Written by
Edwin Arlington Robinson |
I
We thrill too strangely at the master's touch;
We shrink too sadly from the larger self
Which for its own completeness agitates
And undetermines us; we do not feel --
We dare not feel it yet -- the splendid shame
Of uncreated failure; we forget,
The while we groan, that God's accomplishment
Is always and unfailingly at hand.
II
Tumultuously void of a clean scheme
Whereon to build, whereof to formulate,
The legion life that riots in mankind
Goes ever plunging upward, up and down,
Most like some crazy regiment at arms,
Undisciplined of aught but Ignorance,
And ever led resourcelessly along
To brainless carnage by drunk trumpeters.
III
To me the groaning of world-worshippers
Rings like a lonely music played in hell
By one with art enough to cleave the walls
Of heaven with his cadence, but without
The wisdom or the will to comprehend
The strangeness of his own perversity,
And all without the courage to deny
The profit and the pride of his defeat.
IV
While we are drilled in error, we are lost
Alike to truth and usefulness.
We think
We are great warriors now, and we can brag
Like Titans; but the world is growing young,
And we, the fools of time, are growing with it: --
We do not fight to-day, we only die;
We are too proud of death, and too ashamed
Of God, to know enough to be alive.
V
There is one battle-field whereon we fall
Triumphant and unconquered; but, alas!
We are too fleshly fearful of ourselves
To fight there till our days are whirled and blurred
By sorrow, and the ministering wheels
Of anguish take us eastward, where the clouds
Of human gloom are lost against the gleam
That shines on Thought's impenetrable mail.
VI
When we shall hear no more the cradle-songs
Of ages -- when the timeless hymns of Love
Defeat them and outsound them -- we shall know
The rapture of that large release which all
Right science comprehends; and we shall read,
With unoppressed and unoffended eyes,
That record of All-Soul whereon God writes
In everlasting runes the truth of Him.
VII
The guerdon of new childhood is repose: --
Once he has read the primer of right thought,
A man may claim between two smithy strokes
Beatitude enough to realize
God's parallel completeness in the vague
And incommensurable excellence
That equitably uncreates itself
And makes a whirlwind of the Universe.
VIII
There is no loneliness: -- no matter where
We go, nor whence we come, nor what good friends
Forsake us in the seeming, we are all
At one with a complete companionship;
And though forlornly joyless be the ways
We travel, the compensate spirit-gleams
Of Wisdom shaft the darkness here and there,
Like scattered lamps in unfrequented streets.
IX
When one that you and I had all but sworn
To be the purest thing God ever made
Bewilders us until at last it seems
An angel has come back restigmatized, --
Faith wavers, and we wonder what there is
On earth to make us faithful any more,
But never are quite wise enough to know
The wisdom that is in that wonderment.
X
Where does a dead man go? -- The dead man dies;
But the free life that would no longer feed
On fagots of outburned and shattered flesh
Wakes to a thrilled invisible advance,
Unchained (or fettered else) of memory;
And when the dead man goes it seems to me
'T were better for us all to do away
With weeping, and be glad that he is gone.
XI
So through the dusk of dead, blank-legended,
And unremunerative years we search
To get where life begins, and still we groan
Because we do not find the living spark
Where no spark ever was; and thus we die,
Still searching, like poor old astronomers
Who totter off to bed and go to sleep,
To dream of untriangulated stars.
XII
With conscious eyes not yet sincere enough
To pierce the glimmered cloud that fluctuates
Between me and the glorifying light
That screens itself with knowledge, I discern
The searching rays of wisdom that reach through
The mist of shame's infirm credulity,
And infinitely wonder if hard words
Like mine have any message for the dead.
XIII
I grant you friendship is a royal thing,
But none shall ever know that royalty
For what it is till he has realized
His best friend in himself.
'T is then, perforce,
That man's unfettered faith indemnifies
Of its own conscious freedom the old shame,
And love's revealed infinitude supplants
Of its own wealth and wisdom the old scorn.
XIV
Though the sick beast infect us, we are fraught
Forever with indissoluble Truth,
Wherein redress reveals itself divine,
Transitional, transcendent.
Grief and loss,
Disease and desolation, are the dreams
Of wasted excellence; and every dream
Has in it something of an ageless fact
That flouts deformity and laughs at years.
XV
We lack the courage to be where we are: --
We love too much to travel on old roads,
To triumph on old fields; we love too much
To consecrate the magic of dead things,
And yieldingly to linger by long walls
Of ruin, where the ruinous moonlight
That sheds a lying glory on old stones
Befriends us with a wizard's enmity.
XVI
Something as one with eyes that look below
The battle-smoke to glimpse the foeman's charge,
We through the dust of downward years may scan
The onslaught that awaits this idiot world
Where blood pays blood for nothing, and where life
Pays life to madness, till at last the ports
Of gilded helplessness be battered through
By the still crash of salvatory steel.
XVII
To you that sit with Sorrow like chained slaves,
And wonder if the night will ever come,
I would say this: The night will never come,
And sorrow is not always.
But my words
Are not enough; your eyes are not enough;
The soul itself must insulate the Real,
Or ever you do cherish in this life --
In this life or in any life -- repose.
XVIII
Like a white wall whereon forever breaks
Unsatisfied the tumult of green seas,
Man's unconjectured godliness rebukes
With its imperial silence the lost waves
Of insufficient grief.
This mortal surge
That beats against us now is nothing else
Than plangent ignorance.
Truth neither shakes
Nor wavers; but the world shakes, and we shriek.
XIX
Nor jewelled phrase nor mere mellifluous rhyme
Reverberates aright, or ever shall,
One cadence of that infinite plain-song
Which is itself all music.
Stronger notes
Than any that have ever touched the world
Must ring to tell it -- ring like hammer-blows,
Right-echoed of a chime primordial,
On anvils, in the gleaming of God's forge.
XX
The prophet of dead words defeats himself:
Whoever would acknowledge and include
The foregleam and the glory of the real,
Must work with something else than pen and ink
And painful preparation: he must work
With unseen implements that have no names,
And he must win withal, to do that work,
Good fortitude, clean wisdom, and strong skill.
XXI
To curse the chilled insistence of the dawn
Because the free gleam lingers; to defraud
The constant opportunity that lives
Unchallenged in all sorrow; to forget
For this large prodigality of gold
That larger generosity of thought, --
These are the fleshly clogs of human greed,
The fundamental blunders of mankind.
XXII
Forebodings are the fiends of Recreance;
The master of the moment, the clean seer
Of ages, too securely scans what is,
Ever to be appalled at what is not;
He sees beyond the groaning borough lines
Of Hell, God's highways gleaming, and he knows
That Love's complete communion is the end
Of anguish to the liberated man.
XXIII
Here by the windy docks I stand alone,
But yet companioned.
There the vessel goes,
And there my friend goes with it; but the wake
That melts and ebbs between that friend and me
Love's earnest is of Life's all-purposeful
And all-triumphant sailing, when the ships
Of Wisdom loose their fretful chains and swing
Forever from the crumbled wharves of Time.
|
Written by
John Betjeman |
I am a young executive.
No cuffs than mine are cleaner;
I have a Slimline brief-case and I use the firm's Cortina.
In every roadside hostelry from here to Burgess Hill
The ma?tres d'h?tel all know me well, and let me sign the bill.
You ask me what it is I do.
Well, actually, you know,
I'm partly a liaison man, and partly P.
R.
O.
Essentially, I integrate the current export drive
And basically I'm viable from ten o'clock till five.
For vital off-the-record work - that's talking transport-wise -
I've a scarlet Aston-Martin - and does she go? She flies!
Pedestrians and dogs and cats, we mark them down for slaughter.
I also own a speedboat which has never touched the water.
She's built of fibre-glass, of course.
I call her 'Mandy Jane'
After a bird I used to know - No soda, please, just plain -
And how did I acquire her? Well, to tell you about that
And to put you in the picture, I must wear my other hat.
I do some mild developing.
The sort of place I need
Is a quiet country market town that's rather run to seed
A luncheon and a drink or two, a little savoir faire -
I fix the Planning Officer, the Town Clerk and the Mayor.
And if some Preservationist attempts to interfere
A 'dangerous structure' notice from the Borough Engineer
Will settle any buildings that are standing in our way -
The modern style, sir, with respect, has really come to stay.
|
Written by
Robert Burns |
FINTRY, my stay in wordly strife,
Friend o’ my muse, friend o’ my life,
Are ye as idle’s I am?
Come then, wi’ uncouth kintra fleg,
O’er Pegasus I’ll fling my leg,
And ye shall see me try him.
But where shall I go rin a ride,
That I may splatter nane beside?
I wad na be uncivil:
In manhood’s various paths and ways
There’s aye some doytin’ body strays,
And I ride like the devil.
Thus I break aff wi’ a’ my birr,
And down yon dark, deep alley spur,
Where Theologics daunder:
Alas! curst wi’ eternal fogs,
And damn’d in everlasting bogs,
As sure’s the creed I’ll blunder!
I’ll stain a band, or jaup a gown,
Or rin my reckless, guilty crown
Against the haly door:
Sair do I rue my luckless fate,
When, as the Muse an’ Deil wad hae’t,
I rade that road before.
Suppose I take a spurt, and mix
Amang the wilds o’ Politics—
Electors and elected,
Where dogs at Court (sad sons of bitches!)
Septennially a madness touches,
Till all the land’s infected.
All hail! Drumlanrig’s haughty Grace,
Discarded remnant of a race
Once godlike-great in story;
Thy forbears’ virtues all contrasted,
The very name of Douglas blasted,
Thine that inverted glory!
Hate, envy, oft the Douglas bore,
But thou hast superadded more,
And sunk them in contempt;
Follies and crimes have stain’d the name,
But, Queensberry, thine the virgin claim,
From aught that’s good exempt!
I’ll sing the zeal Drumlanrig bears,
Who left the all-important cares
Of princes, and their darlings:
And, bent on winning borough touns,
Came shaking hands wi’ wabster-loons,
And kissing barefit carlins.
Combustion thro’ our boroughs rode,
Whistling his roaring pack abroad
Of mad unmuzzled lions;
As Queensberry blue and buff unfurl’d,
And Westerha’ and Hopetoun hurled
To every Whig defiance.
But cautious Queensberry left the war,
Th’ unmanner’d dust might soil his star,
Besides, he hated bleeding:
But left behind him heroes bright,
Heroes in C&æsarean fight,
Or Ciceronian pleading.
O for a throat like huge Mons-Meg,
To muster o’er each ardent Whig
Beneath Drumlanrig’s banners;
Heroes and heroines commix,
All in the field of politics,
To win immortal honours.
M’Murdo and his lovely spouse,
(Th’ enamour’d laurels kiss her brows!)
Led on the Loves and Graces:
She won each gaping burgess’ heart,
While he, sub rosa, played his part
Amang their wives and lasses.
Craigdarroch led a light-arm’d core,
Tropes, metaphors, and figures pour,
Like Hecla streaming thunder:
Glenriddel, skill’d in rusty coins,
Blew up each Tory’s dark designs,
And bared the treason under.
In either wing two champions fought;
Redoubted Staig, who set at nought
The wildest savage Tory;
And Welsh who ne’er yet flinch’d his ground,
High-wav’d his magnum-bonum round
With Cyclopeian fury.
Miller brought up th’ artillery ranks,
The many-pounders of the Banks,
Resistless desolation!
While Maxwelton, that baron bold,
’Mid Lawson’s port entrench’d his hold,
And threaten’d worse damnation.
To these what Tory hosts oppos’d
With these what Tory warriors clos’d
Surpasses my descriving;
Squadrons, extended long and large,
With furious speed rush to the charge,
Like furious devils driving.
What verse can sing, what prose narrate,
The butcher deeds of bloody Fate,
Amid this mighty tulyie!
Grim Horror girn’d, pale Terror roar’d,
As Murder at his thrapple shor’d,
And Hell mix’d in the brulyie.
As Highland craigs by thunder cleft,
When lightnings fire the stormy lift,
Hurl down with crashing rattle;
As flames among a hundred woods,
As headlong foam from a hundred floods,
Such is the rage of Battle.
The stubborn Tories dare to die;
As soon the rooted oaks would fly
Before th’ approaching fellers:
The Whigs come on like Ocean’s roar,
When all his wintry billows pour
Against the Buchan Bullers.
Lo, from the shades of Death’s deep night,
Departed Whigs enjoy the fight,
And think on former daring:
The muffled murtherer of Charles
The Magna Charter flag unfurls,
All deadly gules its bearing.
Nor wanting ghosts of Tory fame;
Bold Scrimgeour follows gallant Graham;
Auld Covenanters shiver—
Forgive! forgive! much-wrong’d Montrose!
Now Death and Hell engulph thy foes,
Thou liv’st on high for ever.
Still o’er the field the combat burns,
The Tories, Whigs, give way by turns;
But Fate the word has spoken:
For woman’s wit and strength o’man,
Alas! can do but what they can;
The Tory ranks are broken.
O that my een were flowing burns!
My voice, a lioness that mourns
Her darling cubs’ undoing!
That I might greet, that I might cry,
While Tories fall, while Tories fly,
And furious Whigs pursuing!
What Whig but melts for good Sir James,
Dear to his country, by the names,
Friend, Patron, Benefactor!
Not Pulteney’s wealth can Pulteney save;
And Hopetoun falls, the generous, brave;
And Stewart, bold as Hector.
Thou, Pitt, shalt rue this overthrow,
And Thurlow growl a curse of woe,
And Melville melt in wailing:
Now Fox and Sheridan rejoice,
And Burke shall sing, “O Prince, arise!
Thy power is all-prevailing!”
For your poor friend, the Bard, afar
He only hears and sees the war,
A cool spectator purely!
So, when the storm the forest rends,
The robin in the hedge descends,
And sober chirps securely.
Now, for my friends’ and brethren’s sakes,
And for my dear-lov’d Land o’ Cakes,
I pray with holy fire:
Lord, send a rough-shod troop o’ Hell
O’er a’ wad Scotland buy or sell,
To grind them in the mire!
|
Written by
John Betjeman |
Hark, I hear the bells of Westgate,
I will tell you what they sigh,
Where those minarets and steeples
Prick the open Thanet sky.
Happy bells of eighteen-ninety,
Bursting from your freestone tower!
Recalling laurel, shrubs and privet,
Red geraniums in flower.
Feet that scamper on the asphalt
Through the Borough Council grass,
Till they hide inside the shelter
Bright with ironwork and glass,
Striving chains of ordered children
Purple by the sea-breeze made,
Striving on to prunes and suet
Past the shops on the Parade.
Some with wire around their glasses,
Some with wire across their teeth,
Writhing frames for running noses
And the drooping lip beneath.
Church of England bells of Westgate!
On this balcony I stand,
White the woodwork wriggles round me,
Clocktowers rise on either hand.
For me in my timber arbour
You have one more message yet,
"Plimsolls, plimsolls in the summer,
Oh galoshes in the wet!"
|
Written by
David Lehman |
The fear of perjuring herself turned into a tacit
Admission of her guilt.
Yet she had the skill
And the luck to elude her implacable pursuers.
God was everywhere like a faceless guard in a gallery.
Death was last seen in the auction room, looking worried.
She hadn't seen him leave.
She narrowly avoided him
Walking past the hard hats eating lunch.
Which one was he?
She felt like one of those women you sometimes see
Crying in a hotel lobby.
But he couldn't figure her out.
She wrote him a letter saying, "Please don't phone me,"
Meaning, "Please phone me.
" And there were times when she
Refused to speak at all.
Would this be one of them?
On went the makeup and the accessories.
Her time was now,
And he could no more share her future than she
Could go to college with him twenty years ago.
She would have had a tremendous crush on him
Back then, with his scarf flying in the wind like
The National League pennant flying over Ebbets Field
In Brooklyn, borough of churches, with the pigeons on the sill
And the soprano's trill echoing in the alley.
|
Written by
Robert Burns |
SIR, as your mandate did request,
I send you here a faithfu’ list,
O’ gudes an’ gear, an’ a’ my graith,
To which I’m clear to gi’e my aith.
Imprimis, then, for carriage cattle,
I hae four brutes o’ gallant mettle,
As ever drew afore a pettle.
My hand-afore ’s a guid auld has-been,
An’ wight an’ wilfu’ a’ his days been:
My hand-ahin ’s a weel gaun fillie,
That aft has borne me hame frae Killie.
2
An’ your auld borough mony a time
In days when riding was nae crime.
But ance, when in my wooing pride
I, like a blockhead, boost to ride,
The wilfu’ creature sae I pat to,
(L—d pardon a’ my sins, an’ that too!)
I play’d my fillie sic a shavie,
She’s a’ bedevil’d wi’ the spavie.
My furr-ahin ’s a wordy beast,
As e’er in tug or tow was traced.
The fourth’s a Highland Donald hastle,
A d—n’d red-wud Kilburnie blastie!
Foreby a cowt, o’ cowts the wale,
As ever ran afore a tail:
Gin he be spar’d to be a beast,
He’ll draw me fifteen pund at least.
Wheel-carriages I ha’e but few,
Three carts, an’ twa are feckly new;
An auld wheelbarrow, mair for token,
Ae leg an’ baith the trams are broken;
I made a poker o’ the spin’le,
An’ my auld mither brunt the trin’le.
For men, I’ve three mischievous boys,
Run-deils for ranting an’ for noise;
A gaudsman ane, a thrasher t’ other:
Wee Davock hauds the nowt in fother.
I rule them as I ought, discreetly,
An’ aften labour them completely;
An’ aye on Sundays duly, nightly,
I on the Questions targe them tightly;
Till, faith! wee Davock’s grown sae gleg,
Tho’ scarcely langer than your leg,
He’ll screed you aff Effectual Calling,
As fast as ony in the dwalling.
I’ve nane in female servant station,
(L—d keep me aye frae a’ temptation!)
I hae nae wife-and thay my bliss is,
An’ ye have laid nae tax on misses;
An’ then, if kirk folks dinna clutch me,
I ken the deevils darena touch me.
Wi’ weans I’m mair than weel contented,
Heav’n sent me ane mae than I wanted!
My sonsie, smirking, dear-bought Bess,
She stares the daddy in her face,
Enough of ought ye like but grace;
But her, my bonie, sweet wee lady,
I’ve paid enough for her already;
An’ gin ye tax her or her mither,
By the L—d, ye’se get them a’ thegither!
And now, remember, Mr.
Aiken,
Nae kind of licence out I’m takin:
Frae this time forth, I do declare
I’se ne’er ride horse nor hizzie mair;
Thro’ dirt and dub for life I’ll paidle,
Ere I sae dear pay for a saddle;
My travel a’ on foot I’ll shank it,
I’ve sturdy bearers, Gude the thankit!
The kirk and you may tak you that,
It puts but little in your pat;
Sae dinna put me in your beuk,
Nor for my ten white shillings leuk.
This list, wi’ my ain hand I wrote it,
The day and date as under noted;
Then know all ye whom it concerns,
Subscripsi huic, ROBERT BURNS.
MOSSGIEL, February 22, 1786.
Note 1.
The “Inventory” was addressed to Mr.
Aitken of Ayr, surveyor of taxes for the district.
[back]
Note 2.
Kilmarnock.
—R.
B.
[back]
|
Written by
Robert Burns |
DAUGHTER of Chaos’ doting years,
Nurse of ten thousand hopes and fears,
Whether thy airy, insubstantial shade
(The rights of sepulture now duly paid)
Spread abroad its hideous form
On the roaring civil storm,
Deafening din and warring rage
Factions wild with factions wage;
Or under-ground, deep-sunk, profound,
Among the demons of the earth,
With groans that make the mountains shake,
Thou mourn thy ill-starr’d, blighted birth;
Or in the uncreated Void,
Where seeds of future being fight,
With lessen’d step thou wander wide,
To greet thy Mother—Ancient Night.
And as each jarring, monster-mass is past,
Fond recollect what once thou wast:
In manner due, beneath this sacred oak,
Hear, Spirit, hear! thy presence I invoke!
By a Monarch’s heaven-struck fate,
By a disunited State,
By a generous Prince’s wrongs.
By a Senate’s strife of tongues,
By a Premier’s sullen pride,
Louring on the changing tide;
By dread Thurlow’s powers to awe
Rhetoric, blasphemy and law;
By the turbulent ocean—
A Nation’s commotion,
By the harlot-caresses
Of borough addresses,
By days few and evil,
(Thy portion, poor devil!)
By Power, Wealth, and Show,
(The Gods by men adored,)
By nameless Poverty,
(Their hell abhorred,)
By all they hope, by all they fear,
Hear! and appear!
Stare not on me, thou ghastly Power!
Nor, grim with chained defiance, lour:
No Babel-structure would I build
Where, order exil’d from his native sway,
Confusion may the REGENT-sceptre wield,
While all would rule and none obey:
Go, to the world of man relate
The story of thy sad, eventful fate;
And call presumptuous Hope to hear
And bid him check his blind career;
And tell the sore-prest sons of Care,
Never, never to despair!
Paint Charles’ speed on wings of fire,
The object of his fond desire,
Beyond his boldest hopes, at hand:
Paint all the triumph of the Portland Band;
Mark how they lift the joy-exulting voice,
And how their num’rous creditors rejoice;
But just as hopes to warm enjoyment rise,
Cry CONVALESCENCE! and the vision flies.
Then next pourtray a dark’ning twilight gloom,
Eclipsing sad a gay, rejoicing morn,
While proud Ambition to th’ untimely tomb
By gnashing, grim, despairing fiends is borne:
Paint ruin, in the shape of high D[undas]
Gaping with giddy terror o’er the brow;
In vain he struggles, the fates behind him press,
And clam’rous hell yawns for her prey below:
How fallen That, whose pride late scaled the skies!
And This, like Lucifer, no more to rise!
Again pronounce the powerful word;
See Day, triumphant from the night, restored.
Then know this truth, ye Sons of Men!
(Thus ends thy moral tale,)
Your darkest terrors may be vain,
Your brightest hopes may fail.
|