Category: Regular poem

Maude Clare

Out of the church she followed them

  With a lofty step and mien:

His bride was like a village maid,

  Maude Clare was like a queen.

“Son Thomas,” his lady mother said,

  With smiles, almosr with tears:

“May Nell and you but live as true

  As we have done form years;

“Your father thirty years ago

    Had just your tale to tell;

But he was not so pale as you,

  Nor I so pale as Nell.”

My lord was pale with inward strife,

  And Nell was pale with pride;

My lord gazed long on pale Maude Clare

  Or ever he kissed the bride.

“Lo, I have brought my gift, my lord,

    Have brought my gift,” she said:

To bless the hearth, to bless the board,

   To bless the marriage-bed.

“Here’s my half of the golden chain

  You wore about your neck,

That day we waded ankle-deep

  For lilies in the beck:

“Here’s my half of the faded leaves

    We plucked from the budding bough,

With feet amongst the lily leaves, –

  The lilies are budding now.”

He strove to match her scorn with scorn,

  He faltered in his place:

“Lady,” he said, – “Maude Clare,” he said, –

  “Maude Clare,” – and hid his face.

She turn’d to Nell: “My Lady Nell,

  I have a gift for you;

Though, were it fruit, the blooms were gone,

  Or, were it flowers, the dew.

“Take my share of a fickle heart,

    Mine of a paltry love:

Take it or leave it as you will,

    I wash my hands thereof.”

“And what you leave,” said Nell, “I’ll take,

    And what you spurn, I’ll wear;

For he’s my lord for better and worse,

   And him I love Maude Clare.

“Yea, though you’re taller by the head,

  More wise and much more fair:

I’ll love him till he loves me best,

  Me best of all Maude Clare.

Christina Rossetti

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Candles

 

The days of our future stand in front of us
like a row of little lit candles —
golden, warm, and lively little candles.

The days past remain behind us,
a mournful line of extinguished candles;
the ones nearest are still smoking,
cold candles, melted, and bent.

I do not want to look at them; their form saddens me,
and it saddens me to recall their first light.
I look ahead at my lit candles.

I do not want to turn back, lest I see and shudder
at how fast the dark line lengthens,
at how fast the extinguished candles multiply.

Constantine P. Cavafy (1899)

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THE SHOOTING OF DAN MCGREW"

A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon;
The kid that handles the music-box was hitting a jag-time tune;
Back at the bar, in a solo game, sat Dangerous Dan McGrew,
And watching his luck was his light-o'-love, the lady that's known as Lou.

When out of the night, which was fifty below, and into the din and the glare,
There stumbled a miner fresh from the creeks, dog dirty, and loaded for bear.
He looked like a man with a foot in the grave, and scarcely the strength of a louse,
Yet he tilted a poke of dust on the bar, and he called for drinks on the house.
There was none could place the stranger's face, though we searched ourselves for a clue;
But we drank his health, and the last to drink was Dangerous Dan McGrew.

There's men that somehow just grip your eyes, and hold them hard like a spell;
And such was he, and he looked to me like a man who had lived in hell;
With a face most hair, and the dreary stare of a dog whose day is done,
As he watered the green stuff in his glass, and the drops fell one by one.
Then I got to figgering who he was, and wondering what he'd do,
And I turned my head — and there watching him was the lady that's known as Lou.

His eyes went rubbering round the room, and he seemed in a kind of daze,
Till at last that old piano fell in the way of his wondering gaze.
The rag-time kid was having a drink; there was no one else on the stool,
So the stranger stumbles across the room, and flops down there like a fool.
In a buckskin shirt that was glazed with dirt he sat, and I saw him sway;
Then he clutched the keys with his talon hands — my God! but that man could play!

Were you ever out in the great alone, when the moon was awful clear,
And the icy mountains hemmed you in with a silence you most could hear;
With only the howl of a timber wolf, and you camped there in the cold,
A half-dead thing in the stark, dead world, clean mad for the muck called gold;
While high overhead, green, yellow and red, the North Lights swept in bars —
Then you've got a hunch what the music meant … hunger and night and the stars.

And hunger not of the belly kind, that's banished with bacon and beans;
But the gnawing hunger of lonely men for a home and all that it means;
For a fireside far from the cares that are, four walls and a roof above;
But oh! so cramful of cosy joy, and crowned with a woman's love;
A woman dearer than all the world, and true as Heaven is true —
(God! how ghastly she looks through her rouge, — the lady that's known as Lou.)

Then all of a sudden the music changed, so soft that you scarce could hear;
But you felt that your life had been looted clean of all that it once held dear;
That someone had stolen the woman you loved; that her love was a devil's lie;
That your guts were gone, and the best of you was to crawl away and die. 'Twas the crowning cry of a heart's despair, and it thrilled you through and through —
"I guess I'll make it a spread misere," said Dangerous Dan McGrew.

The music almost died away … then it burst like a pent-up flood;
And it seemed to say, "Repay, repay," and my eyes were blind with blood.
The thought came back of an ancient wrong, and it stung like a frozen lash,
And the lust awoke to kill, to kill … then the music stopped with a crash,
And the stranger turned, and his eyes they burned in a most peculiar way;
In a buckskin shirt that was glazed with dirt he sat, and I saw him sway;

Then his lips went in in a kind of a grin, and he spoke, and his voice was calm;
And, "Boys," says he, "you don't know me, and none of you care a damn;
But I want to state, and my words are straight, and I'll bet my poke they're true,
That one of you is a hound of hell … and that one is Dan McGrew."

Then I ducked my head, and the lights went out, and two guns blazed in the dark;
And a woman screamed, and the lights went up, and two men lay stiff and stark;
Pitched on his head, and pumped full of lead, was Dangerous Dan McGrew,
While the man from the creeks lay clutched to the breast of the Lady that's known as Lou.

These are the simple facts of the case, and I guess I ought to know;
They say that the stranger was crazed with "hooch," and I'm not denying it's so.
I'm not so wise as the lawyer guys, but strictly between us two —
The woman that kissed him — and pinched his poke — was the lady that's known as Lou.

By Robert Wm. Service (1874-1958).

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{mos_sb_discuss:5} 

To Charlotte Von Stein
 
Fate, why did you grant us this depth
Of insightful vision into our future,
So that our love, earthly happiness,
Is a thing we can trust in happily never?
Why did you grant us such intuition,
Such power to know each other’s heart,
To see, among life’s scattered throng,
The true relationship where we are?
 
Oh, many thousands of us drift dumbly
Through life, our hearts scarcely known,
Floating here and there, and aimlessly
Fleeing unexpected pain, without hope:
Rejoicing again, at the unexpected
Morning radiance of swift delight:
Only we two, love-filled, wretched
Souls are denied that mutual light
Of loving without knowing one another,
Of seeing in each what each never was,
Setting out anew towards the Dream Lover,
Faltering at phantom Danger’s course.
 
Happy those an empty dream preoccupies,
Happy those whose presentiments prove vain!
Our every meeting, every mutual sight
Sadly confirms our presentiments, our dream.
Tell me, what does Fate intend for us?
Say, how it bound us so strictly, purely?
Oh, in some far off time you must
Have been my wife, been a sister to me.
 
You knew every feature of my being,
Saw the purest tremor of each nerve,
With a single glance you could read me,
Hard as I am for mortal eye to pierce:
You brought calm to my heated blood,
Guiding my wild and wandering course,
And in your arms, an angel’s arms, I could
Rest as my ravaged heart was restored.
You bound your lover fast with magic ease,
And made many a day pass gloriously.
What happiness could compare with these
Hours of rapture, thankful at your feet,
Feeling his heart flow towards your heart,
Feeling himself virtuous in your sight,
All his senses brightened by your art,
The raging blood in his veins grown quiet?
 
And, of all of that, but a drifting memory
Is left, round his uncertain heart again.
He feels the old truth within, eternally,
While this new state only brings him pain.
And we seem to ourselves only half alive,
The brightest day is twilight all around.
Happy are we that Fate torments our lives,
Yet can change nothing of what we found.

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

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{mos_sb_discuss:5}
 

The Darkling Thrush

 I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed as fervorless as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling its soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.

  Thomas Hardy

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 {mos_sb_discuss:5}

Toads

Why should I let the toad work

Squat on my life?

Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork

And drive the brute off?

Six days of the week it soils

With its sickening poison -

Just for paying a few bills!

That's out of proportion.

Lots of folk live on their wits:

Lecturers, lispers,

Losers, loblolly-men, louts-

They don't end as paupers;

Lots of folk live up lanes

With fires in a bucket,

Eat windfalls and tinned sardines-

They seem to like it.

Their nippers have got bare feet,

Their unspeakable wives

Are skinny as whippets - and yet

No one actually _starves_.

Ah, were I courageous enough

To shout, Stuff your pension!

But I know, all too well, that's the stuff

That dreams are made on:

For something sufficiently toad-like

Squats in me, too;

Its hunkers are heavy as hard luck,

And cold as snow,

And will never allow me to blarney

My way of getting

The fame and the girl and the money

All at one sitting.

I don't say, one bodies the other

One's spiritual truth;

But I do say it's hard to lose either,

When you have both.

        -- Philip Larkin

 

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 {mos_sb_discuss:5}

Dolor

I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,

 Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper weight,

 All the misery of manila folders and mucilage,

 Desolation in immaculate public places.

 Lonely reception room, lavatory, switch-board,

 The unalterable pathos of basin and pitcher,

 Ritual of multigraph, paper clip, comma,

 Endless duplication of lives and objects.

 And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions,

 Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica,

 Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium,

 Dropping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows,

 Glazing the pale hair, the duplicate grey standard faces.

 

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{mos_sb_discuss:5} 

Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann'd:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.

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 {mos_sb_discuss:5}

It little profits that an idle king,

By this still hearth, among these barren crags,

Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole

Unequal laws unto a savage race,

That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink

Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd

Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those

That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when

Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades

Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;

For always roaming with a hungry heart

Much have I seen and known; cities of men

And manners, climates, councils, governments,

Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;

And drunk delight of battle with my peers,

Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.

I am a part of all that I have met;

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'

Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades

For ever and forever when I move.

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,

To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!

As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life

Were all too little, and of one to me

Little remains: but every hour is saved

From that eternal silence, something more,

A bringer of new things; and vile it were

For some three suns to store and hoard myself,

And this gray spirit yearning in desire

To follow knowledge like a sinking star,

Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.



 




 

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,

To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,---

Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil

This labour, by slow prudence to make mild

A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees

Subdue them to the useful and the good.

Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere

Of common duties, decent not to fail

In offices of tenderness, and pay

Meet adoration to my household gods,

When I am gone. He works his work, I mine. 




 

    There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:

There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,

Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me ---

That ever with a frolic welcome took

The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed

Free hearts, free foreheads --- you and I are old;

Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;

Death closes all: but something ere the end,

Some work of noble note, may yet be done,

Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.

The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:

The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep

Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,

'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

Push off, and sitting well in order smite

The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars, until I die.

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,

And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Continue reading “Ulysses” →

 {mos_sb_discuss:5}

Into my heart an air that kills

Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.

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