Wednesday, April 28, 2010

My Cicely


"ALIVE?"--And I leapt in my wonder,
Was faint of my joyance,
And grasses and grove shone in garments
Of glory to me.

"She lives, in a plenteous well-being,
To-day as aforehand;
The dead bore the name--though a rare one--
The name that bore she."

She lived ... I, afar in the city
Of frenzy-led factions,
Had squandered green years and maturer
In bowing the knee

To Baals illusive and specious,
Till chance had there voiced me
That one I loved vainly in nonage
Had ceased her to be.

The passion the planets had scowled on,
And change had let dwindle,
Her death-rumor smartly relifted
To full apogee.

I mounted a steed in the dawning
With acheful remembrance,
And made for the ancient West Highway
To far Exonb'ry.

Passing heaths, and the House of Long Sieging,
I neared the thin steeple
That tops the fair fane of Poore's olden
Episcopal see;

And, changing anew my onbearer,
I traversed the downland
Whereon the bleak hill-graves of Chieftains
Bulge barren of tree;

And still sadly onward I followed
That Highway the Icen,
Which trails its pale ribbon down Wessex
O'er lynchet and lea.

Along through the Stour-bordered Forum,
Where Legions had wayfared,
And where the slow river upglasses
Its green canopy,

And by Weatherbury Castle, and therence
Through Casterbridge, bore I,
To tomb her whose light, in my deeming,
Extinguished had He.

No highwayman's trot blew the night-wind
To me so life-weary,
But only the creak of the gibbets
Or wagoners' jee.

Triple-ramparted Maidon gloomed grayly
Above me from southward,
And north the hill-fortress of Eggar,
And square Pummerie.

The Nine-Pillared Cromlech, the Bride-streams,
The Axe, and the Otter
I passed, to the gate of the city
Where Exe scents the sea;

Till, spent, in the graveacre pausing,
I learnt 'twas not my Love
To whom Mother Church had just murmured
A last lullaby.

--"Then, where dwells the Canon's kinswoman,
My friend of aforetime?"--
('Twas hard to repress my heart-heavings
And new ecstasy.)

"She wedded."--"Ah!"--"Wedded beneath her--
She keeps the stage-hostel
Ten miles hence, beside the great Highway--
The famed Lions-Three.

"Her spouse was her lackey--no option
'Twixt wedlock and worse things;
A lapse over-sad for a lady
Of her pedigree!"

I shuddered, said nothing, and wandered
To shades of green laurel:
Too ghastly had grown those first tidings
So brightsome of blee!

For, on my ride hither, I'd halted
Awhile at the Lions,
And her--her whose name had once opened
My heart as a key--

I'd looked on, unknowing, and witnessed
Her jests with the tapsters,
Her liquor-fired face, her thick accents
In naming her fee.

"O God, why this hocus satiric!"
I cried in my anguish:
"O once Loved, of fair Unforgotten--
That Thing--meant it thee!

"Inurned and at peace, lost but sainted,
Where grief I could compass;
Depraved--'tis for Christ's poor dependent
A cruel decree!"

I backed on the Highway; but passed not
The hostel. Within there
Too mocking to Love's re-expression
Was Time's repartee!

Uptracking where Legions had wayfared,
By cromlechs unstoried,
And lynchets, and sepultured Chieftains,
In self-colloquy,

A feeling stirred in me and strengthened
That she was not my Love,
But she of the garth, who lay rapt in
Her long reverie.

And thence till to-day I persuade me
That this was the true one;
That Death stole intact her young dearness
And innocency.

Frail-witted, illuded they call me;
I may be. 'Tis better
To dream than to own the debasement
Of sweet Cicely.

Moreover I rate it unseemly
To hold that kind Heaven
Could work such device--to her ruin
And my misery.

So, lest I disturb my choice vision,
I shun the West Highway,
Even now, when the knaps ring with rhythms
From blackbird and bee;

And feel that with slumber half-conscious
She rests in the church-hay,
Her spirit unsoiled as in youth-time
When lovers were we.

Thomas Hardy

Mute Opinion


I

I traversed a dominion
Whose spokesmen spake out strong
Their purpose and opinion
Through pulpit, press, and song.
I scarce had means to note there
A large-eyed few, and dumb,
Who thought not as those thought there
That stirred the heat and hum.

II

When, grown a Shade, beholding
That land in lifetime trode,
To learn if its unfolding
Fulfilled its clamoured code,
I saw, in web unbroken,
Its history outwrought
Not as the loud had spoken,
But as the mute had thought.

Thomas Hardy

Moments of Vision


That mirror
Which makes of men a transparency,
Who holds that mirror
And bids us such a breast-bare spectacle see
Of you and me?

That mirror
Whose magic penetrates like a dart,
Who lifts that mirror
And throws our mind back on us, and our heart,
until we start?

That mirror
Works well in these night hours of ache;
Why in that mirror
Are tincts we never see ourselves once take
When the world is awake?

That mirror
Can test each mortal when unaware;
Yea, that strange mirror
May catch his last thoughts, whole life foul or fair,
Glassing it -- where?

Thomas Hardy

The Early Morning


The moon on the one hand, the dawn on the other:
The moon is my sister, the dawn is my brother.
The moon on my left and the dawn on my right.
My brother, good morning: my sister, good night.

Hilaire Belloc

Stanzas


Oh, weep not, love! each tear that springs
In those dear eyes of thine,
To me a keener suffering brings,
Than if they flowed from mine.

And do not droop! however drear
The fate awaiting thee;
For my sake combat pain and care,
And cherish life for me!

I do not fear thy love will fail;
Thy faith is true, I know;
But, oh, my love! thy strength is frail
For such a life of woe.

Were't not for this, I well could trace
(Though banished long from thee,)
Life's rugged path, and boldly face
The storms that threaten me.

Fear not for me -­ I've steeled my mind
Sorrow and strife to greet;
Joy with my love I leave behind,
Care with my friends I meet.

A mother's sad reproachful eye,
A father's scowling brow -­
But he may frown and she may sigh:
I will not break my vow!

I love my mother, I revere
My sire, but fear not me­
Believe that Death alone can tear
This faithful heart from thee.

Acton

Anne Bronte

Song of the Stygian Naiades


Proserpine may pull her flowers,
Wet with dew or wet with tears,
Red with anger, pale with fears;
Is it any fault of ours,
If Pluto be an amorous king
And come home nightly, laden
Under his broad bat-wing
With a gentle earthly maiden?
Is it so, Wind, is it so?
All that I and you do know
Is that we saw fly and fix
'Mongst the flowers and reeds of Styx,
Yesterday,
Where the Furies made their hay
For a bed of tiger cubs,
A great fly of Beelzebub's,
The bee of hearts, which mortals name
Cupid, Love, and Fie for shame.


Proserpine may weep in rage,
But ere I and you have done
Kissing, bathing in the sun,
What I have in yonder cage,
She shall guess and ask in vain,
Bird or serpent, wild or tame;
But if Pluto does 't again,
It shall sing out loud his shame.
What hast caught then? What hast caught?
Nothing but a poet's thought,
Which so light did fall and fix
'Mongst the flowers and reeds of Styx,
Yesterday,
Where the Furies made their hay
For a bed of tiger cubs,
A great fly of Beelzebub's,
The bee of hearts, which mortals name
Cupid, Love, and Fie for shame.

Thomas Lovell Beddoes

The Pagan World


In his cool hall, with haggard eyes,
The Roman noble lay;
He drove abroad, in furious guise,
Along the Appian way.

He made a feast, drank fierce and fast,
And crowned his hair with flowers -
No easier nor no quicker passed
The impracticable hours.

The brooding East with awe beheld
Her impious younger world.
The Roman tempest swelled and swelled,
And on her head was hurled.

The East bowed low before the blast
In patient, deep disdain;
She let the legions thunder past,
And plunged in thought again.

So well she mused, a morning broke
Across her spirit grey;
A conquering, new-born joy awoke,
And filled her life with day.

"Poor world," she cried, "so deep accurst
That runn'st from pole to pole
To seek a draught to slake thy thirst -
Go, seek it in thy soul!"

She heard it, the victorious West,
In crown and sword arrayed!
She felt the void which mined her breast,
She shivered and obeyed.

She veiled her eagles, snapped her sword,
And laid her sceptre down;
Her stately purple she abhorred,
And her imperial crown.

She broke her flutes, she stopped her sports,
Her artists could not please;
She tore her books, she shut her courts,
She fled her palaces;

Lust of the eye and pride of life
She left it all behind,
And hurried, torn with inward strife,
The wilderness to find.

Tears washed the trouble from her face!
She changed into a child!
Mid weeds and wrecks she stood -a place
Of ruin -but she smiled!

Matthew Arnold

Let Me Sing Of What I Know


A wild west Coast, a little Town,
Where little Folk go up and down,
Tides flow and winds blow:
Night and Tempest and the Sea,
Human Will and Human Fate:
What is little, what is great?
Howsoe'er the answer be,
Let me sing of what I know.

William Allingham

Beauty


I am as lovely as a dream in stone;
My breast on which each finds his death in turn
Inspires the poet with a love as lone
As everlasting clay, and as taciturn.

Swan-white of heart, as sphinx no mortal knows,
My throne is in the heaven's azure deep;
I hate all movement that disturbs my pose;
I smile not ever, neither do I weep.

Before my monumental attitudes,
Taken from the proudest plastic arts,
My poets pray in austere studious moods,

For I, to fold enchantment round their hearts,
Have pools of light where beauty flames and dies,
The placid mirrors of my luminous eyes.

Charles Baudelaire

Idea


Truce, gentle love, a parley now I crave,
Methinks 'tis long since first these wars begun;
Nor thou nor I the better yet can have;
Bad is the match where neither party won.
I offer free conditions of fair peace,
My heart for hostage that it shall remain;
Discharge our forces, here let malice cease,
So for my pledge thou give me pledge again.
Or if no thing but death will serve thy turn,
Still thirsting for subversion of my state,
Do what thou canst, raze, massacre, and burn,
Let the world see the utmost of thy hate;
...I send defiance, since if overthrown,
Thou vanquishing, the conquest is mine own.

Michael Drayton (1563-1631)

Imagination


Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.

George Bernard Shaw

Bad for the mind


Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity.

Christopher Morley

That which has always been accepted by everyone, everywhere, is almost certain to be false.

Paul Valery

Do something


You're alive. Do something. The directive in life, the moral imperative was so uncomplicated. It could be expressed in single words, not complete sentences. It sounded like this: Look. Listen. Choose. Act.

Barbara Hall

Perfect


You come to love not by finding the perfect person, but by seeing an imperfect person perfectly.

Sam Keen

Happiness


Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values.

Ayn Rand

Better


How much better is it to weep at joy than to joy at weeping!

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Oldest


Commit the oldest sins the newest kind of ways.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Suffering


Deep, unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state.

George Eliot (1819-1880)

A minute´s mirth


Who buys a minute's mirth to wail a week?
Or sells eternity to get a toy?
For one sweet grape who will the vine destroy?

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

An elemental thing


An elemental thing to remember is that we must never read into a man's words what we mean, but just try and find out what the author of the words means. As a rule we read into his words what we mean and consequently miss his meaning altogether.

Oswald Chambers (1874-1917)

Welcome, O life!


Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.

James Joyce

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Afternoon Song


Though your wicked eyebrows call
Your nature into question
(Unangelic's their suggestion,
Witch whose eyes enthrall)

I adore you still
O foolish terrible emotion
Kneeling in devotion
As a priest to his idol will.

Your undone braids conceal
Desert, forest scents,
In your exotic countenance
Lie secrets unrevealed.

Over your flesh perfume drifts
Like incense 'round a censor,
Tantalizing dispenser
Of evening's ardent gifts.

No Philtres could compete
With your potent idleness:
You've mastered the caress
That raises dead me to their feet.

Your hips themselves are romanced
By your back and by your breasts:
By your languid dalliance.

Now and then, your appetite's
Uncontrolled, unassuaged:
Mysteriously enraged,
You kiss me and you bite.

Dark one, I am torn
By your savage ways,
Then, soft as the moon, your gaze
Sees my tortured heart reborn.

Beneath your satin shoe,
Beneath your charming silken foot.
My greatest joy I put
My genius and destiny, too.

You bring my spirit back,
Bringer of the light.
Exploding color in the night
Of my Siberia so black.

Charles Baudelaire

Mismet


I
He was leaning by a face,
He was looking into eyes,
And he knew a trysting-place,
And he heard seductive sighs;
But the face,
And the eyes,
And the place,
And the sighs,
Were not, alas, the right ones--the ones meet for him--
Though fine and sweet the features, and the feelings all abrim.

II
She was looking at a form,
She was listening for a tread,
She could feel a waft of charm
When a certain name was said;
But the form,
And the tread,
And the charm,
And name said,
Were the wrong ones for her, and ever would be so,
While the heritor of the right it would have saved her soul to know!

Thomas Hardy

Let Me Enjoy



I

Let me enjoy the earth no less
Because the all-enacting Might
That fashioned forth its loveliness
Had other aims than my delight.

II

About my path there flits a Fair,
Who throws me not a word or sign;
I'll charm me with her ignoring air,
And laud the lips not meant for mine.

III

From manuscripts of moving song
Inspired by scenes and dreams unknown
I'll pour out raptures that belong
To others, as they were my own.

IV

And some day hence, towards Paradise
And all its blest -- if such should be --
I will lift glad, afar-off eyes
Though it contain no place for me.

Thomas Hardy

Because My Faltering Feet


Because my faltering feet may fail to dare
The first descendant of the steps of Hell
Give me the Word in time that triumphs there.
I too must pass into the misty hollow
Where all our living laughter stops: and hark!
The tiny stuffless voices of the dark
Have called me, called me, till I needs must follow:
Give me the Word and I'll attempt it well.

Say it's the little winking of an eye
Which in that issue is uncurtained quite;
A little sleep that helpsa moment by
Between the thin dawn and the large daylight.
Ah! tell me more than yet was hoped of men;
Swear that's true now, and I'll believe it then.

Hilaire Belloc

Song


Come to the banquet -- triumph in your songs!
Strike up the chords -- and sing of Victory!
The oppressed have risen to redress their wrongs;
The Tyrants are o'erthrown; the Land is free!
The Land is free! Aye, shout it forth once more;
Is she not red with her oppressors' gore?

We are her champions -- shall we not rejoice?
Are not the tyrants' broad domains our own?
Then wherefore triumph with a faltering voice;
And talk of freedom in a doubtful tone?
Have we not longed through life the reign to see
Of Justice, linked with Glorious Liberty?

Shout you that will, and you that can rejoice
To revel in the riches of your foes.
In praise of deadly vengeance lift you voice,
Gloat o'er your tyrants' blood, you victims' woes.
I'd rather listen to the skylarks' songs,
And think on Gondal's, and my Father's wrongs.

It may be pleasant, to recall the death
Of those beneath whose sheltering roof you lie;
But I would rather press the mountain heath,
With naught to shield me from the starry sky,
And dream of yet untasted victory --
A distant hope -- and feel that I am free!

O happy life! To range the mountains wild,
The waving woods -- or Ocean's heaving breast,
With limbs unfettered, conscience undefiled,
And choosing where to wander, where to rest!
Hunted, oppressed, but ever strong to cope --
With toils, and perils -- ever full of hope!

'Our flower is budding' -- When that word was heard
On desert shore, or breezy mountain's brow,
Wherever said -- what glorious thoughts it stirred!
'Twas budding then -- Say has it blossomed now?
Is this the end we struggled to obtain?
O for the wandering Outlaw's life again!

Anne Bronte

Song from the Waters


The swallow leaves her nest,
The soul my weary breast;
But therefore let the rain
On my grave
Fall pure; for why complain
Since both will come again
O'er the wave.

The wind dead leaves and snow
Doth hurry to and fro;
And, once, a day shall break
O'er the wave,
When a storm of ghosts shall shake
The dead, until they wake
In the grave.

Thomas Lovell Beddoes

In a Spring Grove


Here the white-ray'd anemone is born,
Wood-sorrel, and the varnish'd buttercup;
And primrose in its purfled green swathed up,
Pallid and sweet round every budding thorn,
Gray ash, and beech with rusty leaves outworn.
Here, too the darting linnet hath her nest
In the blue-lustred holly, never shorn,
Whose partner cheers her little brooding breast,
Piping from some near bough. O simple song!
O cistern deep of that harmonious rillet,
And these fair juicy stems that climb and throng
The vernal world, and unexhausted seas
Of flowing life, and soul that asks to fill it,
Each and all of these,--and more, and more than these!

William Allingham

Longing


Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again!
For so the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.

Come, as thou cam'st a thousand times,
A messenger from radiant climes,
And smile on thy new world, and be
As kind to others as to me!

Or, as thou never cam'st in sooth,
Come now, and let me dream it truth,
And part my hair, and kiss my brow,
And say, My love why sufferest thou?

Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again!
For so the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.

Matthew Arnold

A Man's Requirements


Love me Sweet, with all thou art,
...Feeling, thinking, seeing;
Love me in the lightest part,
...Love me in full being.

Love me with thine open youth
...In its frank surrender;
With the vowing of thy mouth,
...With its silence tender.

Love me with thine azure eyes,
...Made for earnest granting;
Taking colour from the skies,
...Can Heaven's truth be wanting?

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

She Was a Phantom of Delight


She was a phantom of delight
When first she gleamed upon my sight;
A lovely Apparition, sent
To be a moment's ornament;
Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair;
Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair;
But all things else about her drawn
From May-time and the cheerful Dawn;
A dancing Shape, an Image gay,
To haunt, to startle, and way-lay.

I saw her upon a nearer view,
A Spirit, yet a Woman too!
Her household motions light and free,
And steps of virgin liberty;
A countenance in which did meet
Sweet records, promises as sweet;
A Creature not too bright or good
For human nature's daily food;
For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears and smiles.

And now I see with eye serene
The very pulse of the machine;
A Being breathing thoughtful breath,
A Traveler between life and death;
The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;
A perfect Woman, nobly planned,
To warm, to comfort, and command;
And yet a Spirit still, and bright,
With something of angelic light.

William Wordsworth

But love is blind


But love is blind and lovers cannot see
The pretty follies that themselves commit;
For if they could, Cupid himself would blush
To see me thus transformed to a boy.

William Shakespeare

Character


Nothing shows a man's character more than what he laughs at.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

Words




When ideas fail, words come in very handy.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The highest courage


The highest courage is to dare to appear to be what one is.

John Lancaster Spalding

Faults


Make sure that however good you may be, you have faults; that however dull you may be, you can find out what they are; and that however slight they may be, you had better make some patient effort to get quit of them. . . . Therefore see that no day passes in which you do not make yourself a somewhat better creature; and in order to do that find out first what you are now. ... If you do not dare to do this, find out why you do not dare, and try to get strength of heart enough to look yourself fairly in the face, in mind as well as in body.

John Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies, 1899

True joy


True joy is a serene and sober motion ; and they are miserably out that take laughing for rejoicing: the seat of it is within, and there is no cheerfulness like the resolutions of a brave mind, that has fortune under its feet.

Seneca

For of those who borrow


For of those who borrow, some read slow ; some mean to read, but don't read ; and some neither read nor mean to read, but borrow, to leave you an opinion of their sagacity. I must do my money-borrowing friends the justice to say that there is nothing of this caprice or wantonness of alienation in them. When they borrow my money they never fail to make use of it.

Charles Lamb

I can read anything which I call a book


I can read anything which I call a book. There are things in that shape which I cannot allow for such. In this catalogue of books which are no books—biblia a-biblia—I reckon Court Calendars, Directories, Pocket Books, Draught Boards bound and lettered on the back, Scientific Treatises, Almanacs, Statutes at Large: the works of Hume, Gibbon, Robertson, Beattie, Soame Jenyns, and generally all those volumes which " no gentleman's library should be without:" the Histories of Flavius Josephus (that learned Jew), and Paley's Moral Philosophy. With these exceptions, I can read almost any thing. I bless my stars for a taste so catholic, so unexcluding.

Charles Lamb: Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading

Conservatives and Progressives


The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.

G. K. Chesterton

Within


There is a god within us, and we have intercourse with heaven. That spirit comes from abodes on high.

Ovid

Monday, April 26, 2010

Lines Written in Kensington Gardens


In this lone, open glade I lie,
Screen'd by deep boughs on either hand;
And at its end, to stay the eye,
Those black-crown'd, red-boled pine-trees stand!

Birds here make song, each bird has his,
Across the girdling city's hum.
How green under the boughs it is!
How thick the tremulous sheep-cries come!

Sometimes a child will cross the glade
To take his nurse his broken toy;
Sometimes a thrush flit overhead
Deep in her unknown day's employ.

Here at my feet what wonders pass,
What endless, active life is here!
What blowing daisies, fragrant grass!
An air-stirr'd forest, fresh and clear.

Scarce fresher is the mountain-sod
Where the tired angler lies, stretch'd out,
And, eased of basket and of rod,
Counts his day's spoil, the spotted trout.

In the huge world, which roars hard by,
Be others happy if they can!
But in my helpless cradle I
Was breathed on by the rural Pan.

I, on men's impious uproar hurl'd,
Think often, as I hear them rave,
That peace has left the upper world
And now keeps only in the grave.

Yet here is peace for ever new!
When I who watch them am away,
Still all things in this glade go through
The changes of their quiet day.

Then to their happy rest they pass!
The flowers upclose, the birds are fed,
The night comes down upon the grass,
The child sleeps warmly in his bed.

Calm soul of all things! make it mine
To feel, amid the city's jar,
That there abides a peace of thine,
Man did not make, and cannot mar.

The will to neither strive nor cry,
The power to feel with others give!
Calm, calm me more! nor let me die
Before I have begun to live.

Matthew Arnold

Isolation


We were apart; yet, day by day,
I bade my heart more constant be.
I bade it keep the world away,
And grow a home for only thee;
Nor fear'd but thy love likewise grew,
Like mine, each day, more tried, more true.

The fault was grave! I might have known,
What far too soon, alas! I learn'd--
The heart can bind itself alone,
And faith may oft be unreturn'd.
Self-sway'd our feelings ebb and swell--
Thou lov'st no more;--Farewell! Farewell!

Farewell!--and thou, thou lonely heart,
Which never yet without remorse
Even for a moment didst depart
From thy remote and spher{`e}d course
To haunt the place where passions reign--
Back to thy solitude again!

Back! with the conscious thrill of shame
Which Luna felt, that summer-night,
Flash through her pure immortal frame,
When she forsook the starry height
To hang over Endymion's sleep
Upon the pine-grown Latmian steep.

Yet she, chaste queen, had never proved
How vain a thing is mortal love,
Wandering in Heaven, far removed.
But thou hast long had place to prove
This truth--to prove, and make thine own:
'Thou hast been, shalt be, art, alone.'

Or, if not quite alone, yet they
Which touch thee are unmating things--
Ocean and clouds and night and day;
Lorn autumns and triumphant springs;
And life, and others' joy and pain,
And love, if love, of happier men.

Of happier men--for they, at least,
Have dream'd two human hearts might blend
In one, and were through faith released
From isolation without end
Prolong'd; nor knew, although not less
Alone than thou, their loneliness.

Matthew Arnold

Half-waking


I thought it was the little bed
I slept in long ago;
A straight white curtain at the head,
And two smooth knobs below.
I thought I saw the nursery fire,
And in a chair well-known
My mother sat, and did not tire
With reading all alone.
If I should make the slightest sound
To show that I'm awake,
She'd rise, and lap the blankets round,
My pillow softly shake;
Kiss me, and turn my face to see
The shadows on the wall,
And then sing Rousseau's Dream to me,
Till fast asleep I fall.
But this is not my little bed;
That time is far away;
With strangers now I live instead,
From dreary day to day.

William Allingham

Song from the Ship


To sea, to sea! The calm is o'er;
The wanton water leaps in sport,
And rattles down the pebbly shore;
The dolphin wheels, the sea-cows snort,
And unseen Mermaids' pearly song
Comes bubbling up, the weeds among.
Fling broad the sail, dip deep the oar:
To sea, to sea! the calm is o'er.

To sea, to sea! our wide-winged bark
Shall billowy cleave its sunny way,
And with its shadow, fleet and dark,
Break the caved Tritons' azure day,
Like mighty eagle soaring light
O'er antelopes on Alpine height.
The anchor heaves, the ship swings free,
The sails swell full. To sea, to sea!

Thomas Lovell Beddoes

Song


We know where deepest lies the snow,
And where the frost-winds keenest blow,
O'er every mountain's brow,
We long have known and learnt to bear
The wandering outlaw's toil and care,
But where we late were hunted, there
Our foes are hunted now.

We have their princely homes, and they
To our wild haunts are chased away,
Dark woods, and desert caves.
And we can range from hill to hill,
And chase our vanquished victors still;
Small respite will they find until
They slumber in their graves.

But I would rather be the hare,
That crouching in its sheltered lair
Must start at every sound;
That forced from cornfields waving wide
Is driven to seek the bare hillside,
Or in the tangled copse to hide,
Than be the hunter's hound.

Anne Bronte

An Author’s Hope


When I am dead, I hope it may be said:
‘His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.’

Hilaire Belloc

In Vision I Roamed


IN vision I roamed the flashing Firmament,
So fierce in blazon that the Night waxed wan,
As though with an awed sense of such ostent;
And as I thought my spirit ranged on and on

In footless traverse through ghast heights of sky,
To the last chambers of the monstrous Dome,
Where stars the brightest here to darkness die:
Then, any spot on our own Earth seemed Home!

And the sick grief that you were far away
Grew pleasant thankfulness that you were near,
Who might have been, set on some outstep sphere,
Less than a Want to me, as day by day
I lived unware, uncaring all that lay
Locked in that Universe taciturn and drear.

Thomas Hardy

Forgiveness


Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.

Paul Boese