Your favorite poem

[Northern_Paladin]

And here is one of my favorite poems.

My Soul is Dark by Lord Byron

My soul is dark - Oh! quickly string
The harp I yet can brook to hear;
And let thy gentle fingers fling
Its melting murmurs o'er mine ear.
If in this heart a hope be dear,
That sound shall charm it forth again:
If in these eyes there lurk a tear,
'Twill flow, and cease to burn my brain.

But bid the strain be wild and deep,
Nor let thy notes of joy be first:
I tell thee, minstrel, I must weep,
Or else this heavy heart will burst;
For it hath been by sorrow nursed,
And ached in sleepless silence, long;
And now 'tis doomed to know the worst,
And break at once - or yield to song.

[WFHermans]

Bonnie Blue Flag

We are a band of brothers
And native to the soil
Fighting for our liberty
With treasure blood, and toil
And when our rights were threatened,
The cry rose near and far
Hurrah for the Bonnie Blue Flag
That bears a single star!

Refrain:
Hurrah!
Hurrah!
For Southern rights, hurrah!
Hurrah for the Bonnie Blue Flag
That bears a single star.

As long as the Union
Was faithful to her trust
Like friends and brethren,
Kind were we, and just
But now, when Northern treachery
Attempts our rights to mar
We hoist on high the Bonnie Blue Flag
That bears a single star.

First gallant South Carolina
Nobly made the stand
Then came Alabama
And took her by the hand
Next, quickly Mississippi,
Georgia, and Florida
All raised on high the Bonnie Blue Flag
That bears a single star.

Ye men of valor gather
Round the banner of the right
Texas and fair Louisiana
Join us in the fight
Davis, our loved President,
And Stephens statesmen are
Now rally round the Bonnie Blue Flag
That bears a single star.

And here's to brave Virginia
The Old Dominion state
With the young Confederacy
At length has linked her fate
Impelled by her example
Now other states prepare
To hoist on high the Bonnie Blue Flag
That bears the single star.

Then here's to our Confederacy
Strong we are and brave
Like patriots of old we'll fight
Our heritage to save
And rather than submit to shame
To die we would prefer
So cheer for the Bonnie Blue Flag
That bears the single star.

Then cheer boys cheer
Raise the joyous shout
For Arkansas and North Carolina
Now have both gone out
And let another rousing cheer
For Tennessee be given
The single star on the Bonnie Blue Flag
Has grown to be eleven.

And to Missouri we
Extend both heart and hand
And welcome her a sister
Of our Confederate band
Tho surrounded by oppression
No one dare deter
Her adding to our Bonnie Blue Flag
Her bright and twelfth star!

[Jimbo Gomez]

Zij zullen hem niet temmen, de fiere Vlaamse Leeuw.
Al dreigen zij zijn vrijheid, met kluisters en geschreeuw.
Ze zullen hem niet temmen, zolang een Vlaming leeft,
Zolang de Leeuw kan klauwen, zolang hij tanden heeft.

Ze zullen hem niet temmen, zolang een Vlaming leeft,
Zolang de leeuw kan klauwen, zolang hij tanden heeft.
Zolang de leeuw kan klauwen, zolang hij tanden heeft.

De tijd verslindt de steden, geen tronen blijven staan.
De legerbenden sneven, een volk zal niet vergaan.
De vijand trekt te veld, omringd van doodsgevaar.
Wij lachen met zijn woede, de Vlaamse Leeuw is daar.

Hij strijdt nu duizend jaren, voor vrijheid, land en God.
En nog zijn zijn krachten, in al haar jeugdgenot.
Als ze hem machtloos denken, en tergen met een schop.
Dan richt hij zich bedreigend, en vreeslijk voor hen op.

Wee hem, de onbezonnen', die vals en vol verraad,
de Vlaamse Leeuw komt strelen, en trouweloos hem slaat.
Geen enkle handbeweging, die hij uit 't oog verliest:
en voelt hij zich getroffen, hij stelt zijn maan en briest.

Het waaksein is gegeven, Hij is hun tergen moe;
met vuur in 't oog, met woede, springt hij den vijand toe.
Hij scheurt, vernielt, verplettert, bedekt met bloed en slijk,
en zegepralend grijnst hij, op 's vijands trillend lijk.

[Aule]

Kublah Kahn
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me
That with music loud and long
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

[Keystone]

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.



Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.



Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.



Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night.



Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.



And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.


---Dylan Thomas

[Spitfire]

Zij zullen hem niet temmen, de fiere Vlaamse Leeuw.
Al dreigen zij zijn vrijheid, met kluisters en geschreeuw.
Ze zullen hem niet temmen, zolang een Vlaming leeft,
Zolang de Leeuw kan klauwen, zolang hij tanden heeft.

Ze zullen hem niet temmen, zolang een Vlaming leeft,
Zolang de leeuw kan klauwen, zolang hij tanden heeft.
Zolang de leeuw kan klauwen, zolang hij tanden heeft.

De tijd verslindt de steden, geen tronen blijven staan.
De legerbenden sneven, een volk zal niet vergaan.
De vijand trekt te veld, omringd van doodsgevaar.
Wij lachen met zijn woede, de Vlaamse Leeuw is daar.

Hij strijdt nu duizend jaren, voor vrijheid, land en God.
En nog zijn zijn krachten, in al haar jeugdgenot.
Als ze hem machtloos denken, en tergen met een schop.
Dan richt hij zich bedreigend, en vreeslijk voor hen op.

Wee hem, de onbezonnen', die vals en vol verraad,
de Vlaamse Leeuw komt strelen, en trouweloos hem slaat.
Geen enkle handbeweging, die hij uit 't oog verliest:
en voelt hij zich getroffen, hij stelt zijn maan en briest.

Het waaksein is gegeven, Hij is hun tergen moe;
met vuur in 't oog, met woede, springt hij den vijand toe.
Hij scheurt, vernielt, verplettert, bedekt met bloed en slijk,
en zegepralend grijnst hij, op 's vijands trillend lijk.

How many people here can read Dutch?

My Hero The Foo Fighters

Too alarming now to talk about
Take your pictures down and shake it out
Truth or consequence, say it aloud
Use that evidence, race it around

There goes my hero
Watch him as he goes
There goes my hero
Hes ordinary

Dont the best of them bleed it out
While the rest of them peter out
Truth or consequence, say it aloud
Use that evidence, race it around

There goes my hero
Watch him as he goes
There goes my hero
Hes ordinary

Kudos my hero leaving all the best
You know my hero, the one thats on

There goes my hero
Watch him as he goes
There goes my hero
Hes ordinary

[///M power]

poetry? does panteras songs count as poetry?
:whip: :whip: :bbbat: :bbbat:

[Keystone]

poetry? does panteras songs count as poetry?
:whip: :whip: :bbbat: :bbbat:
I can't see why not. Songs are poetry set to music.

[///M power]

I can't see why not. Songs are poetry set to music.

ok.. their songs are nothing without the music but all metal fans surly know this song- pantera-cowboys from hell

"Under the lights where we stand tall
Nobody touches us at all
Showdown, shootout, spread fear within, without
We're gonna take what's ours to have
Spread the word throughout the land
They say the bad guys wear black
We're tagged and can't turn back

You see us comin'
And you all together run for cover
We're takin over this town

Here we come reach for your gun
And you better listen my friend, you see
It's been slow down below,
Aimed at you we're the cowboys from hell
Deed is done again, we've won
Ain't talking no tall tales friend
'Cause high noon, your doom
Comin' for you we're the cowboys from hell

Pillage the village, trash the scene
But better not take it out on me
'Cause a ghost town is found
Where your city used to be
So out of the darkness and into the light
Sparks fly everywhere in sight
From my double barrel, 12 gauge,
Can't lock me in your cage


You see us comin'
And you all together run for cover
We're takin over this town

Here we come reach for your gun
And you better listen my friend, you see
It's been slow down below,
Aimed at you we're the cowboys from hell
Deed is done again, we've won
Ain't talking no tall tales friend
'Cause high noon, your doom
Comin' for you we're the cowboys from hell

[Sinclair]

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! - An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, -
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.


What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
- Only the monstruous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, -
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Wilfred Owen's stuff is great... The depressing bit is that he got killed just before WWI ended. Apparently his mother got the news just as the Armistice was being celebrated.

[Keystone]

LOL.

Bregowald just gave me a wall of :jew: :jew: :jew: rep for Dylan Thomas.

Get it off your chest in public, man. It'll do you good kid! :rofl:

[Jake Featherston]

does panteras songs count as poetry?

It counts as poetry much in the same way that a burlap sack full of urine-soaked tree bark counts as "food."

[Jake Featherston]

Up the airy mountain side,
and down the wooded glen,
We dare not go a-hunting...
FOR FEAR OF LITTLE MEN!

[Jake Featherston]

Macavity: The Mystery Cat

Macavity's a Mystery Cat: he's called the Hidden Paw -
For he's the master criminal who can defy the Law.
He's the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad's despair:
For when they reach the scene of crime - Macavity's not there!

Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity,
He's broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity.
His powers of levitation would make a fakir stare,
And when you reach the scene of crime - Macavity's not there!
You may seek him in the basement, you may look up in the air -
But I tell you once and once again, Macavity's not there!

Mcavity's a ginger cat, he's very tall and thin;
You would know him if you saw him, for his eyes are sunken in.
His brow is deeply lined with thought, his head is highly domed;
His coat is dusty from neglect, his whiskers are uncombed.
He sways his head from side to side, with movements like a snake;
And when you think he's half asleep, he's always wide awake.

Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity,
For he's a fiend in feline shape, a monster of depravity.
You may meet him in a by-street, you may see him in the square -
But when a crime's discovered, then Macavity's not there!

He's outwardly respectable. (They say he cheats at cards.)
And his footprints are not found in any file of Scotland Yard's.
And when the larder's looted, or the jewel-case is rifled,
Or when the milk is missing, or another Peke's been stifled,
Or the greenhouse glass is broken, and the trellis past repair -
Ay, there's the wonder of the thing! Macavity's not there!

And when the Foreign Office find a Treaty's gone astray,
Or the Admiralty lose some plans and drawings by the way,
There may be a scrap of paper in the hall or on the stair -
But it's useless to investigate - Mcavity's not there!
And when the loss has been disclosed, the Secret Service say:
`It must have been Macavity!' - but he's a mile away.
You'll be sure to find him resting, or a-licking of his thumbs,
Or engaged in doing complicated long-division sums.

Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity,
There never was a Cat of such deceitfulness and suavity.
He always has an alibi, and one or two to spaer:
At whatever time the deed took place - MACAVITY WASN'T THERE!
And they say that all the Cats whose wicked deeds are widely known
(I might mention Mungojerrie, I might mention Griddlebone)
Are nothing more than agents for the Cat who all the time
Just controls their operations: the Napoleon of Crime!

[Jimbo Gomez]

@ Spitfire and Northern Paladin: it is the Flemish National anthem.

[Ahknaton]

JABBERWOCKY

Lewis Carroll (from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872)

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.


"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.


`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

[Zander]

poetry is for fags.

[Will Scarlet]

"American Names," by Stephen Vincent Benet

I have fallen in love with American names,
The sharp names that never get fat,
The snakeskin-titles of mining-claims,
The plumed war-bonnet of Medicine Hat,
Tucson and Deadwood and Lost Mule Flat.

Seine and Piave are silver spoons,
But the spoonbowl-metal is thin and worn,
There are English counties like hunting-tunes
Played on the keys of a postboy's horn,
But I will remember where I was born.

I will remember Carquinez Straits,
Little French Lick and Lundy's Lane,
The Yankee ships and the Yankee dates
And the bullet-towns of Calamity Jane.
I will remember Skunktown Plain.

I will fall in love with a Salem tree
And a rawhide quirt from Santa Cruz,
I will get me a bottle of Boston sea
And a blue-gum nigger to sing me blues.
I am tired of loving a foreign muse.

Rue des Martyrs and Bleeding-Heart-Yard,
Senlis, Pisa, and Blindman's Oast,
It is a magic ghost you guard
But I am sick for a newer ghost,
Harrisburg, Spartanburg, Painted Post.

Henry and John were never so
And Henry and John were always right?
Granted, but when it was time to go
And the tea and the laurels had stood all night,
Did they never watch for Nantucket Light?

I shall not rest quiet in Montparnasse.
I shall not lie easy at Winchelsea.
You may bury my body in Sussex grass,
You may bury my tongue at Champmedy.
I shall not be there. I shall rise and pass.
Bury my heart at Wounded Knee.

[Will Scarlet]

"The Ballad of William Sycamore," by Stephen Vincent Benet

My father, he was a mountaineer,
His fist was a knotty hammer;
He was quick on his feet as a running deer,
And he spoke with a Yankee stammer.

My mother, she was merry and brave,
And so she came to her labor,
With a tall green fir for her doctor grave
And a stream for her comforting neighbor.

And some are wrapped in the linen fine,
And some like a godling's scion;
But I was cradled on twigs of pine
And the skin of a mountain lion.

And some remember a white, starched lap
And a ewer with silver handles;
But I remember a coonskin cap
And the smell of bayberry candles.

The cabin logs, with the bark still rough,
And my mother who laughed at trifles,
And the tall, lank visitors, brown as snuff,
With their long, straight squirrel-rifles.

I can hear them dance, like a foggy song,
Through the deepest one of my slumbers,
The fiddle squeaking the boots along
And my father calling the numbers.

The quick feet shaking the puncheon-floor,
And the fiddle squealing and squealing,
Till the dried herbs rattled above the door
And the dust went up to the ceiling.

There are children lucky from dawn till dusk,
But never a child so lucky!
For I cut my teeth on "Money Musk"
In the Bloody Ground of Kentucky!

When I grew tall as the Indian corn,
My father had little to lend me,
But he gave me his great, old powder-horn
And his woodsman's skill to befriend me.

With a leather shirt to cover my back,
And a redskin nose to unravel
Each forest sign, I carried my pack
As far as a scout could travel.

Till I lost my boyhood and found my wife,
A girl like a Salem clipper!
A woman straight as a hunting-knife
With as eyes as bright as the Dipper!

We cleared our camp where the buffalo feed,
Unheard-of streams were our flagons;
And I sowed my sons like the apple-seed
On the trail of the Western wagons.

They were right, tight boys, never sulky or slow,
A fruitful, a goodly muster.
The eldest died at the Alamo.
The youngest fell with Custer.

The letter that told it burned my hand.
Yet we smiled and said, "So be it!"
But I could not live when they fenced the land,
For it broke my heart to see it.

I saddled a red, unbroken colt
And rode him into the day there;
And he threw me down like a thunderbolt
And rolled on me as I lay there.

The hunter's whistle hummed in my ear
As the city-men tried to move me,
And I died in my boots like a pioneer
With the whole wide sky above me.

Now I lie in the heart of the fat, black soil,
Like the seed of a prairie-thistle;
It has washed my bones with honey and oil
And picked them clean as a whistle.

And my youth returns, like the rains of Spring,
And my sons, like the wild-geese flying;
And I lie and hear the meadow-lark sing
And have much content in my dying.

Go play with the towns you have built of blocks,
The towns where you would have bound me!
I sleep in my earth like a tired fox,
And my buffalo have found me.

[Aule]

The Cremation of Sam McGee
by Robert W. Service

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee,
Where the cotton blooms and blows.
Why he left his home in the South to roam
'Round the Pole, God only knows.
He was always cold, but the land of gold
Seemed to hold him like a spell;
Though he'd often say in his homely way
That he'd "sooner live in hell".

On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way
Over the Dawson trail.
Talk of your cold! through the parka's fold
It stabbed like a driven nail.
If our eyes we'd close, then the lashes froze
Till sometimes we couldn't see;
It wasn't much fun, but the only one
To whimper was Sam McGee.

And that very night, as we lay packed tight
In our robes beneath the snow,
And the dogs were fed, and the stars o'erhead
Were dancing heel and toe,
He turned to me, and "Cap," says he,
"I'll cash in this trip, I guess;
And if I do, I'm asking that you
Won't refuse my last request."

Well, he seemed so low that I couldn't say no;
Then he says with a sort of moan:
"It's the cursed cold, and it's got right hold
Till I'm chilled clean through to the bone.
Yet 'tain't being dead -- it's my awful dread
Of the icy grave that pains;
So I want you to swear that, foul or fair,
You'll cremate my last remains."

A pal's last need is a thing to heed,
So I swore I would not fail;
And we started on at the streak of dawn;
But God! he looked ghastly pale.
He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day
Of his home in Tennessee;
And before nightfall a corpse was all
That was left of Sam McGee.

There wasn't a breath in that land of death,
And I hurried, horror-driven,
With a corpse half hid that I couldn't get rid,
Because of a promise given;
It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say:
"You may tax your brawn and brains,
But you promised true, and it's up to you
To cremate those last remains."

Now a promise made is a debt unpaid,
And the trail has its own stern code.
In the days to come, though my lips were dumb,
In my heart how I cursed that load.
In the long, long night, by the lone firelight,
While the huskies, round in a ring,
Howled out their woes to the homeless snows --
O God! how I loathed the thing.

And every day that quiet clay
Seemed to heavy and heavier grow;
And on I went, though the dogs were spent
And the grub was getting low;
The trail was bad, and I felt half mad,
But I swore I would not give in;
And I'd often sing to the hateful thing,
And it hearkened with a grin.

Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge,
And a derelict there lay;
It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice
It was called the "Alice May".
And I looked at it, and I thought a bit,
And I looked at my frozen chum;
Then "Here," said I, with a sudden cry,
"Is my cre-ma-tor-eum."

Some planks I tore from the cabin floor,
And I lit the boiler fire;
Some coal I found that was lying around,
And I heaped the fuel higher;
The flames just soared, and the furnace roared --
Such a blaze you seldom see;
And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal,
And I stuffed in Sam McGee.

Then I made a hike, for I didn't like
To hear him sizzle so;
And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled,
And the wind began to blow.
It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled
Down my cheeks, and I don't know why;
And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak
Went streaking down the sky.

I do not know how long in the snow
I wrestled with grisly fear;
But the stars came out and they danced about
Ere again I ventured near;
I was sick with dread, but I bravely said:
"I'll just take a peep inside.
I guess he's cooked, and it's time I looked"; . . .
Then the door I opened wide.

And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm,
In the heart of the furnace roar;
And he wore a smile you could see a mile,
And he said: "Please close that door.
It's fine in here, but I greatly fear
You'll let in the cold and storm --
Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee,
It's the first time I've been warm."

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

[Will Scarlet]

One more by Benet:

"Southern Ships and Settlers," by Stephen Vincent Benet

O, where are you going, "Godspeed" and "Discovery"?
With meek "Susan Constant" to make up the three?
We're going to settle the wilds of Virginia,
For gold and adventure we're crossing the sea.

And what will you find there? Starvation and fever.
We'll eat of the adder and quarrel and rail.
All but sixty shall die of the first seven hundred,
But a nation begins with the voyage we sail.

O, what are you doing, my handsome Lord Baltimore?
Where are you sending your ""Ark" and your "Dove?"
I'm sending them over the ocean to Maryland
To build up a refuge for people I love.

Both Catholic and Protestant there may find harbor,
Though I am a Catholic by creed and by prayer.
The South is Virginia, the North is New England.
I'll go in the middle and plant my folk there.

O, what do you seek, "Carolina" and "Albemarle"
Now the Stuarts are up and the Roundheads are down?
We'll seek and we'll find, to the South of Virginia,
A site by two rivers and name it Charles Town.

And in South Carolina, the cockfighting planters
Will dance with their belles by a tropical star.
And in North Carolina, the sturdy Scotch-Irish
Will prove at King's Mountain the metal they are.

O, what are you dreaming, cock-hatted James Oglethorpe?
And who are the people you take in the "Anne"?
They're poor English debtors whom hard laws imprison,
And poor, distressed Protestants, fleeing a ban.

I'll settle them pleasantly on the Savannah,
With Germans and Highlanders, thrifty and strong.
They shall eat Georgia peaches in huts of palmetto,
And their land shall be fertile, their days shall be long.



We're the barques and the sailors, the bread on the waters,
The seed that was planted and grew to be tall,
And the South was first won by our toils and our dangers,
So remember our journeys. Remember us all.

[Geist]

The Burial of the Dead.
from The Waste Land:

April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke's,
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in winter.

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
Frisch weht der Wind
Der heimat zu
Mein Irisch kind,
Wo weilest du?
"You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;"
"They called me the hyacinth girl."
--Yet when we came back, late, from the hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Oed' und leer das Meer.

Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Has a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor.
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of situations.
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something that he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.
Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
Tell her I bring the horoscope myself;
One must be so careful these days.

Unreal City
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet,
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying, "Stetson!
You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
Oh keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men,
Or with his nails he'll dig it up again!
You! hypocrite lecteur!--mon semblable!--mon frère!"

[Geist]

William Blake
London


I wandered through each chartered street,
Near where the chartered Thames does flow,
And mark in every face I meet,
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every man,
In every infant's cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forged manacles I hear:

How the chimney-sweeper's cry
Every blackening church appals,
And the hapless soldier's sigh
Runs in blood down palace-walls.

But most, through midnight streets I hear
How the youthful harlot's curse
Blasts the new-born infant's tear,
And blights with plagues the marriage-hearse.

[Geist]

O sweet spontaneous
e.e. cummings

O sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
the
doting

fingers of
purient philosophers pinched
and
poked

thee
,has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy

beauty .how
oftn have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy knees
squeezing and

buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
(but
true

to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover

thou answerest


them only with


spring)

[ironweed]

I think this one should be the Phora National Anthem. :p

A Nautical Ballad

A capital ship for an ocean trip
Was "The Walloping Window-blind;"
No gale that blew dismayed her crew
Or troubled the captain's mind.

The man at the wheel was taught to feel
Contempt for the wildest blow,
And it often appeared, when the weather had cleared,
That he'd been in his bunk below.

The boatswain's mate was very sedate,
Yet fond of amusement, too;
And he played hop-scotch with the starboard watch,
While the captain tickled the crew.

And the gunner we had was apparently mad,
For he sat on the after-rail,
And fired salutes with the captain's boots,
In the teeth of the booming gale.

The captain sat in a commodore's hat,
And dined, in a royal way,
On toasted pigs and pickles and figs
And gummery bread, each day.

But the cook was Dutch, and behaved as such;
For the food that he gave the crew
Was a number of tons of hot-cross buns,
Chopped up with sugar and glue.

And we all felt ill as mariners will,
On a diet that's cheap and rude;
And we shivered and shook as we dipped the cook
In a tub of his gluesome food.

Then nautical pride we laid aside,
And we cast the vessel ashore
On the Gulliby Isles, where the Poohpooh smiles,
And the Anagazanders roar.

Composed of sand was that favored land,
And trimmed with cinnamon straws;
And pink and blue was the pleasing hue
Of the Tickletoeteaser's claws.

And we sat on the edge of a sandy ledge
And shot at the whistling bee;
And the Binnacle-bats wore water-proof hats
As they danced in the sounding sea.

On rubagub bark, from dawn to dark,
We fed, till we all had grown
Uncommonly shrunk,-when a Chinese junk
Came by from the torriby zone.

She was stubby and square, but we didn't much care,
And we cheerily put to sea;
And we left the crew of the junk to chew
The bark of the rubagub tree.


Charles Edward Carryl

[Felix the Cat]

Edgar Allan Poe, "The Bells"

Hear the sledges with the bells-
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells-
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

II

Hear the mellow wedding bells,
Golden bells!
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!
Through the balmy air of night
How they ring out their delight!
From the molten-golden notes,
And an in tune,
What a liquid ditty floats
To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats
On the moon!
Oh, from out the sounding cells,
What a gush of euphony voluminously wells!
How it swells!
How it dwells
On the Future! how it tells
Of the rapture that impels
To the swinging and the ringing
Of the bells, bells, bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells,bells,
Bells, bells, bells-
To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!

III

Hear the loud alarum bells-
Brazen bells!
What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells!
In the startled ear of night
How they scream out their affright!
Too much horrified to speak,
They can only shriek, shriek,
Out of tune,
In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire,
Leaping higher, higher, higher,
With a desperate desire,
And a resolute endeavor,
Now–now to sit or never,
By the side of the pale-faced moon.
Oh, the bells, bells, bells!
What a tale their terror tells
Of Despair!
How they clang, and clash, and roar!
What a horror they outpour
On the bosom of the palpitating air!
Yet the ear it fully knows,
By the twanging,
And the clanging,
How the danger ebbs and flows:
Yet the ear distinctly tells,
In the jangling,
And the wrangling,
How the danger sinks and swells,
By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells-
Of the bells-
Of the bells, bells, bells,bells,
Bells, bells, bells-
In the clamor and the clangor of the bells!

IV

Hear the tolling of the bells-
Iron Bells!
What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!
In the silence of the night,
How we shiver with affright
At the melancholy menace of their tone!
For every sound that floats
From the rust within their throats
Is a groan.
And the people–ah, the people-
They that dwell up in the steeple,
All Alone
And who, tolling, tolling, tolling,
In that muffled monotone,
Feel a glory in so rolling
On the human heart a stone-
They are neither man nor woman-
They are neither brute nor human-
They are Ghouls:
And their king it is who tolls;
And he rolls, rolls, rolls,
Rolls
A paean from the bells!
And his merry bosom swells
With the paean of the bells!
And he dances, and he yells;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the paean of the bells-
Of the bells:
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the throbbing of the bells-
Of the bells, bells, bells-
To the sobbing of the bells;
Keeping time, time, time,
As he knells, knells, knells,
In a happy Runic rhyme,
To the rolling of the bells-
Of the bells, bells, bells:
To the tolling of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells-
Bells, bells, bells-
To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.

[Lenny]

if i was a nigger...i could drive a cadillac with class
my pocket stuffed with welfare checks, and i could sit on my big black ass
now you take a nigger, he aint nobody's fool, he doesn't buy any gasoline, to drive his kids to school
damn i wish i was a nigger
our government has gone crazy, i'd change things if i could
if i was only a nigger, i could afford to live in a white neighborhood
oh the things that i could do, if i was black and hell bent
i could send my kids to college, and it wouldn't cost me one damn cent
damn i wish i was a nigger
the wife and i were down on our luck, we were really getting uptight
they said at the welfare office, you aint black you're white
oh how I've tried to get a job, a diploma i have with pride
the post office man laughed and said, youre not dark enough to even qualify
damn i wish i was a nigger
i took a civil service exam, and passed it without shame
a nigger took one next to me, and he couldnt even write his own name
the nigger, he got the job, now he's government top brass
he couldn't qualify for a trash truck, I'm out on the street, on my ass
damn i wish i was a nigger
if i was a Jesse Jackson, i'd be nobody's slob
wearin $500.00 dollar suits, that nigger hasn't even got a job
if i was Jackson Brown, i could sit back and relax
and if elected president, could paint the white house black
damn i wish i was a nigger
if i was a jig-a-boo, i could find me my roots
with a afro big as a watermelon, and a pair of white disco boots
if i was only dark complected, i could stand tall in this life
i could eat high off the hog, just me and my white wife
damn i wish i was a nigger
things aren't supposed to be segregated, but things are a little off key
I've never seen a white man, head...of the NAACP
it aint that i don't like a nigger, if I've rubbed you wrong by chance
take a look at that mistletoe, hanging, on the seat of my pants
damn i wish i was a nigger
if i was a kinky top, i could be a Martin Luther King
i'd have me a vision on a mountain top, my song the whole world would sing
i could have me a peace march, on the streets of Memphis, Tennessee
i could tear up the whole damn city, and the police wouldn't dare stop me
damn i wish i was a nigger
a lot of things in life i know, but one thing i cant figure
why a nigger can call me a honkey, and i cant call a nigger, a nigger
if i was a jungle bunny, i could ring a golden bell
i could be a Mohammed Ali, and be loved by Howard Cousell
damn i wish i was a nigger
if i was a Ubengi, 7 foot tall and lean
i could be a famous player, on the Washington basketball team
if i was only chocolate brown, i could have me some turnip greens
a possum fat and watermelon, chitlens and a pot of butter beans
damn i wish i was a nigger
now old Martin Luther King, was buried in Washington with class
face down in his box, so the politicians could kiss his ass
i guess it's just politics, and it sure gets my goat
kiss-assin' with a nigger, just to get his vote
damn i wish i was a nigger
if i was only a burrhad, i'd live high on the hill
sellin' cocaine and prostitutes, and poppin all kinds of pills
now take the NAACP, they can march and raise all kinds of hell
let the Kay Kay Kay start to move, and they'll all wind up in jail
damn i wish i was a nigger
i dreamed my life was over, i heard saint peter say
today we're takin on the niggers, you've gotta go the..other way
then i heard the devil, he said i heard what peter had to say
but I'm sorry to tell you son, today in hell...is nigger day
damn, don't you wish you were a nigger?
I'm going back to the hills of Arkansas, where they don't have those not damn one sided nigger peace marches
protesters, welfare-check-grabbers, I'm gon' plant me some turnip greens in a watermelon patch
raise me a hog, and a big fat possum
i said yes i am you mother

Listen here (http://www.solargeneral.com/music/johnny%20rebel%20-%20best/David%20Allen%20Coe%20-%20Damn%20I%20Wish%20I%20Was%20A%20Nigger.mp3)

[Lenny]

It was late last night.
I made my rounds.
I met my woman and I blowed her down.
I went on home and I went to bed,
I laid my pistol up under my head.
Early next mornin' by the risin' sun,
I woke up and I started to run.
I made a run but I run too slow,
A man overtook me down in Jericho.
I was standin' on the corner readin' my daddy's will.
Along come a man, they called him Bad Texas Bill.
He said, ah, captain, is your name Lee Brown?
I believe that you're the rascal blowed your woman down.
I said yes sir, captain, my name is Lee,
And if you've got any blues, boy, sing 'em to me.
Well I guess Lee that you know the best,
You better come go with me, the judge will tell you the rest.
I was arrested, I was dressed in black.
They put me on a train and they brung me back.
Jury found me guilty in the first degree
And they laid me down in the penitentiary.
Yes the judge found me guilty and the jury, too.
Cried Lord in Heaven have some mercy on me.
I'll be here for the rest of my life. All I done was kill my wife.

[Northern_Paladin]

LOL.

Bregowald just gave me a wall of :jew: :jew: :jew: rep for Dylan Thomas.

Get it off your chest in public, man. It'll do you good kid! :rofl:

What a coincidence. Francis Galton gave me the same wall of Jews.:dance2:
I'm really confused. As I don't see how either Poetry or Lord Byron is Jewish.

[Jofreidr_1488]

Hitler's Odinist poem

In 1915, while serving in the German Army on the Western Front, Hitler wrote the following esoteric poem mentioning the pre-Christian Germanic deity Wotan:

"I often go on bitter nights
To Woden's oak in the quiet glade
With dark powers to weave a union -
The moonlight showing me the runic spell

And all who are full of impudence during the day
Are made small by the magic formula!
They draw shining steel - but instead of going into combat,
They solidify into stalagmites.

Thus the wrong ones separate from the genuine ones -
I reach into a nest of words
then give to the good and fair
With my formula blessings and prosperity"

Link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_mysticism#Hitler.27s_Odinist_poem)

[Arminius]

This is my favorite poem and has been for a long time. I first read it at school, as a child.

La Belle Dame Sans Merci
John Keats
(1819)


I.

O WHAT can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has wither’d from the lake,
And no birds sing.

II.

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms!
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel’s granary is full,
And the harvest’s done.

III.

I see a lily on thy brow
With anguish moist and fever dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.

IV.

I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful—a faery’s child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.

V.

I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She look’d at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.

VI.

I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A faery’s song.

VII.

She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna dew,
And sure in language strange she said—
“I love thee true.”

VIII.

She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she wept, and sigh’d fill sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.

IX.

And there she lulled me asleep,
And there I dream’d—Ah! woe betide!
The latest dream I ever dream’d
On the cold hill’s side.

X.

I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried—“La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!”

XI.

I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill’s side.

XII.

And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is wither’d from the lake,
And no birds sing.

http://img342.imageshack.us/img342/2176/red3zt8.jpg

[VAMPIR]

I can't say just one poet and poem. Its so many of them...

Pablo Neruda

If You Forget Me

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

William Shakespeare

Absence

Being your slave, what should I do but tend
Upon the hours and times of your desire?
I have no precious time at all to spend
Nor services to do, till you require:
Nor dare I chide the world-without-end-hour
Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,
Nor think the bitterness of absence sour
When you have bid your servant once adieu:

Nor dare I question with my jealous thought
Where you may be, or your affairs suppose.
But like a sad slave, stay and think of nought
Save, where you are, how happy you make those;—

So true a fool is Love, that in your will
Though you do anything, he thinks no ill.

[VAMPIR]

Письмо от матери

Чего же мне
Еще теперь придумать,
О чем теперь
Еще мне написать?
Передо мной
На столике угрюмом
Лежит письмо,
Что мне прислала мать.

Она мне пишет:
"Если можешь ты,
То приезжай, голубчик,
К нам на святки.
Купи мне шаль,
Отцу купи порты,
У нас в дому
Большие недостатки.
Мне страх не нравится,
Что ты поэт,
Что ты сдружился
С славою плохою.
Гораздо лучше б
С малых лет
Ходил ты в поле за сохою.

Стара я стала
И совсем плоха,
Но если б дома
Был ты изначала,
То у меня
Была б теперь сноха
И на ноге
Внучонка я качала.

Но ты детей
По свету растерял,
Свою жену
Легко отдал другому,
И без семьи, без дружбы,
Без причал
Ты с головой
Ушел в кабацкий омут.

Любимый сын мой,
Что с тобой?
Ты был так кроток,
Был так смиренен.
И говорил все наперебой:
Какой счастливый
Александр Есенин!

В тебе надежды наши
Не сбылись,
И на душе
С того больней и горше,
Что у отца
Была напрасной мысль,
Чтоб за стихи
Ты денег брал побольше.

Хоть сколько б ты
Ни брал,
Ты не пошлешь их в дом,
И потому так горько
Речи льются,
Что знаю я
На опыте твоем:
Поэтам деньги не даются.

Мне страх не нравится,
Что ты поэт,
Что ты сдружился
С славою плохою.
Гораздо лучше б
С малых лет
Ходил ты в поле за сохою.

Теперь сплошная грусть,
Живем мы, как во тьме.
У нас нет лошади.
Но если б был ты в доме,
То было б все,
И при твоем уме -
Пост председателя
В волисполкоме.
Тогда б жилось смелей,
Никто б нас не тянул,
И ты б не знал
Ненужную усталость,
Я б заставляла
Прясть
Твою жену,
А ты, как сын,
Покоил нашу старость".
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Я комкаю письмо,
Я погружаюсь в жуть.
Ужель нет выхода
В моем пути заветном?
Но все, что думаю,
Я после расскажу.
Я расскажу
В письме ответном...

Сергей Александрович Есенин (Sergei Esenin)

[Sandee]

Poems of Mirabai

"With my tears,
I watered the creeper of love that I planted;
Now the creeper has grown spread all over,
and borne the fruit of bliss.
The churner of the milk churned with great love.
When I took out the butter,
no need to drink any buttermilk.
I came for the sake of love-devotion;
seeing the world, I wept. "



Unbreakable

Unbreakable, O Lord,
Is the love
That binds me to You:
Like a diamond,
It breaks the hammer that strikes it.

My heart goes into You
As the polish goes into the gold.
As the lotus lives in its water,
I live in You.

Like the bird
That gazes all night
At the passing moon,
I have lost myself dwelling in You.

O my Beloved - Return.

[VAMPIR]

Petar Petrović II Njegoš

Noć skuplja vijeka


[Pjesma je napisana 1845]

La douceur de l’haleine de cette deesse
surpassait tous les parfums de l’Arabie heureuse

Plava luna vedrim zrakom u prelesti divno teče
ispod polja zvjezdanije u proljećnu tihu veče,
siplje zrake magičeske, čuvstva tajna neka budi,
te smrtnika žedni pogled u dražesti slatkoj bludi.
Nad njom zv’jezde rojevima brilijantna kola vode,
pod njom kaplje rojevima zažižu se rojne vode;
na grm slavuj usamljeni armoničku pjesnu poje,
mušice se ognjevite ka komete male roje.
Ja zamišljen pred šatorom na šareni ćilim sjedim
i s pogledom vnimatelnim svu divotu ovu gledim.
Čuvstva su mi sad trejazna, a misli se razletile;
krasota mi ova boža razvijala umne sile.
Nego opet k sebe dođi, u ništavno ljudsko stanje,
al’ lišeno svoga trona božestvo sam neko manje;
pretčuvstvijem nekim slatkim hod Dijanin veličavi
dušu mi je napojio – sve njen v’jenac gledim plavi,
O nasljedstvo idejalno, ti nam gojiš besmrtije,
te sa nebom duša ljudska ima svoje snošenije!
Sluh i duša u nadeždi plivajući tanko paze
na livadi dviženija – do njih hitro svi dolaze!
Rasprsne li pupulj cv’jetni ali kane rosa s struka –
sve to sluhu oštrom grmi, kod mene je strašna huka;
zatrepte li tice krila u busenju guste trave,
strecanja me rajska tresu, a vitlenja muče glave.
Trenuć mi je svaki sahat – moje vreme sad ne ide;
sile su mi na opazu, oči bježe svud – da vide.
Dok evo ti divne vile lakim krokom đe mi leti –
zavid’te mi, svi besmrtni, na trenutak ovaj sveti!
Hod je vilin mlogo dični na Avrorin kada šeće,
od srebrnog svoga praga nad proljećem kad se kreće;
zrak je vile mladolike tako krasan ka Atine,
ogledalo i mazanje preziru joj čerte fine.
Ustav’ luno, b’jela kola, produži mi čase mile,
kad su sunce nad Inopom ustaviti mogle vile.
Prelesnicu kako vidim, zagrlim je kv bog veli,
uvedem je pod šatorom k ispunjenju svetoj želji.
Pri zrakama krasne lune, pri svjećici zapaljenoj
plamena se spoji duša ka dušici raskaljenoj
i cjelivi božestveni dušu s dušom dragom sliju.
Ah, cjelivi, boža mana, sve prelesti rajske liju!
Cjelitelni balsam sveti najmirisni aromati
što je nebo zemlji dalo na usne joj stah sisati.
Sovršenstvo tvorenija, tainstvene sile bože,
ništa ljepše nit’ je kada niti od nje stvorit može!
Malena joj usta slatka, a angelski obraščići –
od tisuće što čuvstvujem jednu ne znam sada reći!
Snježana joj prsa okrugla, a strecaju svetim plamom,
dv’je slonove jabučice na njih dube slatkim mamom;
crna kosa na valove niz rajske s igra grudi...
O divoto! Čudo smrtni ere sada ne poludi!
B’jela prsa gordija su pod crnijem valovima
no planina gordeljiva pod vječnijem snjegovima
na izlazak kad je sunca sa ravnine cv’jetne gledim,
kroz mrežicu tanke magle veličinu kad joj sl’jedim.
Igram joj se s jabukama – dva svijeta srećna važe,
k voshištenju besmrtnome lišenika sreće draže;
znoj lagani s njenom kosom s zanešene tarem glave...
Druge sreće, malo važne, za nju bi da, i sve slave.
Ne miču se usta s ustah – cjeliv jedan noći c’jele!
Jošt se sitan ne naljubih vladalice vile b’jele;
svezala se dva pogleda magičeskom slatkom silom,
kao sunce s svojim likom kada leti nad pučinom.
Luna bježi s horizonta i ustupa Febu vladu,
tad iz vida ja izgubim divotnicu moju mladu!

[Sean]

I haven't read a lot of poetry, but I really like "Ode on a Grecian Urn" by Keats:

I.


THOU still unravish’d bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

II.


Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal - yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

III.


Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

IV.


Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.

V.


O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,
«Beauty is truth, truth beauty,»- that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

[Anti Social]

It seemed that out of battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites which titanic wars had groined.

Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
Then ,as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
Lifting distressful hands, as if to bless.
And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall, -
By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.

With a thousand pains that vision's face was grained;
Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,
And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.
'Strange friend,' I said, 'here is no cause to mourn.'
'None,' said that other, 'save the undone years,
The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,
Was my life also; I went hunting wild
After the wildest beauty in the world,
Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,
But mocks the steady running of the hour,
And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.
For by my glee might many men have laughed,
And of my weeping something had been left,
Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,
The pity of war, the pity war distilled.
Now men will go content with what we spoiled,
Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.
They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress.
None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.
Courage was mine, and I had mystery,
Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery:
To miss the march of this retreating world
Into vain citadels that are not walled.
Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels,
I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,
Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.
I would have poured my spirit without stint
But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.
Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.

I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now...'

[albion]

http://poetrypages.lemon8.nl/life/musee/icarusbreughel.jpg
"Fall of Icarus" by Breughel

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

http://poetrypages.lemon8.nl/life/musee/museebeauxarts.htm

[Kodos]

Kublah Kahn
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me
That with music loud and long
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Ive never been much for poetry( I like Kipling) but my father loves that one...

[Hippias]

W. H. Auden

As I Walked Out One Evening

As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
"Love has no ending.

"I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
Till China and Afica meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street.

"I'll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.

"The years shall run like rabbits,
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
And the first love of the world."

But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
"O let not Time deceive you
You cannot conquer Time.

"In the burrows of the Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss.

"In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And time will have his fancy
To-morrow or to-day.

"Into many a green valley
Drifts the appalling snow
Time breaks the threaded dances
And the diver's brilliant bow.

"O plunge your hands in water
Plunge them up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you've missed."

"The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.

"Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer
And Jill goes down on her back."

"O look, look in the mirror,
O look in your distress;
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless."

"O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbor
With your crooked heart."

It was late, late in the evening
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
And the deep river ran on.

[Delmac]

Someone's already posted my favourite, Keats' La Belle Dame Sans Merci.

So here's something I also like, albeit in a less romantic vein

Louis MacNeice - Bagpipe Music

It's no go the merrygoround, it's no go the rickshaw,
All we want is a limousine and a ticket for the peepshow.
Their knickers are made of crêpe-de-chine, their shoes are made of python,
Their halls are lined with tiger rugs and their walls with heads of bison.

John MacDonald found a corpse, put it under the sofa,
Waited till it came to life and hit it with a poker,
Sold its eyes for souvenirs, sold its blood for whiskey,
Kept its bones for dumb-bells to use when he was fifty.

It's no go the Yogi-Man, it's no go Blavatsky,
All we want is a bank balance and a bit of skirt in a taxi.

Annie MacDougall went to milk, caught her foot in the heather,
Woke to hear a dance record playing of Old Vienna.
It's no go your maidenheads, it's no go your culture,
All we want is a Dunlop tyre and the devil mend the puncture.

The Laird o' Phelps spent Hogmanay declaring he was sober,
Counted his feet to prove the fact and found he had one foot over.
Mrs Carmichael had her fifth, looked at the job with repulsion,
Said to the midwife 'Take it away; I'm through with overproduction'.

It's no go the gossip column, it's no go the Ceilidh,
All we want is a mother's help and a sugar-stick for the baby.

Willie Murray cut his thumb, couldn't count the damage,
Took the hide of an Ayrshire cow and used it for a bandage.
His brother caught three hundred cran when the seas were lavish,
Threw the bleeders back in the sea and went upon the parish.

It's no go the Herring Board, it's no go the Bible,
All we want is a packet of fags when our hands are idle.

It's no go the picture palace, it's no go the stadium,
It's no go the country cot with a pot of pink geraniums,
It's no go the Government grants, it's no go the elections,
Sit on your arse for fifty years and hang your hat on a pension.

It's no go my honey love, it's no go my poppet;
Work your hands from day to day, the winds will blow the profit.
The glass is falling hour by hour, the glass will fall for ever,
But if you break the bloody glass you won't hold up the weather.

[kultron]

I can't stand overly long poems that require many re-reads just to get the meaning. Here is mine:

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

[Delmac]

As far as short, easy-to-understand poems go, how about:

Philip Larkin - This Be The Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

[calvin]

I like Whitman's poem about Custer.

FROM far Dakota's canons,
Lands of the wild ravine, the dusky Sioux, the lonesome stretch, the
silence,
Haply to-day a mournful wall, haply a trumpet-note for heroes.

The battle-bulletin,
The Indian ambuscade, the craft, the fatal environment,
The cavalry companies fighting to the last in sternest heroism,
In the midst of their little circle, with their slaughter'd horses
for breastworks,
The fall of Custer and all his officers and men.

Continues yet the old, old legend of our race,
The loftiest of life upheld by death,
The ancient banner perfectly maintain'd,
O lesson opportune, O how I welcome thee!

As sitting in dark days,
Lone, sulky, through the time's thick murk looking in vain for
light, for hope,
From unsuspected parts a fierce and momentary proof,
(The sun there at the centre though conceal'd,
Electric life forever at the centre,)
Breaks forth a lightning flash.

Thou of the tawny flowing hair in battle,
I erewhile saw, with erect head, pressing ever in front, bearing a
bright sword in thy hand,
Now ending well in death the splendid fever of thy deeds,
(I bring no dirge for it or thee, I bring a glad triumphal sonnet,)
Desperate and glorious, aye in defeat most desperate, most glorious,
After thy many battles in which never yielding up a gun or a color,
Leaving behind thee a memory sweet to soldiers,
Thou yieldest up thyself.

[Olin D. Johnston]

One of my favorite poems, it's by Rudyard Kipling.

The Stranger Within My Gate

The Stranger within my gate,
He may be true or kind,
But he does not talk my talk—
I cannot feel his mind.
I see the face and the eyes and the mouth,
But not the soul behind.

The men of my own stock
They may do ill or well,
But they tell the lies I am wonted to,
They are used to the lies I tell.
And we do not need interpreters
When we go to buy and sell.

The Stranger within my gates,
He may be evil or good,
But I cannot tell what powers control—
What reasons sway his mood;
Nor when the Gods of his far-off land
Shall repossess his blood.

The men of my own stock,
Bitter bad they may be,
But, at least, they hear the things I hear,
And see the things I see;
And whatever I think of them and their likes
They think of the likes of me.

This was my father's belief
And this is also mine:
Let the corn be all one sheaf—
And the grapes be all one vine,
Ere our children's teeth are set on edge
By bitter bread and wine.

[MrRS]

I have always been a fan of Tennyson:

The Charge Of The Light Brigade

by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Memorializing Events in the Battle of Balaclava, October 25, 1854
Written 1854



Half a league half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred:
'Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns' he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

'Forward, the Light Brigade!'
Was there a man dismay'd ?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Some one had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do & die,
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd & thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.

Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army while
All the world wonder'd:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro' the line they broke;
Cossack & Russian
Reel'd from the sabre-stroke,
Shatter'd & sunder'd.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
While horse & hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wonder'd.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!


http://etext.virginia.edu/britpo/tennyson/TenChar.html

[Milesian]

Go fiú ar an oileán seo
Is cosc ar ghreim láimhe
Dá mbeadh do lámh agam
Ghreamóinn i go rábach --
Ní hea, ní go rábach é
Ach go híogair, go híogair,
Chomh híogair san
Ná haireodh éinne é --
Einne beo --
Tusa fhéin
Go fiù.

[Felix the Cat]

Go fiú ar an oileán seo
Is cosc ar ghreim láimhe
Dá mbeadh do lámh agam
Ghreamóinn i go rábach --
Ní hea, ní go rábach é
Ach go híogair, go híogair,
Chomh híogair san
Ná haireodh éinne é --
Einne beo --
Tusa fhéin
Go fiù.
On the Island of Pilgrimage

Even on this Island
where holding hands is forbidden
If I had your hand
I would grip it tightly
No, not tightly,
But sensitively, sensitively
so sensitively that
none would notice it
no one at all
you yourself
even

[A Flickering]

Imre Madach - The Tragedy of Man

http://mek.oszk.hu/00900/00918/html/

[Kim Jong Tha Illest]

Send New Beasts, Joe Wenderoth

These beasts will not do.

1 Their bleeding is decidedly inadequate-from a distance they appear not to bleed at all. Considering the likelihood of distance in today's spectator, this is not a small problem.

2 While they are exotic enough in appearance-and I assume this is why they were selected-they have a tendency, and an ability, to hide themselves in plain view. I don't claim to understand this ability-I only know that it is widely felt that, even at close range, they are difficult to get a good look at, and this is especially true when a blow is being struck upon them. It's almost as if they're immune to isolation-as if they are able to always appear, no matter how alone they are, in the noise and confusion of a herd.

3 They are far too obedient and willing to receive blows. Indeed, they seem to sense when a blow is coming and to move intuitively into it. If this movement was desperate-graceful or gracelessit might generate some interest, but it seems to fall, tragically, somewhere in between. That is, they seem able, at every point in their torture, to collapse in a reasonable fashion, as if the collapse was being dictated by their own will. No one enjoys-I don't think I even need to tell you-a reasoned collapse. It is this aspect of the beasts that most deeply defeats us, our simple want of a show.

4 Their attacks-and I hesitate to even call them attacks-are largely indistinguishable from the active reasoning of their own collapse. It is as though they seek above all to expose us to this activity of theirs-to infect us with their will to reason, and in so doing, reduce us to the unvarying rhythm of their irreducible herd. I would like to say that we are immune to this reduction, but I am not sure. In any case, I see no good reason for continuing to subject ourselves to these attacks. It would be better to have no beasts at all-to live altogether outside of shows-than to sink numbly into tolerance of a spectacle which fails to clarify what it is that distinguishes us from beasts.

[sugartits]

Charles Baudelaire


To the Reader


Folly and error, sin and avarice,
Labor our minds and bodies in their course,
Blithely we nourish pleasurable remorse
As beggars feed their parasitic lice.


Our sins are stubborn, our repentance faint,
We sell our weak confessions at high price,
Returning gaily to the bogs of vice,
Thinking base tears can cleanse our every taint.


Pillowed on evil, Satan Trismegist
Ceaselessly cradles our enchanted mind,
The flawless metal of our will we find
Volatilized by this rare alchemist.


The Devil holds the puppet threads; and swayed
By noisome things and their repugnant spell,
Daily we take one further step toward Hell,
Suffering no horror in the olid shade.


As an impoverished rake will kiss and bite
The bruised blue nipples of an ancient whore,
We steal clandestine pleasures by the score,
Which, like dried orange rinds, we pressure tight.


Serried, aswarm, like million maggots, so
Demons carouse in us with fetid breath,
And, when we breathe, the unseen stream of death
Flows down our lungs with muffled wads of woe.


If poison, knife, rape, arson, have not dared
Yet stamp the pleasing pattern of their gyves
On the dull canvas of our sorry lives,
It is because our torpid souls are scared.


But side by side with our monstrosities —
Jackals and bitch hounds, scorpions, vultures, apes,
Panthers and serpents whose repulsive shapes
Pollute our vice's dank menageries,


There is one viler and more wicked spawn,
Which never makes great gestures or loud cries
Yet would turn earth to wastes of sumps and sties
And swallow all creation in a yawn:


Ennui! Moist-eyed perforce, worse than all other,
Dreaming of stakes, he smokes his houka pipe...
Reader, you know this fiend, refined and ripe,
Reader, O hypocrite — my like! — my brother!



That one's my fave, but here's a page with a few different translations. http://fleursdumal.org/poem/099

[sugartits]

The Ideal

No beauties such as figure in vignettes,
Monsters of a vain era's lame design,
With feet for buskins, hands for castanets,
Can ever satisfy a heart like mine.
I leave to Gavarni's chlorotic Muse
These sickly prattling nymphs, however real;
Not one of these pale roses would I choose
To match the flowers of my red ideal.


What my heart, deep as an abyss, demands,
Lady Macbeth, is your brave bloody hands,
And, Aeschylus, your dreams of rage and fright,
Or you, vast Night, daughter of Angelo's,
Who peacefully twist into a strange pose
Charms fashioned for a Titan's mouth to bite.



:suicide:

[Geist]

Ah yes, Monsieur Baudelaire. The flâneur.

[Ahknaton]

I've always liked this one ever since I was a kid. It's fun trying to find symbolism in it too. I think it's about a harvesting of souls, and Jesus is the Carpenter (the Walrus is the Devil/Cthulu). We are the goysters. Who consumes you?

The Walrus and the Carpenter by Lewis Carroll

The sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might:
He did his very best to make
The billows smooth and bright--
And this was odd, because it was
The middle of the night.

The moon was shining sulkily,
Because she thought the sun
Had got no business to be there
After the day was done--
"It's very rude of him," she said,
"To come and spoil the fun!"

The sea was wet as wet could be,
The sands were dry as dry.
You could not see a cloud, because
No cloud was in the sky:
No birds were flying overhead--
There were no birds to fly.

The Walrus and the Carpenter
Were walking close at hand;
They wept like anything to see
Such quantities of sand:
"If this were only cleared away,"
They said, "it would be grand!"

"If seven maids with seven mops
Swept it for half a year.
Do you suppose," the Walrus said,
"That they could get it clear?"
"I doubt it," said the Carpenter,
And shed a bitter tear.

"O Oysters, come and walk with us!"
The Walrus did beseech.
"A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk,
Along the briny beach:
We cannot do with more than four,
To give a hand to each."

The eldest Oyster looked at him,
But never a word he said:
The eldest Oyster winked his eye,
And shook his heavy head--
Meaning to say he did not choose
To leave the oyster-bed.

But four young Oysters hurried up,
All eager for the treat:
Their coats were brushed, their faces washed,
Their shoes were clean and neat--
And this was odd, because, you know,
They hadn't any feet.

Four other Oysters followed them,
And yet another four;
And thick and fast they came at last,
And more, and more, and more--
All hopping through the frothy waves,
And scrambling to the shore.

The Walrus and the Carpenter
Walked on a mile or so,
And then they rested on a rock
Conveniently low:
And all the little Oysters stood
And waited in a row.

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."

"But wait a bit," the Oysters cried,
"Before we have our chat;
For some of us are out of breath,
And all of us are fat!"
"No hurry!" said the Carpenter.
They thanked him much for that.

"A loaf of bread," the Walrus said,
"Is what we chiefly need:
Pepper and vinegar besides
Are very good indeed--
Now if you're ready, Oysters dear,
We can begin to feed."

"But not on us!" the Oysters cried,
Turning a little blue.
"After such kindness, that would be
A dismal thing to do!"
"The night is fine," the Walrus said.
"Do you admire the view?

"It was so kind of you to come!
And you are very nice!"
The Carpenter said nothing but
"Cut us another slice:
I wish you were not quite so deaf--
I've had to ask you twice!"

"It seems a shame," the Walrus said,
"To play them such a trick,
After we've brought them out so far,
And made them trot so quick!"
The Carpenter said nothing but
"The butter's spread too thick!"

"I weep for you," the Walrus said:
"I deeply sympathize."
With sobs and tears he sorted out
Those of the largest size,
Holding his pocket-handkerchief
Before his streaming eyes.

"O Oysters," said the Carpenter,
"You've had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?'
But answer came there none--
And this was scarcely odd, because
They'd eaten every one.

[Dodge Viper]

This isnt really a poem, more of a meditation or prayer.

I am Flying Home

Paramahansa Yogananda


Good-bye blue house of heaven. Farewell, stars and celestial celebraties and your dramas on the screen of space. Good-bye, flowers with your traps of beauty and fragrance. You can hold me no longer. I am flying home.

Adieu to the warm embrace of sunshine. Farewell, cool, soothing, comforting breeze. Good-bye, entertaining music of man.

I stayed long reveling with you all, dancing with my variously costumed thoughts, drinking the wine of my feelings and my mundane will. I have now forsaken the intoxications of delusion.

Good-bye muscles, bones, and bodily motions. Farewell breath. I cast thee away from my breast. Adieu, heart-throbs, emotions, thoughts, and memories. I am flying home in a plane of silence. I go to feel my heart throb in him.

I soar in the plane of consciousness above, beneath, on the left, on the right, within and without, everywhere, to find that in every nook of my space-home I have always been in the sacred presence of my Father.


http://meditationdoctor.org/images/LastSmile.jpg

[Dr. Gutberlet]

One of my all time favourites:

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=173127

There Is A Garden In Her Face
by Thomas Campion


There is a garden in her face
Where roses and white lilies grow;
A heav'nly paradise is that place
Wherein all pleasant fruits do flow.
There cherries grow which none may buy,
Till "Cherry ripe" themselves do cry.


Those cherries fairly do enclose
Of orient pearl a double row,
Which when her lovely laughter shows,
They look like rose-buds fill'd with snow;
Yet them nor peer nor prince can buy,
Till "Cherry ripe" themselves do cry.


Her eyes like angels watch them still,
Her brows like bended bows do stand,
Threat'ning with piercing frowns to kill
All that attempt with eye or hand
Those sacred cherries to come nigh,
Till "Cherry ripe" themselves do cry.

[Ahmadinebobina]

I have many:

Dear Rimbaud:

The Cheated Heart
My poor heart dribbles at the stern
My heart covered with caporal
They squirt upon it jets of soup
My poor heart dribbles at the stern
Under the gibes of the whole crew
Which burst out in a single laugh,
My poor heart dribbles at the stern
My heart covered with caporal.

Ithypallic, erkish, lewd,
Their gibes have corrupted it.
In the wheelhouse you can see graffiti*
Ithypallic, erkish, lewd.
O abracadantic waves
Take my heart that it may be cleansed!
Ithypallic, erkish, lewd,
Their gibes have corrupted it.

When they have finished chewing their quids
What shall we do, o cheated heart?
It will be bacchic hiccups then
When they have finished chewing their quids
I shall have stomach heavings then
I can swallow down my heart:
When they have finished chewing their quids
What shall we do, o cheated heart?

The Star has wept rose-colour
The star has wept rose-colour in the heart of your ears,
The infinite rolled white from your nape to the small of your back
The sea has broken russet at your vermilion nipples,
And Man bled black at your royal side.

Richard Brautigan:

Hinged to forgetfulness like a door,
she slowly closed out of sight,
and she was the woman that I loved,
but too many times she slept like
a mechanical deer in my caresses,
and I ached in the metal silence
of her dreams.

[Geist]

A yes Rimbaud. A true genius with words. So young when he wrote these poems too. If he had lived to 50 he may well have surpassed Shakespeare.


It's found again.
What? Eternity.
It's the sea gone off
With the sun.

(from 'L'Éternite', 1872)

That expresses more than most poetry can in entire volumes.

[ivory bill]

More Wilfred Owen, his strongest anti-war poem:

Wilfred Owen
Dulce Et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

[Geist]

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--

Some strong imagery.

[Roland]

Below is a poem entitled "Song of the Sexagenarian." It is part of Carl Schmitt's Ex Captivate Salus: Erfahrungen der Zeit. The translation is by G. L. Ulmen, and appeared in issue 72 of "Telos" (http://www.telospress.com/). I don't believe that this is great poetry, but it is peculiar, and perhaps even valuable because of its remarkable depth of theory. Schmitt manages to cover several problems of 20th century politics.

I have experienced the tribulations of fate.
Victories and defeats, revolutions and restorations.
Inflations and deflations, bombings,
Defamations, broken regimes and broken pipes,
Hunger and cold, internment and solitary confinement.
Through it all I have passed,
And through me it all has passed.

I am acquainted with the abundant varieties of terror,
The terror from above and the terror from below,
Terror on the land and terror from the air,
Terror legal and extra-legal,
Brown, red and checkered terror,
And worst of all, the terror none dares to name.
I am acquainted with them all and know their grip

I know the chanting choirs of power and law,
The shrieking voices and mean falsifiers of the regime,
The black lists with many names.
And the cardfiles of the persecutors.

What now should I sing? The hymn of placebo?
Should I abandon problems and envy plants and animals?
Tremble in panic in the circle of the paniscs?
Fortunate as the gnat, who dances to his own tune?

Thrice I sat in the belly of the whale.
I confronted suicide at the hand of the executioner.
Yet the sheltering word of the sibylline poets embraced me,
And a holy man from the East opened to me the gates of deliverance.

[Yon]

"The Second Coming"
W.B. Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?


"Kali the Mother"
Swami Vivekananda

The stars are blotted out,
The clouds are covering clouds
It is darkness vibrant, sonant.
In the roaring, whirling wind
Are the souls of a million lunatics
Just loosed from the prison-house,
Wrenching trees by the roots,
Sweeping all from the path.

The sea has joined the fray,
And swirls up mountain-waves,
To reach the pitchy sky.
The flash of lurid light
Reveals on every side
A thousand, thousand shades
Of Death begrimed and black —
Scattering plagues and sorrows,
Dancing mad with joy,
Come, Mother, come!

For Terror is Thy name,
Death is in Thy breath.
And every shaking step
Destroys a world for e'er.
Thou ÔTime', the All-destroyer!
Come, O Mother, come!

Who dares misery love,
And hug the form of Death,
Dance in Destruction's dance,
To him the Mother comes.

[Keystone]

I don't like poetry.

[Yon]

I enjoy this poem for its sweet nature of simple fineries. We don't recall time passed, but moments. Memory is powerful.

"I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud"
William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.


This poem is applicable in any age for a certain type of man.

"Tommy"
Rudyard Kipling
I went into a public-'ouse to get a pint o' beer,
The publican 'e up an' sez, "We serve no red-coats here."
The girls be'ind the bar they laughed an' giggled fit to die,
I outs into the street again an' to myself sez I:
O it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, go away";
But it's "Thank you, Mister Atkins", when the band begins to play,
The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,
O it's "Thank you, Mister Atkins", when the band begins to play.

I went into a theatre as sober as could be,
They gave a drunk civilian room, but 'adn't none for me;
They sent me to the gallery or round the music-'alls,
But when it comes to fightin', Lord! they'll shove me in the stalls!
For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, wait outside";
But it's "Special train for Atkins" when the trooper's on the tide,
The troopship's on the tide, my boys, the troopship's on the tide,
O it's "Special train for Atkins" when the trooper's on the tide.

Yes, makin' mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an' they're starvation cheap;
An' hustlin' drunken soldiers when they're goin' large a bit
Is five times better business than paradin' in full kit.
Then it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, 'ow's yer soul?"
But it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll,
The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
O it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll.

We aren't no thin red 'eroes, nor we aren't no blackguards too,
But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;
An' if sometimes our conduck isn't all your fancy paints,
Why, single men in barricks don't grow into plaster saints;
While it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, fall be'ind",
But it's "Please to walk in front, sir", when there's trouble in the wind,
There's trouble in the wind, my boys, there's trouble in the wind,
O it's "Please to walk in front, sir", when there's trouble in the wind.

You talk o' better food for us, an' schools, an' fires, an' all:
We'll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.
Don't mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face
The Widow's Uniform is not the soldier-man's disgrace.
For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Chuck him out, the brute!"
But it's "Saviour of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot;
An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please;
An' Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool -- you bet that Tommy sees!

[Keystone]

"Tommy"
Rudyard Kipling
I actually like that one.

[Roland]

Here is another classic Kipling piece. The poetry of imperialism and antique millennialism.
Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.

Take up the White Man's burden--
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden--
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper--
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark them with your living,
And mark them with your dead.

Take up the White Man's burden--
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--
"Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"

Take up the White Man's burden--
Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloke your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.

Take up the White Man's burden--
Have done with childish days--
The lightly proferred laurel
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!

[Geist]

I actually like that one.

Thus you like some poetry. :)

[MrRS]

An old man traveling a lone highway
came at evening, cold and gray
to chasm deep and wide.

The old man crossed in the twilight dim,
the old sullen streams had no fear for him,
but he turned when he reached the other side
and building a bridge to span the tide.

"Old man," cried a pilgrim near,
"You are wasting your strength with your building here.
"You never again will pass in this way,
your journey will end with the ending day,
you have crossed the chasm deep and wide,
why build a bridge at eventide?”

The builder raised his old gray head,
"Good friend, in the path I have come," he said,
"there follewth after me today
a youth whose feet must pass this way.

"This stream that has meant naught to me
may to that fair-haired boy a pitfall be?
"He too must cross in the twilight dim,
Good friend, I am building this bridge for him."

[Mackie]

I dont have any particular fav poems but there are some nice verses in kalevala :)

"Every child of Northland, listen,
Whether poor, or fortune-favored:
Never bow before an image
Born of molten gold and silver:
Never while the sunlight brightens,
Never while the moonlight glimmers,
Choose a maiden of the metals,
Choose a bride from gold created
Cold the lips of golden maiden,
Silver breathes the breath of sorrow."

And then theres a song that for some reason affects me ;p

"A long or longer ago I met a beggar
Like a dog he begged for help
Into my mind rised the wealthy home of mine
and the better side of me said to my self:

"Even if you shared your all, let him into your table,
you would still be left with far more than you need"
I remember those last words: "There is nothing I can pay back,
but the heavens will make it up plentifully"

But I ran back to my beloved ones
For no beggars shall I bring into my home
And I understood my luck and thought;
Though holy and merciful I may be, I am no samaritan.

Many years later, as I laid on my deathbed
When I saw those three angels
I still believed in heavens but I was led
Where everything turns upside down

And now like a dog I wander in my hell
From the dark I travel towards the darkness
And snakes follow, slithering, reminding;
"You are no samaritan"."

[Fitz]

one of my favorites...

from The Sonnets To Orpheus by Rainer Rilke

II, 13

Be ahead of all parting, as though it already were
behind you, like the winter that has just gone by.
For among these winters there is one so endlessly winter
that only by wintering through it all will your heart survive.

Be forever dead in Eurydice-more gladly arise
into the seamless life proclaimed in your song.
Here, in the realm of decline, among momentary days,
be the crystal cup that shattered even as it rang.

Be-and yet know the great void where all things begin,
the infinite source of your own most intense vibration,
so that, this once, you may give it your perfect assent.

To all that is used-up, and to all the muffled and dumb
creatures in the world's full reserve, the unsayable sums,
joyfully add yourself, and cancel the count.



-translation by Mitchell

[ivory bill]

I Knew a Woman

I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:
The shapes a bright container can contain!
Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,
Or English poets who grew up on Greek
(I'd have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek.)

How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin,
She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and stand;
She taught me Touch, that undulant white skin:
I nibbled meekly from her proffered hand;
She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake,
Coming behind her for her pretty sake
(But what prodigious mowing did we make.)


Love likes a gander, and adores a goose:
Her full lips pursed, the errant note to seize;
She played it quick, she played it light and loose;
My eyes, they dazzled at her flowing knees;
Her several parts could keep a pure repose,
Or one hip quiver with a mobile nose
(She moved in circles, and those circles moved.)


Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:
I'm martyr to a motion not my own;
What's freedom for? To know eternity.
I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.
But who would count eternity in days?
These old bones live to learn her wanton ways:
(I measure time by how a body sways.)

Theodore Roethke

[ivory bill]

“In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said: "Is it good, friend?"
"It is bitter-bitter," he answered;
"But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart.”

[Kim Jong Tha Illest]

One poem for each manifestation of that ineffable thing marked by name as 'fernando pessoa'. These aren't the best translations, but i cant find my hard copy.

Alberto Caeiro:

If, After I Die

If, after I die, they should want to write my biography,
There's nothing simpler.
I've just two dates - of my birth, and of my death.
In between the one thing and the other all the days are
mine.

I am easy to describe.
I lived like mad.
I loved things without any sentimentality.
I never had a desire I could not fulfil, because
I never went blind.
Even hearing was to me never more than an
accompaniment of seeing.
I understood that things are real and all different from
each other;
I understood it with the eyes, never with thinking.
To understand it with thinking would be to find them
all equal.

One day I felt sleepy like a child.
I closed my eyes and slept.
And by the way, I was only Nature poet.

Alvaro De Campos:

I Have a Terrible Cold

I have a terrible cold,
And everyone knows how terrible colds
Alter the whole system of the universe,
Set us against life,
And make even metaphysics sneeze.
I have wasted the whole day blowing my nose.
My head is aching vaguely.
Sad condition for a minor poet!
Today I am really and truly a minor poet.
What I was in old days was a wish; it's gone.

Goodbye for ever, queen of fairies!
Your wings were made of sun, and I am walking here.
I shan't get well unless I go and lie down on my bed.
I never was well except lying down on the Universe.

Excusez un peu ... What a terrible cold! ... it's
physical!
I need truth and aspirin.

Ricardo Reis:

Hate You, Christ, I Do Not

Hate you, Christ, I do not, or seek. I believe
In you as in the others gods, your elders.
I count you as neither more nor less
Than they are, merely newer.

I do hate, yes, and calmly abhor people
Who seek you above the other gods, yours equals.
I seek you where you are, not higher
Than them, not lower, yourself merely.

Sag god, needed perhaps because there was
None like you: one more in the Pantheon, nothing
More, not purer: because the whole
Was complete with gods, except you.

Take care, exclusive idolater of Christ: life
Is multiple, all days different from each other,
And only as multiple shall we
Be with reality and alone.

Fernando Pessoa:

As She Passes

When I am sitting at the window,
Through the panes, which the snow blurs,
I see the lovely images, hers, as
She passes ... passes ... passes by ...

Over me grief has thrown its veil:-
Less a creature in this world
And one more angel in the sky.

When I am sitting at the window,
Through the panes, which the snow blurs,
I think I see the image, hers,
That's not now passing ... not passing by ...

For those who aren't hep to the pessoa, all of these names belong to one man. Each has their own character, style of writing, and background. They (along with a host of other less developed heteronyms) translate one another, collaborate on anthologies, and are often quite critical of each other's work. Pessoa, world's first, and best sockpuppeter.

[Schwarze Sonne]

To make an idol of a book,
Is poison for the brain;
A dying God upon a cross
Is reason gone insane.
Beware of all the Holy books
And all the creeds and schools,
And every law man has made
And all the golden rules.
"Laws" and "Rules" imposed on you
From days of old renown,
Are not intended for your "good"
But for your crushing down.
Then dare to rend the chains that bind
And to yourself be true.
Dare to liberate your mind,
From all things, old and new.
Always think your own thought,
All other thoughts reject;
Learn to use your brain
And boldly stand erect.

-Ragnar Redbeard from 'Might is Right'

It's just from memory, but there are many small poems within that book.

[Kim Jong Tha Illest]

AFAICT The only popular song about an historical event to cite sources:

The Mountain Goats (John Darnielle) "The Anglo-Saxons"

*We'd like to dedicate this song to our
friends, the former inhabitants of the British Isles.*

they use to paint their bodies blue
a couple of them might be distantly related
to you
according to ceaser
they shaved their entire bodies
except for the upper lip and the head

yeah the anglo-saxons
yeah the anglo-saxons

a subliterate bunch of guys
but some sources say otherwise
yeah the anglo-saxons

yeah they were men on a mission
perserving their poetry
by and oral tradition
yeah an oral tradition is was all you get
untill st. agustine
brought them the alphabet

yeah the anglo-saxons
yeah the anglo-saxons
yeah in 1065
they were ragin'
1066 brought the Norman Invasion
go!

edit: cleaned up faulty transcription.

[jcs]

To make an idol of a book,
Is poison for the brain;
A dying God upon a cross
Is reason gone insane.
Beware of all the Holy books
And all the creeds and schools,
And every law man has made
And all the golden rules.
"Laws" and "Rules" imposed on you
From days of old renown,
Are not intended for your "good"
But for your crushing down.
Then dare to rend the chains that bind
And to yourself be true.
Dare to liberate your mind,
From all things, old and new.
Always think your own thought,
All other thoughts reject;
Learn to use your brain
And boldly stand erect.

-Ragnar Redbeard from 'Might is Right'

It's just from memory, but there are many small poems within that book.
Simplistic iconoclasm, bad poetry. Compare to anything from Eliot. Why waste your time with garbage?

[Kim Jong Tha Illest]

花間一壺酒。 Among flowers with a pot of liquor;
獨酌無相親。 I pour alone but with no friend at hand;
舉杯邀明月。 So I lift the cup to invite the shining moon;
對影成三人。 Along with my shadow, a fellowship of three.

月既不解飲。 The moon understands not the art of drinking;
影徒隨我身。 The shadow gingerly follows my movements;
暫伴月將影。 Still I make the moon and the shadow my company;
行樂須及春。 To enjoy the springtime before too late.

我歌月徘徊。 The moon lingers while I am singing;
我舞影零亂。 The shadow scatters while I am dancing;
醒時同交歡。 We share the cheers of delight when sober;
醉後各分散。 We separate our ways after getting drunk;
永結無情遊。 Forever will we keep this unfettered friendship;
相期邈雲漢。 Til we meet again far in the Milky Way.


Another great poem. props to wikipedia for the chinese characters.

[arbeitsscheuer]

The Responsibility

I am the man who gives the word,
If it should come, to use the Bomb.

I am the man who spreads the word
From him to them if it should come.

I am the man who gets the word
From him who spreads the word from him.

I am the man who drops the Bomb
If ordered by the one who's heard
From him who merely spreads the word
The first one gives if it should come.

I am the man who loads the Bomb
That he must drop should orders come
From him who gets the word passed on
By one who waits to hear from him.

I am the man who makes the Bomb
That he must load for him to drop
If told by one who gets the word
From one who passes it from him.

I am the man who fills the till,
Who pays the tax, who foots the bill
That guarantees the Bomb he makes
For him to load for him to drop
If orders come from one who gets
The word passed on to him by one
Who waits to hear it from the man
Who gives the word to use the Bomb.

I am the man behind it all;
I am the one responsible.

Peter Appleton

[Roland]

For the philosophers.

David Bar Paulo, late eighth/early ninth century Syrian scholar and Syriac translator:Above all the Greeks is the wise Porphyry held in honor,
The master of all sciences, after the likeness of the godhead.
In all fields of knowledge did the great Plato too shine out,
And likewise subtle Democritus and the glorious Socrates,
The astute Epicurus and Pythagoras the wise;
So too Hippocrates the great, and the wise Galen,
But exalted above these all is Aristotle,
surpassing all in his knowledge, both predecessors and successors.

[Kamandi]

The Gates of Paradise
Blake


Mutual Forgiveness of each vice,
Such are the Gates of Paradise,
Against the Accuser's chief desire,
Who walk'd among the stones of fire.
Jehovah's Finger wrote the Law;
Then wept; then rose in zeal and awe,
And the dead corpse, from Sinai's heat,
Buried beneath His Mercy-seat.
O Christians! Christians! tell me why
You rear it on your altars high?

[Totenkopf]

Think About It
— AN APPEAL FOR PATIENCE AND —
KINDNESS TOWARD ONE'S AGING MOTHER

When your mother has grown older,
And you have grown older,
When what was once easy and effortless
Now becomes a burden,
When her dear, faithful eyes
No longer see life as they once did,
When her feet, grown tired,
No longer want to carry her as she walks —
Then give her your arm for support;
Accompany her with gladness and joy.
The hour will come when, weeping
You will accompany her on her final walk.

And if she asks for something, then answer her.
And if she asks again, then speak.
And if she asks yet again, respond to her,
Not stormily, but with gentle calm.
And if she cannot understand you well,
Explain everything to her joyfully.
The hour will come, the bitter hour,
When her mouth will ask for nothing more.

— ADOLF HITLER

* "Denk es," from the Sunday Morgenpost, Munich, May 14, 1925

http://www.francocenerelli.com/antologia/ah_106.jpg

[Ahknaton]

W.B. Yeats - The Stolen Child

Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water-rats;
There we've hid out faery vats,
Full of berries
And the reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim grey sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances,
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And is anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters of the wild
With a faery hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.


Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.


Away with us he's going,
The solemn-eyed:
He'll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal-chest.
For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery hand in hand,
From a world more full of weeping than he can understand.

[Johnson]

I sought on Earth a Garden of Delight,
Or island altar to the Sea and Air,
Where gentle music were accounted prayer,
And reason, veiled, performed the happy rite.
My sad youth worshiped at the piteous height,
Where God vouchsafed the death of man to share;
His love made mortal sorrow light to bear,
But his deep wounds put joy to shamed flight.
And though his arms, outstretched upon the tree,
Were beautiful, and pleaded my embrace,
My sins were loath to look upon his face.
So came I down from Golgotha to thee,
Eternal Mother; let the Sun and Sea
Heal me, and keep me in thy dwelling-place.
- George Santayana

My fathers sleep on the sunrise plains,
And each one sleeps alone.
Their trails may dim to the grass and rains,
For I choose to make my own.
I lay proud claim to their blood and name,
But I lean on no dead kin;
My name is mine for the praise or scorn,
And the world began when I was born
And the world is mine to win.
- Badger Clark, The Westerner

[Transcendentally Challenged]

A VALEDICTION FORBIDDING MOURNING by John Donne

AS virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
"Now his breath goes," and some say, "No."

So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move ;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears ;
Men reckon what it did, and meant ;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.


Dull sublunary lovers' love
—Whose soul is sense—cannot admit
Of absence, 'cause it doth remove
The thing which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two ;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.

And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.

[sugartits]

An impromptu poem that popped up in a Burroughs novel:


I WORK FOR THE BLACK HOLE
WHERE ALL NATURAL LAWS ARE INVALID

Working for the hole
I'll get a mule to foal
I'm the uninvited mole
The errant lawless soul
I pop out here
and I pop out there
I have no human goal
I'm a singularity
I have no human MEEE
No man can pay my fee
No man can set me free
I'm a lock without a key
A singularity

[Delmac]

I was reading some posts of Thomas777's and was irresistibly reminded of the following parody of A.E.Housman's poetry, apparently by a chap called Kingsmill (named after sliced bread?)

What still alive at twenty-two,
A fine upstanding chap like you?
Sure, if your throat is hard to slit,
Slit your girl’s, and swing for it.

Like enough, you won’t be glad
When they come to hang you, lad:
But bacon’s not the only thing
That’s cured by hanging from a string.

So, when the spilt ink of the night
Spreads o’er the blotting-pad of light,
Lads whose job is still to do
Shall whet their knives, and think of you.

[shanemac]

CLIFF

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?


Rik

[Ambrosio Spinola]

LA VOZ A TI DEBIDA Pedro Salinas 1927
Versos 2191 a 2219

No quiero que te vayas
dolor, última forma
de amar. Me estoy sintiendo
vivir cuando me dueles
no en ti, ni aquí, más lejos:
en la tierra, en el año
de donde vienes tú,
en el amor con ella
y todo lo que fue.
En esa realidad
hundida que se niega
a sí misma y se empeña
en que nunca ha existido,
que sólo fue un pretexto
mío para vivir.
Si tú no me quedaras,
dolor, irrefutable,
yo me lo creería;
pero me quedas tú.
Tu verdad me asegura
que nada fue mentira.
Y mientras yo te sienta,
tú me serás, dolor,
la prueba de otra vida
en que no me dolías.
La gran prueba, a lo lejos,
de que existió, que existe,
de que me quiso, sí,
de que aún la estoy queriendo.

[Omniel]

CLIFF

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?

Rik

The People's Poem

What do you think you're doing, pig?
Do you really give a fig, pig?
And what's your favourite sort of gig, pig?
Barry Manilow?
...or the black and white minstrel show?

Rik

[Schwarze Sonne]

Simplistic iconoclasm, bad poetry. Compare to anything from Eliot. Why waste your time with garbage?

Why waste your time with going to church, or reading Jewish law, or even reading Eliot, for that matter? :confused:

At least Redbeard gets a point across in a quick and decisive way, rather than throw around random words for popular-aesthetic value.

Besides, what this world needs about now is some iconoclasm.

[todd]

I don't like poems. But I do like this one.


Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes,
Flow gently, I'll sing thee a song in thy praise;
My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream,
Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream.

Thou stock-dove whose echo resounds thro' the glen,
Ye wild whistling blackbirds in yon thorny den,
Thou green-crested lapwing, thy screaming forebear,
I charge you disturb not my slumbering fair.

How lofty, sweet Afton, thy neighboring hills,
Far mark'd with the courses of clear winding rills,
There daily I wander as noon rises high
My flocks and my Mary's sweet cot in my eye.

How pleasant thy banks and green valleys below,
Where wild in the woodlands the primroses blow;
There oft as mild Ev'ning weeps over the lea
The sweet scented birk shades my Mary and me.

Thy crystal stream, Afton, how lovely it glides,
And winds by the cot where my Mary resides,
How wanton thy waters her snowy feet lave,
As gathering sweet flow'rets she stems thy clear wave.

Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes,
Flow gently, sweet river, the theme of my lays,
My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream,
Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream.

[Mike]

A FIRE-MIST and a planet,--
A crystal and a cell,--
A jelly-fish and a saurian,
And caves where the cave-men dwell;
Then a sense of law and beauty,
And a face turned from the clod,--
Some call it Evolution,
And others call it God.

A haze on the far horizon,
The infinite, tender sky,
The ripe, rich tint of the cornfields,
And the wild geese sailing high,--
And all over the upland and lowland
The charm of the goldenrod,--
Some of us call it Autumn,
And others call it God.

Like tides on a crescent sea-beach,
When the moon is new and thin,
Into our hearts high yearnings
Come welling and surging in,--
Come from the mystic ocean
Whose rim no foot has trod,--
Some of us call it longing,
And others call it God.

A picket frozen on duty,--
A mother starved for her brood,--
Socrates drinking the hemlock,
And Jesus on the rood;
And millions who, humble and nameless,
The straight, hard pathways plod,--
Some call it Consecration,
And others call it God.

By: William Herbert Carruth (1859-1924)

[Kodos]

Something by Kipling, right now probably Poor Honest Men

Your jar of Virginny
Will cost you a guinea,
Which you reckon too much by five shillings or ten;
But light your churchwarden
And judge it according,
When I've told you the troubles of poor honest men.

From the Capes of the Delaware,
As you are well aware,
We sail which tobacco for England-but then,
Our own British cruisers,
They watch us come through, sirs,
And they press half a score of us poor honest men!

Or if by quick sailing
(Thick weather prevailing )
We leave them behind ( as we do now and then)
We are sure of a gun from
Each frigate we run from,
Which is often destruction to poor honest men!

Broadsides the Atlantic
We tumble short-handed,
With shot-holes to plug and new canvas to bend;
And off the Azores,
Dutch, Dons and Monsieurs
Are waiting to terrify poor honest men.

Napoleon's embargo
Is laid on all cargo
Which comfort or aid to King George may intend;
And since roll, twist and leaf,
Of all comforts is chief,
They try for to steal it from poor honest men!
With no heart for fight,
We take refuge in flight,
But fire as we run, our retreat to defend;
Until our stern-chasers
Cut up her fore-braces,
And she flies off the wind from us poor honest men!

'Twix' the Forties and Fifties,
South-eastward the drift is,
And so, when we think we are making Land's End
Alas, it is Ushant
With half the King's Navy
Blockading French ports against poor honest men!

But they may not quit station
(Which is our salvation )
So swiftly we stand to the Nor'ard again;
And finding the tail of
A homeward-bound convoy,
We slip past the Scillies like poor honest men.

'Twix' the Lizard and Dover,
We hand our stuff over,
Though I may not inform how we do it, nor when.
But a light on each quarter,
Low down on the water,
Is well understanded by poor honest men.

Even then we have dangers,
From meddlesome strangers,
Who spy on our business and are not content
To take a smooth answer,
Except with a handspike . . .
And they say they are murdered by poor honest men!

To be drowned or be shot
Is our natural lot,
Why should we, moreover, be hanged in the end---
After all our great pains
For to dangle in chains
As though we were smugglers, not poor honest men?

[Transcendentally Challenged]

“I grow old… I grow old… I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.”

T.S. Elliott.

[Transcendentally Challenged]

To continue the Kipling theme, an excellent poem The Hyenas.

AFTER the burial-parties leave
And the baffled kites have fled;
The wise hyænas come out at eve
To take account of our dead.

How he died and why he died
Troubles them not a whit.
They snout the bushes and stones aside
And dig till they come to it.

They are only resolute they shall eat
That they and their mates may thrive,
And they know that the dead are safer meat
Than the weakest thing alive.

(For a goat may butt, and a worm may sting,
And a child will sometimes stand;
But a poor dead soldier of the King
Can never lift a hand.)

They whoop and halloo and scatter the dirt
Until their tushes white
Take good hold in the army shirt,
And tug the corpse to light,

And the pitiful face is shewn again
For an instant ere they close;
But it is not discovered to living men—
Only to God and to those

Who, being soulless, are free from shame,
Whatever meat they may find.
Nor do they defile the dead man’s name—
That is reserved for his kind.

[Delmac]

To bring the dead to life
Is no great magic.
Few are wholly dead:
Blow on a dead man's embers
And a live flame will start.

Let his forgotten griefs be now,
And now his withered hopes;
Subdue your pen to his handwriting
Until it prove as natural
To sign his name as yours.

Limp as he limped,
Swear by the oaths he swore;
If he wore black, affect the same;
If he had gouty fingers,
Be yours gouty too.

Assemble tokens intimate of him --
A ring, a hood, a desk:
Around these elements then build
A home familiar to
The greedy revenant.

So grant him life, but reckon
That the grave which housed him
May not be empty now:
You in his spotted garments
Shall yourself lie wrapped.

Robert Graves

[Königin Luise von Preußen]

Shall I sue, shall I seek for grace?
Shall I pray shall I prove?
Shall I strive to a heav'nly joy,
With an earthly love?

Shall I think that a bleeding heart
Or a wounded eye,
Or a sigh can ascend the clouds,
To attain so high?

Silly wretch, forsake these dreams
Of a vain desire,
O bethink what high regard
Holy hopes do require.

Favour is as fair as things are,
Treasure is not bought,
Favour is not won with words,
Nor the wish of a thought.

Justice gives each man his own,
Though my love be just,
Yet will not she pity my grief,
Therefore die I must.

Silly heart then yield to die
Perish in despair,
Witness yet how fain I die,
When I die for the fair.

Title: Shall I sue, shall I seeke for grace
Composer: John Dowland


Number of voices: 4vv Voicing: SATB
Genre: Secular, Madrigal


Language: English
Instruments: a cappella, or with (optional) Lute

Description: No XIX from Second Book of Songs or Ayres (1600)

[<access denied>]

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

-- Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias (1818)

[Kostya Novoselov]

Boris Pasternak, 1956
In everything I want to reach...:

Во всем мне хочется дойти
До самой сути.
В работе, в поисках пути,
В сердечной смуте.

До сущности протекших дней,
До их причины,
До оснований, до корней,
До сердцевины.

Всё время схватывая нить
Судеб, событий,
Жить, думать, чувствовать, любить,
Свершать открытья.

О, если бы я только мог
Хотя отчасти,
Я написал бы восемь строк
О свойствах страсти.

О беззаконьях, о грехах,
Бегах, погонях,
Нечаянностях впопыхах,
Локтях, ладонях.

Я вывел бы ее закон,
Ее начало,
И повторял ее имен
Инициалы.

Я б разбивал стихи, как сад.
Всей дрожью жилок
Цвели бы липы в них подряд,
Гуськом, в затылок.

В стихи б я внес дыханье роз,
Дыханье мяты,
Луга, осоку, сенокос,
Грозы раскаты.

Так некогда Шопен вложил
Живое чудо
Фольварков, парков, рощ, могил
В свои этюды.

Достигнутого торжества
Игра и мука -
Натянутая тетива
Тугого лука.

***

[ScottishStalinist1]

This is a favourite of mine from our national poet, Robert Burns. A short one but still very good nevertheless.

It is anti-British and the false patriotism of that time when Britain conspired against Revolutionary France. Burns, being a peasant and people's revolutionary, thoroughly supported the French Revolution and France in the war against Britain and other counter-revolutionary states.



On Thanksgiving For A National Victory (1793)


Original, In Scots


Ye hypocrites! are these your pranks?
To murder men, and give God thanks?
Desist for shame! Proceed no further:
God won't accept your thanks for Murther.


Standard English Translation

You hypocrites! are these your pranks?
To murder men, and give God thanks?
Desist for shame! Proceed no further:
God won't accept your thanks for Murder.

[Mackie]

I can say with fair certainty that there are better ones and that I should look further for em but for some reason this is what I remember the best;

"Every child of Northland, listen,
Whether poor, or fortune-favored:
Never bow before an image
Born of molten gold and silver:
Never while the sunlight brightens,
Never while the moonlight glimmers,
Choose a maiden of the metals,
Choose a bride from gold created
Cold the lips of golden maiden,
Silver breathes the breath of sorrow."

[Mary Magdalene]

After a while you learn the
subtle difference
between holding a hand and
sharing a life
and you learn that love doesn't
mean possession
and company doesn't mean security
and loneliness is universal.
And you learn that kisses
aren't contracts
and presents aren't promises
and you begin to accept your
defeats
with your head up and your
eyes open
with the grace of a woman
not the grief of a child.
And you learn to build your
hope on today
as the future has a way of
falling apart in mid-flight
because tomorrow's ground
can be too uncertain for plans
yet, each step taken in a new
direction creates a path
toward the promise of a
brighter dawn.
And you learn that even
sunshine burns
if you get too much
so you plant your own garden
and nourish your own soul
instead of waiting for someone
to bring you flowers.
And you learn that love,
true love,
always has joys and sorrows
seems ever present, yet is
never quite the same
becoming more than love and
less than love
so difficult to define.
And you learn that through it all
you really can endure
that you really are strong
that you do have value
and you learn and grow
with every goodbye
you learn.

[calvin]

Burns "supporter" of the French revolution and, ahhem!, "anti-monarchist".
Posted specially for ScottishStalinist. Enjoy!

Does haughty Gaul invasion threat?
Then let the louns beware, Sir;
There's wooden walls upon our seas,
And volunteers on shore, Sir:
The Nith shall run to Corsincon,
And Criffel sink in Solway,
Ere we permit a Foreign Foe
On British ground to rally!
We'll ne'er permit a Foreign Foe
On British ground to rally!

The wretch that would a tyrant own,
And the wretch, his true-born brother,
Who would set the Mob aboon the Throne,
May they be damn'd together!
Who will not sing "God save the King,"
Shall hang as high's the steeple;
But while we sing "God save the King,"
We'll ne'er forget The People!

[ScottishStalinist1]

Burns certainly was a supporter of the French Revolution and was anti-monarchist. In the final stanza in the poem you posted this is shown, too.

His support of the French Revolution and its ideals can be seen very clearly in Why Should We Idly Waste Our Prime:

Standard English

Why should we idly waste our prime
Repeating our oppressions?
Come rouse to arms! It is now the time
To punish past transgressions.
It is said that Kings can do no wrong -
Their murderous deeds deny it,
And, since from us their power is sprung,
We have a right to try it.
Now each true patriot's song shall be: -
'Welcome Death or Liberty!'

Proud Priests and Bishops we will translate
And canonize as Martyrs;
The guillotine on Peers shall wait;
And Knights shall hang in garters.
Those Despots long have trod us down,
And Judges are their engines:
Such wretched minions of a Crown
Demand the people's vengeance!
To-day it is theirs. To-morrow we
Shall don the Cap of Liberty!

The Golden Age we will then revive:
Each man will be a brother;
In harmony we all shall live,
And share the earth together;
In Virtue trained, enlightened Youth
Will love each fellow-creature;
And future years shall prove the truth
That Man is good by nature:
Then let us toast with three times three
The reign of Peace and Liberty!

[Yon]

In no manner do I wish to detract anything from this thread but if I may include a short favorite by your kind poster.

"Ode to the Future"
-Yon Yonsworthy

Roses are red
Wine is fine
Give them Jews Hell
In 2000&9.

Well shiver me timbers
And tickle me pink
Antisemitism this New Years
Nod nod, wink wink!

[Emanual Goldbloom]

Here enter not vile bigots, hypocrites,
Externally devoted apes, base snites,
Puffed-up, wry-necked beasts, worse than the Huns,
Or Ostrogoths, forerunners of baboons:
Cursed snakes, dissembled varlets, seeming sancts,
Slipshod caffards, beggars pretending wants,
Fat chuffcats, smell-feast knockers, doltish gulls,
Out-strouting cluster-fists, contentious bulls,
Fomenters of divisions and debates,
Elsewhere, not here, make sale of your deceits.

Your filthy trumperies
Stuffed with pernicious lies
(Not worth a bubble),
Would do but trouble
Our earthly paradise,
Your filthy trumperies.

Here enter not attorneys, barristers,
Nor bridle-champing law-practitioners:
Clerks, commissaries, scribes, nor pharisees,
Wilful disturbers of the people's ease:
Judges, destroyers, with an unjust breath,
Of honest men, like dogs, even unto death.
Your salary is at the gibbet-foot:
Go drink there! for we do not here fly out
On those excessive courses, which may draw
A waiting on your courts by suits in law.

Lawsuits, debates, and wrangling
Hence are exiled, and jangling.
Here we are very
Frolic and merry,
And free from all entangling,
Lawsuits, debates, and wrangling.

Here enter not base pinching usurers,
Pelf-lickers, everlasting gatherers,
Gold-graspers, coin-gripers, gulpers of mists,
Niggish deformed sots, who, though your chests
Vast sums of money should to you afford,
Would ne'ertheless add more unto that hoard,
And yet not be content,--you clunchfist dastards,
Insatiable fiends, and Pluto's bastards,
Greedy devourers, chichy sneakbill rogues,
Hell-mastiffs gnaw your bones, you ravenous dogs.

You beastly-looking fellows,
Reason doth plainly tell us
That we should not
To you allot
Room here, but at the gallows,
You beastly-looking fellows.

Here enter not fond makers of demurs
In love adventures, peevish, jealous curs,
Sad pensive dotards, raisers of garboils,
Hags, goblins, ghosts, firebrands of household broils,
Nor drunkards, liars, cowards, cheaters, clowns,
Thieves, cannibals, faces o'ercast with frowns,
Nor lazy slugs, envious, covetous,
Nor blockish, cruel, nor too credulous,--
Here mangy, pocky folks shall have no place,
No ugly lusks, nor persons of disgrace.

Grace, honour, praise, delight,
Here sojourn day and night.
Sound bodies lined
With a good mind,
Do here pursue with might
Grace, honour, praise, delight.

Here enter you, and welcome from our hearts,
All noble sparks, endowed with gallant parts.
This is the glorious place, which bravely shall
Afford wherewith to entertain you all.
Were you a thousand, here you shall not want
For anything; for what you'll ask we'll grant.
Stay here, you lively, jovial, handsome, brisk,
Gay, witty, frolic, cheerful, merry, frisk,
Spruce, jocund, courteous, furtherers of trades,
And, in a word, all worthy gentle blades.

Blades of heroic breasts
Shall taste here of the feasts,
Both privily
And civilly
Of the celestial guests,
Blades of heroic breasts.

Here enter you, pure, honest, faithful, true
Expounders of the Scriptures old and new.
Whose glosses do not blind our reason, but
Make it to see the clearer, and who shut
Its passages from hatred, avarice,
Pride, factions, covenants, and all sort of vice.
Come, settle here a charitable faith,
Which neighbourly affection nourisheth.
And whose light chaseth all corrupters hence,
Of the blest word, from the aforesaid sense.

The holy sacred Word,
May it always afford
T' us all in common,
Both man and woman,
A spiritual shield and sword,
The holy sacred Word.

Here enter you all ladies of high birth,
Delicious, stately, charming, full of mirth,
Ingenious, lovely, miniard, proper, fair,
Magnetic, graceful, splendid, pleasant, rare,
Obliging, sprightly, virtuous, young, solacious,
Kind, neat, quick, feat, bright, compt, ripe, choice, dear, precious.
Alluring, courtly, comely, fine, complete,
Wise, personable, ravishing, and sweet,
Come joys enjoy. The Lord celestial
Hath given enough wherewith to please us all.

Gold give us, God forgive us,
And from all woes relieve us;
That we the treasure
May reap of pleasure,
And shun whate'er is grievous,
Gold give us, God forgive us.


Gargantua (Francois Rabelais)

[calvin]

Burns certainly was a supporter of the French Revolution and was anti-monarchist

Yes, you've rumbled me. Burns didn't write the poem I posted. I am, in fact, a closet poetic genius with a time machine who wrote that poem and went into the past to interpolate it into historical portfolios.

[ScottishStalinist1]

Yes, you've rumbled me. Burns didn't write the poem I posted. I am, in fact, a closet poetic genius with a time machine who wrote that poem and went into the past to interpolate it into historical portfolios.

The poem you posted does not contain any criticism whatsoever of the French Revolution as far as its ideals. And it should be made known that the poem was wrote in 1795. I have posted another Burns poem which reveals he shared the ideals of the French Revolution. The poem is not a critique of the French Republic (anti-monarchist, republican democracy), but it is against a possible invasion of Britain by France.

[calvin]

The poem you posted does not contain any criticism whatsoever of the French Revolution as far as its ideals

The wretch that would a tyrant own,
And the wretch, his true-born brother,
Who would set the Mob aboon the Throne,
May they be damn'd together!
Who will not sing "God save the King,"
Shall hang as high's the steeple

Yes you're right again! When Burns said, "Who would set the MOB above the THRONE, may they be damned together" it only seems to be a criticism of revolutionary ideals to pedants who insist upon using a conventional interpretation of obvious statements written in plain English.

How could I posibly have mistaken the line, "Who will not sing "God save the King shall hang as high's the steeple", as envincing pro-monarchist sentiments? Lordy me!

[Susan]

Emily Dickinson:

I died for beauty, but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain
In an adjoining room.

He questioned softly why I failed?
"For beauty," I replied.
"And I for truth,--the two are one;
We brethren are," he said.

And so, as kinsmen met a night,
We talked between the rooms,
Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our names.

[ScottishStalinist1]

The wretch that would a tyrant own,
And the wretch, his true-born brother,
Who would set the Mob aboon the Throne,
May they be damn'd together!
Who will not sing "God save the King,"
Shall hang as high's the steeple

Yes you're right again! When Burns said, "Who would set the MOB above the THRONE, may they be damned together" it only seems to be a criticism of revolutionary ideals to pedants who insist upon using a conventional interpretation of obvious statements written in plain English.

How could I posibly have mistaken the line, "Who will not sing "God save the King shall hang as high's the steeple", as envincing pro-monarchist sentiments? Lordy me!


On further investigation it seems we are both right, calvin. This (http://www.robertburns.org/encyclopedia/PoliticsBurnsand.720.shtml) Burns site claims that in 1795, six years after the overthrow of the French monarchy and abolishment of feudalism, Burns changed his view on the French Revolution. I was not aware of this, and you were not aware that earlier he was a supporter of the French Revolution.

[Susan]

Emily Dickinson:

Because I Could Not Stop for Death

Because I could not stop for Death--
He kindly stopped for me--
The Carriage held but just ourselves--
And Immortality.

We slowly drove--He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility.

We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess--in the Ring--
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain--
We passed the Setting Sun.

Or rather--He passed Us--
The Dews drew quivering and chill--
For only Gossamer, My Gown--
My Tippet--only Tulle.

We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground--
The Roof was scarcely visible--
The Cornice but a mound.

Since then--tis Centuries--but each
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses' Heads
Were toward Eternity--

[Emanual Goldbloom]

HOWL

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,

angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,

who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,

who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,

who passed through universities with radiant eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war,

who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,

who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall,

who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,

who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after night

with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls,

incomparable blind streets of shuddering cloud and lightning in the mind leaping towards poles of Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the motionless world of Time between,

Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops, storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brooklyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind,

who chained themselves to subways for the endless ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine until the noise of wheels and children brought them down shuddering mouth-wracked and battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance in the drear light of Zoo,

who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford's floated out and sat through the stale beer afternoon in desolate Fugazzi's, listening to the crack of doom on the hydrogen jukebox,

who talked continuously seventy hours from park to pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brooklyn Bridge,

a lost batallion of platonic conversationalists jumping down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills off Empire State out of the moon

yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars,

whose intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days and nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the Synagogue cast on the pavement,

who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic City Hall,

suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grindings and migraines of China under junk-withdrawal in Newark's bleak furnished room,

who wandered around and around at midnight in the railway yard wondering where to go, and went, leaving no broken hearts,

who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing through snow toward lonesome farms in grandfather night,

who studied Plotinus Poe St John of the Cross telepathy and bop kabbalah because the universe instinctively vibrated at their feet in Kansas,

who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking visionary indian angels who were visionary indian angels,

who thought they were only mad when Baltimore gleamed in supernatural ecstasy,

who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Oklahoma on the impulse of winter midnight streetlight smalltown rain,

who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston seeking jazz or sex or soup, and followed the brilliant Spaniard to converse about America and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship to Africa,

who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving nothing behind but the shadow of dungarees and the larva and ash of poetry scattered in fireplace Chicago,

who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the FBI in beards and shorts with big pacifist eyes sexy in their dark skin passing out incomprehensible leaflets,

who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism, who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union Square weeping and undressing while the sirens of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also wailed,

who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked and trembling before the machinery of other skeletons,

who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight in policecars for committing no crime but their own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication,

who howled on their knees in the subway and were dragged off the roof waving genitals and manuscripts,

who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy,

who blew and were blown by those human seraphim, the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean love,

who balled in the morning in the evenings in rosegardens and the grass of public parks and cemeteries scattering their semen freely to whomever come who may,

who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath when the blond & naked angel came to pierce them with a sword,

who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden threads of the craftsman's loom,

who copulated ecstatic and insatiate and fell off the bed, and continued along the floor and down the hall and ended fainting on the wall with a vision of ultimate cunt and come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness,

who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling in the sunset, and were red eyed in the morning but were prepared to sweeten the snatch of the sunrise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked in the lake,

who went out whoring through Colorado in myriad stolen night-cars, N.C., secret hero of these poems, cocksman and Adonis of Denver—joy to the memory of his innumerable lays of girls in empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses' rickety rows, on mountaintops in caves or with gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely petticoat upliftings & especially secret gas-station solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys too,

who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in dreams, woke on a sudden Manhattan, and picked themselves up out of basements hungover with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemployment offices,

who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on the snowbank docks waiting for a door in the East River to open full of steamheat and opium,

who created great suicidal dramas on the appartment cliff-banks of the Hudson under the wartime blue floodlight of the moon & their heads shall be crowned with laurel in oblivion,

who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested the crab at the muddy bottom of the rivers of the Bowery,

who wept at the romance of the streets with their pushcarts full of onions and bad music,

who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the bridge, and rose up to build harpsichords in their lofts, who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded by orange crates of theology,

who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations which in the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish,

who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht & tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable kingdom,

who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for an egg,

who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for an Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade,

who cut their wrists three times successfully unsuccessfully, gave up and were forced to open antique stores where they thought they were growing old and cried,

who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run down by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality,

who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked away unknown and forgotten into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alleyways & firetrucks, not even one free beer,

who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of the subway window, jumped in the filthy Passaic, leaped on negroes, cried all over the street, danced on broken wineglasses barefoot smashed phonograph records of nostalgic European 1930s German jazz finished the whiskey and threw up groaning into the bloody toilet, moans in their ears and the blast of colossal steamwhistles,

who barreled down the highways of the past journeying to each other's hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude watch Birmingham jazz incarnation,

who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity,

who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who came back to Denver & waited in vain, who watched over Denver & brooded & loned in Denver and finally went away to find out the Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes,

who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying for each other's salvation and light and breasts, until the soul illuminated its hair for a second,

who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for impossible criminals with golden heads and the charm of reality in their hearts who sang sweet blues to Alcatraz,

who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky Mount to tender Buddha or Tangiers to boys or Southern Pacific to the black locomotive or Harvard to Narcissus to Woodlawn to the daisychain or grave,

who demanded sanity trials accusing the radio of hypnotism & were left with their insanity & their hands & a hung jury,

who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturerson Dadaism and subsequently presented themselves on the granite steps of the madhouse with the shaven heads and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding instantaneous lobotomy,

and who were given instead the concrete void of insulin Metrazol electricity hydrotherapy psychotherapy occupational therapy pingpong & amnesia,

who in humorless protest overturned only one symbolic pingpong table, resting briefly in catatonia,

returning years later truly bald except for a wig of blood, and tears and fingers, to the visible madman doom of the wards of the madtowns of the East,

Pilgrim State's Rockland's and Greystone's foetid halls, bickering with the
with mother finally *****, and the last fantastic book flung out of the tenement window, and the last door closed at 4 A.M. and the last telephone slammed at the wall in reply and the last furnished room emptied down to the last piece of mental furniture, a yellow paper rose twisted on a wire hanger on the closet, and even that imaginary, nothing but a hopeful little bit of hallucination—

ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and now you're really in the total animal soup of time—

and who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed with a sudden flash of the alchemy of the use of the ellipse the catalog the meter & the vibrating plane,

who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space through images juxtaposed, and trapped the archangel of the soulbetween 2 visual images and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun and dash of consciousness together jumping with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deus

to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before you speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet confessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm of thought in his naked and endless head,

the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown, yet putting down here what might be left to say in time come after death,

and rose incarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the suffering of America's naked mind for love into an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio

with the absolute heart of the poem butchered out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years.




What sphinx of cement and aluminium bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?

Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks!

Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy judger of men!

Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgement! Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stunned governments!

Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb!

Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows! Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long streets like endless Jehovas! Moloch whose factories dream and choke in the fog! Moloch whose smokestacks and antennae crown the cities!

Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen! Moloch whose name is the Mind!

Moloch in whom I sit lonely! Moloch in whom I dream angels! Crazy in Moloch! Cocksucker in Moloch! Lacklove and manless in Moloch!

Moloch who entered my soul early! Moloch in whom I am a consciousness without a body! Moloch who frightened me out of my natural ecstasy! Moloch whom I abandon! Wake up in Moloch! Light streaming out of the sky!

Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! invisable suburbs! skeleton treasuries! blind capitals! demonic industries! spectral nations! invincible madhouses! granite cocks! monstrous bombs!

They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven! Pavements, trees, radios, tons! lifting the city to Heaven which exists and is everywhere about us!

Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstacies! gone down the American river!

Dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole boatload of sensitive bullshit!

Breakthroughs! over the river! flips and crucifixions! gone down the flood! Highs! Epiphanies! Despairs! Ten years' animal screams and suicides! Minds! New loves! Mad generation! down on the rocks of Time!

Real holy laughter in the river! They saw it all! the wild eyes! the holy yells! They bade farewell! They jumped off the roof! to solitude! waving! carrying flowers! Down to the river! into the street!

[calvin]

On further investigation it seems we are both right, calvin. This Burns site claims that in 1795, six years after the overthrow of the French monarchy and abolishment of feudalism, Burns changed his view on the French Revolution. I was not aware of this, and you were not aware that earlier he was a supporter of the French Revolution

I was perfectly aware that Burns initially supported the revolution, but just as intelligent people like Malcolm Muggeridge and George Orwell turned against Stalin when the reality of communism dawned on them, Burns turned aginst the revolution, just as he turned against Jacobitism (Ye Jacobites by Name), when the truth about it became obvious. All we have established is your semi-literacy sonny. Thanks for your second childish and abusive neg rep BTW. You can continue your abuse in private and I will continue to humiliate you in public. Is that a deal?

[ScottishStalinist1]

I was perfectly aware that Burns initially supported the revolution

Your first reply to me does not show this at all. You were either being deceitful in your first few posts, or you are now lying about your knowledge of this change in the political beliefs of Burns. I was not wrong in claiming Burns was a supporter of the French revolution or that he was anti-monarchist, as you have now admitted here. A simple post from you with the words he changed his view on the French Revolution would have sufficed. Instead you insinuated in your first post he was not a supporter of the French Revolution by posting poetry from a period when his political views changed drastically. Again if you were aware of this ideological shift, you were being decietful.


Thanks for your second childish and abusive neg rep BTW. You can continue your abuse in private and I will continue to humiliate you in public. Is that a deal?

The first neg rep had no comment in it to which you whined in another post and started the insult game yesterday. As for humiliating me, you did not.

[calvin]

I was not wrong in claiming Burns was a supporter of the French revolution or that he was anti-monarchist

In a situation in which Burns clearly evolved away from revolutionary ardour to a patriotic pro-monarchist worldview, you continue to insist that his attitude should be defined by the initial position he rejected. According to this methodology Mussolini should be regarded as a Communist. I think you'd find that that analysis tends to have the distinct smell of bullshit about it. You clearly and obviously know nothing whatsoever about Burns. A fact that you've ably demonstrated.

[Raskolnikov]

Ginsberg was horrendous.

[ScottishStalinist1]

In a situation in which Burns clearly evolved away from revolutionary ardour to a patriotic pro-monarchist worldview, you continue to insist that his attitude should be defined by the initial position he rejected. According to this methodology Mussolini should be regarded as a Communist.

You could have saved a lot of time if you wrote this in your first post. Why you have not offered an explanation as to why you did not state there was a political change in the thought of Robert Burns makes me question whether or not you knew this happened before I discovered and conceded the point. Your silly arrogance also adds to my suspicion.

The statement "Burns supported the French Revolution" is not false. You have admitted this twice now. Yet it is also not exactly accurate because, later on, he changed his views. This, as I have admitted many times now, I was not aware of. The statement remains true as he did support the French Revolution for a lengthy amount of time. I made the mistake in thinking this was his view until his dying day, unaware of the ideological change. You in your earlier posts seemed to be rejecting the idea that he ever supported the French Revolution.

As for Mussolini: the statement "Mussolini was a Socialist" would also be true. He was not born one and did not die one, but he still was one for a period of his life.

I think you'd find that that analysis tends to have the distinct smell of bullshit about it. You clearly and obviously know nothing whatsoever about Burns. A fact that you've ably demonstrated.

You have created a strawman in claiming that "his attitute" should be fixed upon his earlier, pro-French Revolution stance. This has not been my view since I discovered the ideological shift. We now both agree that there was a revolutionary Burns and a monarchist Burns, one supported and one was against the French Revolution. As I wrote two posts ago: we are both correct.

[Mary Magdalene]

Óró 'Sé do bheatha 'bhaile,
Anois ar theacht an tsamhraidh!


'Sé do bheatha a bhean ba léanmhar,
B' é ár gcreach tú bheith i ngéibhinn,
Do dhúiche bhreá i seilibh meirleach...
Is tú díolta leis na Gallaibh!


Tá Gráinne Mhaol ag teacht thar sáile,
Óglaigh armtha léi mar gharda,
Gaeil iad féin is ní Gaill ná Spáinnigh...
Is cuirfidh siad ruaig ar Ghallaibh!


A bhuí le Rí na bhFeart go bhfeiceann,
Muna mbíonn beo ina dhiaidh ach seachtain,
Gráinne Mhaol is míle gaiscíoch...
Ag fógairt fáin ar Ghallaibh!

(translation)

Óró! You are welcome home!
Now that summer is coming


Welcome Oh woman who was so afflicted,
It was our ruin that you were in bondage,
Our fine land in the possesion of thieves,
And sold to the foreigners


Grainne Mhaol is coming over the sea,
Armed warriors along with her as guard,
They are Irishmen, not English or Spanish,
And they will rout the foreigners


May it please the God of Miracles that we may see,
Although we only live a week after it,
Grainne Mhaol and a thousand warriors,
Dispersing the foreigners


the story behind the words :)

Gráinne Ní Mháille was Grace O'Malley...Irish Chieftain, pirate, trader and seafarer

Grace O'Malley (also called Granuaile) was a famous pirate, seafarer, trader and chieftain in Ireland in the 1500's. She was born in 1530 in County Mayo, Ireland and was the daughter of sea captain Owen O'Malley. As a young child, Grace always knew she wanted to be a sailor but as a female, she was discouraged repeatedly. Extremely upset when her father refused to take her on a sailing trip, legend has it Grace cut off all her hair and dressed in boys clothes to prove to her parents that she could handle the trip and live a seafarer's life. Seeing this, her father and brother laughed aloud and nicknamed her "Grainne Mhaol" meaning "Bald Grace" (which is believed to have led to her nickname "Granuaile.") Eventually, through her persistence, she was allowed to go to sea with her father and his fleet of ships.

As a child, Grace often sailed with her father on trading missions overseas. Once, upon returning from a trip to Spain, their ship was attacked by an English vessel. Grace had been instructed by her father to hide below deck if they ever were attacked, but she did not heed his advise. Instead she climbed up onto the sail rigging. Watching the battle from above, she noticed an English pirate sneaking up on her father, raising a dagger behind his back! The brave Granuaile leapt off of the rigging, through the air and onto the pirate's back.... screaming all the while! The distraction this caused was enough for the O'Malleys to regain control of the ship and defeat the English pirates.

She spent her young life learning the ways of the sea and grew to be quite the sailor--eventually having her own fleet of ships. Her family had become wealthy mainly through fishing and trade, but in her later life, Grace took up piracy by taking on Turkish and Spanish pirate ships and even the English fleets. She grew her estate to include a fleet of ships as well as several islands and castles on the west coast of Ireland.

In her later years, Grace developed her reputation as a fearless leader through her efforts in battle along side her followers. Legend has it that Grace gave birth to one of her sons while out to sea. The very next day following the birth of the baby, the ship was attacked by Turkish pirates. Though exhausted from giving birth Grace grabbed a gun, went on deck and proceded to rally her men against the Turks, forcing their retreat.

Grace married two times in her life. Her first husband was Donal O'Flaherty who was the son of the chieftain of the O'Flaherty clan and next in line for the post as chieftain. Grace and Donal married when was about 16 years old. In those times, it was common for families to arrange marriages so the union between Grace and Donal was probably more political than emotional at first. The O'Flahertys were a seafaring people, much like the O'Malleys, so Grace was right at home with their clan. Over the course of their marriage, Grace learned more about seafaring from Donal and his clan and added to her knowledge of sailing and trading at sea. Grace was soon in charge of the O'Flaherty fleet of ships and ruled the waters surrounding their lands. Although it was unusual for a woman to lead men, Grace earned the respect of all who followed her through her shrewdness as well as her knowledge of sailing and bravery at sea. Her husband, Donal, had a reputation for being quite a "hot head" and his temper eventually cost him his life in battle against a rival clan. They were married for a total of nineteen years.

According to Irish law, widows were entitled to a portion of their husbands estates. But for some reason, the O'Flahertys did not follow this tradition. Grace was forced to rely on the O'Flaherty clan for support. She did not like this, so she set out on her own, taking with her a loyal group of followers and traded on the seas to earn her own way. She used what she learned from her father in her youth and from her husband and eventually was able to break away from the O'Flaherty Clan altogether. Grace moved back with the O'Malley clan bringing her followers with her -- Grace had become a Chieftain in her own right and the heir as Chieftain of the O'Malley clan.

In equally as political a move, Grace married her second husband, Richard Burke in an effort to strengthen her hold on the west coast area of Ireland. Since the death of Donal, she had built her empire to include five castles and several islands in Clew Bay, but needed Rockfleet castle in the northeast side of the bay to complete her stronghold on the area.

Legend has it that Grace travelled to the Castle Rockfleet, knocked on the door and proposed marriage to Richard for a period of one year. She explained that the union would enable both clans to withstand the impending invasion by the English (who were slowly taking over the Irish lands around them.) It is believed that after exactly one year, Grace said to Richard, "I release you," apparantly offering him the option to end the marriage, but he must have really fallen for the lovely Granuaile, because they remained married until he died some seventeen years later.

Grace had a total of four children. Donal and Grace had three children, 2 boys and 1 girl. Their sons were Owen and Murrough and daughter Margaret. Later, when Grace married Richard, they had a son, Tibbot (or Theobald).

In 1593, after many difficult years fighting against the English and the capture of her brother and son by English forces, Grace visited Queen Elizabeth to make peace and ask for the release of her brother and son. Events leading up to the meeting between Grace and Queen Elizabeth had a significant impact on the meeting itself and Grace's behavior afterward.

Over Grace's lifetime, the English had taken over much of Ireland a peice at a time through a process called "Sumit and Regrant." The English would convince (or force) Clan leaders to submit their lands to the English and in return they were given an English title. Some Cheiftains surrendered, many rebelled-- Grace among the rebellious. She maintained her independence longer than most of the rest of Ireland, but in her later years, the pressure from English forces began to weigh heavily on her.

At 56 years old, Grace was captured by Sir Richard Bingham, a ruthless Governer appointed by the Queen to rule over the regranted territories. Soon after his appointment, Bingham sent guards to arrest Grace and have her hanged. Grace was apprehended and along with members of her clan, imprisoned and scheduled for execution. Determined to die with dignity, Grace held her head high as she awaited her execution. At the last minute, Grace's son-in-law offered himself as a hostage in exchange for the promise that Grace would never return to her rebellious ways. Bingham released Grace on this promise but was determined to keep her from power and make her suffer for her insurrection. Over the course of time, Bingham was responsible for taking away her cattle, forcing her into poverty, even plotting the murder of her eldest son, Owen.

During this period of Irish rebellion, the Spanish Armada was waging war against the English along the Irish and Scottish coastlines. It is not known whether Grace assisted the English against the Spanish or if she was merely protecting what little she had left-- but around 1588, Grace slaughtered hundreds of Spaniards on the ship of Don Pedro de Mendoza near the castle on Clare island. Even into her late 50's, Grace was fierce in battle.

In the early 1590's, Grace was still virtually pennyless thanks the constant efforts of Bingham to keep tight controls on her. There was a rather large rebellion brewing and Bingham feared that Grace would run to the aid of the rebels against the English. He wrote in a letter during this time that Grace was, "a notable traitoress and nurse to all rebellions in the province for 40 years."

Grace had written letters to the Queen demanding justice, but received no response. In 1593, her son Theobald and brother Donal-na-Piopa were arrested and thrown into prison. This was the final straw that prompted Grace to stop writing letters and go to London in person to request their release and ask for the Queen's help in regaining the lands and wealth that were rightfully hers.

Grace set sail and managed to avoid the English patrol boats that littered the seas between her homeland and London. The meeting took place in Greenwich Castle. The only record of this meeting that has survived are the lyrics to an old song that tell of Grace's presence in the court of the Queen:



No one really knows why Queen Elizabeth agreed to meet with Grace (let alone why she did not have her executed or imprisoned). Grace was fluent in Latin and thus was able to converse freely with the Queen. Grace explained that her actions in the past were not rebellion but rather acts of self-defense. She told of how her rightful inheritance from both husbands' deaths were wrongfully withheld from her and asked for them to be returned. She also asked for the release of her son and brother. In return for all of this, Grace agreed to use her strength and leadership to defend the Queen against her enemies by land and by sea.

The Queen agreed and Grace returned to Ireland and demanded Bingham release her son and brother and return her assets by order of the Queen. Bingham did release the two captives, but never did restore Grace her rightful possessions.

One interesting story is also worth noting. This allegedly occured during Grace's meeting with the Queen in England. It is said that during the meeting, Grace sneezed in the presence of the Queen and her lords and ladies. A member of the court, in an act of politeness, handed Grace an attractive and expensive lace handkerchief. She took the delicate cloth and proceded to blow her nose loudly then tossed the kerchief into a blazing fireplace. The members of the court were aghast that she would be so rude to toss an expensive gift so easily into the fire. The Queen then scolded her and said that the handkerchief was meant as a gift and should have been put into her pocket. Grace replied that the Irish would never put a soiled garment into their pocket and apparantly had a higher standard of cleanliness. After a period of uncomfortable silence, (during which the members of the court expected the Queen to have Grace executed for her rude behavior) nervous then roaring laughter followed. The Queen was amused.

Granuaile was known as a fearless leader and fierce fighter. In her 70 years of life, she and her family saw the English rule spreading throughout Ireland, but through her strength and leadership saw that her clan and those around her were mostly unaffected by it. It is said that from the year of her death in 1603 and onward, that no Irish chieftain had been able to preserve the old Gaelic way of life as Granuaile and her family had done in her lifetime.

[Kostya Novoselov]

Mayakovsky, 1914, A Cloud in Trousers, Part 2:

Glorify me!
The great ones are no match for me!
Upon everything that’s been done
I stamp the word “naught.”

As of now,
I have no desire to read.
Novels?
So what!

This is how books are made,
I used to think,--
Along comes a poet,
And opens his lips with ease.
Inspired, the fool simply begins to sing,--
Oh please!
It turns out:
Before they can sing with elation,
On their calloused feet they tramp for some time,
While brainless fishes of imagination
Are splashing and wallowing in the heart’s slime.
And while, hissing with rhymes, they boil
All the loves and the nightingales in a broth-like liquid,
The tongueless street merely squirms and coils,--
It has nothing to yell or even speak with.

In our pride, we work all day with goodwill
And the city towers of Babel are again restored.
But God
Grinds
These cites into empty fields,
Stirring the word.

In silence, the street dragged on the ordeal.
A scream stood erect on the gullet’s road.
While fat taxies and cabs were bristling still,
Wedged in the throat.
As if from consumption,
the trodden chest gasped for air.

The city, with gloom, blocked the road rather fast.

And when,--
Nevertheless! --
The street coughed up the strain onto the square
And pushed the portico off its throat, at last,
It seemed as if,
Accompanied by choirs of an archangel’s chorus,
Recently robbed, God would show us His heat!

But the street squatted down and yelled out coarsely:
“Let’s go eat!”

Krupps and Krupplets gather around
To paint menacing brows on the city,
While in the gorge,
Corpses of words are scatted about,--
Two live and thrive,--
“Swine”
And another one,--
I believe, “borsch”.

And poets,
Soaking in sobs and complaining,
Run from the street, resentful and sour:
“With those two words there’s no way to portray now
A beautiful lady,
And love
And a dew-covered flower!”

And after the poets,
Thousands of others stampeded:
Students,
Prostitutes,
Salesmen.

Gentlemen,
Stop!
You are not the needy;
How dare you to beg them, gentlemen!
Covering yards with each stride,
We are healthy and ardent!
Don’t listen to them, but thrash them instead!
Them,
Who are stuck like a free add-on
To each king-size bed!

Are we to ask them humbly:
“Help us, please!”
Imploring them for hymns
And oratorios?
We are creators with burning hymns
To the hum of mills and laboratories.

Why should I care about Faust?
In a fairy display of the fireworks’ loot,
He’s gliding with Mephistopheles
On the parquet of galaxies!
I know,--
A nail in my boot
Is more frightening than Goethe’s fantasies!

I am
The most golden-mouthed,
With every word giving
The body - a name-day,
And the soul - a rebirth,
I assure you:
Minutest speck of the living
Is worth more than I can ever do on this earth!

Listen!
Present-day Zarathustra,
Wet with sweat,
Is dashing among you and preaching here.
We,
With faces crumpled like a bed spread,
With lips sagging like a chandelier,
We,
The Leprous City detainees,
Where, from filth and gold, lepers’ sores were raised,
We are purer than Venetian azure seas,
Washed by sunshine’s balmy rays.

I spit on the fact
That Homer and Ovid didn’t create
Soot-covered with pox,
Men like us all,
But at the same time, I know
That the sun would fade
If it looked at the golden fields of our souls.

Muscles are surer than prayers to us!
We won’t pray for aid any more!
We--
Each one of us--
Holds in his grasp
The driving reins of the world!

This led to Golgotha in the auditoriums
Of Petrograd, Moscow, Kiev, Odessa,
And there wasn’t one of you
Who wasn’t
Imploring thus:
“Crucify him!”
Teach him a lesson!”
But to me,--
People,
Even those of you who were mean,--
To me, you are dear and I love you with passion.

Haven’t you seen
A dog licking the hand that it’s being thrashed by?

I am laughed at
By the present-day tribe.
They’ve made
A dirty joke out of me.
But I can see crossing mountains of time,
Him, whom others can’t see.

Where men’s sight falls short,
Wearing the revolution’s thorny crown,
Walking at the head of a hungry horde,
The year 1916 is coming around.

Among you, his precursor,
Wherever there’s pain, I’ll be near.
I have nailed myself to the cross there
On every single drop of a tear.
There’s nothing left to pardon now!
In souls that bred pity, I burnt out the fields.
That is much harder than
Taking a thousand thousands of Bastilles.

And when
His advent announcing,
Joyful and proud,
You’ll step up to greet the savior,--
I will drag
My soul outside,
And trample it
So it spreads out!
And give it to you, red in blood, as a flag.

[Kostya Novoselov]

Я,
обсмеянный у сегодняшнего племени,
как длинный
скабрезный анекдот,
вижу идущего через горы времени,
которого не видит никто.

[calvin]

You have created a strawman in claiming that "his attitute" should be fixed upon his earlier, pro-French Revolution stance. This has not been my view since I discovered the ideological shift. We now both agree that there was a revolutionary Burns and a monarchist Burns, one supported and one was against the French Revolution. As I wrote two posts ago: we are both correct

What we have established is that you are shortbread tin Scot who knows nothing about Burns except that narrow spectrum of his work that can be used to pass off complacent lager anesthetized working-class passivity, lack of ambition and ignorant philistinism as heroic resistance to English cultural imperialism. Scottish "socialism" is just an excuse to not feel as depressed as you should about having a crap government, living in a crap house and forming your identity around crap football teams.

[Kostya Novoselov]

Mayakovsky, 1915, Backbone Flute, Prologue

For all of you,
Whom I admired or continue admiring,
Hidden like icons in the cave of the soul,
Like a goblet of wine at a festive gathering,
I shall raise my heavy, verse-brimming skull.

More and more often, I wonder,--
Why shouldn’t I place
A period of a bullet at the end of the stanza?
Today,
Just in case,
I am giving my final, farewell concert...

[Kostya Novoselov]

Mayakovsky committed suicide in 1930

http://home.comcast.net/~kneller/maya.jpg

[Susan]

Jesus Christ. Arguing and excessive yakkety yak in the Poetry Thread for gosh' sake? How about just posting your poem and being done with it?

[calvin]

Mayakovsky committed suicide in 1930

Why is suicide viewed as some kind of authentication of poetic worth?

[calvin]

Here's a poem for Susan



The Female of the Species

WHEN the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,
He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside.
But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

When Nag the basking cobra hears the careless foot of man,
He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it if he can.
But his mate makes no such motion where she camps beside the trail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

When the early Jesuit fathers preached to Hurons and Choctaws,
They prayed to be delivered from the vengeance of the squaws.
'Twas the women, not the warriors, turned those stark enthusiasts pale.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

Man's timid heart is bursting with the things he must not say,
For the Woman that God gave him isn't his to give away;
But when hunter meets with husbands, each confirms the other's tale—
The female of the species is more deadly than the male.

Man, a bear in most relations—worm and savage otherwise,—
Man propounds negotiations, Man accepts the compromise.
Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact
To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act.

Fear, or foolishness, impels him, ere he lay the wicked low,
To concede some form of trial even to his fiercest foe.
Mirth obscene diverts his anger—Doubt and Pity oft perplex
Him in dealing with an issue—to the scandal of The Sex!

But the Woman that God gave him, every fibre of her frame
Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for the same;
And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail,
The female of the species must be deadlier than the male.

She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath her breast
May not deal in doubt or pity—must not swerve for fact or jest.
These be purely male diversions—not in these her honour dwells—
She the Other Law we live by, is that Law and nothing else.

She can bring no more to living than the powers that make her great
As the Mother of the Infant and the Mistress of the Mate.
And when Babe and Man are lacking and she strides unclaimed to claim
Her right as femme (and baron), her equipment is the same.

She is wedded to convictions—in default of grosser ties;
Her contentions are her children, Heaven help him who denies!—
He will meet no suave discussion, but the instant, white-hot, wild,
Wakened female of the species warring as for spouse and child.

Unprovoked and awful charges—even so the she-bear fights,
Speech that drips, corrodes, and poisons—even so the cobra bites,
Scientific vivisection of one nerve till it is raw
And the victim writhes in anguish—like the Jesuit with the squaw!

So it comes that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer
With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her
Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands
To some God of Abstract Justice—which no woman understands.

And Man knows it! Knows, moreover, that the Woman that God gave him
Must command but may not govern—shall enthral but not enslave him.
And She knows, because She warns him, and Her instincts never fail,
That the Female of Her Species is more deadly than the Male.

[Kostya Novoselov]

ALEXANDR BLOK, Scythians
(to theocide)

Скифы

Мильоны - вас. Нас - тьмы, и тьмы, и тьмы.
Попробуйте, сразитесь с нами!
Да, скифы - мы! Да, азиаты - мы,
С раскосыми и жадными очами!

Для вас - века, для нас - единый час.
Мы, как послушные холопы,
Держали щит меж двух враждебных рас
Монголов и Европы!

Века, века ваш старый горн ковал
И заглушал грома, лавины,
И дикой сказкой был для вас провал
И Лиссабона, и Мессины!

Вы сотни лет глядели на Восток
Копя и плавя наши перлы,
И вы, глумясь, считали только срок,
Когда наставить пушек жерла!

Вот - срок настал. Крылами бьет беда,
И каждый день обиды множит,
И день придет - не будет и следа
От ваших Пестумов, быть может!

О, старый мир! Пока ты не погиб,
Пока томишься мукой сладкой,
Остановись, премудрый, как Эдип,
Пред Сфинксом с древнею загадкой!

Россия - Сфинкс. Ликуя и скорбя,
И обливаясь черной кровью,
Она глядит, глядит, глядит в тебя
И с ненавистью, и с любовью!...

Да, так любить, как любит наша кровь,
Никто из вас давно не любит!
Забыли вы, что в мире есть любовь,
Которая и жжет, и губит!

Мы любим все - и жар холодных числ,
И дар божественных видений,
Нам внятно всё - и острый галльский смысл,
И сумрачный германский гений...

Мы помним всё - парижских улиц ад,
И венецьянские прохлады,
Лимонных рощ далекий аромат,
И Кельна дымные громады...

Мы любим плоть - и вкус ее, и цвет,
И душный, смертный плоти запах...
Виновны ль мы, коль хрустнет ваш скелет
В тяжелых, нежных наших лапах?

Привыкли мы, хватая под уздцы
Играющих коней ретивых,
Ломать коням тяжелые крестцы,
И усмирять рабынь строптивых...

Придите к нам! От ужасов войны
Придите в мирные обьятья!
Пока не поздно - старый меч в ножны,
Товарищи! Мы станем - братья!

А если нет - нам нечего терять,
И нам доступно вероломство!
Века, века вас будет проклинать
Больное позднее потомство!

Мы широко по дебрям и лесам
Перед Европою пригожей
Расступимся! Мы обернемся к вам
Своею азиатской рожей!

Идите все, идите на Урал!
Мы очищаем место бою
Стальных машин, где дышит интеграл,
С монгольской дикою ордою!

Но сами мы - отныне вам не щит,
Отныне в бой не вступим сами,
Мы поглядим, как смертный бой кипит,
Своими узкими глазами.

Не сдвинемся, когда свирепый гунн
В карманах трупов будет шарить,
Жечь города, и в церковь гнать табун,
И мясо белых братьев жарить!...

В последний раз - опомнись, старый мир!
На братский пир труда и мира,
В последний раз на светлый братский пир
Сзывает варварская лира!

[Locksley Hall]

Ode on Intimations of Immortality
- William Wordsworth

THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;--
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

II

The Rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the Rose,
The Moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare,
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where'er I go,
That there hath past away a glory from the earth.

III

Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound,
To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong:
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;
I hear the Echoes through the mountains throng,
The Winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
And all the earth is gay;
Land and sea
Give themselves up to jollity,
And with the heart of May
Doth every Beast keep holiday;--
Thou Child of Joy,
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy
Shepherd-boy!

IV

Ye blessed Creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make; I see
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival,
My head hath its coronal,
The fulness of your bliss, I feel--I feel it all.
Oh evil day! if I were sullen
While Earth herself is adorning,
This sweet May-morning,
And the Children are culling
On every side,
In a thousand valleys far and wide,
Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
And the Babe leaps up on his Mother's arm:--
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
--But there's a Tree, of many, one,
A single Field which I have looked upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone:
The Pansy at my feet
Doth the same tale repeat:
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

V

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But He beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

VI

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And, even with something of a Mother's mind,
And no unworthy aim,
The homely Nurse doth all she can
To make her Foster-child, her Inmate Man,
Forget the glories he hath known,
And that imperial palace whence he came.

VII

Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,
A six years' Darling of a pigmy size!
See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,
With light upon him from his father's eyes!
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,
Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly-learned art;
A wedding or a festival,
A mourning or a funeral;
And this hath now his heart,
And unto this he frames his song:
Then will he fit his tongue
To dialogues of business, love, or strife;
But it will not be long
Ere this be thrown aside,
And with new joy and pride
The little Actor cons another part;
Filling from time to time his "humorous stage"
With all the Persons, down to palsied Age,
That Life brings with her in her equipage;
As if his whole vocation
Were endless imitation.

VIII

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
Thy Soul's immensity;
Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep
Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind,
That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,
Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,--
Mighty Prophet! Seer blest!
On whom those truths do rest,
Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;
Thou, over whom thy Immortality
Broods like the Day, a Master o'er a Slave,
A Presence which is not to be put by;
Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?
Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lie upon thee with a weight
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!

IX

O joy! that in our embers
Is something that doth live,
That nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction: not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest--
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:--
Not for these I raise
The song of thanks and praise;
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings;
Blank misgivings of a Creature
Moving about in worlds not realised,
High instincts before which our mortal Nature
Did tremble like a guilty Thing surprised:
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain light of all our day,
Are yet a master light of all our seeing;
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,
To perish never;
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
Nor Man nor Boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy!
Hence in a season of calm weather
Though inland far we be,
Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither,
And see the Children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

X

Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young Lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound!
We in thought will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,
Ye that through your hearts to-day
Feel the gladness of the May!
What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.

XI

And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquished one delight
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love the Brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripped lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
Is lovely yet;
The Clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

[Susan]

John Keats:

La Belle Dame Sans Merci (the beautiful lady without pity)

"O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.

"O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel's granary is full,
And the harvest's done.

"I see a lily on thy brow
With anguish moist and fever dew;
And on thy cheek a fading rose
Fast withereth too."

"I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful, a faery's child;
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.


I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She looked at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.

"I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long;
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A faery's song.

"She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna dew,
And sure in language strange she said,
'I love thee true.'

"She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she wept, and sighed full sore;
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.

"And there she lulled me asleep,
And there I dreamed,--Ah! woe betide!
The latest dream I ever dreamed
On the cold hill's side.

"I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried: 'La belle dame sans merci
Hath thee in thrall!'

"I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill's side.

"And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing."


Does she really exist or did he just dream her?

(And forgive me, I did not realize until just now that this poem had already been posted. Apparently, many of us have the same taste in poetry. I have seen many of my favorite poems here)

[Susan]

William Wordsworth:

She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways

She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
A maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love:

A violet by a mossy stone
Half-hidden from the eye!
--Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.

She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and, oh,
The difference to me!




(I believe Wordsworth wrote several poems to "Lucy")

[Delmac]

If you live along with all the other people
and are just like them, and conform, and are nice
you're just a worm --

and if you live with all the other people
and you don't like them and won't be like them and won't conform
then you're just the worm that has turned,
in either case, a worm.

The conforming worm stays just inside the skin
respectably unseen, and cheerfully gnaws away at the heart of life,
making it all rotten inside.

The unconforming worm -- that is, the worm that has turned --
gnaws just the same, gnawing the substance out of life,
but he insists on gnawing a little hole in the social epidermis
and poking his head out and waving himself
and saying: Look at me, I am not respectable,
I do all the things the bourgeois daren't do,
I booze and fornicate and use foul language and despise your honest man.--

But why should the worm that has turned protest so much?
The bonnie bonnie bourgeois goes a-whoring up back streets just the same.
The busy busy bourgeois imbibes his little share
just the same
if not more.
The pretty pretty bourgeois pinks his language just as pink
if not pinker,
and in private boasts his exploits even louder, if you ask me,
than the other.
While as to honesty, Oh look where the money lies!

So I can't see where the worm that has turned puts anything over
the worm that is too cunning to turn.
On the contrary, he merely gives himself away.
The turned worm shouts. I bravely booze!
the other says. Have one with me!
The turned worm boasts: I copulate!
the unturned says: You look it.
You're a d----- b----- b----- p----- bb-----, says the worm that's turned.
Quite! says the other. Cuckoo!

[Susan]

Anonymous (early 16th century)

Western Wind, When Wilt Thou Blow

Western wind, when wilt thou blow,
The small rain down can rain?
Christ, that my love were in my arms,
And I in my bed again!

;)

[Mary Magdalene]

I have dreamed of you so much that you are no longer real.
Is there still time for me to reach your breathing body, to kiss your mouth and make
your dear voice come alive again?


I have dreamed of you so much that my arms, grown used to being crossed on my
chest as I hugged your shadow, would perhaps not bend to the shape of your body.
For faced with the real form of what has haunted me and governed me for so many
days and years, I would surely become a shadow.


I have dreamed of you so much that surely there is no more time for me to wake up.
I sleep on my feet prey to all the forms of life and love, and you, the only one who
counts for me today, I can no more touch your face and lips than touch the lips and
face of some passerby

I have dreamed of you so much, have walked so much, talked so much, slept so much
with your phantom, that perhaps the only thing left for me is to become a phantom
among phantoms, a shadow a hundred times more shadow than the shadow the
moves and goes on moving, brightly, over the sundial of your life.



(Robert Desnos)

[Mary Magdalene]

It's the impossibility of Womanhood that vexes me.
The child bride symbol
The ability to read eyes and minds -
Curves more fluid than desert waves,
The tiny bones of the wrist,
The organic movement to paint the lips.
But the heart
A woman's heart
Much older than the hollow'd trees.
I am the Queen who fell upon her sword,
My servants and descendants each took their turn a glorious wave.
But anger is such energy, beautiful if controlled,
A slow simmer, the sharpening of teeth.
But the heart
A woman's heart
Has the patience of the black, black sea.
Our hands are tied.
Our voices mute.
Such was our fate when they cut off our head.
Little sisters You seem so estranged.
Some may dress and act the glamour'd part but they'll never have
A woman's heart
A woman's heart
Burns deadlier than the sleeping beast.
Hang your head in shame
Every time you break another woman's heart

:whip:

[Susan]

A Poison Tree

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright;
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine.

And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole:
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

--William Blake

[Delmac]

This is the last of all, this is the last!
I must hold my hands, and turn my face to the fire,
I must watch my dead days fusing together in dross,
Shape after shape, and scene after scene from my past
Fusing to one dead mass in the sinking fire
Where the ash on the dying coals grows swiftly, like heavy moss.

Strange he is, my son, whom I have awaited like a loyer,
Strange to me like a captive in a foreign country, haunting
The confines and gazing out on the land where the wind is free;
White and gaunt, with wistful eyes that hover
Always on the distance, as if his soul were chaunting
The monotonous weird of departure away from me.

Like a strange white bird blown out of the frozen seas,
Like a bird from the far north blown with a broken wing
Into our sooty garden, he drags and beats
From place to place perpetually, seeking release
From me, from the hand of my love which creeps up, needing
His happiness, whilst he in displeasure retreats.

I must look away from him, for my faded eyes
Like a cringing dog at his heels offend him now,
Like a toothless hound pursuing him with my will,
Till he chafes at my crouching persistence, and a sharp spark flies
In my soul from under the sudden frown of his brow,
As he blenches and turns away, and my heart stands still.

This is the last, it will not be any more.
All my life I have borne the burden of myself,
All the long years of sitting in my husband’s house,
Never have I said to myself as he closed the door:
“Now I am caught!—You are hopelessly lost, O Self,
You are frightened with joy, my heart, like a frightened mouse.”

Three times have I offered myself, three times rejected.
It will not be any more. No more, my son, my son!
Never to know the glad freedom of obedience, since long ago
The angel of childhood kissed me and went. I expected
Another would take me,—and now, my son, O my son,
I must sit awhile and wait, and never know
The loss of myself, till death comes, who cannot fail.

Death, in whose service is nothing of gladness, takes me:
For the lips and the eyes of God are behind a veil.
And the thought of the lipless voice of the Father shakes me
With fear, and fills my eyes with the tears of desire,
And my heart rebels with anguish as night draws nigher.

[Manfrotto]

This is a poem about my cat Percival. I wrote it myself.

My tame little lion. My little Percival.
You prowl, you pounce, you are so purposeful.
Killer instinct? My little Percival?
Not at all, you are so merciful.
Are you the only companion I'll ever need?
You are my Percival, you are indeed.

Indeed.

[Susan]

Cheers to Percival.:D

Now go find you a good woman with a dog.

[Susan]

The Solitary Reaper

Behold her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!
Alone she cuts and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! for the vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.

No nightingale did ever chaunt
More welcome notes to weary bands
Of travellers in some shady haunt,
Among Arabian sands:
A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard
In spring-time from the cuckoo-bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides.

Will no one tell me what she sings?--
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago:
Or is it some more humble lay,
Familiar matter of to-day?
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
That has been, and may be again?

Whate'er the theme, the maiden sang
As if her song could have no ending;
I saw her singing at her work,
And o'er the sickle bending;--
I listened, motionless and still;
And, as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore
Long after it was heard no more.

--William Wordsworth

[Susan]

Rose Aylmer

Ah what avails the sceptered race,
Ah what the form divine!
What every virtue, every grace!
Rose Aylmer, all were thine.

Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes
May weep, but never see,
A night of memories and of sighs
I consecrate to thee.

--Walter Savage Landor

[Susan]

The Indian Serenade

I arise from dreams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low,
And the stars are shining bright:
I arise from dreams of thee,
And a spirit in my feet
Hath led me--who knows how?
To thy chamber-window, Sweet!

The wandering airs, they faint
On the dark, the silent stream--
The Champak* odors fail
Like sweet thoughts in a dream;
The nightingale's complaint,
It dies upon her heart;--
As I must on thine,
Oh, beloved as thou art!

Oh, lift me from the grass!
I die! I faint! I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain
On my lips and eyelids pale.
My cheek is cold and white, alas!
My heart beats loud and fast;--
Oh! press it close to thine again,
Where it will break at last.

--Percy Bysshe Shelley



*Champak: Indian tree of the magnolia family.

[Susan]

When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripened grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starred face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love;--then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

--John Keats

[Susan]

Crossing the Bar

Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;

For though from out our bourne of time and place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crossed the bar.


--Alfred, Lord Tennyson

[Susan]

Tears, Idle Tears, I Know Not What They Mean

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy autumn fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O death in life, the days that are no more!

--Alfred, Lord Tennyson

[Susan]

One of my favorites:

After Apple-Picking

My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.

--Robert Frost

[Delmac]

This is a poem about my cat Percival. I wrote it myself.

My tame little lion. My little Percival.
You prowl, you pounce, you are so purposeful.
Killer instinct? My little Percival?
Not at all, you are so merciful.
Are you the only companion I'll ever need?
You are my Percival, you are indeed.

Indeed.

Have you read these two cat poems?

Pangur Bán (translated from the Gaelic, written by an Irish Monk in the 8th century)

I and Pangur Bn, my cat
'Tis a like task we are at;
Hunting mice is his delight
Hunting words I sit all night.

Better far than praise of men
'Tis to sit with book and pen;
Pangur bears me no ill will,
He too plies his simple skill.

'Tis a merry thing to see
At our tasks how glad are we,
When at home we sit and find
Entertainment to our mind.

Oftentimes a mouse will stray
In the hero Pangur's way:
Oftentimes my keen thought set
Takes a meaning in its net.

'Gainst the wall he sets his eye
Full and fierce and sharp and sly;
'Gainst the wall of knowledge I
All my little wisdom try.

When a mouse darts from its den,
O how glad is Pangur then!
O what gladness do I prove
When I solve the doubts I love!

So in peace our tasks we ply,
Pangur Bán, my cat, and I;
In our arts we find our bliss,
I have mine and he has his.

Practice every day has made
Pangur perfect in his trade;
I get wisdom day and night
Turning darkness into light.


From"Jubilate Agno"
by Christopher Smart

For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.

For he is the servant of the Living God duly and daily serving him.

For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.

For this is done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.

For then he leaps up to catch the musk, which is the blessing of God upon his prayer.

For he rolls upon prank to work it in.

For having done duty and received blessing he begins to consider himself.

For this he performs in ten degrees.

For first he looks upon his forepaws to see if they are clean.

For secondly he kicks up behind to clear away there.

For thirdly he works it upon stretch with the forepaws extended.

For fourthly he sharpens his paws by wood.

For fifthly he washes himself.

For sixthly he rolls upon wash.

For seventhly he fleas himself, that he may not be interrupted upon the beat.

For eighthly he rubs himself against a post.

For ninthly he looks up for his instructions.

For tenthly he goes in quest of food.

For having consider'd God and himself he will consider his neighbour.

For if he meets another cat he will kiss her in kindness.

For when he takes his prey he plays with it to give it a chance.

For one mouse in seven escapes by his dallying.

For when his day's work is done his business more properly begins.

For he keeps the Lord's watch in the night against the adversary.

For he counteracts the powers of darkness by his electrical skin and glaring eyes.

For he counteracts the Devil, who is death, by brisking about the life.

For in his morning orisons he loves the sun and the sun loves him.

For he is of the tribe of Tiger.

For the Cherub Cat is a term of the Angel Tiger.

For he has the subtlety and hissing of a serpent, which in goodness he suppresses.

For he will not do destruction, if he is well-fed, neither will he spit without provocation.

For he purrs in thankfulness, when God tells him he's a good Cat.

For he is an instrument for the children to learn benevolence upon.

For every house is incomplete without him and a blessing is lacking in the spirit.

For the Lord commanded Moses concerning the cats at the departure of the Children of Israel from Egypt.

For every family had one cat at least in the bag.

For the English Cats are the best in Europe.

For he is the cleanest in the use of his forepaws of any quadruped.

For the dexterity of his defence is an instance of the love of God to him exceedingly.

For he is the quickest to his mark of any creature.

For he is tenacious of his point.

For he is a mixture of gravity and waggery.

For he knows that God is his Saviour.

For there is nothing sweeter than his peace when at rest.

For there is nothing brisker than his life when in motion.

For he is of the Lord's poor and so indeed is he called by benevolence perpetually--Poor Jeoffry! poor Jeoffry! the rat has bit thy throat.

For I bless the name of the Lord Jesus that Jeoffry is better.

For the divine spirit comes about his body to sustain it in complete cat.

For his tongue is exceeding pure so that it has in purity what it wants in music.

For he is docile and can learn certain things.

For he can set up with gravity which is patience upon approbation.

For he can fetch and carry, which is patience in employment.

For he can jump over a stick which is patience upon proof positive.

For he can spraggle upon waggle at the word of command.

For he can jump from an eminence into his master's bosom.

For he can catch the cork and toss it again.

For he is hated by the hypocrite and miser.

For the former is afraid of detection.

For the latter refuses the charge.

For he camels his back to bear the first notion of business.

For he is good to think on, if a man would express himself neatly.

For he made a great figure in Egypt for his signal services.

For he killed the Ichneumon-rat very pernicious by land.

For his ears are so acute that they sting again.

For from this proceeds the passing quickness of his attention.

For by stroking of him I have found out electricity.

For I perceived God's light about him both wax and fire.

For the Electrical fire is the spiritual substance, which God sends from heaven to sustain the bodies both of man and beast.

For God has blessed him in the variety of his movements.

For, tho he cannot fly, he is an excellent clamberer.

For his motions upon the face of the earth are more than any other quadruped.

For he can tread to all the measures upon the music.

For he can swim for life.

For he can creep.

[Königin Luise von Preußen]

A Peculiar Ideal
by Friedrich von Schiller


What thou thinkest,
belongs to all;
what thou feelest,
is thine only.
Wouldst thou make him thine own,
feel thou the God whom thou thinkest!





* * *


If You Forget Me
by Pablo Neruda


I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine



* * *

[Mary Magdalene]

Fairy Tale


Many times upon a time
There was a man who loved a woman.
Many times upon a time
There was a woman who loved a man.
Many times upon a time
There was a man and there was a woman
Who did not love the ones who loved them.

Once upon a time
Perhaps only once
A man and a woman who loved each other.

Sky Song
The flower of the Alps told the seashell: "You're shining"
The seashell told the sea: "You echo"
The sea told the boat: "You're shuddering"
The boat told the fire: "You're glowing brightly"
The fire told me: "I glow less brightly than her eyes"
The boat told me: "I shudder less than your heart does when she appears"
The sea told me: "I echo less than her name does in your love-making"
The seashell told me: "I shine less brightly than the phosphorus of desire in your hollow dream"
The flower of the Alps told me: "She's beautiful"
I said: "She's beautiful, so beautiful, she moves me."


Sleep Spaces
In the night there are of course the seven wonders
of the world and the greatness tragedy and enchantment.
Forests collide with legendary creatures hiding in thickets.
There is you.
In the night there are the walker's footsteps the murderer's
the town policeman's light from the street lamp and the ragman's lantern
There is you.
In the night trains go past and boats
and the fantasy of countries where it's daytime. The last breaths
of twilight and the first shivers of dawn.
There is you.
A piano tune, a shout.
A door slams. A clock.
And not only beings and things and physical sounds.
But also me chasing myself or endlessly going beyond me.
There is you the sacrifice, you that I'm waiting for.
Sometimes at the moment of sleep strange figures are born and disappear.
When I shut my eyes phosphorescent blooms appear and fade
and come to life again like fireworks made of flesh.
I pass through strange lands with creatures for company.
No doubt you are there, my beautiful discreet spy.
And the palpable soul of the vast reaches.
And perfumes of the sky and the stars the song of a rooster
from 2000 years ago and piercing screams in a flaming park and kisses.
Sinister handshakes in a sickly light and axles grinding on paralyzing roads.
No doubt there is you who I do not know, who on the contrary I do know.
But who, here in my dreams, demands to be felt without ever appearing.
You who remain out of reach in reality and in dream.
You who belong to me through my will to possess your illusion
but who brings your face near mine only if my eyes are closed in dream as well as
in reality.
You who in spite of an easy rhetoric where the waves die on the beach
where crows fly into ruined factories, where the wood rots
crackling under a lead sun.
You who are at the depths of my dreams stirring up a mind
full of metamorphoses leaving me your glove
when I kiss your hand.
In the night there are stars and the shadowy motion of the sea,
of rivers, forests, towns, grass and the lungs
of millions and millions of beings.
In the night there are the seven wonders of the world.
In the night there are no guardian angels, but there is sleep.
In the night there is you.
In the daylight too.

Robert Desnos, the son of a cafe owner, was born on July 4, 1900, in Paris.

He attended commercial college, and then worked as a clerk before becoming a literary columnist for the newspaper Paris-Soir.
He first published poems in the Dadaist magazine Litterature in 1919, and in 1922 he published his first book, Prose Selavy, a collection of surrealistic aphorisms. While on leave in Morocco from his mandatory two years in the French Army, Desnos befriended poet Andre Breton. Together with writers Louis Aragon and Paul Eluard, Breton and Desnos would form the vanguard of literary surrealism.

They practiced a technique known as "automatic writing," and many hailed Desnos as the most accomplished practitioner. Breton, in the Manifesto of Surrealism, 1924, singled out Desnos for particular praise. The technique involved drifting into a trance and then recording the associations and leaps of the subconscious mind.
Desnos' poems from this time are playful (often using puns and homonyms), sensual, and serious. The 1920s were an extremely creative period for Desnos; between 1920 and 1930, he published more than eight books of poetry, including Language cuit (1923), Deuil pour deuil (1924), Journal d'une apparition (1927), and The Night of Loveless Nights (1930).
In the 1930s, Desnos diverged slightly from his Surrealist peers. Breton, in his Second Manifesto of Surrealism, 1930, would criticize Desnos for straying from the movement and for his journalistic work. In part, Desnos had simply grown tired of his own excesses—both in his creative and personal life. It was at this time that he married Youki Foujita and took on more commercial writing assignments for French radio and television.

His poems became more direct and musical, though still maintaining some of their earlier adventurous style. Desnos continued to write throughout the decade; in 1936 he wrote a poem per day for the entire year. His published works from this time include Corps et biens (1930), and Le sans cou (1934).

In 1939 at the onset of World War II, Desnos again served in the French Army. During the German occupation, he returned to Paris and under pseudonyms such as Lucien Gallois and Pierre Andier, Desnos published a series of essays that subtly mocked the Nazis. These articles combined with his work for the French Resistance led to his arrest. Desnos was sent to first to Auschwitz, and then transferred to a concentration camp in Czechoslovakia. Although the Allies liberated this camp in 1945, Desnos had contracted typhoid. He died on June 8, 1945. ..

[Mary Magdalene]

Jehanne D'arc

Who is that girl? Do I know her face?


All the banners stop waving
And the flags stop flying
And the silence comes over

Jehanne wears a golden cross
And she looks so beautiful in her armour
Jehanne blows a kiss to God
And she never wears a ring on her finger

Who is that girl? Do I know her face?

[Thomas Shaw]

Annabel Lee

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love-
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me-
Yes!- that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we-
Of many far wiser than we-
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

--Edgar Allan Poe

[steve b]

Poetry's for fags and girls.

[Julian Curtis Lee]

Poetry is the highest art of words. And the art of words is one of the masculine arts. That's why a man can reliably attract a woman almost with the power of words alone, and no woman is deeply attracted to man lacking the gift of speech. A male without the gift of speech is barely a man.

The more masculine the male ,the greater his gift of speech. That's why most of the great poets are men and none of them are gays. For example, Andy Warhol, who you are obsessed with, had no powers of speech (he was a lot like you). Stupid men (like Steve B) want to mock poetry because they are dimwits and have not the gift of blarney, which takes both intelligence and creativity, i.e. strong male energy.

[Thomas Shaw]

Poetry's for fags and girls.

Before Odin was the god of war he was the god of poetry. When it comes to masculinity the one eyed god has no equal.:viking:

[Julian Curtis Lee]

Of course.

[James DeGrizz]

"The Waste Land" by T.S. Eliot. To long to post, but still my favorite.

[Kostya Novoselov]

Poetry is the highest art of words… That's why a man can... attract a woman

Any soul on existential quest inevitably finds itself on quicksands or even in a free fall; but even that soul can’t resist the power of Art. For it comes from the connection with what is beyond the visible, the connection with the Stars.

In that sense, Art saves. It is more powerful than any institutionalized, eastern or western, spiritual tradition. As true Art can make you understand what it all means, even for a single moment.

[Julian Curtis Lee]

Any soul on existential quest inevitably finds itself on quicksands or even in a free fall; but even that soul can’t resist the power of Art. For it comes from the connection with what is beyond the visible, the connection with the Stars.
Yes.
In that sense, Art saves.
I wouldn't go that far. It can, however, attract one to what saves.
It is more powerful than any institutionalized, eastern or western, spiritual tradition.
I wouldn't go that far. The spiritual traditions, as well as their institutions and the order they create, are what have fostered and inspired the highest art. However, we need the institutions and religious order more than we need the art. Meanwhile, the former creates the latter, while art can't create religoius truth or socially beneficial religious instititutions. It can only adorn them.
As true Art can make you understand what it all means, even for a single moment.
I agree. But the institutions and religions help one remember that understanding well beyond that moment and create things from that that are beneficial to families and society. Through religions and their institutions we make that inspiration steady and build a culture out of it.

I used to read from a big book of old poems to my kids. I will try to post some that I liked. The one who got that bedtime treatment the most become a great song lyricist. The best of my four for lyrics. Another one of my four became a noted poet in the Pacific Northwest, in anthologies and readings and radio shows. That's probably because we homeschooled her and gave her a great tutor who was a literature major who loved and also taught poetry. She also was her French teacher.

[Jett]

My favorite poem.


Way, way down in the jungle deep
The lion stepped on the signifying monkey's feet.
The monkey said, "Motherfucker, can't you see?
You're standing on my god damn feet!"

The monkey lived in the jungle in an old oak tree
Bullshittin' a line every day of the week.
Everyday before the sun go down
That lion would kick his ass all through the jungle town.

But the monkey got wise and started using his wit
Start telling himself "I'm gonna put a stop to this old ass kickin shit"

So he ran up on the lion the very next day
He said, "Oh, Mr. Lion. There's a big, bad motherfucker coming your way.
And he's somebody that you don't know.
He just broke aloose from the Ringling Brother's Show.

He talked about your people in a terrible way
He talked about your people til my hair turned gray.

So Mr. Lion, you know that ain't right.
So wherever you run up on the elephant I want you to be ready to fight."

The lion jumped up in a hell of a rage
Like a young man smoking some gage.

He ran up on the elephant talking to the swine.
He said, "All right, you big, bad motherfucker,
It's gonna be your ass or mine.

The lion jumped up and made a fancy pass
But the elephant side-stepped him and knocked him dead on his ass.
He fucked up his jaw, messed up his face,
Broke all four legs and knocked his ass out of place.

They fought all night and all the next day.
Somehow the little lion managed to get away.
He drug his ass back to the jungle more dead than alive
Just to run into the monkey and more of his signifying jive.

The little monkey said, "Look here, partner, you don't look so swell.
Looks to me like you caught a whole lot of hell."

Said, "Your eyes is red and your ass is blue.
I knew in first place it wasn't shit to you.
But I told my wife before you left
'I should have whipped your ass my motherfucking self.'

Shut up! Don't you roar!
'Cause I'll jump out of this tree and whip your dog ass some more.

And don't look up here with your stuck 'ol case
Because I'll piss through the fork of this tree in your motherfuckin' face!"

The little monkey got happy; started jumping up and down
His feet missed the limb and his ass hit the ground.

Like a ball of lightning and a streak of white
That lion was on his ass with all four feet.

Thus, rolls of tears came in the little monkey's eyes,
Nothing he could see and nothing he could hear
But he knew that was the end of his bullshittin' and signifying career

And SIGNIFYING CAREER!!!!

[Susan]

*Heavy sigh*

Thank you Starr.

Now, back to poetry for White people.

[Susan]

Portrait D'Une Femme

Your mind and you are our Sargasso Sea,
London has swept about you this score years
And bright ships left you this or that in fee:
Ideas, old gossip, oddments of all things,
Strange spars of knowledge and dimmed wates of price.
Great minds have sought you--lacking someone else.
You have been second always. Tragical?
No. You preferred it to the usual thing:
One dull man, dulling and uxorious,
One average mind--with one thought less, each year.
Oh, you are patient, I have seen you sit
Hours, where something might have floated up.
And now you pay one. Yes, you richly pay.
You are a person of some interest, one comes to you
And takes strange gain away:
Trophies fished up; some curious suggestion;
Fact that leads nowhere; and a tale or two,
Pregnant with mandrakes, or with something else
That might prove useful and yet never proves,
That never fit a corner or shows use,
Or finds its hour upon the loom of days:
The tarnished, gaudy, wonderful old work;
Idols and ambergris and rare inlays,
These are your riches, your great store; and yet
For all this sea-hoard of decidiuous things,
Stange woods half sodden, and new brighter stuff:
In the slow float of different light and deep,
No! There is nothing! In the whole and all,
Nothing that's quite your own
Yet this is you.

--Ezra Pound

[Mary Magdalene]

Canto II

The Patron of true Holinesse,
Foule Errour doth defeate:
Hypocrisie him to entrappe,
Doth to his home entreate.


A Gentle Knight was pricking on the plaine,
Y cladd in mightie armes and siluer shielde,
Wherein old dints of deepe wounds did remaine,
The cruell markes of many' a bloudy fielde;
Yet armes till that time did he neuer wield:
His angry steede did chide his foming bitt,
As much disdayning to the curbe to yield:
Full iolly knight he seemd, and faire did sitt,
As one for knightly giusts and fierce encounters fitt.
But on his brest a bloudie Crosse he bore,
The deare remembrance of his dying Lord,
For whose sweete sake that glorious badge he wore,
And dead as liuing euer him ador'd:
Vpon his shield the like was also scor'd,
For soueraine hope, which in his helpe he had:
Right faithfull true he was in deede and word,
But of his cheere did seeme too solemne sad;
Yet nothing did he dread, but euer was ydrad.

Vpon a great aduenture he was bond,
That greatest Gloriana to him gaue,
That greatest Glorious Queene of Faerie lond,
To winne him worship, and her grace to haue,
Which of all earthly things he most did craue;
And euer as he rode, his hart did earne
To proue his puissance in battell braue
Vpon his foe, and his new force to learne;
Vpon his foe, a Dragon horrible and stearne.

A louely Ladie rode him faire beside,
Vpon a lowly Asse more white then snow,
Yet she much whiter, but the same did hide
Vnder a vele, that wimpled was full low,
And ouer all a blacke stole she did throw,
As one that inly mournd: so was she sad,
And heauie sat vpon her palfrey slow:
Seemed in heart some hidden care she had,
And by her in a line a milke white lambe she lad.

So pure and innocent, as that same lambe,
She was in life and euery vertuous lore,
And by descent from Royall lynage came
Of ancient Kings and Queenes, that had of yore
Their scepters stretcht from East to Westerne shore,
And all the world in their subiection held;
Till that infernall feend with foule vprore
Forwasted all their land, and them expeld:
Whom to auenge, she had this Knight from far copeld

[cerberus]

The life that I have
Is all that I have
And the life that I have
Is yours

The love that I have
Of the life that I have
Is yours and yours and yours

A sleep I shall have
A rest I shall have
Yet death will be but a pause

For the peace of my years
In the long green grass
Will be yours and yours
and yours

[Raskolnikov]

The Isles of Greece - Lord Byron

THE isles of Greece! the isles of Greece!
Where burning Sappho loved and sung,
Where grew the arts of war and peace,---
Where Delos rose and Phoebus sprung!
Eternal summer gilds them yet,
But all, except their sun, is set.

The Scian and the Teian muse,
The hero's harp, the lover's lute,
Have found the fame your shores refuse;
Their place of birth alone is mute
To sounds which echo further west
Than your sires' "Islands of the Blest."

The mountains look on Marathon---
And Marathon looks on the sea;
And musing there an hour alone,
I dream'd that Greece might yet be free
For, standing on the Persians' grave,
I could not deem myself a slave.

A king sat on the rocky brow
Which looks on sea-born Salamis;
And ships, by thousands, lay below,
And men in nations;---all were his!
He counted them at break of day---
And when the sun set, where were they?

And where are they? and where art thou,
My country? On thy voiceless shore
The heroic lay is tuneless now---
The heroic bosom beats no more!
And must thy lyre, so long divine,
Degenerate into hands like mine?

'Tis something, in the dearth of fame,
Though link'd among a fetter'd race,
To feel at least a patriot's shame,
Even as I sing, suffuse my face;
For what is left the poet here?
For Greeks a blush---for Greece a tear.

Must we but weep o'er days more blest?
Must we but blush?---Our fathers bled.
Earth! render back from out thy breast
A remnant of our Spartan dead!
Of the three hundred grant but three,
To make a new Thermopylae.

What, silent still, and silent all?
Ah! no; the voices of the dead
Sound like a distant torrent's fall,
And answer, "Let one living head,
But one arise,---we come, we come!"
'Tis but the living who are dumb.

In vain---in vain: strike other chords;
Fill high the cup of Samian wine!
Leave battles to the Turkish hordes,
And shed the blood of Scio's vine!
Hark! rising to the ignoble call---
How answers each bold bacchanal!

You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet,
Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone?
Of two such lessons, why forget
The nobler and the manlier one?
You have the letters Cadmus gave---
Think ye he meant them for a slave?

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
We will not think of themes like these!
It made Anacreon's song divine;
He served---but served Polycrates---
A tyrant; but our masters then
Were still, at least, our countrymen.

The tyrant of the Chersonese
Was freedom's best and bravest friend;
That tyrant was Miltiades!
Oh! that the present hour would lend
Another despot of the kind!
Such chains as his were sure to bind.

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
On Suli's rock, and Parga's shore,
Exists the remnant of a line
Such as the Doric mothers bore;
And there, perhaps, some seed is sown,
The Heracleidan blood might own.

Trust not for freedom to the Franks---
They have a king who buys and sells:
In native swords and native ranks,
The only hope of courage dwells:
But Turkish force and Latin fraud
Would break your shield, however broad.

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
Our virgins dance beneath the shade---
I see their glorious black eyes shine;
But, gazing on each glowing maid,
My own the burning tear-drop laves,
To think such breasts must suckle slaves.

Place me on Sunium's marble steep---
Where nothing, save the waves and I,
May hear our mutual murmurs sweep:
There, swan-like, let me sing and die;
A land of slaves shall ne'er be mine---
Dash down yon cup of Samian wine!

[Susan]

Cerberus: I'm not familiar with your poem--is it yours?

Heaven: the late afternoon sun coming in the window, a fresh baked piece of pound cake, a cup of fresh brewed coffee, and good poetry. Ahhhhhhhhhhh................:)

[Raskolnikov]

Maybe the best poem ever:

Eternity - Rimbaud

It is recovered.
What? Eternity.
In the whirling light
Of sun become sea.

Oh my sentinel soul,
Let us desire
The nothing of night
And the day on fire.

From the applause of the World
And the striving of Man
You set yourself free
And fly as you can.

For out of you only,
Soft silken embers,
Duty arises
Nor surfeit remembers.

Then shall all hope fail,
No orietur.
Science with patience,
The torment is sure.

It is recovered.
What? Eternity.
In the whirling light
Of sun become sea.

[James DeGrizz]

I had to memorize this poem in 8th grade:

"Sea-Fever"

I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face, and a grey dawn breaking.

I must down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.

By John Masefield

[Julian Curtis Lee]

It's soul food.

[Hartmann von Aue]

An objectionable poem, but my favorite.

To his Coy Mistress
by Andrew Marvell


Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day;
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood;
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.

But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserv'd virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.

Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like am'rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapp'd power.
Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

[Susan]

Come In

As I came to the edge of the woods,
Thrush music--hark!
Now if it was dusk outside,
Inside it was dark.

Too dark in the woods for a bird
By sleight of wing
To better its perch for the night,
Though it still could sing.

The last of the light of the sun
That had died in the west
Still lived for one song more
In a thrush's breast.

Far in the pillared dark
Thrush music went--
Almost like a call to come in
To the dark and lament.

But no, I was out for stars:
I would not come in.
I meant not even if asked,
And I hadn't been.

--Robert Frost

[Lud]

SALUTATION

O generation of the thoroughly smug
and thoroughly uncomfortable,
I have seen fishermen picnicking in the sun,
I have seen them with untidy families,
I have seen their smiles full of teeth
and heard ungainly laughter.
And I am happier than you are,
And they were happier than I am;
And the fish swim in the lake
and do not even own clothing.

-Ezra Pound.

[Susan]

There's a Certain Slant of Light

There's a certain Slant of Light,
Winter afternoons--
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes--

Heavenly Hurt, it gives us--
We can find no scar,
But internal difference,
Where the meanings, are--

None may teach it--Any--
'Tis the Seal Despair--
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the Air--

When it comes, the Landscape listens--
Shadows--hold their breath--
When it goes, 'tis like the Distance
On the look of Death--

--Emily Dickinson

[Königin Luise von Preußen]

The Broken Heart
by Ingeborg Bachmann (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingeborg_Bachmann)

News o' grief had overteaken
Dark-eyed Fanny, now vorseaken;
There she zot, wi' breast a-heaven,
While vrom zide to zide, wi' grieven,
Vell her head, wi' tears a-creepen
Down her cheaks, in bitter weepen.
There wer still the ribbon-bow
She tied avore her hour ov woe,
An' there wer still the hans that tied it
Hangen white,
Or wringen tight,
In ceare that drowned all ceare bezide it.

When a man, wi' heartless slighten,
Mid become a maiden's blighten,
He mid cearelessly vorseake her,
But must answer to her Meaker;
He mid slight, wi' selfish blindness,
All her deeds o' loven-kindness,
God wull waigh 'em wi' the slighten
That mid be her love's requiten;
He do look on each deceiver,
He do know
What weight o' woe
Do break the heart ov ev'ry griever.


* * *


Vull a Man

by Ingeborg Bachmann

No, I'm a man, I'm vull a man,
You beat my manhood, if you can.
You'll be a man if you can teake
All steates that household life do meake.
The love-toss'd child, a-croodlen loud,
The bwoy a-screamen wild in play,
The tall grown youth a-steppen proud,
The father staid, the house's stay.
No ; I can boast if others can,
I'm vull a man.

A young-cheak'd mother's tears mid vall,
When woone a-lost, not half man-tall,
Vrom little hand, a-called vrom play,
Do leave noo tool, but drop a tay,
An' die avore he's father-free
To sheape his life by his own plan;
An' vull an angel he shall be,
But here on e'th not vull a man,
No; I could boast if others can,
I'm vull a man.

I woonce, a child, wer father-fed,
An' I've a-vound my childern bread;
My earm, a sister's trusty crook,
Is now a faithvul wife's own hook;
An' I've agone where vo'k did zend,
An' gone upon my own free mind,
An' of'en at my own wits' end.
A-led o' God while I were blind.
No; I could boast if others can,
I'm vull a man.

An' still, ov all my tweil ha' won,
My loven maid an' merry son,
Though each in turn's a jay an' ceare,
'Ve a-had, an' still shall have, their sheare
An' then, if God should bless their lives,
Why I mid zend vrom son to son
My life, right on drough men an' wives,
As long, good now, as time do run.
No, I could boast if others can,
I'm vull a man.

[Lud]

Attn: Mentious

Another of my favorites.


The Deluge

Though giant rains put out the sun,
Here stand I for a sign.
Though earth be filled with waters dark,
My cup is filled with wine.
Tell to the trembling priests that here
Under the deluge rod,
One nameless, tattered, broken man
Stood up, and drank to God.

Sun has been where the rain is now,
Bees in the heat to hum,
Haply a humming maiden came,
Now let the deluge come:
Brown of aureole, green of garb,
Straight as a golden rod,
Drink to the throne of thunder now!
Drink to the wrath of God.

High in the wreck I held the cup,
I clutched my rusty sword,
I cocked my tattered feather
To the glory of the Lord.
Not undone were the heaven and earth,
This hollow world thrown up,
Before one man had stood up straight,
And drained it like a cup.

-Gilbert Keith Chesterton

[SSanguine]

I have been reading this poem over and over again since a very young age and it remains one of my absolute favorites besides my own....

The Wild Swans at Coole

THE trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty Swans.

The nineteenth autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.

But now they drift on the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake's edge or pool
Delight men's eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?

[Mary Magdalene]

Beneath the sediment of aeons In ancient repose
My trust lay eroded by age The old glory faded
And past times forgotten My reign given way to my rage

Harmonious the centuries The land and I were one
My Soil My water, My air Bringer of light And Master of night
In balance The earth in my care

But with the passing of days A new wind came blowing
With whispers of change On its wing
This tide of corruption Laid siege to my world Usurping the throne of a King

Your new gods Your new ways All seek to dispel me
With doctrines of fear built on lies The hidden one no longer I claim my dominion
To the sun of your age I arise...

...Of your anger Your anger Your ignorance Your blindness Your greed
Your progress Your conquest Your mania Your need
Your sorrow Your sickness Your final, parting breath Your hatred Your bloodshed

Your future Your death I will have none I will have none
I, dread lord of shadows With broken spell unto this dying age I bid farewell...

----------------------------------------------------

Hear me my beloved; I beckon thee through waves of dream and in mine
ears a voice whispers oceans of light and in thine eyes alone begins
this journey of mine; is this love? Thou art Love; thou art Truth;
thou art a vision resplendent and I am born with recognition;
for I have known thee a thousand years yet never known thee before; when
thy radiance spoke my name I was a king restored and my kingdom pales in
the gloriousness of thee and my fortunes mask an emptiness filled only
by this; where our world exists beyond this brilliant dream; I shall
find thee, thou art the answer; I will find thee, thou art the light
yet I am human and thy light dims with consciousness; I am man and my
love shall dim in thy conquest; I am passionately human and I shall
close my eyes to thee for truth proves me mortal to be; yes, this is
love and I must put my heart to sleep for this is love; true love dims
in human's keep and I am damned

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Air-built madness: unfamiliar charm Hides in the softest eyes
And ponderous smiles manifest denial But heavy heartless Conscious of our load
Hurled by dreams into a separate world We dig the thoughtless earth

With fingers lighter than the breath Of lifeless minds awaiting death On this Mercyground

What may transpire in this stagnant posture Tradition multiplies
Where repetition reigns and the air smells of age And prayers of sightless Blind us to the earth
Disenchantment sings in voices fortified Our sleep is justified

Prone and weary from descent Our eyes reflect empyrean On this Mercyground
Safe inured we lay to rest Pinioned by our helplessness On this Mercyground

Empty smiles drag us down Until we softly kiss the ground And all movement is lost
Silently we all sink down Embraced within this Mercyground And all movement is lost

-----------------------------------------------------------

Welcome my dear please take my hand It's wonderful here it's really quite grand
The moment still, await the hour The Masquerade for Time's dead flowers

Dancing and reeling We move beneath shadows We've hung from the ceiling
All memory receding Take leave of reason In step with the bleeding

Chapter & Verse the lyric takes flight Red is the day as red is the night
The hours pass, the years expire The dance goes on, we spin on fire

Laughing and screaming A wide-awake nightmare Diseased and believing
In mourning-deceiving Ever in motion and ever in grieving

Welcome my dear please take my hand It's wonderful here it's really quite grand

Shadows now descending To join in the Madness The song never-ending
Wounds never mending Wretched in countenance The fear now transcending

----------------------------------------------------------------
Thank you F&M

[Susan]

Acquainted With The Night

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain--and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street.

But not to call me back or say good-by;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

--Robert Frost

[Jett]

Heavy horses


Iron-clad feather-feet pounding the dust
On octobers day, towards evening
Sweat embossed veins standing proud to the plough
Salt on a deep chest, seasoning
Last of the line at an honest days toil
Turning the deep sod under
Flint at the fetlock, chasing the bone
Flies at the nostrils plunder.

The suffolk, the clydesdale, the percheron vie
With the shire on his feathers floating
Hauling soft timber into the dusk
To bed on a warm straw coating.

Heavy horses, move the land under me
Behind the plough gliding --- slipping and sliding free
Now youre down to the few
And theres no work to do
The tractors on its way.

Let me find you a filly for your proud stallion seed
To keep the old line going.
And well stand you abreast at the back of the woods
Behind the young trees growing
To hide you from eyes that mock at your girth,
Youre eighteen hands at the shoulder

And one day when the oil barons have all dripped dry
And the nights are seen to draw colder
Theyll beg for your strength, your gentle power
Your noble grace and your bearing
And youll strain once again to the sound of the gulls
In the wake of the deep plough, sharing.

Standing like tanks on the brow of the hill
Up into the cold wind facing
In stiff battle harness, chained to the world
Against the low sun racing
Bring me a wheel of oaken wood
A rein of polished leather
A heavy horse and a tumbling sky
Brewing heavy weather.

Bring a song for the evening
Clean brass to flash the dawn
Across these acres glistening
Like dew on a carpet lawn
In these dark towns folk lie sleeping
As the heavy horses thunder by
To wake the dying city
With the living horsemans cry

At once the old hands quicken ---
Bring pick and wisp and curry comb ---
Thrill to the sound of all
The heavy horses coming home.

Iron-clad feather-feet pounding the dust
On octobers day, towards evening
Sweat embossed veins standing proud to the plough
Salt on a deep chest, seasoning
Bring me a wheel of oaken wood
A rein of polished leather
A heavy horse and a tumbling sky
Brewing heavy weather.

Heavy horses, move the land under me
Behind the plough gliding --- slipping and sliding free
Now youre down to the few
And theres no work to do
The tractors on its way.

[Susan]

Wow! I'm impressed Jett. Every time I see your name in the Poetry thread, I come expecting to find:

There once was a girl from Nantucket..........:rofl::rofl: :rofl:

[calvin]

This poem reminded me of Julian Lee.

Rudyard Kipling

Buddha at Kamakura (1892)

O ye who tread the Narrow Way
By Tophet-flare to Judgment Day,
Be gentle when ‘the heathen’ pray
To Buddha at Kamakura!

To Him the Way, the Law, apart,
Whom Maya held beneath her heart,
Ananda’s Lord, the Bodhisat,
The Buddha of Kamakura.

For though He neither burns nor sees,
Nor hears ye thank your Deities,
Ye have not sinned with such as these,
His children at Kamakura,

Yet spare us still the Western joke
When joss-sticks turn to scented smoke
The little sins of little folk
That worship at Kamakura—

The grey-robed, gay-sashed butterflies
That flit beneath the Master’s eyes.
He is beyond the Mysteries
But loves them at Kamakura.

And whoso will, from Pride released,
Contemning neither creed nor priest,
May feel the Soul of all the East
About him at Kamakura.

Yea, every tale Ananda heard,
Of birth as fish or beast or bird,
While yet in lives the Master stirred,
The warm wind brings Kamakura.

Till drowsy eyelids seem to see
A-flower ’neath her golden htee
The Shwe-Dagon flare easterly
From Burma to Kamakura,

And down the loaded air there comes
The thunder of Thibetan drums,
And droned—‘Om mane padme hum’s’
A world’s-width from Kamakura.

Yet Brahmans rule Benares still,
Buddh-Gaya’s ruins pit the hill,
And beef-fed zealots threaten ill
To Buddha and Kamakura.

A tourist-show, a legend told,
A rusting bulk of bronze and gold,
So much, and scarce so much, ye hold
The meaning of Kamakura?

But when the morning prayer is prayed,
Think, ere ye pass to strife and trade,
Is God in human image made
No nearer than Kamakura?

[sugartits]

There once was a girl from Nantucket..

Who posted a poem so long they thought "Fuck It"
It went on and on
Like a sad swan song
Buddy oughta get on and chuck it.

[harjit]

Here are some of the Chieko Poems, a series of poems by the Japanese poet Kotaro Takamura about his wife Chieko.

Chieko, an early feminist, eventually became schizophrenic. Here are is a selection of the poems about her final descent into madness.
------------------------

Farsighted Life
A bird starts up from my foot.
My wife goes mad.
My clothes become ragged.
Gunsight at 3000 metres,
The rifle aimed too far away!

Chieko Rides The Wind
Chieko's now completely crazy, using gestures
Rather than words to call the magpies and plovers.
The forest windbreak slopes down,
A mass of yellow pine pollen streams through the air,
The Ninety-Nine Mile Beach smokes in the bright May breeze.
Chieko's summer kimono darts in and out of the pines.
In the white sand are pine truffles,
I slowly follow after Chieko
Picking up the pine truffles.
The magpies and plovers are Chieko's friends.
For Chieko, who has given up being human,
The frighteningly clear morning air is a wonderful place to wander,
Chieko flies along like a bird.

Chieko Plays With Plovers
On the empty Ninety-Nine Mile Beach,
Chieko sits in the sand and plays.
Countless friends call her name:
Chi, chi, chi, chi, chi...
Leaving tiny footprints in the sand,
Plovers come to gather round Chieko.
Mumbling away to herself,
Chieko beckons them with her hands.
Chi, chi, chi...
They beg for the shells she holds.
Chieko tosses them a few at a time.
Rising up, they call to Chieko:
Chi, chi, chi, chi, chi...
Having given up all human contact
And crossed far into the natural world,
Chieko seems such a lonely speck -
Two hundred yards away, in the forest windbreak, in the setting sun,
Smothered in pine pollen, I stand still as if for ever.

Extraordinary Chieko
Chieko sees what cannot be seen,
Hears what cannot be heard.
Chieko goes where no-one else can go,
Does what no-one else can do.
Chieko doesn't see the physical me,
She yearns for the me behind me.
Chieko has lifted the burden of suffering
And drifted into a world of aesthetic beauty.
I hear her voice calling over and over to me
But Chieko no longer has a ticket to the human world.

[Kostya Novoselov]

Extraordinary Chieko

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to harjit again.

[NeoCornelio]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/14/Boris_Vian_sepia.jpg/200px-Boris_Vian_sepia.jpg

Je Voudrais Pas Crever - Boris Vian

I don't want to crack up
Without having known
The black dogs of Mexico
Who sleep without dreaming
The monkeys with bare bums
Devourers of the tropics
The silver spiders
With nests stuffed with bubbles
I don't want to crack up
without knowing if the moon
Under her false shilling-face
Has a pointed side
If the sun is cold
If the four seasons are really only four
Without having tried
Wearing a dress
On the grand boulevards
Without having looked
into a sewer inspection-hole Without having put my prick
into some bizarre corners
I don't want to end without knowing leprosy
Or the seven maladies
One catches down there
The good nor the bad
Doesn't bother me
If if if I knew
That I would have the first of it
And there is also
All that I know
All that I value
That I know pleases me
The green depth of the sea
Where the strands of algae waltz
On the rippled sand
The baked grass of June
The crackling earth
The scent of the pines
And her kisses
Now here now there
Her beauty obvious to all
My Bear cub, Ursula
I don't want to crack up
Before having used
her mouth with my mouth
her body with my hands
the rest with my eyes
I say no more of it
It's better to stay reverential
I don't want to die
Before someone has invented
eternal roses
The work-day of two hours
The sea at the mountain
The mountain at the sea
The end of sadness
The newspapers in colour
All the children happy
And so many tricks still
Which sleep in the heads
Of genial engineers
Of jovial gardeners
Of civil citizens
And thoughtful thinkers
So many things to see
To see and to hear
So much time to spend
Searching in the night

As for me I see the swarming
End arriving
With his lousy mug
Opening for me his
Bandy toad arms

I don't want to crack up
No monsieur no madame
Before having explored
The flavour which torments me
The flavour which is the heaviest
I don't want to crack up
Before having flavoured
The taste of death.

[Mary Magdalene]

When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams
as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.

But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.

When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart," but rather, "I am in the heart of God."
And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

(Kahlil Gibran)

[Tellurocrat]

The Schoolboy
William Blake

I love to rise on a summer morn,
When birds are singing on every tree;
The distant huntsman winds his horn,
And the skylark sings with me:
Oh what sweet company!

But to go to school in a summer morn, --
Oh it drives all joy away!
Under a cruel eye outworn,
The little ones spend the day
In sighing and dismay.

Ah then at times I drooping sit,
And spend many an anxious hour;
Nor in my book can I take delight,
Nor sit in learning's bower,
Worn through with the dreary shower.

How can the bird that is born for joy
Sit in a cage and sing?
How can a child, when fears annoy,
But droop his tender wing,
And forget his youthful spring?

Oh father and mother, if buds are nipped,
And blossoms blown away;
And if the tender plants are stripped
Of their joy in the springing day,
By sorrow and care's dismay, --

How shall the summer arise in joy,
Or the summer fruits appear?
Or how shall we gather what griefs destroy,
Or bless the mellowing year,
When the blasts of winter appear?

[klipgeit]

When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams
as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.

But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.

When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart," but rather, "I am in the heart of God."
And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

(Kahlil Gibran)

From the Prophet.
You know that he was very unlucky with love.
This poem referred to his love for Lebanon and that Menorites as well as Muslim must shake hands.
Gibran was with the prophet a bit out of touch with reality
Stil a very good poem

[Baron_Corvo]

My favourite poem is "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", but since someone's mentioned Kipling I should say that I think this poem has particular relevance now. Whether you agree with its sentiments or not (and my idealism dies harder than most), it's a heck of a poem;

http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_copybook.htm

AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

[Mary Magdalene]

From the Prophet.
You know that he was very unlucky with love.
This poem referred to his love for Lebanon and that Menorites as well as Muslim must shake hands.
Gibran was with the prophet a bit out of touch with reality
Stil a very good poem

I think poets and artists are very often dreamers..living in their own little utopia's

“Eager souls, mystics and revolutionaries, may propose to refashion the world in accordance with their dreams; but evil remains, and so long as it lurks in the secret places of the heart, utopia is only the shadow of a dream”

(Nathaniel Hawthorne)

[NeoCornelio]

SONNET- TO SCIENCE
by Edgar Allan Poe

Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art!
Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart,
Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?
How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise,
Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering
To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,
Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?
Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car?
And driven the Hamadryad from the wood
To seek a shelter in some happier star?
Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,
The Elfin from the green grass, and from me
The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?



I'm going to memorize this poem so I can have a good excuse for my utter ignorance on scientific matters.

[Mary Magdalene]

The Playground of Life

One hour devoted to the pursuit of Beauty
And Love is worth a full century of glory
Given by the frightened weak to the strong.


From that hour comes man's Truth; and
During that century Truth sleeps between
The restless arms of disturbing dreams.


In that hour the soul sees for herself
The Natural Law, and for that century she
Imprisons herself behind the law of man;
And she is shackled with irons of oppression.


That hour was the inspiration of the Songs
Of Solomon, an that century was the blind
Power which destroyed the temple of Baalbek.


That hour was the birth of the Sermon on the
Mount, and that century wrecked the castles of
Palmyra and the Tower of Babylon.


That hour was the Hegira of Mohammed and that
Century forgot Allah, Golgotha, and Sinai.


One hour devoted to mourning and lamenting the
Stolen equality of the weak is nobler than a
Century filled with greed and usurpation.


It is at that hour when the heart is
Purified by flaming sorrow and
Illuminated by the torch of Love.
And in that century, desires for Truth
Are buried in the bosom of the earth.
That hour is the root which must flourish.
That hour of meditation, the hour of
Prayer, and the hour of a new era of good.


And that century is a life of Nero spent
On self-investment taken solely from
Earthly substance.


This is life.
Portrayed on the stage for ages;
Recorded earthly for centuries;
Lived in strangeness for years;
Sung as a hymn for days;
Exalted but for an hour, but the
Hour is treasured by Eternity as a jewel.

Khalil Gibran

[Joe McCarthy]

Probably the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, though I'm not too keen on Coleridge the man. It's too long to post here.

[KerguelenExileDissident]

When I Consider How My Light Is Spent - By John Milton

When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest He returning chide;
"Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?"
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need
Either man's work or His own gifts. Who best
Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best. His state
Is kingly: thousands at His bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait."

This poem speaks to me...

[Mary Magdalene]

From Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais

Here enter you, and welcome from our hearts,
All noble sparks, endowed with gallant parts.
This is the glorious place, which bravely shall
Afford wherewith to entertain you all.
Were you a thousand, here you shall not want
For anything; for what you'll ask we'll grant.
Stay here, you lively, jovial, handsome, brisk,
Gay, witty, frolic, cheerful, merry, frisk,
Spruce, jocund, courteous, furtherers of trades,
And, in a word, all worthy gentle blades.

Blades of heroic breasts
Shall taste here of the feasts,
Both privily
And civilly
Of the celestial guests,
Blades of heroic breasts.

Here enter you, pure, honest, faithful, true
Expounders of the Scriptures old and new.
Whose glosses do not blind our reason, but
Make it to see the clearer, and who shut
Its passages from hatred, avarice,
Pride, factions, covenants, and all sort of vice.
Come, settle here a charitable faith,
Which neighbourly affection nourisheth.
And whose light chaseth all corrupters hence,
Of the blest word, from the aforesaid sense.

The holy sacred Word,
May it always afford
T' us all in common,
Both man and woman,
A spiritual shield and sword,
The holy sacred Word.

Here enter you all ladies of high birth,
Delicious, stately, charming, full of mirth,
Ingenious, lovely, miniard, proper, fair,
Magnetic, graceful, splendid, pleasant, rare,
Obliging, sprightly, virtuous, young, solacious,
Kind, neat, quick, feat, bright, compt, ripe, choice, dear, precious.
Alluring, courtly, comely, fine, complete,
Wise, personable, ravishing, and sweet,
Come joys enjoy. The Lord celestial
Hath given enough wherewith to please us all.

Gold give us, God forgive us,
And from all woes relieve us;
That we the treasure
May reap of pleasure,
And shun whate'er is grievous,
Gold give us, God forgive us.

[James DeGrizz]

Probably the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, though I'm not too keen on Coleridge the man. It's too long to post here.

Are you also a fan of Kubla Khan? I used to have the first paragraph memorized, but I've unfortunately forgotten most of it.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round :
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree ;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh ! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover !
A savage place ! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover !
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced :
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail :
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean :
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war !
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves ;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice !
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw :
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome ! those caves of ice !
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware ! Beware !
His flashing eyes, his floating hair !
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

[Joe McCarthy]

Kubla Khan is okay. I'll add Kipling's 'If' though it may have been posted already. I recall it being voted the most read bit of English literature or something of the sort some years back. It presents words to live by.

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

[Mary Magdalene]

Kubla Khan is okay. I'll add Kipling's 'If' though it may have been posted already. I recall it being voted the most read bit of English literature or something of the sort some years back. It presents words to live by.

Wonderful poem Joe.

Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.

(Kipling)

[Mary Magdalene]

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pur whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he's
in there.

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you?

[Vessper]

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pur whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he's
in there.

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you?

Nice poem..

[Dreadnought]

I don't know about favourites, as I don't know much about poetry, but this caught my eye:

Manichaeans

Indistinguishable from the dark, a rat
crawls through debris. Above, aloof and pale,
the moon shines on all the heavens and hells
of the city, shines on the good and bad

alike, more intimately than the sun.
Two pounds of dung sit in our bodies' bowels,
waiting to be released. The sweat on our brows,
the warm saliva on our twisted tongues

shall be purified in estuaries,
merge with the thoughts of seals and otters.
Our sperm and eggs become sons and daughters,
but what of the husks of all our worries,

of our falling lungs and aching gallstones,
of the scabs from our wounds, of our bad blood?
We prefer abstractions, words like: love
and redemption; hate the meat on our bones,

gag at the worms that cleanse us, yield to blight.
We are purists at heart. But, if only
it would stop pounding, if only we could be
fleshless, if only we could be like light.

____________________

I think perhaps everyone thinks like this sometimes?

[Susan]

Yes, I'm sure we all have similar moments. However, I prefer my poetry and my art to be more in the uplifting vein. I like poignancy and sadness, but not really degeneracy and disgust when it comes to poetry and art. Not knocking your choice, just commenting. We all have our preferences and that is what makes the world go 'round. To a point, that is.

As I stated before, a lot of us have the same taste in poetry here it seems as the same poems seem to crop up over and over. All my appreciation of poetry, really, was learned in a couple of really good college lit classes taught by a woman who was a writer and really appreciated the great old poets. Actually, my two or three poetry classes were taught by two friends of mine who were excellent teachers and loved literature and poetry.

[Baron_Corvo]

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich – yes, richer than a king –
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Richard_Cory

[Mary Magdalene]

I loved this poem as a child..and still do! :)

When awful darkness and silence reign
Over the great Gromboolian plain,
Through the long, long wintry nights;--
When the angry breakers roar
As they beat on the rocky shore;--
When Storm-clouds brood on the towering heights
Of the Hills of the Chankly Bore:--

Then, through the vast and gloomy dark,
There moves what seems a fiery spark,
A lonely spark with silvery rays
Piercing the coal-black night,--
A Meteor strange and bright:--
Hither and thither the vision strays,
A single lurid light.

Slowly it wanders,--pauses,--creeeps,--
Anon it sparkles,--flashes and leaps;
And ever as onward it gleaming goes
A light on the Bong-tree stems it throws.
And those who watch at that midnight hour
From Hall or Terrace, or lofty Tower,
Cry, as the wild light passes along,--
'The Dong!--the Dong!
'The wandering Dong through the forest goes!
'The Dong! the Dong!
'The Dong with a luminous Nose!'

Long years ago
The Dong was happy and gay,
Till he fell in love with a Jumbly Girl
Who came to those shores one day,
For the Jumblies came in a sieve, they did,--
Landing at eve near the Zemmery Fidd
Where the Oblong Oysters grow,
And the rocks are smooth and gray.
And all the woods and the valleys rang
With the Chorus they daily and nightly sang,--
'Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue
And they went to sea in a sieve.'

Happily, happily passed those days!
While the cheerful Jumblies staid;
They danced in circlets all night long,
To the plaintive pipe of the lively Dong,
In moonlight, shine, or shade.
For day and night he was always there
By the side of the Jumbly Girl so fair,
With her sky-blue hands, and her sea-green hair.
Till the morning came of that hateful day
When the Jumblies sailed in their sieve away,
And the Dong was left on the cruel shore
Gazing--gazing for evermore,--
Ever keeping his weary eyes on
That pea-green sail on the far horizon,--
Singing the Jumbly Chorus still
As he sate all day on the grassy hill,--
'Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue
And they went to sea in a sieve.'

But when the sun was low in the West,
The Dong arose and said;--
--'What little sense I once possessed
'Has quite gone out of my head!'--
And since that day he wanders still
By lake or forest, marsh and hill,
Singing--'O somewhere, in valley or plain
'Might I find my Jumbly Girl again!
'For ever I'll seek by lake and shore
'Till I find my Jumbly Girl once more!'

Playing a pipe with silvery squeaks,
Since then his Jumbly Girl he seeks,
And because by night he could not see,
He gathered the bark of the Twangum Tree
On the flowery plain that grows.
And he wove him a wondrous Nose,--
A Nose as strange as a Nose could be!
Of vast proportions and painted red,
And tied with cords to the back of his head.
--In a hollow rounded space it ended
With a luminous Lamp within suspended,
All fenced about
With a bandage stout
To prevent the wind from blowing it out;--
And with holes all round to send the light,
In gleaming rays on the dismal night.

And now each night, and all night long,
Over those plains still roams the Dong;
And above the wall of the Chimp and Snipe
You may hear the sqeak of his plaintive pipe
While ever he seeks, but seeks in vain
To meet with his Jumbly Girl again;
Lonely and wild--all night he goes,--
The Dong with a luminous Nose!
And all who watch at the midnight hour,
From Hall or Terrace, or lofty Tower,
Cry, as they trace the Meteor bright,
Moving along through the dreary night,--
'This is the hour when forth he goes,
'The Dong with a luminous Nose!
'Yonder--over the plain he goes,
'He goes!
'He goes;
'The Dong with a luminous Nose!'

[Susan]

I didn't specifically remember Edward Lear from my college lit classes from long long ago, so I looked him up on wikipedia. And when I read that he and Lewis Carroll both lived at the same time that explained why I had the same feeling when I read your poem that I used to get when I read Lewis Carroll.

And my Norton Anthology of English Literature also says that "Carroll learned something of his art from Edward Lear, also an eccentric Victorian bachelor, but Carroll's nonsense, hovering often on the brink of satire, has more edge to it."

There are certain things from my childhood that I recall giving me the creeps, I don't particularly know why. Reading Lewis Carroll was one of those things that I just found somewhat unsettling for reasons unknown.

And since we're talking about Carroll, here's his poem:

Jabberwocky

"Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxome for he sought--
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock!
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
He chortled in his joy.

"Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Lewis Carroll, 1832-1898

[Mary Magdalene]

Another Edward Lear poem Susan. You might know this one. :)

The Owl and the Pussycat went to sea
In a beautiful pea-green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
"O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are, you are, you are,
What a beautiful Pussy you are."
Pussy said to the Owl "You elegant fowl,
How charmingly sweet you sing.
O let us be married, too long we have tarried;
But what shall we do for a ring?"
They sailed away, for a year and a day,
To the land where the Bong-tree grows,
And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood
With a ring at the end of his nose, his nose, his nose,
With a ring at the end of his nose.
"Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling your ring?"
Said the Piggy, "I will"
So they took it away, and were married next day
By the Turkey who lives on the hill.
They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon.
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand.
They danced by the light of the moon, the moon, the moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.

Edward Lear (1812 - 1888)

[Susan]

And since I'm hanging out in the Poetry thread, here's two more I like. Some might remember this first one from the movie Love Story in the scene where Ali MacGraw and Ryan ONeal are saying their marriage vows to each other. This is the poem they recited:

From Sonnets from the Portuguese

When our two souls stand up erect and strong,
Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher,
Until the lengthening wings break into fire
At either curve'd point--what bitter wrong
Can the earth do to us, that we should not long
Be here contented? Think! In mounting higher,
The angels would press on us and aspire
To drop some golden orb of perfect song
Into our deep, dear silence. Let us stay
Rather on earth, Beloved--where the unfit,
Contrarious moods of men recoil away
And isolate pure spirits, and permit
A place to stand and love in for a day,
With darkness and the death-hour rounding it.




And another more well known poem from Sonnets from the Portuguese:



How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle light,
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints--I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!--and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1806-1861

[Susan]

Yes, Mary, I do remember that one. When I was just reading about Lear, that was one of the poems in my Anthology book. So, I did remember him after all.:)

[Susan]

The Widow's Lament in Springtime


Sorrow is my own yard
where the new grass
flames as it has flamed
often before but not
with the cold fire
that closes round me this year.
Thirtyfive years
I lived with my husband.
The plumtree is white today
with masses of flowers.
Masses of flowers
loaded the cherry branches
and color some bushes
yellow and some red
but the grief in my heart
is stronger than they
for though they were my joy
formerly, today I notice them
and turned away forgetting.
Today my son told me
that in the meadows,
at the edge of the heavy woods
in the distance, he saw
trees of white flowers.
I feel that I would like
to go there
and fall into those flowers
and sink into the marsh near them.

William Carlos Williams, 1883-1963

[Mary Magdalene]

The Hermit’s Hymn to Solitude



Namo Tassa Bhagavato Arahato Sammasambuddhasa.

Venerable Lord and Best of Friends,

We, seeing the cycle in which Maha Brahma is perhaps more a drifting buoy than ourselves, knowing that it is called the waking in delusion, the puppet show of delusion, the writhing of delusion, the fetter of delusion, are aware that the way out of the desert is found by going into the desert. Will you, in your lonely lamaserai, accept this hymn from me, who, in the centre of civilisation, am perhaps more isolated than you in your craggy fastness among the trackless steppes of your Untrodden Land?

Aleister Crowley



I.

Mightiest self! Supreme in Self-Contentment!
Sole Spirit gyring in its own ellipse;
Palpable, formless, infinite presentment
Of thine own light in thine own soul’s eclipse!
Let thy chaste lips
Sweep through the empty aethers guarding thee
(As in a fortress girded by the sea
The raging winds and wings of air
Lift the wild waves and bear
Innavigable foam to seaward), bend thee down,
Touch, draw me with thy kiss
Into thine own deep bliss,
Into thy sleep, thy life, thy imperishable crown!
Let that young godhead in thine eyes
Pierce mine, fulfil me of their secrecies,
Thy peace, thy purity, thy soul impenetrably wise.

II.

All things which are complete are solitary;
The circling moon, the inconscient drift of stars,
The central systems. Burn they, change they, vary?
Theirs is no motion beyond the eternal bars.
Seasons and scars
Stain not the planets, the unfathomed home,
The spaceless, unformed faces in the dome
Brighter and blacker than all things,
Borne under the eternal wings
No whither: solitary are the winter woods
And caves not habited,
And that supreme grey head
Watching the groves: single the foaming amber floods,
And O! most lone
The melancholy mountain shrine and throne,
While far above all things God sits, the ultimate alone!

III.

I sate upon the mossy promontory
Where the cascade cleft not his mother rock,
But swept in whirlwind lightning foam and glory,
Vast circling with unwearying luminous shock
To lure and lock
Marvellous eddies in its wild caress;
And there the solemn echoes caught the stress,
The strain of that impassive tide,
Shook it and flung it high and wide,
Till all the air took fire from that melodious roar;
All the mute mountains heard,
Bowed, laughed aloud, concurred,
And passed the word along, the signal of wide war.
All earth took up the sound,
And, being in one tune securely bound,
Even as a star became the soul of silence most profound.

IV.

Thus there, the centre of that death that darkened,
I sat and listened, if God’s voice should break
And pierce the hollow of my ear that hearkened,
Lest God should speak and find me not awake—
For his own sake.
No voice, no song might pierce or penetrate
That enviable universal state.
The sun and moon beheld, stood still.
Only the spirit’s axis, will,
Considered its own soul and sought a deadlier deep,
And in its monotone mood
Of supreme solitude
Was neither glad nor sad because it did not sleep;
But with calm eyes abode
Patient, its leisure the galactic load,
Abode alone, nor even rejoiced to know that it was God.

V.

All change, all motion, and all sound are weakness!
Man cannot bear the darkness which is death.
Even that calm Christ, manifest in meekness,
Cried on the cross and gave his ghostly breath,
On the prick of death,
Voice, for his passion could not bear nor dare
The interlunar, the abundant air
Darkened, and silence on the shuddering
Hill, and the unbeating wing
Of the legions of His Father, and so died.
But I, should I be still
Poised between fear and will?
Should I be silent, I, and be unsatisfied?
For solitude shall bend
Self to all selffulness, and have one friend,
Self, and behold one God, and be, and look beyond the End.

VI.

O Solitude! how many have mistaken
Thy name for Sorrow’s, or for Death’s or Fear’s!
Only thy children lie at night and waken—
How shouldst thou speak and say that no man hears?
O Soul of Tears!
For never hath fallen as dew thy word,
Nor is thy shape showed, nor as Wisdom’s heard
Thy crying about the city
In the house where is no pity,
But in the desolate halls and lonely vales of sand:
Not in the laughter loud,
Nor crying of the crowd,
But in the farthest sea, the yet-untravelled land.
Where thou hast trodden, I have trod;
Thy folk have been my folk, and thine abode
Mine, and thy life my life, and thou, who art thy God, my God.

VII.

Draw me with cords that are not; witch me chanted
Spells never heard nor open to the ear,
Woven of silence, moulded in the haunted
Houses where dead men linger year by year.
I have no fear
To tread thy far irremeable way,
Beyond the paths and palaces of day,
Beyond the night, beyond the skies,
Beyond eternity’s
Tremendous gate; beyond the immanent miracle.
O secret self of things!
I have nor feet nor wings
Except to follow far beyond Heaven and Earth and Hell,
Until I mix my mood
And being in thee, as in my hermit’s hood,
I grow the thing I contemplate— that selfless solitude!

[Delmac]

He loved her and she loved him
His kisses sucked out her whole past and future or tried to
He had no other appetite
She bit him she gnawed him she sucked
She wanted him complete inside her
Safe and Sure forever and ever
Their little cries fluttered into the curtains

Her eyes wanted nothing to get away
Her looks nailed down his hands his wrists his elbows
He gripped her hard so that life
Should not drag her from that moment
He wanted all future to cease
He wanted to topple with his arms round her
Or everlasting or whatever there was
Her embrace was an immense press
To print him into her bones
His smiles were the garrets of a fairy place
Where the real world would never come
Her smiles were spider bites
So he would lie still till she felt hungry
His word were occupying armies
Her laughs were an assasin's attempts
His looks were bullets daggers of revenge
Her glances were ghosts in the corner with horrible secrets
His whispers were whips and jackboots
Her kisses were lawyers steadily writing
His caresses were the last hooks of a castaway
Her love-tricks were the grinding of locks
And their deep cries crawled over the floors
Like an animal dragging a great trap
His promises were the surgeon's gag
Her promises took the top off his skull
She would get a brooch made of it
His vows pulled out all her sinews
He showed her how to make a love-knot
At the back of her secret drawer
Their screams stuck in the wall
Their heads fell apart into sleep like the two halves
Of a lopped melon, but love is hard to stop

In their entwined sleep they exchanged arms and legs
In their dreams their brains took each other hostage

In the morning they wore each other's face

[Delmac]

uEUolGiGPgU

[Mary Magdalene]

Ted Hughes - Lovesong

Lovely poem..

[sugartits]

HUMAN ABSTRACT
William Blake

Pity would be no more
If we did not make somebody poor,
And Mercy no more could be
If all were as happy as we.

And mutual fear brings Peace,
Till the selfish loves increase;
Then Cruelty knits a snare,
And spreads his baits with care.

He sits down with holy fears,
And waters the ground with tears;
Then Humility takes its root
Underneath his foot.

Soon spreads the dismal shade
Of Mystery over his head,
And the caterpillar and fly
Feed on the Mystery.

And it bears the fruit of Deceit,
Ruddy and sweet to eat,
And the raven his nest has made
In its thickest shade.

The gods of the earth and sea
Sought through nature to find this tree,
But their search was all in vain:
There grows one in the human Brain.

[Mary Magdalene]

Blake is an amazing artist and poet. :thumbsup:

[Pollinosis]

No one has mentioned the Divine Comedy?

[sugartits]

Some of Nietzche's rhymes:

Worldy Wisdom

Do not stay in the field!
Nor climb out of sight.
The best view of the world.
Is from a medium height.

Against airs

Those who inflate themselves are cursed.
When pricked by a small pin to burst.

Admonition

What you want is fame?
Then note the price:
All claim
To honor you must sacrifice

Star Morals

Called a star's orbit to pursue
What is the darkness, star, to you?

Roll on in bliss, traverse this age--
Its misery far from you and strange

Let farthest world your light secure.
Pity is sin you must abjure.

But one command is yours: be pure!

[katzeye]

She Walks in Beauty
by George Gordon Byron


She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

[katzeye]

THE LITTLE BLACK BOY
BY
William Blake




My mother bore me in the southern wild,
And I am black, but oh my soul is white!
White as an angel is the English child,
But I am black, as if bereaved of light.

My mother taught me underneath a tree,
And, sitting down before the heat of day,
She took me on her lap and kissed me,
And, pointed to the east, began to say:

"Look on the rising sun: there God does live,
And gives His light, and gives His heat away,
And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive
Comfort in morning, joy in the noonday.

"And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love
And these black bodies and this sunburnt face
Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove.

"For when our souls have learn'd the heat to bear,
The cloud will vanish, we shall hear His voice,
Saying, 'Come out from the grove, my love and care
And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice',"

Thus did my mother say, and kissed me;
And thus I say to little English boy.
When I from black and he from white cloud free,
And round the tent of God like lambs we joy

I'll shade him from the heat till he can bear
To lean in joy upon our Father's knee;
And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair,
And be like him, and he will then love me.

[Mary Magdalene]

Lord Byron's "The Giaour" A fragment of a turkish tale



Remember that this celebrates the vampire as heartless -- he preys on his family first.



A turban carved in coarsest stone,
A pillar with rank weeds o'ergrown,
Whereon can now be scarcely read
The Koran verse that mourns the dead,
Point out the spot where Hassan fell
A victim in that lonely dell.
There sleeps as true an Osmanlie
As e'er at Mecca bent the knee;
As ever scorn'd forbidden wine,
Or pray'd with face towards the shrine,
In orisons resumed anew
At solemn sound of "Alla Hu!"
Yet died he by a stranger's hand,
And stranger in his native land;
Yet died he as in arms he stood,
And unavenged, at least in blood.
But him the maids of Paradise
Impatient to their halls invite,
And the dark Heaven of Houris' eyes
On him shall glance for ever bright;
They come---their kerchiefs green they wave,
And welcome with a kiss the brave!
Who falls in battle 'gainst a Giaour
Is worthiest an immortal bower.



But thou, false Infidel! shall writhe
Beneath avenging Monkir's scythe;
And from its torments 'scape alone
To wander round lost Eblis' throne;
And fire unquench'd, unquenchable,
Around, within, thy heart shall dwell;
Nor ear can hear nor tongue can tell
The tortures of that inward hell!
But first, on earth as Vampire sent,
Thy corse shall from its tomb be rent:
Then ghastly haunt thy native place,
And suck the blood of all thy race;
There from thy daughter, sister, wife,
At midnight drain the stream of life;
Yet loathe the banquet which perforce
Must feed thy livid living corse:
Thy victims ere they yet expire
Shall know the demon for their sir
e,As cursing thee, thou cursing them,
Thy flowers are withered on the stem.
But one that for thy crime must fall,
The youngest, most beloved of all,
Shall bless thee with a father's name--
That word shall wrap thy heart in flame!
Yet must thou end thy task, and mark
Her cheek's last tinge, her eye's last spark,
And the last glassy glance must view
Which freezes o'er its lifeless blue;
Then with unhallow'd hand shalt tear
The tresses of her yellow hair,
Of which in life a lock when shorn
Affection's fondest pledge was worn,
But now is borne away by thee,
Memorial of thine agony!
Wet with thine own best blood shall drip
Thy gnashing tooth and haggard lip;
Then stalking to thy sullen grave,
Go---and with Gouls and Afrits rave;
Till these in horror shrink away
From Spectre more accursed than they!

[Mary Magdalene]

America
Allen Ginsberg (Ginsberg, the gay, Jewish, Buddhist, activist...):dance2:

America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for
murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid and I'm not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.
I won't say the Lord's Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over
from Russia.

I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let our emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie
producers are serious. Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.

Asia is rising against me.
I haven't got a chinaman's chance.
I'd better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals
an unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 miles and hour and
twentyfivethousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underpriviliged who live in
my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I'm a Catholic.

America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his
automobiles more so they're all different sexes
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they
sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the
speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the
workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party
was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother
Bloor made me cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have
been a spy.
America you don're really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power mad. She wants to take
our cars from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader's Digest. her wants our
auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh. Him makes Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers.
Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
I'd better get right down to the job.
It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts
factories, I'm nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

[Bulan]

The Genius ("For you I will be a ghetto Jew ..") from "The Spice-Box of Earth" by Leonard Cohen

For you
I will be a ghetto jew
and dance
and put white stockings
on my twisted limbs
and poison wells
across the town

For you
I will be an apostate jew
and tell the Spanish priest
of the blood vow
in the Talmud
and where the bones
of the child are hid

For you
I will be a banker jew
and bring to ruin
a proud old hunting king
and end his line

For you
I will be a Broadway jew
and cry in theatres
for my mother
and sell bargain goods
beneath the counter

For you
I will be a doctor jew
and search
in all the garbage cans for foreskins
to sew back again

For you
I will be a Dachau jew
and lie down in lime
with twisted limbs
and bloated pain
no mind can understand

[Mike]

Ze'ev is apparently in full-fledged jew jewing jewily mode.

[Susan]

Let's get this Poetry thread back on track with a lovely poem by a Methodist:

Here Lies a Lady

Here lies a lady of beauty and high degree.
Of chills and fever she died, of fever and chills,
The delight of her husband, her aunt, an infant of three,
And of medicos marveling sweetly on her ills.

For either she burned, and her confident eyes would blaze,
And her fingers fly in a manner to puzzle their heads--
What was she making? Why, nothing; she sat in a maze
Of old scraps of laces, snipped into curious shreds--

Or this would pass, and the light of her fire decline
Till she lay discouraged and cold, like a thin stalk white and blown,
And would not open her eyes, to kisses, to wine;
The sixth of these states was her last; the cold settled down.

Sweet ladies, long may ye bloom, and toughly I hope ye may thole,
But was she not lucky? In flowers and lace and mourning,
In love and great honor we bade God rest her soul
After six little spaces of chill, and six of burning.

John Crowe Ransom

[Mary Magdalene]

An Astrologer's Song...Rudyard Kipling

To the Heavens above us
O look and behold
The Planets that love us
All harnessed in gold!
What chariots, what horses
Against us shall bide
While the Stars in their courses
Do fight on our side?

All thought, all desires,
That are under the sun,
Are one with their fires,
As we also are one:
All matter, all spirit,
All fashion, all frame,
Receive and inherit
Their strength from the same.

Oh, man that deniest
All power save thine own,
Their power in the highest
Is mightily shown.
Not less in the lowest
That power is made clear.
(Oh, man, if thou knowest,
What treasure is here!)

Earth quakes in her throes
And we wonder for why!
But the blind planet knows
When her ruler is nigh;
And, attuned since Creation
To perfect accord,
She thrills in her station
And yearns to her Lord.

The waters have risen,
The springs are unbound--
The floods break their prison,
And ravin around.
No rampart withstands 'em,
Their fury will last,
Till the Sign that commands 'em
Sinks low or swings past.

Through abysses unproven
O'er gulfs beyond thought,
Our portion is woven,
Our burden is brought.
Yet They that prepare it,
Whose Nature we share,
Make us who must bear it
Well able to bear.

Though terrors o'ertake us
We'll not be afraid.
No Power can unmake us
Save that which has made:
Nor yet beyond reason
Or hope shall we fall--
All things have their season,
And Mercy crowns all!

Then, doubt not, ye fearful--
The Eternal is King--
Up, heart, and be cheerful,
And lustily sing:--
What chariots, what horses
Against us shall bide
While the Stars in their courses
Do fight on our side?

[Mary Magdalene]

Sky Song


The flower of the Alps told the seashell: "You're shining"
The seashell told the sea: "You echo"
The sea told the boat: "You're shuddering"
The boat told the fire: "You're glowing brightly"
The fire told me: "I glow less brightly than her eyes"
The boat told me: "I shudder less than your heart does when she appears"
The sea told me: "I echo less than her name does in your love-making"
The seashell told me: "I shine less brightly than the phosphorus of desire in your hollow dream"
The flower of the Alps told me: "She's beautiful"
I said: "She's beautiful, so beautiful, she moves me."

Robert Desnos


Fairy Tale


Many times upon a time
There was a man who loved a woman.
Many times upon a time
There was a woman who loved a man.
Many times upon a time
There was a man and there was a woman
Who did not love the ones who loved them.

Once upon a time
Perhaps only once
A man and a woman who loved each other.

Robert Desnos

[Kriger]

"The man who stands at a strange threshold
Should be cautious before he crosses it...
Glance this way and that.
Who knows beforehand what foes may sit
Awaiting him in the Hall?

Greetings to the host;
The guest has arrived.
In which seat shall he sit?
Rash is he who at unknown doors
Relies on good luck.

Fire is needed by the newcomer
Whose knees are frozen numb;
Meat and clean linen a man needs
who has fared across the fells.

Water, too, that he may wash before eating,
Handclothes and a hearty welcome.
Courteous words, then courteous silence
That he may tell his tale".

From the Havamal, a literal translation (from Icelandic) of a portion of The Words of the High.

[Susan]

The Soul Selects Her Own Society

The Soul selects her own Society -
Then - shuts the Door -
To her divine Majority -
Present no more -

Unmoved - she notes the Chariots - pausing -
At her low Gate -
Unmoved - an Emperor be kneeling
Upon her Mat -

I've known her - from an ample nation -
Choose One -
Then - close the Valves of her attention -
Like Stone -

Emily Dickinson



The Bustle in a House

The Bustle in a House
The Morning after Death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted upon Earth -

The Sweeping up the Heart
And putting Love away
We shall not want to use again
Until Eternity

Emily Dickinson


My Life Closed Twice

My life closed twice before its close -
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me

So huge, so hopeless to conceive
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.


Emily Dickinson

[cerberus]

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http://airfieldarchaeology.fotopic.net/p46159128.html

Here is a poem which is outside East Kirkby , it sums up quite a bit in a very few words and speaks for so many silent and long neglected airfields which still wait for crews who will never return.

Old Airfield
I lie her still beside the hill
Abandoned long to natures will
My buildings down my people gone,
My only sounds the wild birds call.

But my mighty birds will rise no more
No more I hear the Merlins roar
And never now my bosum feels
The pounding of their giant wheels

From the ageless hill their voices cast
Thunderous echos of the past
And still in lonely reverie
Their great dark wings sweep down to me

Laughter , sorrow, hope and pain
I shall never know these things again
Emotions that I came to know
Of strange young men so long ago

Who knows as evening shadows meet
Are they here still a phantom fleet
And do my ghosts still stride unseen
Across my face so wide and green

And in the future should structures tall
Bury me beyond recall
I shall still remember them,
My metal birds and long dead men

Now weeds grow high obscure the sky
Oh remember me when you pass by
For beneath this tanglked leafy screen
I was your home, your friend "silksheen"

W.Scott
Ex-630 Squadron.

One which I quite like.

[Tellurocrat]

gifEn61dZBc

[Dreadnought]

Back to basics with the Star of the County Down.

----

In Banbridge Town near the County Down
One morning last July,
Down a boreen green came a sweet colleen,
And she smiled as she passed me by.
She looked so sweet, from her two bare feet
To the sheen of her nut-brown hair.
Such a coaxing elf, sure I shook myself
For to see I was really there.

From Bantry Bay down to Derry Quay,
And from Galway to Dublin Town,
No maid I've seen like the brown colleen
That I met in the County Down.

As she onward sped, sure I scratched my head,
And I looked with a feeling rare.
And I says, says I, to a passer-by,
"Who's the maid with the nut-brown hair?"
He smiled at me, and he said, said he,
"She's the gem of Ireland's crown,
Young Rosie McCann from the banks of the Bann,
She's the Star of the County Down."

Chorus

I've traveled a bit but was never smit
Since my roving career began.
But fair and square, I surrendered there
To the charms of Rose McCann.
I'd a heart to let, and no tenant yet
Had I met in a shawl or gown.
But in she went, and I asked no rent
From the Star of the County Down.

Chorus

At the harvest fair, she'll be surely there,
So I'll dress in my Sunday clothes,
With my shoes shone bright and my hat cocked right
For a smile from my nut-brown rose.
No pipe I'll smoke, no horse I'll yoke,
'Til my plough is a rust-colored brown,
'Til a smiling bride by my own fireside
Sits the Star of the County Down.

[Susan]

Thank you Dread for that Traditional Irish poem above. Very pretty, simple, and sweet. Please post some more if you have any lying around.:)

[Dreadnought]

I believe it's actually from the 19th century. It's generally set, as a song, to the English shaker tune "Dives and Lazarus". Here's a good slow rendition with a slightly odd animation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t56f7ux3dd8

That was a bit off-topic so here's a song/poem (is there really much difference?) about the Easter Rising:

THE FOGGY DEW

As down the glen one Easter morn
To a city fair rode I,
There armed lines of marching men
In squadrons passed me by.
No pipe did hum, no battle drum
Did sound its loud tattoo
But the Angelus' bells o'er the Liffey swells
Rang out in the foggy dew.

Right proudly high in Dublin town
Hung they out a flag of war.
'Twas better to die 'neath an Irish sky
Than at Suvla or Sud el Bar.
And from the plains of Royal Meath
Strong men came hurrying through;
While Brittania's Huns with their long-range guns
Sailed in through the foggy dew.

The bravest fell, and the requiem bell
Rang mournfully and clear
For those who died that Easter-tide
In the springing of the year.
While the world did gaze with deep amaze
At those fearless men but few
Who bore the fight that freedom's light
Might shine through the foggy dew.

And back through the glen I rode again
And my heart with grief was sore
For I parted then with valiant men
Whom I never shall see more
But to and fro
In my dreams I go
And I kneel and pray for you
For slavery fled
Oh, glorious dead
When you fell in the foggy dew

[Susan]

I think I've written here somewhere that I must have been an Irish lass in another life because I just love Irish folk music. I can almost hear that poem above being sung by an Irish singer or two or three.

I know you're from England I guess, but you might have heard of an Irish trio that my friends and I saw about twenty years ago down in Savannah Georgia where they were playing at a little Irish pub. Their name was "Terra something or something Terra."

They were one man and two females and I even have a cassette of theirs somewhere around here. Of course, depending upon how old you are, they could be waaay before your time. I would put their ages back then at around late twenties or so.

Yep, I just love that stuff........

[Dreadnought]

Everyone likes Irish music and poetry. ;)

Yes I am English born but my family is Irish, so that's helped me get into this sort of thing. I'm afraid that I have not heard of that group but I'm on the younger side of this forum's membership.

[Raskolnikov]

Allen Ginsberg? Bukowksi? They aren't even real poets. They wrote trash. If their stuff is some of your favorite poetry, you have extremely horrible taste.

[Susan]

Who are you talking to Raskolnikov? I certainly never said I liked any of that nasty jew garbage from the likes of Ginsberg or anyone else posted here a while back. I got the poetry thread back on track with some pretty poetry.

Again, who are you talking to? Yourself?:confused: :(

[Raskolnikov]

Who are you talking to Raskolnikov? I certainly never said I liked any of that nasty jew garbage from the likes of Ginsberg or anyone else posted here a while back. I got the poetry thread back on track with some pretty poetry.

Again, who are you talking to? Yourself?:confused: :(

The people who posted it.

[Susan]

Fine, but since none of them were anywhere near the current posts, it seemed a bit out of place. Next time, you might want to simply name specific names to avoid confusion. I think most felt that garbage posted by the jews was total crap anyway. It certainly sticks out like a sore thumb on this thread of beautiful White poetry.

[Mary Magdalene]

Milkweed


While I stood here, in the open, lost in myself,
I must have looked a long time
Down the corn rows, beyond grass,
The small house,
White walls, animals lumbering toward the barn.
I look down now. It is all changed.
Whatever it was I lost, whatever I wept for
Was a wild, gentle thing, the small dark eyes
Loving me in secret.
It is here. At a touch of my hand,
The air fills with delicate creatures
From the other world.


James Wright

[Dreadnought]

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blessed by the suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts a peace, under an English heaven.

[Mary Magdalene]

When the chill of earth black-breasted is uplifted at the
glance
Of the red sun million-crested, and the forest blossoms
dance
With the light that stirs and lustres of the dawn, and with
the bloom
Of the wind’s cheek as it clusters from the hidden valley’s
gloom :
Then I walk in woodland spaces, musing on the solemn
ways
Of the immemorial places shut behind the starry rays
Of the East and all its splendour, of the West and all its peace;
And the stubborn lights grow tender, and the hard sounds
hush and cease.
In the wheel of heaven revolving, mysteries of death and
birth,
In the womb of time dissolving, shape anew a heaven and
earth
Ever changing, ever growing, ever dwindling, ever dear,
Ever worth the passion glowing to distill a doubtful tear.
These are with me, these are of me, these approve me,
these obey,
Choose me, move me, fear me, love me, master of the
night and day.
These are real, these illusion : I am of them, false or frail,
True or lasting, all is fusion in the spirit’s shadow-veil,
Till the knowledge -Lotus flowering hides the world
beneath its stem;
Neither I, nor nor God life-showering, find a counterpart in
them.
As a spirit in a vision shows a countenance in fear,
Laughs the looker to derision, only comes to disappear,
Gods and mortals, mind and matter, in the glowing bud
dissever :
Vein from vein they rend and shatter, and are nothingness
for ever.
In the blessed, the enlightened, perfect eyes these visions
pass,
Pass and cease, poor shadows frightened,
leave no stain
upon the glass.
One last stroke, O heart- free master, one last certain
calm of will,
And the maker of Disaster shall be stricken and grow
still.
Burn thou to the core of matter, to the spirit’s utmost
flame,
Consciousness and sense to shatter, ruin sight and form
and name!
Shatter, lake-reflected spectre; lake, rise up in mist to
sun;
Sun, dissolve in showers of nectar, and the Master’s
work is done.
Nectar perfume gently stealing, masterful and sweet and
strong,
Cleanse the world with light of healing in the ancient
House of Wrong !
Free a million mortals on the wheel on being
tossed !
Open wide the mystic portals, and be altogether lost!

At Akyab.

[Mary Magdalene]

Edgar Allan Poe
The Raven


Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more.'

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore -
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore -
Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me - filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
`'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door -
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; -
This it is, and nothing more,'

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
`Sir,' said I, `or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you' - here I opened wide the door; -
Darkness there, and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before
But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, `Lenore!'
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, `Lenore!'
Merely this and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
`Surely,' said I, `surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore -
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; -
'Tis the wind and nothing more!'

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore.
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door -
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door -
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
`Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,' I said, `art sure no craven.
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the nightly shore -
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning - little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door -
Bird or beast above the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as `Nevermore.'

But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only,
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered - not a feather then he fluttered -
Till I scarcely more than muttered `Other friends have flown before -
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.'
Then the bird said, `Nevermore.'

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
`Doubtless,' said I, `what it utters is its only stock and store,
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore -
Till the dirges of his hope that melancholy burden bore
Of "Never-nevermore."'

But the raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore -
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking `Nevermore.'

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o'er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o'er,
She shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
`Wretch,' I cried, `thy God hath lent thee - by these angels he has sent thee
Respite - respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

`Prophet!' said I, `thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil! -
Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted -
On this home by horror haunted - tell me truly, I implore -
Is there - is there balm in Gilead? - tell me - tell me, I implore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

`Prophet!' said I, `thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us - by that God we both adore -
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels named Lenore -
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels named Lenore?'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

`Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!' I shrieked upstarting -
`Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken! - quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted - nevermore!

[Thorvald Eriksson]

The Sleeper
By, Poe

At midnight, in the month of June,
I stand beneath the mystic moon.
An opiate vapor, dewy, dim,
Exhales from out her golden rim,
And, softly dripping, drop by drop,
Upon the quiet mountain top,
Steals drowsily and musically
Into the universal valley.
The rosemary nods upon the grave;
The lily lolls upon the wave;
Wrapping the fog about its breast,
The ruin molders into rest;
Looking like Lethe, see! the lake
A conscious slumber seems to take,
And would not, for the world, awake.
All Beauty sleeps!- and lo! where lies
Irene, with her Destinies!

O, lady bright! can it be right-
This window open to the night?
The wanton airs, from the tree-top,
Laughingly through the lattice drop-
The bodiless airs, a wizard rout,
Flit through thy chamber in and out,
And wave the curtain canopy
So fitfully- so fearfully-
Above the closed and fringed lid
'Neath which thy slumb'ring soul lies hid,
That, o'er the floor and down the wall,
Like ghosts the shadows rise and fall!
Oh, lady dear, hast thou no fear?
Why and what art thou dreaming here?
Sure thou art come O'er far-off seas,
A wonder to these garden trees!
Strange is thy pallor! strange thy dress,
Strange, above all, thy length of tress,
And this all solemn silentness!

The lady sleeps! Oh, may her sleep,
Which is enduring, so be deep!
Heaven have her in its sacred keep!
This chamber changed for one more holy,
This bed for one more melancholy,
I pray to God that she may lie
For ever with unopened eye,
While the pale sheeted ghosts go by!

My love, she sleeps! Oh, may her sleep
As it is lasting, so be deep!
Soft may the worms about her creep!
Far in the forest, dim and old,
For her may some tall vault unfold-
Some vault that oft has flung its black
And winged panels fluttering back,
Triumphant, o'er the crested palls,
Of her grand family funerals-
Some sepulchre, remote, alone,
Against whose portal she hath thrown,
In childhood, many an idle stone-
Some tomb from out whose sounding door
She ne'er shall force an echo more,
Thrilling to think, poor child of sin!
It was the dead who groaned within.

[mladikov]

Leopardi - Coro dei morti

Sola nel mondo eterna, a cui si volve
Ogni creata cosa,
In te, morte, si posa
Nostra ignuda natura;
Lieta no, ma sicura
Dall'antico dolor. Profonda notte
Nella confusa mente
Il pensier grave oscura;
Alla speme, al desio, l'arido spirto
Lena mancar si sente:
Così d'affanno e di temenza è sciolto,
E l'età vote e lente
Senza tedio consuma.

Vivemmo: e qual di paurosa larva,
E di sudato sogno,
A lattante fanciullo erra nell'alma
Confusa ricordanza:
Tal memoria n'avanza
Del viver nostro: ma da tema è lunge
Il rimembrar. Che fummo?
Che fu quel punto acerbo
Che di vita ebbe nome?
Cosa arcana e stupenda
Oggi è la vita al pensier nostro, e tale
Qual de' vivi al pensiero
L'ignota morte appar. Come da morte
Vivendo rifuggia, così rifugge
Dalla fiamma vitale
Nostra ignuda natura;
Lieta no ma sicura,
Però ch'esser beato
Nega ai mortali e nega a' morti il fato.

[mladikov]

I like Ezra Pound's 'With Usura' too.

With usura hath no man a house of good stone
each block cut smooth and well fitting
that design might cover their face,


with usura


hath no man a painted paradise on his church wall
harpes et luthes
or where virgin receiveth message
and halo projects from incision,


with usura


seeth no man Gonzaga his heirs and his concubines
no picture is made to endure nor to live with
but it is made to sell and sell quickly


with usura, sin against nature,
is thy bread ever more of stale rags
is thy bread dry as paper,
with no mountain wheat, no strong flour


with usura the line grows thick


with usura is no clear demarcation
and no man can find site for his dwelling
Stone cutter is kept from his stone
weaver is kept from his loom


WITH USURA


wool comes not to market
sheep bringeth no grain with usura
Usura is a murrain, usura
blunteth the needle in the the maid's hand
and stoppeth the spinner's cunning. Pietro Lombardo
came not by usura
Duccio came not by usura
nor Pier della Francesca; Zuan Bellin' not by usura
nor was "La Callunia" painted.
Came not by usura Angelico; came not Ambrogio Praedis,
Came no church of cut stone signed: Adamo me fecit.


Not by usura St. Trophime


Not by usura St. Hilaire,


Usura rusteth the chisel
It rusteth the craft and the craftsman
It gnaweth the thread in the loom
None learneth to weave gold in her pattern;
Azure hath a canker by usura; cramoisi is unbroidered
Emerald findeth no Memling


Usura slayeth the child in the womb
It stayeth the young man's courting
It hath brought palsey to bed, lyeth
between the young bride and her bridegroom


CONTRA NATURAM


They have brought whores for Eleusis
Corpses are set to banquet


at behest of usura.

[Mary Magdalene]

The thread of your Love is thin,
Far sharper than any knife,
Wind it around my mind
Pull it til I end.

There is always another death to die
Beyond the death you know
Always another door of scars
to open to another room.

In the dyest, whitest stretch
Of pain’s infinite desert,
I lost my sanity,
And found this Rose.

Cloud pregnant with a million bolts of lightening.
Love gives birth to the philosopher’s stone.
My soul is flooded by your Sea of Splendor,
Being and cosmos drown there silently..

[Thorvald Eriksson]

BREAK OF DAY.
by John Donne

STAY, O sweet, and do not rise ;
The light that shines comes from thine eyes ;
The day breaks not, it is my heart,
Because that you and I must part.
Stay, or else my joys will die,
And perish in their infancy.

[Vessper]

I once had a beautiful fatherland.
The oak
Grew there so high, the violets gently nodded.
It was a dream.
It kissed me in German, it spoke in German
(One can hardly believe it,
It sounded so good) the phrase: "I love you!"
It was a dream.


Christian Johann Heinrich Heine

http://www.srpublications.com/tools/literature_language_arts/images/Heinrich%20Heine.jpg

[Rakhmetov]

Mayakovsky - "Left March"

About turn! March!
Away with a talk-show.
Silence, you speakers!
Comrade Mauser,
you
have the floor.
Down with the law which for us
Adam and Eve have left.
We'll ruin the jade of the past.
Left!
Left!
Left!
Hey, bluejackets!
Be gone!
Sail away! Overseas!
Or is there anything wrong
with the keels
of your battleships?
May
the vigorous British Lion
Keep howling, frenzied and chafed.
The commune shall not resign.
Left!
Left!
Left!
There
o'er the hills of sorrow
There's a land of the rising sun...
For hunger,
for the sea of horror,
millions, march one by one!
May them gang up against us,
To all their threats we'll be deaf,
The Entente shall never suppress us.
Left!
Left!
Left!
Can the eagle ever get blind?
Can they make us swing off the road?
Hold
your proletarian hand
tight on the world's throat!
Deck out the sky with drape!
March boldly ahead, don't be late!
Who's marching out of step?
Left!
Left!
Left

[Gaear Grimsrud]

Mayakovsky - "Left March"
Do you have any interests that aren't related to leftist politics? I've seen rusty old automatons at penny arcades that have more personality than you.