No updates for a few days

Thank you to all of you who follow my blog. I will be stuck with a very bad internet connection for the next week or so, and posting will become extremely difficult. But I will be back ASAP.

:-)

Sandra

There Was a Little Girl

There was a little girl,

Who had a little curl,

Right in the middle of her forehead.

When she was good,

She was very good indeed,

But when she was bad she was horrid.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Tear

IT WAS a tale of passion that we read—

Of two who loved, not happily, but well!

And evermore her gentle breast did swell

Like a twin-billow,—for her feelings fed

Upon its rhythmic grief—and brimming shed

Such dews of pity as can only fall

From natures full of sweetness, when the pall

Of tragedy o’ershadows them with dread.

Then, as I looked, in her raised eye there stood

A gem more excellent that ever shined

Within my spirit’s transcendental sphere,

And so embalmed its love with an immortal tear.

Charles Harpur

Lispeth

Look, you have cast out Love! What Gods are these

You bid me please?

The Three in One, the One in Three? Not so!

To my own Gods I go.

It may be they shall give me greater ease

Than your cold Christ and tangled Trinities.

Rudyard Kipling

Body And Soul: A Metaphysical Argument

Man openeth the case

Body, from the arrogance

Of the Soul thou seekest shield,

Makest prayer the old mis--chance

Of your birth--bond be repealed,

Since, sayest thou, the Soul would wield

Sovereign power and looks askance

At her partner in life's dance.

Tell me, Soul, why claimest thou,

Of what right, this sovereignty?

Wherefore dost thou cloud thy brow,

This thy partner standing nigh?

Scorn is written in thine eye

Watching him. Speak plain and show

All thy plaint that I may know.

The Soul speaketh

Judge most just! Wouldst ask of me

My being's secret? Ask the fire

Why he is kindled in the tree,

And why his flames mount high and higher

In scorn of the poor tortured pyre

Which feedeth him. Ask why the Sea

Thus frets her bed eternally.

The flames their kindred flames would reach;

The waves leap up towards the Moon,

And when they foam upon the beach

Grow pale like her. From morn to noon

The sun--flower turneth with the Sun.

A power there is in all and each

Should lesson thee what I would teach.

For I am subtle as the air

Which stirs the tree--tops, scattering wide

The feathered seed--blooms everywhere

And ordering all, itself unspied,

And is unchanged while all beside

Change and decay. In me no share

Is of the death these others bear.

Simple in essence I, to thee

Known but as one exiled by Fate

From her old home Eternity,

And sunk awhile from her estate

And bound to a material mate,

Through whose gross shape and quality

Alone my worth revealed may be.

Yet, shall I doubt me of the power,

Inborn in me, to seek a throne,

Although I stumble toward the hour

Which waits with death, my penance done,

Body to naught and I to run

Simple and unconditioned nor

On quality dependent more?

Or is faith nothing? O I feel

Pity for this poor thing of dust;

And that is why I bid him kneel

And be ennobled, for he must

Kneel first before his queen in trust.

Then would I strike him with my steel

And bind my spurs upon his heel.

But his mistrust defieth me,

His striving still against the bond

Which joineth us, nor will he see

Our wisdom must be straight uncrowned,

And he but perish of the wound,

In such divorcement were he free.

This is my secret, this my plea.

The Judge questioneth

Body, hast thou heard aright

How Soul thus doth thee deny?

She hath claimed in thy despite

Being from Eternity.

Hast thou ancestry as high?

Tell thy title, thou sad wight,

Else her claim will I requite. Body replieth

Wouldst thou know my lineage?

Look around thee. Thou shalt trace

From form to form, from age to age,

Fossil records of my race.

I, the latest, claim my place

Engrossed on Earth's ancestral page

By right inscribed of heritage.

Tell me, in those days long gone

Where was Soul? What then her power?

If to--day she claims a throne,

Was she fashioned me before?

Both of us old Matter bore.

I the elder was, Time's son,

Ages vast ere Soul was known.

Soul came later. My male might

Shielded her in her first cell,

She a frail fair anchorite,

Guarded by my valiance well,

Silent, sanct, intangible.

All my joy she was, and light,

A new dawning on my night.

Thus the out--set. Tryst we kept

In good concord I and she.

Mine the strength which overstepped

Her weak life's propinquity.

Or we yielded mutually;

I was weary and she slept,

She was wounded and I wept.

Happy days of growth. Ah why

Must change come with pride of youth?

She was eager, slow--foot I,

Glorious she, I all uncouth.

Her new wit showed little ruth,

Threw out cunning wings to fly,

Made as she would pass me by.

And when she found she could not win

Alone upon the blast of Time,

It irked her we were counted kin,

Until she held it me a crime

I should be matched with one sublime

And noble as she fain had been,

And last she claimed to be my queen.

Therefore from her arrogance

And her pride I make appeal

Praying this the ordinance

Of our birth--bond, grown unleal,

Thou wouldst cancel or make real.

Be our judge in this mis--chance;

Else decree deliverance. Judgement is given

I am but by your union.

With either Soul or Body lost,

All perisheth. Then work ye on

Together friends, not corpse and ghost.

To live and be is a brave boast.

Learn this; alone ye nothing can,

Yet both together ye make Man.

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

A Bird Came Down

A bird came down the walk:

He did not know I saw;

He bit an angle-worm in halves

And ate the fellow, raw.

And then he drank a dew

From a convenient grass,

And then hopped sidewise to the wall

To let a beetle pass.

He glanced with rapid eyes

That hurried all abroad,--

They looked like frightened beads, I thought;

He stirred his velvet head

Like one in danger; cautious,

I offered him a crumb,

And he unrolled his feathers

And rowed him softer home

Than oars divide the ocean,

Too silver for a seam,

Or butterflies, off banks of noon,

Leap, splashless, as they swim.

Emily Dickinson

Lover´s Infiniteness

IF yet I have not all thy love,

Dear, I shall never have it all ;

I cannot breathe one other sigh, to move,

Nor can intreat one other tear to fall ;

And all my treasure, which should purchase thee,

Sighs, tears, and oaths, and letters I have spent ;

Yet no more can be due to me,

Than at the bargain made was meant.

If then thy gift of love were partial,

That some to me, some should to others fall,

Dear, I shall never have thee all.

Or if then thou gavest me all,

All was but all, which thou hadst then ;

But if in thy heart since there be or shall

New love created be by other men,

Which have their stocks entire, and can in tears,

In sighs, in oaths, and letters, outbid me,

This new love may beget new fears,

For this love was not vow'd by thee.

And yet it was, thy gift being general ;

The ground, thy heart, is mine ; what ever shall

Grow there, dear, I should have it all.

Yet I would not have all yet.

He that hath all can have no more ;

And since my love doth every day admit

New growth, thou shouldst have new rewards in store ;

Thou canst not every day give me thy heart,

If thou canst give it, then thou never gavest it ;

Love's riddles are, that though thy heart depart,

It stays at home, and thou with losing savest it ;

But we will have a way more liberal,

Than changing hearts, to join them ; so we shall

Be one, and one another's all.

John Donne

He Came to Read

He came to read. Two or three books

are open; historians and poets.

But he only read for ten minutes,

and gave them up. He is dozing

on the sofa. He is fully devoted to books

but he is twenty-three years old, and he's very handsome;

and this afternoon love passed

through his ideal flesh, his lips.

Through his flesh which is full of beauty

the heat of love passed;

without any silly shame for the form of the enjoyment.....

Constantine P Cavafy

Morning Song Of Senlin

It is morning, Senlin says, and in the morning

When the light drips through the shutters like the dew,

I arise, I face the sunrise,

And do the things my fathers learned to do.

Stars in the purple dusk above the rooftops

Pale in a saffron mist and seem to die,

And I myself on a swiftly tilting planet

Stand before a glass and tie my tie.

Vine leaves tap my window,

Dew-drops sing to the garden stones,

The robin chips in the chinaberry tree

Repeating three clear tones.

It is morning. I stand by the mirror

And tie my tie once more.

While waves far off in a pale rose twilight

Crash on a white sand shore.

I stand by a mirror and comb my hair:

How small and white my face!—

The green earth tilts through a sphere of air

And bathes in a flame of space.

There are houses hanging above the stars

And stars hung under a sea. . .

And a sun far off in a shell of silence

Dapples my walls for me. . .

It is morning, Senlin says, and in the morning

Should I not pause in the light to remember God?

Upright and firm I stand on a star unstable,

He is immense and lonely as a cloud.

I will dedicate this moment before my mirror

To him alone, and for him I will comb my hair.

Accept these humble offerings, cloud of silence!

I will think of you as I descend the stair.

Vine leaves tap my window,

The snail-track shines on the stones,

Dew-drops flash from the chinaberry tree

Repeating two clear tones.

It is morning, I awake from a bed of silence,

Shining I rise from the starless waters of sleep.

The walls are about me still as in the evening,

I am the same, and the same name still I keep.

The earth revolves with me, yet makes no motion,

The stars pale silently in a coral sky.

In a whistling void I stand before my mirror,

Unconcerned, I tie my tie.

There are horses neighing on far-off hills

Tossing their long white manes,

And mountains flash in the rose-white dusk,

Their shoulders black with rains. . .

It is morning. I stand by the mirror

And surprise my soul once more;

The blue air rushes above my ceiling,

There are suns beneath my floor. . .

. . . It is morning, Senlin says, I ascend from darkness

And depart on the winds of space for I know not where,

My watch is wound, a key is in my pocket,

And the sky is darkened as I descend the stair.

There are shadows across the windows, clouds in heaven,

And a god among the stars; and I will go

Thinking of him as I might think of daybreak

And humming a tune I know. . .

Vine-leaves tap at the window,

Dew-drops sing to the garden stones,

The robin chirps in the chinaberry tree

Repeating three clear tones.

Conrad Potter Aiken

Apology to Delia

This evening, Delia, you and I,

Have managed most delightfully,

For with a frown we parted;

Having contrived some trifle that

We both may be much troubled at,

And sadly disconcerted.

Yet well as each performed their part,

We might perceive it was but art;

And that we both intended

To sacrifice a little ease;

For all such petty flaws as these

Are made but to be mended.

You knew, dissembler! all the while,

How sweet it was to reconcile

After this heavy pelt;

That we should gain by this allay

When next we met, and laugh away

The care we never felt.

Happy! when we but seek to endure

A little pain, then find a cure

By double joy requited;

For friendship, like a severed bone,

Improves and joins a stronger tone

When amply reunited.

William Cowper

Delicious ambiguity

I always wanted a happy ending... Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity.

Gilda Radner

If you have a talent

If you have a talent, use it in every which way possible. Don't hoard it. Don't dole it out like a miser. Spend it lavishly like a millionaire intent on going broke.

Brendan Francis

Talking and eloquence

Talking and eloquence are not the same: to speak and to speak well are two things. A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks.

Ben Jonson

Dangerous

The most dangerous untruths are truths slightly distorted.

G. C. Lichtenberg

Bright passages

In reading authors, when you find
Bright passages, that strike your mind,
And which, perhaps, you may have reason
To think on, at another season,
Be not contented with the sight,
But take them down in black and white;
Such a respect is wisely shown,
As makes another's sense one's own.

Lord Byron [George Gordon Byron]

Never again

I suppose every old scholar has had the experience of reading something in a book which was significant to him, but which he could never find again. Sure he is that he read it there, but no one else ever read it, nor can he find it again, though he buy the book and ransack every page.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Counfound

There is nothing in life so irrational, that good sense and chance may not set it to rights; nothing so rational, that folly and chance may not utterly confound it.

Johann W. von Goethe

An Enigma

A needle, small as small can be,

In bulk and use surpasses me,

Nor is my purchase dear;

For little, and almost for nought

As many of my kind are bought

As days are in the year.

Yet though but little use we boast,

And are procured at little cost,

The labour is not light;

Nor few artificers it asks,

All skilful in their several tasks,

To fashion us aright,

One fuses metal o’er the fire,

A second draws it into wire,

The shears another plies;

Who clips in length the brazen thread

From him who, chafing every shred,

Gives all an equal size.

A fifth prepares, exact and round,

The knob with which it must be crown’d;

His follower makes it fast;

And with his mallet and his file

To shape the point, employs awhile

The seventh and the last.

Now, therefore, Œdipus! declare

What creature, wonderful, and rare,

A process that obtains

Its purpose with so much ado

At last produces!—tell me true,

And take me for your pains!

William Cowper

Miracles

Twilight is spacious, near things in it seem far,

And distant things seem near.

Now in the green west hangs a yellow star.

And now across old waters you may hear

The profound gloom of bells among still trees,

Like a rolling of huge boulders beneath seas.

Silent as though in evening contemplation

Weaves the bat under the gathering stars.

Silent as dew, we seek new incarnation,

Meditate new avatars.

In a clear dusk like this

Mary climbed up the hill to seek her son,

To lower him down from the cross, and kiss

The mauve wounds, every one.

Men with wings

In the dusk walked softly after her.

She did not see them, but may have felt

The winnowed air around her stir;

She did not see them, but may have known

Why her son's body was light as a little stone.

She may have guessed that other hands were there

Moving the watchful air.

Now, unless persuaded by searching music

Which suddenly opens the portals of the mind,

We guess no angels,

And are contented to be blind.

Let us blow silver horns in the twilight,

And lift our hearts to the yellow star in the green,

To find perhaps, if, while the dew is rising,

Clear things may not be seen.

Conrad Potter Aiken

Half an Hour

I never had you, nor will I ever have you

I suppose. A few words, an approach

as in the bar yesterday, and nothing more.

It is, undeniably, a pity. But we who serve Art

sometimes with intensity of mind, and of course only

for a short while, we create pleasure

which almost seems real.

So in the bar the day before yesterday -- the merciful alcohol

was also helping much --

I had a perfectly erotic half-hour.

And it seems to me that you understood,

and stayed somewhat longer on purpose.

This was very necessary. Because

for all the imagination and the wizard alcohol,

I needed to see your lips as well,

I needed to have your body close.

Constantine P Cavafy

The Triple Fool

I am two fools, I know,

For loving, and for saying so

In whining poetry ;

But where's that wise man, that would not be I,

If she would not deny ?

Then as th' earth's inward narrow crooked lanes

Do purge sea water's fretful salt away,

I thought, if I could draw my pains

Through rhyme's vexation, I should them allay.

Grief brought to numbers cannot be so fierce,

For he tames it, that fetters it in verse.

But when I have done so,

Some man, his art and voice to show,

Doth set and sing my pain ;

And, by delighting many, frees again

Grief, which verse did restrain.

To love and grief tribute of verse belongs,

But not of such as pleases when 'tis read.

Both are increasèd by such songs,

For both their triumphs so are published,

And I, which was two fools, do so grow three.

Who are a little wise, the best fools be.

John Donne

"Why do I love" You, Sir?

"Why do I love" You, Sir?

Because—

The Wind does not require the Grass

To answer—Wherefore when He pass

She cannot keep Her place.

Because He knows—and

Do not You—

And We know not—

Enough for Us

The Wisdom it be so—

The Lightning—never asked an Eye

Wherefore it shut—when He was by—

Because He knows it cannot speak—

And reasons not contained—

—Of Talk—

There be—preferred by Daintier Folk—

The Sunrise—Sire—compelleth Me—

Because He's Sunrise—and I see—

Therefore—Then—

I love Thee—

Emily Dickinson

At The Parting Of The Ways

Here our roads part. Go thou by thy green valley,

Thy youth before thee and the river Nile.

My path lies o'er the desert, and my galley

Has rougher seas to plough (and days) the while.

I know not what to offer you: a smile,

A blessing, a farewell? I dare not dally

Even with the thought of tears. 'Twas but a mile

We walked together, and such things were folly.

I will not hope, who have no faith in fate,

That I shall you remember or you me

Beyond to--morrow. Yet, perhaps the wind

Blowing some morning through its Eastern gate

May tell you of my fortune; and behind

The Western star some evening I may see,

As in a vision of far days more kind,

Your dear eyes watching while the night grows blind.

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

Lady Geraldine's Hardship

E.B. Browning

I turned -- Heaven knows we women turn too much

To broken reeds, mistaken so for pine

That shame forbids confession -- a handle I turned

(The wrong one, said the agent afterwards)

And so flung clean across your English street

Through the shrill-tinkling glass of the shop-front-paused,

Artemis mazed 'mid gauds to catch a man,

And piteous baby-caps and christening-gowns,

The worse for being worn on the radiator.

. . . . . . .

My cousin Romney judged me from the bench:

Propounding one sleek forty-shillinged law

That takes no count of the Woman's oversoul.

I should have entered, purred he, by the door --

The man's retort -- the open obvious door --

And since I chose not, he -- not he -- could change

The man's rule, not the Woman's, for the case.

Ten pounds or seven days... Just that... I paid!

Rudyard Kipling

The Past

The Past is flowing through my thoughts—

Flowing like a sea;

With all its billows dancing bright

Over what?—an undermight

Of darkling loss and destiny.

Still it floweth through my thoughts—

Floweth like a sea;

While of worn hope I ask alway,

Like an unsought cast-astray—

What can the future bring to me?

And hope herself admits: To thee

But a darkening scene—

Only slow days of care and doubt,

Only a dreary lengthening out,

Of what this later past hath been.

Charles Harpur

The Wave

'Whither, thou turbid wave?

Whither, with so much haste,

As if a thief wert thou?'

'I am the Wave of Life,

Stained with my margin's dust;

From the struggle and the strife

Of the narrow stream I fly

To the Sea's immensity,

To wash from me the slime

Of the muddy banks of Time.'

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Monna Innominata, 4

I loved you first: but afterwards your love,

...Outsoaring mine, sang such a loftier song

As drowned the friendly cooings of my dove.

...Which owes the other most? My love was long,

...And yours one moment seemed to wax more strong;

I loved and guessed at you, you contrued me

And loved me for what might or might not be--

...Nay, weights and measures do us both a wrong.

For verily love knows not 'mine' or 'thine';

With separate 'I' and 'thou' free love has done,

...For one is both and both are one in love:

Rich love knows nought of 'thine that is not mine';

...Both have the strength and both the length thereof,

Both of us, of the love which makes us one.

Christina Rossetti

The Folly Of Being Comforted

ONE that is ever kind said yesterday:

'Your well-beloved's hair has threads of grey,

And little shadows come about her eyes;

Time can but make it easier to be wise

Though now it seems impossible, and so

All that you need is patience.'

Heart cries, 'No,

I have not a crumb of comfort, not a grain.

Time can but make her beauty over again:

Because of that great nobleness of hers

The fire that stirs about her, when she stirs,

Burns but more clearly. O she had not these ways

When all the wild Summer was in her gaze.'

Heart! O heart! if she'd but turn her head,

You'd know the folly of being comforted.

William Butler Yeats

Would you not like?

Would you not like to try all sorts of lives — one is so very small— but that is the satisfaction of writing — one can impersonate so many people.

Katherine Mansfield

Good idea

It is not a bad idea to get in the habit of writing down one's thoughts. It saves one having to bother anyone else with them.

Isabel Colegate

Paradise

It is a curious thing... that every creed promises a paradise which will be absolutely uninhabitable for anyone of civilized taste.

Evelyn Waugh

Tomorrow

Seize the day, put no trust in tomorrow.

Horace

He who knoweth

He who knoweth not what he ought to know, is a brute beast among men; he that knoweth no more than he hath need of, is a man among brute beasts; and he that knoweth all that may be known, is as a God among men.

Pythagoras

Freedom

Freedom is the right to live as we wish.

Epictetus

No rainbow

The soul would have no rainbow had the eyes no tears.

Cheney, John Vance

The Venetian Gondolier

Here rest the weary oar! -- soft airs

Breathe out in the o'erarching sky;

And Night!-- sweet Night -- serenely wears

A smile of peace; her noon is nigh.

Where the tall fir in quiet stands,

And waves, embracing the chaste shores,

Move o'er sea-shells and bright sands,-

Is heard the sound of dipping oars.

Swift o'er the wave the light bark springs,

Love's midnight hour draws lingering near:

And list!-- his tuneful viol strings

The young Venetian Gondolier.

Lo! on the silver-mirrored deep,

On earth, and her embosomed lakes,

And where the silent rivers sweep,

From the thin cloud fair moonlight breaks

Soft music breathes around, and dies

On the calm bosom of the sea;

Whilst in her cell the novice sighs

Her vespers to her rosary.

At their dim altars bow fair forms,

In tender charity for those,

That, helpless left to life's rude storms,

Have never found this calm repose.

The bell swings to its midnight chime,

Relieved against the deep blue sky!--

Haste!-- dip the oar again! -- 'tis time

To seek Genevra's balcony.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Would I Were With Thee!

WOULD I were with thee! every day and hour

Which now I spend so sadly, far from thee--

Would that my form possessed the magic power

To follow where my heavy heart would be!

Whate'er thy lot--by land or sea--

Would I were with thee--eternally!

Would I were with thee! when, the world forgetting,

Thy weary limbs upon the turf are thrown,

While bright and red the evening sun is setting,

And all thy thoughts belong to heaven alone:

While happy dreams thy heart employ--

Would I were with thee--in thy joy!

Would I were with thee! when, no longer feigning

The hurried laugh that stifles back a sigh;

Thy young lip pours unheard its sweet complaining,

And tears have quenched the light within thine eye:

When all seems dark and sad below,

Would I were with thee--in thy woe!

Would I were with thee! when the day is breaking,

And when the moon hath lit the lonely sea--

Or when in crowds some careless note awaking:

Speaks to thy heart in memory of me.

In joy or pain, by sea or shore--

Would I were with thee--evermore!

Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton

The Nevers of Poetry

Never say aught in verse, or grave or gay,

That you in prose would hesitate to say.

Never in rhyme pretend to tears, unless

True feeling sheds them in unfeigned distress;

Or some dream-grief, with such a mournful strain

As night winds make in pine tops, stirs your brain,

To shake them, dew-like, o’er the flowers that bloom

In the wild dark, round Joy’s imagined tomb;

Or save when doubts that over Love may lower,

Like summer clouds, break in a sunny shower

Out of your gladdened eyes, to freshen all

The bowers of memory with their grateful fall.

Never too much affect that polished thing—

Once belauded—known as point, or sting.

The highest and the noblest growths of wit

Are never, or but seldom, touched with it.

For of the muse it is not truly born

Unless the apex of some burst of scorn,

Or irony, or hate all torture-torn!

Not to increase the passion, but to make

The wave, full surging, on its object break.

Never, if you’d be readable at all,

Aim overmuch at being ethical.

Though she should be a teacher, still the Muse

To be a mere schoolmistress should refuse.

She should instruct us, but her methods never

Be academic ones, however clever.

Her morals, like great nature’s morals, aye

Should work themselves out in an unforced way,

And not so patly as to hint the while

At cryptic ingenuities of style.

Whate’er the theme, her ethic lights should shine

Full forth, as from a central heat divine,

Or heat inherent to the passion, wrought

Into the chastened harmony of thought;

And not be mere extraneous coals of fire

Blown for the nonce into factitious ire.

Though sone has oft some beauty most divine,

Which well we feel, yet cannot well define—

Some yearning excellence, intense and far,

Coming and going like a clouded star—

Some awful glory we but half descry,

Like a strong sunset in a stormy sky—

Yet ne’er be murky of set purpose, since

You only thereby shall the more evince

That even the Sublime’s but then made sure

When, like a morning alp, it breaks from the obscure.

Never heed whether a line strictly goes

By learned rule, if, brook-like, it warble as it flows,

Or if, in concord with the thought, it fills

Fast forward, like a torrent fast flooding from the hills.

Never say aught is “fading like a star”

Because receding in the past afar,

Since stars do not fade, but shine on no less,

Thought lost in light to our weaksightedness;

And no true trope should ever rest on fancy,

But claim a universal relevancy;

Nor think a line is racy to the core,

And bold, and bravely eloquent, the more

It striving seems to tear itself asunder,

Like this—“Down there i’ the deep heart o’ the thunder,”

But for which, surely (out of chaos), none

Might feign to find a sanction, save in fun.

Never think harshness the best foil to raise

And relish sweetness; for love craggy lays.

Yet never be you glib, when passion’s force

Should ridge your style, as by a tempest hoarse

The deep is roughened into waves that roar

At heaven—upheaping, huddling, more and more,

To burst at last in booming thunder on the shore.

Never be such a pagan as to deem

That truth or beauty must diviner seem

For some abnormal set-off, hunched and rude,

Prowling for evil in the neighbourhood,

If such strange opposite breathe not the air

Of nature—being found, not conjured there;

And never to be graceless be you fain,

Till to be graceful you have tried in vain.

Never be cheated—never may you be!—

Into the cramp belief that poesy

Must of necessity in soul be one

With the mere form of verse if it but deftly run;

Or pour, as with a mill-wheel’s vigorous cheer,

A rhyming clatter hard upon the ear.

Never believe that verse a license knows

For aught that would be balderdash in prose,

Or that all reason may at any time

Find a sufficient substitute in rhyme;

Or that because with many words you re fraught,

There must be under them some flood of thought.

Never compel a simile that wont

Take service without forcing; if it don t,

As of itself, into your verses flow,

But true to liberty—and let it go.

Never reject a homely-sounding phrase,

That your whole meaning easily conveys,

For one made current by some courtly wit

Which barely indicates a shade of it,

Or which—for probably it so may fall—

Does not express what you would mean at all.

Never suppose that you in song are free

To strain all praise, and make it flattery.

To sing of the heroic is to raise

One value by another—but to praise

Mere clowns, in verse, or natures lean and cold,

Is like to setting gravel stones in gold.

Never exalt vagaries to a station

But due to flights of the imagination—

Gas-charged balloons, put vainly all a-bloat,

For clouds of God that in the orient float;

Theatric thunders, all set brattling for

The dread all-shaking tempest-trumps of Thor;

For in the end all charlatanry must,

The more it startle, but the more disgust.

And lastly, never take for gospel all

Your friends say of your genius, when they call

Its merits o’er; but at the same time see

That you do never take yourself to be

So great an ass as your known foes declare

They do most solemnly believe you are.

[Each embryo poet, profit by my strain!

Then shall men say, “He has not lived in vain! ”]

Charles Harpur