Let us use it while we may
Snatch those joys that haste away!
Earth her winter coat may cast,
And renew her beauty past:
But, our winter come, in vain
We solicit spring again;
And when our furrows snow shall cover,
Love may return but never lover.
Edmund Waller
Go, lovely Rose -
Tell her that wastes her time and me,
That now she knows,
When I resemble her to thee,
How sweet and fair she seems to be.
Tell her that's young,
And shuns to have her graces spied,
That hadst thou sprung
In deserts where no men abide,
Thou must have uncommended died.
Small is the worth
Of beauty from the light retired:
Bid her come forth,
Suffer herself to be desired,
And not blush so to be admired
Then die - that she
The common fate of all things rare
May read in thee;
How small a part of time they share
That are so wondrous sweet and fair!
Theodore Weiss
'Yes, But...'
FOR WCW AGAIN
There he was - having spent
the night with us, the first,br>
time away from home alone,
terribly frail for another stroke,
his dreams still shaking him-
his fame steadily leaping ahead,
and he complaining to me,
struggling just to be somebody,
expecting me to comfort him!
Manfully, if with a bitter sense
of injustice, I did my best:
'Why, Bill, you've left a good
green swath of writing behind you.'
And he, in a low voice,
most mournfully, 'Yes, but
is it poetry?'
That years ago.
Only now I begin to understand
the doubts necessary to one
always open, always desperate
(his work's honesty, spontaneity-
work nothing, life-depended
on it),
one too so given
over to the moment, so lover-
faithfully serving it,
he could remember or believe
in little else.
(Some months
later Frost would visit,
older, sturdy as an ancient oak,br>
unlike Williams, who could not read
to the end of a verse,
intoning
his poems well over an hour
with tremendous relish, then
standing on his solid stumps
another hour batting it out
with students,
no doubt shaking
him and few new leaves breaking
out of him.)
And only now,
the years, the doubts accumulating,
can I be grateful to Bill
for his uncertainty,
can I lean
on it, lean more than on all
his accomplishments, those greeny
asphodel triumphs.
We have all been in rooms
We cannot die in, and they are odd places, and sad.
Often Indians are standing eagle-armed on hills
In the sunrise open wide to the Great Spirit
Or gliding in canoes or cattle are browsing on the walls
Far away gazing down with the eyes of our children
Not far away or there are men driving
The last railspike, which has turned
Gold in their hands. Gigantic forepleasure lives
Among such scenes, and we are alone with it
At last. There is always some weeping
Between us and someone is always checking
A wrist watch by the bed to see how much
Longer we have left. Nothing can come
Of this nothing can come
Of us: of me with my grim techniques
Or you who have sealed your womb
With a ring of convulsive rubber:
Although we come together,
Nothing will come of us. But we would not give
It up, for death is beaten
By praying Indians by distant cows historical
Hammers by hazardous meetings that bridge
A continent. One could never die here
Never die never die
While crying. My lover, my dear one
I will see you next week
When I'm in town. I will call you
If I can. Please get hold of Please don't
Oh God, Please don't any more I can't bear . . . Listen:
We have done it again we are
Still living. Sit up and smile,
God bless you. Guilt is magical.
James Schevill
Green Frog at Roadstead, Wisconsin
It is the way of a pleasant path
To walk through white birch, fir,
And spruce on a limestone trail
Through the quiet, complacent time
Of summer when, suddenly, the frog jumps
And you jump after him, laughing,
Hopping, frog and woman, to show
The stationary world its flat ways.
Love is a Frog, I grin that greenly
To your green eyes and they leap
At me. Up, I will enter the Frog World
With you and try the leaping ways
Of the heart that we do not fail to find
The sunlit air full of leaping chances.
A Screamer Discusses Methods of Screaming
We all scream, most of us inside.
Outside is another world.
A neighbor fills her television dinner
With too much pepper and screams.
One woman stabs her door with a sword.
Another, overweight, steps in the shower
And screams, 'Fat! Fat! Fat!'
A man who takes flying lessons
Soars high in the clouds to scream.
Another dives to the bottom of his pool
Where he screams underwater.
A friend cleans his gun, screaming 'Assassin!'
I like an interior, smiling scream.
When you walk past me on the street
I nod my head to you and, smiling, scream.
You never hear me through the smile.
The inside scream has no echo.
For what as easy
For what thought small,
For what is well
Because between,
To you simply
From me I mean.
Who goes with who
The bedclothes say,
As I and you
Go kissed away,
The data given,
The senses even.
Fate is not late,
Nor the speech rewritten,
Nor one word forgotten,
Said at the start
About heart,
By heart, for heart.
Louis MacNeice
The Sunlight on the Garden
The sunlight on the garden
Hardens and grows cold,
We cannot cage the minute
Within its nets of gold,
When all is told
We cannot beg for pardon.
Our freedom as free lances
Advances towards its end;
The earth compels, upon it
Sonnets and birds descend;
And soon, my friend,
We shall have no time for dances.
The sky was good for flying
Defying the church bells
And every evil iron
Siren and what it tells:
The earth compels,
We are dying, Egypt, dying
And not expecting pardon,
Hardened in heart anew,
But glad to have sat under
Thunder and rain with you,
And grateful too
For sunlight on the garden.
My black hills have never seen the sun rising,
Eternally they look north towards Armagh.
Lot's wife would not be salt if she had been
Incurious as my black hills that are happy
When dawn whitens Glassdrummond chapel.
My hills hoard the bright shillings of March
While the sun searches in every pocket.
They are my Alps and I have climbed the Matterhorn
With a sheaf of hay for three perishing calves
In the field under the Big Forth of Rocksavage.
The sleety winds fondle the rushy beards of Shancoduff
While the cattle-drovers sheltering in the Featherna Bush
Look up and say: 'Who owns them hungry hills
That the water-hen and snipe must have forsaken?
A poet? Then by heavens he must be poor.'
I hear and is my heart not badly shaken?
Robert Browning
Meeting at Night
The grey sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i' the slushy sand.
Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, through its joys and feares,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!
Upon a gloomy night,
With all my cares to loving ardours flushed,
(O venture of delight!)
With nobody in sight
I went abroad when all my house was hushed.
In safety, in disguise,
In darkness up the secret stair I crept,
(O happy enterprise)
Concealed from other eyes
When all my house at length in silence slept.
Upon that lucky night
In secrecy, inscrutable to sight,
I went without discerning
And with no other light
Except for that which in my heart was burning.
It lit and led me through
More certain than the light of noonday clear
To where One waited near
Whose presence well I knew,
There where no other presence might appear.
Oh night that was my guide!
Oh darkness dearer than the morning's pride,
Oh night that joined the lover
To the beloved bride
Transfiguring them each into the other.
Within my flowering breast
Which only for himself entire I save
He sank into his rest
And all my gifts I gave
Lulled by the airs with which the cedars wave.
Over the ramparts fanned
While the fresh wind was fluttering his tresses,
With his serenest hand
My neck he wounded, and
Suspended every sense with its caresses.
Lost to myself I stayed
My face upon my lover having laid
From all endeavour ceasing:
And all my cares releasing
Threw them amongst the lilies there to fade.
I came too late to the hills: they were swept bare
Winters before I was born of song and story,
Of spell or speech with power of oracle or invocation,
The great ash long dead by a roofless house, its branches rotten,
The voice of the crows an inarticulate cry,
And from the wells and springs the holy water ebbed away.
A child I ran in the wind on a withered moor
Crying out after those great presences who were not there,
Long lost in the forgetfulness of the forgotten.
Only the archaic forms themselves could tell!
In sacred speech of hoodie on gray stone, or hawk in air,
Of Eden where the lonely rowan bends over the dark pool.
Yet I have glimpsed the bright mountain behind the mountain,
Knowledge under the leaves, tasted the bitter berries red,
Drunk water cold and clear from an inexhaustible hidden fountain.
The fruits you give me are more savory than others, their aroma brings me something of you.
I ate them again on your mouth, where I recaptured their flavor, with provoking kisses, in the perfumed juice of blue plums.
You held my hand and our lips were fresher than the centers of fruit bursting with ripeness; hard nuts cracked between our teeth;
your eyes were laughing, but suddenly they grew dark, and you bit the ripe raspberries at the tips of my inflamed breasts.
If one day you must tear my heart to pieces, Sylvius, as you rend apart the blond pulp that summer lavishes on us,
don't bother to sharpen the blade that sparkles on the wall in the house, take it with your bare teeth, tear it out and
let my blood pour out of my open heart, more sparkling than the bright blood that swells through the currants.
I'll act out a weird dream
hobble like a broken bird
howl a name over and over like a hyena
flare an open wing like a fan to a half-eaten moon
choose a grain from the sands of your closed lips
and retrace my steps and always
come back in half shadows
damned by the wing I have left
I am the sign who names you.
The young, having risen early, had gone,
Some with excursions beyond the bay-mouth,
Some toward lakes, a fragile reflected sun.
Thunder-heads drift, awkwardly, from the south;
The old watch them. They have watched the safe
Packed harbor topple under sudden gales,
Great tides irrupt, yachts burn at the wharf
That on clean seas pitched their effective sails.
There are silences. These, too, they endure:
Soft comings-on; soft aftershocks of calm.
Quietly they wade the disturbed shore;
Gather the dead as the first dead scrape home.
steps out
from a lily
into the clear,
bearing a quince,
creator
calling
the ships out,
radiant
in cloth
and water
like a daisy
in the hand.
She lifts
her skirt
and speaks.
The ships
are radiant.
Man rises
from the kiss
and answers Yes.
Pauline Hanson
And I Am Old to Know
No place seemed farther than your death
but when I went there - gone from there,
it was from your love you spoke
and it was to your love I moved.
And as you speak it - you, my own:
in the days, in the nights of your voice,
always the word of love opens,
opens into all its meaning.
And as I longer move to you,
as you wait and as you take me,
not like a lover but like love
you tell me and I am old to know:
love is to the farthest place -
love is to so far a place
from always its greatest distances,
to see where death was, I look back.
Pauline Hanson
From Creature to Ghost
Across the night
until beside me,
the wild dogs crouch
and the hunted, the hurt thing,
cries its anguish,
begs its life.
But night is a country
of dying and dead
and when night voices howl
somewhere and how
the body is torn -
shuddering out of it
what small is this
so slant, so uncertain,
the moon will not show
nor darkness describe
the slow way it moves
from creature to ghost
and now from the home of
its body is lost.
Is lost, is alone,
yet so great this anguish
of dying and dead,
I think the small ones
of all the earth
sometime are met in it.
Or time is always
of once and now.
And in any night
when the wind is black
and the wild dogs leap -
hunted and tormented
and torn from the body,
like the animal ones
of all the earth
I come to everywhere,
everywhere this darkness.
And shuddering into it
if once I was only
the one who listened
listening has made me
the one who cries.
Until in this place
of dying and dead:
from creature to ghost
the way is so strange -
I die, I live,
in the anguish of both.
Robert Graves
Call It a Good Marriage
Call it a good marriage -
For no one ever questioned
Her warmth, his masculinity,
Their interlocking views;
Except one stray graphologist
Who frowned in speculation
At her h's and her s's,
His p's and w's.
Though few would still subscribe
To the monogamic axiom
That strife below the hip-bones
Need not estrange the heart,
Call it a good marriage:
More drew those two together,
Despite a lack of children,
Than pulled them apart.
Call it a good marriage:
They never fought in public,
They acted circumspectly
And faced the world with pride;
Thus the hazards of their love-bed
Were none of our damned business -
Till as jurymen we sat on
Two deaths by suicide.
Sir John Harington
Of An Heroical Answer of a Great Roman Lady to Her Husband
A grave wise man that had a great rich lady,
Such as perhaps in these days found there may be,
Did think she played him false and more than think,
Save that in wisdom he thereat did wink.
Howbeit one time disposed to sport and play
Thus to his wife he pleasantly did say,
'Since strangers lodge their arrows in thy quiver,
Dear dame, I pray you yet the cause deliver,
If you can tell the cause and not dissemble,
How all our children me so much resemble?'
The lady blushed but yet this answer made
'Though I have used some traffic in the trade,
And must confess, as you have touched before,
My bark was sometimes steered with foreign oar,
Yet stowed I no man's stuff but first persuaded
The bottom with your ballast full was laded.'
My peace is broken, my white gentle sleep
So softly drifted on, so cool caressed
By morning's rose and evening's amethyst,
Jarred by the wind's breath, troubled by the sweep
Of the fox's brush, the rabbit's light-foot leap.
On my own rhythms lulled as on a breast,
In habit resting as the heart-beats rest,
From change and danger I lay buried deep.
Had I a shield, a refuge, I might shun
This deed of arson from the distant sun,
This green-clad burning, big with crimson shame,
Big with its own quick death, heavy and hot
And headlong in my nerves. But I can not.
A sky-thrown torch has kindled me to flame.
e e cummings
my father moved through dooms of love
my father moved through dooms of love
through sames of am through haves of give,
singing each morning out of each night
my father moved through depths of height
this motionless forgetful where
turned at his glance to shining here;
that if(so timid air is firm)
under his eyes would stir and squirm
newly as from unburied which
floats the first who, his april touch
drove sleeping selves to swarm their fates
woke dreamers to their ghostly roots
and should some why completely weep
my father's fingers brought her sleep:
vainly no smallest voice might cry
for he could feel the mountains grow.
Lifting the valleys of the sea
my father moved through griefs of joy;
praising a forehead called the moon
singing desire into begin
joy was his song and joy so pure
a heart of star by him could steer
and pure so now and now so yes
the wrists of twilight would rejoice
keen as midsummer's keen beyond
conceiving mind of sun will stand,
so strictly(over utmost him
so hugely)stood my father's dream
his flesh was flesh his blood was blood:
no hungry man but wished him food;
no cripple wouldn't creep one mile
uphill to only see him smile.
Scorning the pomp of must and shall
my father moved through dooms of feel;
his anger was as right as rain
his pity was as green as grain
septembering arms of year extend
less humbly wealth to foe and friend
than he to foolish and to wise
offered immeasurable is
proudly and(by octobering flame
beckoned)as earth will downward climb,
so naked for immortal work
his shoulders marched against the dark
his sorrow was as true as bread:
no liar looked him in the head;
if every friend became his foe
he'd laugh and build a world with snow.
My father moved through theys of we,
singing each new leaf out of each tree
(and every child was sure that spring
danced when she heard my father sing)
then let men kill which cannot share,
let blood and flesh be mud and mire,
scheming imagine,passion willed,
freedom a drug that's bought and sold
giving to steal and cruel kind,
a heart to fear,to doubt a mind,
to differ a disease of same,
conform the pinnacle of am
though dull were all we taste as bright,
bitter all utterly things sweet,
maggoty minus and dumb death
all we inherit,all bequeath
and nothing quite so least as truth
-i say though hate were why men breathe-
because my father lived his soul
love is the whole and more than all
ever been kidnapped
by a poet
if i were a poet
i'd kidnap you
put you in my phrases and meter
you to jones beach
or maybe coney island
or maybe just to my house
lyric you in lilacs
dash you in the rain
blend into the beach
to complement my see
play the lyre for you
ode you with my love song
anything to win you
wrap you in the red Black green
show you off to mama
yeah if i were a poet i'd kid
nap you
Emily Dickinson
"Hope" is the thing with feathers
"Hope" is the thing with feathers --
That perches in the soul --
And sings the tune without the words --
And never stops -- at all --
And sweetest -- in the Gale -- is heard --
And sore must be the storm --
That could abash the little Bird
That keeps so many warm --
I've heard it in the chillest land --
And on the strangest Sea --
Yet, never, in Extremity,
It asked a crumb -- of Me.
Sir Walter Scott
An Hour With Thee
An hour with thee ! When earliest day
Dapples with gold the eastern grey,
Oh, what can frame my mind to bear
The toil and turmoil, cark and care,
New griefs, which coming hours unfold,
And sad remembrance of the old?
One hour with thee.
One hour with thee ! When burning June
Waves his red flag at pitch of noon;
What shall repay the faithful swain,
His labour on the sultry plain;
And, more than cave or sheltering bough,
Cool feverish blood and throbbing brow?
One hour with thee.
One hour with thee ! When sun is set,
Oh, what can teach me to forget
The thankless labours of the day;
The hopes, the wishes, flung away;
The increasing wants, and lessening gains,
The master's pride, who scorns my pains?
One hour with thee.
What needs my Shakespeare for his honored bones
The labor of an age in piled stones?
Or that his hallowed reliques should be hid
Under a star-ypointing pyramid?
Dear son of Memory, great heir of Fame,
What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name?
Thou in our wonder and astonishment
Hast built thy self a livelong monument.
For whilst, to th' shame of slow-endeavoring art,
Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book
Those Delphic lines with deep impression took,
Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving,
Dost make us marble with too much conceiving,
And so sepulchred in such pomp dost lie
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.
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