And in a little while we broke under the strain: suppurations ad nauseam, the wanting to be taller, though it‘s simply about being mysterious, i.e., not taller, like any tree in any forest. Mute, the pancake describes you. It had tiny roman numerals embedded in its rim. It was a pancake clock. They had ’em in those days, always getting smaller, which is why they finally became extinct.
Aunt Mildred tied up her petticoats with binder’s twine, and my great-uncle Ezekiel waxed and waxed his moustaches into flexibility. It was the whole family off then into the dangerous continent of air
and while the salesman with the one gold eyetooth told us the cords at our ankles were guaranteed to stretch to their utmost and then bring us safely back to the fried chicken and scalloped potatoes of Sunday dinner
[Introduction] Lo now! four other acts upon the stage, Childhood, and Youth, the Manly, and Old-age. The first: son unto Phlegm, grand-child to water, Unstable, supple, moist, and cold’s his Nature. The second: frolic claims his pedigree; From blood and air, for hot and moist is he. The third of fire and choler is compos’d, Vindicative, and quarrelsome dispos’d. The last, of earth and heavy melancholy, Solid, hating all lightness, and all folly. Childhood was cloth’d in white, and given to show, His spring was intermixed with some snow. Upon his head a Garland Nature set: Of Daisy, Primrose, and the Violet.
Christ God who savest man, save most Of men Count Gismond who saved me! Count Gauthier, when he chose his post, Chose time and place and company To suit it; when he struck at length My honour, 't was with all his strength.
Whatever is we only know As in our minds we find it so; No staring fact is half so clear As one dim, preconceived idea -- No matter how the fact may glow.
Vainly may Truth her trumpet blow To stir our minds; like heavy dough
(As Distinguished by an Italian Person of Quality) Had I but plenty of money, money enough and to spare, The house for me, no doubt, were a house in the city-square;
Whatever city or country road you two are on there are nettles, and the dark invisible elements cling to your skin though you do not cry and you do not scratch your arms at forty-five degree angles
The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold, And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold; And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea, When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.
Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green, That host with their banners at sunset were seen: Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown, That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.
Is dead serious about this one, having rehearsed it for two weeks they bring it right into the Odd Fellows Meeting Hall. Riding the backs of the Trojan Women, In Euripides’ great wake they are swept up,
But the women of the chorus, in black stockings and kerchiefs, Stand up bravely to it, shawled arms thrash In a foam of hysterical voices shrieking, Seaweed on the wet flanks of a whale,
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord: He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; He hath loosed the fatal lightning of his terrible swift sword: His truth is marching on.
I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps; They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps; I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps. His Day is marching on.
I have read a fiery gospel, writ in burnished rows of steel: “As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal; Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel, Since God is marching on.”
At five I wake, rise, rub on the smoking pane A port to see—water breathing in the air, Boughs broken. The sun comes up in a golden stain, Floats like a glassy sea-fruit. There is mist everywhere, White and humid, and the Harbour is like plated stone, Dull flakes of ice. One light drips out alone, One bead of winter-red, smouldering in the steam, Quietly over the roof-tops—another window
The house in Broad Street, red brick, with nine rooms the weedgrown graveyard with its rows of tombs the jail from which imprisoned faces grinned at stiff palmettos flashing in the wind
the engine-house, with engines, and a tank in which young alligators swam and stank, the bell-tower, of red iron, where the bell gonged of the fires in a tone from hell
To the Memory of the Household It Describes This Poem is Dedicated by the Author
“As the Spirits of Darkness be stronger in the dark, so Good Spirits, which be Angels of Light, are augmented not only by the Divine light of the Sun, but also by our common Wood Fire: and as the Celestial Fire drives away dark spirits, so also this our Fire of Wood doth the same.” —Cor. Agrippa, Occult Philosophy, Book I.ch. v.
“Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, Arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields, Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air Hides hills and woods, the river and the heaven, And veils the farm-house at the garden’s end. The sled and traveller stopped, the courier’s feet Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed In a tumultuous privacy of Storm.” EMERSON, The Snow Storm. The sun that brief December day Rose cheerless over hills of gray, And, darkly circled, gave at noon A sadder light than waning moon.
Retired ballerinas on winter afternoons walking their dogs in Central Park West (or their cats on leashes— the cats themselves old highwire artists) The ballerinas leap and pirouette through Columbus Circle
Nudes—stark and glistening, Yelling in lurid glee. Grinning faces And raging limbs Whirl over the floor one fire. For a shirt verminously busy Yon soldier tore from his throat, with oaths Godhead might shrink at, but not the lice. And soon the shirt was aflare Over the candle he’d lit while we lay.
Then we all sprang up and stript To hunt the verminous brood. Soon like a demons’ pantomime The place was raging. See the silhouettes agape,
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