Spring

When daisies pied, and violets blue,

And lady-smocks all silver-white,

And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue

Do paint the meadows with delight,

The cuckoo then, on every tree,

Mocks married men, for thus sings he:

“Cuckoo!

Cuckoo, cuckoo!” O word of fear,

Unpleasing to a married ear.

When shepherds pipe on oaten straws,

And merry larks are ploughmen’s clocks,

When turtles tread, and rooks, and daws,

And maidens bleach their summer smocks,

The cuckoo then, on every tree,

Mocks married men, for thus sings he:

“Cuckoo!

Cuckoo, cuckoo!” O word of fear,

Unpleasing to a married ear.

Song, from Act V, Scene 2 of Love’s Labors Lost

William Shakespeare (1598)

What the Last Evening Will Be Like

You're sitting at a small bay window

in an empty café by the sea.

It's nightfall, and the owner is locking up,

though you're still hunched over the radiator,

which is slowly losing warmth.

Now you're walking down to the shore

to watch the last blues fading on the waves.

You've lived in small houses, tight spaces—

the walls around you kept closing in—

but the sea and the sky were also yours.

No one else is around to drink with you

from the watery fog, shadowy depths.

You're along with the whirling cosmos.

Goodbye, love, far away, in a warm place.

Night is endless here, silence infinite.

Edward Hirsch

Belated

BLITHE summer blossom, born too late,

Wilt make my desert garden fair?

Lo Winter's hand is on the gate,

His breath is in the curdling air.

Still yesterweek, but yesterweek,

Thou hadst, unfolding in warm light,

Spread ripening to the crimson streak

And seed to make the next year bright.

But now there fall the latter rains,

The chills that brown the ferns are come;

Southward, above the shivering plains,

The eddying swallows hasten home.

Oh flower too frail, too late of birth,

There is no sun for such as thou:

Droop down upon the barren earth;

What boots it to have blossomed now?

Augusta Davies Webster

By The Seaside : The Secret Of The Sea

Ah! what pleasant visions haunt me

As I gaze upon the sea!

All the old romantic legends,

All my dreams, come back to me.

Sails of silk and ropes of sandal,

Such as gleam in ancient lore;

And the singing of the sailors,

And the answer from the shore!

Most of all, the Spanish ballad

Haunts me oft, and tarries long,

Of the noble Count Arnaldos

And the sailor's mystic song.

Like the long waves on a sea-beach,

Where the sand as silver shines,

With a soft, monotonous cadence,

Flow its unrhymed lyric lines;--

Telling how the Count Arnaldos,

With his hawk upon his hand,

Saw a fair and stately galley,

Steering onward to the land;--

How he heard the ancient helmsman

Chant a song so wild and clear,

That the sailing sea-bird slowly

Poised upon the mast to hear,

Till his soul was full of longing,

And he cried, with impulse strong,--

'Helmsman! for the love of heaven,

Teach me, too, that wondrous song!'

'Wouldst thou,'--so the helmsman answered,

'Learn the secret of the sea?

Only those who brave its dangers

Comprehend its mystery!'

In each sail that skims the horizon,

In each landward-blowing breeze,

I behold that stately galley,

Hear those mournful melodies;

Till my soul is full of longing

For the secret of the sea,

And the heart of the great ocean

Sends a thrilling pulse through me.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Les Roses de Sâdi

This morning I vowed I would bring thee my roses,

They were thrust in the band that my bodice encloses;

But the breast-knots were broken, the roses went free.

The breast-knots were broken; the roses together

Floated forth on the wings of the wind and the weather,

And they drifted afar down the streams of the sea.

And the sea was as red as when sunset uncloses;

But my raiment is sweet from the scent of the roses,

Thou shalt know, love, how fragrant a memory can be.

Andrew Lang

The Awakening River

The gulls are mad-in-love with the river,

And the river unveils her face and smiles.

In her sleep-brooding eyes they mirror their shining wings.

She lies on silver pillows: the sun leans over her.

He warms and warms her, he kisses and kisses her.

There are sparks in her hair and she stirs in laughter.

Be careful, my beautiful waking one! You will catch

on fire.

Wheeling and flying with the foam of the sea on their

breasts,

The ineffable mists of the sea clinging to their wild wings,

Crying the rapture of the boundless ocean,

The gulls are mad-in-love with the river.

Wake! we are the dream thoughts flying form your heart.

Wake! we are the songs of desire flowing from your

bosom.

O, I think the sun will lend her his great wings

And the river will fly to the sea with the mad-in-

love birds.

Katherine Mansfield

The Fairies

Up the airy mountain,

Down the rushy glen,

We daren’t go a-hunting

For fear of little men;

Wee folk, good folk,

Trooping all together;

Green jacket, red cap,

And white owl’s feather!

Down along the rocky shore

Some make their home,

They live on crispy pancakes

Of yellow tide-foam;

Some in the reeds

Of the black mountain lake,

With frogs for their watch-dogs,

All night awake.

High on the hill-top

The old King sits;

He is now so old and gray

He’s nigh lost his wits.

With a bridge of white mist

Columbkill he crosses,

On his stately journeys

From Slieveleague to Rosses;

Or going up with music

On cold starry nights

To sup with the Queen

Of the gay Northern Lights.

They stole little Bridget

For seven years long;

When she came down again

Her friends were all gone.

They took her lightly back,

Between the night and morrow,

They thought that she was fast asleep,

But she was dead with sorrow.

They have kept her ever since

Deep within the lake,

On a bed of flag-leaves,

Watching till she wake.

By the craggy hill-side,

Through the mosses bare,

They have planted thorn-trees

For pleasure here and there.

If any man so daring

As dig them up in spite,

He shall find their sharpest thorns

In his bed at night.

Up the airy mountain,

Down the rushy glen,

We daren’t go a-hunting

For fear of little men;

Wee folk, good folk,

Trooping all together;

Green jacket, red cap,

And white owl’s feather!

William Allingham

To Morning

O holy virgin! clad in purest white,

Unlock heav'n's golden gates, and issue forth;

Awake the dawn that sleeps in heaven; let light

Rise from the chambers of the east, and bring

The honey'd dew that cometh on waking day.

O radiant morning, salute the sun

Rous'd like a huntsman to the chase, and with

Thy buskin'd feet appear upon our hills.

William Blake

A Phantom

I The Darkness

In the mournful vaults of fathomless gloom

To which Fate has already banished me,

Where a bright, rosy beam never enters;

Where, alone with Night, that sullen hostess,

I'm like a painter whom a mocking God

Condemns to paint, alas! upon darkness;

Where, a cook with a woeful appetite,

I boil and I eat my own heart;

At times there shines, and lengthens, and broadens

A specter made of grace and of splendor;

By its dreamy, oriental manner,

When it attains its full stature,

I recognize my lovely visitor;

It's She! dark and yet luminous.

II The Perfume

Reader, have you at times inhaled

With rapture and slow greediness

That grain of incense which pervades a church,

Or the inveterate musk of a sachet?

Profound, magical charm, with which the past,

Restored to life, makes us inebriate!

Thus the lover from an adored body

Plucks memory's exquisite flower.

From her tresses, heavy and elastic,

Living sachet, censer for the bedroom,

A wild and savage odor rose,

And from her clothes, of muslin or velvet,

All redolent of her youth's purity,

There emanated the odor of furs.

III The Frame

As a lovely frame adds to a painting,

Even though it's from a master's brush,

An indefinable strangeness and charm

By isolating it from vast nature,

Thus jewels, metals, gilding, furniture,

Suited her rare beauty to perfection;

Nothing dimmed its flawless splendor;

All seemed to form for her a frame.

One would even have said that she believed

That everything wished to love her; she drowned

Her nudity voluptuously

In the kisses of the satin and linen,

And, with each movement, slow or brusque,

She showed the child-like grace of a monkey.

IV The Portrait

Disease and Death make ashes

Of all the fire that flamed for us.

Of those wide eyes, so fervent and tender,

Of that mouth in which my heart was drowned,

Of those kisses potent as dittany,

Of those transports more vivid than sunbeams,

What remains? It is frightful, O my soul!

Nothing but a faint sketch, in three colors,

Which, like me, is dying in solitude,

And which Time, that contemptuous old man,

Grazes each day with his rough wing...

Black murderer of Life and Art,

You will never kill in my memory

The one who was my glory and my joy!

Charles Baudelaire

Translated by William Aggeler

Sonnet From the Portuguese V

I lift my heavy heart up solemnly,

As once Electra her sepulchral urn,

And, looking in thine eyes, I overturn

The ashes at thy feet. Behold and see

What a great heap of grief lay hid in me,

And how the red wild sparkles dimly burn

Through the ashen greyness. If thy foot in scorn

Could tread them out to darkness utterly,

It might be well perhaps. But if instead

Thou wait beside me for the wind to blow

The grey dust up, . . those laurels on thine head,

O My beloved, will not shield thee so,

That none of all the fires shall scorch and shred

The hair beneath. Stand further off then! Go.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-61)

No pleasure

There is no pleasure in having nothing to do; the fun is in having lots to do and not doing it.

Mary Wilson Little

Merciful

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

H. P. Lovecraft

Overstatement

What's on your mind, if you will allow the overstatement?

Fred Allen

Glimpse

The truth [is] that there is only one terminal dignity - love. And the story of a love is not important - what is important is that one is capable of love. It is perhaps the only glimpse we are permitted of eternity.

Helen Hayes

Style

Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.

Gore Vidal

Split

"The scientists split the atom; now the atom is splitting us."

Quentin Reynolds

Vision

"Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision."

Ayn Rand

Few

Few love to hear the sins they love to act.

William Shakespeare

Come Slowly — Eden

Come slowly—Eden

Lips unused to Thee—

Bashful—sip thy Jessamines

As the fainting Bee—

Reaching late his flower,

Round her chamber hums—

Counts his nectars—

Enters—and is lost in Balms.

Emily Dickinson

Sadness of the Moon

Tonight the moon dreams with more indolence,

Like a lovely woman on a bed of cushions

Who fondles with a light and listless hand

The contour of her breasts before falling asleep;

On the satiny back of the billowing clouds,

Languishing, she lets herself fall into long swoons

And casts her eyes over the white phantoms

That rise in the azure like blossoming flowers.

When, in her lazy listlessness,

She sometimes sheds a furtive tear upon this globe,

A pious poet, enemy of sleep,

In the hollow of his hand catches this pale tear,

With the iridescent reflections of opal,

And hides it in his heart afar from the sun's eyes.

Charles Baudelaire

Translated by William Aggeler

To Autumn

O Autumn, laden with fruit, and stain'd

With the blood of the grape, pass not, but sit

Beneath my shady roof; there thou may'st rest,

And tune thy jolly voice to my fresh pipe,

And all the daughters of the year shall dance!

Sing now the lusty song of fruits and flowers.

'The narrow bud opens her beauties to

The sun, and love runs in her thrilling veins;

Blossoms hang round the brows of Morning, and

Flourish down the bright cheek of modest Eve,

Till clust'ring Summer breaks forth into singing,

And feather'd clouds strew flowers round her head.

'The spirits of the air live in the smells

Of fruit; and Joy, with pinions light, roves round

The gardens, or sits singing in the trees.'

Thus sang the jolly Autumn as he sat,

Then rose, girded himself, and o'er the bleak

Hills fled from our sight; but left his golden load.

William Blake

The Bubble

See the pretty planet!

Floating sphere!

Faintest breeze will fan it

Far or near;

World as light as feather;

Moonshine rays,

Rainbow tints together,

As it plays.

Drooping, sinking, failing,

Nigh to earth,

Mounting, whirling, sailing,

Full of mirth;

Life there, welling, flowing,

Waving round;

Pictures coming, going,

Without sound.

Quick now, be this airy

Globe repelled!

Never can the fairy

Star be held.

Touched--it in a twinkle

Disappears!

Leaving but a sprinkle,

As of tears.

William Allingham

The Arabian Shawl

"It is cold outside, you will need a coat--

What! this old Arabian shawl!

Bind it about your head and throat,

These steps... it is dark... my hand... you

might fall."

What has happened? What strange, sweet charm

Lingers about the Arabian shawl...

Do not tremble so! There can be no harm

In just remembering--that is all.

"I love you so--I will be your wife,"

Here, in the dark of the Terrace wall,

Say it again. Let that other life

Fold us like the Arabian shawl.

"Do you remember?"... "I quite forget,

Some childish foolishness, that is all,

To-night is the first time we have met...

Let me take off my Arabian shawl!"

Katherine Mansfield

In Ithica

'Tis thought Odysseus when the strife was o'er

With all the waves and wars, a weary while,

Grew restless in his disenchanted isle,

And still would watch the sunset, from the shore,

Go down the ways of gold, and evermore

His sad heart followed after, mile on mile,

Back to the Goddess of the magic wile,

Calypso, and the love that was of yore.

Thou too, thy haven gained, must turn thee yet

To look across the sad and stormy space,

Years of a youth as bitter as the sea,

Ah, with a heavy heart, and eyelids wet,

Because, within a fair forsaken place

The life that might have been is lost to thee.

Andrew Lang

Changed. (Birds Of Passage. Flight The Third)

From the outskirts of the town

Where of old the mile-stone stood,

Now a stranger, looking down

I behold the shadowy crown

Of the dark and haunted wood.

Is it changed, or am I changed?

Ah! the oaks are fresh and green,

But the friends with whom I ranged

Through their thickets are estranged

By the years that intervene.

Bright as ever flows the sea,

Bright as ever shines the sun,

But alas! they seem to me

Not the sun that used to be,

Not the tides that used to run.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Autumn’s Warnings

SOFT voices of the woods, that make

The summer air a harmony,

Winged whispers through the leaves where wake

Long wind-wafts dying in a sigh,

Replies of birds from brake to brake,

Plash of the runnel on its stones,

Soft voices, sweet for summer's sake,

There is a word in all your tones,

A word that not till now ye spake,

'Goodbye, goodbye.'

And yet, see, dearest, overhead

The branches bar a sultry sky,

No earliest fleck of tanned or red

'Mid all the leafage far and nigh,

And, with their serried curves outspread,

The fresh green fern-fronds know no frost.

Nought gone; but still some grace is dead:

Nought changed; but still some hope is lost:

Listen, and every voice has said

'Goodbye, goodbye.'

We shall not see the summer wane,

But, with a start of memory,

When the long chills have come again,

Awake and know that it did die:

So slowest loss is sudden pain;

We have not known till all is o'er;

'Tis summer till the autumn's rain.

Yet has there stolen long before

That sadness through some sweetest strain

'Goodbye, goodbye.'

Ah, love, hear all the thought that grew;

Mock it away; I'll mock it, I:

Summer, and I sit here with you,

Your great eyes smiling tenderly,

Your silence wooing me to woo,

A meaning in your lightest word

As though love made it something new—

And what if all the while I heard

The autumn whisper sighing through

'Goodbye, goodbye'?

Augusta Davies Webster

Love and desire

Love and desire are the spirit's wings to great deeds.

Johann W. von Goethe

Worthwhile

Love does not make the world go round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile.

P. Jones

The difference

The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to make sense.

Tom Clancy

Either

Either it sounds right or it doesn't sound right.

Isaac Asimov

Leaders

If in the darkness of ignorance, you don't recognize a person's true nature, look to see whom he has chosen for his leader.

Rumi

Arrogance

"Arrogance on the part of the meritorious is even more offensive to us than the arrogance of those without merit: for merit itself is offensive."

Friedrich Nietzsche

Formula

If some day they truly discover a formula for all our desires and caprices—that is, an explanation of what they depend upon, by what laws they arise, just how they develop, what they are aiming at in one case or another and so on, and so on, that is, a real mathematical formula—then, after all, man would most likely at once stop to feel desire, indeed, he will be certain to. _For who would want to choose by rule?_ Besides, he will at once be transformed from a human being into an organ stop or something of that sort; for what is a man without desire, without free will and without choice, if not a stop in an organ?

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Believer

I'm a firm believer in anxiety and the power of negative thinking.

Gertrude Berg

Moonshine

We are here and it is now. Further than that all human knowledge is moonshine.

H. L. Mencken

Know it all

Those who think they know it all have no way of finding out they don't.

Leo Buscaglia

Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour

Light the first light of evening, as in a room

In which we rest and, for small reason, think

The world imagined is the ultimate good.

This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous.

It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,

Out of all the indifferences, into one thing:

Within a single thing, a single shawl

Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth,

A light, a power, the miraculous influence.

Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.

We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,

A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.

Within its vital boundary, the mind.

We say God and the imagination are one...

How high that highest candle lights the dark.

Out of this same light, out of the central mind,

We make a dwelling in the evening air,

In which being there together is enough.

Wallace Stevens

The Princess: A Medley: As thro' the land

As thro' the land at eve we went,

And pluck'd the ripen'd ears,

We fell out, my wife and I,

O we fell out I know not why,

And kiss'd again with tears.

And blessings on the falling out

That all the more endears,

When we fall out with those we love

And kiss again with tears!

For when we came where lies the child

We lost in other years,

There above the little grave,

O there above the little grave,

We kiss'd again with tears.

Lord Alfred Tennyson

Disease

Love is a serious mental disease.

Plato

Impatience

"There is a certain impertinance in allowing oneself to be burned for an opinion."

Anatole France (1844-1924)

Man

Man is a clever animal who behaves like an imbecile.

Albert Schweitzer

No more wise

I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active - not more happy - nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.

Edgar Allan Poe

We are told

We are told that people stay in love because of chemistry or because they remain intrigued with each other, because of many kindnesses, because of luck... But part of it has got to be forgiveness and gratefulness.

Ellen Goodman

Give all

Give all to love; obey thy heart.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Possession

"No one worth possessing can be quite possessed."

Sara Teasdale

Kindness

Kindness is the golden chain by which society is bound together.

Johann W. von Goethe

Surprised by Joy -- Impatient as the Wind

Surprised by joy -- impatient as the Wind

I turned to share the transport -- Oh! with whom

But Thee, deep buried in the silent tomb,

That spot which no vicissitude can find?

Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind --

But how could I forget thee? Through what power,

Even for the least division of an hour,

Have I been so beguiled as to be blind

To my most grievous loss? -- That thought's return

Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore,

Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,

Knowing my heart's best treasure was no more;

That neither present time, nor years unborn

Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.

William Wordsworth

A Summer Mood

BUT wait. Let each by each the days pass by,

One faded and one blown like summer flowers;

What need of hope, with summer in the sky?

What of regret, with all fair morrows ours?

If yesterday be gone,No reck, 'twas not alone,

To-morrow will have just so sweet long hours.

But yet to-day is sweetest till 'tis flown.

But wait. Let summer day be changed from day,

Like following surges of the ebb and flow;

And flow brings breath of saltness and blithe spray,

And ebb long music of seas plashing low.

The waves, stolen out of reach

,Have no farewell for speech;

Next tide will roll as swift, as rippling go.

And yet 'tis now that's best along the beach.

Ah wait. The while we linger our lives live,

Our summer ripens purpose through our dreams;

Flower-petals fallen leave a seed to thrive,

Spent tides heap treasures from the deep sea streams;

Now drifts by unaware,

And Afterwards is heir;

To-morrow wins the wealth of yester gleams.

Yet 'tis to-day that summer makes most fair.

Augusta Davies Webster

Catawba Wine. (Birds Of Passage. Flight The First)

This song of mine

Is a Song of the Vine,

To be sung by the glowing embers

Of wayside inns,

When the rain begins

To darken the drear Novembers.

It is not a song

Of the Scuppernong,

From warm Carolinian valleys,

Nor the Isabel

And the Muscadel

That bask in our garden alleys.

Nor the red Mustang,

Whose clusters hang

O'er the waves of the Colorado,

And the fiery flood

Of whose purple blood

Has a dash of Spanish bravado.

For richest and best

Is the wine of the West,

That grows by the Beautiful River;

Whose sweet perfume

Fills all the room

With a benison on the giver.

And as hollow trees

Are the haunts of bees,

Forever going and coming;

So this crystal hive

Is all alive

With a swarming and buzzing and humming.

Very good in its way

Is the Verzenay,

Or the Sillery soft and creamy;

But Catawba wine

Has a taste more divine,

More dulcet, delicious, and dreamy.

There grows no vine

By the haunted Rhine,

By Danube or Guadalquivir,

Nor on island or cape,

That bears such a grape

As grows by the Beautiful River.

Drugged is their juice

For foreign use,

When shipped o'er the reeling Atlantic,

To rack our brains

With the fever pains,

That have driven the Old World frantic.

To the sewers and sinks

With all such drinks,

And after them tumble the mixer;

For a poison malign

Is such Borgia wine,

Or at best but a Devil's Elixir.

While pure as a spring

Is the wine I sing,

And to praise it, one needs but name it;

For Catawba wine

Has need of no sign,

No tavern-bush to proclaim it.

And this Song of the Vine,

This greeting of mine,

The winds and the birds shall deliver

To the Queen of the West,

In her garlands dressed,

On the banks of the Beautiful River.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Ideal

Ah, mystic child of Beauty, nameless maid,

Dateless and fatherless, how long ago,

A Greek, with some rare sadness overweighed,

Shaped thee, perchance, and quite forgot his woe!

Or Raphael thy sweetness did bestow,

While magical his fingers o'er thee strayed,

Or that great pupil taught of Verrocchio

Redeemed thy still perfection from the shade

That hides all fair things lost, and things unborn,

Where one has fled from me, that wore thy grace,

And that grave tenderness of thine awhile;

Nay, still in dreams I see her, but her face

Is pale, is wasted with a touch of scorn,

And only on thy lips I find her smile.

Andrew Lang