Felix Randal the farrier, O is he dead then? my duty all ended, Who have watched his mould of man, big-boned and hardy-handsome Pining, pining, till time when reason rambled in it, and some Fatal four disorders, fleshed there, all contended?
Sickness broke him. Impatient, he cursed at first, but mended Being anointed and all; though a heavenlier heart began some Months earlier, since I had our sweet reprieve and ransom Tendered to him. Ah well, God rest him all road ever he offended!
This seeing the sick endears them to us, us too it endears. My tongue had taught thee comfort, touch had quenched thy tears, Thy tears that touched my heart, child, Felix, poor Felix Randal;
How far from then forethought of, all thy more boisterous years,
She was a village Of lovely knowledge The high roads left her aside, she was forlorn, a maid — Water ran there, dusk hid her, she climbed four-wayed. Brown-gold windows showed last folk not yet asleep; Water ran, was a centre of silence deep, Fathomless deeps of pricked sky, almost fathomless Hallowed an upward gaze in pale satin of blue. And I was happy indeed, of mind, soul, body even Having got given A sign undoubtful of a dear England few Doubt, not many have seen, That Will Squele he knew and was so shriven. Home of Twelfth Night — Edward Thomas by Arras fallen, Borrow and Hardy, Sussex tales out of Roman heights callen.
It is true also that we here are Americans: That we use the machines: that a sight of the god is unusual: That more people have more thoughts: that there are
Progress and science and tractors and revolutions and Marx and the wars more antiseptic and murderous And music in every home: there is also Hoover.
Does the lady suggest we should write it out in The Word?
Here bygynneth the Book of the tales of Caunterbury Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote, The droghte of March hath perced to the roote, And bathed every veyne in swich licóur Of which vertú engendred is the flour;
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;
An Etching A meadow brown; across the yonder edge A zigzag fence is ambling; here a wedge Of underbush has cleft its course in twain, Till where beyond it staggers up again;
Lo I the man, whose Muse whilome did maske, As time her taught in lowly Shepheards weeds, Am now enforst a far unfitter taske, For trumpets sterne to chaunge mine Oaten reeds, And sing of Knights and Ladies gentle deeds; Whose prayses having slept in silence long, Me, all too meane, the sacred Muse areeds To blazon broad emongst her learned throng: Fierce warres and faithful loves shall moralize my song. Helpe then, O holy Virgin chiefe of nine, Thy weaker Novice to performe thy will, Lay forth out of thine everlasting scryne The antique rolles, which there lye hidden still, Of Faerie knights and fairest Tanaquill, Whom that most noble Briton Prince so long
From the region of zephyrs, the Emerald isle, The land of thy birth, in my freshness I come, To waken this long-cherished morn with a smile, And breathe o’er thy spirit the whispers of home. O welcome the stranger from Erin’s green sod; I sprang where the bones of thy fathers repose, I grew where thy free step in infancy trod, Ere the world threw around thee its wiles and its woes.
The turtle carries his house on his back. He is both the house and the person of that house. But actually, under the shell is a little room where the true turtle, wearing long underwear, sits at a little table. At one end of the room a series of levers sticks out of slots in the floor, like the controls of a steam shovel. It is with these that the turtle controls the legs of his house. Most of the time the turtle sits under the sloping ceiling of his turtle room reading catalogues at the little table where a candle burns. He leans on one elbow, and then the other. He crosses one leg, and then the other. Finally he yawns and buries his head in his arms and sleeps. If he feels a child picking up his house he quickly douses the candle and runs to the control levers and activates the legs of his house and tries to escape. If he cannot escape he retracts the legs and withdraws the so-called head and waits. He knows that children are careless, and that there will come a time when he will be free to move his house to some secluded place, where he will relight his candle, take out his catalogues and read until at last he yawns. Then he’ll bury his head in his arms and sleep....That is, until another child picks up his house....
Purged, with the life they left, of all That makes life paltry and mean and small, In their new dedication charged With something heightened, enriched, enlarged, That lends a light to their lusty brows And a song to the rhythm of their trampling feet, These are the men that have taken vows,
Nota: man is the intelligence of his soil, The sovereign ghost. As such, the Socrates Of snails, musician of pears, principium And lex. Sed quaeritur: is this same wig Of things, this nincompated pedagogue,
‘þis were a wikkede wey but whoso hadde a gyde þat [myȝte] folwen us ech foot’: þus þis folk hem mened. Quod Perkyn þe Plowman, ‘By Seint Peter of Rome! I haue an half acre to erie by þe heiȝe weye; Hadde I eryed þis half acre and sowen it after I wolde wende wiþ yow and þe wey teche.’ ‘þis were a long lettyng,’ quod a lady in a Scleyre. ‘What sholde we wommen werche þe while?’
Wolleward and weetshoed wente I forþ after As a recchelees renk þat [reccheþ of no wo], And yede forþ lik a lorel al my lif tyme, Til I weex wery of þe world and wilned eft to slepe, And lened me to a lenten, and longe tyme I slepte; | Reste me þere and rutte faste til Ramis palmarum. Of gerlis and of Gloria laus gretly me dremed, And how Osanna by Organye olde folk songen,
Leo bends over his desk Gazing at a memorandum While Stuart stands beside him With a smile, saying, "Leo, the order for those desks Came in today From Youngstown Needle and Thread!" C. Loth Inc., there you are Like Balboa the conqueror Of those who want to buy office furniture Or bar fixtures In nineteen forty in Cincinnati, Ohio! Secretaries pound out Invoices on antique typewriters— Dactyllographs
Among these latter busts we count by scores, Half-emperors and quarter-emperors, Each with his bay-leaf fillet, loose-thonged vest, Loric and low-browed Gorgon on the breast,— One loves a baby face, with violets there, Violets instead of laurel in the hair, As those were all the little locks could bear.
After the sweet promise, the summer’s mild retreat from mother’s cancer, the winter months of her death, I come to this white office, its sterile sheet, its hard tablet, its stirrups, to hold my breath while I, who must, allow the glove its oily rape, to hear the almost mighty doctor over me equate
At the Poem Society a black-haired man stands up to say “You make me sick with all your talk about restraint and mature talent! Haven’t you ever looked out the window at a painting by Matisse, Or did you always stay in hotels where there were too many spiders crawling on your visages? Did you ever glance inside a bottle of sparkling pop, Or see a citizen split in two by the lightning? I am afraid you have never smiled at the hibernation
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