*Poem of the day thread

[lontok2005]

'Love takes hostages' - I love that line

But something cheerier:

Postcards from the Hedgehog

i
Dear Mum
Beautiful weather.
I saw a fox last night,
did as you always said
and rolled into a ball.
After a while it went away.
I was a bit scared all the same.
love Simon

ii
Dear Mum
Lovely weather today.
Just saw a pretty girl.
Not sure how to approach her.
She makes me really shy
but just all warm inside.
I rolled up into a ball.
Wish you were here,
love Simon

iii
Dear Mum
It's raining today. I ate a slug.
Wasn't as good as the ones
you used to give us.
Tomorrow I think I'll approach the girl.
Perhaps I'll take her a slug.
She makes me ever so nervous.
I rolled up into a ball.
Wish you were here,
love Simon

iv
Dear Mum
Sun's come out again.
This morning I was very brave
and I went to see her.
I edged up very carefully as you suggested,
but when I spoke to her
I discovered she was actually
a pine cone.
I felt very embarrassed.
I rolled into a ball.
Wish you were here,
love Simon



A.F.Harrold

 

[janeb]

I've always loved the Raymond Carver poem, Late Fragment


And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.


Have only just found out that apparently he wrote this when he knew he was dying of lung cancer

 

[heinous seamus]

When I was a boy...



When I was a boy
a god would often rescue me
from the shouting and violence of humans.
Then, safe and well, I would play
with the meadow flowers,
and heaven's breezes
would play with me.



And as you delight the heart
of plants, stretching their tender
arms toward you,
Father Helios,
so you delighted my heart,
and I was your beloved,
holy Luna, just like Endymion!


All you faithful
friendly gods!
I wish you knew
how my soul loved you!


Naturally I couldn't call you
by name then, nor did you use
mine, as humans do, as if
they really knew each other.


But I was better acquainted with you
than I ever was with humans.
I knew the stillness of the Aether:
I never understood the words of men.


The euphony of the rustling
meadow was my education;
among flowers I learned to love.


I grew up
in the arms of the gods.

Friedrich Hölderlin

 

[DotCommunist]

The more I read it the more I enjoy it

The grey sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i' the slushy sand.

II.
Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, thro' its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!


Browning ennit

 

[heinous seamus]

That's not bad.
This was Friedrich's day, though

 

[SpookyFrank]

I'm going to be a pretentious wanker and post this in French:

Sensation-

Par les soirs bleus d'été, j'irai dans les sentiers
Picoté par les blés, fouler l'herbe menue
Reveur, j'en sentirai la fraicheur a mes pieds
Je laisserai le vent baigner ma tête nue

Je ne parlerai pas, je ne penserai rien
Mais l'amour infini me montera dans l'âme
Et j'irai loin, bien loin, comme un bohémien
Par la nature, hereux comme avec une femme

e2a: Jean-Arthur Rimbaud obviously.

 

[heinous seamus]

Ah Friedrich, no wonder you went mental.

 

[soulman]

When I was a boy...
Friedrich Hölderlin

That's wonderful, so poignant.

 

[coccinelle]

My favourite poem is called 'The Undertaking' by Louise Gluck (a modern American poetess)

"The darkness lifts, imagine, in your lifetime.
There you are - cased in clean bark you drift
through weaving rushes, fields flooded with cotton.
You are free. The river films with lilies,
shrubs appear, shoots thicken into palm. And now
all fear gives way: the light
looks after you, you feel the waves' goodwill
as arms widen over the water; Love

the key is turned. Extend yourself -
it is the Nile, the sun is shining,
everywhere you turn is luck."

 

[heinous seamus]

I'm going to be a pretentious wanker and post this in French:

Sensation-

Par les soirs bleus d'été, j'irai dans les sentiers
Picoté par les blés, fouler l'herbe menue
Reveur, j'en sentirai la fraicheur a mes pieds
Je laisserai le vent baigner ma tête nue

Je ne parlerai pas, je ne penserai rien
Mais l'amour infini me montera dans l'âme
Et j'irai loin, bien loin, comme un bohémien
Par la nature, hereux comme avec une femme

e2a: Jean-Arthur Rimbaud obviously.

Aw c'mon you coulda gave us an english translation at least!

 

[heinous seamus]

Have you ever been in love?

Horrible isn't it?

It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore.

Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain.

I hate love.

i had to read this out loud recently and i was shaking by the end of it. neil gaiman btw from the sandman

This is good. Sums up how I feel right now to be honest!
Why were you reading it out loud?

 

[ShiftyBagLady]

I have been reading Felix Dennis a lot lately, here are a couple of my current favourites
Never go back
Never go back. Never go back.
Never return to the haunts of your youth.
Keep to the track, to the beaten track,
Memory holds all you need of the truth.

Never look back. Never look back.
Never succumb to the gorgon's stare.
Keep to the track, to the beaten track,
No-one is waiting and nothing is there.

Never go back. Never go back.
Never surrender the future you've earned.
Keep to the track, to the beaten track,
Never return to the bridges you burned.

Never look back. Never look back.
Never retreat to the 'glorious past'.
Keep to the track, to the beaten track,
Treat every day of your life as your last.

Never go back. Never go back.
Never acknowledge the ghost on the stair.
Keep to the track, to the beaten track,
No-one is waiting and nothing is there.

And this one which I love

To A Beautiful Lady Of A Certain Age
Lady, lady do not weep -
What is gone is gone. Now sleep.
Turn your pillow, dry your tears,
Count thy sheep and not thy years.

Nothing good can come of this.
Time rules all, my dearest,'tis
But folly to be waging war
On one who never lost before.

Lady, this is all in vain,
Youth can never come again;
We have drunk the summer wine,
None can make a stitch in time.

Nip and tuck 'til crack of doom,
What is foretold in the womb
May not be forsworn with gold -
Nor may time be bought or sold.

Dearest, do I love thee less,
Do I shrink from thy caress?
Think you I could cease to care?
Never was there one so fair!

Lady, lady do not weep -
What is gone is gone. Now sleep.
Lean against me, calm your fears,
Count thy blessings, not thy years.

 

[ShiftyBagLady]

The lowest trees have tops, the ant her gall
The fly her spleen, the little spark his heat;
The slender hairs cast shadows, through but small,
And bees have stings, although they be not great;
Seas have their source, and so have shallow springs;
And love is love, in beggars and in kings.

Where waters smoothest run, there deepest are the fords,
The dial stirs, yet none perceives it move;
The firmest faith is found in fewest words,
The turtles do not sing, and yet they love;
True hearts have ears, and eyes, no tongues to speak;
They hear, and see, and sign, and then they break

Sir Edward Dyer

 

[ShiftyBagLady]

MY LOST YOUTH
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Often I think of the beautiful town
That is seated by the sea;
Often in thought go up and down
The pleasant streets of that dear old town,
And my youth comes back to me.
And a verse of a Lapland song
Is haunting my memory still:
"A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

I can see the shadowy lines of its trees,
And catch, in sudden gleams,
The sheen of the far-surrounding seas,
And islands that were the Hesperides
Of all my boyish dreams.
And the burden of that old song,
It murmurs and whispers still:
"A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

I remember the black wharves and the slips,
And the sea-tides tossing free;
And Spanish sailors with bearded lips,
And beauty and mystery of the ships,
And the magic of the sea.
And the voice of that wayward song
Is singing and saying still:
"A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

I remember the bulwarks by the shore,
And the fort upon the hill;
The sunrise gun, with its hollow roar,
The drum-beat repeated o'er and o'er,
And the bugle wild and shrill.
And the music of that old song
Throbs in my memory still:
"A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

I remember the sea-fight far away,
How it thundered o'er the tide!
And the dead captains, as they lay
In their graves, o'erlooking the tranquil bay
Where they in battle died.
And the sound of that mournful song
Goes through me with a thrill:
"A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

I can see the breezy dome of groves,
The shadows of Deering's Woods;
And the friendships old and the early loves
Come back with a Sabbath sound, as of doves
In quiet neighborhoods.
And the verse of that sweet old song,
It flutters and murmurs still:
"A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

I remember the gleams and glooms that dart
Across the schoolboy's brain;
The song and the silence in the heart,
That in part are prophecies, and in part
Are longings wild and vain.
And the voice of that fitful song
Sings on, and is never still:
"A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

There are things of which I may not speak;
There are dreams that cannot die;
There are thoughts that make the strong heart weak,
And bring a pallor into the cheek,
And a mist before the eye.
And the words of that fatal song
Come over me like a chill:
"A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

Strange to me now are the forms I meet
When I visit the dear old town;
But the native air is pure and sweet,
And the trees that o'ershadow each well-known street,
As they balance up and down
Are singing the beautiful song,
Are sighing and whispering still:
"A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

And Deering's Woods are fresh and fair,
And with joy that is almost pain
My heart goes back to wander there,
And among the dreams of the days that were,
I find my lost youth again.
And the strange and beautiful song,
The groves are repeating it still:
"A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."


The bit in bold makes me shiver, it's beautiful.

 

[heinous seamus]

The Two by Philip Levine

When he gets off work at Packard, they meet

outside a diner on Grand Boulevard. He's tired,

a bit depressed, and smelling the exhaustion

on his own breath, he kisses her carefully

on her left cheek. Early April, and the weather

has not decided if this is spring, winter, or what.

The two gaze upwards at the sky which gives

nothing away: the low clouds break here and there

and let in tiny slices of a pure blue heaven.

The day is like us, she thinks; it hasn't decided

what to become. The traffic light at Linwood

goes from red to green and the trucks start up,

so that when he says, "Would you like to eat?"

she hears a jumble of words that mean nothing,

though spiced with things she cannot believe,

"wooden Jew" and "lucky meat." He's been up

late, she thinks, he's tired of the job, perhaps tired

of their morning meetings, but when he bows

from the waist and holds the door open

for her to enter the diner, and the thick

odor of bacon frying and new potatoes

greets them both, and taking heart she enters

to peer through the thick cloud of tobacco smoke

to the see if "their booth" is available.

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that there were no

second acts in America, but he knew neither

this man nor this woman and no one else

like them unless he stayed late at the office

to test his famous one liner, "We keep you clean

Muscatine," on the woman emptying

his waste basket. Fitzgerald never wrote

with someone present, except for this woman

in a gray uniform whose comings and goings

went unnoticed even on those December evenings

she worked late while the snow fell silently

on the window sills and the new fluorescent lights

blinked on and off. Get back to the two, you say.

Not who ordered poached eggs, who ordered

only toast and coffee, who shared the bacon

with the other, but what became of the two

when this poem ended, whose arms held whom,

who first said "I love you" and truly meant it,

and who misunderstood the words, so longed

for, and yet still so unexpected, and began

suddenly to scream and curse until the waitress

asked them both to leave. The Packard plant closed

years before I left Detroit, the diner was burned

to the ground in '67, two years before my oldest son

fled to Sweden to escape the American dream.

"And the lovers?" you ask. I wrote nothing about lovers.

Take a look. Clouds, trucks, traffic lights, a diner, work,

a wooden shoe, East Moline, poached eggs, the perfume

of frying bacon, the chaos of language, the spices

of spent breath after eight hours of night work.

Can you hear all I feared and never dared to write?

Why the two are more real than either you or me,

why I never returned to keep them in my life,

how little I now mean to myself or anyone else,

what any of this could mean, where you found

the patience to endure these truths and confessions?

 

[heinous seamus]

Happiness

I asked the professors who teach the meaning of life to tell
me what is happiness.
And I went to famous executives who boss the work of
thousands of men.
They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though
I was trying to fool with them
And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along
the Desplaines river
And I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with
their women and children and a keg of beer and an
accordion.

Carl Sandburg

 

[soulman]

We rob their banks
We thin their ranks
And ask no thanks
For what we do.

 

[soulman]

The black flag

When I die
let the black rag fly
raven falling
from the sky.

Let the black flag lie
on bones and skin
that long last night
as I enter in.

For out of black
soul's night have stirred
dawn's cold gleam,
morning's singing bird.

Let black day die,
let black flag fall,
let raven call,
let new day dawn
of black reborn.

 

[heinous seamus]

The Dancers Inherit the Party

When I have talked for an hour I feel lousy—
Not so when I have danced for an hour:
The dancers inherit the party
While the talkers wear themselves out and
sit in corners alone, and glower.

Ian Hamilton Finlay

 

[maya]

whoever finds a horseshoe

We look at a forest and say:
Here is a forest for ships and masts,
Red pines,
Free to their tops of their shaggy burden,
To creak in the storm
In the furious forestless air;
The plumbline fastened to the dancing deck
Will hold out under the wind's salt heel.
And the sea-wanderer,
In his unbridled thirst for space,
Dragging through damp ruts a geometer's needle,
Collates the rough surface of the seas
With the attraction of the earth's lap.

But breathing the smell
Of resinous tears oozing through planks,
Admiring the boards of bulkheads riveted
Not by the peaceful Bethlehem carpenter but by that other-
Father of journeys, friend of seafarers-
We say:
These too stood the earth,
Awkward as a donkey's backbone,
Their crests forgetful of their roots,
On a celebrated mountain ridge;
And howled under the sweet cloud-burst,
Fruitlessly offering the sky their precious freight
For a pinch of salt.

Where shall we begin?
Everything pitches and splits,
The air quivers with comparisions,
No one word is better than another,
The earth hums with metaphors.
And light two-wheeled chariots,
Harnessed brightly to flocks of strenuous birds,
Explode,
Vying with the snorting favourites of the race-track.

Three times blest he who puts a name into song;
A song adorned with a name
Survives longer among the others,
Marked by a fillet
That frees it from forgetfulness and stupefying smells,
Whether proximity of man or the smell of a beast's pelt
Or simply a whiff of thyme rubbed between the palms.

The air dark like water, everything alive swims like fish,
Fins pushing aside the sphere
That's compact, resilient, hardly heated-
The crystal in which wheels move and horses shy,
The moist black-earth every night flung open anew
By pitchforks, tridents, hoes and ploughs.
The air is mixed as densely as the earth-
You can't get out, to get inside is arduous.

Rustling runs through the trees like a green ball-game;
Children play knucklebones with the vertebrae of dead animals.
The fragile calculation of the years of our era ends.
Let us be grateful for what we had:
I too made mistakes, lost my way, lost count.
The era rang like a golden sphere,
Cast, hollow, supported by no one.
Touched, it answered yes and no,
As a child will say:
I'll give you an apple, or: I won't give you one;
Its face an exact copy of the voice that pronounces these words.

The sound is still ringing although its source has ceased.
The horse foams in the dust.
But the acute curve of his neck
Preserves the memory of the race with outstretched legs
When there were not four
But as many as the stones on the road,
Renewed in four shifts
As blazing hooves pushed off from the ground.

So,
Whoever finds a horseshoe
Blows away the dust,
Rubs it with wool till it shines,
Then
Hangs it over the treshold
To test,
So that it will no longer have to strike sparks from flint.
Human lips
which have nothing more to say
Preserve the form of the last word said.
And the arm retains the sense of weight
Though the jug
splashes half-empty
on the way home.

What I am saying at this moment is not being said by me
But is dug from the ground like grains of petrified wheat.
Some
on their coins depict a lion,
Others
a head;
Various tablets of brass, of gold and bronze
Lie with equal honour in the earth.
The century, trying to bite through them, left its teeth-marks
there.
Time pares me down like a coin,
And there is no longer enough of me for myself.

(- Osip Mandelshtam, 1923.)

 

[maya]

Gacela of the Dark Death
by Federico García Lorca


I want to sleep the sleep of the apples,

I want to get far away from the busyness of the cemeteries.

I want to sleep the sleep of that child

who longed to cut his heart open far out at sea.



I don't want them to tell me again how the corpse keeps all its blood,

how the decaying mouth goes on begging for water.

I'd rather not hear about the torture sessions the grass arranges for

nor about how the moon does all its work before dawn

with its snakelike nose.



I want to sleep for half a second,

a second, a minute, a century,

but I want everyone to know that I am still alive,

that I have a golden manger inside my lips,

that I am the little friend of the west wind,

that I am the elephantine shadow of my own tears.



When it's dawn just throw some sort of cloth over me

because I know dawn will toss fistfuls of ants at me,

and pour a little hard water over my shoes

so that the scorpion claws of the dawn will slip off.



Because I want to sleep the sleep of the apples,

and learn a mournful song that will clean all earth away from me,

because I want to live with that shadowy child

who longed to cut his heart open far out at sea.

 

[maya]

Death Fugue
by Paul Celan

Black milk of morning we drink you at dusktime

we drink you at noontime and dawntime we drink you at night

we drink and drink

we scoop out a grave in the sky where it’s roomy to lie

There’s a man in this house who cultivates snakes and who writes

who writes when it’s nightfall nach Deutschland your golden hair Margareta

he writes it and walks from the house and the stars all start flashing he whistles his dogs to draw near

whistles his Jews to appear starts us scooping a grave out of sand

he commands us to play for the dance



Black milk of morning we drink you at night

we drink you at dawntime and noontime we drink you at dusktime

we drink and drink

There’s a man in this house who cultivates snakes and who writes

who writes when it’s nightfall nach Deutschland your golden hair Margareta

your ashen hair Shulamite we scoop out a grave in the sky where it’s roomy to lie

He calls jab it deep in the soil you lot there you other men sing and play

he tugs at the sword in his belt he swings it his eyes are blue

jab your spades deeper you men you other men you others play up again for the dance



Black milk of morning we drink you at night

we drink you at noontime and dawntime we drink you at dusktime

we drink and drink

there’s a man in this house your golden hair Margareta

your ashen hair Shulamite he cultivates snakes



He calls play that death thing more sweetly Death is a gang-boss aus Deutschland

he calls scrape that fiddle more darkly then hover like smoke in the air

the scoop out a grave in the clouds where it’s roomy to lie



Black milk of morning we drink you at night

we drink you at noontime Death is a gang-boss aus Deutschland

we drink you at dusktime and dawntime we drink and drink

Death is a gang-boss aus Deutschland his eye is blue

he shoots you with leaden bullets his aim is true

there’s a man in this house your golden hair Margareta

he sets his dogs on our trail he gives us a grave in the sky

he cultivates snakes and he dreams Death is a gang-boss aus Deutschland



your golden hair Margareta

your ashen hair Shulamite

 

[maya]

My First Memory (of Librarians)
by Nikki Giovanni

This is my first memory:
A big room with heavy wooden tables that sat on a creaky
wood floor
A line of green shades—bankers’ lights—down the center
Heavy oak chairs that were too low or maybe I was simply
too short
For me to sit in and read
So my first book was always big

In the foyer up four steps a semi-circle desk presided
To the left side the card catalogue
On the right newspapers draped over what looked like
a quilt rack
Magazines face out from the wall

The welcoming smile of my librarian
The anticipation in my heart
All those books—another world—just waiting
At my fingertips.

 

[Housmans]

By the People's poet

Oh, Cliff
Sometimes it must be difficult not to feel as if
You really are a Cliff
When fascists keep trying to push you over it
Are they the lemmings?
Or are you Cliff?
Or are you, Cliff?

 

[Mrs Magpie]

A poem on a video.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=LtQxSRiMKZU

This is the best poem I've heard in ages.

 

[Hi-ASL]

Mirror by Sylvia Plath
...

In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

Face Lift

You bring me good news from the clinic,
Whipping off your silk scarf, exhibiting the tight white
Mummy-cloths, smiling: I'm all right.
When I was nine, a lime-green anesthetist
Fed me banana gas through a frog-mask. The nauseous vault
Boomed wild bad dreams and the Jovian voices of surgeons.
The mother swam up, holding a tin basin.
O I was sick.

They've changed all that. Traveling
Nude as Cleopatra in my well-boiled hospital shift,
Fizzy with sedatives and unusually humorous,
I roll to an anteroom where a kind man
Fists my fingers for me. He makes me feel something precious
Is leaking from the finger-vents. At the count of two
Darkness wipes me out like chalk on a blackboard...
I don't know a thing.

For five days I lie in secret,
Tapped like a cask, the years draining into my pillow.
Even my best friend thinks I'm in the country.
Skin doesn't have roots, it peels away easy as paper.
When I grin, the stitches tauten. I grow backward. I'm twenty,
Broody and in long skirts on my first husband's sofa, my fingers
Buried in the lambswool of the dead poodle;
I hadn't a cat yet.

Now she's done for, the dewlapped lady
I watched settle, line by line, in my mirror—
Old sock-face, sagged on a darning egg.
They've trapped her in some laboratory jar.
Let her die there, or whither incessantly for the next fifty years,
Nodding and rocking and fingering her thin hair.
Mother to myself, I wake swaddled in gauze,
Pink and smooth as a baby.

 

[Hi-ASL]

Aubade

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
- The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused - nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast, moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear - no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anasthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small, unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can't escape,
Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

Philip Larkin


Oh well. Worth posting twice..

 

[ebay sex moomin]

fantastic, thanks for posting. I always meant to immerse myself in Larkin's verse- somehow it hasn't come about yet.

 

[Hi-ASL]

Green Groweth the Holly​

1 Green groweth the holly,
2 So doth the ivy.
3 Though winter blasts blow never so high,
4 Green groweth the holly. ​

5 As the holly groweth green
6 And never changeth hue,
7 So I am, ever hath been,
8 Unto my lady true. ​

9 As the holly groweth green
10 With ivy all alone
11 When flowers cannot be seen
12 And greenwood leaves be gone, ​

13 Now unto my lady
14 Promise to her I make,
15 From all other only
16 To her I me betake. ​

17 Adieu, mine own lady,
18 Adieu, my special
19 Who hath my heart truly
20 Be sure, and ever shall. ​

Henry VIII, King of England ​

 

[lang rabbie]

Happy 400th Birthday, Citizen Milton

Sadly, only the workshy would have a chance to work through "Paradise Lost" if I suggested it as Poem of the Day.

I've decided on this one instead.

"[Wordsworth] asked me what I thought the finest, elegiac composition in the language; and, when I diffidently suggested Lycidas, he replied, 'You are not far wrong."

Lycidas

In this Monody the Author bewails a
learned Friend, unfortunatly drown'd in his Passage
from Chester on the Irish Seas, 1637. And by
occasion fortels the ruine of our corrupted
Clergy then in their height.​

YET once more, O ye Laurels, and once more
Ye Myrtles brown, with Ivy never-sear,
I com to pluck your Berries harsh and crude,
And with forc'd fingers rude,
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.
Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear,
Compels me to disturb your season due:
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer:
Who would not sing for Lycidas? he knew
Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme.
He must not flote upon his watry bear
Unwept, and welter to the parching wind,
Without the meed of som melodious tear.

Begin then, Sisters of the sacred well,
That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring,
Begin, and somwhat loudly sweep the string.
Hence with denial vain, and coy excuse,
So may som gentle Muse
With lucky words favour my destin'd Urn,
And as he passes turn,
And bid fair peace be to my sable shrowd.
For we were nurst upon the self-same hill,
Fed the same flock, by fountain, shade, and rill.

Together both, ere the high Lawns appear'd
Under the opening eye-lids of the morn,
We drove a field, and both together heard
What time the Gray-fly winds her sultry horn,
Batt'ning our flocks with the fresh dews of night,
Oft till the Star that rose, at Ev'ning, bright
Toward Heav'ns descent had slop'd his westering wheel.
Mean while the Rural ditties were not mute,
Temper'd to th' Oaten Flute,
Rough Satyrs danc'd, and Fauns with clov'n heel,
From the glad sound would not be absent long,
And old Damœtas lov'd to hear our song.

But O the heavy change, now thou art gon,
Now thou art gon, and never must return!
Thee Shepherd, thee the Woods, and desert Caves,
With wilde Thyme and the gadding Vine o'regrown,
And all their echoes mourn.
The Willows, and the Hazle Copses green,
Shall now no more be seen,
Fanning their joyous Leaves to thy soft layes.
As killing as the Canker to the Rose,
Or Taint-worm to the weanling Herds that graze,
Or Frost to Flowers, that their gay wardrop wear,
When first the White thorn blows;
Such, Lycidas, thy loss to Shepherds ear.

Where were ye Nymphs when the remorseless deep
Clos'd o're the head of your lov'd Lycidas?
For neither were ye playing on the steep,
Where your old Bards, the famous Druids ly,
Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high,
Nor yet where Deva spreads her wisard stream:
Ay me, I fondly dream!
Had ye bin there — for what could that have don?
What could the Muse her self that Orpheus bore,
The Muse her self, for her inchanting son
Whom Universal nature did lament,
When by the rout that made the hideous roar,
His goary visage down the stream was sent,
Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore.

Alas! What boots it with uncessant care
To tend the homely slighted Shepherds trade,
And strictly meditate the thankles Muse,
Were it not better don as others use,
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neæra's hair?
Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of Noble mind)
To scorn delights, and live laborious dayes;
But the fair Guerdon when we hope to find,
And think to burst out into sudden blaze,
Comes the blind Fury with th' abhorred shears,
And slits the thin spun life. But not the praise,
Phœbus repli'd, and touch'd my trembling ears;
Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,
Nor in the glistering foil
Set off to th' world, nor in broad rumour lies,
But lives and spreds aloft by those pure eyes,
And perfet witnes of all judging Jove;
As he pronounces lastly on each deed,
Of so much fame in Heav'n expect thy meed.

O Fountain Arethuse, and thou honour'd flood,
Smooth-sliding Mincius, crown'd with vocall reeds,
That strain I heard was of a higher mood:
But now my Oate proceeds,
And listens to the Herald of the Sea
That came in Neptune's plea,
He ask'd the Waves, and ask'd the Fellon winds,
What hard mishap hath doom'd this gentle swain?
And question'd every gust of rugged wings
That blows from off each beaked Promontory,
They knew not of his story,
And sage Hippotades their answer brings,
That not a blast was from his dungeon stray'd,
The Ayr was calm, and on the level brine,
Sleek Panope with all her sisters play'd.
It was that fatall and perfidious Bark
Built in th' eclipse, and rigg'd with curses dark,
That sunk so low that sacred head of thine.

Next Camus, reverend Sire, went footing slow,
His Mantle hairy, and his Bonnet sedge,
Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge
Like to that sanguine flower inscrib'd with woe.
Ah! Who hath reft (quoth he) my dearest pledge?
Last came, and last did go,
The Pilot of the Galilean lake,
Two massy Keyes he bore of metals twain,
(The Golden opes, the Iron shuts amain)
He shook his Miter'd locks, and stern bespake,
How well could I have spar'd for thee young swain,
Anow of such as for their bellies sake,
Creep and intrude, and climb into the fold?
Of other care they little reck'ning make,
Then how to scramble at the shearers feast,
And shove away the worthy bidden guest.
Blind mouthes! that scarce themselves know how to hold
A Sheep-hook, or have learn'd ought els the least
That to the faithfull Herdmans art belongs!
What recks it them? What need they? They are sped;
And when they list, their lean and flashy songs
Grate on their scrannel Pipes of wretched straw,
The hungry Sheep look up, and are not fed,
But swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw,
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread:
Besides what the grim Woolf with privy paw
Daily devours apace, and nothing sed,
But that two-handed engine at the door,
Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.

Return Alpheus, the dread voice is past,
That shrunk thy streams; Return Sicilian Muse,
And call the Vales, and bid them hither cast
Their Bels, and Flourets of a thousand hues.
Ye valleys low where the milde whispers use,
Of shades and wanton winds, and gushing brooks,
On whose fresh lap the swart Star sparely looks,
Throw hither all your quaint enameld eyes,
That on the green terf suck the honied showres,
And purple all the ground with vernal flowres.
Bring the rathe Primrose that forsaken dies.
The tufted Crow-toe, and pale Jasmine,
The white Pink, and the Pansie freakt with jeat,
The glowing Violet.
The Musk-rose, and the well attir'd Woodbine,
With Cowslips wan that hang the pensive hed,
And every flower that sad embroidery wears:
Bid Amaranthus all his beauty shed,
And Daffadillies fill their cups with tears,
To strew the Laureat Herse where Lycid lies.
For so to interpose a little ease,
Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise.
Ay me! Whilst thee the shores and sounding Seas
Wash far away, where ere thy bones are hurld,
Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides,
Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide
Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world;
Or whether thou to our moist vows deny'd,
Sleep'st by the fable of Bellerus old,
Where the great vision of the guarded Mount
Looks toward Namancos and Bayona's hold;
Look homeward Angel now, and melt with ruth.
And, O ye Dolphins, waft the haples youth.

Weep no more, woful Shepherds weep no more,
For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead,
Sunk though he be beneath the watry floar,
So sinks the day-star in the Ocean bed,
And yet anon repairs his drooping head,
And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled Ore,
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky:
So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high,
Through the dear might of him that walk'd the waves;
Where other groves, and other streams along,
With Nectar pure his oozy Lock's he laves,
And hears the unexpressive nuptiall Song,
In the blest Kingdoms meek of joy and love.
There entertain him all the Saints above,
In solemn troops, and sweet Societies
That sing, and singing in their glory move,
And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes.
Now Lycidas the Shepherds weep no more;
Hence forth thou art the Genius of the shore,
In thy large recompense, and shalt be good
To all that wander in that perilous flood.

Thus sang the uncouth Swain to th' Okes and rills,
While the still morn went out with Sandals gray,
He touch'd the tender stops of various Quills,
With eager thought warbling his Dorick lay:
And now the Sun had stretch'd out all the hills,
And now was dropt into the Western bay;
At last he rose, and twitch'd his Mantle blew:
To morrow to fresh Woods, and Pastures new.


Version with hyperlinked footnotes

Citizen Milton at the Bodleian Library, Oxford