I I weep for Adonais—he is dead! Oh, weep for Adonais! though our tears Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head! And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers, And teach them thine own sorrow, say: "With me Died Adonais; till the Future dares Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be An echo and a light unto eternity!"
II Where wert thou, mighty Mother, when he lay, When thy Son lay, pierc'd by the shaft which flies In darkness? where was lorn Urania
Happy Birthday Kenneth Koch/Feb 27 We went to all those places where they restore sadness and joy and call it art. We were piloted by Auden who became Unbearably acrimonious when we dropped off Senghor into the steamy skies of his beloved West Africa. The termites and ants
I In a far country, and a distant age, Ere sprites and fays had bade farewell to earth, A boy was born of humble parentage; The stars that shone upon his lonely birth Did seem to promise sovereignty and fame— Yet no tradition hath preserved his name.
II ’T is said that on the night when he was born, A beauteous shape swept slowly through the room; Its eyes broke on the infant like a morn, And his cheek brightened like a rose in bloom;
Nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room; And hermits are contented with their cells; And students with their pensive citadels; Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom, Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom, High as the highest Peak of Furness-fells, Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells: In truth the prison, into which we doom
A longish poem about wallpaper. A short lyric about discouragement in white. A medium-length thesis of uncertain importance. Another sonnet, about scholarship. A couplet of olives.
A long narrative about the exaggeration of your absence. Several quatrains about candle stubs. That old sestina on Isaiah. Palindromes about Scots presbyters of the 18th century. Some rock lyrics from Benares.
A nature poem about committees. Seven heroic couplets about Art Murphy. Several more heroic couplets on Murphy’s Law.
When chapman billies leave the street, And drouthy neebors neebors meet, As market-days are wearing late, And folk begin to tak the gate; While we sit bousin, at the nappy, And gettin fou and unco happy, We think na on the lang Scots miles, The mosses, waters, slaps, and stiles, That lie between us and our hame, Whare sits our sulky, sullen dame, Gathering her brows like gathering storm, Nursing her wrath to keep it warm.
This truth fand honest Tam o' Shanter, As he frae Ayr ae night did canter:
If by dull rhymes our English must be chain'd, And, like Andromeda, the Sonnet sweet Fetter'd, in spite of pained loveliness; Let us find out, if we must be constrain'd, Sandals more interwoven and complete To fit the naked foot of poesy; Let us inspect the lyre, and weigh the stress Of every chord, and see what may be gain'd By ear industrious, and attention meet: Misers of sound and syllable, no less Than Midas of his coinage, let us be Jealous of dead leaves in the bay wreath crown; So, if we may not let the Muse be free, She will be bound with garlands of her own.
They dub thee idler, smiling sneeringly, And why? because, forsooth, so many moons, Here dwelling voiceless by the voiceful sea, Thou hast not set thy thoughts to paltry tunes In song or sonnet. Them these golden noons Oppress not with their beauty; they could prate, Even while a prophet read the solemn runes On which is hanging some imperial fate. How know they, these good gossips, what to thee The ocean and its wanderers may have brought? How know they, in their busy vacancy, With what far aim thy spirit may be fraught? Or that thou dost not bow thee silently Before some great unutterable thought?
Alone it stands in Poesy’s fair land, A temple by the muses set apart; A perfect structure of consummate art, By artists builded and by genius planned. Beyond the reach of the apprentice hand, Beyond the ken of the unturtored heart, Like a fine carving in a common mart, Only the favored few will understand. A chef-d’oeuvre toiled over with great care, Yet which the unseeing careless crowd goes by, A plainly set, but well-cut solitaire, An ancient bit of pottery, too rare To please or hold aught save the special eye, These only with the sonnet can compare.
What are we first? First, animals; and next Intelligences at a leap; on whom Pale lies the distant shadow of the tomb, And all that draweth on the tomb for text. Into which state comes Love, the crowning sun: Beneath whose light the shadow loses form. We are the lords of life, and life is warm. Intelligence and instinct now are one. But nature says: "My children most they seem When they least know me: therefore I decree That they shall suffer." Swift doth young Love flee, And we stand wakened, shivering from our dream. Then if we study Nature we are wise. Thus do the few who live but with the day: The scientific animals are they—
The village life, and every care that reigns O'er youthful peasants and declining swains; What labour yields, and what, that labour past, Age, in its hour of languor, finds at last; What forms the real picture of the poor, Demands a song—the Muse can give no more. Fled are those times, if e'er such times were seen, When rustic poets praised their native green;
—Now let me tell you why I said that. Try to put yourself into an experimental mood. Stop right here and try to review everything you felt about that line. Did you accept it as wisdom? as perception? as a gem, maybe, for your private anthology of Telling Truths?
My point is that the line is fraudulent. A blurb. It is also relevant that I know
I Put a sun in Sunday, Sunday. Eleven please ten hoop. Hoop. Cousin coarse in coarse in soap. Cousin coarse in soap sew up. soap. Cousin coarse in sew up soap.
I Beyond the hollow sunset, ere a star Take heart in heaven from eastward, while the west, Fulfilled of watery resonance and rest, Is as a port with clouds for harbour bar To fold the fleet in of the winds from far That stir no plume now of the bland sea's breast:
II Above the soft sweep of the breathless bay Southwestward, far past flight of night and day, Lower than the sunken sunset sinks, and higher Than dawn can freak the front of heaven with fire, My thought with eyes and wings made wide makes way To find the place of souls that I desire.
I When Bishop Berkeley said "there was no matter," And proved it—'twas no matter what he said: They say his system 'tis in vain to batter, Too subtle for the airiest human head; And yet who can believe it! I would shatter Gladly all matters down to stone or lead, Or adamant, to find the World a spirit, And wear my head, denying that I wear it.
II What a sublime discovery 'twas to make the Universe universal egotism, That all's ideal—all ourselves: I'll stake the World (be it what you will) that that's no schism.
I Fanny was younger once than she is now, And prettier of course: I do not mean To say that there are wrinkles on her brow; Yet, to be candid, she is past eighteen— Perhaps past twenty—but the girl is shy About her age, and Heaven forbid that I
II Should get myself in trouble by revealing A secret of this sort; I have too long Loved pretty women with a poet’s feeling, And when a boy, in day dream and in song, Have knelt me down and worshipp’d them: alas! They never thank’d me for’t—but let that pass.
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