ODE TO THE WEST WIND
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley
I
O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow
Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill:
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear!
ON LOOKING UP BY CHANCE AT THE CONSTELLATIONS
~ Robert Frost
You'll wait a long, long time for anything much
To happen in heaven beyond the floats of cloud
And the Northern Lights that run like tingling nerves.
The sun and moon get crossed, but they never touch,
Nor strike out fire from each other nor crash out loud.
The planets seem to interfere in their curves -
But nothing ever happens, no harm is done.
We may as well go patiently on with our life,
And look elsewhere than to stars and moon and sun
For the shocks and changes we need to keep us sane.
It is true the longest drout will end in rain,
The longest peace in China will end in strife.
Still it wouldn't reward the watcher to stay awake
In hopes of seeing the calm of heaven break
On his particular time and personal sight.
That calm seems certainly safe to last to-night.
ON THE NATURE OF LOVE
(From CHAITALI)
~ Rabindranath Tagore
(Translated from Bengali by Ketaki Kushari Dyson)
The night is black and the forest has no end;
a million people thread it in a million ways.
We have trysts to keep in the darkness, but where
or with whom- of that we are unaware.
But we have this faith--that a lifetime's bliss
will appear any minute, with a smile upon its lips.
Scents, touches, sounds, snatches of songs
brush us, pass us, give us delightful shocks.
Then peradventure there's a flash of lightning:
whomever I see that instant I fall in love with.
I call that person and cry: `This life is blest!
For your sake such miles have I traversed!'
All those others who come close and moved off
in the darkness--I don't know if they exist or not.
(Submitted by Heidi Liedberg)
OUTLAWS
~ Robert Graves
Owls -- they whinny down the night;
Bats go zigzag by.
Ambushed in shadow beyond sight
The outlaws lie.
Old gods, tamed to silence, there
In the wet woods they lurk,
Greedy of human stuff to snare
In nets of murk.
Look up, else your eye will drown
In a moving sea of black;
Between the tree-tops, upside down,
Goes the sky-track.
Look up, else your feet will stray
Towards that dim ambuscade
Where spider-like they trap their prey
In webs of shade.
For though creeds whirl away in dust,
Faith dies and men forget,
These aged gods of power and lust
Cling to life yet--
Old gods almost dead, malign,
Starving for unpaid dues;
Incense and fire, salt, blood and wine
And a drumming muse,
Banished to woods and a sickly moon,
Shrunk to mere bogey things,
Who spoke with thunder once at noon
To prostrate kings
With thunder grom an open sky
To warrior, virgin, priest
Bowing in fear with a dazzled eye
Toward the dread East--
Proud gods, humbled, sunk so low,
Living with ghosts and ghouls,
And ghosts of ghosts and last year's snow
And dead toadstools.
PHASES OF THE MOON
~ Elinor Wylie
Once upon a time I heard
That the flying moon was a Phoenix bird;
Thus she sails through windy skies,
Thus in the willow's arms she lies;
Turn to the East or turn to the West
In many trees she makes her nest.
When she's but a pearly thread
Look among birch leaves overhead;
When she dies in yellow smoke
Look in a thunder-smitten oak;
But in May when the moon is full,
Bright as water and white as wool,
Look for her where she loves to be,
Asleep in a high magnolia tree.
A PINCH OF SALT
~ Robert Graves
When a dream is born in you
With a sudden clamorous pain,
When you know the dream is true
And lovely, with no flaw nor stain,
O then, be careful, or with sudden clutch
You'll hurt the delicate thing you prize so much.
Dreams are like a bird that mocks,
Flirting the feathers of his tail.
When you seize at the salt-box
Over the hedge you'll see him sail.
Old birds are neither caught with salt nor chaff:
They watch you from the apple bough and laugh.
Poet, never chase the dream.
Laugh yourself and turn away.
Mask your hunger, let it seem
Small matter if he come or stay;
But when he nestles in your hand at last,
Close up your fingers tight and hold him fast.
A POET OF ONE MOOD
~ Alice Meynell
A poet of one mood in all my lays,
Ranging all life to sing one only love,
Like a west wind across the world I move,
Sweeping my harp of floods mine own wild ways.
The countries change, but not the west-wind days
Which are my songs. My soft skies shine above,
And on all seas the colours of a dove,
And on all fields a flash of silver greys.
I made the whole world answer to my art
And sweet monotonous meanings. In your ears
I change not ever, bearing, for my part,
One thought that is the treasure of my years--
A small cloud full of rain upon my heart
And in mine arms, clapsed, like a child in tears.
THE QUIET SNOW
~ Raymond Knister
The quiet snow
Will splotch
Each in the row of cedars
With a fine
And patient hand;
Numb the harshness,
Tangle of that swamp.
It does not say, The sun
Does these things another way.
Even on hats of walkers,
The air of noise
And street-car ledges
It does not know
There should be hurry.
RELUCTANCE
~ by Robert Frost
Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.
The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.
And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question 'Whither?'
Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?
(Suggested by Katherine Remmel)
RING OUT SOLSTICE BELLS
~ Ian Anderson
Now is the solstice
of the year,
winter is the glad song that you hear.
Seven maids move in seven time.
Have the lads up ready in a line.
Ring out these bells.
Ring out, ring solstice bells.
Ring solstice bells.
Join together beneath the mistletoe.
By the holy oak whereon it grows.
Seven druids dance in seven time.
Sing the song the bells call, loudly chiming.
Ring out these bells.
Ring out, ring solstice bells.
Ring solstice bells.
Praise be to the distant sister sun,
joyful as the silver planets run.
Seven maids move in seven time.
Sing the song the bells call, loudly chiming.
Ring out those bells.
Ring out, ring solstice bells.
Ring solstice bells.
Ring on, ring out.
Ring on, ring out.
ROMANCE
~ Robert Louis Stevenson
I will make you brooches and toys for your delight
Of bird-song at morning and star-shine at night.
I will make a palace fit for you and me,
Of green days in forests and blue days at sea.
I will make my kitchen, and you shall keep your room,
Where white flows the river and bright blows the broom,
And you shall wash your linen and keep your body white
In rainfall at morning and dewfall at night.
And this shall be for music when no one else is near,
The fine song for singing, the rare song to hear!
That only I remember, that only you admire,
Of the broad road that stretches and the roadside fire.
(Submitted by Fran Peters)
POETRY
~ Marianne Moore
school-books": all these phenomena are important. One must make a distinction
however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the result
is not poetry,
nor till the poets among us can be
"literalists of
the imagination" -- above
insolence and triviality and can
present
(Submitted by Katherine Remmel
THE OTHERS
~ Seamus O'Sullivan
From our hidden places
By a secret path,
We come in the moonlight
To the side of the green rath.
There the night through
We take our pleasure,
Dancing to such a measure
As earth never knew.
To song and dance
And lilt without a name,
So sweetly breathed
'Twould put a bird to shame.
And many a young maiden
Is there, of mortal birth,
Her young eyes laden
With dreams of earth.
And many a youth entranced
Moves slowly in the wildered round,
His brave lost feet enchanted,
With the rhythms of faery sound.
Music so forest wild
And piercing sweet would bring
Silence on blackbirds singing
Their best in the ear of spring.
And now they pause in their dancing,
And look with troubled eyes,
Earth straying children
With sudden memory wise.
They pause, and their eyes in the moonlight
With fairy wisdom cold,
Grow dim and a thought goes fluttering
In the hearts no longer old.
And then the dream forsakes them,
And sighing, they turn anew,
As the whispering music takes them,
To the dance of the elfin crew.
O many a thrush and a blackbird
Would fall to the dewy ground,
And pine away in silence
For envy of such a sound.
So the night through
In our sad pleasure,
We dance to many a measure,
That earth never knew.
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