Poem of the Day

The entire campus seems consumed by construction since it’s summer (fewer students), so I thought I’d post this one.

The Roofwalker
FOR DENISE LEVERTOV.
By Adrienne Rich

Over the half-finished houses
night comes. The builders
stand on the roof. It is
quiet after the hammers,
the pulleys hang slack.
Giants, the roofwalkers,
on a listing deck, the wave
of darkness about to break
on their heads. The sky
is a torn sail where figures
pass magnified, shadows
on a burning deck.

I feel like them up there:
exposed, larger than life,
and due to break my neck.

Was it worth while to lay—
with infinite exertion—
a roof I can’t live under?
—All those blueprints,
closings of gaps
measurings, calculations?
A life I didn’t choose
chose me: even
my tools are the wrong ones
for what I have to do.
I’m naked, ignorant,
a naked man fleeing
across the roofs
who could with a shade of difference
be sitting in the lamplight
against the cream wallpaper
reading—not with indifference—
about a naked man
fleeing across the roofs.

Current Tea: peaches & ginger (full-leaf Ceylon with large pieces of peaches and ginger)

I finally finished slogging through A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man! THANK HEAVENS! In celebration of never having to read Joyce again (I will boycott any book club meeting that centers around his works), I’m going to post a poem from Portrait.

Are you not weary of ardent ways
FROM A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN, CHAPTER 5
By James Joyce

Are you not weary of ardent ways,
Lure of the fallen seraphim?
Tell no more of enchanted days.

Your eyes have set man’s heart ablaze
And you have had your will of him.
Are you not weary of ardent ways?

Above the flame the smoke of praise
Goes up from ocean rim to rim.
Tell no more of enchanted days.

Our broken cries and mournful lays
Rise in one eucharistic hymn.
Are you not weary of ardent ways?

While sacrificing hands upraise
The chalice flowing to the brim,
Tell no more of enchanted days.

And still you hold our longing gaze
With languorous look and lavish limb!
Are you not weary of ardent ways?
Tell no more of enchanted days.

Current Tea: Tangawizi ginger tea (Kenyan black tea blended with pure ground ginger)

As a follow up to yesterday’s poem, I have to post this one.

London, 1802
By William Wordsworth

Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart:
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on life’s common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet the heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay.

Current Tea: winter dreams (black tea with chocolate flavoring and peppermint leaves)

This one’s for Jennifer. (hee hee)

Sonnet to a Stilton Cheese
By G.K. Chesterton

Stilton, thou shouldst be living at this hour
And so thou art. Nor losest grace thereby;
England has need of thee, and so have I—
She is a Fen. Far as the eye can scour,
League after grassy league from Lincoln tower
To Stilton in the fields, she is a Fen.
Yet this high cheese, by choice of fenland men,
Like a tall green volcano rose in power.
Plain living and long drinking are no more,
And pure religion reading “Household Words”,
And sturdy manhood sitting still all day
Shrink, like this cheese that crumbles to its core;
While my digestion, like the House of Lords,
The heaviest burdens on herself doth lay.

Current Tea: Valentine’s blend (black tea with chocolate and rosebuds)

Not a very uplifting poem, but I look at it as a warning.

The Leaden-eyed
By Vachel Lindsay

Let not young souls be smothered out before
They do quaint deeds and fully flaunt their pride.
It is the world’s one crime its babes grow dull,
Its poor are ox-like, limp and leaden-eyed.

Not that they starve; but starve so dreamlessly,
Not that they sow, but that they seldom reap,
Not that they serve, but have no gods to serve,
Not that they die, but that they die like sheep.

Current Tea: Thai iced tea

It’s fairly rare that I don’t post the PotD until nighttime, so I thought I’d go with this one to commemorate my laziness today.

Moonlight
By Sara Teasdale

It will not hurt me when I am old,
   A running tide where moonlight burned
      Will not sting me like silver snakes;
The years will make me sad and cold,
      It is the happy heart that breaks.

The heart asks more than life can give,
   When that is learned, then all is learned;
      The waves break fold on jewelled fold,
But beauty itself is fugitive,
      It will not hurt me when I am old.

I’m reading A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man for book club (and not particularly enjoying it) and Tennyson was referred to as a rhymester in a derogatory fashion. Fie!

The Eagle
By Alfred, Lord Tennyson

He clasps the crag with crookèd hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring’d with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

Current Tea: pumpkin spice (black tea)

I was just looking at the pictures from my trip to England, so I thought I’d post this poem I read in A Poem a Day.

Composed Upon Westminster Bridge
By William Wordsworth

3 SEPTEMBER 1802
Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This city now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did the sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne’er saw I, never felt a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

Current Tea: Thai chai (green tea blended with coconut, ginger and lemongrass)

I’m listening to A Tale of Two Cities from LibriVox.org, and I was delighted to read the following passage:

His hair could not have been more violently on end, if it had been that moment dressed by the Cow with the crumpled horn in the house that Jack built.
—Book III, Chapter VIII

Thus, today we hear from Mother Goose.

The House That Jack Built
By Mother Goose

This is the house that Jack built.

This is the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built.

This is the rat,
That ate the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built.

This is the cat,
That killed the rat,
That ate the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built.

This is the dog,
That worried the cat,
That killed the rat,
That ate the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built.

This is the cow with the crumpled horn,
That tossed the dog,
That worried the cat,
That killed the rat,
That ate the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built.

This is the maiden all forlorn,
That milked the cow with the crumpled horn,
That tossed the dog,
That worried the cat,
That killed the rat,
That ate the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built.

This is the man all tattered and torn,
That kissed the maiden all forlorn,
That milked the cow with the crumpled horn,
That tossed the dog,
That worried the cat,
That killed the rat,
That ate the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built.

This is the priest all shaven and shorn,
That married the man all tattered and torn,
That kissed the maiden all forlorn,
That milked the cow with the crumpled horn,
That tossed the dog,
That worried the cat,
That killed the rat,
That ate the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built.

This is the cock that crowed in the morn,
That waked the priest all shaven and shorn,
That married the man all tattered and torn,
That kissed the maiden all forlorn,
That milked the cow with the crumpled horn,
That tossed the dog,
That worried the cat,
That killed the rat,
That ate the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built.

This is the farmer sowing his corn,
That kept the cock that crowed in the morn,
That waked the priest all shaven and shorn,
That married the man all tattered and torn,
That kissed the maiden all forlorn,
That milked the cow with the crumpled horn,
That tossed the dog,
That worried the cat,
That killed the rat,
That ate the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built.

Current Tea: pumpkin spice (black tea)

A reader suggested this one as a follow-up to yesterday’s poem.

Very Like a Whale
By Ogden Nash

One thing that literature would be greatly the better for
Would be a more restricted employment by the authors of simile and metaphor.
Authors of all races, be they Greeks, Romans, Teutons or Celts,
Can’t seem just to say that anything is the thing it is but have to go out of their way to
   say that it is like something else.
What does it mean when we are told
That that Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold?
In the first place, George Gordon Byron had enough experience
To know that it probably wasn’t just one Assyrian, it was a lot of Assyrians.
However, as too many arguments are apt to induce apoplexy and thus hinder longevity.
We’ll let it pass as one Assyrian for the sake of brevity.
Now then, this particular Assyrian, the one whose cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold,
Just what does the poet mean when he says he came down like a wolf on the fold?
In heaven and earth more than is dreamed of in our philosophy there are great many things.
But I don’t imagine that among them there is a wolf with purple and gold cohorts or purple
   and gold anythings.
No, no, Lord Byron, before I’ll believe that this Assyrian was actually like a wolf I must
   have some kind of proof;
Did he run on all fours and did he have a hairy tail and a big red mouth and big white teeth
   and did he say Woof Woof?
Frankly I think it is very unlikely, and all you were entitled to say, at the very most,
Was that the Assyrian cohorts came down like a lot of Assyrian cohorts about to destroy the
   Hebrew host.
But that wasn’t fancy enough for Lord Byron, oh dear me no, he had to invent a lot of figures
   of speech and then interpolate them,
With the result that whenever you mention Old Testament soldiers to people they say Oh yes,
   they’re the ones that a lot of wolves dressed up in gold and purple ate them.
That’s the kind of thing that’s being done all the time by poets, from Homer to Tennyson;
They’re always comparing ladies to lilies and veal to venison,
And they always say things like that the snow is a white blanket after a winter storm.
Oh it is, is it, all right then, you sleep under a six-inch blanket of snow and I’ll sleep
   under a half-inch blanket of unpoetical blanket material and we’ll see which one keeps warm,
And after that maybe you’ll begin to comprehend dimly
What I mean by too much metaphor and simile.

Current Tea: vanilla almond (black tea)

We haven’t heard from dear Lord Byron in a while.

The Destruction of Sennacherib
By George Gordon, Lord Byron

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green,
That host with their banners at sunset were seen;
Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.

For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he pass’d;
And the eyes of the sleepers wax’d deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!

And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide;
But through it there roll’d not the breath of his pride:
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.

And there lay the rider distorted and pale,
With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail;
And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
The lances uplifted, the trumpet unblown.

And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail;
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!

Current Tea: Nutcracker tea (black tea blended with apple bits, orange peels, currants, cinnamon, almond flakes, cloves, and safflowers)

This is for Ryan, a fan of Robert Frost. You can hear audio of Frost reading some of his poems here, and this one specifically here.

Choose Something Like a Star
By Robert Frost

O Star (the fairest one in sight),
We grant your loftiness the right
To some obscurity of cloud—
It will not do to say of night,
Since dark is what brings out your light.
Some mystery becomes the proud.
But to be wholly taciturn
In your reserve is not allowed.
Say something to us we can learn
By heart and when alone repeat.
Say something! And it says “I burn.”
But say with what degree of heat.
Talk Fahrenheit, talk Centigrade.
Use language we can comprehend.
Tell us what elements you blend.
It gives us strangely little aid,
But does tell something in the end.
And steadfast as Keats’ Eremite,
Not even stooping from its sphere,
It asks a little of us here.
It asks of us a certain height,
So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may choose something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid.

Current Tea: Thai iced tea

I’ll be out of internet contact until Sunday afternoon (gasp) so no PotD tomorrow. Instead, I’ll leave you with one from NSN today, since she’s so amazing she should count for two days!

I Feel Sorry for Jesus
By Naomi Shihab Nye

People won’t leave Him alone.
I know He said, wherever two or more
are gathered in my name…
But I bet some days He regrets it.

Cozily they tell you what he wants
and doesn’t want
as if they just got an e-mail.
Remember “Telephone,” that pass-it-on game

where the message changed dramatically
by the time it rounded the circle?
Well.
People blame terrible pieties on Jesus.

They want to be his special pet.
Jesus deserves better.
I think He’s been exhausted
for a very long time.

He went into the desert, friends.
He didn’t go into the pomp.
He didn’t go into
the golden chandeliers

and say, the truth tastes better here.
See? I’m talking like I know.
It’s dangerous talking for Jesus.
You get carried away almost immediately.

I stood in the spot where He was born.
I closed my eyes where He died and didn’t die.
Every twist of the Via Dolorosa
was written on my skin.

And that makes me feel like being silent
for Him, you know? A secret pouch
of listening. You won’t hear me
mention this again.

This poem is sad, but I’m posting it because I feel as if I’ve been fighting a war lately (and losing).

Joining the Colours
(WEST KENTS, DUBLIN, 1914)
By Katharine Tynan Hinkson

There they go marching all in step so gay!
   Smooth-cheeked and golden, food for shells and guns.
Blithely they go as to a wedding day,
            The mothers’ sons.

The drab street stares to see them row on row
   On the high tram-tops, singing like the lark.
Too careless-gay for courage, singing they go
            Into the dark.

With tin whistles, mouth-organs, any noise,
   They pipe the way to glory and the grave;
Foolish and young, the gay and golden boys
            Love cannot save.

High heart! High courage! The poor girls they kissed
   Run with them: they shall kiss no more, alas!
Out of the mist they stepped—into the mist
            Singing they pass.

Current Tea: Thai iced tea

I’m really quite surprised I haven’t posted this before. Stash used to print the quote in my icon on their orange starfruit chamomile teabags, and I think it’s lovely. Here it is in (slightly) larger context.

Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships
FROM THE TRAGICAL HISTORY OF DOCTOR FAUSTUS, ACT V SCENE I
By Christopher Marlowe

Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?—
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.—
Her lips suck forth my soul: see, where it flies!—
Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.
Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips,
And all is dross that is not Helena.
I will be Paris, and for love of thee,
Instead of Troy, shall Wittenberg be sack’d;
And I will combat with weak Menelaus,
And wear thy colours on my plumed crest;
Yea, I will wound Achilles in the heel,
And then return to Helen for a kiss.
O, thou art fairer than the evening air
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars;
Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter
When he appear’d to hapless Semele;
More lovely than the monarch of the sky
In wanton Arethusa’s azur’d arms;
And none but thou shalt be my paramour!

Current Tea: Thai iced tea (a new discovery at the Tea Embassy yesterday and I’m really excited about it!)

This was in a book my poetry pals brought with them and I really liked it. The idea of using something from the past as an excuse for stagnation was especially poignant.

Waiting for the Barbarians
By Constantine P. Cavafy

What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?

     The barbarians are due here today.

Why isn’t anything going on in the senate?
Why are the senators sitting there without legislating?

     Because the barbarians are coming today.
     What’s the point of senators making laws now?
     Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating.

Why did our emperor get up so early,
and why is he sitting enthroned at the city’s main gate,
in state, wearing the crown?

     Because the barbarians are coming today
     and the emperor’s waiting to receive their leader.
     He’s even got a scroll to give him,
     loaded with titles, with imposing names.

Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today
wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas?
Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts,
rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds?
Why are they carrying elegant canes
beautifully worked in silver and gold?

     Because the barbarians are coming today
     and things like that dazzle the barbarians.

Why don’t our distinguished orators turn up as usual
to make their speeches, say what they have to say?

     Because the barbarians are coming today
     and they’re bored by rhetoric and public speaking.

Why this sudden bewilderment, this confusion?
(How serious people’s faces have become.)
Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,
everyone going home lost in thought?

     Because night has fallen and the barbarians haven’t come.
     And some of our men who have just returned from the border say
     there are no barbarians any longer.

Now what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?
Those people were a kind of solution.

Current Tea: wedding tea (Mutan white tea with pink rose buds, vanilla, and lemon)

Here’s another one shared by my poetry pals.

Happiness
By Jane Kenyon

There’s just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.

And how can you not forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what
was lost, and take from its place the finest
garment, which you saved for an occasion
you could not imagine, and you weep night and day
to know that you were not abandoned,
that happiness saved its most extreme form
for you alone.

No, happiness is the uncle you never
knew about, who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes
into town, and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep midafternoon
as you so often are during the unmerciful
hours of your despair.

It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street
with a birch broom, to the child
whose mother has passed out from drink.
It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
a sock, to the pusher, to the basket maker,
and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night.
It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
to rain falling on the open sea,
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.

Current Tea: pineapple ginger Ceylon

I went and looked this up after reading Donald Hall’s To a Waterfowl, and I was rather surprised I’d never posted it.

To a Waterfowl
By William Cullen Bryant

   Whither, midst falling dew,
While glow the heavens with the last steps of day,
Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue
   Thy solitary way?

   Vainly the fowler’s eye
Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,
As, darkly seen against the crimson sky,
   Thy figure floats along.

   Seek’st thou the plashy brink
Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink
   On the chafed ocean-side?

   There is a Power whose care
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast—
The desert and illimitable air—
   Lone wandering, but not lost.

   All day thy wings have fanned
At that far height, the cold thin atmosphere
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,
   Though the dark night is near.

   And soon that toil shall end;
Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest,
And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend,
   Soon o’er thy sheltered nest.

   Thou’rt gone, the abyss of heaven
Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart
Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given,
   And shall not soon depart.

   He, who, from zone to zone,
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone,
   Will lead my steps aright.

I get to spend time with my favorite poetry pals this weekend, which always gives me more fodder for posting. They had heard Donald Hall read this poem in Chicago last week, and we all enjoyed it. An mp3 of his reading is available on poetryfoundation.org, but I saved it here in case they take it down. It’s well worth listening to!

To a Waterfowl
By Donald Hall

Women with hats like the rear ends of pink ducks
applauded you, my poems.
These are the women whose husbands I meet on airplanes,
who close their briefcases and ask, “What are you in?”
I look in their eyes, I tell them I am in poetry,

and their eyes fill with anxiety, and with little tears.
“Oh, yeah?” they say, developing an interest in clouds.
“My wife, she likes that sort of thing? Hah-hah?
I guess maybe I’d better watch my grammar, huh?”
I leave them in airports, watching their grammar,

and take a limousine to the Women’s Goodness Club
where I drink Harvey’s Bristol Cream with their wives,
and eat chicken salad with capers, with little tomato wedges
and I read them “The Erotic Crocodile,” and “Eating You.”
Ah, when I have concluded the disbursement of sonorities,

crooning, “High on thy thigh I cry, Hi!”—and so forth—
they spank their wide hands, they smile like Jell-O,
and they say, “Hah-hah? My goodness, Mr. Hall,
but you certainly do have an imagination, huh?”
“Thank you, indeed,” I say; “it brings in the bacon.”

But now, my poems, now I have returned to the motel,
returned to l’eternel retour of the Holiday Inn,
naked, lying on the bed, watching Godzilla Sucks Mount Fuji,
addressing my poems, feeling superior, and drinking bourbon
from a flask disguised to look like a transistor radio.

And what about you? You, laughing? You, in the bluejeans,
laughing at your mother who wears hats, and at your father
who rides airplanes with a briefcase watching his grammar?
Will you ever be old and dumb, like your creepy parents?
Not you, not you, not you, not you, not you, not you.

There have been a couple poems by Vikram Seth in A Poem a Day that I really like, this being one of them.

Protocols
By Vikram Seth

What can I say to you? How can I retract
   All that that fool, my voice, has spoken—
Now that the facts are plain, the placid surface cracked,
   The protocols of friendship broken?

I cannot walk by day as now I walk at dawn
   Past the still house where you lie sleeping.
May the sun burn these footprints on the lawn
   And hold you in its warmth and keeping.

Current Tea: Diva blend (Ceylon black tea with hints of hazelnut and chocolate)

I read this in A Poem a Day and I was quite surprised I’d not posted it before.

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
By Thomas Gray

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o’er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower,
The moping owl does to the moon complain,
Of such as wandering near her secret bower,
Molest her ancient solitary reign.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree’s shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,
The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed,
The cock’s shrill clarion, and the echoing horn,
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
Or busy housewife ply her evening care:
No children run to lisp their sire’s return,
Nor climb his knees the envied kiss to share.

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,
Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke,
How jocund did they drive their team afield!
How bowed the woods beneath their sturdy stoke!

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys and destiny obscure,
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile,
The short and simple annals of the poor.

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,
Awaits alike the inevitable hour,
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault,
If Memory o’er their tomb no trophies raise,
Where, through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault,
The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.

Can storied urn, or animated bust,
Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can Honour’s voice provoke the silent dust,
Or Flattery soothe the dull cold ear of Death?

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid,
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire,
Hands, that the rod of empire might have swayed,
Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre.

But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page,
Rich with the spoils of time did ne’er unroll,
Chill Penury repressed their noble rage,
And froze the genial current of the soul.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast,
The little tyrant of his fields withstood;
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country’s blood.

The applause of listening senates to command,
The treats of pain and ruin to despise,
To scatter plenty o’er a smiling land,
And read their history in a nation’s eyes.

Their lot forbad: nor circumscribed alone,
Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined;
Forbad to wade through slaughter to a throne,
Or shut the gates of mercy on mankind,

The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,
To quench the blushes of ingenious shame,
Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride,
With incense, kindled at the Muse’s flame.

Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learned to stray;
Along the cool sequestered vale of life,
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

Yet even these bones from insult to protect,
Some frail memories still erected nigh,
With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked,
Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.

Their name, their years, spelt by the unlettered muse,
The place of fame and epitaph supply:
And many a holy text around she strews,
That teach the rustic moralists to die.

For who to dumb Forgetfulness a prey,
This pleasing anxious being e’er resigned,
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
Nor cast one longing lingering look behind?

On some fond breast the parting soul relies,
Some pious drops the closing eye requires;
Ev’n from the tomb the voice of nature cries,
Ev’n in our ashes live their wonted fires.

For thee, who mindful of the unhonoured dead
Dost in these lines their artless tale relate;
If chance, by lonely Contemplation led,
Some kindred spirit shall enquire thy fate.

Haply some hoary-headed swain may say,
“Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn
Brushing with hasty steps the dews away
To meet the sun upon the upland lawn.

“There, at the foot of yonder nodding beech
That wreaths its old fantastic roots so high,
His listless length at noontide would he stretch,
And pore upon the brook, that babbles by.

“Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,
Muttering his wayward fancies, would he rove,
Now drooping, woeful-wan, like one forlorn,
Or crazed with care, or crossed in hopeless love.

“One morn I missed him from the customed hill,
Along the heath, and near his favorite tree;
Another came; nor yet beside the rill,
Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he;

“The next with dirges due in sad array
Slow through the church-way path we saw him borne.
Approach and read (for thou cans’t read) the lay,
Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn.”

The Epitaph

Here rests his head upon the lap of earth
A youth, to fortune and to fame unknown.
Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth,
And Melancholy marked him for her own.

Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,
Heaven did a recompense as largely send:
He gave to Misery all he had, a tear,
He gained from Heaven (’twas all he wished) a friend.

No farther seek his merits to disclose,
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode,
(There they alike in trembling hope repose)
The bosom of his Father and his God.

Current Tea: iced sundew (organic green tea, sunflower blossoms, red rose blossoms, cornflower blossoms, safflowers)

I’ve been reading a bit of Keats in A Poem a Day, so I thought I’d share one.

Song
By John Keats

O blush not so! O blush not so!
   Or I shall think you knowing;
And if you smile the blushing while,
   Then maidenheads are going.

There’s a blush for won’t, and a blush for shan’t,
   And a blush for having done it:
There’s a blush for thought and a blush for naught,
   And a blush for just begun it.

O sigh not so! O sigh not so!
   For it sounds of Eve’s sweet pippin;
By these loosened lips you have tasted the pips
   And fought in an amorous nipping.

Will you play once more at nice-cut-core,
   For it only will last our youth out?
And we have the prime of the kissing time,
   We have not one sweet tooth out.

There’s a sigh for yes, and a sigh for no,
   And a sigh for I can’t bear it!
O what can be done, shall we stay or run?
   O, cut the sweet apple and share it!

Current Tea: peaches & ginger (full-leaf Ceylon with large pieces of peaches and ginger)

This poem is the story of my life!

6 A.M. Thoughts
By Dick Davis

As soon as you wake they come blundering in
   Like puppies or importunate children;
What was a landscape emerging from mist
   Becomes at once a disordered garden.

And the mess they trail with them! Embarrassments,
   Anger, lust, fear—in fact the whole pig-pen;
And who’ll clean it up? No hope for sleep now—
   Just heave yourself out, make the tea, and give in.

Here’s another one I came across in A Poem a Day.

Words
By Sylvia Plath

Axes
After whose stroke the wood rings,
And the echoes!
Echoes traveling
Off from the center like horses.

The sap
Wells like tears, like the
Water striving
To re-establish its mirror
Over the rock

That drops and turns,
A white skull,
Eaten by weedy greens.
Years later I
Encounter them on the road—

Words dry and riderless,
The indefatigable hoof-taps.
While
From the bottom of the pool, fixed stars
Govern a life.

Every time I come across a poem by Elinor Wylie I think, “I really need to read more of her stuff,” and I still haven’t. I’m always impressed when I read a poem of hers, though.

Prophecy
By Elinor Wylie

I shall lie hidden in a hut
   In the middle of an alder wood,
With the back door blind and bolted shut,
   And the front door locked for good.
I shall lie folded like a saint.
   Lapped in a scented linen sheet,
On a bedstead striped with bright-blue paint,
   Narrow and cold and neat.
The midnight will be glassy black
   Behind the panes, with wind about
To set his mouth against a crack
   And blow the candle out.

I can’t say that I’ve ever lived close to the sea or felt drawn to the sea. Though this might seem at odds with the control-freak aspects of my nature, I really like the idea of inspirations beyond our control. I also love the lines So comes to us at times, from the unknown/And inaccessible solitudes of being.

The Sound of the Sea
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The sea awoke at midnight from its sleep,
And round the pebbly beaches far and wide
I heard the first wave of the rising tide
Rush onward with uninterrupted sweep;
A voice out of the silence of the deep,
A sound mysteriously multiplied
As of a cataract from the mountain’s side,
Or roar of winds upon a wooded steep.
So comes to us at times, from the unknown
And inaccessible solitudes of being,
The rushing of the sea-tides of the soul;
And inspirations, that we deem our own,
Are some divine foreshadowing and foreseeing
Of things beyond our reason or control.

I had one more poem from Alias Grace, but I didn’t post it before because there was also another one by Emily Dickinson. It’s quite appropriate for a book about someone who was presumed mentally ill, and who may in fact have had multiple personality disorder.

I felt a Cleaving in my Mind—
By Emily Dickinson

I felt a Cleaving in my Mind—
As if my Brain had split—
I tried to match it—Seam by Seam—
But could not make it fit.

The thought behind, I strove to join
Unto the thought before—
But Sequence ravelled out of Sound
Like Balls—upon a Floor.

I’ve been bolstering my list by reading several books of Naomi Shihab Nye’s poems, and I’ve also started A Poem a Day, edited by Karen McCosker and Nicholas Albery. I’m trying to read 10-20 (or even a month’s worth) of poems each day so I finish them before the library due date. I’m reserving my method of posting a poem by an author I’ve only posted once for when I’m stuck and have nothing in my file.

So far I’ve read January’s poems in A Poem a Day, and out of those 31 poems, I’ve read/posted 6 of them previously. So that gave me new fodder! I’ve posted quite a few poems by Yeats before, but I came across two that I haven’t read before and loved them, which isn’t surprising.

Sailing to Byzantium
By William Butler Yeats

                              I

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

                              II

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

                              III

O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

                              IV

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

I’ve always loved the imagery in this poem so I thought I’d find another by Wilbur.

Worlds
By Richard Wilbur

For Alexander there was no Far East,
Because he thought the Asian continent
India ended. Free Cathay at least
Did not contribute to his discontent.

But Newton, who had grasped all space, was more
Serene. To him it seemed that he’d but played
With several shells and pebbles on the shore
Of that profundity he had not made.

Swiss Einstein with his relativity—
Most secure of all. God does not play dice
With the cosmos and its activity.
Religionless equations won’t suffice.

My scheme of posting poems by poets who I’ve only posted once before seems to be working out well (at least in terms of time).

The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter
By Ezra Pound

While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of Chokan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.

At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.

At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever.
Why should I climb the lookout?

At sixteen you departed,
You went into far Ku-to-en, by the river of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.

You dragged your feet when you went out.
By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me. I grow older.
If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you
As far as Cho-fo-Sa.