Sunday Poetry XXXVI -- Textbook Poetry 3.7

Section VII wore me out.  I was interested for the first six poems, as all were about birds, and I thought perhaps an interesting and perhaps poetic motif might emerge.  Nope.  Just six excellent poems on birds and then – pff! – hodge-podge, and, as hodge-podge goes, bland.  Oh well.  Not bothering with the last poem of the book.  It annoyed me, and it’s long.  Instead three bird poems, all new to me and all quite enjoyable.  (Corbies are crows or ravens, by the way.)

An Approach to Literature

Brooks, Purser, Warren

1952

The Twa Corbies

Anonymous

As I was walking all alane,
I heard twa corbies makin a mane;
The tane unto the ither say,
"Whar sall we gang and dine the-day?"

"In ahint yon auld fail dyke,
I wot there lies a new slain knight;
And nane do ken that he lies there,
But his hawk, his hound an his lady fair."

"His hound is tae the huntin gane,
His hawk tae fetch the wild-fowl hame, 
His lady's tain anither mate,
So we may mak oor dinner swate."

"Ye'll sit on his white hause-bane,
And I'll pike oot his bonny blue een;
Wi ae lock o his gowden hair 
We'll theek oor nest whan it grows bare."

"Mony a one for him makes mane,
But nane sall ken whar he is gane;
Oer his white banes, whan they are bare,
The wind sall blaw for evermair."

The Oven Bird

Robert Frost

There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
He says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;
And comes that other fall we name the fall.
He says the highway dust is over all.
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing. 

Gulls

William Carlos Williams

My townspeople, beyond in the great world,
Are many with whom it were far more
Profitable for me to live than here with you.
These whirr about me calling, calling!
And for my own part I answer them loud as I can,
But they, being free pass!
I remain! Therefore, listen!
For you will not soon have another singer

First I say this: You have seen
The strange birds, have you not, that sometimes
Rest upon our river in winter?
Let them cause you to think well then of the storms
That drive many to shelter. These things
Do not happen without reason.

And next thing I say is this:
I saw an eagle once circling against the clouds
Over one of our principal churches
Easter, it was a beautiful day!
Three gulls came from above the river
And crossed slowly seaward!
Oh, I know you have your own hymns, I have heard them
And because I knew they invoked some great protector
I could not be angry with you, no matter
How much they outraged true music

You see, it is not necessary for us to leap at each other,
And, as I told you, in the end
The gulls moved seaward very quietly.

Sunday Poetry XXXIII -- TEXTBOOK POETRY 3.5

An Approach to Literature

Brooks, Purser, Warren

1952

Ode on Melancholy

John Keats

No, no! go not to Lethe, neither twist

      Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;

Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss'd

      By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;

Make not your rosary of yew-berries,

      Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be

            Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl

A partner in your sorrow's mysteries;

      For shade to shade will come too drowsily,

            And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.

But when the melancholy fit shall fall

      Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,

That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,

      And hides the green hill in an April shroud;

Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose.

      Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,

            Or on the wealth of globèd peonies;

Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,

      Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave.

            And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.

She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die;

      And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips

Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,

      Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:

Ay, in the very temple of Delight

      Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine,

            Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue

Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;

      His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,

            And be among her cloudy trophies hung.

Very Like a Whale

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.

How about the man who wrote,

Her little feet stole in and out like mice beneath her petticoat?

Wouldn’t anybody but a poet think twice

Before stating that his girl’s feet were mice?

Then they always say things like that after a winter storm

The snow is a white blanket.  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.

Kilroy

Peter Viereck

Also Ulysses once--that other war.
      (Is it because we find his scrawl 
      Today on every privy door
      That we forget his ancient role?)
Also was there--he did it for the wages--
When a Cathay-drunk Genoese set sail.
Whenever "longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,"
Kilroy is there;
      he tells The Miller's Tale.

At times he seems a paranoic king
Who stamps his crest on walls and says "My Own!"
But in the end he fades like a lost tune,
Tossed here and there, whom all the breezes sing.
"Kilroy was here"; these words sound wanly gay,
      Haughty yet tired with long marching.
He is Orestes--guilty of what crime?--
      For whom the Furies still are searching;
      When they arrive, the find their prey
(Leaving his name to mock them) went away.
Sometimes he does not flee from them in time:
"Kilroy was--"
          with his blood a dying man
      Wrote half the phrase out in Bataan.

Kilroy, beware. "HOME" is the final trap
That lurks for you in many a wily shape:
In pipe-and-slippers plus a Loyal Hound
      Or fooling around, just fooling around.
Kind to the old (their warm Penelope)
But fierce to boys
      thus "home" becomes that sea,

Horribly disguised, where you were always drowned--
      (How could suburban Crete condone
The yarns you would have V-mailed from the sun?)--
And folksy fishes sip Icarian tea.

One stab of hopeless wings imprinted your
      Exultant Kilroy-signature
Upon sheer sky for all the world to stare:
      "I was there! I was there! I was there!"

God is like Kilroy. He, too, sees it all;
That's how He knows of every sparrow's fall;
That's why we prayed each time the tightropes cracked
On which our loveliest clowns contrived their act.

The G.I. Faustus who was

everywhere

Strolled home again. "What was it like outside?"
Asked Can't, with his good neighbors Ought and But
And pale Perhaps and grave-eyed Better Not;
For "Kilroy" means: the world is very wide.
      He was there, he was there, he was there!

The Leg in the Subway

Oscar Williams

Then I saw the woman's leg on the floor of the subway train,

Protrude beyond the panel (while her body overflowed my mind's eye),

When I saw the pink stocking, black shoe, curve bulging with warmth,

The delicate etching of the hair behind the flesh-colored gauze,

When I saw the ankle of Mrs. Nobody going nowhere for a nickel,

When I saw this foot motionless on the moving motionless floor,

My mind caught on a nail of a distant star, I was wrenched out

Of the reality of the subway ride, I hung in a socket of distance:

And this is what I saw:

The long tongue of the earth's speed was licking the leg,

Upward and under and around went the long tongue of speed:

It was made of a flesh invisible, it dripped the saliva of miles:

It drank moment, lit shivers of insecurity in niches between bones:

It was full of eyes, it stopped licking to look at the passengers:

It was as alive as a worm, and busier than anybody in the train:

It spoke saying: To whom does this leg belong? Is it a bonus leg

For the rush hour? Is it a forgotten leg? Among the many

Myriads of legs did an extra leg fall in from the Out There?

O Woman, sliced off bodily by the line of the panel, shall I roll

Your leg into the abdominal nothing, among the digestive teeth?

Or shall I fit it in with the pillars that hold up the headlines?

But nobody spoke, though all the faces were talking silently,

As the train zoomed, a zipper closing up swiftly the seam of time.

Alas, said the long tongue of the speed of the earth quite faintly,

What is one to do with an incorrigible leg that will not melt

But everybody stopped to listen to the train vomiting cauldrons

Of silence, while somebody's jolted-out afterthought trickled down

The blazing shirt-front solid with light bulbs, and just then

The planetary approach of the next station exploded atoms of light,

And when the train stopped, the leg had grown a surprising mate,

And the long tongue had slipped hurriedly out through the window:

I perceived through the hole left by the nail of the star in my mind

How civilization was as dark as a wood and dimensional with things

And how birds dipped in chromium sang in the crevices of our deeds.

The Grasshopper

Richard Lovelace

O thou that swing’st upon the waving hair

   Of some well-fillèd oaten beard,

Drunk every night with a delicious tear

   Dropped thee from heaven, where now th’ art reared;

The joys of earth and air are thine entire,

   That with thy feet and wings dost hop and fly;

And, when thy poppy works, thou dost retire

   To thy carved acorn-bed to lie.

Up with the day, the sun thou welcom’st then,

   Sport’st in the gilt-plats of his beams,

And all these merry days mak’st merry men,

   Thyself, and melancholy streams.

But ah, the sickle! Golden ears are cropped;

   Ceres and Bacchus bid good night;

Sharp, frosty fingers all your flowers have topped,

   And what scythes spared, winds shave off quite.

Poor verdant fool, and now green ice! thy joys,

   Large and as lasting as thy perch of grass,

Bid us lay in ’gainst winter rain, and poise

   Their floods with an o’erflowing glass.

Thou best of men and friends! we will create

   A genuine summer in each other’s breast,

And spite of this cold time and frozen fate,

   Thaw us a warm seat to our rest.

Our sacred hearths shall burn eternally,

   As vestal flames; the North Wind, he

Shall strike his frost-stretched wings, dissolve, and fly

   This Etna in epitome.

Dropping December shall come weeping in,

   Bewail th’usurping of his reign:

But when in showers of old Greek we begin,

   Shall cry he hath his crown again!

Night, as clear Hesper, shall our tapers whip

   From the light casements where we play,

And the dark hag from her black mantle strip,

   And stick there everlasting day.

Thus richer than untempted kings are we,

   That, asking nothing, nothing need:

Though lords of all what seas embrace, yet he

   That wants himself is poor indeed.

Sunday Poetry XXXII -- TEXTBOOK POETRY 3.4

An Approach to Literature

Brooks, Purser, Warren

1952

Neutral Tones

Thomas Hardy

We stood by a pond that winter day,

And the sun was white, as though chidden of God,

And a few leaves lay on the starving sod;

         – They had fallen from an ash, and were gray.

Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove

Over tedious riddles of years ago;

And some words played between us to and fro

         On which lost the more by our love.

The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing

Alive enough to have strength to die;

And a grin of bitterness swept thereby

         Like an ominous bird a-wing….

Since then, keen lessons that love deceives,

And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me

Your face, and the God curst sun, and a tree,

         And a pond edged with grayish leaves.

To a Mouse

Robert Burns

Wee, sleekit, cowrin ,tim’rous beastie,

Oh, what a panic’s in thy breastie!

Thou need na start awa saw hasty

     Wi’ bickerin’ brattle!

O was be laith to rn an’ chase thee

     Wi’ murdering prattle!

I’m truly sorry man’s dominion

Has broken Nature’s social union,

An’ justifies that ill opinion

     Which makes thee startle

At me, thy poor earth-born companion,

     An’ fellow-mortal!

I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve:

What then? Poor beastie, thou maun live!

A daimen icker in a thrave

      ‘S a sma’ request;

I’ll get a blessin’ wi’ the lave,

     An’ never miss ‘t!

Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin!

It’s silly wa’s the win’s are strewin!

An’ naething, now, to big a new ane,

     O’ foggage green!

An’ bleak December’s winds ensuin,

     Baith snell an’ keen!

Thou saw the fields laid bare an’ waste,

An’ weary winter comin fast,

An’ cozie here, beneath the blast,

     Thou thought to dwell,

Till crash! the cruel coulter past

     Out thro’ thy cell.

That wee bit heap o’ leaves an’ stibble,

Has cost thee monie a weary nibble!

Now thou’s turn’d out, for a’ thy trouble,

     But house or hald,

To thole the winter’s sleety dribble,

     An’ cranreuch cauld!

But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,

In proving foresight may be vain;

The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men

     Gang aft agley,

An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,

     For promis’d joy!

Still thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me!

The present only toucheth thee:

But, och! I backward cast my e’e,

     On prospects drear!

An’ forward, tho’ I canna see,

     I guess an’ fear!

His Books

Robert Southey

My days among the Dead are past; 
     Around me I behold, 
Where'er these casual eyes are cast, 
     The mighty minds of old: 
My never-failing friends are they, 
With whom I converse day by day. 

With them I take delight in weal 
     And seek relief in woe; 
And while I understand and feel 
    How much to them I owe, 
My cheeks have often been bedew'd 
With tears of thoughtful gratitude. 

My thoughts are with the Dead; with them 
     I live in long-past years, 
Their virtues love, their faults condemn, 
     Partake their hopes and fears; 
And from their lessons seek and find 
Instruction with an humble mind. 

My hopes are with the Dead; anon 
     My place with them will be, 
And I with them shall travel on 
     Through all Futurity; 
Yet leaving here a name, I trust, 
That will not perish in the dust.

Fidele’s Dirge

William Shakespeare

Come away, come away, death, 
     And in sad cypres let me be laid; 
Fly away, fly away, breath; 
     I am slain by a fair cruel maid. 
My shroud of white, stuck all with yew, 
     O prepare it! 
My part of death, no one so true 
     Did share it. 

Not a flower, not a flower sweet, 
     On my black coffin let there be strown; 
Not a friend, not a friend greet 
     My poor corse, where my bones shall be thrown: 
A thousand thousand sighs to save, 
     Lay me, O, where 
Sad true lover never find my grave 
     To weep there!

Commemorative of a Naval Victory

Herman Melville

Sailors there are of the gentlest breed,
     Yet strong, like every goodly thing;
The discipline of arms refines,
     And the wave gives tempering.
     The damasked blade its beam can fling;
It lends the last grave grace:
The hawk, the hound, and sworded nobleman
     In Titian’s picture for a king,
Are of hunter or warrior race.

In social halls a favored guest
     In years that follow victory won,
How sweet to feel your festal fame
     In woman’s glance instinctive thrown:
     Repose is yours—your deed is known,
It musks the amber wine;
It lives, and sheds a light from storied days
     Rich as October sunsets brown,
Which make the barren place to shine.

But seldom the laurel wreath is seen
     Unmixed with pensive pansies dark;
There's a light and a shadow on every man
     Who at last attains his lifted mark—
     Nursing through night the ethereal spark.
Elate he never can be;
He feels that spirit which glad had hailed his worth,
     Sleep in oblivion.—The shark
Glides white through the phosphorus sea.

They Flee from Me

Sir Thomas Wyatt

They flee from me that sometime did me seek

     With naked foot, stalking in my chamber.

I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek,

     That now are wild and do not remember

     That sometime they put themself in danger

To take bread at my hand; and now they range,

Busily seeking with a continual change.

Thanked be fortune it hath been otherwise

     Twenty times better; but once in special,

In thin array after a pleasant guise,

     When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall,

     And she me caught in her arms long and small;

Therewithall sweetly did me kiss

And softly said, “Dear heart, how like you this?”

It was no dream: I lay broad waking.

     But all is turned thorough my gentleness

Into a strange fashion of forsaking;

     And I have leave to go of her goodness,

     And she also, to use newfangleness.

But since that I so kindly am served

I would fain know what she hath deserved.

Sunday Poetry XXXI -- TEXTBOOK POETRY 3.3

The subtitle for this section is about as off-putting as anything anywhere across the humongousness literature's pedagogy: "The Mechanics of Verse."  As far as my experience goes, this is the single most influential contributor to students' dislike nearly acatalectic (if you'll excuse the clearly slant usage there) poetry--even more so than just the difficulty of interpretation.  As I look at An Approach to Literature's editors' very limited selection (you'll see in a moment) for exemplifying and explaining the mechanics of poetry and versification, I can't decide if, on the one hand, they're really into it and, at that, only in its purest, most abstract form, or if they understand how dismal counting syllables can be and decided to keep it as short as possible.  But here's the problem: the section isn't short.  In word count, it certainly exceeds the previous two sections, but there are only (are you ready?) TWO POEMS.  (Section 4, by the way, has nearly thirty to choose from!)  Whether it would have been better for the editors to have included a dozen poems, or just two for the entire bloody concept I'll leave to you.  Here, then, I reproduce all of the poetry in this section--no personal selection necessary:

An Approach to Literature

Brooks, Purser, Warren

1952

That the Night Come

William Butler Yeats

She lived in storm and strife,

Her soul had such desire

For what proud death may bring

That it could not endure

The common good of life,

But lived as 'twere a king

That packed his marriage day

With banneret and pennon,

Trumpet and kettledrum,

And the outrageous cannon,

To bundle time away

That the night come.

Come Down, O Maid

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (clearly a favorite of the editors’)

Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height:
What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang),
In height and cold, the splendour of the hills?
But cease to move so near the Heavens, and cease
To glide a sunbeam by the blasted Pine,
To sit a star upon the sparkling spire;
And come, for Love is of the valley, come,
For Love is of the valley, come thou down
And find him; by the happy threshold, he,
Or hand in hand with Plenty in the maize,
Or red with spirted purple of the vats,
Or foxlike in the vine; nor cares to walk
With Death and Morning on the silver horns,
Nor wilt thou snare him in the white ravine,
Nor find him dropt upon the firths of ice,
That huddling slant in furrow-cloven falls
To roll the torrent out of dusky doors:
But follow; let the torrent dance thee down
To find him in the valley; let the wild
Lean-headed Eagles yelp alone, and leave
The monstrous ledges there to slope, and spill
Their thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke,
That like a broken purpose waste in air:
So waste not thou; but come; for all the vales
Await thee; azure pillars of the hearth
Arise to thee; the children call, and I
Thy shepherd pipe, and sweet is every sound,
Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet;
Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro' the lawn,
The moan of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmuring of innumerable bees.

Sunday Poetry [30] -- TEXTBOOK POETRY 3.2

I have to remind myself, especially as I’m going through a textbook with which I am surprisingly (so, at least, to me) sympathetic, that the point of this little endeavor (the textbook poetry entries) is to show poems with which I am not familiar, poems that indicate the type of the textbook containing them, and, of course, the first and last poems of the lot.  This is difficult here with this text, because I know and enjoy so much of the poetry; I want to include so much more than I should, and not because it’s new, but because I know it and love it.  Maybe that in and of itself is some indication of the type of the textbook I’m holding right now, or maybe it just bears witness against my overall well-roundedness.  There is, after all, so much out there to read that I haven’t even touched.

An Approach to Literature

Brooks, Purser, Warren

1952

The Eagle (included in section introduction as example)

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;

Close to the sun in lonely lands,

Ringed with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;

He watches from his mountain wall,

And like a thunderbolt he falls.

Silver (first of section collection)

Walter De La Mare

Slowly, silently, now the moon

Walks the night in her silver shoon;

Silver fruit upon silver trees;

One by one the casements catch

Her beams beneath the silvery thatch;

Couched in his kennel, like a log,

With paws of silver sleeps the dog;

From their shadowy cote the white breasts peep

Of doves in a silver-feathered sleep’

A harvest mouse goes scampering by,

With silver claws and a silver eye;

And moveless fish in the water gleam,

By silver reeds in a silver stream.

To Daffadills

Robert Herrick

Faire Daffadills, we weep to see

      You haste away so soone:

As yet the early-rising Sun

      Has not attain’d his Noone.

            Stay, stay,

         Until the hasting day

            Has run

         But to the Even-song;

And, having pray’d together, wee

         Will goe with you along.

We have short time to stay, as you,

      We have as short a Spring;

As quick a growth to meet Decay,

      As you, or any thing.

            We die,

      As your hours doe, and drie

            Away,

      Like to the Summers raine;

Or as the pearles of Mornings dew

         Ne’er to be found againe.

Nulla Fides

Patrick Carey

For God’s sake mark that fly:

See what a poor, weak, little thing it is.

When thou has marked and scorned it, know that this,

This little, poor, weak fly

Has killed a pope; can make an emp’ror die.

Behold you spark of fire;

How little hot!  how near to nothing ‘tis!

When thou hast done despising, know that this,

This contemned spark of fire,

Has burnt whole towns; can burn a world entire.

That crawling worm there see:

Ponder how ugly, filthy, vile it is.

When thou hast seen and loathed it, know that this,

This base worm thou dost see,

Has quite devoured thy parents; shall eat thee.

Honour, the world, and man,

What trifles are they; since most true it is

That this poor fly, this little spark, this

So much abhorred worm, can

Honour destroy; burn worlds; devour up man.

The Mower to the Glow-Worms

Andrew Marvell

Ye living lamps, by whose dear light

The Nightingale does sit so late,

And studying all the Summer-night,

Her matchless Songs does meditate;

Ye Country Comets, that portend

No War, nor Princes funeral,

Shining unto no higher end

Than to presage the Grasses fall;

Ye Glow-worms, whose officious Flame

To wandering Mowers shows the way,

That in the Night have lost their aim,

And after foolish Fires do stray;

Your courteous Lights in vain you waste,

Since Juliana here is come,

For She my Mind hath so displaced

That I shall never find my home.

Ode to the West Wind

Percy Bysshe Shelley

I.

O WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,

      Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead

Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

      Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,

Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,

      Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low,

      Each like a corpse within its grave, until

Thine azure sister of the spring shall blow

      Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill

(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)

      With living hues and odors plain and hill:

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;

Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!

II.

Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion,

      Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,

Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,

      Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread

On the blue surface of thine airy surge,

      Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

Of some fierce Mænad, even from the dim verge

      Of the horizon to the zenith's height,

The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge

      Of the dying year, to which this closing night

Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,

      Vaulted with all thy congregated might

Of vapors, from whose solid atmosphere

Black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst: oh hear!

III.

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams

      The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,

Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,

      Beside a pumice isle in Baiæ's bay,

And saw in sleep old palaces and towers

      Quivering within the wave's intenser day,

All overgrown with azure moss and flowers

      So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou

For whose path the Atlantic's level powers

      Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below

The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear

      The sapless foliage of the ocean, know

Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,

And tremble and despoil themselves: oh, hear!

IV.

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;

      If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;

A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share

      The impulse of thy strength, only less free

Than thou, O uncontrollable! if even

      I were as in my boyhood, and could be

The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven,

      As then, when to outstrip thy skyey speed

Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne'er have striven

      As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.

Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!

      I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed

One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

V.

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is;

      What if my leaves are falling like its own!

The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

      Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,

Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,

      My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe

      Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!

And, by the incantation of this verse,

      Scatter, as from an extinguished hearth

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

      Be through my lips to unwakened earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

*

Other poems in this section:

·         “The Man with the Hoe, Written After Seeing Millet’s World-Famous Painting,” by Edwin Markham

·         “The Woodpile,” by Robert Frost

·         “The Lotos Eaters,” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

·         “Mariana,” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

·         Sonnets 18, 73, and 97, by William Shakespeare

·         “Song,” by Edmund Waller

·         “The Bugle Song,” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

·         “The Tree of Man,” by A.E. Housman

·         “A Passer-By,” by Robert Bridges

·         “The Wild Swans at Coole,” by William Butler Yeats

·         “Hymn to Diana,” by Ben Johnson

·         “The Night-Piece to Julia,” by Robert Herrick

·         “God’s Grandeur,” by Gerard Manley Hopkins

·         “The Lamb” and “The Tiger,” by William Blake (two of my all-time favorite poems—seriously)