Silence - Thomas Hood

There is a silence where hath been no sound,
There is a silence where no sound may be,
In the cold grave—under the deep deep sea,
Or in the wide desert where no life is found,
Which hath been mute, and still must sleep profound;
No voice is hush’d—no life treads silently,
But clouds and cloudy shadows wander free,
That never spoke, over the idle ground:
But in green ruins, in the desolate walls
Of antique palaces, where Man hath been,
Though the dun fox, or wild hyena, calls,
And owls, that flit continually between,
Shriek to the echo, and the low winds moan,
There the true Silence is, self-conscious and alone.

Thomas Hood (n. Londres, 23 de maio de 1799, † Devonshire Lodge, Finchley Road (Londres), 3 de maio de 1845)

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Jean / Joaninha - Robert Burns

Flores - imagem daqui

OF a' the airts the wind can blaw,
I dearly like the west,
For there the bonnie lassie lives,
The lassie I lo'e best:
There wild woods grow, and rivers row,
And monie a hill between;
But day and night may fancy's flight
Is ever wi' my Jean.

I see her in the dewy flowers,
I see her sweet and fair:
I hear her in the tunefu' birds,
I hear her charm the air:
There's not a bonnie flower that springs
By fountain, shaw, or green;
There's not a bonnie bird that sings,
But minds me o' my Jean.

Em Português

Anda alegria no vento
sempre que vem do sol-pôr:
lá donde vive a serrana
que me enfeitiçou d’amor...
Lá nos montes, pelas fontes,
pelos pinhais, vai sozinha…
A cada momento, o vento
me faz lembrar - Joaninha!

Vejo-as nas florinhas tenras,
que dá graça de as olhar;
ouça-a no trilo das aves
que põe bruxedo no ar:
a papoila que floresce
por entre a messe, ou na vinha,
o rouxinol que gorjeia,
só me dizem - Joaninha!

trad. Luís Cardim - in Rosa do Mundo 2001 Poemas para o Futuro, Assírio & Alvim

Robert Burns (b. Alloway, Ayrshire, Scotland, 25 Jan. 1759; d. Dumfries, Scotland 21 Jul 1796).

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Poem for a birthday - Sylvia Plath

1. Who

The month of flowering’s finished. The fruit’s in,
Eaten or rotten. I am all mouth.
October’s the month for storage.

The shed’s fusty as a mummy’s stomach:
Old tools, handles and rusty tusks.
I am at home here among the dead heads.

Let me sit in a flowerpot,
The spiders won’t notice.
My heart is a stopped geranium.

If only the wind would leave my lungs alone.
Dogsbody noses the petals. They bloom upside down.
They rattle like hydrangea bushes.

Mouldering heads console me,
Nailed to the rafters yesterday:
Inmates who don’t hibernate.

Cabbageheads: wormy purple, silver-glaze,
A dressing of mule ears, mothy pelts, but green-hearted,
Their veins white as porkfat.

O the beauty of usage!
The orange pumpkins have no eyes.
These halls are full of women who think they are birds.

This is a dull school.
I am a root, a stone, an owl pellet,
Without dreams of any sort.

Mother, you are the one mouth
I would be a tongue to. Mother of otherness
Eat me. Wastebasket gaper, shadow of doorways.

I said: I must remember this, being small.
There were such enormous flowers,
Purple and red mouths, utterly lovely.

The hoops of blackberry stems made me cry.
Now they light me up like an electric bulb.
For weeks I can remember nothing at all.

2. Dark House

This is a dark house, very big.
I made it myself,
Cell by cell from a quiet corner,
Chewing at the grey paper,
Oozing the glue drops,
Whistling, wiggling my ears,
Thinking of something else.

It has so many cellars,
Such eelish delvings!
U an round as an owl,
I see by my own light.
Any day I may litter puppies
Or mother a horse. My belly moves.
I must make more maps.

These marrowy tunnels!
Moley-handed, I eat my way.
All-mouth licks up the bushes
And the pots of meat.
He lives in an old well,
A stoney hole. He’s to blame.
He’s a fat sort.

Pebble smells, turnipy chambers.
Small nostrils are breathing.
Little humble loves!
Footlings, boneless as noses,
It is warm and tolerable
In the bowel of the root.
Here’s a cuddly mother.

3. Maenad

Once I was ordinary:
Sat by my father’s bean tree
Eating the fingers of wisdom.
The birds made milk.
When it thundered I hid under a flat stone.

The mother of mouths didn’t love me.
The old man shrank to a doll.
O I am too big to go backward:
Birdmilk is feathers,
The bean leaves are dumb as hands.

This month is fit for little.
The dead ripen in the grapeleaves.
A red tongue is among us.
Mother, keep out of my barnyard,
I am becoming another.

Dog-head, devourer:
Feed me the berries of dark.
The lids won’t shut. Time
Unwinds from the great umbilicus of the sun
Its endless glitter.

I must swallow it all.

Lady, who are these others in the moon’s vat —
Sleepdrunk, their limbs at odds?
In this light the blood is black.
Tell me my name.

4. The Beast

He was the bullman earlierm
King of the dish, my lucky animal.
Breathing was easy in his airy holding.
The sun sat in his armpit.
Nothing went moldy. The little invisibles
Waited on him hand and foot.
The blue sisters sent me to another school.
Monkey lived under the dunce cap.
He kept blowing me kisses.
I hardly knew him.

He won’t be got rid of:
Memblepaws, teary and sorry,
Fido Littlesoul, the bowel’s unfamiliar.
A dustbin’s enough for him.
The dark’s his bone.
Call him any name, he’ll come to it.

Mud-sump, happy sty face.
I’ve married a cupboard of rubbish.
I bed in a fish puddle.
Down here the sky is always falling.
Hogwallow’s at the window.
The star bugs won’t save me this mouth.
I housekeep in Time’s gut-end
Among emmets and mollusks,
Duchess of Nothing,
Hairtusk’s bride.

5. Flute Notes From A Reedy Pond

Now coldness comes sifting down, layer after layer,
To our bower at the lily root.
Overhead the old umbrellas of summer
Wither like pithless hands. There is little shelter.

Hourly the eye of the sky enlarges its blank
Dominion. The stars are no nearer.
Already frog-mouth and fish-mouth drink
The liquor of indolence, and all thing sink

Into a soft caul of forgetfulness.
The fugitive colors die.
Caddis worms drowse in their silk cases,
The lamp-headed nymphs are nodding to sleep like statues.

Puppets, loosed from the strings of the puppetmaster
Wear masks of horn to bed.
This is not death, it is something safer.
The wingy myths won’t tug at us anymore:

The molts are tongueless that sang from above the water
Of golgotha at the tip of a reed,
And how a god flimsy as a baby’s finger
Shall unhusk himself and steer into the air.

6. Witch Burning

In the marketplace they are piling the dry sticks.
A thicket of shadows is a poor coat. I inhabit
The wax image of myself, a doll’s body.
Sickness begins here: I am the dartboard for witches.
Only the devil can eat teh devil out.
In the month of red leaves I climb to a bed of fire.

It is easy to blame the dark: the mouth of a door,
The cellar’s belly. They’ve blown my sparkler out.
A black-sharded lady keeps me in parrot cage.
What large eyes the dead have!
I am intimate with a hairy spirit.
Smoke wheels from the beak of this empty jar.

If I am a little one, I can do no harm.
If I don’t move about, I’ll knock nothing over. So I said,
Sitting under a potlid, tiny and inert as a rice grain.
They are turning the burners up, ring after ring.
We are full of starch, my small white fellows. We grow.
It hurts at first. The red tongues will teach the truth.

Mother of beetles, only unclench your hand:
I’ll fly through the candles’ mouth like a singeless moth.
Give me back my shape. I am ready to construe the days
I coupled with dust in the shadow of a stone.
My ankles brighten. Brightness ascends my thighs.
I am lost, I am lost, in the roves of all this light.

7.The Stones

This is the city where men are mended.
I lie on a great anvil.
The flat blue sky-circle

Flew off like the hat of a doll
When I fell out of the light. I entered
The stomach of indifference, the wordless cupboard.

The mother of pestles diminished me.
I became a still pebble.
The stones of de belly were peaceable,

The head-stone quiet, jostled by nothing.
Only the mouth-hole piped out,
Importunate cricket

In a quarry of silences.
The people of the city heard it.
They hunted the stones, taciturn and separate,

The mouth-hole crying their locations.
Drunk as a foetus
I suck the paps of darkness.

The food tubes embrace me. Sponges kiss my lichens away.
The jewelmaster drives his chisel to pry
Open one stone eye.

This is the after-hell: I see the light.
A wind unstoppers the chamber
Of the ear, old worrier.

Sylvia Plath (n. Boston, Massachusetts, 27 de outubro de 1932; m. Londres 11 de fevereiro de 1963)

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Decisão / Resolve - Sylvia Plath

Dia nublado: dia cinzento

fico
de mãos bobas
esperando o leiteiro

o gato de uma orelha
lambe a pata cinza

e ardem brasas em chamas

lá fora, vão ficando amarelinhas
as folhas da trepadeira
uma fina fita de leite
embaça garrafas vazias na janela

nenhuma glória provém

duas gotas se equilibram
numa verde envergada
haste da roseira na casa ao lado

ó se arca de espinhos

o gato afia as garras
o mundo gira

hoje
hoje não irei
desiludir meus doze engalanados examinadores
nem cerrarei meu punho
na ironia do vento.

Trad. Elson Fróes


ORIGINAL VERSION

RESOLVE


Day of mist: day of tarnish

with hands
unserviceable, I wait
for the milk van

the one-eared cat
laps its gray paw

and the coal fire burns

outside, the little hedge leaves are
become quite yellow
a milk-film blurs
the empty bottles on the windowsill

no glory descends

two water drops poise
on the arched green
stem of my neighbor's rose bush

o bent bow of thorns

the cat unsheathes its claws
the world turns

today
today I will not
disenchant my twelve black-gowned examiners
or bunch my fist
in the wind's sneer.

Sylvia Plath (n. Boston, Massachusetts, 27 de outubro de 1932; m. Londres 11 de fevereiro de 1963)

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Soneto: Não será sempre assim... Quando não for; / It may not always be so; and I say - E. E. Cummings

Não será sempre assim... Quando não for;
Quando teus lábios forem de outro; quando
No rosto de outro o teu suspiro brando
Soprar; quando em silêncio, ou no maior

Delírio de palavras desvairando,
Ao teu peito o estreitares com fervor;
Quando, um dia, em frieza e desamor
Tua afeição por mim se for trocando:

Se tal acontecer; fala-me. Irei
Procurá-lo, dizer-lhe num sorriso:
«Goza a ventura de que já gozei.»

Depois, desviando os olhos, de improviso,
Longe, ah tão longe, um pássaro ouvirei
Cantar no meu perdido paraíso.

(Tradução de Manuel Bandeira)

em Rosa do Mundo, 2001 Poemas para o Futuro, Assírio & Alvim

ORIGINAL

it may not always be so; and i say
that if your lips, which i have loved, should touch
another's, and your dear strong fingers clutch
his heart, as mine in time not far away;
if on another's face your sweet hair lay
in such a silence as i know, or such
great writhing words as, uttering overmuch,
stand helplessly before the spirit at bay;

if this should be, i say if this should be-
you of my heart, send me a little word;
that i may go unto him, and take his hands,
saying, Accept all happiness from me.
Then shall i turn my face, and hear one bird
sing terribly afar in the lost lands.

Edward Estlin Cummings (b. on 14 Oct. 1894 in Cambridge, Massachusetts; d. on 3 Sep. 1962 in North Conway, New Hampshire)

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I love my Jean - Robert Burns

Anda alegria no vento
sempre que vem do sol-pôr:
lá donde vive a serrana
que me enfeitiçou d’amor…
Lá nos montes, pelas fontes,
pelos pinhais, vai sozinha…
A cada momento, o vento
me faz lembrar — Joaninha!

Vejo-a nas florinhas tenras,
que dá graça de as olhar;
ouço-a no trilo das aves
que põe bruxedo no ar:
a papoila que floresce
por entre a messe, ou a vinha,
o rouxinol que gorjeia,
só me dizem — Joaninha!

(original)

Of all the airts the wind can blaw
I dearly like the west
For there the bonnie Lassie lives
The Lassie I love best
There’s wild-woods grow, and rivers row
And mony a hill between
But day and night my fancy’s flight
Is ever way my Jean

I see her in the Dewy flowers
I see her sweet and fair
I hear her in the tuneful birds
I hear her charm the air
There’s not a bonnie flower, that springs
By a fountain, shaw, or green
There’s not a bonnie bird that sings
But minds me o‚ my Jean

Robert Burns (b. 25 January 1759, Alloway, Ayrshire, Scotland – d. 21 July 1796, Dumfries, Scotland)

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Désespoir - Oscar Wilde

The seasons send their ruin as they go,
For in the spring the narciss shows its head
Nor withers till the rose has flamed to red,
And in the autumn purple violets blow,
And the slim crocus stirs the winter snow;
Wherefore yon leafless trees will bloom again
And this grey land grow green with summer rain
And send up cowslips for some boy to mow.

But what of life whose bitter hungry sea
Flows at our heels, and gloom of sunless night
Covers the days which never more return?
Ambition, love and all the thoughts that burn
We lose too soon, and only find delight
In withered husks of some dead memory.

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (Dublin, Irland 16 Oct. 1854 – Paris, France, 30 nov. 1900)

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Loveliest Poem - Arvo Turtiainen

The loveliest poem is born
when you are close to someone,
when tenderness,
simple and boundless,
without questions
flows from one to the other.

You do not forget the loveliest poem.
It is stamped on your forehead, eyes,
lips and heart,
stamped for lovers to read,
for lovers to surrender.

Arvo Turtiainen (Helsinqui, 16 september 1904 - 8 october 1980)

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Love Poem for No-one in Particular - Mark O'Brien

Let me touch you with my words
For my hands lie limp as empty gloves
Let my words stroke your hair
Slide down your backand tickle your belly
Ignore my wishes and stubbornly refuse to carry out my quietest desires
Let my words enter your mind bearing torches

admit them willingly into your being
so they may caress you gently
within

Mark O'Brien (Boston, Massachusetts, July 31, 1949 – July 4, 1999)

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The Portrait - Stanley Kunitz

My mother never forgave my father
for killing himself,
especially at such an awkward time
and in a public park,
that spring
when I was waiting to be born.
She locked his name
in her deepest cabinet
and would not let him out,
though I could hear him thumping.
When I came down from the attic
with the pastel portrait in my hand
of a long-lipped stranger
with a brave moustache
and deep brown level eyes,
she ripped it into shreds
without a single word
and slapped me hard.
In my sixty-fourth year
I can feel my cheek
still burning.

Stanley Jasspon Kunitz (b. 29 July 1905 in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA Died 14 May 2006 in New York City, New York, USA)

Read also
The Layers
Passing Through
A Zanga / The Quarrell

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The Layers - Stanley Kunitz

I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
“Live in the layers,
not on the litter.”
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.

from The Collected Poems of Stanley Kunitz (W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 2002)

Stanley Jasspon Kunitz (b. 29 July 1905 in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA Died 14 May 2006 in New York City, New York, USA)

Read also Passing Through

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Soneto 28 de William Shakespeare, versão de Carlos de Oliveira

Como voltar feliz ao meu trabalho
se a noite não me deu nenhum sossego?
A noite, o dia, cartas dum baralho
sempre trocadas neste jogo cego.

Eles dois, inimigos de mãos dadas,
me torturam, envolvem no seu cerco
de fadiga, de dúbias madrugadas:
e tu, quanto mais sofro mais te perco.

Digo ao dia que brilhas para ele,
Que desfazes as nuvens do seu rosto;
digo à noite sem estrelas que és o mel

na sua pele escura: o oiro, o gosto.
Mas dia a dia alonga-se a jornada
e cada noite a noite é mais fechada.

Transcrito de Obras de Carlos de Oliveira, Editorial Caminho, Lisboa, 1992.


SONNET 28

How can I then return in happy plight,
That am debarred the benefit of rest?
When day’s oppression is not eased by night,
But day by night and night by day oppressed?
And each (though enemies to either’s reign)
Do in consent shake hands to torture me,
The one by toil, the other to complain
How far I toil, still farther off from thee.
I tell the day to please him thou art bright,
And dost him grace when clouds do blot the heaven;
So flatter I the swart-complexioned night,
When sparkling stars twire not thou gild’st the even.
But day doth daily draw my sorrows longer,
And night doth nightly make grief’s length seem stronger.

in Complete Sonnets and Poems, edited by Colin Burrow, Oxford University Press, 2002.

William Shakespeare (b. Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England, born probably on 23 April 1564 - baptised 26 April 1564; died Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England, 23 April 1616)

De ti me separei na Primavera
Sonnet XVIII / Soneto XVIII
Music to Hear (Sonnet VIII)

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Abuses and awards - Andrei Voznesensky

A poet can't be in disfavour,
he needs no awards, no fame.
A star has no setting whatever,
no black nor a golden frame.

A star can't be killed with a stone, or
award, or that kind of stuff.
He'll bear the blow of a fawner
lamenting he's not big enough.

What matters is music and fervour,
not fame, nor abuse, anyway.
World powers are out of favour
when poets turn them away.

Translation by Alec Vagapov

Andrei Andreyevich Voznesensky, em russo Андре́й Андре́евич Вознесе́нский  (nasceu em Moscovo na então União Soviética a 12 de maio de 1933 e faleceu em Moscovo, Rússia, a 1 de junho de 2010)

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Ode to a Nightingale - John Keats

MY heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,
That thou, light-wingèd Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

O for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delvèd earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country-green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South! 15
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stainèd mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs;
Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmèd darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast-fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
To thy high requiem become a sod.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that ofttimes hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:—do I wake or sleep?

John Keats ( London 31 October 1795 – Tome, 23 February 1821)

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Remember - Christina Rossetti

Water Lilies - 1906 Oil on canvas 87.6 x 92.7 cm (34 1/2 x 36 1/2)
by Claude Monnet (b. Paris 14 Nov. 1830 - d. Giverni 5 Dec 1926)
in The Art Institute of Chicago

Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you planned:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.

(versão em português)

Recorda-te de mim quando eu embora
For para o chão silente e desolado;
Quando eu não te tiver mais ao meu lado
E sombra vã chorar por quem me chora.

Quando mais não puderes, hora a hora,
Falar-me no futuro que hás sonhado,
Ah de mim te recorda e do passado,
Delícia do presente por agora.

No entanto, se algum dia me olvidares
E depois te lembrares novamente,
Não chores: que se em meio aos meus pesares

Um resto houver do afecto que em mim viste,
- Melhor é me esqueceres, mas contente,
Que me lembrares e ficares triste.

Trad. de Manuel Bandeira, in Rosa do Mundo 2001 Poemas para o Futuro, Assírio & Alvim

Christina Rossetti (b. 5-Dec-1830 in London, England; Died: 29-Dec-1894, London, England)

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Words - Anne Sexton

Be careful of words,
even the miraculous ones.
For the miraculous we do our best,
sometimes they swarm like insects
and leave not a sting but a kiss.
They can be as good as fingers.
They can be as trusty as the rock
you stick your bottom on.
But they can be both daisies and bruises.

Yet I am in love with words.
They are doves falling out of the ceiling.
They are six holy oranges sitting in my lap.
They are the trees, the legs of summer,
and the sun, its passionate face.

Yet often they fail me.
I have so much I want to say,
so many stories, images, proverbs, etc.
But the words aren't good enough,
the wrong ones kiss me.
Sometimes I fly like an eagle
but with the wings of a wren.

But I try to take care
and be gentle to them.
Words and eggs must be handled with care.
Once broken they are impossible
things to repair.

Anne Sexton (November 9, 1928, Newton, Massachusetts – October 4, 1974, Weston, Massachusetts)

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Six Significant Landscapes - Wallace Stevens

I

An old man sits
In the shadow of a pine tree
In China.
He sees larkspur,
Blue and white,
At the edge of the shadow,
Move in the wind.
His beard moves in the wind.
The pine tree moves in the wind.
Thus water flows
Over weeds.

II
The night is of the colour
Of a woman's arm:
Night, the female,
Obscure,
Fragrant and supple,
Conceals herself.
A pool shines,
Like a bracelet
Shaken in a dance.

III
I measure myself
Against a tall tree.
I find that I am much taller,
For I reach right up to the sun,
With my eye;
And I reach to the shore of the sea
With my ear.
Nevertheless, I dislike
The way ants crawl
In and out of my shadow.

IV
When my dream was near the moon,
The white folds of its gown
Filled with yellow light.
The soles of its feet
Grew red.
Its hair filled
With certain blue crystallizations
From stars,
Not far off.

V
Not all the knives of the lamp-posts,
Nor the chisels of the long streets,
Nor the mallets of the domes
And high towers,
Can carve
What one star can carve,
Shining through the grape-leaves.

VI
Rationalists, wearing square hats,
Think, in square rooms,
Looking at the floor,
Looking at the ceiling.
They confine themselves
To right-angled triangles.
If they tried rhomboids,
Cones, waving lines, ellipses -
As, for example, the ellipse of the half-moon -
Rationalists would wear sombreros.

Wallace Stevens (b. October 2, 1879 in Reading, Pennsylvania, United States - d. August 2, 1955)

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Autobiography - Louis MacNeice

My father made the walls resound,
He wore his collar the wrong way round.

Come back early or never come.

When I was five the black dreamscame;
Nothing after was quite the same.

Come back early or never come.

When I woke they did not care;
Nobody, nobody was there.

Come back early or never come.

In my childhood trees were green
And there was plenty to be seen.

Come back early or never come.

When my silent terror cried,
Nobody, nobody replied.

Come back early or never come.

I got up; the chilly sun
Saw me walk away alone.

Come back early or never come.

My mother wore a yellow dress;
Gentle, gently, gentleness.

Come back early or never come.

The dark was talking to the dead;
The lamp was dark beside my bed.

Come back early or never come.

Frederick Louis MacNeice (Belfast, 12 September 1907 – 3 September 1963)

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Godiva - Alfred Tennysson

I waited for the train at Coventry;
I hung with grooms and porters on the bridge,
To watch the three tall spires; and there I shaped
The city's ancient legend into this:

Not only we, the latest seed of Time,
New men, that in the flying of a wheel
Cry down the past, not only we, that prate
Of rights and wrongs, have loved the people well,
And loathed to see them overtax'd; but she
Did more, and underwent, and overcame,
The woman of a thousand summers back,
Godiva, wife to that grim Earl, who ruled
In Coventry: for when he laid a tax
Upon his town, and all the mothers brought
Their children, clamoring, "If we pay, we starve!"
She sought her lord, and found him, where he strode
About the hall, among his dogs, alone,
His beard a foot before him and his hair
A yard behind. She told him of their tears,
And pray'd him, "If they pay this tax, they starve."
Whereat he stared, replying, half-amazed,
"You would not let your little finger ache
For such as these?" -- "But I would die," said she.
He laugh'd, and swore by Peter and by Paul;
Then fillip'd at the diamond in her ear;
"Oh ay, ay, ay, you talk!" -- "Alas!" she said,
"But prove me what I would not do."
And from a heart as rough as Esau's hand,
He answer'd, "Ride you naked thro' the town,
And I repeal it;" and nodding, as in scorn,
He parted, with great strides among his dogs.

So left alone, the passions of her mind,
As winds from all the compass shift and blow,
Made war upon each other for an hour,
Till pity won. She sent a herald forth,
And bade him cry, with sound of trumpet, all
The hard condition; but that she would loose
The people: therefore, as they loved her well,
From then till noon no foot should pace the street,
No eye look down, she passing; but that all
Should keep within, door shut, and window barr'd.

Then fled she to her inmost bower, and there
Unclasp'd the wedded eagles of her belt,
The grim Earl's gift; but ever at a breath
She linger'd, looking like a summer moon
Half-dipt in cloud: anon she shook her head,
And shower'd the rippled ringlets to her knee;
Unclad herself in haste; adown the stair
Stole on; and, like a creeping sunbeam, slid
From pillar unto pillar, until she reach'd
The Gateway, there she found her palfrey trapt
In purple blazon'd with armorial gold.

Then she rode forth, clothed on with chastity:
The deep air listen'd round her as she rode,
And all the low wind hardly breathed for fear.
The little wide-mouth'd heads upon the spout
Had cunning eyes to see: the barking cur
Made her cheek flame; her palfrey's foot-fall shot
Light horrors thro' her pulses; the blind walls
Were full of chinks and holes; and overhead
Fantastic gables, crowding, stared: but she
Not less thro' all bore up, till, last, she saw
The white-flower'd elder-thicket from the field,
Gleam thro' the Gothic archway in the wall.

Then she rode back, clothed on with chastity;
And one low churl, compact of thankless earth,
The fatal byword of all years to come,
Boring a little auger-hole in fear,
Peep'd -- but his eyes, before they had their will,
Were shrivel'd into darkness in his head,
And dropt before him. So the Powers, who wait
On noble deeds, cancell'd a sense misused;
And she, that knew not, pass'd: and all at once,
With twelve great shocks of sound, the shameless noon
Was clash'd and hammer'd from a hundred towers,
One after one: but even then she gain'd
Her bower; whence reissuing, robed and crown'd,
To meet her lord, she took the tax away
And built herself an everlasting name.

Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (6 August 1809 Somersby, Lincolnshire, England
United Kingdom – 6 October 1892 Haslemere, Surrey, England
United Kingdom)

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Don't Quit - Edgar Guest

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
When the road you're trudging seems all up hill,
When the funds are low, and the debts are high,
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit,
Rest if you must, but don't you quit.

Life is queer with it's twists and turns,
As everyone of us sometimes learns,
And many a failure turns about,
When he might have won had he stuck it out.
Don't give up though the pace seems slow,
You may succeed with another blow.

Success is failure turned inside out,
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt,
And you never can tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems so far,
So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit,
It's when things seem worse,
That you must not quit.

Edgar Albert Guest (August 20, 1881, Birmingham, England – August 5, 1959, Detroit, Michigan)

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