Poem of the Day

Short and sad… my kind of poem!

Memory
By Thomas Bailey Aldrich

My mind lets go a thousand things,
Like dates of wars and deaths of kings,
And yet recalls the very hour—
‘Twas noon by yonder village tower,
And on the last blue noon in May—
The wind came briskly up this way,
Crisping the brook beside the road;
Then, pausing here, set down its load
Of pine-scents, and shook listlessly
Two petals from that wild-rose tree.

I think it’s time for more ESVM. This is one of her most famous sonnets.

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why
By Edna St. Vincent Millay

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

I read this in a poetry anthology and I really like it!

Conversion
By Frances Angermayer

Look, God, I have never spoken to You.
But now I want to say: “How do You do?”
You see, God, they told me You didn’t exist—
And like a fool I believed all of this.
Last night from a shell hole I saw Your sky
I figured right then they had told me a lie.
Had I taken time to see the things You made,
I’d known they weren’t calling a spade a spade.
I wonder, God, if You’d shake my hand,
Somehow I feel that You will understand.
Funny I had to come to this hellish place,
Before I had the time to see Your face.
Well, I guess there isn’t much more to say;
But, I’m sure glad, God, I met You today.
I guess the zero hour will soon be here,
But I’m not afraid since I know You’re near.
The signal! Well, God, I’ll have to go—
I like You lots, this I want You to know.
Look, now! This will be a horrible fight;
Who knows, I may come to Your House tonight.
Tho’ I wasn’t friendly with You before,
I wonder, God, if You’ll wait at Your door?
Look, I’m crying—me shedding tears!
I wish I’d known You these many years.
Well, God, I have to go now—good-bye—
Strange, since I met You I’m not afraid to die.

I do love Shelley!

Music, when soft voices die
By Percy Bysshe Shelley

Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory;
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heap’d for the belovèd’s bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.

Over the weekend, I read Savannah by John Jakes (after finally finishing Robin Hood). One of the characters quite liked Wordsworth, so I thought I’d post one of the poems she mentioned.

Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood
By 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.

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 pass’d away a glory from the earth.

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!

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?

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

This is another poem I read at the Palace of the Governors.

Maps and Wings
By Gary Mex Glazner

The road looks the same
no matter where you are going.
Some roads take on a magic
from the hum of the wheels
they hold.
Route 66 was my father’s road
and his father’s road.
Model A with the dust bowl
in the rear view mirror
and California in the headlights.
From being men
to being Oakies.
The vulgarities of newcomers.
A drowsy distant hope.
Plowing and sowing the
stretch of pavement.
A gateway to work and food.
Following the hungry signs.
Route 66 was their plowshare.
They dug into the rank soil.
Held the miles in rusted fingers.
Cracked open its hull using the seeds
for guidance. Maps folded like wings.
A banquet of motion. Summoning us
now with its broken fragments.
Let us piece the road together.
This is the way they went
and we shall follow them
as we are able.

I finished Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (for the second time) yesterday, so now I’m back to Robin Hood. This selection is from Little John Turns Barefoot Friar.

The Strolling Friar’s Song
FROM THE MERRY ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD, CHAPTER XVI
By Howard Pyle

In the blossoming hedge the robin cock sings,
   For the sun it is merry and bright,
And he joyfully hops and he flutters his wings,
   For his heart is all full of delight.
      For the May bloometh fair,
      And there’s little of care,
And plenty to eat in the Maytime rare.
      When the flowers all die,
      Then off he will fly,
      To keep himself warm
      In some jolly old barn
Where the snow and the wind neither chill him nor harm.

And such is the life of the strolling friar,
   With aplenty to eat and to drink;
For the goodwife will keep him a seat by the fire,
   And the pretty girls smile at his wink.
      Then he lustily trolls
      As he onward strolls,
A rollicking song for the saving of souls.
      When the wind doth blow,
      With the coming of snow,
      There’s a place by the fire
      For the fatherly friar,
And a crab in the bowl for his heart’s desire.

I’ve always loved the story of Icarus, and Charles Umlauf created a wonderful statue of him. Here’s Vassar Miller’s take on him.

The New Icarus
By Vassar Miller

Slip off the husk of gravity to lie
Bedded with wind; float on a whimsy, lift
Upon a wish: your bow’s own arrow, rift
Newton’s decorum—only then you fly.
But naked. No false-feathered fool, you try
Dalliance with the heights, nor, plumed with metal, shift
And shear the clouds, imperiling lark and swift
And all bridal-bowered in the sky.

Your wreck of bone, barred their delight’s dominions,
Lacking their formula for flight, holds imaged
Those alps of air no eagle’s wing can quell.
With arms flung crosswise, pinioned to wooden pinions,
You, in one motion plucked and crimson-plumaged,
Outsoar all Heaven, plummeting all Hell.

I thought I’d post a fluffly little funny poem. I first heard this one Thanksgiving out at the ranch and we were all quite amused by it. It’s especially enjoyable when read out loud.

Johnny’s Hist’ry Lesson
By Nixon Waterman

I think of all the things at school
     A boy has got to do,
That studyin’ hist’ry, as a rule,
     Is worst of all, don’t you?
Of dates there are an awful sight,
An’ though I study day an’ night,
There’s only one I’ve got just right—
     That’s fourteen ninety-two.

Columbus crossed the Delaware
     In fourteen ninety-two;
We whipped the British, fair an’ square,
     In fourteen ninety-two.
At Concord an’ Lexington
We kept the redcoats on the run
While the band played “Johnny Get Your Gun,”
     In fourteen ninety-two.

Pat Henry, with his dyin’ breath—
     In fourteen ninety-two—
Said, “Gimme liberty or death!”
     In fourteen ninety-two.
An’ Barbara Fritchie, so ’tis said,
Cried, “Shoot if you must this old gray head,
But I’d rather ‘twould be your own instead!”
     In fourteen ninety-two.

The Pilgrims came to Plymouth Rock
     In fourteen ninety-two,
An’ the Indians standin’ on the dock
     Asked, “What are you goin’ to do?”
An’ they said, “We seek your harbor drear
That our children’s children’s children dear
May boast that their forefathers landed here
     In fourteen ninety-two.”

Miss Pocahontas saved the life,
     In fourteen ninety-two,
Of John Smith, an’ became his wife
     In fourteen ninety-two.
An’ the Smith tribe started then an’ there,
An’ now there are John Smiths everywhere,
But they didn’t have any Smiths to spare
     In fourteen ninety-two.

Kentucky was settled by Daniel Boone
     In fourteen ninety-two,
An’ I think the cow jumped over the moon
     In fourteen ninety-two.
Ben Franklin flew his kite so high
He drew the lightnin’ from the sky,
An’ Washington couldn’t tell a lie,
     In fourteen ninety-two.

Still reading The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood and still in breathless anticipation for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince… Today’s selection is from The Merry Adventure with Midge, the Miller’s Son.

The Wooing of Sir Keith
FROM THE MERRY ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD, CHAPTER X
By Howard Pyle

King Arthur sat in his royal hall,
   And about on either hand
Was many a noble lordling tall,
   The greatest in the land.

Sat Lancelot with raven locks,
   Gawaine with golden hair,
Sir Tristram, Kay who kept the locks,
   And many another there.

And through the stained windows bright,
   From o’er the red-tiled eaves,
The sunlight blazed with colored light
   On golden helms and greaves.

But suddenly a silence came
   About the Table Round,
For up the hall there walked a dame
   Bent nigh unto the ground.

Her nose was hooked, her eyes were bleared,
   Her locks were lank and white;
Upon her chin there grew a beard;
   She was a gruesome sight.

And so with crawling step she came
   And kneeled at Arthur’s feet;
Quoth Kay, `She is the foulest dame
   That e’er my sight did greet.’

‘O mighty King! of thee I crave
   A boon on bended knee’;
‘Twas thus she spoke. ‘What wouldst thou have.’
   Quoth Arthur, King, ‘of me?’

Quoth she, ‘I have a foul disease
   Doth gnaw my very heart,
And but one thing can bring me ease
   Or cure my bitter smart.

‘There is no rest, no ease for me
   North, east, or west, or south,
Till Christian knight will willingly
   Thrice kiss me on the mouth.

‘Nor wedded may this childe have been
   That giveth ease to me;
Nor may he be constrained, I ween,
   But kiss me willingly.

‘So is there here one Christian knight
   Of such a noble strain
That he will give a tortured wight
   Sweet ease of mortal pain?’

‘A wedded man,’ quoth Arthur, King,
   ’A wedded man I be
Else would I deem it noble thing
   To kiss thee willingly.

‘Now, Lancelot, in all men’s sight
   Thou art the head and chief
Of chivalry. Come, noble knight,
   And give her quick relief.’

But Lancelot he turned aside
   And looked upon the ground,
For it did sting his haughty pride
   To hear them laugh around.

‘Come thou, Sir Tristram,’ quoth the King.
   Quoth he, ‘It cannot be,
For ne’er can I my stomach bring
   To do it willingly.’

‘Wilt thou, Sir Kay, thou scornful wight?’
   Quoth Kay, ‘Nay, by my troth!
What noble dame would kiss a knight
   That kissed so foul a mouth?’

‘Wilt thou, Gawaine?’ ‘I cannot, King.’
   ’Sir Geraint?’ ‘Nay, not I;
My kisses no relief could bring,
   For sooner would I die.’

Then up and spake the youngest man
   Of all about the board,
‘Now such relief as Christian can
   I’ll give to her, my lord.’

It was Sir Keith, a youthful knight,
   Yet strong of limb and bold,
With beard upon his chin as light
   As finest threads of gold.

Quoth Kay, ‘He hath no mistress yet
   That he may call his own,
But here is one that’s quick to get,
   As she herself has shown.’

He kissed her once, he kissed her twice,
   He kissed her three times o’er,
A wondrous change came in a trice,
   And she was foul no more.

Her cheeks grew red as any rose,
   Her brow as white as lawn,
Her bosom like the winter snows,
   Her eyes like those of fawn.

Her breath grew sweet as summer breeze
   That blows the meadows o’er;
Her voice grew soft as rustling trees,
   And cracked and harsh no more.

Her hair grew glittering, like the gold,
   Her hands as white as milk;
Her filthy rags, so foul and old,
   Were changed to robes of silk.

In great amaze the knights did stare.
   Quoth Kay, ‘I make my vow
If it will please thee, lady fair,
   I’ll gladly kiss thee now.’

But young Sir Keith kneeled on one knee
   And kissed her robes so fair.
‘O let me be thy slave,’ said he,
   ’For none to thee compare.’

She bent her down, she kissed his brow,
   She kissed his lips and eyes.
Quoth she, ‘Thou art my master now,
   My lord, my love, arise!

‘And all the wealth that is mine own,
   My lands, I give to thee,
For never knight hath lady shown
   Such noble courtesy.

‘Bewitched was I, in bitter pain,
   But thou hast set me free,
So now I am myself again,
   I give myself to thee.’

I love NSN because she can take a simple image and give it so much meaning.

Breaking My Favorite Bowl
By Naomi Shihab Nye

Some afternoons
thud unexpectedly
and split into four pieces
on the floor.

Two large pieces, two small ones.
I could glue them back,
but what would I use them for?

Forgive me when I answer you
in a voice so swollen
it won’t fit your ears.

I’m thinking about apples and histories,
the hands I broke off
my mother’s praying statue
when I was four—
how she tearfully repaired them,
but the hairline cracks
in the wrists
were all she said
she could see—

the unannounced blur
of something passing
out of a life.

Since I’m currently reading Howard Pyle’s The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (to kill time until Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince comes out…) here you go.

A Song of Sherwood
By Alfred Noyes

Sherwood in the twilight, is Robin Hood awake?
Grey and ghostly shadows are gliding through the brake,
Shadows of the dappled deer, dreaming of the morn,
Dreaming of a shadowy man that winds a shadowy horn.

Robin Hood is here again: all his merry thieves
Hear a ghostly bugle-note shivering through the leaves,
Calling as he used to call, faint and far away,
In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day.

Merry, merry England has kissed the lips of June:
All the wings of fairyland were here beneath the moon,
Like a flight of rose-leaves fluttering in a mist
Of opal and ruby and pearl and amethyst.

Merry, merry England is waking as of old,
With eyes of blither hazel and hair of brighter gold:
For Robin Hood is here again beneath the bursting spray
In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day.

Love is in the greenwood building him a house
Of wild rose and hawthorn and honeysuckle boughs:
Love is in the greenwood, dawn is in the skies,
And Marian is waiting with a glory in her eyes.

Hark! The dazzled laverock climbs the golden steep!
Marian is waiting: is Robin Hood asleep?
Round the fairy grass-rings frolic elf and fay,
In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day.

Oberon, Oberon, rake away the gold,
Rake away the red leaves, roll away the mould,
Rake away the gold leaves, roll away the red,
And wake Will Scarlet from his leafy forest bed.

Friar Tuck and Little John are riding down together
With quarter-staff and drinking-can and grey goose-feather.
The dead are coming back again, the years are rolled away
In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day.

Softly over Sherwood the south wind blows.
All the heart of England his in every rose
Hears across the greenwood the sunny whisper leap,
Sherwood in the red dawn, is Robin Hood asleep?

Hark, the voice of England wakes him as of old
And, shattering the silence with a cry of brighter gold
Bugles in the greenwood echo from the steep,
Sherwood in the red dawn, is Robin Hood asleep?

Where the deer are gliding down the shadowy glen
All across the glades of fern he calls his merry men—
Doublets of the Lincoln green glancing through the May
In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day—

Calls them and they answer: from aisles of oak and ash
Rings the Follow! Follow! and the boughs begin to crash,
The ferns begin to flutter and the flowers begin to fly,
And through the crimson dawning the robber band goes by.

Robin! Robin! Robin! All his merry thieves
Answer as the bugle-note shivers through the leaves,
Calling as he used to call, faint and far away,
In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day.

I read a whole boatload of poetry over the weekend, so I have lots of new stuff on tap for the poem of the day!

Longing
By Matthew Arnold

Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again!
For so the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.

Come, as thou cam’st a thousand times,
A messenger from radiant climes,
And smile on thy new world, and be
As kind to others as to me!

Or, as thou never cam’st in sooth,
Come now, and let me dream it truth,
And part my hair, and kiss my brow,
And say, My love why sufferest thou?

Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again!
For so the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.

I haven’t posted an ESVM in a while…

Kin to Sorrow
By Edna St. Vincent Millay

Am I kin to Sorrow,
   That so oft
Falls the knocker of my door—
   Neither loud nor soft,
But as long accustomed,
   Under Sorrow’s hand?
Marigolds around the step
   And rosemary stand,
And then comes Sorrow—
   And what does Sorrow care
For the rosemary
   Or the marigolds there?
Am I kin to Sorrow?
   Are we kin?
That so oft upon my door—
   Oh, come in!

This was my favorite poem at the Palace of the Governors. I love the lines Even the tourists are hushed / by so much evidence of faith. I haven’t been to the Santuario at Chimayo, but I’m sad to say that I didn’t see any evidence of these lines at the Loretto Chapel in Santa Fe, the Cathedral Church of St. Francis of Assisi in Santa Fe, or the San Francisco de Asis church in Taos.

Santuario at Chimayo
By Kim Addonizio

It’s so quiet among the carved saints,
the votives giving out, one by one, the old
Indian woman scraping wax and spent wicks.

Grief lights them again. Photographs
of the dead are tucked into the corners
of framed Christs, dogtags slung

from a punched-tin cross—Jaime Escalero,
his number and blood type.
And Catholic. Even the tourists are hushed

by so much evidence of faith.
In the room behind the altar
a small hole holds the dirt

said to heal. The blind
come here, and the broken-hearted.
They squat down

to take the earth
in their hands and let it run through.
Every afternoon

the old woman slips new candles
into their sheaths
and the random light from cameras

is like souls entering
or abandoning the world,
each with that same brightness.

I saw this poem at the Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe. They had a reading room with displays of poems printed on their press. Unfortunately they didn’t have a publication compiling their displayed poetry, but I wrote down titles and hopefully I’ll be able to get my hands on them and post them in the future.

Haiku
By Joel Dias-Porter (aka DJ Renegade)

Spirituals are
how angels would sound, singing
in a cotton field.