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;
As rising from the vegetable World My Theme ascends, with equal Wing ascend, My panting Muse; and hark, how loud the Woods Invite you forth in all your gayest Trim. Lend me your Song, ye Nightingales! oh pour The mazy-running Soul of Melody Into my varied Verse! while I deduce, From the first Note the hollow Cuckoo sings,
—Was it for this That one, the fairest of all Rivers, lov'd To blend his murmurs with my Nurse's song, And from his alder shades and rocky falls, And from his fords and shallows, sent a voice That flow'd along my dreams? For this, didst Thou, O Derwent! travelling over the green Plains Near my 'sweet Birthplace', didst thou, beauteous Stream
Above the fresh ruffles of the surf Bright striped urchins flay each other with sand. They have contrived a conquest for shell shucks, And their fingers crumble fragments of baked weed Gaily digging and scattering.
And in answer to their treble interjections The sun beats lightning on the waves,
PART I 'Tis the middle of night by the castle clock, And the owls have awakened the crowing cock; Tu—whit! Tu—whoo! And hark, again! the crowing cock, How drowsily it crew. Sir Leoline, the Baron rich, Hath a toothless mastiff bitch; From her kennel beneath the rock She maketh answer to the clock, Four for the quarters, and twelve for the hour; Ever and aye, by shine and shower, Sixteen short howls, not over loud; Some say, she sees my lady's shroud.
Nondum amabam, et amare amabam, quaerebam quid amarem, amans amare.— Confess. St. August. Earth, ocean, air, belovèd brotherhood! If our great Mother has imbued my soul With aught of natural piety to feel Your love, and recompense the boon with mine;
On a road through the mountains with a friend many years ago I came to a curve on a slope where a clear stream flowed down flashing across dark rocks through its own echoes that could neither be caught nor forgotten it was the turning of autumn and already the mornings were cold with ragged clouds in the hollows long after sunrise but the pasture sagging like a roof the glassy water and flickering yellow leaves
The ground dove stuttered for a few steps then flew up from his path to settle in the sun-browned branches that were now barely twigs; in drought it coos with its relentless valve, a tiring sound, not like the sweet exchanges of turtles in the Song of Solomon, or the flutes of Venus in frescoes though all the mounds in the dove-calling drought
How a Ship having passed the Line was driven by storms to the cold Country towards the South Pole; and how from thence she made her course to the tropical Latitude of the Great Pacific Ocean; and of the strange things that befell; and in what manner the Ancyent Marinere came back to his own Country. PART I It is an ancient Mariner, And he stoppeth one of three. 'By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,
Out of the cradle endlessly rocking, Out of the mocking-bird’s throat, the musical shuttle, Out of the Ninth-month midnight, Over the sterile sands and the fields beyond, where the child leaving his bed wander’d alone, bareheaded, barefoot, Down from the shower’d halo, Up from the mystic play of shadows twining and twisting as if they were alive, Out from the patches of briers and blackberries, From the memories of the bird that chanted to me,
the day he traveled to my daughter's house
it was june. he cursed me with his morning nod
of anger as he filtered his callous
walk. skip. hop. feet slipshod
from 125th street bars, face curled with odd
reflections. the skin of a father is accented
in the sentence of the unaccented.
Sixty-two, sixty-three, I most remember As time W. C. Williams dies and we are Back from a hard two years in Guatemala Where the meager provision of being Schoolmaster for the kids of the patrones Of two coffee plantations has managed Neither a life nor money. Leslie dies in Horror of bank giving way as she and her
It is their way to find the surface when they die. Fish feed on fish and drop those beautiful bones to swim. I see them stretch the water to their need as I domesticate the separate air to be my breath.
Let us consider the farmer who makes his straw hat his sweetheart; or the old woman who makes a floor lamp her son; or the young woman who has set herself the task of scraping her shadow off a wall....
Let us consider the old woman who wore smoked cows’ tongues for shoes and walked a meadow gathering cow chips in her apron; or a mirror grown dark with age that was given to a blind man who spent his nights looking into it, which saddened his mother, that her son should be so lost in vanity....
Let us consider the man who fried roses for his dinner, whose kitchen smelled like a burning rose garden; or the man who disguised himself as a moth and ate his overcoat, and for
Spirit that breathest through my lattice, thou That cool’st the twilight of the sultry day, Gratefully flows thy freshness round my brow: Thou hast been out upon the deep at play, Riding all day the wild blue waves till now, Roughening their crests, and scattering high their spray And swelling the white sail. I welcome thee To the scorched land, thou wanderer of the sea!
To Identify the 16th, 17th, or 18th Presidentiad. Why reclining, interrogating? why myself and all drowsing? What deepening twilight—scum floating atop of the waters, Who are they as bats and night-dogs askant in the capitol? What a filthy Presidentiad! (O South, your torrid suns! O North, your arctic freezings!)
I will build a house of rest, Square the corners every one: At each angle on his breast Shall a cherub take the sun; Rising, risen, sinking, down, Weaving day’s unequal crown.
In the chambers, light as air, Shall responsive footsteps fall: Brother, sister, art thou there? Hush! we need not jar nor call; Need not turn to seek the face Shut in rapture’s hiding-place.
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