1 The white butterfly in the park is being read by many. I love that cabbage-moth as if it were a fluttering corner of truth itself!
At dawn the running crowds set our quiet planet in motion. Then the park fills with people. To each one, eight faces polished like jade, for all situations, to avoid making mistakes. To each one, there's also the invisible face reflecting "something you don't talk about." Something that appears in tired moments and is as rank as a gulp of viper schnapps with its long scaly aftertaste.
NO more of talk where God or Angel Guest With Man, as with his Friend, familiar us'd To sit indulgent, and with him partake Rural repast, permitting him the while Venial discourse unblam'd: I now must change Those Notes to Tragic; foul distrust, and breach Disloyal on the part of Man, revolt, And disobedience: On the part of Heav'n
That night the moon drifted over the pond, turning the water to milk, and under the boughs of the trees, the blue trees, a young woman walked, and for an instant
the future came to her: rain falling on her husband’s grave, rain falling on the lawns of her children, her own mouth filling with cold air, strangers moving into her house,
Pitch here the tent, while the old horse grazes: By the old hedge-side we'll halt a stage. It's nigh my last above the daisies: My next leaf'll be man's blank page. Yes, my old girl! and it's no use crying: Juggler, constable, king, must bow. One that outjuggles all's been spying Long to have me, and he has me now.
My body is powdery white and round I sink and bob like a mountain in a pond The hand that kneads me is hard and rough You can't destroy my true red heart
Ages passed slowly, like a load of hay, As the flowers recited their lines And pike stirred at the bottom of the pond. The pen was cool to the touch. The staircase swept upward Through fragmented garlands, keeping the melancholy Already distilled in letters of the alphabet.
Between pond and sheepbarn, by maples and watery birches, Rebecca paces a double line of rust in a sandy trench, striding on black creosoted eight-by-eights. In nineteen-forty-three, wartrains skidded tanks, airframes, dynamos, searchlights, and troops to Montreal. She counted cars
Created purely from glass the saint stands, Exposing his gifted quite empty hands Like a conjurer about to begin, A righteous man begging of righteous men.
2
In the sun lily-and-gold-coloured, Filtering the cruder light, he has endured,
And is it stamina that unseasonably freaks forth a bluet, a Quaker lady, by the lake? So small, a drop of sky that splashed and held, four-petaled, creamy
Blessings on thee, little man, Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan! With thy turned-up pantaloons, And thy merry whistled tunes; With thy red lip, redder still Kissed by strawberries on the hill; With the sunshine on thy face, Through thy torn brim’s jaunty grace; From my heart I give thee joy,— I was once a barefoot boy! Prince thou art,—the grown-up man Only is republican. Let the million-dollared ride! Barefoot, trudging at his side, Thou hast more than he can buy
the spiritual, Platonic old England … S. T. COLERIDGE, Anima Poetae
‘Your situation’, said Coningsby, looking up the green and silent valley, ‘is absolutely poetic.’ ‘I try sometimes to fancy’, said Mr Millbank, with a rather fierce smile, ‘that I am in the New World.’ BENJAMIN DISRAELI, Coningsby
Who gave thee, O Beauty, The keys of this breast,— Too credulous lover Of blest and unblest? Say, when in lapsed ages Thee knew I of old; Or what was the service For which I was sold? When first my eyes saw thee, I found me thy thrall, By magical drawings, Sweet tyrant of all! I drank at thy fountain False waters of thirst; Thou intimate stranger,
One of those appointments you postpone until anxiety propels you to the phone, then have to wait too long for, to take an inconvenient time . . . Late in the day, an old man and I watch the minute hand
on the waiting room wall. I’ve papers to grade, but he wants someone to talk to, and his attendant’s rude, so he turns
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