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,
When he would not return to fine garments and good food, to his houses and his people, Loingseachan told him, “Your father is dead.” “I’m sorry to hear it,” he said. “Your mother is dead,” said the lad. “All pity for me has gone out of the world.” “Your sister, too, is dead.” “The mild sun rests on every ditch,” he said; “a sister loves even though not loved.” “Suibhne, your daughter is dead.” “And an only daughter is the needle of the heart.” “And Suibhne, your little boy, who used to call you “Daddy”—he is dead.” “Aye,” said Suibhne, “that’s the drop that brings a man to the ground.” He fell out of the yew tree; Loingseachan closed his arms around him and placed him in manacles.—AFTER THE MIDDLE-IRISH ROMANCE, THE MADNESS OF SUIBHNE
'There it is!– You play beside a death-bed like a child, Yet measure to yourself a prophet's place To teach the living. None of all these things, Can women understand. You generalise, Oh, nothing!–not even grief! Your quick-breathed hearts, So sympathetic to the personal pang,
My hair is grey, but not with years, Nor grew it white In a single night, As men's have grown from sudden fears: My limbs are bow'd, though not with toil, But rusted with a vile repose, For they have been a dungeon's spoil, And mine has been the fate of those
1 I am sitting in a cell with a view of evil parallels, Waiting thunder to splinter me into a thousand me's. It is not enough to be in one cage with one self; I want to sit opposite every prisoner in every hole. Doors roll and bang, every slam a finality, bang! The junkie disappeared into a red noise, stoning out his hell. The odored wino congratulates himself on not smoking,
Cloth from the moon. Cloth from another planet. They look back at the leopard like the leopard.
And I.... this print of mine, that has kept its color Alive through so many cleanings; this dull null Navy I wear to work, and wear from work, and so To my bed, so to my grave, with no
All winter long you listened for the boom Of distant cannon wheeled into their place. Sometimes outside beneath a bombers’ moon You stood alone to watch the searchlights trace
Their careful webs against the boding sky, While miles away on Munich’s vacant square The bombs lunged down with an unruly cry Whose blast you saw yet could but faintly hear.
Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown, Of thee from the hill-top looking down; The heifer that lows in the upland farm, Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm; The sexton, tolling his bell at noon, Deems not that great Napoleon Stops his horse, and lists with delight, Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height;
I struck the board, and cried, "No more; I will abroad! What? shall I ever sigh and pine? My lines and life are free, free as the road, Loose as the wind, as large as store. Shall I be still in suit? Have I no harvest but a thorn To let me blood, and not restore What I have lost with cordial fruit? Sure there was wine Before my sighs did dry it; there was corn Before my tears did drown it. Is the year only lost to me? Have I no bays to crown it, No flowers, no garlands gay? All blasted?
As a dare-gale skylark scanted in a dull cage, Man's mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house, dwells — That bird beyond the remembering his free fells; This in drudgery, day-labouring-out life's age. Though aloft on turf or perch or poor low stage Both sing sometímes the sweetest, sweetest spells, Yet both droop deadly sómetimes in their cells Or wring their barriers in bursts of fear or rage.
Not that the sweet-fowl, song-fowl, needs no rest — Why, hear him, hear him babble & drop down to his nest, But his own nest, wild nest, no prison.
Man's spirit will be flesh-bound, when found at best, But uncumberèd: meadow-down is not distressed
The curious wits, seeing dull pensiveness Bewray itself in my long-settl'd eyes, Whence those same fumes of melancholy rise, With idle pains and missing aim do guess. Some, that know how my spring I did address, Deem that my Muse some fruit of knowledge plies; Others, because the prince my service tries, Think that I think state errors to redress; But harder judges judge ambition's ragei Scourge of itself, still climbing slipp'ry placei Holds my young brain captiv'd in golden cage. O fool or over-wise! alas, the race Of all my thoughts hath neither stop nor start But only Stella's eyes and Stella's heart.
A free bird leaps on the back of the wind and floats downstream till the current ends and dips his wing in the orange sun rays and dares to claim the sky.
When Love with unconfinèd wings Hovers within my Gates, And my divine Althea brings To whisper at the Grates; When I lie tangled in her hair, And fettered to her eye, The Gods that wanton in the Air, Know no such Liberty.
Content that now the bleeding bone be swept Out of her reach, she lay upon her side. In a blonde void sunk deep, she slept, she slept Bland as a child, slept, breathing like a bride. Color of noons that shimmer as they sing Above the dunes, her sandy flanks heaved slow. Between her paws curled inward, billowing Waves of desert silence seemed to flow.
These hills are sandy. Trees are dwarfed here. Crows Caw dismally in skies of an arid brilliance, Complain in dusty pine-trees. Yellow daybreak Lights on the long brown slopes a frost-like dew, Dew as heavy as rain; the rabbit tracks Show sharply in it, as they might in snow. But it’s soon gone in the sun—what good does it do? The houses, on the slope, or among brown trees,
Once you saw a drove of young pigs crossing the highway. One of them pulling his body by the front feet, the hind legs dragging flat. Without thinking, you called the Humane Society. They came with a net and went for him. They were matter of fact, uniformed;
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