ANCIENT LULLABY
~ Gerald Griffin

Darkness o’er the world is creeping,
Slumber while the heavens are weeping,
While the kerns their watch are keeping,
And all eyes beside are sleeping.

Heaven’s dark curtains now are closing,
The wild winds in peace reposing;
Now the harper old is prosing,
While his chieftain’s eyes are dozing.

Heavy is the humming number:
Let the witch that scatters slumber,
In her passage halt and murmur,
Till her dews they lids encumber.

Dull and dim the moon is gleaming,
Drowsy is the owlet’s screaming,
Sullen sounds and gloomy seeming
Soon shall mingle in thy dreaming.

BE STILL AS YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL
~ Patrick Mac Donogh

Be still as you are beautiful
Be silent as the rose;
Through miles of starlit countryside
Unspoken worship flows
To reach you in your loveless room
From lonely men whom daylight gave
The blessing of your passing face
Impenetrably grave.

A white owl in the lichened wood
Is circling silently,
More secret and more silent yet
Must be your love to me.
Thus, while about my dreaming head
Your soul in ceaseless vigil goes,
Be still as you are beautiful
Be silent as the rose.

THE CASTING
~ Oliver St. John Gogarty

I pour in the mould of rhyme
All that my heart would hold:
The transient light on the tower,
The moat in its wintry gold,
Sunlight, and a passing shower,
The gleam of your garments' fold
That baffles the eye as you pass,
Formless and lovely things
Like speech that breaks in laugh;
To leave them a shape with wings,
And Time but a cenotaph.
I heat them with more than heat,
Because they must glow in the cold;
I puddle the white-hot mass,
And praying with words retold,
To temper Beauty from Time,
I pour them into the mould.

EPIC
~ Patrick Kavanagh

 I have lived in important places, times
 When great events were decided, who owned
That half a rood of rock, a no-man's land
 Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims.
 I heard the Duffeys shouting "Damn your soul"
 And old McCabe stripped to the waist, seen
  Step the plot defying blue cast-steel --
 "Here is the march along these iron stones".
 That was the year of the Munich bother. Which
 Was more important? I inclined
 To lose my faith in Ballyrush and Gortin
 Till Homer's ghost came whispering to my mind.
 He said: I made the Iliad from such
 A local row. Gods make their own importance.

(Submitted by Anonymous)

ECHO
~ Thomas Moore

How sweet the Echo makes
To music at night,
When, roused by lute or horn, she wakes,
And, far away, o'er lawns and lakes,
Goes answering light.

Yet Love hath echoes truer far,
And far more sweet,
Than e'er beneath the moonlight's star,
Or horn or lute, or soft guitar,
The songs repeat.

'Tis when the sigh, in youth sincere,
And only then,---
The sigh that's breathed for one to hear,
Is by that one, that only dear,
Breathed back again.

(Submitted by Carolyn Holland)

ADMONITION
~ Philip Stack (Kid Kazanova)

No, I am through and you can call in vain.
There is too great a fee for your caress;
Too great a share of heartbreak and of pain
And all the kindred hurts of loneliness.
What does it mean at best? A fevered hour
When I forget that you are not for me;
Your charm aglow like some exotic flower
To rouse again the waves of memory.

No, I am through---the trumpet call of youth
Must sound in vain---for I have need of rest;
You have no peace to give---no certain truth---
And I am sick and weary of my quest.

Leave me to books and wine and memories---
Nothing you have to give can equal these!

(Submitted by Jeannie Pavlik)

ALCHEMY
~ Francis Carlin

Because of the light of the moon,
Silver is found on the moor;
And because of the light of the sun,
There is gold on the walls of the poor.

Because of the light of the stars,
Planets are found in the stream;
And because of the light of your eyes,
There is love in the depths of my dream.

ALL DAY I HEAR THE NOISE OF WATERS
~ James Joyce

All day I hear the noise of waters
Making moan,
Sad as the sea-bird is, when going
Forth alone,
He hears the winds cry to the waters'
Monotone.

The grey winds, the cold winds are blowing
Where I go
I hear the noise of many waters
Far below,
All day, all night, I hear them flowing
To and fro.

ARS POETICA
~ Archibald MacLeish

A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit

Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown--

A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds

Apoem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs

Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, the moon behind the winter leaves,
Memory by memory the mind--

A poem should be motinless in time
As the moon climbs

A poem should be equal to:
Not true

For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf

For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea--

A poem should not mean
But be

(Submitted by Yankee Housewife)

AUTUMN
~ John Clare

The thistledown's flying, though the winds are all still,
On the green grass now lying, now mounting the hill,
The spring from the fountain now boils like a pot;
Through stones past the counting it bubbles red-hot.

The ground parched and cracked is like overbaked bread,
The greensward all wracked is, bents dried up and dead.
The fallow fields glitter like water indeed,
And gossamers twitter, flung from weed unto weed.

Hill-tops like hot iron glitter bright in the sun,
And the rivers we're eyeing burn to gold as they run;
Burning hot is the ground, liquid gold is the air;
Whoever looks round sees Eternity there.

BEER
~ Charles Stuart Calverly

In those old days which poets say were golden --
(Perhaps they laid the gilding on themselves:
And, if they did, I'm all the more beholden
To those brown dwellers in my dusty shelves,
Who talk to me "in language quaint and olden"
Of gods and demigods and fauns and elves,
Pan with his pipes, and Bacchus with his leopards,
And staid young goddesses who flirt with shepherds:)
In those old days, the Nymph called Etiquette
(Appalling thought to dwell on) was not born.
They had their May, but no Mayfair as yet,
No fashions varying as the hues of morn.
Just as they pleased they dressed and drank and ate,
Sang hymns to Ceres (their John Barleycorn)
And danced unchaperoned, and laughed unchecked,
And were no doubt extremely incorrect.
Yet do I think their theory was pleasant:
And oft, I own, my "wayward fancy roams"
Back to those times, so different from the present;
When no one smoked cigars, nor gave At-homes,
Nor smote a billiard-ball, nor winged a pheasant,
Nor "did" her hair by means of long-tailed combs,
Nor migrated to Brighton once a year,
Nor -- most astonishing of all -- drank Beer.
No, they did not drink Beer, "which brings me to"
(As Gilpin said) "the middle of my song."
Not that "the middle" is precisely true,
Or else I should not tax your patience long:
If I had said "beginning," it might do;
But I have a dislike to quoting wrong:
I was unlucky -- sinned against, not sinning --
When Cowper wrote down "middle" for "beginning."
So to proceed. That abstinence from Malt
Has always struck me as extremely curious.
The Greek mind must have had some vital fault,
That they should stick to liquors so injurious --
(Wine, water, tempered p'raps with Attic salt) --
And not at once invent that mild, luxurious,
And artful beverage, Beer. How the digestion
Got on without it, is a startling question.
Had they digestions? and an actual body
Such as dyspepsia might make attacks on?
Were they abstract ideas -- (like Tom Noddy
And Mr. Briggs) -- or men, like Jones and Jackson?
Then nectar -- was that beer, or whisky-toddy?
Some say the Gaelic mixture, I the Saxon:
I think a strict adherence to the latter
Might make some Scots less pigheaded, and fatter.
Besides, Bon Gaultier definitely shows
That the real beverage for feasting gods on
Is a soft compound, grateful to the nose
And also to the palate, known as "Hidgson."
I know a man -- a tailor's son -- who rose
To be a peer: and this I would lay odds on,
(Though in his Memoirs it may not appear,)
That that man owed his rise to copious Beer.
O Beer! O Hodgson, Guinness, Allsopp, Bass!
Names that should be on every infant's tongue!
Shall days and months and years and centuries pass,
And still your merits be unrecked, unsung?
Oh! I have gazed into my foaming glass,
And wished that lyre could yet again be strung
Which once rang prophet-like through Greece, and taught her
Misguided sons that the best drink was water.
How would he now recant that wild opinion,
And sing -- as would that I could sing -- of you!
I was not born (alas!) the "Muses' minion,"
I'm not poetical, not even blue:
And he, we know, but strives with waxen pinion,
Whoe'er he is that entertains the view
Of emulating Pindar, and will be
Sponsor at last to some now nameless sea.
Oh! when the green slopes of Arcadia burned
With all the lustre of the dying day,
And on Cithæron's brow the reaper turned,
(Humming, of course, in his delightful way,
How Lycidas was dead, and how concerned
The Nymphs were when they saw his lifeless clay;
And how rock told to rock the dreadful story
That poor young Lycidas was gone to glory:)
What would that lone and labouring soul have given,
At that soft moment for a pewter pot!
How had the mists that dimmed his eye been riven,
And Lycidas and sorrow all forgot!
If his own grandmother had died unshriven,
In two short seconds he'd have recked it not;
Such power hath Beer. The heart which Grief hath cankered
Hath one unfailing remedy -- the Tankard.
Coffee is good, and so no doubt is cocoa;
Tea did for Johnson and the Chinamen:
When "Dulce est desipere in loco"
Was written, real Falernian winged the pen.
When a rapt audience has encored "Fra Poco"
Or "Casta Diva," I have heard that then
The Prima Donna, smiling herself out,
Recruits her flagging powers with bottled stout.
But what is coffee, but a noxious berry,
Born to keep used-up Londoners awake?
What is Falernian, what is Port or Sherry,
But vile concoctions to make dull heads ache?
Nay stout itself -- (though good with oysters, very) --
Is not a thing your reading man should take.
He that would shine, and petrify his tutor,
Should drink draught Allsopp in its "native pewter."
But hark! a sound is stealing on my ear --
A soft and silvery sound -- I know it well.
Its tinkling tells me that a time is near
Precious to me -- it is the Dinner Bell.
O blessed Bell! Thou bringest beef and beer,
Thou bringest good things more than tongue may tell:
Seared is, of course, my heart -- but unsubdued
Is, and shall be, my appetite for food.
I go. Untaught and feeble is my pen:
But on one statement I may safely venture:
That few of our most highly gifted men
Have more appreciation of their trencher.
I go. One pound of British beef, and then
What Mr. Swiveller called a "modest quencher";
That home-returning, I may "soothly say,"
"Fate cannot touch me: I have dined to-day."

THE BELLS
~ Edgar Allen Poe

I
Hear the sledges with the bells--
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells--
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

II
Hear the mellow wedding bells,
Golden bells!
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!
Through the balmy air of night
How they ring out their delight!
From the molten-golden notes,
And an in tune,
What a liquid ditty floats
To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats
On the moon!
Oh, from out the sounding cells,
What a gush of euphony voluminously wells!
How it swells!
How it dwells
On the Future! how it tells
Of the rapture that impels
To the swinging and the ringing
Of the bells, bells, bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells--
To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!

III
Hear the loud alarum bells--
Brazen bells!
What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells!
In the startled ear of night
How they scream out their affright!
Too much horrified to speak,
They can only shriek, shriek,
Out of tune,
In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire,
Leaping higher, higher, higher,
With a desperate desire,
And a resolute endeavor,
Now--now to sit or never,
By the side of the pale-faced moon.
Oh, the bells, bells, bells!
What a tale their terror tells
Of Despair!
How they clang, and clash, and roar!
What a horror they outpour
On the bosom of the palpitating air!
Yet the ear it fully knows,
By the twanging,
And the clanging,
How the danger ebbs and flows:
Yet the ear distinctly tells,
In the jangling,
And the wrangling,
How the danger sinks and swells,
By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells--
Of the bells--
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells--
In the clamor and the clangor of the bells!

IV
Hear the tolling of the bells--
Iron Bells!
What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!
In the silence of the night,
How we shiver with affright
At the melancholy menace of their tone!
For every sound that floats
From the rust within their throats
Is a groan.
And the people--ah, the people--
They that dwell up in the steeple,
All Alone
And who, tolling, tolling, tolling,
In that muffled monotone,
Feel a glory in so rolling
On the human heart a stone--
They are neither man nor woman--
They are neither brute nor human--
They are Ghouls:
And their king it is who tolls;
And he rolls, rolls, rolls,
Rolls
A paean from the bells!
And his merry bosom swells
With the paean of the bells!
And he dances, and he yells;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the paean of the bells--
Of the bells:
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the throbbing of the bells--
Of the bells, bells, bells--
To the sobbing of the bells;
Keeping time, time, time,
As he knells, knells, knells,
In a happy Runic rhyme,
To the rolling of the bells--
Of the bells, bells, bells:
To the tolling of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells--
Bells, bells, bells--
To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.

BENEDICTUS
~ David Cousins

The wanderer has far to go
Humble must he constant be
Where the paths of wisdom lead
Distant is the shadow of the setting sun

Bless the daytime
Bless the night
Bless the sun which gives us light
Bless the thunder
Bless the rain
Bless all those who cause us pain.

Yellow stars may guide the way
All diversions lead astray
While his resolution holds
Fortune and good will will surely follow him.

Bless the free man
Bless the slave
Bless the hero in his grave
Bless the soldier
Bless the saint
Bless all those whose hearts grow faint.

A BIRTHDAY
~ Christina Rossetti

My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a water'd shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these
Because my love is come to me.

Raise me a dais of silk and down;
Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
Carve it in doves and pomegranates,
And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my life
Is come, my love is come to me.

(Submitted by Fran Peters)

The cat went here and there
And the moon spun round like a top,
And the nearest kin of the moon,
The creeping cat, looked up.

Black Minnaloushe stared at the moon,
For, wander and wail as he would,
The pure cold light in the sky
Troubled his animal blood.

Minnaloushe runs in the grass
Lifting his delicate feet.
Do you dance, Minnaloushe, do you dance?
When two close kindred meet,
What better than call a dance?

Maybe the moon may learn,
Tired of that courtly fashion,
A new dance turn.

Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
From moonlit place to place,
The sacred moon overhead
Has taken a new phase.

Does Minnaloushe know that his pupils
Will pass from change to change,
And that from round to crescent,
From crescent to round they range?

Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
Alone, important and wise,
And lifts to the changing moon
His changing eyes.

(Submitted by Katherine Remmel)

CHANGE
~ Raymond Knister

I shall not wonder more, then,
But I shall know.

Leaves change, and birds, flowers,
And after years are still the same.

The sea's breast heaves in sighs to the moon,
But they are moon and sea forever.

As in other times the trees stand tense and lonely,
And spread a hollow moan of other times.

You will be you yourself,
I'll find you more, not else,
For vintage of the woeful years.

The sea breathes, or broods, or loudens,
Is bright or is mist and the end of the world;
And the sea is constant to change.

I shall not wonder more, then,
But I shall know.

THE DAY IS DONE
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The day is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of Night,
As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in his flight.

I see the lights of the village
Gleam through the rain and the mist,
And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me
That my soul cannot resist:

A feeling of sadness and longing,
That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only
As the mist resembles the rain.

Come, read to me some poem,
Some simple and heartfelt lay,
That shall soothe this restless feeling,
And banish the thoughts of day.

Not from the grand old masters,
Not from the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo
Through the corridors of Time,

For, like strains of martial music,
Their mighty thoughts suggest
Life's endless toil and endeavor;
And tonight I long for rest.

Read from some humbler poet,
Whose songs gushed from his heart,
As showers from the clouds of summer,
Or tears from the eyelids start;

Who, through long days of labor,
And nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in his soul the music
Of wonderful melodies.

Such songs have a power to quiet
The restless pulse of care,
And comes like the benediction
That follows after prayer.

Then read from the treasured volume
The poem of thy choice,
And lend to the rhyme of the poet
The beauty of thy voice.

And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares, that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.

DEPARTED YOUTH
~ Hannah Parkhouse Crowley

What though the rosebuds from my cheek
Have faded all! which one so sleek
Spoke youth and joy, and careless thought.
By guilt, or fear, or shame uncaught,
My soul, uninjured, still hath youth,
Its lively sense attests the truth.

Oh! I can wander yet, and taste
The beauties of the flowery waste,
The nightingale's deep swell can feel
Til to the eye a tear doth steal;
Rapt! gaze upon the gem decked night,
Or mark the clear moon's gradual flight,
Whilst the bright river's rippled wave
Repeats the quivering beams she gave.

Nor yet does painting strive in vain
To waken from its canvas plain
The lofty passions of the mind.
Or hint of sentiment refined:
To the sweet magic yet I bow,
As when youth decked my polished brow.

The chisel's lightest touch to trace
Through the pure form, or siftened grace,
Is lent me still; I still admire,
And kindle the Poet's fire-
Why time since these are left me still,
Of lesser theft's e'en take thy fill,

Yes, take all the lustre from my eye,
And let the blithe carnation fly,
My tresses sprinkled o'er with snow
That boasted once their auburn glow,
Break the slim form that was once adored
By him so loved , my wedded lord;
But you leave me, whilst all these you steal,
The mind to taste, the nerve to feel.

(Submitted by Fran Peters)

DESERT PLACES
~ Robert Frost

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.

The woods around it have it--it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.

And lonely as it is that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it be less--
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars--on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.

(Submitted by Katherine Remmel)

THE END OF THE RAVEN
~ Edgar Allan Poe's Cat

On a night quite unenchanting,
When the rain was downward slanting,
I awakened to the ranting
Of the man I catch mice for.
Tipsy and a bit unshaven,
In a tone I found quite craven,
Poe was talking to a Raven
Perched above the chamber door.
"Raven's very tasty," thought I,
As I tiptoed o'er the floor...

"There is nothing I like more."

Soft upon the rug I treaded,
Calm and careful as I headed
Towards his roost atop that dreaded
Bust of Pallas I deplore.
While the bard and birdie chattered,
I made sure that nothing clattered,
Creaked or snapped, or fell, or shattered,
As I crossed the corridor;
For Poe's house is crammed with trinkets,
Curios and weird decor...

Bric-a-brac and junk galore.

Still the Raven never fluttered,
Standing stock-still, as he uttered,
In a voice that shrieked and sputtered,
His two cents' worth... "Nevermore."
While the dirge the birdbrain kept up,
Oh, so silently I crept up;
Then I crouched and quickly leapt up,
Pouncing on the feathered bore.
Soon he was a heap of plumage,
And a little blood and gore...

Only this, and not much more.

"Ooooh!" my pickled poet cried out,
"Pussycat, it's time I dried out!
Never sat I in my hideout
Talking to a bird before;
Now I've wallowed in self-pity,
While my gallant, valiant kitty
Put an end to that damned ditty."
Then I heard him start to snore.
Back atop the door I clambered,
Eyed that statue I abhor...

Jumped... and smashed it on the floor.

EXILES
~ A.E. (George Russell)

The gods have taken alien shapes upon them
Wild peasants driving swine
In a strange country. Through the swarthy faces
The starry faces shine.

Under grey tattered skies they strain and reel there:
Yet cannot all disguise
The majesty of fallen gods, the beauty,
The fire beneath their eyes.

They huddle at night within low clay-built cabins;
And, to themselves unknown,
They carry with them diadem and sceptre
And move from throne to throne

EVENING SOLACE
~ Charlotte Brontë

The human heart has hidden treasures,
In secret kept, in silence sealed;
The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures,
Whose charms were broken if revealed.
And days may pass in gay confusion,
And nights in rosy riot fly,
While, lost in Fame's or Wealth's illusion,
The memory of the Past may die.

But, there are hours of lonely musing,
Such as in evening silence come,
When, soft as birds their pinions closing,
The heart's best feelings gather home.
Then in our souls there seems to languish
A tender grief that is not woe;
And thoughts that once wrung groans of anguish,
Now cause but some mild tears to flow.

And feelings, once as strong as passions,
Float softly back as faded dream;
Our own sharp griefs and wild sensations,
The tale of others' sufferings seem.
Oh ! when the heart is freshly bleeding,
How longs it for that time to be,
When, through the mist of years receding,
Its woes but live in reverie!

And it can dwell on moonlight glimmer,
On evening shade and loneliness;
And, while the sky grows dim and dimmer,
Feel no untold and strange distress­
Only a deeper impulse given
By lonely hour and darkened room,
To solemn thoughts that soar to heaven,
Seeking a life and world to come.

CHAMBER MUSIC (III)
~ James Joyce

At that hour when all things have repose,
O lonely watcher of the skies,
Do you hear the night wind and the sighs
Of harps playing unto Love to unclose
The pale gates of sunrise?

When all things repose, do you alone
Awake to hear the sweet harps play
To Love before him on his way,
And the night wind answering in antiphon
Till night is overgone?

Play on, invisible harps, unto Love,
Whose way in heaven is aglow
At that hour when soft lights come and go,
Soft sweet music in the air above
And in the earth below.

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