The Horses
Edwin Muir

Barely a twelvemonth after
The seven days war that put the world to sleep,
Late in the evening the strange horses came.
By then we had made our covenant with silence,
But in the first few days it was so still
We listened to our breathing and were afraid.
On the second day
The radios failed; we turned the knobs; no answer.
On the third day a warship passed us, heading north,
Dead bodies piled on the deck. On the sixth day
A plane plunged over us into the sea. Thereafter
Nothing. The radios dumb;
And still they stand in corners of our kitchens,
And stand, perhaps, turned on, in a million rooms
All over the world. But now if they should speak,
If on a sudden they should speak again,
If on the stroke of noon a voice should speak,
We would not listen, we would not let it bring
That old bad world that swallowed its children quick
At one great gulp. We would not have it again.
Sometimes we think of the nations lying asleep,
Curled blindly in impenetrable sorrow,
And then the thought confounds us with its strangeness.
The tractors lie about our fields; at evening
They look like dank sea-monsters couched and waiting.
We leave them where they are and let them rust:
'They'll molder away and be like other loam.'
We make our oxen drag our rusty plows,
Long laid aside. We have gone back
Far past our fathers' land.
And then, that evening
Late in the summer the strange horses came.
We heard a distant tapping on the road,
A deepening drumming; it stopped, went on again
And at the corner changed to hollow thunder.
We saw the heads
Like a wild wave charging and were afraid.
We had sold our horses in our fathers' time
To buy new tractors. Now they were strange to us
As fabulous steeds set on an ancient shield.
Or illustrations in a book of knights.
We did not dare go near them. Yet they waited,
Stubborn and shy, as if they had been sent
By an old command to find our whereabouts
And that long-lost archaic companionship.
In the first moment we had never a thought
That they were creatures to be owned and used.
Among them were some half a dozen colts
Dropped in some wilderness of the broken world,
Yet new as if they had come from their own Eden.
Since then they have pulled our plows and borne our loads
But that free servitude still can pierce our hearts.
Our life is changed; their coming our beginning.                             

Past One O'clock...
Vladimir Mayakovsky

Past one o’clock. You must have gone to bed.
The Milky Way streams silver through the night.
I’m in no hurry; with lightning telegrams
I have no cause to wake or trouble you.
And, as they say, the incident is closed.
Love’s boat has smashed against the daily grind.
Now you and I are quits. Why bother then
To balance mutual sorrows, pains, and hurts.
Behold what quiet settles on the world.
Night wraps the sky in tribute from the stars.
In hours like these, one rises to address
The ages, history, and all creation.

I Meant to Do My Work Today
Richard LeGallienne

I meant to do my work today-
   But a brown bird sang in the apple-tree,
And a butterfly flitted across the field,
   And all the leaves were calling me.

And the wind went sighing over the land
   Tossing the grasses to and fro,
And a rainbow held out its shining hand-
  So what could I do but laugh and go?

An English Night
Felix Dennis

9:45 on a fine June night,
I watch from the window and write and write
As the fields are lit by the blood-eyed flight
Of the westering sun— as trees ignite,
And the shadows lance in the slanted light,
Each leaf a halo of fire, more bright
Than the pale moon clothed in mottle and white,
Awaiting the arms of her purple knight.

Little is moving in Eden this night:
The ears of an owl on his branchy height,
Or the plop of a frog as he sinks from sight,
As a martin blurs like a sickle kite
Of gunmetal grey… and I write and write
This hymn of delight in an English light.

Deliverance
mine

Run to the bridge, captain, swell's mountain high,
The wreckers are out, and I fear we shall die.
Steer us to safety, as only you can,
There's fear in the eyes now, of every man.
The cargo is shifting, we're starting to list,
We can't see the land for the rain and the mist.
Deliver us, captain, to some sheltered bay,
Neither tempest nor wreckers shall have us today.
Our children are waiting, our wives holding tight
To the hope that the storm will not take us, tonight.
To heaven we look and to God we will pray,
But our captain's the one saving souls here this day.

Autumn
Walter De La Mare

There is a wind where the rose was;
Cold rain where sweet grass was;
And clouds like sheep
Stream o'er the steep
Grey skies where the lark was.

Nought gold where your hair was;
Nought warm where your hand was;
But phantom, forlorn,
Beneath the thorn,
Your ghost where your face was.

Sad winds where your voice was;
Tears, tears where my heart was;
And ever with me,
Child, ever with me,
Silence where hope was.

Beauty
John Masefield

I have seen dawn and sunset on moors and windy hills
Coming in solemn beauty like slow old tunes of Spain:
I have seen the lady April bringing the daffodils,
Bringing the springing grass and the soft warm April rain.

I have heard the song of the blossoms and the old chant of the sea,
And seen strange lands from under the arched white sails of ships;
But the loveliest things of beauty God ever has showed to me
Are her voice, and her hair, and eyes, and the dear red curve of her lips.

The Winter Galaxy
Charles Heavysege

The stars are glittering in the frosty sky,
Frequent as pebbles on a broad sea-coast;
And o'er the vault the cloud-like galaxy
Has marshalled its innumerable host.
Alive all heaven seems! with wondrous glow
Tenfold refulgent every star appears,
As if some wide, celestial gale did blow,
And thrice illume the ever-kindled spheres.
Orbs, with glad orbs rejoicing, burning, beam,
Ray-crowned, with lambent lustre in their zones,
Till o'er the blue, bespangled spaces seem
Angels and great archangels on their thrones;
A host divine, whose eyes are sparkling gems,
And forms more bright than diamond diadems.                             

The Song of Love
Ludwig Lewisohn

How shall I guard my soul so that it be
Touched not by thine? And how shall it be brought,
Lifted above thee, unto other things?
Ah, gladly would I hide it utterly
Lost in the dark where are no murmurings,
In strange and silent places that do not
Vibrate when thy deep soul quivers and sings.
But all that touches us two makes us twin
Even as the bow crossing the violin
Draws but one voice from the two strings that meet.
Upon what instrument are we two spanned?
And what great player has us in his hand?
O song most sweet.

Unrequited Love
Empress Eifuku (1271-1342)

If even now
in the midst of rejection
I still love him so,
then what would be my feelings
if he were to love me back?

Lunar Magic

Enchanted hare in golden barley lies,
With just a touch of madness in his eyes,
The harvest moon intensifies it's light,
Empowers in him the magic of the night.
And when dawn’s traces creep across the sky,
With joy, he wakes and leaps the barley high,
Then panting, rests and weaves an autumn spell,
While whispering winds Earth’s tale of winter tell.

Robin Redbreast
William Allingham

Good-bye, good-bye to Summer!
For Summer's nearly done;
The garden smiling faintly,
Cool breezes in the sun;
Our Thrushes now are silent,
Our Swallows flown away, --
But Robin's here, in coat of brown,
With ruddy breast-knot gay.
Robin, Robin Redbreast,
O Robin dear!
Robin singing sweetly
In the falling of the year.

Bright yellow, red, and orange,
The leaves come down in hosts;
The trees are Indian princes,
But soon they'll turn to ghosts;
The scanty pears and apples
Hang russet on the bough,
It's autumn, autumn, autumn late,
'Twill soon be Winter now.
Robin, Robin Redbreast,
O Robin dear!
And what will this poor Robin do?
For pinching times are near.

The fireside for the cricket,
The wheatstack for the mouse,
When trembling night-winds whistle
And moan all round the house.
The frosty ways like iron,
The branches plumed with snow, --
Alas! in Winter, dead and dark,
Where can poor Robin go?
Robin, Robin Redbreast,
O Robin dear!
And a crumb of bread for Robin,
His little heart to cheer.                             

Japanese Maple
Clive James

Your death, near now, is of an easy sort.
So slow a fading out brings no real pain.
Breath growing short
Is just uncomfortable. You feel the drain
Of energy, but thought and sight remain:

Enhanced, in fact. When did you ever see
So much sweet beauty as when fine rain falls
On that small tree
And saturates your brick back garden walls,
So many Amber Rooms and mirror halls?

Ever more lavish as the dusk descends
This glistening illuminates the air.
It never ends.
Whenever the rain comes it will be there,
Beyond my time, but now I take my share.

My daughter’s choice, the maple tree is new.
Come autumn and its leaves will turn to flame.
What I must do
Is live to see that. That will end the game
For me, though life continues all the same:

Filling the double doors to bathe my eyes,
A final flood of colors will live on
As my mind dies,
Burned by my vision of a world that shone
So brightly at the last, and then was gone.

   Renouncement Alice Meynell   I must not think of thee; and, tired yet strong,
I shun the thought that lurks in all delight—
The thought of thee—and in the blue Heaven’s height,
And in the sweetest passage of a song.
Oh, just beyond the fairest thoughts that throng
This breast, the thought of thee waits, hidden yet bright;
But it must never, never come in sight;
I must stop short of thee the whole day long.
But when sleep comes to close each difficult day,
When night gives pause to the long watch I keep,
And all my bonds I needs must loose apart,
Must doff my will as raiment laid away,—
With the first dream that comes with the first sleep
I run, I run, I am gathered to thy heart.

Daisy
Francis Thompson

Where the thistle lifts a purple crown
     Six foot out of the turf,
And the harebell shakes on the windy hill--
     O breath of the distant surf!--

The hills look over on the South,
     And southward dreams the sea;
And with the sea-breeze hand in hand
     Came innocence and she.

Where 'mid the gorse the raspberry
     Red for the gatherer springs;
Two children did we stray and talk
     Wise, idle, childish things.

She listened with big-lipped surprise,
     Breast-deep 'mid flower and spine:
Her skin was like a grape whose veins
     Run snow instead of wine.

She knew not those sweet words she spake,
     Nor knew her own sweet way;
But there's never a bird, so sweet a song
     Thronged in whose throat all day.

Oh, there were flowers in Storrington
     On the turf and on the spray;
But the sweetest flower on Sussex hills
     Was the Daisy-flower that day!

Her beauty smoothed earth's furrowed face.
     She gave me tokens three:--
A look, a word of her winsome mouth,
     And a wild raspberry.

A berry red, a guileless look,
     A still word,--strings of sand!
And yet they made my wild, wild heart
     Fly down to her little hand.

For standing artless as the air,
     And candid as the skies,
She took the berries with her hand,
     And the love with her sweet eyes.

The fairest things have fleetest end,
     Their scent survives their close:
But the rose's scent is bitterness
     To him that loved the rose.

She looked a little wistfully,
     Then went her sunshine way:--
The sea's eye had a mist on it,
     And the leaves fell from the day.

She went her unremembering way,
     She went and left in me
The pang of all the partings gone,
     And partings yet to be.

She left me marvelling why my soul
     Was sad that she was glad;
At all the sadness in the sweet,
     The sweetness in the sad.

Still, still I seemed to see her, still
     Look up with soft replies,
And take the berries with her hand,
     And the love with her lovely eyes.

Nothing begins, and nothing ends,
     That is not paid with moan,
For we are born in other's pain,
     And perish in our own.

Perhaps-
( To R.A.L. Died of wounds in France, December 23rd, 1915)
Vera Brittain

Perhaps some day the sun will shine again,
And I shall see that still the skies are blue,
And feel once more I do not live in vain,
Although bereft of You.

Perhaps the golden meadows at my feet
Will make the sunny hours of spring seem gay,
And I shall find the white May-blossoms sweet,
Though You have passed away.

Perhaps the summer woods will shimmer bright,
And crimson roses once again be fair,
And autumn harvest fields a rich delight,
Although You are not there.

Perhaps some day I shall not shrink in pain
To see the passing of the dying year,
And listen to Christmas songs again,
Although You cannot hear.' 

But though kind Time may many joys renew,
There is one greatest joy I shall not know
Again, because my heart for loss of You
Was broken, long ago.

Seat Ibiza, Party Time!

Seat Ibiza, party time!
A car that so deserves a rhyme!
'Quest for perfection,’ - short climb.

Not too pretentious - unassuming,
Saving the planet - low consuming.

Vague steering? Transmission shunting?
Hold the flags and hide the bunting!

Though overall, James thinks it’s fine,
I’ll go ahead and order mine.

When talking cars, he's quite a smarty,
Appears the Ibiza is quite hearty,
I'll provide the beer, let's have that party!

 

The Self-banished

Edmund Waller 1606-1687

 

It is not that I love you less

Than when before your feet I lay,

But to prevent the sad increase

Of hopeless love, I keep away.

In vain (alas!) for everything

Which I have known belong to you,

Your form does to my fancy bring,

And makes my old wounds bleed anew.

Who in the spring from the new sun

Already has a fever got,

Too late begins those shafts to shun,

Which Phœbus through his veins has shot.

Too late he would the pain assuage,

And to thick shadows does retire;

About with him he bears the rage,

And in his tainted blood the fire.

But vow’d I have, and never must

Your banish’d servant trouble you;

For if I break, you may distrust

The vow I made to love you, too.

If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking
Emily Dickinson

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.                             

'All sunsets are illusions to the eye...'
Felix Dennis

All sunsets are illusions to the eye;
No sun has ever set from mortal sight —
Our puny ball of mud spins in the sky
To stare upon the void men call the night.

All gods are but the churn of plow to seeds,
The chaff of priests mere superstitious cant.
Their words are perilous, judge by their deeds!
Their prophets profitless, mere beards and rant.

When imams pray in interstellar space
Five times a day — pray, which way must they face?
When bishops rage at inter-species love,
Shall demons mock below — or screech above?

All sunsets are illusions to the eye;
And we ourselves are gods— and all gods die.

A Leave-Taking
Algernon Charles Swinburne

Let us go hence, my songs; she will not hear.
Let us go hence together without fear;
Keep silence now, for singing-time is over,
And over all old things and all things dear.
She loves not you nor me as we all love her.
Yea, though we sang as angels in her ear,
She would not hear.

Let us rise up and part; she will not know.
Let us go seaward as the great winds go,
Full of blown sand and foam; what help is here?
There is no help, for all these things are so,
And all the world is bitter as a tear.
And how these things are, though ye strove to show,
She would not know.

Let us go home and hence; she will not weep.
We gave love many dreams and days to keep,
Flowers without scent, and fruits that would not grow,
Saying, `If thou wilt, thrust in thy sickle and reap.'
All is reaped now; no grass is left to mow;
And we that sowed, though all we fell on sleep,
She would not weep.

Let us go hence and rest; she will not love.
She shall not hear us if we sing hereof,
Nor see love's ways, how sore they are and steep.
Come hence, let be, lie still; it is enough.
Love is a barren sea, bitter and deep;
And though she saw all heaven in flower above,
She would not love.

Let us give up, go down; she will not care.
Though all the stars made gold of all the air,
And the sea moving saw before it move
One moon-flower making all the foam-flowers fair;
Though all those waves went over us, and drove
Deep down the stifling lips and drowning hair,
She would not care.

Let us go hence, go hence; she will not see.
Sing all once more together; surely she,
She too, remembering days and words that were,
Will turn a little toward us, sighing; but we,
We are hence, we are gone, as though we had not been there.
Nay, and though all men seeing had pity on me,
She would not see.                             

 

Nostalgia

Louis MacNeice

In cock-wattle sunset or grey
Dawn when the dagger
Points again of longing.
For what was never home
We needs must turn away
From the voices that cry ‘ Come,’
That under-sea ding-donging.

Dingle-dongle, bells and bluebells,
Snapdragon, solstice, lunar lull,
The wasp circling the honey
Or the lamp soft on the snow -
These are the times at which
The will is vulnerable,
The trigger-finger slow,
The spirit lonely.

These are the times at which
Aloneness is too ripe
When homesick for the hollow
Heart of the Milky Way
The soundless clapper calls
And we would follow
But earth and will are stronger
And nearer - and we stay.

Rocky Robin
Mine

I saw a bird, a bird saw me,
I was sat on the bench, he was perched in a tree,
I was startled, when he started to speak to me,
Asking,

“Are you sure that you are really free?”

Well, I thought it would be rude, not to reply,
So, I turned around to face him, eye to eye,
To be honest I was baffled and was standing by,
Because I thought that, at that moment, he was bound to fly.

“Were we put on this Earth to live, or die?”

But, casually he pecked at a passing bee,
Before again turning his full attention to me,
With a sweet song he was spouting, philosophically,
A spindle-legged, fluff-ball, emissary.

“Do you think that here on Earth you have supremacy?”

“We came before you in the order of things,
All manner of beasts and us with wings,
Ask a bird or a leviathan, why he sings.”

I awoke from my dream, trying to understand,
Became aware of the robin eating out of my hand.
Grateful for his trust and the words, unspoken,
Knew that when he left, I would be heartbroken.

 

 

In The Highlands
R. L. Stevenson

In the highlands, in the country places,
Where the old plain men have rosy faces,
   And the young fair maidens
   Quiet eyes;
Where essential silence cheers and blesses,
And for ever in the hill-recesses
   Her more lovely music
   Broods and dies--

O to mount again where erst I haunted;
Where the old red hills are bird-enchanted,
   And the low green meadows
   Bright with sward;
And when even dies, the million-tinted,
And the night has come, and planets glinted,
   Lo, the valley hollow
   Lamp-bestarr'd!

O to dream, O to awake and wander
There, and with delight to take and render,
   Through the trance of silence,
   Quiet breath!
Lo! for there, among the flowers and grasses,
Only the mightier movement sounds and passes;
   Only winds and rivers,
   Life and death.                             

Part of Plenty
Bernard Spencer

When she carries food to the table and stoops down
- Doing this out of love - and lays soup with its good
Tickling smell, or fry winking from the fire
And I look up, perhaps from the book I am reading
Or other work: there is an importance of beauty
Which can't be accounted for by there and then,
And attacks me, but not separately from the welcome
Of the food, or the grace of her arms.

When she puts a sheaf of tulips in a jug
And pours in water and presses to one side
The upright stems and leaves that you hear creak,
Or loosens them, or holds them up to show me,
So that I see the tangle of their necks and cups
With the curls of her hair, and the body they are held
Against, and the stalk of the small waist rising
And flowering in the shape of breasts;

Whether in the bringing of the flowers or the food
She offers plenty, and is part of plenty,
And whether I see her stooping, or leaning with the flowers,
What she does is ages old, and she is not simply,
No, but lovely in that way.

In Memoriam Private D Sutherland
killed in action in the German trench May 16th 1916
and the others who died
Ewart A Mackintosh

So you were David's father,
And he was your only son,
And the new-cut peats are rotting
And the work is left undone,
Because of an old man weeping,
Just an old man in pain,
For David, his son David,
That will not come again.  

Oh, the letters he wrote you
And I can see them still,
Not a word of the fighting
But just the sheep on the hill
And how you should get the crops in
Ere the year got stormier,
And the Bosches have got his body,
And I was his officer.  

You were only David's father,
But I had fifty sons
When we went up in the evening
Under the arch of the guns,
And we came back at twilight-
O God! I heard them call
To me for help and pity
That could not help at all.  

Oh, never will I forget you,
My men that trusted me,
More my sons than your fathers',
For they could only see
The little helpless babies
And the young men in their pride.
They could not see you dying,
And hold you when you died.  

Happy and young and gallant,
They saw their first-born go,
But not the strong limbs broken
And the beautiful men brought low,
The piteous writhing bodies,
They screamed 'Don't leave me, sir"
For they were only your fathers
But I was your officer.

This poem arrived in a letter after his death, fighting in Tunisia 1943

Woman of Sleep
Richard Spender

Tempt me not with dalliance, Woman of Sleep
Light-footed and swift, to the silk couch of night
For here, though your lips and your arms offer love,
You are sold to the terrors that hide from the light.

I have passed you at dark in the folds of the hills,
Heard you low singing, would fain have turned back,
But I saw the smooth Treachery kissing your mouth,
Death leered through your tresses and clung to your back.

Come to me, rather, as sister or mother,
When I, closing my eyes in the cool mid-day breeze,
May imagine the sunshine that splinters through woods
And floods the warm meadows I left overseas.

Woman of Sleep, though men woo you by starlight,
I greet you by sun when you cannot betray,
As now as - half dreaming - some African bird
Is a sweet thrush that sings to the Tees far away.

In sunlight and safety then, let me sink deeper,
Hearing the sounds that once made the night good:
The cawing of rooks soaring home 'cross the sun,
The last bark of a dog beyond Ettington wood.

But bring not at dusk your breast for my head
As when we made love in the years without care,
For I have seen men, who had kissed you in darkness,
Wake to your cold sister Death's chilly stare.

Something Useful
Mine

It's in the kitchen drawer...
But I don't know what it's for!
Think I bought it on a whim
And then hid the cost from Him.
I'm sure it's something useful,
Believe me I have tried
To peel and chop some onions,
till I cried and cried and cried!

It's sort of round and bendy
but it's not a garlic press.
When I tried to squeeze the lemons
It was leaving quite a mess.
It's not a nutmeg grinder or
a rotary steel grater.
Although, I might give it a go...
We're having cheese sauce, later.

Well, oops, that's solved the mystery,
No longer need to ponder,
Turns out, it wasn't mine at all,
But a part for Little Honda!

*************************************************



Remembrance (TimeTicking)

It's in the kitchen drawer...
A gold watch, an old watch,
For service to the industry,
But it's so much more.

It represents a lifetime's toil...
His work, hard work,
Year on year of loyalty,
Like his father, before.

And yet it is a ladies watch...
Her watch, his wife's watch,
Mother to his dynasty,
Lovers, fifty years and more.

I'll take it, and wind it
And wear it, and bear it,
Remembering my parents,
With the loss still raw.

The Indian Serenade
P B Shelley

I arise from dreams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low,
And the stars are shining bright
I arise from dreams of thee,
And a spirit in my feet
Hath led me--who knows how?
To thy chamber window, Sweet!

The wandering airs they faint
On the dark, the silent stream--
The champak odors fail
Like sweet thoughts in a dream;
The nightingale's complaint,
It dies upon her heart;
As I must on thine,
Oh, beloved as thou art!

O lift me from the grass!
I die! I faint! I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain
On my lips and eyelids pale.
My cheek is cold and white, alas!
My heart beats loud and fast;--
Oh! press it to thine own again,
Where it will break at last.                             

 

The Retired Cat
William Cowper

A poet’s cat, sedate and grave
As poet well could wish to have,
Was much addicted to inquire
For nooks to which she might retire,
And where, secure as mouse in chink,
She might repose, or sit and think.
I know not where she caught the trick—
Nature perhaps herself had cast her
In such a mould philosophique,
Or else she learn’d it of her master.
Sometimes ascending, debonnair,
An apple-tree, or lofty pear,
Lodged with convenience in the fork,
She watch’d the gardener at his work;
Sometimes her ease and solace sought
In an old empty watering pot:
There, wanting nothing save a fan,
To seem some nymph in her sedan
Apparell’d in exactest sort,
And ready to be borne to court.
But love of change, it seems, has place
Not only in our wiser race;
Cats also feel, as well as we,
That passion’s force, and so did she.
Her climbing, she began to find,
Exposed her too much to the wind,
And the old utensil of tin
Was cold and comfortless within:
She therefore wish’d instead of those
Some place of more serene repose,
Where neither cold might come, nor air
Too rudely wanton with her hair,
And sought it in the likeliest mode
Within her master’s snug abode.
A drawer, it chanced, at bottom lined
With linen of the softest kind,
With such as merchants introduce
From India, for the ladies’ use,
A drawer impending o’er the rest,
Half open in the topmost chest,
Of depth enough, and none to spare,
Invited her to slumber there;
Puss, with delight beyond expression,
Survey’d the scene, and took possession.
Recumbent at her ease, ere long,
And lull’d by her own humdrum song,
She left the cares of life behind,
And slept as she would sleep her last,
When in came, housewifely inclined,
The chambermaid, and shut it fast;
By no malignity impell’d,
But all unconscious whom it held.
Awaken’d by the shock (cried Puss)
“Was ever cat attended thus?
The open drawer was left, I see,
Merely to prove a nest for me,
For soon as I was well composed,
Then came the maid, and it was closed.
How smooth these ‘kerchiefs, and how sweet!
O what a delicate retreat!
I will resign myself to rest
Till Sol, declining in the west,
Shall call to supper, when, no doubt,
Susan will come and let me out.”
The evening came, the sun descended,
And Puss remain’d still unattended.
The night roll’d tardily away
(With her indeed ‘twas never day),
The sprightly morn her course renew’d,
The evening grey again ensued,
And Puss came into mind no more
Than if entomb’d the day before,
With hunger pinch’d, and pinch’d for room,
She now presaged approaching doom,
Nor slept a single wink, or purr’d,
Conscious of jeopardy incurr’d.
That night, by chance, the poet watching,
Heard an inexplicable scratching;
His noble heart went pit-a-pat,
And to himself he said—“What’s that?”
He drew the curtain at his side,
And forth he peep’d, but nothing spied.
Yet, by his ear directed, guess’d
Something imprison’d in the chest,
And, doubtful what, with prudent care
Resolved it should continue there.
At length a voice which well he knew,
A long and melancholy mew,
Saluting his poetic ears,
Consoled him and dispell’d his fears:
He left his bed, he trod the floor,
He ‘gan in haste the drawers explore,
The lowest first, and without stop
The rest in order to the top.
For ‘tis a truth well known to most,
That whatsoever thing is lost,
We seek it, ere it come to light,
In every cranny but the right.
Forth skipp’d the cat, not now replete
As erst with airy self-conceit,
Nor in her own fond apprehension
A theme for all the world’s attention,
But modest, sober, cured of all
Her notions hyperbolical,
And wishing for a place of rest
Any thing rather than a chest.
Then stepp’d the poet into bed
With this reflection in his head:
moral.
Beware of too sublime a sense
Of your own worth and consequence:
The man who dreams himself so great,
And his importance of such weight,
That all around, in all that’s done,
Must move and act for him alone,
Will learn in school of tribulation
The folly of his expectation.

 

A great poet is no longer with us.

Adieu!

Felix Dennis

Chance makes brothers but hearts make friends,
Here then, before our friendship ends
As now it must, my friend, be glad
For what we shared — for what we had.
How late we learned, how little we knew
Of those who stood, blade-straight, steel-true
To brace when push had come to shove:
Chance makes brothers — but hearts make love!



 At Midnight

Sara Teasdale

Now at last I have come to see what life is,
Nothing is ever ended, everything only begun,
And the brave victories that seem so splendid
Are never really won.

Even love that I built my spirit's house for,
Comes like a brooding and a baffled guest,
And music and men's praise and even laughter
Are not so good as rest.                             

The BlueBell Wood
Felix Dennis

We walked within an ancient wood
Beside the Heart-of-England way
Where oak and beech and hazel stood,
Their leaves the pale shades of May.

By bole and bough, still black with rain,
The sunlight filtered where it would
Across a glowing, radiant stain—
We stood within a bluebell wood!

And stood and stood, both lost for words,
As all around the woodland rang
And echoed with the cries of birds
Who sang and sang and sang and sang…

My mind has marked that afternoon
To hoard against life’s stone and sling;
Should I go late, or I go soon,
The bluebells glow— the birds still sing.

Moon Sonnet
Mine

Of all the things the moon has seen,
Pale, drifting sphere, silent, serene,
She keeps all secrets held, embraced,
Forever in her heart encased.
Invisibly shackled by Earth's force
On an eternal, tethered course,
A captive then, who rules the tides;
The jealous cloud, her beauty hides.
She haunts the sky by day, unseen;
At night parades in borrowed light,
And poets bow before their queen,
And lovers vow within her sight.
And when she rises, takes her throne,
She makes the souls of men her own.

Silent Service
Siegfried Sassoon

Now, multifold, let Britain's patient power
Be proven within us for the world to see,
None are exempt from service in this hour;
And vanquished in ourselves we dare not be.
Now, for a sunlit future, we can show
The clenched resolved endurance that defies
Daemons in dark, - and toward that future go
With earth's defended freedom in our eyes.
In every separate soul let courage shine -
A kneeling angel holding faith's front-line.

 

The Going
Thomas Hardy

Why did you give no hint that night
That quickly after the morrow's dawn,
And calmly, as if indifferent quite,
You would close your term here, up and be gone
Where I could not follow
With wing of swallow
To gain one glimpse of you ever anon!

Never to bid good-bye
Or lip me the softest call,
Or utter a wish for a word, while I
Saw morning harden upon the wall,
Unmoved, unknowing
That your great going
Had place that moment, and altered all.

Why do you make me leave the house
And think for a breath it is you I see
At the end of the alley of bending boughs
Where so often at dusk you used to be;
Till in darkening dankness
The yawning blankness
Of the perspective sickens me!

You were she who abode
By those red-veined rocks far West,
You were the swan-necked one who rode
Along the beetling Beeny Crest,
And, reining nigh me,
Would muse and eye me,
While Life unrolled us its very best.

Why, then, latterly did we not speak,
Did we not think of those days long dead,
And ere your vanishing strive to seek
That time's renewal? We might have said,
"In this bright spring weather
We'll visit together
Those places that once we visited."

Well, well! All's past amend,
Unchangeable. It must go.
I seem but a dead man held on end
To sink down soon. . . . O you could not know
That such swift fleeing
No soul foreseeing--
Not even I--would undo me so!           

To........
Thomas Moore

'Tis time, I feel, to leave thee now,
While yet my soul is something free;
While yet those dangerous eyes allow
One minute's thought to stray from thee.

Oh! thou art every instant dearer-
Every chance that brings me nigh thee
Brings my ruin nearer, nearer,--
I am lost, unless I fly thee!

Nay, if thou dost not scorn and hate me,
Wish me not so soon to fall
Duties, fame, and hopes await me,
Oh! that eye would blast them all!

Yes, yes, it would - for thou'rt cold
As ever yet allured and swayed,
And wouldst, without a sigh, behold
The ruin which thyself had made.

Yet - could I think that, truly fond,
That eye but once would smile on me,
Good Heaven! how much, how far beyond
Fame, duty, hope, that smile would be!

Oh! but to win it, night and day,
Inglorious at thy feet reclined,
I'd sigh my dreams of fame away,
The world for thee forgot, resigned!

But no, no, no - farewell - we part,
Never to meet, no, never, never -
Oh woman, what a mind and heart
Thy coldness has undone forever!

Weathers
Thomas Hardy

This is the weather the cuckoo likes,
And so do I;
When showers betumble the chestnut spikes,
And nestlings fly;
And the little brown nightingale bills his best,
And they sit outside at 'The Traveller's Rest,'
And maids come forth sprig-muslin drest,
And citizens dream of the south and west,
And so do I.

This is the weather the shepherd shuns,
And so do I;
When beeches drip in browns and duns,
And thresh and ply;
And hill-hid tides throb, throe on throe,
And meadow rivulets overflow,
And drops on gate bars hang in a row,
And rooks in families homeward go,
And so do I.           

 

Woolly Thoughts

 

I've had this jumper twenty years... or more,

It was bought, I think, in nineteen ninety four.
Wow!

Last century, when I was young and green.

Impossible that I could have foreseen
The life that I now have, a global star;
A happenstance that's taken me so far.

 

Yet, the only thought that makes me starry-eyed,

Is, I'm loved by that sweet Woman by my side.

Some things, like people, we can't bear to part with,

But all that counts is, who you share your heart with.