Portal:Poetry/poem archive/2006 archive
This is an archive of article summaries that have appeared in the poem section of Portal:Poetry in 2006. For past archives, see the complete archive page.
Dirce
Stand close around, ye Stygian set,
With Dirce in one boat conveyed!
Or Charon, seeing, may forget
That he is old and she a shade.
Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,
As, to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And guilded honour shamefully misplaced,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,
And strength by limping sway disabled,
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly doctor-like controlling skill,
And simple truth miscall'd simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill:
Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,
Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.
Mr. Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service
- Look, look, master, here comes two religious caterpillars.
- The Jew of Malta.
- by T. S. Eliot
- The Jew of Malta.
POLYPHILOPROGENITIVE
The sapient sutlers of the Lord
Drift across the window-panes.
In the beginning was the Word.
In the beginning was the Word.
Superfetation of το ευ,
And at the mensual turn of time
Produced enervate Origen.
A painter of the Umbrian school
Designed upon a gesso ground
The nimbus of the Baptized God.
The wilderness is cracked and browned
But through the water pale and thin
Still shine the unoffending feet
And there above the painter set
The Father and the Paraclete.
The sable presbyters approach
The avenue of penitence;
The young are red and pustular
Clutching piaculative pence.
Under the penitential gates
Sustained by staring Seraphim
Where the souls of the devout
Burn invisible and dim.
Along the garden-wall the bees
With hairy bellies pass between
The staminate and pistilate,
Blest office of the epicene.
Sweeney shifts from ham to ham
Stirring the water in his bath.
The masters of the subtle schools
Are controversial, polymath.
YES: in the sea of life enisl’d,
With echoing straits between us thrown,
Dotting the shoreless watery wild,
We mortal millions live alone.
The islands feel the enclasping flow,
And then their endless bounds they know.
But when the moon their hollows lights,
And they are swept by balms of spring,
And in their glens, on starry nights,
The nightingales divinely sing;
And lovely notes, from shore to shore,
Across the sounds and channels pour —
Oh! then a longing like despair
Is to their farthest caverns sent;
For surely once, they feel, we were
Parts of a single continent!
Now round us spreads the watery plain —
Oh might our marges meet again!
Who order’d, that their longing’s fire
Should be, as soon as kindled, cool’d?
Who renders vain their deep desire?—
A God, a God their severance rul’d!
And bade betwixt their shores to be
The unplumb’d, salt, estranging sea.
Gefunden (Found)
- by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (trans. E.A. Bowring)
| Ich ging im Walde | Once through the forest |
| So für mich hin, | Alone I went; |
| Und nichts zu suchen | To seek for nothing |
| Das war mein Sinn. | My thoughts were bent. |
| Im Schatten sah ich | I saw i' the shadow |
| Ein Blümchen stehn, | A flower stand there |
| Wie Sterne leuchtend, | As stars it glisten'd, |
| Wie Äuglein schön. | As eyes 'twas fair. |
| Ich wollt es brechen, | I sought to pluck it,— |
| Da sagt' es fein: | It gently said: |
| Soll ich zum Welken | "Shall I be gather'd |
| Gebrochen sein? | Only to fade?" |
| Ich grubs mit allen | With all its roots |
| Den Würzlein aus, | I dug it with care, |
| Zum Garten trug ichs | And took it home |
| Am hübschen Haus. | To my garden fair. |
| Und pflanzt es wieder | In silent corner |
| Am stillen Ort; | Soon it was set; |
| Nun zweigt es immer | There grows it ever, |
| Und blüht so fort. | There blooms it yet. |
The Lie
Go, Soul, the body's guest,
Upon a thankless errand;
Fear not to touch the best;
The truth shall be thy warrant:
Go, since I needs must die,
And give the world the lie.
Say to the court, it glows
And shines like rotten wood;
Say to the church, it shows
What's good, and doth no good:
If church and court reply,
Then give them both the lie.
Tell potentates, they live
Acting by others' action;
Not loved unless they give,
Not strong but by a faction.
If potentates reply,
Give potentates the lie.
Tell men of high condition,
That manage the estate,
Their purpose is ambition,
Their practice only hate:
And if they once reply,
Then give them all the lie.
Tell them that brave it most,
They beg for more by spending,
Who, in their greatest cost,
Seek nothing but commending.
And if they make reply,
Then give them all the lie.
Tell zeal it wants devotion;
Tell love it is but lust;
Tell time it is but motion;
Tell flesh it is but dust:
And wish them not reply,
For thou must give the lie.
Tell age it daily wasteth;
Tell honour how it alters;
Tell beauty how she blasteth;
Tell favour how it falters:
And as they shall reply,
Give every one the lie.
Tell wit how much it wrangles
In tickle points of niceness;
Tell wisdom she entangles
Herself in overwiseness:
And when they do reply,
Straight give them both the lie.
Tell physic of her boldness;
Tell skill it is pretension;
Tell charity of coldness;
Tell law it is contention:
And as they do reply,
So give them still the lie.
Tell fortune of her blindness;
Tell nature of decay;
Tell friendship of unkindness;
Tell justice of delay:
And if they will reply,
Then give them all the lie.
Tell arts they have no soundness,
But vary by esteeming;
Tell schools they want profoundness,
And stand too much on seeming:
If arts and schools reply,
Give arts and schools the lie.
Tell faith it's fled the city;
Tell how the country erreth;
Tell manhood shakes off pity
And virtue least preferreth:
And if they do reply,
Spare not to give the lie.
So when thou hast, as I
Commanded thee, done blabbing--
Although to give the lie
Deserves no less than stabbing--
Stab at thee he that will,
No stab the soul can kill.
DIRGE
Boys and girls that held her dear,
Do your weeping now;
All you loved of her lies here.
Brought to earth the arrogant brow,
And the withering tongue
Chastened; do your weeping now.
Sing whatever songs are sung,
Wind whatever wreath,
For a playmate perished young,
For a spirit spent in death.
Boys and girls that held her dear,
All you loved of her lies here.
Night, street, lamp, drugstore,
A dull and meaningless light.
Go on and live another quarter century -
Nothing will change. There's no way out.
- Ночь, улица, фонарь, аптека,
- Бессмысленный и тусклый свет.
- Живи еще хоть четверть века -
- Все будет так. Исхода нет.
You'll die - start from the beginning anew,
And all will repeat, just like before:
Night, icy ripples on a canal,
Drugstore, street, lamp.
- Умрешь - начнешь опять сначала
- И повторится все, как встарь:
- Ночь, ледяная рябь канала,
- Аптека, улица, фонарь.
To an Athlete Dying Young
from A Shropshire Lad
- by AE Housman
THE TIME you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.
To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.
Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.
Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:
Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.
So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.
And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl’s.
The Cross of Snow
In the long, sleepless watches of the night,
A gentle face--the face of one long dead--
Looks at me from the wall, where round its head
The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light.
Here in this room she died, and soul more white
Never through martyrdom of fire was led
To its repose; nor can in books be read
The legend of a life more benedight.
There is a mountain in the distant West
That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines
Displays a cross of snow upon its side.
Such is the cross I wear upon my breast
These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes
And seasons, changeless since the day she died.
Margaritæ Sorori
A late lark twitters from the quiet skies:
And from the west,
Where the sun, his day's work ended,
Lingers as in content,
There falls on the old, gray city
An influence luminous and serene,
A shining peace.
The smoke ascends
In a rosy-and-golden haze. The spires
Shine and are changed. In the valley
Shadows rise. The lark sings on. The sun,
Closing his benediction,
Sinks, and the darkening air
Thrills with a sense of the triumphing night--
Night with her train of stars
And her great gift of sleep.
So be my passing!
My task accomplish'd and the long day done,
My wages taken, and in my heart
Some late lark singing,
Let me be gather'd to the quiet west,
The sundown splendid and serene,
Death.
Step on His Head
"Let's step on daddy's head",
Shout the children, my dear children,
As we walk in the country
On a sunny summer day.
My shadow bobs dark on the road as we walk
And they jump on its head, and my love for them
Fills me all full of soft feelings.
Now I duck with my head, so they'll miss when they jump
And they screech with delight, and I moan
"Oh, you're hurting, you're hurting me! Stop!"
And they jump all the harder,
And love fills the whole road.
But I see it run on through the years,
And I know how someday they must jump and it won't
Be this shadow, but really my head
As I stepped on my own father's head.
It will hurt, really hurt,
And I wonder if then, if I'll have enough love.
Will I have love enough when it's not just a game?
Matsushima
- by Matsuo Bashō
O Matsushima!
O Matsushima!
O Matsushima![1]
- ^ This poem was written as the poet's emotional response to a scenic area of Japan overlooking a bay, Matsushima.
The Lowest Trees
The lowest trees have tops, the ant her gall,
The fly her spleen, the little spark his heat,
And slender hairs cast shadows though but small,
And bees have stings although they be not great.
Seas have their source, and so have shallow springs.
And love is love in beggars and in kings.
Where waters smoothest run, deep are the fords.
The dial stirs, yet none perceives it move.
The firmest faith is in the fewest words.
The turtles cannot sing, and yet they love.
True hearts have eyes and ears,no tongues to speak:
They hear, and see, and sigh, and then they break.
Sonnet to accompany the Spring concerto, from The Four Seasons
Giunt' è la Primavera e festosetti
La Salutan gl' Augei con lieto canto,
E i fonti allo Spirar de' Zeffiretti
Con dolce mormorio Scorrono intanto:
Vengon' coprendo l' aer di nero amanto
E Lampi, e tuoni ad annuntiarla eletti
Indi tacendo questi, gl' Augelletti;
- Springtime is upon us.
- The birds celebrate her return with festive song,
- and murmuring streams are softly
- caressed by the breezes.
- Thunderstorms, those heralds of Spring, roar,
- casting their dark mantle over heaven,
- Then they die away to silence, and the birds take up their
- charming songs once more.
Tornan' di nuovo al lor canoro incanto:
E quindi sul fiorito ameno prato
Al caro mormorio di fronde e piante
Dorme 'l Caprar col fido can' à lato.
Di pastoral Zampogna al suon festante
Danzan Ninfe e Pastor nel tetto amato
Di primavera all' apparir brillante.
- On the flower-strewn meadow, with leafy branches
- rustling overhead, the goat-herd sleeps,
- his faithful dog beside him.
- Led by the festive sound of rustic bagpipes,
- nymphs and shepherds lightly dance beneath
- the brilliant canopy of spring.
The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
COME live with me and be my Love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dale and field,
And all the craggy mountains yield.
There will we sit upon the rocks
And see the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.
There will I make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroider'd all with leaves of myrtle.
A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull,
Fair linèd slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold.
A belt of straw and ivy buds
With coral clasps and amber studs:
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me and be my Love.
Thy silver dishes for thy meat
As precious as the gods do eat,
Shall on an ivory table be
Prepared each day for thee and me.
The shepherd swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May-morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my Love.
The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd
If all the world and love were young,
And truth in every shepherd's tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move
To live with thee and be thy love.
Time drives the flocks from field to fold
When rivers rage and rocks grow cold,
And Philomel becometh dumb;
The rest complains of cares to come.
The flowers do fade, and wanton fields
To wayward winter reckoning yields;
A honey tongue, a heart of gall,
Is fancy's spring, but sorrow's fall.
The gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses,
Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies
Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten,—
In folly ripe, in reason rotten.
Thy belt of straw and ivy buds,
Thy coral clasps and amber studs,
All these in me no means can move
To come to thee and be thy love.
But could youth last and love still breed,
Had joys no date nor age no need,
Then these delights my mind might move
To live with thee and be thy love.
Tichborne's Elegy
My prime of youth is but a frost of cares,
My feast of joy is but a dish of pain,
My crop of corn is but a field of tares,
And all my good is but vain hope of gain.
The day is past, and yet I saw no sun,
And now I live, and now my life is done.
My tale was heard and yet it was not told,
My fruit is fallen and yet my leaves are green;
My youth is spent and yet I am not old,
I saw the world and yet I was not seen.
My thread is cut and yet it is not spun,
And now I live, and now my life is done.
I sought my death and found it in my womb,
I looked for life and saw it was a shade;
I trod the earth and knew it was my tomb,
And now I die, and now I was but made.
My glass is full, and now my glass is run,
And now I live, and now my life is done.
On Himself
by Robert Herrick
Live by thy Muse thou shalt, when others die,
Leaving no fame to long posterity;
When monarchies trans-shifted are, and gone,
Here shall endure thy vast dominion.
YES: in the sea of life enisl’d,
With echoing straits between us thrown,
Dotting the shoreless watery wild,
We mortal millions live alone.
The islands feel the enclasping flow,
And then their endless bounds they know.
But when the moon their hollows lights,
And they are swept by balms of spring,
And in their glens, on starry nights,
The nightingales divinely sing;
And lovely notes, from shore to shore,
Across the sounds and channels pour —
Oh! then a longing like despair
Is to their farthest caverns sent;
For surely once, they feel, we were
Parts of a single continent!
Now round us spreads the watery plain —
Oh might our marges meet again!
Who order’d, that their longing’s fire
Should be, as soon as kindled, cool’d?
Who renders vain their deep desire?—
A God, a God their severance rul’d!
And bade betwixt their shores to be
The unplumb’d, salt, estranging sea.
- by Robert Frost
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
Epitaph
By Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Stop, Christian passer-by : Stop, child of God,
And read, with gentle breast. Beneath this sod
A poet lies, or that which once seem'd he—
O, lift one thought in prayer for S. T. C.—
That he who many a year with toil of breath
Found death in life, may here find life in death:
Mercy for praise--to be forgiven for fame—
He ask'd, and hoped through Christ. Do thou the same.[1]
NOTE: "Mercy for praise"
— in the sense of "mercy instead of praise"
November 9, 1833, published 1834
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (selection)
lo lorde quoþ þe leude and þe lace hondeled
þis is þe bende of þis blame I bere my nek
þis is þe laþe and þe losse þat I la3t haue
of couardise and couetyse þat I haf ca3t þare
þis is þe token of vntrawþe þat I am tan inne
and I mot nedez hit were wyle I may last
for non may hyden his harme bot vnhap ne may hit
for þer hit onez is tachched twynne wil hit neuer
þe kyng comfortez þe kny3t and alle þe court als
la3en loude þerat and luflyly acorden
þat lordes and ladis þat longed to þe table
vche burne of þe broþerhede a bauderyk schulde haue
a bende abelef hym aboute of a bry3t grene
and þat for sake of þat segge in swete to were
for þat watz acorded þe renoun of þe rounde table
and he honoured þat hit hade euermore after
as hit is breued in þe best boke of romaunce
þus in arthurus day þis aunter bitidde
þe brutus bokez þerof beres wyttenesse
syþen brutus þe bolde burne bo3ed hider fyrst
after þe segge and þe asaute watz sesed at troye
iwysse
mony aunterez here biforne
haf fallen suche er þis
now þat here þe croun of þorne
he bryng vus to his blysse amen
Translation: `Lo, my lord,' quoth the knight as he handled the lace, 'this is the bond and sign of my shame, this is the loss and the hurt that I have suffered through cowardice and covetousness. It is the token of untruth, and I must needs wear it while life shall last, for none may hide it, for when it is once fixed upon any one never will it pass from him.' The king comforted the knight, as did all the court; and they laughed loudly, and it was agreed that all the lords and ladies of the Round Table, each member of the brotherhood, should have a lace belt, a band of bright green, and wear it for the sake of Sir Gawain as long as they lived. And this was the renown of the Round Table, and he that had it was held in great honour for evermore, as I have seen it written in the best book of romance. Thus in King Arthur's day did this adventure betide. The Brutus books bear witness to it, since the bold Knight Brutus came hither first after the siege and the assault ceased at Troy, as I wish. Many adventures herebefore have befallen such ere this. Now He that thorn-crown for us bore, bring us to His bliss. Amen.
To a Lady on the Death of Three Relations
WE trace the pow'r of Death from tomb to tomb,
And his are all the ages yet to come.
'Tis his to call the planets from on high,
To blacken Phoebus, and dissolve the sky;
His too, when all in his dark realms are hurl'd,
From its firm base to shake the solid world;
Hid fatal sceptre rules the spacious whole,
And trembling nature rocks from pole to pole.
Awful he move, and wide his wings are spread:
Behold thy brother number'd with the dead!
From bondage freed, the exulting spirit flies
Beyond Olympus, and these starry skies.
Lost in our woe for thee, blest shade, we mourn
In vain; to earth thou never must return.
Thy sisters too, fair mourner, feel the dart
Of Death, and with fresh torture rend thine heart.
Weep not for them, who wish thine happy mind
To rise with them, and leave the world behind.
As a young plant by hurricanes up torn,
So near its parents lies the newly born -
But'midst the bright ethereal train behold
It shines superior on a throne of gold:
Then, mourner, cease; let hope thy tears restrain,
Smile on the tomb, and sooth the raging pain.
On yon blest regions fix thy longing view,
Mindless of sublunary scenes below;
Ascend the sacred mount, in thought arise,
And seek substantial and immortal joys;
Where hope receives, where faith to vision springs,
And raptur'd seraphs tune th' immortal strings
To strains extatic. Thou the chorus join,
And to thy father tune the praise divine.
The Golf Links
by Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn
The golf links lie so near the mill
That almost every day
The laboring children can look out
And see the men at play.
(1915)
Messe [ocus] Pangur bán,
|
I and Pangur Ban my cat, Better far than praise of men 'Tis a merry task to see Oftentimes a mouse will stray 'Gainst the wall he sets his eye When a mouse darts from its den, So in peace our task we ply, Practice every day has made |
Nativity
Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb,
Now leaves His well-belov'd imprisonment,
There He hath made Himself to His intent
Weak enough, now into the world to come;
But O, for thee, for Him, hath the inn no room?
Yet lay Him in this stall, and from the Orient,
Stars and wise men will travel to prevent
The effect of Herod's jealous general doom.
Seest thou, my soul, with thy faith's eyes, how He
Which fills all place, yet none holds Him, doth lie?
Was not His pity towards thee wondrous high,
That would have need to be pitied by thee?
Kiss Him, and with Him into Egypt go,
With His kind mother, who partakes thy woe.
On the Morning of Christ's Nativity
This is the month, and this the happy morn
Wherein the Son of Heav'n's eternal King,
Of wedded Maid, and Virgin Mother born,
Our great redemption from above did bring;
For so the holy sages once did sing,
That he our deadly forfeit should release,
And with his Father work us a perpetual peace.
- II
That glorious Form, that Light unsufferable,
And that far-beaming blaze of Majesty,
Wherewith he wont at Heav'n's high council-table,
To sit the midst of Trinal Unity,
He laid aside, and here with us to be,
Forsook the courts of everlasting day,
And chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay.
- III
Say Heav'nly Muse, shall not thy sacred vein
Afford a present to the Infant God?
Hast thou no verse, no hymn, or solemn strain,
To welcome him to this his new abode,
Now while the heav'n, by the Sun's team untrod,
Hath took no print of the approaching light,
And all the spangled host keep watch in squadrons bright?
- IV
See how from far upon the eastern road
The star-led wizards haste with odours sweet:
O run, prevent them with thy humble ode,
And lay it lowly at his blessed feet;
Have thou the honour first thy Lord to greet,
And join thy voice unto the angel quire,
From out his secret altar touched with hallowed fire.