O soft embalmer of the still midnight!
Shutting, with careful fingers and benign,
Our gloom-pleas’d eyes, embower’d from the light,
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine;
O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close,
In midst of this thine hymn, my willing eyes.
Or wait the Amen, ere thy poppy throws
Around my bed its lulling charities;
Then save me, or
Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not soe,
For, those, whom thou think’st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill mee.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee
Human reason is beautiful and invincible.
No bars, no barbed wire, no pulping of books,
No sentence of banishment can prevail against it.
It establishes the universal ideas in language,
And guides our hand so we write Truth and Justice
With capital letters, lie and oppression with small.
It puts what should be above things as they are,
Is an
I have lined up the threshold,
Of my soul with lamps of hope;
From the blossoms of passion,
I have threaded garlands for Him;
The kohl you see in my eyes,
Is the soot of fire in my heart;
My fidgetiness is the expression,
Of my irrepressible madness,
To be held in His arms forever;
I find no reason why
Once made a fairy rooster from
Mashed potatoes
Whose eyes I forget
But green onions were his tail
And his two legs were carrot sticks
A tomato slice his crown.
Who came home on vacation
When the sun was hot
and cooked
and cleaned
And minded least of all
The children’s questions
“As I lay in my bed slepe full unmete
Was unto me, but why that I ne might
Rest I ne wist, for there n’as erthly wight
[As I suppose] had more of hertis ese
Than I, for I n’ad sickness nor disese.” – Chaucer
What is more gentle than a wind in summer?
What is more soothing than the pretty
Drum of war is still and silent like coma,
Tears mob the land and rent homes apart,
The velocity of their echoes
Travelled far beyond the seas,
Our heroes, the conquerors of many wars,
Returned home and silence like grave.
Masquerades amuse the day
With their best dancing steps,
Beautiful cities of Eastern Europe in Ukraine shatter by atomic bombs:
Cherkasy
Chernihiv
Chernivtsi
Dnipropetrovsk
Donetsk
Ivano-Frankivsk
Kharkiv
Kherson
Khmelnytskyi
Kiev
Kiroyobrad
Luhansk
Lviv
Mykolaiv
Curtains forcing their will
against the wind,
children sleep,
exchanging dreams with
seraphim. The city
drags itself awake on
subway straps; and
I, an alarm, awake as a
rumor of war,
lie stretching into dawn,
Elaine the fair, Elaine the loveable,
Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat,
High in her chamber up a tower to the east
Guarded the sacred shield of Lancelot;
Which first she placed where morning’s earliest ray
Might strike it, and awake her with the gleam;
Then fearing rust or soilure fashioned for it
A case of silk, and braided thereupon<br
There’s no wind along these seas,
Out oars for Stavenger!
Forward all for Stavenger!
So we must wake the white-ash breeze,
Let fall for Stavenger!
A long pull for Stavenger!
Oh, hear the benches creak and strain!
(A long pull for Stavenger!)
She thinks she smells the Northland rain!
(A long pull for Stavenger!)
The stink of fish on earthen streets
A hot wind blows from ochre hills
Black faces shine with brilliant teeth
Street market ***** doth cure all ills.
Redness in her plaited hair
Rhythm in her steady tread
A harmony of balance, she carries
Water jars on her head.
A market girl is singing
As she sits among bananas
The drama
Wounded sore the stricken soul
Lies bleeding and unbound
Tears of anguish flow
The broken heart of woe
Feels for all our grief
Broken heart and downcast eyes
Bound by many a chain
Heart weary, restless soul
Peace long sought
The calm of hills above
Shattered and bruised soul
Witching pleasures of vain world charm
? or John Fletcher.
ORPHEUS with his lute made trees
And the mountain tops that freeze
Bow themselves when he did sing:
To his music plants and flowers
Ever sprung; as sun and showers
There had made a lasting spring.
Every thing that heard him play,
Even the billows of the sea,
Hung their heads and then lay by.
Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North,
The birth-place of Valour, the country of Worth;
Wherever I wander, wherever I rove,
The hills of the Highlands for ever I love.
My heart’s in the Highlands, my heart is not here;
My heart’s in the Highlands a-chasing the deer;
A-chasing the wild-deer, and following the roe,
My heart’s in the Highlands
From an address, written for a little boy, the carrier of a village news-paper, Jan. 1, 1822.
Spirit of Poesy! oh, deign to hear
A humble votary’s first and ardent prayer!
Warm, with thy holy fire, thy suppliant youth,
And lend thy beauty to the cause of truth;
Thy heavenly ardor in my breast diffuse,
Nor scorn to be a little
Slow
As a limping cow
Or a mighty bull
With it legs spilt in two
A great black spider comes out of the earth,
And climb up the wall,
Then painfully set his back against the trees,
Throws out his threads for the wind to carry,
If I met Charley I probably would have smashed him in his over sized snozz
Like a scene ripped from the reels of Barfly yes indeed we would have bar fought
I would have clobbered that big smug ugly b*st*rd with my big chubby ham club
Solely in an effort to sober him up for a moment
Only because he
SHEPHERD
Not the blue-fountained Florida hotel,
Bell-capped, bellevued, straight-jacketed and decked
With chromium palms and a fromage of moon,
Not goodnight chocolates, nor the soothing slide
Of huîtres and sentinel straight-up martinis,
Neither the yacht heraldic nor the stretch
Limos and pants, Swiss banks or Alpine stocks
Shall solace you, or quiet the long pain
Of cold ancestral disinheritance,
Severing
What colour is this?
Colour white
As white as snow
What colour is this?
Colour black
As black as charcoal
What colour is this?
Colour blue
As blue as the ocean
