Of Chesterton, In the County of Huntingdon, Esquire How blessed is he, who leads a Country Life, Unvex’d with anxious Cares, and void of Strife! Who studying Peace, and shunning Civil Rage, Enjoy’d his Youth, and now enjoys his Age:
The wind rests its cheek upon the ground and feels the cool damp And lifts its head with twigs and small dead blades of grass Pressed into it as you might at the beach rise up and brush away The sand. The day is cool and says, “I’m just staying overnight.” The world is filled with music, and in between the music, silence And varying the silence all sorts of sounds, natural and man made: There goes a plane, some cars, geese that honk and, not here, but Not so far away, a scream so rending that to hear it is to be
It is patent to the eye that cannot face the sun The smug philosophers lie who say the world is one; World is other and other, world is here and there, Parmenides would smother life for lack of air Precluding birth and death; his crystal never breaks— No movement and no breath, no progress nor mistakes, Nothing begins or ends, no one loves or fights, All your foes are friends and all your days are nights
That story which the bold Sir Bedivere, First made and latest left of all the knights, Told, when the man was no more than a voice In the white winter of his age, to those With whom he dwelt, new faces, other minds.
For on their march to westward, Bedivere, Who slowly paced among the slumbering host, Heard in his tent the moanings of the King:
"I found Him in the shining of the stars, I mark'd Him in the flowering of His fields, But in His ways with men I find Him not. I waged His wars, and now I pass and die. O me! for why is all around us here
Close by those meads, for ever crown'd with flow'rs, Where Thames with pride surveys his rising tow'rs, There stands a structure of majestic frame, Which from the neighb'ring Hampton takes its name. Here Britain's statesmen oft the fall foredoom Of foreign tyrants and of nymphs at home; Here thou, great Anna! whom three realms obey, Dost sometimes counsel take—and sometimes tea.
Hither the heroes and the nymphs resort, To taste awhile the pleasures of a court; In various talk th' instructive hours they pass'd, Who gave the ball, or paid the visit last; One speaks the glory of the British queen, And one describes a charming Indian screen;
The heavy, wet, guttural small-plane engine fights for air, and goes down in humid darkness about where the airport should be. I take a lot for granted, not pleased to be living under the phlegm- soaked, gaseous, foggy and irradiated heavens whose angels wear collars in propjets
"Courage!" he said, and pointed toward the land, "This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon." In the afternoon they came unto a land In which it seemed always afternoon. All round the coast the languid air did swoon, Breathing like one that hath a weary dream. Full-faced above the valley stood the moon; And like a downward smoke, the slender stream Along the cliff to fall and pause and fall did seem.
A land of streams! some, like a downward smoke, Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go; And some thro' wavering lights and shadows broke, Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below. They saw the gleaming river seaward flow
In the rain in the rain in the rain in the rain in Spain. Does it rain in Spain? Oh yes my dear on the contrary and there are no bull fights. The dancers dance in long white pants It isn’t right to yence your aunts Come Uncle, let’s go home. Home is where the heart is, home is where the fart is. Come let us fart in the home. There is no art in a fart. Still a fart may not be artless. Let us fart an artless fart in the home. Democracy. Democracy. Bill says democracy must go. Go democracy.
December has frozen its double-edged breath and blows it down from the icy heavens, like a dry fire coming apart in threads, like a huge ruin that topples on soldiers.
Snow where horses have left their hoof-marks is a solitude of grief that gallops on. Snow like split fingernails, or claws badly worn, like a malice out of heaven or a final contempt.
There is no widening distance at the shore— The sea revolving slowly from the piers— But the one border of our take-off roar And we are mounted on the hemispheres.
Above the waning moon whose almanac We wait to finish continents away, The Northern stars already call us back, And silence folds like maps on all we say.
Come to your heaven, you heavenly choirs, Earth hath the heaven of your desires. Remove your dwelling to your God; A stall is now his best abode. Sith men their homage do deny, Come, angels, all their fault supply.
His chilling cold doth heat require; Come, seraphins, in lieu of fire. This little ark no cover hath; Let cherubs’ wings his body swathe. Come, Raphael, this babe must eat; Provide our little Toby meat.
Did I, my lines intend for public view, How many censures, would their faults pursue, Some would, because such words they do affect, Cry they’re insipid, empty, and uncorrect. And many have attained, dull and untaught, The name of wit only by finding fault. True judges might condemn their want of wit, And all might say, they’re by a woman writ.
To Lady Winchelsea, Occasioned by four Satirical Verses on Women Wits, In The Rape of the Lock In vain you boast poetic names of yore, And cite those Sapphos we admire no more: Fate doomed the fall of every female wit; But doomed it then, when first Ardelia writ.
You may talk o’ gin and beer When you’re quartered safe out ’ere, An’ you’re sent to penny-fights an’ Aldershot it; But when it comes to slaughter You will do your work on water, An’ you’ll lick the bloomin’ boots of ’im that’s got it. Now in Injia’s sunny clime, Where I used to spend my time
A 29-year-old stewardess fell ... to her death tonight when she was swept through an emergency door that sud- denly sprang open ... The body ... was found ... three hours after the accident. —New York Times
See! There he stands; not brave, but with an air Of sullen stupor. Mark him well! Is he Not more like brute than man? Look in his eye! No light is there; none, save the glint that shines In the now glaring, and now shifting orbs Of some wild animal caught in the hunter’s trap.
To wed, or not to wed; that is the question; Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The bills and house rent of a wedded fortune, Or to say “nit” when she proposes, And by declining cut her. To wed; to smoke No more; And have a wife at home to mend The holes in socks and shirts And underwear and so forth. ’Tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished. To wed for life; To wed; perchance to fight; ay, there’s the rub; For in that married life what fights may come, When we have honeymooning ceased Must give us pause; there’s the respect That makes the joy of single life. For who would bear her mother’s scornful tongue,
Comment form: