Poetry and quotable quotes

[Florestan]

The only poem I've ever written in English.

On Hearing Schubert's String Quartet in A minor "Rosamunde"

1. Allegro ma non troppo

Long, long ago, when I was young,
My days were filled with joy and song.
Their memory still lives in me,
Like a sweet Mozart melody.
Dark have been my days of late,
Pain and misery my fate,
And yet, away from me, o Death!
For as long as I still can breath'
My youth, though gone, will sing to me
That happy Mozart melody.

2. Andante

I loved a maid from distant lands,
The Heaven whole was in her hands,
But Time went by mercilessly
And took away my love from me.
Where art thou now, my fair Lenore?
Quoth the Raven: - Nevermore.

3. Menuetto, allegro

"You broken soul, can you still dance?"
Thus asked me Death, and I said: "Yes!
My poor soul is dancing still,
What's really broken is my will."
"Then come with me and have no fear",
said she, "your final rest is near."
"Not yet!, for broken is my will,
But my poor soul is breathing still!"

4. Allegro moderato

Let's go now, Death, but not too fast!
This journey here is my last,
Allow me then farewell to take
From things that life worth living make.
For neither song, nor love, nor men
I'll hear, or feel, or see again.
To my youth's tune I take a bow,
And... here's my hand! I'm all yours now.

[Karl Henning]

It's an age since I thought of this one:

  The Blind Men and the Elephant
John Godfry Saxe (1816 – 1887)

   It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.

The First approached the Elephant,
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl:
"God bless me! but the Elephant
Is very like a wall!"

The Second, feeling of the tusk,
Cried, "Ho! what have we here
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me 'tis mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a spear!"

The Third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up and spake:
"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant
Is very like a snake!"

The Fourth reached out an eager hand,
And felt about the knee.
"What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain," quoth he;
"'Tis clear enough the Elephant
Is very like a tree!"

The Fifth who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: "E'en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an Elephant
Is very like a fan!"

The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Than, seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant
Is very like a rope!"

And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!

Moral

So oft in theologic wars,
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen!

[North Star]

It's an age since I thought of this one:

  The Blind Men and the Elephant
John Godfry Saxe (1816 – 1887)

...

Moral

So oft in theologic wars,
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen!

I haven't actually seen this poem before, let alone read it, but I certainly have heard the metaphor, probably in some senior high religion or philosophy class. Good stuff.
The poem, of course, ignores possibility that there might have been some people who didn't even find the elephant, and that there maybe was no elephant, and they all touched each other instead...

[Lisztianwagner]

William Butler Yeats, The Fiddler of Dooney:

When I play on my fiddle in Dooney,   
Folk dance like a wave of the sea;   
My cousin is priest in Kilvarnet,   
My brother in Moharabuiee.   
 
I passed my brother and cousin:          
They read in their books of prayer;   
I read in my book of songs   
I bought at the Sligo fair.   
 
When we come at the end of time,   
To Peter sitting in state,    
He will smile on the three old spirits,   
But call me first through the gate;   
 
For the good are always the merry,   
Save by an evil chance,   
And the merry love the fiddle    
And the merry love to dance:   
 
And when the folk there spy me,   
They will all come up to me,   
With 'Here is the fiddler of Dooney!'   
And dance like a wave of the sea.   

[North Star]

Robert Frost:

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

[Ten thumbs]

Waiting, waiting. 'Tis so far
    To the day that is to come :
One by one the days that axe
    All to tell their countless sum ;
Each to dawn and each to die —
What so far as by and by?

Waiting, waiting. 'Tis not ours.
    This to-day that flies so fast :
Let them go, the shadowy hours.
    Floating, floated, into Past
Our day wears to-morrow's sky —
What so near as by and by?

From Yu-Pe-Ya's Lute.

[Ten thumbs]

Florentine May

STILL, still is the Night ; still as the pause after pain ;
      Still and as dear ;
Deep, solemn, immense ; veiling the stars in the clear
Thrilling and luminous blue of the moon-shot atmosphere;
      Ah, could the Night remain !

Who, truly, shall say thou art sullen or dark or unseen,
      Thou, O heavenly Night,
Clear o'er the valley of olives asleep in the quivering
   light,
Clear o'er the pale-red hedge of the rose, and the lilies
   all white
      Down at my feet in the green ?

Nay, not as the Day, thou art light, O Night, with a
   beam
      Far more dear and divine ;
Never the noon was blue as these tremulous heavens or
   thine,
Pulsing with stars half seen, and vague, in a pallid shine,
      Vague as a dream.

Night, clear with the moon, filled with the dreamy fire
      Shining in thicket and close,
Fire from the lamp in his breast that the luminous firefly
   throws ;
Night, full of wandering light and of song, and the
   blossoming rose,
      Night, be thou my desire !

Night, Angel of Night, hold me and cover me so
      Open thy wings !
Ah, bend above and embrace ! till I hear in the one
   bird that sings
The throb of thy musical heart in the dusk, and the
   magical things
      Only the Night can know.

A. Mary Robinson (from An Italian Garden)

[Ten thumbs]

FOR MUSIC.

Thou art looking on the face of night, my love !
Is not yon evening star bright, my love .'
         Methinks it is
         A world of bliss
For spirits all softness and light, my love !

This earth is so chilled with care, my dear !
Would we might wing our flight there, my dear!
         For love to blaze
         With the cloudless rays
It would have in a world so fair, my dear !

But my wish to visit that star, dear love !
Is vain as my other hopes are, dear love!
         For my heart's wild sigh
         Of idolatry
Breathes with thee like that planet afar, dear love!

L. E. L.

[jochanaan]

I've been thinking about this quote a lot recently:

"Everyone is a leader
But no one leads."

--Yevgeny Yevtushenko, "The Loss" (written in English, not Russian as you might expect)

[Ten thumbs]

This is a poem about voyages - voyages into memory and voyages into the imagination.

CAPTAIN COOK

Do you recall the fancies of many years ago,
When the pulse danced those light measures that again it cannot know
Ah ! we both of us are altered, and now we talk no more
Of all the old creations that haunted us of yore.

Then any favourite volume was a mine of long delight,
From whence we took our future, to fashion as we might.
We lived again its pages, we were its chiefs and kings,
As actual, but more pleasant, than what the day now brings.

It was an August evening, with sunset in the trees,
When home you brought his Voyages who found the fair South Seas.
We read it till the sunset amid the boughs grew dim ;
All other favourite heroes were nothing beside him.

For weeks he was our idol, we sailed with him at sea,
And the pond amid the willows the ocean seemed to be.
The water-lilies growing beneath the morning smile,
We call'd the South Sea islands, each flower a different isle.

No golden let that fortune could draw for human life,
To us seemed like a sailor's, 'mid the storm and strife.
Our talk was of fair vessels that swept before the breeze,
And new discovered countries amid the Southern Seas.

Within that lonely garden what happy hours went by,
While we fancied that around us spread foreign sea and sky.
Ah ! the dreaming and the distant no longer haunt the mind;
We leave, in leaving childhood, life's fairy land behind.

There is not of that garden a single tree or flower ;
They have ploughed its long green grasses, and cut down the lime tree bower.
Where are the Guelder roses, whose silver used to bring,
With the gold of the laburnums, their tribute to the Spring !

They have vanished with the childhood that with their treasures played ;
The life that cometh after dwells in a darker shade.
Yet the name of that sea captain, it cannot but recall
How much we loved his dangers, and how we mourned his fall.

L. E. L.

[NJ Joe]

Two of my favorites:

Ozymandias

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

Percy Bysshe Shelley


The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

W. B. Yeats

[North Star]

My favourite Yeats..

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

[Karl Henning]

This here's the wattle,
The emblem of our land:
You can stick it in a bottle,
You can hold it in your hand.
Amen.

(Sorry . . . the word always reminds me of the Bruces!)

[Ten thumbs]

There were no blossoming shrubs, but sweeping pines
Guarded the solitude; and laurel boughs
Made fitting mirrors for the lovely moon,
With their bright shining leaves; the ivy lay
And trail'd upon the ground; and in the midst
A large old cypress stood, beneath whose shade
There was a sculptured form; the feet were placed
Upon a finely-carved rose wreath; the arms
Were raised to Heaven, as if to clasp the stars
EULALIA leant beside; 'twas hard to say
Which was the actual marble: when she spoke,
You started, scarce it seem'd a human sound;
But the eyes' lustre told life linger'd still;
And now the moonlight seem'd to fill their depths.
"You see," she said, "my cemetery here:—
Here, only here, shall be my quiet grave.
Yon statue is my emblem: see, its grasp
Is raised to Heaven, forgetful that the while
Its step has crush'd the fairest of earth's flowers
With its neglect."——
                                Her prophecy was sooth:
No change of leaf had that green valley known,
When EULALIE lay there in her last sleep.

[jochanaan]

Okay, you amateur psychologists out there, here's one of mine:

I must go in and take her
not knowing why
Her lips and limbs raise me
to heights the dreamtime knows
Why then does my hand feel--bones?

[Ten thumbs]

My last was published in 1829, so instead of Eulalie breathing her last, one could remember Schubert.

[North Star]

The Colour of His Hair

Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrists?
And what has he been after, that they groan and shake their fists?
And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air?
Oh they're taking him to prison for the colour of his hair.

'Tis a shame to human nature, such a head of hair as his;
In the good old time 'twas hanging for the colour that it is;
Though hanging isn't bad enough and flaying would be fair
For the nameless and abominable colour of his hair.

Oh a deal of pains he's taken and a pretty price he's paid
To hide his poll or dye it of a mentionable shade;
But they've pulled the beggar's hat off for the world to see and stare,
And they're haling him to justice for the colour of his hair.

Now 'tis oakum for his fingers and the treadmill for his feet,
And the quarry-gang on Portland in the cold and in the heat,
And between his spells of labour in the time he has to spare
He can curse the God that made him for the colour of his hair.


A. E. Housman (1859 – 1936)

[Ten thumbs]

The Colour of His Hair

More colour prejudice!

[North Star]

From the poem The Deserted Village

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay:
Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade;
A breath can make them, as a breath has made;
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destroyed can never be supplied.

[North Star]

The mosquito knows

The mosquite knows full well, smart as he is
he's a beast of prey.
But after all
he only takes his bellyful,
he doesn't put my blood in the bank.


-D. H. Lawrence