Through Alpine meadows soft-suffused With rain, where thick the crocus blows, Past the dark forges long disused, The mule-track from Saint Laurent goes. The bridge is cross'd, and slow we ride, Through forest, up the mountain-side.
The autumnal evening darkens round, The wind is up, and drives the rain; While, hark! far down, with strangled sound Doth the Dead Guier's stream complain, Where that wet smoke, among the woods, Over his boiling cauldron broods.
The old Roman sow Bears a new litter now To fatten for a while On the same imperial swill. The cannibal wolf will dig And root out Spanish bones beside the pig.
Whom should I consult? Philosophers Are happy in their homes and seminars. See this one with the mischievous bright childlike Gaze going out through walls and air, A tangent to the bent rays of the star. Hear the chalk splutter, hear the groping voice: Conceive the demiurge in his perpetual Strife with the chaos of the universe,
I. Until Jove let it be, no colonist Mastered the wild earth; no land was marked, None parceled out or shared; but everyone Looked for his living in the common world.
And Jove gave poison to the blacksnakes, and Made the wolves ravage, made the ocean roll, Knocked honey from the leaves, took fire away— So man might beat out various inventions
The summer and autumn had been so wet, That in winter the corn was growing yet, 'Twas a piteous sight to see all around The grain lie rotting on the ground.
Every day the starving poor Crowded around Bishop Hatto's door, For he had a plentiful last-year's store, And all the neighbourhood could tell His granaries were furnish'd well.
At last Bishop Hatto appointed a day To quiet the poor without delay; He bade them to his great Barn repair,
O but we talked at large before The sixteen men were shot, But who can talk of give and take, What should be and what not While those dead men are loitering there To stir the boiling pot?
You say that we should still the land Till Germany’s overcome; But who is there to argue that Now Pearse is deaf and dumb? And is their logic to outweigh MacDonagh’s bony thumb?
In all these rotten shops, in all this broken furniture and wrinkled ties and baseball trophies and coffee pots I have never seen a postwar Philco with the automatic eye nor heard Ravel's "Bolero" the way I did in 1945 in that tiny living room on Beechwood Boulevard, nor danced as I did then, my knives all flashing, my hair all streaming,
I remember when I wrote The Circus I was living in Paris, or rather we were living in Paris Janice, Frank was alive, the Whitney Museum Was still on 8th Street, or was it still something else? Fernand Léger lived in our building Well it wasn’t really our building it was the building we lived in Next to a Grand Guignol troupe who made a lot of noise So that one day I yelled through a hole in the wall
When Hans Hofmann became a hedgehog somewhere in a Germany that has vanished with its forests and hedgerows Shakespeare would have been a young actor starting out in a country that was only a word to Hans who had learned from those who had painted animals only from hearing tales about them without ever setting eyes on them or from corpses with the lingering light mute and deathly still forever held fast in the fur or the feathers hanging or lying on a table and he had learned from others who had arranged the corpses of animals
I saw him walking along slowly at night holding a tray of candy and chewing-gum: a Jewish boy of fifteen or sixteen with large black eyes and a gentle face. He sidled into a saloon and must have been ordered away because he came out promptly through the swinging doors.
New England. Alas, dear Mother, fairest Queen and best, With honour, wealth, and peace happy and blest, What ails thee hang thy head, and cross thine arms, And sit i’ the dust to sigh these sad alarms? What deluge of new woes thus over-whelm The glories of thy ever famous Realm? What means this wailing tone, this mournful guise? Ah, tell thy Daughter; she may sympathize.
Old England. Art ignorant indeed of these my woes, Or must my forced tongue these griefs disclose, And must my self dissect my tatter’d state, Which Amazed Christendom stands wondering at?
Show me dear Christ, thy spouse so bright and clear. What! is it she which on the other shore Goes richly painted? or which, robb'd and tore, Laments and mourns in Germany and here? Sleeps she a thousand, then peeps up one year? Is she self-truth, and errs? now new, now outwore? Doth she, and did she, and shall she evermore On one, on seven, or on no hill appear? Dwells she with us, or like adventuring knights First travel we to seek, and then make love? Betray, kind husband, thy spouse to our sights, And let mine amorous soul court thy mild Dove, Who is most true and pleasing to thee then When she'is embrac'd and open to most men.
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