From de4ea3df48a863fb9da58cb48b29d1ab69f96568 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Thomas Morris Date: Fri, 5 Jul 2024 15:36:04 -0400 Subject: [PATCH] added more chesterton --- README.rst | 2 +- poems/curator.py | 2 +- poems/poem.py | 3 + poems/poems.json | 2231 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++--------- poems/utils.py | 2 +- 5 files changed, 1827 insertions(+), 413 deletions(-) diff --git a/README.rst b/README.rst index 0090cf9..55c59b9 100644 --- a/README.rst +++ b/README.rst @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@ poems ----- -All of the poems in here are good, or interesting. There are currently 8,161 poems by 545 poets. \ No newline at end of file +All of the poems in here are good, or interesting. There are currently 8,173 poems by 546 poets. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/poems/curator.py b/poems/curator.py index 50e4ae5..49066d0 100644 --- a/poems/curator.py +++ b/poems/curator.py @@ -65,7 +65,7 @@ def get_poem( self.catalog.df["probability"] = self.catalog.df.likelihood / self.catalog.df.likelihood.sum() if very_verbose: - catalog_summary = self.catalog.df.sort_values("probability", ascending=False)[["author", "title", "context", "probability"]] + catalog_summary = self.catalog.df.sort_values(["probability", "author"], ascending=[False, False])[["author", "title", "context", "probability"]] print(f"choosing from {len(self.catalog.df)} poems; the most likely are:") print(catalog_summary.iloc[:20].to_string()) chosen_loc = np.random.choice(self.catalog.df.index, p=self.catalog.df.probability) diff --git a/poems/poem.py b/poems/poem.py index 8cedfa8..46eda0c 100644 --- a/poems/poem.py +++ b/poems/poem.py @@ -47,6 +47,9 @@ def pretty_date(self): if year: x += f"{year}" + if "approximate" in self.metadata["date"]: + x = f"circa {x}" + return x.strip() @property diff --git a/poems/poems.json b/poems/poems.json index 420f80d..9950c30 100644 --- a/poems/poems.json +++ b/poems/poems.json @@ -4120,7 +4120,7 @@ }, "when-a-heavy-lid-of-low-sky": { "title": "“When a heavy lid of low sky …”", - "body": "# I.\n\nFebruary, peeved at Paris, pours \na gloomy torrent on the pale lessees \nof the graveyard next door and a mortal chill\non tenants of the foggy suburbs too.\n\nThe tiles afford no comfort to my cat \nthat cannot keep its mangy body still; \nthe soul of some old poet haunts the drains \nand howls as if a ghost could hate the cold.\n\nA churchbell grieves, a log in the fireplace smokes\nand hums falsetto to the clock’s catarrh, \nwhile in a filthy reeking deck of cards\n\ninherited from a dropsical old maid,\nthe dapper Knave of Hearts and the Queen of Spades \ngrimly disinter their love affairs.\n\n\n# II.\n\nSouvenirs?\nMore than if I had lived a thousand years!\n\nNo chest of drawers crammed with documents, \nlove-letters, wedding-invitations, wills,\na lock of someone’s hair rolled up in a deed, \nhides so many secrets as my brain.\nThis branching catacombs, this pyramid \ncontains more corpses than the potter’s field:\nI am a graveyard that the moon abhors,\nwhere long worms like regrets come out to feed\nmost ravenously on my dearest dead.\nI am an old boudoir where a rack of gowns, \nperfumed by withered roses, rots to dust; \nwhere only faint pastels and pale Bouchers \ninhale the scent of long-unstoppered flasks.\n\nNothing is slower than the limping days \nwhen under the heavy weather of the years\nBoredom, the fruit of glum indifference, \ngains the dimension of eternity … \nHereafter, mortal clay, you are no more\nthan a rock encircled by a nameless dread,\nan ancient sphinx omitted from the map, \nforgotten by the world, and whose fierce moods \nsing only to the rays of setting suns.\n\n\n# III.\n\nI’m like the king of a rainy country, rich \nbut helpless, decrepit though still a young man \nwho scorns his fawning tutors, wastes his time \non dogs and other animals, and has no fun; \nnothing distracts him, neither hawk nor hound \nnor subjects starving at the palace gate. \nHis favorite fool’s obscenities fall flat\n--the royal invalid is not amused--\nand ladies in waiting for a princely nod \nno longer dress indecently enough \nto win a smile from this young skeleton.\nThe bed of state becomes a stately tomb. \nThe alchemist who brews him gold has failed \nto purge the impure substance from his soul, \nand baths of blood, Rome’s legacy recalled \nby certain barons in their failing days, \nare useless to revive this sickly flesh \nthrough which no blood but brackish Lethe seeps.\n\n\n# IV.\n\nWhen skies are low and heavy as a lid\nover the mind tormented by disgust,\nand hidden in the gloom the sun pours down \non us a daylight dingier than the dark;\n\nwhen earth becomes a trickling dungeon where \nTrust like a bat keeps lunging through the air,\nbeating tentative wings along the walls \nand bumping its head against the rotten beams;\n\nwhen rain falls straight from unrelenting clouds, \nforging the bars of some enormous jail, \nand silent hordes of obscene spiders spin \ntheir webs across the basements of our brains;\n\nthen all at once the raging bells break loose,\nhurling to heaven their awful caterwaul, \nlike homeless ghosts with no one left to haunt \nwhimpering their endless grievances.\n\n--And giant hearses, without dirge or drums, \nparade at half-step in my soul, where Hope, \ndefeated, weeps, and the oppressor Dread \nplants his black flag on my assenting skull.", + "body": "# I.\n\nFebruary, peeved at Paris, pours\na gloomy torrent on the pale lessees\nof the graveyard next door and a mortal chill\non tenants of the foggy suburbs too.\n\nThe tiles afford no comfort to my cat\nthat cannot keep its mangy body still;\nthe soul of some old poet haunts the drains\nand howls as if a ghost could hate the cold.\n\nA churchbell grieves, a log in the fireplace smokes\nand hums falsetto to the clock’s catarrh,\nwhile in a filthy reeking deck of cards\n\ninherited from a dropsical old maid,\nthe dapper Knave of Hearts and the Queen of Spades\ngrimly disinter their love affairs.\n\n\n# II.\n\nSouvenirs?\nMore than if I had lived a thousand years!\n\nNo chest of drawers crammed with documents,\nlove-letters, wedding-invitations, wills,\na lock of someone’s hair rolled up in a deed,\nhides so many secrets as my brain.\nThis branching catacombs, this pyramid\ncontains more corpses than the potter’s field:\nI am a graveyard that the moon abhors,\nwhere long worms like regrets come out to feed\nmost ravenously on my dearest dead.\nI am an old boudoir where a rack of gowns,\nperfumed by withered roses, rots to dust;\nwhere only faint pastels and pale Bouchers\ninhale the scent of long-unstoppered flasks.\n\nNothing is slower than the limping days\nwhen under the heavy weather of the years\nBoredom, the fruit of glum indifference,\ngains the dimension of eternity …\nHereafter, mortal clay, you are no more\nthan a rock encircled by a nameless dread,\nan ancient sphinx omitted from the map,\nforgotten by the world, and whose fierce moods\nsing only to the rays of setting suns.\n\n\n# III.\n\nI’m like the king of a rainy country, rich\nbut helpless, decrepit though still a young man\nwho scorns his fawning tutors, wastes his time\non dogs and other animals, and has no fun;\nnothing distracts him, neither hawk nor hound\nnor subjects starving at the palace gate.\nHis favorite fool’s obscenities fall flat\n--the royal invalid is not amused--\nand ladies in waiting for a princely nod\nno longer dress indecently enough\nto win a smile from this young skeleton.\nThe bed of state becomes a stately tomb.\nThe alchemist who brews him gold has failed\nto purge the impure substance from his soul,\nand baths of blood, Rome’s legacy recalled\nby certain barons in their failing days,\nare useless to revive this sickly flesh\nthrough which no blood but brackish Lethe seeps.\n\n\n# IV.\n\nWhen skies are low and heavy as a lid\nover the mind tormented by disgust,\nand hidden in the gloom the sun pours down\non us a daylight dingier than the dark;\n\nwhen earth becomes a trickling dungeon where\nTrust like a bat keeps lunging through the air,\nbeating tentative wings along the walls\nand bumping its head against the rotten beams;\n\nwhen rain falls straight from unrelenting clouds,\nforging the bars of some enormous jail,\nand silent hordes of obscene spiders spin\ntheir webs across the basements of our brains;\n\nthen all at once the raging bells break loose,\nhurling to heaven their awful caterwaul,\nlike homeless ghosts with no one left to haunt\nwhimpering their endless grievances.\n\n--And giant hearses, without dirge or drums,\nparade at half-step in my soul, where Hope,\ndefeated, weeps, and the oppressor Dread\nplants his black flag on my assenting skull.", "metadata": { "translator": "Richard Howard", "date": { @@ -11637,6 +11637,7 @@ "title": "“Drake in the Southern Sea”", "body": "I set out from the Port of Acapulco on the twenty-third of March\nAnd kept a steady course until Saturday, the fourth of April, when\nA half hour before dawn, we saw by the light of the moon\nThat a ship had come alongside\nWith sails and a bow that seemed to be of silver.\nOur helmsman cried out to them to stand off\nBut no one answered, as though they were all asleep.\nAgain we called out: “WHERE DID THEIR SHIP COME FROM?”\nAnd they said: Peru!\nAfter which we heard trumpets, and muskets firing,\nAnd they ordered me to come down into their longboat\nTo cross over to where their Captain was.\nI found him walking the deck,\nWent up to him, kissed his hands and he asked me:\n“What silver or gold I had aboard that ship?”\nI said, “None at all,\nNone at all, My Lord, only my dishes and cups.”\nSo then he asked me if I knew the Viceroy.\nI said I did. And I asked the Captain,\n“If he were Captain Drake himself and no other?”\nThe Captain replied that\n“He was the very Drake I spoke of.”\nWe spoke together a long time, until the hour of dinner,\nAnd he commanded that I sit by his side.\nHis dishes and cups are of silver, bordered with gold\nWith his crest upon them.\nHe has with him many perfumes and scented waters in crystal vials\nWhich, he said, the Queen had given him.\nHe dines and sups always with music of violins\nAnd also takes with him everywhere painters who keep painting\nAll the coast for him.\nHe is a man of some twenty-four years, small, with a reddish beard.\nHe is a nephew of Juan Aquinas, the pirate.\nAnd is one of the greatest mariners there are upon the sea.\nThe day after, which was Sunday, he clothed himself in splendid garments\nAnd had them hoist all their flags\nWith pennants of divers colors at the mastheads,\nThe bronze rings, and chains, and the railings and\nThe lights on the Alcazar shining like gold.\nHis ship was like a gold dragon among the dolphins.\nAnd we went, with his page, to my ship to look at the coffers.\nAll day long until night he spent looking at what I had.\nWhat he took from me was not much,\nA few trifles of my own,\nAnd he gave me a cutlass and a silver brassart for them,\nAsking me to forgive him\nSince it was for his lady that he was taking them:\nHe would let me go, he said, the next morning, as soon as there was a breeze;\nFor this I thanked him, and kissed his hands.\nHe is carrying, in his galleon, three thousand bars of silver\nThree coffers full of gold\nTwelve great coffers of pieces of eight:\nAnd he says he is heading for China\nFollowing the charts and steered by a Chinese pilot whom he captured …", "metadata": { + "translator": "Thomas Merton", "context": { "month": "april", "day": "05", @@ -13387,57 +13388,96 @@ "tags": [ "english" ], - "n_poems": 65 + "n_poems": 71 }, "poems": { "all-the-leaves-are-gold": { "title": "“All the Leaves Are Gold”", "body": "Lo! I am come to autumn,\n When all the leaves are gold;\nGrey hairs and golden leaves cry out\n The year and I are old.\n\nIn youth I sought the prince of men,\n Captain in cosmic wars,\nOur Titan, even the weeds would show\n Defiant, to the stars.\n\nBut now a great thing in the street\n Seems any human nod,\nWhere shift in strange democracy\n The million masks of God.\n\nIn youth I sought the golden flower\n Hidden in wood or wold,\nBut I am come to autumn,\n When all the leaves are gold.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + }, "context": { "month": "october" } } }, + "the-ballad-of-god-makers": { + "title": "“The Ballad of God-Makers”", + "body": "A bird flew out at the break of day\nFrom the nest where it had curled,\nAnd ere the eve the bird had set\nFear on the kings of the world.\n\nThe first tree it lit upon\nWas green with leaves unshed;\nThe second tree it lit upon\nWas red with apples red;\n\nThe third tree it lit upon\nWas barren and was brown,\nSave for a dead man nailed thereon\nOn a hill above a town.\n\nThat night the kings of the earth were gay\nAnd filled the cup and can;\nLast night the kings of the earth were chill\nFor dread of a naked man.\n\n“If he speak two more words,” they said,\n“The slave is more than the free;\nIf he speak three more words,” they said,\n“The stars are under the sea.”\n\nSaid the King of the East to the King of the West,\nI wot his frown was set,\n“Lo, let us slay him and make him as dung,\nIt is well that the world forget.”\n\nSaid the King of the West to the King of the East,\nI wot his smile was dread,\n“Nay, let us slay him and make him a god,\nIt is well that our god be dead.”\n\nThey set the young man on a hill,\nThey nailed him to a rod;\nAnd there in darkness and in blood\nThey made themselves a god.\n\nAnd the mightiest word was left unsaid,\nAnd the world had never a mark,\nAnd the strongest man of the sons of men\nWent dumb into the dark.\n\nThen hymns and harps of praise they brought,\nIncense and gold and myrrh,\nAnd they thronged above the seraphim,\nThe poor dead carpenter.\n\n“Thou art the prince of all,” they sang,\n“Ocean and earth and air.”\nThen the bird flew on to the cruel cross,\nAnd hid in the dead man’s hair.\n\n“Thou art the son of the world.” they cried,\n“Speak if our prayers be heard.”\nAnd the brown bird stirred in the dead man’s hair\nAnd it seemed that the dead man stirred.\n\nThen a shriek went up like the world’s last cry\nFrom all nations under heaven,\nAnd a master fell before a slave\nAnd begged to be forgiven.\n\nThey cowered, for dread in his wakened eyes\nThe ancient wrath to see;\nAnd a bird flew out of the dead Christ’s hair,\nAnd lit on a lemon tree.", + "metadata": {} + }, "ballad-of-saint-barbara": { "title": "“Ballad of Saint Barbara”", "body": "_(St. Barbara is the patron saint of artillery and of those in danger of sudden death.)_\n\nWhen the long grey lines came flooding upon Paris in the plain,\nWe stood and drank of the last free air we never could taste again:\nThey had led us back from the lost battle, to halt we knew not where\nAnd stilled us; and our gaping guns were dumb with our despair.\nThe grey tribes flowed for ever from the infinite lifeless lands\nAnd a Norman to a Breton spoke, his chin upon his hands.\n\n“There was an end to Ilium; and an end came to Rome;\nAnd a man plays on a painted stage in the land that he calls home;\nArch after arch of triumph, but floor beyond falling floor,\nThat lead to a low door at last; and beyond there is no door.”\n\nAnd the Breton to the Norman spoke, like a small child spoke he,\nAnd his sea-blue eyes were empty as his home beside the sea:\n“There are more windows in one house than there are eyes to see,\nThere are more doors in a man’s house, but God has hid the key:\nRuin is a builder of windows; her legend witnesseth\nBarbara, the saint of gunners, and a stay in sudden death.”\n\nIt seemed the wheel of the world stood still an instant in its turning,\nMore than the kings of the earth that turned with the turning of Valmy mill:\nWhile trickled the idle tale and the sea-blue eyes were burning,\nStill as the heart of a whirlwind the heart of the world stood still.\n\n _“Barbara the beautiful\n Had praise of lute and pen:\n Her hair was like a summer night\n Dark and desired of men.\n\n Her feet like birds from far away\n That linger and light in doubt;\n And her face was like a window\n Where a man’s first love looked out.\n\n Her sire was master of many slaves\n A hard man of his hands;\n They built a tower about her\n In the desolate golden lands,\n\n Sealed as the tyrants sealed their tombs,\n Planned with an ancient plan,\n And set two windows in the tower\n Like the two eyes of a man.”_\n\nOur guns were set toward the foe; we had no word, for firing.\nGrey in the gateway of St. Gond the Guard of the tyrant shone;\nDark with the fate of a falling star, retiring and retiring,\nThe Breton line went backward and the Breton tale went on.\n\n _“Her father had sailed across the sea\n From the harbour of Africa\n When all the slaves took up their tools\n For the bidding of Barbara.\n\n She smote the bare wall with her hand\n And bad them smite again;\n She poured them wealth of wine and meat\n To stay them in their pain.\n\n And cried through the lifted thunder\n Of thronging hammer and hod\n ‘Throw open the third window\n In the third name of God.’\n\n Then the hearts failed and the tools fell,\n And far towards the foam,\n Men saw a shadow on the sands\n And her father coming home.”_\n\nSpeak low and low, along the line the whispered word is flying\nBefore the touch, before the time, we may not loose a breath:\nTheir guns must mash us to the mire and there be no replying,\nTill the hand is raised to fling us for the final dice to death.\n\n _“There were two windows in your tower,\n Barbara, Barbara,\n For all between the sun and moon\n In the lands of Africa.\n\n Hath a man three eyes, Barbara,\n A bird three wings,\n That you have riven roof and wall\n To look upon vain things?”\n\n Her voice was like a wandering thing\n That falters yet is free,\n Whose soul has drunk in a distant land\n Of the rivers of liberty.\n\n “There are more wings than the wind knows\n Or eyes than see the sun\n In the light of the lost window\n And the wind of the doors undone.\n\n For out of the first lattice\n Are the red lands that break\n And out of the second lattice\n Sea like a green snake,\n\n But out of the third lattice\n Under low eaves like wings\n Is a new corner of the sky\n And the other side of things.”_\n\nIt opened in the inmost place an instant beyond uttering,\nA casement and a chasm and a thunder of doors undone,\nA seraph’s strong wing shaken out the shock of its unshuttering,\nThat split the shattered sunlight from a light behind the sun.\n\n _“Then he drew sword and drave her\n Where the judges sat and said\n ‘Caesar sits above the gods,\n Barbara the maid.\n\n Caesar hath made a treaty\n With the moon and with the sun,\n All the gods that men can praise\n Praise him every one.\n\n There is peace with the anointed\n Of the scarlet oils of Bel,\n With the Fish God, where the whirlpool\n Is a winding stair to hell,\n\n With the pathless pyramids of slime,\n Where the mitred negro lifts\n To his black cherub in the cloud\n Abominable gifts,\n\n With the leprous silver cities\n Where the dumb priests dance and nod,\n But not with the three windows\n And the last name of God.’”_\n\nThey are firing, we are falling, and the red skies rend and shiver us,\nBarbara, Barbara, we may not loose a breath--\nBe at the bursting doors of doom, and in the dark deliver us,\nWho loosen the last window on the sun of sudden death.\n\n _“Barbara the beautiful\n Stood up as queen set free,\n Whose mouth is set to a terrible cup\n And the trumpet of liberty.\n\n ‘I have looked forth from a window\n That no man now shall bar,\n Caesar’s toppling battle-towers\n Shall never stretch so far.\n\n The slaves are dancing in their chains,\n The child laughs at the rod,\n Because of the bird of the three wings,\n And the third face of God.’\n\n The sword upon his shoulder\n Shifted and shone and fell,\n And Barbara lay very small\n And crumpled like a shell.”_\n\nWhat wall upon what hinges turned stands open like a door?\nToo simple for the sight of faith, too huge for human eyes,\nWhat light upon what ancient way shines to a far-off floor,\nThe line of the lost land of France or the plains of Paradise?\n\n _“Caesar smiled above the gods,\n His lip of stone was curled,\n His iron armies wound like chains\n Round and round the world,\n\n And the strong slayer of his own\n That cut down flesh for grass,\n Smiled too, and went to his own tower\n Like a walking tower of brass,\n\n And the songs ceased and the slaves were dumb;\n And far towards the foam\n Men saw a shadow on the sands;\n And her father coming home …\n\n Blood of his blood upon the sword\n Stood red but never dry.\n He wiped it slowly, till the blade\n Was blue as the blue sky.\n\n But the blue sky split with a thunder-crack,\n Spat down a blinding brand,\n And all of him lay back and flat\n As his shadow on the sand.”_\n\nThe touch and the tornado; all our guns give tongue together\nSt. Barbara for the gunnery and God defend the right,\nThey are stopped and gapped and battered as we blast away the weather.\nBuilding window upon window to our lady of the light.\nFor the light is come on Liberty, her foes are falling, falling,\nThey are reeling, they are running, as the shameful years have run,\nShe is risen for all the humble, she has heard the conquered calling,\nSt. Barbara of the Gunners, with her hand upon the gun.\nThey are burst asunder in the midst that eat of their own flatteries,\nWhose lip is curled to order as its barbered hair is curled …\nBlast of the beauty of sudden death, St. Barbara of the batteries!\nThat blow the new white window in the wall of all the world.\n\nFor the hand is raised behind us, and the bolt smites hard\nThrough the rending of the doorways, through the death-gap of the Guard,\nFor the cry of the Three Colours is in Condé and beyond\nAnd the Guard is flung for carrion in the graveyard of St. Gond,\nThrough Mondemont and out of it, through Morin marsh and on\nWith earthquake of salutation the impossible thing is gone,\nGaul, charioted and charging, great Gaul upon a gun,\nTip-toe on all her thousand years and trumpeting to the sun:\nAs day returns, as death returns, swung backwards and swung home,\nBack on the barbarous reign returns the battering-ram of Rome.\nWhile that that the east held hard and hot like pincers in a forge,\nCame like the west wind roaring up the cannon of St. George,\nWhere the hunt is up and racing over stream and swamp and tarn\nAnd their batteries, black with battle, hold the bridgeheads of the Marne\nAnd across the carnage of the Guard, by Paris in the plain,\nThe Normans to the Bretons cried and the Bretons cheered again …\nBut he that told the tale went home to his house beside the sea\nAnd burned before St. Barbara, the light of the windows three,\nThree candles for an unknown thing, never to come again,\nThat opened like the eye of God on Paris in the plain.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + } + } }, "ballad-of-the-sun": { "title": "“Ballad of the Sun”", "body": "O well for him that loves the sun\nThat sees the heaven-race ridden or run\nThe splashing seas of sunset won\nAnd shouts for victory.\n\nGod made the sun to crown his head\nAnd when death’s dart at last is sped\nAt least it will not find him dead\nAnd pass the carrion by.\n\nO ill for him that loves the sun;\nShall the sun stoop for anyone?\nShall the sun weep for hearts undone\nOr heavy souls that pray?\n\nNot less for us and everyone\nWas that white web of splendour spun;\nO well for him who loves the sun\nAlthough the sun should slay.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + } + } }, "ballade-dune-grande-dame": { "title": "“Ballade D’une Grande Dame”", "body": "Heaven shall forgive you Bridge at dawn\nThe clothes you wear--or do not wear--\nAnd Ladies’ Leap-frog on the lawn\nAnd dyes and drugs and _petits verres._\nYour vicious things shall melt in air …\n… But for the Virtuous Things you do\nThe Righteous Work the Public Care\nIt shall not be forgiven you.\n\nBecause you could not even yawn\nWhen your Committees would prepare\nTo have the teeth of paupers drawn\nOr strip the slums of Human Hair;\nBecause a Doctor Otto Maehr\nSpoke of “a segregated few”--\nAnd you sat smiling in your chair--\nIt shall not be forgiven you.\n\nThough your sins cried to Father Vaughan\nThese desperate you could not spare\nWho steal with nothing left to pawn;\nYou caged a man up like a bear\nFor ever in a jailor’s care\nBecause his sins were more than _two_ …\n… I know a house in Hoxton where\nIt shall not be forgiven you.\n\n\n# _Envoi:_\n\nPrincess you trapped a guileless Mayor\nTo meet some people that you knew …\nWhen the Last Trumpet rends the air\nIt shall not be forgiven you.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + } + } }, "a-ballade-of-suicide": { "title": "“A Ballade of Suicide”", "body": "The gallows in my garden people say\nIs new and neat and adequately tall.\nI tie the noose on in a knowing way\nAs one that knots his necktie for a ball;\nBut just as all the neighbours--on the wall--\nAre drawing a long breath to shout “Hurray!”\nThe strangest whim has seized me … After all\nI think I will not hang myself to-day.\n\nTo-morrow is the time I get my pay--My\nuncle’s sword is hanging in the hall--\nI see a little cloud all pink and grey--\nPerhaps the rector’s mother will _not_ call--\nI fancy that I heard from Mr. Gall\nThat mushrooms could be cooked another way--\nI never read the works of Juvenal--\nI think I will not hang myself to-day.\n\nThe world will have another washing day;\nThe decadents decay; the pedants pall;\nAnd H.G. Wells has found that children play.\nAnd Bernard Shaw discovered that they squall;\nRationalists are growing rational--\nAnd through thick woods one finds a stream astray\nSo secret that the very sky seems small--\nI think I will not hang myself to-day.\n\n\n# _Envoi:_\n\nPrince I can hear the trumpet of Germinal\nThe tumbrils toiling up the terrible way;\nEven to-day your royal head may fall--\nI think I will not hang myself to-day.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + } + } }, "a-ballade-of-a-book-reviewer": { "title": "“A Ballade of a Book-Reviewer”", "body": "I have not read a rotten page\nOf “Sex-Hate” or “The Social Test”\nAnd here comes “Husks” and “Heritage” …\nO Moses give us all a rest!\n“Ethics of Empire”! … I protest\nI will not even cut the strings\nI’ll read “Jack Redskin on the Quest”\nAnd feed my brain with better things.\n\nSomebody wants a Wiser Age\n(He also wants me to invest);\nSomebody likes the Finnish Stage\nBecause the Jesters do not jest;\nAnd grey with dust is Dante’s crest\nThe bell of Rabelais soundless swings;\nAnd the winds come out of the west\nAnd feed my brain with better things.\n\nLord of our laughter and our rage.\nLook on us with our sins oppressed!\nI too have trodden mine heritage\nWickedly wearying of the best.\nBurn from my brain and from my breast\nSloth and the cowardice that clings\nAnd stiffness and the soul’s arrest:\nAnd feed my brain with better things.\n\n\n# _Envoi:_\n\nPrince you are host and I am guest\nTherefore I shrink from cavillings …\nBut I should have that fizz suppressed\nAnd feed my brain with better things.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + } + } }, "a-ballade-of-an-anti-puritan": { "title": "“A Ballade of an Anti-Puritan”", "body": "They spoke of Progress spiring round\nOf Light and Mrs. Humphry Ward--\nIt is not true to say I frowned\nOr ran about the room and roared;\nI might have simply sat and snored--\nI rose politely in the club\nAnd said “I feel a little bored;\nWill someone take me to a pub?”\n\nThe new world’s wisest did surround\nMe; and it pains me to record\nI did not think their views profound\nOr their conclusions well assured;\nThe simple life I can’t afford\nBesides I do not like the grub--\nI wait a mash and sausage “scored”--\nWill someone take me to a pub?\n\nI know where Men can still be found\nAnger and clamorous accord\nAnd virtues growing from the ground\nAnd fellowship of beer and board\nAnd song that is a sturdy cord.\nAnd hope that is a hardy shrub\nAnd goodness that is God’s last word--\nWill someone take me to a pub?\n\n\n# _Envoi:_\n\nPrince Bayard would have smashed his sword\nTo see the sort of knights you dub--Is\nthat the last of them--O Lord!\nWill someone take me to a pub?", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + } + } }, "a-ballade-of-the-first-rain": { "title": "“A Ballade of the First Rain”", "body": "The sky is blue with summer and the sun\nThe woods are brown as autumn with the tan\nIt might as well be Tropics and be done\nI might as well be born a copper Khan;\nI fashion me an oriental fan\nMade of the wholly unreceipted bills\nBrought by the ice-man sleeping in his van\n(A storm is coming on the Chiltern Hills).\n\nI read the Young Philosophers for fun\n--Fresh as our sorrow for the late Queen Anne--\nThe Dionysians whom a pint would stun\nThe Pantheists who never heard of Pan.\n--But through my hair electric needles ran\nAnd on my book a gout of water spills\nAnd on the skirts of heaven the guns began\n(A storm is coming on the Chiltern Hills).\n\nO fields of England cracked and dry and dun\nO soul of England sick of words and wan!--\nThe clouds grow dark;--the down-rush has begun.\n--It comes it comes as holy darkness can\nBlack as with banners ban and arriere-ban;\nA falling laughter all the valley fills\nDeep as God’s thunder and the thirst of man:\n(A storm is coming on the Chiltern Hills).\n\n\n# _Envoi:_\n\nPrince Prince-Elective on the modern plan\nFulfilling such a lot of People’s Wills\nYou take the Chiltern Hundreds while you can--\nA storm is coming on the Chiltern Hills.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + } + } }, "bay-combe": { "title": "“Bay Combe”", "body": "With leaves below and leaves above\nAnd groping under tree and tree\nI found the home of my true love\nWho is a wandering home for me.\n\nWho lost in ruined worlds aloof\nBore the dread dove wings like a roof;\nWho past the last lost stars of space\nCarried the fire-light on her face.\n\nWho passing as in idle hours\nTamed the wild weeds to garden flowers;\nStroked the strange whirlwind’s whirring wings\nAnd made the comets homely things.\n\nWhere she went by upon her way\nThe dark was dearer than the day;\nWhere she paused in heaven or hell\nThe whole world’s tale had ended well.\n\n_With leaves below and leaves above.\nAnd groping under tree and tree\nI found the home of my true love\nWho is a wandering home for me_.\n\nWhere she was flung above beneath\nBy the rude dance of life and death\nGrow she at Gotham--die at Rome\nBetween the pine trees is her home.\n\nIn some strange town some silver morn\nShe may have wandered to be born;\nStopped at some motley crowd impressed\nAnd called them kinsfolk for a jest.\n\nIf we again En goodness thrive\nAnd the dead saints become alive\nThen pedants bald and parchments brown\nMay claim her blood for London town.\n\n_But leaves below and leaves above.\nAnd groping under tree and tree\nI found the home of my true love\nWho is a wandering home for me_.\n\nThe great gravestone she may pass by\nAnd without noticing may die;\nThe streets of silver Heaven may tread\nWith her grey awful eyes unfed.\n\nThe city of great peace in pain\nMay pass until she find again\nThis little house of holm and fir\nGod built before the stars for her.\n\nHere in the fallen leaves is furled\nHer secret centre of the world.\nWe sit and feel in dusk and dun\nThe stars swing round us like a sun.\n\n_For leaves below and leaves above.\nAnd groping under tree and tree\nI found the home of my true love.\nWho is a wandering home for me_.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + }, "context": { "liturgy": "advent" } @@ -13446,17 +13486,28 @@ "the-beatific-vision": { "title": "“The Beatific Vision”", "body": "Then Bernard smiled at me that I should gaze\nBut I had gazed already; caught the view\nFaced the unfathomable ray of rays\nWhich to itself and by itself is true.\n\nThen was my vision mightier than man’s speech;\nSpeech snapt before it like a flying spell;\nAnd memory and all that time can teach\nBefore that splendid outrage failed and fell.\n\nAs when one dreameth and remembereth not\nWaking what were his pleasures or his pains\nWith every feature of the dream forgot\nThe printed passion of the dream remains:--\n\nEven such am I; within whose thoughts resides\nNo picture of that sight nor any part\nNor any memory: in whom abides\nOnly a happiness within the heart\n\nA secret happiness that soaks the heart\nAs hills are soaked by slow unsealing snow\nOr secret as that wind without a chart\nWhereon did the wild leaves of Sibyl go.\n\nO light uplifted from all mortal knowing\nSend back a little of that glimpse of thee.\nThat of its glory I may kindle glowing\nOne tiny spark for all men yet to be.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + } + } }, "blessed-are-the-peacemakers": { "title": "“Blessed Are the Peacemakers”", "body": "Of old with a divided heart\nI saw my people’s pride expand\nSince a man’s soul is torn apart\nBy mother earth and fatherland.\n\nI knew through many a tangled tale\nGlory and truth not one but two:\nKing Constable and Amirail\nTook me like trumpets: but I knew\n\nA blacker thing than blood’s own dye\nWeighed down great Hawkins on the sea;\nAnd Nelson turned his blindest eye\nOn Naples and on liberty.\n\nTherefore to you my thanks O throne\nO thousandfold and frozen folk\nFor whose cold frenzies all your own\nThe Battle of the Rivers broke;\n\nWho have no faith a man could mourn.\nNor freedom any man desires;\nBut in a new clean light of scorn\nClose up my quarrel with my sires;\n\nWho bring my English heart to me\nWho mend me like a broken toy;\nTill I can see you fight and flee\nAnd laugh as if I were a boy.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + } + } }, "a-child-of-the-snows": { "title": "“A Child of the Snows”", "body": "There is heard a hymn when the panes dim\nAnd never before or again\nWhen the nights are strong with a darkness long\nAnd the dark is alive with rain.\n\nNever we know but in sleet and in snow\nThe place where the great fires are\nThat the midst of the earth is a raging mirth\nAnd the heart of the earth a star.\n\nAnd at night we win to the ancient inn\nWhere the child in the frost is furled\nWe follow the feet where all souls meet\nAt the inn at the end of the world.\n\nThe gods lie dead where the leaves lie red\nFor the flame of the sun is flown.\nThe gods lie cold where the leaves lie gold.\nAnd a Child comes forth alone.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + }, "context": { "liturgy": "advent" } @@ -13466,6 +13517,9 @@ "title": "“A Christmas Carol”", "body": "The Christ-child lay on Mary’s lap,\nHis hair was like a light.\n(O weary, weary were the world,\nBut here is all aright.)\n\nThe Christ-child lay on Mary’s breast,\nHis hair was like a star.\n(O stern and cunning are the kings,\nBut here the true hearts are.)\n\nThe Christ-child lay on Mary’s heart,\nHis hair was like a fire.\n(O weary, weary is the world,\nBut here the world’s desire.)\n\nThe Christ-child stood at Mary’s knee,\nHis hair was like a crown.\nAnd all the flowers looked up at Him,\nAnd all the stars looked down.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + }, "context": { "liturgy": "christmastide" } @@ -13475,6 +13529,9 @@ "title": "“A Christmas Song for Three Guilds”", "body": "To be sung a long time ago--or hence.\n\n# _The Carpenters_\n\nSt. Joseph to the Carpenters said on a Christmas Day:\n“The master shall have patience and the prentice shall obey;\nAnd your word unto your women shall be nowise hard or wild:\nFor the sake of me your master who have worshipped Wife and Child.\nBut softly you shall frame the fence and softly carve the door\nAnd softly plane the table--as to spread it for the poor\nAnd all your thoughts be soft and white as the wood of the white tree.\nBut if they tear the Charter Jet the tocsin speak for me!\nLet the wooden sign above your shop be prouder to be scarred\nThan the lion-shield of Lancelot that hung at Joyous Garde.”\n\n\n# _The Shoemakers_\n\nSt. Crispin to the shoemakers said on a Christmastide:\n“Who fashions at another’s feet will get no good of pride.\nThey were bleeding on the Mountain the feet that brought good news\nThe latchet of whose shoes we were not worthy to unloose.\nSee that your feet offend not nor lightly lift your head\nTread softly on the sunlit roads the bright dust of the dead.\nLet your own feet be shod with peace; be lowly all your lives.\nBut if they touch the Charter ye shall nail it with your knives.\nAnd the bill-blades of the commons drive in all as dense array\nAs once a crash of arrows came upon St. Crispin’s Day.”\n\n\n# _The Painters_\n\nSt. Luke unto the painters on Christmas Day he said:\n“See that the robes are white you dare to dip in gold and red;\nFor only gold the kings can give and only blood the saints;\nAnd his high task grows perilous that mixes them in paints.\nKeep you the ancient order; follow the men that knew\nThe labyrinth of black and whits the maze of green and blue;\nPaint mighty things paint paltry things paint silly things or sweet.\nBut if men break the Charter you may slay them in the street.\nAnd if you paint one post for them then … but you know it well\nYou paint a harlot’s face to drag all heroes down to hell.”\n\n\n# _All Together_\n\nAlmighty God to all mankind on Christmas Day said He:\n“I rent you from the old red hills and rending made you free.\nThere was charter there was challenge; in a blast of breath I gave;\nYou can be all things other; you cannot be a slave.\nYou shall be tired and tolerant of fancies as they fade\nBut if men doubt the Charter ye shall call on the Crusade--\nTrumpet and torch and catapult cannon and bow and blade\nBecause it was My challenge to all the things I made.”", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + }, "context": { "holiday": "christmas_day" } @@ -13483,17 +13540,28 @@ "a-cider-song": { "title": "“A Cider Song”", "body": "The wine they drink in Paradise\nThey make in Haute Lorraine;\nGod brought it burning from the sod\nTo be a sign and signal rod\nThat they that drink the blood of God\nShall never thirst again.\n\nThe wine they praise in Paradise\nThey make in Ponterey\nThe purple wine of Paradise\nBut we have better at the price;\nIt’s wine they praise in Paradise\nIt’s cider that they pray.\n\nThe wine they want in Paradise\nThey find in Plodder’s End\nThe apple wine of Hereford\nOf Hafod Hill and Hereford\nWhere woods went down to Hereford\nAnd there I had a friend.\n\nThe soft feet of the blessed go\nIn the soft western vales\nThe road the silent saints accord\nThe road from Heaven to Hereford\nWhere the apple wood of Hereford\nGoes all the way to Wales.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + } + } }, "confessional": { "title": "“Confessional”", "body": "Now that I kneel at the throne O Queen\nPity and pardon me.\nMuch have I striven to sing the same\nBrother of beast and tree;\nYet when the stars catch me alone\nNever a linnet sings--\nAnd the blood of a man is a bitter voice\nAnd cries for foolish things.\n\nNot for me be the vaunt of woe;\nWas not I from a boy\nVowed with the helmet and spear and spur\nTo the blood-red banner of joy?\nA man may sing his psalms to a stone\nPour his blood for a weed\nBut the tears of a man are a sudden thing\nAnd come not of his creed.\n\nNay but the earth is kind to me\nThough I cry for a Star\nLeaves and grasses feather and flower\nCover the foolish scar\nProphets and saints and seraphim\nLighten the load with song\nAnd the heart of a man is a heavy load\nFor a man to bear along.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + } + } }, "the-convert": { "title": "“The Convert”", "body": "After one moment when I bowed my head\nAnd the whole world turned over and came upright\nAnd I came out where the old road shone white.\nI walked the ways and heard what all men said\nForests of tongues like autumn leaves unshed\nBeing not unlovable but strange and light;\nOld riddles and new creeds not in despite\nBut softly as men smile about the dead\n\nThe sages have a hundred maps to give\nThat trace their crawling cosmos like a tree\nThey rattle reason out through many a sieve\nThat stores the sand and lets the gold go free:\nAnd all these things are less than dust to me\nBecause my name is Lazarus and I live.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + }, "context": { "liturgy": "advent" } @@ -13502,27 +13570,51 @@ "the-crusader-returns-from-captivity": { "title": "“The Crusader Returns from Captivity”", "body": "I have come forth alive from the land of purple and poison and glamour\nWhere the charm is strong as the torture being chosen to change the mind;\nTorture of wordless dance and wineless feast without clamour\nPalace hidden in palace garden with garden behind;\n\nWomen veiled in the sun or bare as brass in the shadows\nAnd the endless eyeless patterns where each thing seems an eye …\nAnd my stride is on Caesar’s sand where it slides to the English meadows\nTo the last low woods of Sussex and the road that goes to Rye.\n\nIn the cool and careless woods the eyes of the eunuchs burned not\nBut the wild hawk went before me being free to return or roam\nThe hills had broad unconscious backs; and the tree-tops turned not\nAnd the huts were heedless of me: and I knew I was at home.\n\nAnd I saw my lady afar and her holy freedom upon her\nA head without veil averted and not to be turned with charms\nAnd I heard above bannerets blown the intolerant trumpets of honour\nThat usher with iron laughter the coming of Christian arms.\n\nMy shield hangs stainless still; but I shall not go where they praise it\nA sword is still at my side but I shall not ride with the King.\nOnly to walk and to walk and to stun my soul and amaze it\nA day with the stone and the sparrow and every marvellous thing.\n\nI have trod the curves of the Crescent in the maze of them that adore it\nCurved around doorless chambers and unbeholden abodes\nBut I walk in the maze no more; on the sign of the cross I swore it\nThe wild white cross of freedom the sign of the white cross-roads.\n\nAnd the land shall leave me or take and the Woman take me or leave me\nThere shall be no more Night or nightmares seen in a glass;\nBut Life shall hold me alive and Death shall never deceive me\nAs long as I walk in England in the lanes that let me pass.", + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + } + } + }, + "cyclopean": { + "title": "“Cyclopean”", + "body": "A mountainous and mystic brute\nNo rein can curb, no arrow shoot,\nUpon whose doomed deformed back\nI sweep the planets’ scorching track.\n\nOld is the elf, and wise, men say,\nHis hair grows green as ours grows grey;\nHe mocks the stars with myriad hands,\nHigh as that swinging forest stands.\n\nBut though in pigmy wanderings dull\nI scour the deserts of his skull,\nI never find the face, eyes, teeth,\nLowering or laughing underneath.\n\nI met my foe in an empty dell,\nHis face in the sun was naked hell.\nI thought, “One silent, bloody blow,\nNo priest would curse, no crowd would know.”\n\nThen cowered: a daisy, half concealed,\nWatched for the fame of that poor field;\nAnd in that flower and suddenly\nEarth opened its one eye on me.", "metadata": {} }, "the-dead-hero": { "title": "“The Dead Hero”", "body": "We never saw you like our sires\nFor whom your face was Freedom’s face\nNor know what office-tapes and wires\nWith such strong cords may interlace;\nWe know not if the statesmen then\nWere fashioned as the sort we see\nWe know that not under your ken\nDid England laugh at Liberty.\n\nYea this one thing is known of you\nWe know that not till you were dumb\nNot till your course was thundered through\nDid Mammon see his kingdom come.\nThe songs of theft the swords of hire\nThe clerks that raved the troops that ran\nThe empire of the world’s desire\nThe dance of all the dirt began.\n\nThe happy jewelled alien men\nWorked then but as a little leaven;\nFrom some more modest palace then\nThe Soul of Dives stank to Heaven.\nBut when they planned with lisp and leer\nTheir careful war upon the weak\nThey smote your body on its bier\nFor surety that you could not speak.\n\nA hero in the desert died;\nMen cried that saints should bury him.\nAnd round the grave should guard and ride\nA chivalry of Cherubim.\nGod said: “There is a better place\nA nobler trophy and more tall;\nThe beasts that fled before his face\nShall come to make his funeral.”\n\n“The mighty vermin of the void\nThat hid them from his bended bow\nShall crawl from caverns overjoyed\nJackal and snake and carrion crow.\nAnd perched above the vulture’s eggs\nReversed upon its hideous head\nA blue-faced ape shall wave its legs\nTo tell the world that he is dead.”", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + } + } }, "the-dedication-of-the-man-who-was-thursday": { "title": "“The Dedication of the Man Who Was Thursday”", "body": "A cloud was on the mind of men and wailing went the weather\nYea a sick cloud upon the soul when we were boys together.\nScience announced nonentity and art admired decay;\nThe world was old and ended: but you and I were gay.\nRound us in antic order their crippled vices came--\nLust that had lost its laughter fear that had lost its shame.\nLike the white lock of Whistler that lit our aimless gloom\nMen showed their own white feather as proudly as a plume.\nLife was a fly that faded and death a drone that stung;\nThe world was very old indeed when you and I were young.\nThey twisted even decent sin to shapes not to be named:\nMen were ashamed of honour; but we were not ashamed.\nWeak if we were and foolish not thus we failed not thus;\nWhen that black Baal blocked the heavens he had no hymns from us.\nChildren we were--our forts of sand were even as weak as we\nHigh as they went we piled them up to break that bitter sea.\nFools as we were in motley all jangling and absurd\nWhen all church bells were silent our cap and bells were heard.\n\nNot all unhelped we held the fort our tiny flags unfurled;\nSome giants laboured in that cloud to lift it from the world.\nI find again the book we found I feel the hour that flings\nFar out of fish-shaped Paumanok some cry of cleaner things;\nAnd the Green Carnation withered as in forest fires that pass\nRoared in the wind of all the world ten million leaves of grass;\nOr sane and sweet and sudden as a bird sings in the rain\nTruth out of Tusitala spoke and pleasure out of pain.\nYea cool and clear and sudden as a bird sings in the grey\nDunedin to Samoa spoke and darkness unto day\nBut we were young; we lived to see God break their bitter charms\nGod and the good Republic come riding back in arms:\nWe have seen the city of Mansoul even as it rocked relieved--Blessed\nare they who did not see but being blind believed.\n\nThis is a tale of those old fears even of those emptied hells\nAnd none but you shall understand the true thing that it tells--\nOf what colossal gods of shame could cow men and yet crash\nOf what huge devils hid the stars yet fell at a pistol flash.\nThe doubts that were so plain to chase so dreadful to withstand--\nOh who shall understand but you; yea who shall understand?\nThe doubts that drove us through the night as we two talked amain\nAnd day had broken on the streets e’er it broke upon the brain.\nBetween us by the peace of God such truth can now be told;\nYea there is strength in striking root and good in growing old.\nWe have found common things at last and marriage and a creed.\nAnd I may safely write it now and you may safely read.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + } + } }, "the-deluge": { "title": "“The Deluge”", "body": "Though giant rains put out the sun\nHere stand I for a sign.\nThough Earth be filled with waters dark\nMy cup is filled with wine.\nTell to the trembling priests that here\nUnder the deluge rod\nOne nameless tattered broken man\nStood up and drank to God.\n\nSun has been where the rain is now\nBees in the heat to hum\nHaply a humming maiden came\nNow let the Deluge come:\nBrown of aureole green of garb\nStraight as a golden rod\nDrink to the throne of thunder now!\nDrink to the wrath of God.\n\nHigh in the wreck I held the cup\nI clutched my rusty sword\nI cocked my tattered feather\nTo the glory of the Lord.\nNot undone were the heaven and earth\nThis hollow world thrown up\nBefore one man had stood up straight!\nAnd drained it like a cup.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + } + } }, "the-donkey": { "title": "“The Donkey”", "body": "When fishes flew and forests walked\nAnd figs grew upon thorn\nSome moment when the moon was blood\nThen surely I was born.\n\nWith monstrous head and sickening cry\nAnd ears like errant wings\nThe devil’s walking parody\nOn all four-footed things.\n\nThe tattered outlaw of the earth\nOf ancient crooked will;\nStarve scourge deride me: I am dumb\nI keep my secret still.\n\nFools! For I also had my hour;\nOne far fierce hour and sweet:\nThere was a shout about my ears\nAnd palms before my feet.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + }, "context": { "holiday": "palm_sunday" } @@ -13531,17 +13623,28 @@ "the-earths-vigil": { "title": "“The Earth’s Vigil”", "body": "The old earth keepeth her watch the same.\nAlone in a voiceless void doth stand\nHer orange flowers in her bosom flame\nHer gold ring in her hand.\nThe surfs of the long gold-crested morns\nBreak ever more at her great robe’s hem\nAnd evermore come the bleak moon-horns.\nBut she keepeth not watch for them.\n\n _She keepeth her watch through the awns\n But the heart of her groweth not old\n For the peal of the bridegroom’s paeans\n And the tale she once was told._\n\nThe nations shock and the cities reel\nThe empires travail and rive and rend\nAnd she looks on havoc and smoke and steel\nAnd knoweth it is not the end.\nThe faiths may choke and the powers despair\nThe powers re-arise and the faiths renew\nShe is only a maiden waiting there\nFor the love whose word is true.\n\n _She keepeth her watch through the aeons\n But the heart of her groweth not old\n For the peal of the bridegroom’s paeans\n And the tale she once was told._\n\nThrough the cornfield’s gleam and the cottage shade\nThey wait unwearied the young and old\nMother for child and man for maid.\nFor a love that once was told.\nThe hair grows grey under thatch or slates\nThe eyes grow dim behind lattice panes\nThe earth-race wait as the old earth waits\nAnd the hope in the heart remains.\n\n _She keepeth her watch through the aeons\n But the heart of her groweth not old\n For the peal of the bridegroom’s paeans\n And the tale she once was told._\n\nGod’s gold ring on her hand is bound\nShe fires with blossom the grey hill-sides\nHer fields are quickened her forests crowned\nWhile the love of her heart abides\nAnd we from the fears that fret and mar\nLook up in hours and behold awhile\nHer face colossal mid star on star\nStill looking forth with a smile.\n\n _She keepeth her watch through the sons\n But the heart of her groweth not old\n For the peal of the bridegroom’s paeans\n And the tale she once was told._", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + } + } }, "a-fairy-tale": { "title": "“A Fairy Tale”", "body": "All things grew upwards, foul and fair:\nThe great trees fought and beat the air\nWith monstrous wings that would have flown;\nBut the old earth clung to her own,\nHolding them back from heavenly wars,\nThough every flower sprang at the stars.\n\nBut he broke free: while all things ceased,\nSome hour increasing, he increased.\nThe town beneath him seemed a map,\nAbove the church he cocked his cap,\nAbove the cross his feather flew\nAbove the birds and still he grew.\n\nThe trees turned grass; the clouds were riven;\nHis feet were mountains lost in heaven;\nThrough strange new skies he rose alone,\nThe earth fell from him like a stone,\nAnd his own limbs beneath him far\nSeemed tapering down to touch a star.\n\nHe reared his head, shaggy and grim,\nStaring among the cherubim;\nThe seven celestial floors he rent,\nOne crystal dome still o’er him bent:\nAbove his head, more clear than hope,\nAll heaven was a microscope.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + } + } }, "fantasia": { "title": "“Fantasia”", "body": "The happy men that lose their heads\nThey find their heads in heaven,\nAs cherub heads with cherub wings,\nAnd cherub haloes even:\nOut of the infinite evening lands\nAlong the sunset sea,\nLeaving the purple fields behind,\nThe cherub wings beat down the wind\nBack to the groping body and blind\nAs the bird back to the tree.\n\nWhether the plumes be passion-red\nFor him that truly dies\nBy headsmen’s blade or battle-axe,\nOr blue like butterflies,\nFor him that lost it in a lane\nIn April’s fits and starts,\nHis folly is forgiven then:\nBut higher, and far beyond our ken,\nIs the healing of the unhappy men,\nThe men that lost their hearts.\n\nIs there not pardon for the brave\nAnd broad release above,\nWho lost their heads for liberty\nOr lost their hearts for love?\nOr is the wise man wise indeed\nWhom larger thoughts keep whole?\nWho sees life equal like a chart,\nMade strong to play the saner part,\nAnd keep his head and keep his heart,\nAnd only lose his soul.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + }, "context": { "month": "april" } @@ -13551,30 +13654,63 @@ "title": "“Femina Contra Mundum”", "body": "The sun was black with judgment, and the moon\nBlood: but between\nI saw a man stand, saying: “To me at least\nThe grass is green.”\n\n“There was no star that I forgot to fear\nWith love and wonder.\nThe birds have loved me”; but no answer came--\nOnly the thunder.\n\nOnce more the man stood, saying: “A cottage door,\nWherethrough I gazed\nThat instant as I turned--yea, I am vile;\nYet my eyes blazed.”\n\n“For I had weighed the mountains in a balance,\nAnd the skies in a scale,\nI come to sell the stars--old lamps for new--\nOld stars for sale.”\n\nThen a calm voice fell all the thunder through,\nA tone less rough:\n“Thou hast begun to love one of my works\nAlmost enough.”", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + }, "context": { "season": "summer" } } }, + "for-a-war-memorial": { + "title": "“For a War Memorial”", + "body": "The hucksters haggle in the mart\nThe cars and carts go by;\nSenates and schools go droning on;\nFor dead things cannot die.\n\nA storm stooped on the place of tombs\nWith bolts to blast and rive;\nBut these be names of many men\nThe lightning found alive.\n\nIf usurers rule and rights decay\nAnd visions view once more\nGreat Carthage like a golden shell\nGape hollow on the shore,\n\nStill to the last of crumbling time\nUpon this stone be read\nHow many men of England died\nTo prove they were not dead.", + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + }, + "context": { + "holiday": "memorial_day" + } + } + }, "glencoe": { "title": "“Glencoe”", "body": "The star-crowned cliffs seem hinged upon the sky\nThe clouds are floating rags across them curled\nThey open to us like the gates of God\nCloven in the last great wall of all the world.\n\nI looked and saw the valley of my soul\nWhere naked crests fight to achieve the skies\nWhere no grain grows nor wine no fruitful thing\nOnly big words and starry blasphemies.\n\nBut you have clothed with mercy like a moss\nThe barren violence of its primal wars\nSterile although they be and void of rule\nYou know my shapeless crags have Wed the stars.\n\nHow shall I thank you O courageous heart.\nThat of this wasteful world you had no fear;\nBut bade it blossom in clear faith and sent\nYour fair flower-feeding rivers: even as here\n\nThe peat burns brimming from their cups of stone\nGlow brown and blood-red down the vast decline\nAs if Christ stood on yonder clouded peak\nAnd turned its thousand waters into wine.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + } + } }, - "the-great-minimum": { - "title": "“The Great Minimum”", - "body": "It is something to have wept as we have wept\nIt is something to have done as we have done\nIt is something to have watched when all men slept\nAnd seen the stars which never see the sun.\n\nIt is something to have smelt the mystic rose\nAlthough it break and leave the thorny rods\nIt is something to have hungered once as those\nMust hunger who have ate the bread of gods.\n\nTo have seen you and your unforgotten face\nBrave as a blast of trumpets for the fray.\nPure as white lilies in a watery space\nIt were something though you went from me to-day.\n\nTo have known the things that from the weak are furled\nPerilous ancient passions strange and high;\nIt is something to be wiser than the world\nIt is something to be older than the sky.\n\nIn a time of sceptic moths and cynic rusts\nAnd fatted lives that of their sweetness tire\nIn a world of flying loves and fading lusts\nIt is something to be sure of a desire.\n\nLo blessed are our ears for they have heard;\nYea blessed are our eyes for they have seen:\nLet thunder break on man and beast and bird\nAnd the lightning. It is something to have been.", - "metadata": {} + "gloria-in-profundis": { + "title": "“Gloria in Profundis”", + "body": "There has fallen on earth for a token\nA god too great for the sky.\nHe has burst out of all things and broken\nThe bounds of eternity:\nInto time and the terminal land\nHe has strayed like a thief or a lover,\nFor the wine of the world brims over,\nIts splendour is spilt on the sand.\n\nWho is proud when the heavens are humble,\nWho mounts if the mountains fall,\nIf the fixed stars topple and tumble\nAnd a deluge of love drowns all-\nWho rears up his head for a crown,\nWho holds up his will for a warrant,\nWho strives with the starry torrent,\nWhen all that is good goes down?\n\nFor in dread of such falling and failing\nThe fallen angels fell\nInverted in insolence, scaling\nThe hanging mountain of hell:\nBut unmeasured of plummet and rod\nToo deep for their sight to scan,\nOutrushing the fall of man\nIs the height of the fall of God.\n\nGlory to God in the Lowest\nThe spout of the stars in spate-\nWhere thunderbolt thinks to be slowest\nAnd the lightning fears to be late:\nAs men dive for sunken gem\nPursuing, we hunt and hound it,\nThe fallen star has found it\nIn the cavern of Bethlehem.", + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + }, + "context": { + "liturgy": "advent" + } + } }, "the-horrible-history-of-jones": { "title": "“The Horrible History of Jones”", "body": "Jones had a dog; it had a chain;\nNot often worn not causing pain;\nBut as the I.K.L. had passed\nTheir “Unleashed Cousins Act” at last\nInspectors took the chain away;\nWhereat the canine barked “hurray”!\nAt which of course the S.P.U.\n(Whose Nervous Motorists’ Bill was through)\nWere forced to give the dog in charge\nFor being Audibly at Large.\nNone you will say were now annoyed\nSave haply Jones--the yard was void.\nBut something being in the lease\nAbout “alarms to aid police”\nThe U.S.U. annexed the yard\nFor having no sufficient guards\nNow if there’s one condition\nThe C.C.P. are strong upon\nIt is that every house one buys\nMust have a yard for exercise;\nSo Jones as tenant was unfit.\nHis state of health was proof of it.\nTwo doctors of the T.T.U.‘s\nTold him his legs from long disuse\nWere atrophied; and saying “So\nFrom step to higher step we go\nTill everything is New and True”\nThey cut his legs off and withdrew.\nYou know the E.T.S.T.‘s views\nAre stronger than the T.T.U.‘s:\nAnd soon (as one may say) took wing\nThe Arms though not the Man I sing.\nTo see him sitting limbless there\nWas more than the K.K. could bear\n“In mercy silence with all speed\nThat mouth there are no hands to feed;\nWhat cruel sentimentalist\nO Jones would doom thee to exist--\nClinging to selfish Selfhood yet?\nWeak one! Such reasoning might upset\nThe Pump Act and the accumulation\nOf all constructive legislation;\nLet us construct you up a bit--”\nThe head fell off when it was hit:\nThen words did rise and honest doubt\nAnd four Commissions sat about\nWhether the slash that left him dead\nCut off his body or his head.\n\nAn author in the Isle of Wight\nObserved with unconcealed delight\nA land of old and just renown\nWhere Freedom slowly broadened down\nFrom Precedent to Precedent …\nAnd this I think was what he meant.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + } + } }, "the-house-of-christmas": { "title": "“The House of Christmas”", "body": "There fared a mother driven forth\nOut of an inn to roam;\nIn the place where she was homeless\nAll men are at home.\nThe crazy stable close at hand\nWith shaking timber and shifting sand\nGrew a stronger thing to abide and stand\nThan the square stones of Rome.\n\nFor men are homesick in their homes\nAnd strangers under the sun\nAnd they lay their heads in a foreign land\nWhenever the day is done.\nHere we have battle and blazing eyes\nAnd chance and honour and high surprise\nWhere the yule tale was begun.\n\nA Child in a foul stable\nWhere the beasts feed and foam;\nOnly where He was homeless\nAre you and I at home;\nWe have hands that fashion and heads that\nBut our hearts we lost--how long ago!\nIn a place no chart nor ship can show\nUnder the sky’s dome.\n\nThis world is wild as an old wives’ tale\nAnd strange the plain things are\nThe earth is enough and the air is enough\nFor our wonder and our war;\nBut our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings\nAnd our peace is put in impossible things\nWhere clashed and thundered unthinkable wings\nRound an incredible star.\n\nTo an open house in the evening\nHome shall men come\nTo an older place than Eden\nAnd a taller town than Rome.\nTo the end of the way of the wandering star\nTo the things that cannot be and that are\nTo the place where God was homeless\nAnd all men are at home.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + }, "context": { "liturgy": "christmastide" } @@ -13582,68 +13718,137 @@ }, "the-hunting-of-the-dragon": { "title": "“The Hunting of the Dragon”", - "body": "When we went hunting the Dragon\nIn the days when we were young,\nWe tossed the bright world over our shoulder\nAs bugle and baldrick slung;\nNever was world so wild and fair\nAs what went by on the wind,\nNever such fields of paradise\nAs the fields we left behind:\n\n For this is the best of a rest for men\n That men should rise and ride\n Making a flying fairyland\n Of market and country-side,\n Wings on the cottage, wings on the wood,\n Wings upon pot and pan,\n For the hunting of the Dragon\n That is the life of a man.\n\nFor men grow weary of fairyland\nWhen the Dragon is a dream,\nAnd tire of the talking bird in the tree,\nThe singing fish in the stream;\nAnd the wandering stars grow stale, grow stale,\nAnd the wonder is stiff with scorn;\nFor this is the honour of fairyland\nAnd the following of the horn;\n\n Beauty on beauty called us back\n When we could rise and ride,\n And a woman looked out of every window\n As wonderful as a bride:\n And the tavern-sign as a tabard blazed,\n And the children cheered and ran,\n For the love of the hate of the Dragon\n That is the pride of a man.\n\nThe sages called him a shadow\nAnd the light went out of the sun:\nAnd the wise men told us that all was well\nAnd all was weary and one:\nAnd then, and then, in the quiet garden,\nWith never a weed to kill,\nWe knew that his shining tail had shone\nIn the white road over the hill:\nWe knew that the clouds were flakes of flame,\nWe knew that the sunset fire\nWas red with the blood of the Dragon\nWhose death is the world’s desire.\n\n For the horn was blown in the heart of the night\n That men should rise and ride,\n Keeping the tryst of a terrible jest\n Never for long untried;\n Drinking a dreadful blood for wine,\n Never in cup or can,\n The death of a deathless Dragon,\n That is the life of a man.", - "metadata": {} + "body": "When we went hunting the Dragon\nIn the days when we were young,\nWe tossed the bright world over our shoulder\nAs bugle and baldrick slung;\nNever was world so wild and fair\nAs what went by on the wind,\nNever such fields of paradise\nAs the fields we left behind:\n\n _For this is the best of a rest for men\n That men should rise and ride\n Making a flying fairyland\n Of market and country-side,\n Wings on the cottage, wings on the wood,\n Wings upon pot and pan,\n For the hunting of the Dragon\n That is the life of a man._\n\nFor men grow weary of fairyland\nWhen the Dragon is a dream,\nAnd tire of the talking bird in the tree,\nThe singing fish in the stream;\nAnd the wandering stars grow stale, grow stale,\nAnd the wonder is stiff with scorn;\nFor this is the honour of fairyland\nAnd the following of the horn;\n\n _Beauty on beauty called us back\n When we could rise and ride,\n And a woman looked out of every window\n As wonderful as a bride:\n And the tavern-sign as a tabard blazed,\n And the children cheered and ran,\n For the love of the hate of the Dragon\n That is the pride of a man._\n\nThe sages called him a shadow\nAnd the light went out of the sun:\nAnd the wise men told us that all was well\nAnd all was weary and one:\nAnd then, and then, in the quiet garden,\nWith never a weed to kill,\nWe knew that his shining tail had shone\nIn the white road over the hill:\nWe knew that the clouds were flakes of flame,\nWe knew that the sunset fire\nWas red with the blood of the Dragon\nWhose death is the world’s desire.\n\n _For the horn was blown in the heart of the night\n That men should rise and ride,\n Keeping the tryst of a terrible jest\n Never for long untried;\n Drinking a dreadful blood for wine,\n Never in cup or can,\n The death of a deathless Dragon,\n That is the life of a man._", + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + } + } }, "a-hymn-for-the-church-militant": { "title": "“A Hymn for the Church Militant”", "body": "Great God that bowest sky and star\nBow down our towering thoughts to thee\nAnd grant us in a faltering war\nThe firm feet of humility.\n\nLord we that snatch the swords of flame\nLord we that cry about Thy car.\nWe too are weak with pride and shame\nWe too are as our foemen are.\n\nYea we are mad as they are mad\nYea we are blind as they are blind\nYea we are very sick and sad\nWho bring good news to all mankind.\n\nThe dreadful joy Thy Son has sent\nIs heavier than any care;\nWe find as Cain his punishment\nOur pardon more than we can bear.\n\nLord when we cry Thee far and near\nAnd thunder through all lands unknown\nThe gospel into every ear\nLord let us not forget our own.\n\nCleanse us from ire of creed or class\nThe anger of the idle tings;\nSow in our souls like living grass\nThe laughter of all lowly things.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + } + } }, "a-hymn": { "title": "“A Hymn”", "body": "O God of earth and altar\nBow down and hear our cry\nOur earthly rulers falter\nOur people drift and die;\nThe walls of gold entomb us\nThe swords of scorn divide\nTake not thy thunder from us\nBut take away our pride.\n\nFrom all that terror teaches\nFrom lies of tongue and pen\nFrom all the easy speeches\nThat comfort cruel men\nFrom sale and profanation\nOf honour and the sword\nFrom sleep and from damnation\nDeliver us good Lord!\n\nTie in a living tether\nThe prince and priest and thrall\nBind all our lives together\nSmite us and save us all;\nIn ire and exultation\nAflame with faith and free\nLift up a living nation\nA single sword to thee.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + } + } }, "the-kingdom-of-heaven": { "title": "“The Kingdom of Heaven”", "body": "Said the Lord God “Build a house\nBuild it in the gorge of death\nFound it in the throats of hell.\nWhere the lost sea muttereth\nFires and whirlwinds build it well.”\n\nLaboured sternly flame and wind\nBut a little and they cry\n“Lord we doubt of this Thy will\nWe are blind and murmur why”\nAnd the winds are murmuring still.\n\nSaid the Lord God “Build a house\nCleave its treasure from the earth\nWith the jarring powers of hell\nStrive with formless might and mirth\nTribes and war-men build it well.”\n\nThen the raw red sons of men\nBrake the soil and lopped the wood\nBut a little and they shrill\n“Lord we cannot view Thy good”\nAnd the wild men clamour still.\n\nSaid the Lord God “Build a house\nSmoke and iron spark and steam\nSpeak and vote and buy and sell;\nLet a new world throb and stream\nSeers and makers build it well.”\n\nStrove the cunning men and strong\nBut a little and they cry\n“Lord mayhap we are but clay\nAnd we cannot know the why”\nAnd the wise men doubt to-day.\n\nYet though worn and deaf and blind\nForce and savage king and seer\nLabour still they know not why;\nAt the dim foundation here\nKnead and plough and think and ply.\n\nTill at last mayhap hereon\nFused of passion and accord\nLove its crown and peace its stay\nRise the city of the Lord\nThat we darkly build to-day.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + } + } }, "the-last-hero": { "title": "“The Last Hero”", "body": "The wind blew out from Bergen from the dawning to the day\nThere was a wreck of trees and fall of towers a score of miles away\nAnd drifted like a livid leaf I go before its tide\nSpewed out of house and stable beggared of flag and bride.\nThe heavens are bowed about my head shouting like seraph wars.\nWith rains that might put out the sun and clean the sky of stars\nRains like the fall of ruined seas from secret worlds above\nThe roaring of the rains of God none but the lonely love.\nFeast in my hall O foemen and eat and drink and drain\nYou never loved the sun in heaven as I have loved the rain.\n\nThe chance of battle changes--so may all battle be;\nI stole my lady bride from them they stole her back from me.\nI rent her from her red-roofed hall I rode and saw arise\nMore lovely than the living flowers the hatred in her eyes.\nShe never loved me never bent never was less divine;\nThe sunset never loved me; the wind was never mine.\nWas it all nothing that she stood imperial in duresse?\nSilence itself made softer with the sweeping of her dress.\nO you who drain the cup of life O you who wear the crown\nYou never loved a woman’s smile as I have loved her frown.\n\nThe wind blew out from Bergen from the dawning to the day\nThey ride and run with fifty spears to break and bar my way\nI shall not die alone alone but kin to all the powers.\nAs merry as the ancient sun and fighting like the flowers.\nHow white their steel how bright their eyes! I love each laughing knave.\nCry high and bid him welcome to the banquet of the brave.\nYea I will bless them as they bend and love them where they lie\nWhen on their skulls the sword I swing falls shattering from the sky.\nThe hour when death is like a light and blood is like a rose--\nYou never loved your friends my friends as I shall love my foes.\n\nKnow you what earth shall lose to-night what rich uncounted loans\nWhat heavy gold of tales untold you bury with my bones?\nMy loves in deep dim meadows my ships that rode at ease\nRuffling the purple plumage of strange and secret seas.\nTo see this fair earth as it is to me alone was given\nThe blow that breaks my brow to-night shall break the dome of heaven.\nThe skies I saw the trees I saw after no eyes shall see.\nTo-night I die the death of God; the stars shall die with me:\nOne sound shall sunder all the spears and break the trumpet’s breath:\nYou never laughed in all your life as I shall laugh in death.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + } + } }, "lepanto": { "title": "“Lepanto”", - "body": "White founts falling in the Courts of the sun\nAnd the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run;\nThere is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared\nIt stirs the forest darkness the darkness of his beard\nIt curls the blood-red crescent the crescent of his lips\nFor the inmost sea of all the earth is shake with his ships.\nThey have dared the white republics up the cape of Italy\nThey have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea\nAnd the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss\nAnd called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross.\nThe cold queen of England is looking in the glass;\nThe shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass;\nFrom evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun\nAnd the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.\n\nDim drums throbbing in the hills half heard\nWhere only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred\nWhere risen from a doubtful seat and half attainted stall\nThe last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall\nThe last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung\nThat once went singing southward when all the world was young.\nIn that enormous silence tiny and unafraid\nComes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade.\n\nStrong gongs groaning as the guns boom far\nDon John of Austria is going to the war\nStiff flags straining in the night-blasts cold\nIn the gloom black-purple in the glint old-gold\nTorchlight crimson on the copper kettle-drums\nThen the tuckets then the trumpets then the cannon and he comes.\nDon John laughing in the brave beard curled.\nSpuming of his stirrups like the thrones of all the world\nHolding his head up for a flag of all the free.\nLove-light of Spain--hurrah!\nDeath-light of Africa!\nDon John of Austria\nIs riding to the sea.\n\nMahound is in his paradise above the evening star\n_(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)_\nHe moves a mighty turban on the timeless houri’s knees\nHis turban that is woven of the sunsets and the seas.\nHe shakes the peacock gardens as he rises from his ease\nAnd he strides among the tree-tops and is taller than the trees\nAnd his voice through all the garden is a thunder sent to bring\nBlack Azrael and Ariel and Ammon on the wing.\nGiants and the Genii\nMultiplex of wing and eye\nWhose strong obedience broke the sky\nWhen Solomon was king.\n\nThey rush in red and purple from the red clouds of the morn\nFrom temples where the yellow gods shut up their eyes in scorn;\nThey rise in green robes roaring from the green hells of the sea\nWhere fallen skies and evil hues and eyeless creatures be;\nOn them the sea-valves cluster and the grey sea-forests curl\nSplashed with a splendid sickness the sickness of the pearl;\nThey swell in sapphire smoke out of the blue cracks of the ground--\nThey gather and they wonder and give worship to Mahound.\nAnd he saith “Break up the mountains where the hermit-folk can hide\nAnd sift the red and silver sands lest bone of saint abide\nAnd chase the Giaours flying night and day not giving rest\nFor that which was our trouble comes again out of the west.\nWe have set the seal of Solomon on all things under sun\nOf knowledge and of sorrow and endurance of things done\nBut a noise is in ‘the mountains in the mountains and I know\nThe voice that shook our palaces--four hundred years ago:\nIt is he that saith not ‘Kismet’; it is he that knows not Fate;\nIt is Richard it is Raymond it is Godfrey in the gate!\nIt is he whose loss is laughter when he counts the wager worth\nPut down your feet upon him that our peace be on the earth.”\nFor he heard drums groaning and he heard guns jar\n_(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)_\nSudden and still--hurrah!\nBolt from Iberia!\nDon John of Austria\nIs gone by Alcalar.\n\nSt. Michael’s on his Mountain in the sea-roads of the north\n_(Don John of Austria is girt and going forth.)_\nWhere the grey seas glitter and the sharp tides shift\nAnd the sea-folk labour and the red sails lift.\nHe shakes his lance of iron and he claps his wings of stone;\nThe noise is gone through Normandy; the noise is gone alone;\nThe North is full of tangled things and texts and aching eyes\nAnd dead is all the innocence of anger and surprise\nAnd Christian killeth Christian in a narrow dusty\nAnd Christian dreadeth Christ that hath a newer face of doom\nAnd Christian hateth Mary that God kissed in Galilee\nBut Don John of Austria is riding to the sea.\nDon John calling through the blast and the eclipse\nCrying with the trumpet with the trumpet of his lips\nTrumpet that sayeth ha!\n_Domino gloria_!\nDon John of Austria\nIs shouting to the ships.\n\nKing Philip’s in his closet with the Fleece about his neck\n_(Don John of Austria is armed upon the deck.)_\nThe walls are hung with velvet that is black and soft as sin\nAnd little dwarfs creep out of it and little dwarfs creep in.\nHe holds a crystal phial that has colours like the moon\nHe touches and it tingles and he trembles very\nAnd his face is as a fungus of a leprous white and grey\nLike plants in the high houses that are shuttered from the day.\nAnd death is in the phial and the end of noble work\nBut Don John of Austria has fired upon the Turk.\nDon John’s hunting and his hounds have bayed--Booms\naway past Italy the rumour of his raid.\nGun upon gun ha! ha!\nGun upon gun hurrah!\nDon John of Austria\nHas loosed the cannonade.\n\nThe Pope was in his chapel before day or battle broke\n_(Don John of Austria is hidden in the smoke.)_\nThe hidden room in man’s house where God sits all the year\nThe secret window whence the world looks small and very dear.\nHe sees as in a mirror on the monstrous twilight sea\nThe crescent of his cruel ships whose name is mystery;\nThey fling great shadows foe-wards making Cross and Castle dark\nThey veil the plumed lions on the galleys of St. Mark;\nAnd above the ships are palaces of brown black-bearded chiefs\nAnd below the ships are prisons where with multitudinous griefs\nChristian captives sick and sunless all a labouring race repines\nLike a race in sunken cities like a nation in the mines.\nThey are lost like slaves that swat and in the skies of morning hung\nThe stair-ways of the tallest gods when tyranny was young.\nThey are countless voiceless hopeless as those fallen or fleeing on\nBefore the high Kings’ horses in the granite of Babylon.\nAnd many a one grows witless in his quiet room in hell\nWhere a yellow face looks inward through the lattice of his cell\nAnd he finds his God forgotten and he seeks no more a sign_(But\nDon John of Austria has burst the battle-line!)_\nDon John pounding from the slaughter-painted poop\nPurpling all the ocean like a bloody pirate’s sloop\nScarlet running over on the silvers and the golds\nBreaking of the hatches up and bursting of the holds\nThronging of the thousands up that labour under sex\nWhite for bliss and blind for sun and stunned for liberty.\n_Vivat Hispania!_\n_Domino Gloria!_\nDon John of Austria\nHas set his people free!\n\nCervantes on his galley sets the sword back in the sheath\n_(Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath.)_\nAnd he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain\nUp which a lean and foolish knight for ever rides in vain\nAnd he smiles but not as Sultans smile and settles back the blade …\n_(But Don John of Austria rides home from the Crusade_.)", - "metadata": {} + "body": "White founts falling in the Courts of the sun\nAnd the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run;\nThere is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared\nIt stirs the forest darkness the darkness of his beard\nIt curls the blood-red crescent the crescent of his lips\nFor the inmost sea of all the earth is shake with his ships.\nThey have dared the white republics up the cape of Italy\nThey have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea\nAnd the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss\nAnd called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross.\nThe cold queen of England is looking in the glass;\nThe shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass;\nFrom evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun\nAnd the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.\n\nDim drums throbbing in the hills half heard\nWhere only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred\nWhere risen from a doubtful seat and half attainted stall\nThe last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall\nThe last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung\nThat once went singing southward when all the world was young.\nIn that enormous silence tiny and unafraid\nComes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade.\n\nStrong gongs groaning as the guns boom far\n_Don John of Austria is going to the war_\nStiff flags straining in the night-blasts cold\nIn the gloom black-purple in the glint old-gold\nTorchlight crimson on the copper kettle-drums\nThen the tuckets then the trumpets then the cannon and he comes.\nDon John laughing in the brave beard curled.\nSpuming of his stirrups like the thrones of all the world\nHolding his head up for a flag of all the free.\nLove-light of Spain--hurrah!\nDeath-light of Africa!\nDon John of Austria\nIs riding to the sea.\n\nMahound is in his paradise above the evening star\n_(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)_\nHe moves a mighty turban on the timeless houri’s knees\nHis turban that is woven of the sunsets and the seas.\nHe shakes the peacock gardens as he rises from his ease\nAnd he strides among the tree-tops and is taller than the trees\nAnd his voice through all the garden is a thunder sent to bring\nBlack Azrael and Ariel and Ammon on the wing.\nGiants and the Genii\nMultiplex of wing and eye\nWhose strong obedience broke the sky\nWhen Solomon was king.\n\nThey rush in red and purple from the red clouds of the morn\nFrom temples where the yellow gods shut up their eyes in scorn;\nThey rise in green robes roaring from the green hells of the sea\nWhere fallen skies and evil hues and eyeless creatures be;\nOn them the sea-valves cluster and the grey sea-forests curl\nSplashed with a splendid sickness the sickness of the pearl;\nThey swell in sapphire smoke out of the blue cracks of the ground--\nThey gather and they wonder and give worship to Mahound.\nAnd he saith “Break up the mountains where the hermit-folk can hide\nAnd sift the red and silver sands lest bone of saint abide\nAnd chase the Giaours flying night and day not giving rest\nFor that which was our trouble comes again out of the west.\nWe have set the seal of Solomon on all things under sun\nOf knowledge and of sorrow and endurance of things done\nBut a noise is in ‘the mountains in the mountains and I know\nThe voice that shook our palaces--four hundred years ago:\nIt is he that saith not ‘Kismet’; it is he that knows not Fate;\nIt is Richard it is Raymond it is Godfrey in the gate!\nIt is he whose loss is laughter when he counts the wager worth\nPut down your feet upon him that our peace be on the earth.”\nFor he heard drums groaning and he heard guns jar\n_(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)_\nSudden and still--hurrah!\nBolt from Iberia!\nDon John of Austria\nIs gone by Alcalar.\n\nSt. Michael’s on his Mountain in the sea-roads of the north\n_(Don John of Austria is girt and going forth.)_\nWhere the grey seas glitter and the sharp tides shift\nAnd the sea-folk labour and the red sails lift.\nHe shakes his lance of iron and he claps his wings of stone;\nThe noise is gone through Normandy; the noise is gone alone;\nThe North is full of tangled things and texts and aching eyes\nAnd dead is all the innocence of anger and surprise\nAnd Christian killeth Christian in a narrow dusty\nAnd Christian dreadeth Christ that hath a newer face of doom\nAnd Christian hateth Mary that God kissed in Galilee\nBut Don John of Austria is riding to the sea.\nDon John calling through the blast and the eclipse\nCrying with the trumpet with the trumpet of his lips\nTrumpet that sayeth ha!\n_Domino gloria!_\nDon John of Austria\nIs shouting to the ships.\n\nKing Philip’s in his closet with the Fleece about his neck\n_(Don John of Austria is armed upon the deck.)_\nThe walls are hung with velvet that is black and soft as sin\nAnd little dwarfs creep out of it and little dwarfs creep in.\nHe holds a crystal phial that has colours like the moon\nHe touches and it tingles and he trembles very\nAnd his face is as a fungus of a leprous white and grey\nLike plants in the high houses that are shuttered from the day.\nAnd death is in the phial and the end of noble work\nBut Don John of Austria has fired upon the Turk.\nDon John’s hunting and his hounds have bayed--Booms\naway past Italy the rumour of his raid.\nGun upon gun ha! ha!\nGun upon gun hurrah!\nDon John of Austria\nHas loosed the cannonade.\n\nThe Pope was in his chapel before day or battle broke\n_(Don John of Austria is hidden in the smoke.)_\nThe hidden room in man’s house where God sits all the year\nThe secret window whence the world looks small and very dear.\nHe sees as in a mirror on the monstrous twilight sea\nThe crescent of his cruel ships whose name is mystery;\nThey fling great shadows foe-wards making Cross and Castle dark\nThey veil the plumed lions on the galleys of St. Mark;\nAnd above the ships are palaces of brown black-bearded chiefs\nAnd below the ships are prisons where with multitudinous griefs\nChristian captives sick and sunless all a labouring race repines\nLike a race in sunken cities like a nation in the mines.\nThey are lost like slaves that swat and in the skies of morning hung\nThe stair-ways of the tallest gods when tyranny was young.\nThey are countless voiceless hopeless as those fallen or fleeing on\nBefore the high Kings’ horses in the granite of Babylon.\nAnd many a one grows witless in his quiet room in hell\nWhere a yellow face looks inward through the lattice of his cell\nAnd he finds his God forgotten and he seeks no more a sign_(But\nDon John of Austria has burst the battle-line!)_\nDon John pounding from the slaughter-painted poop\nPurpling all the ocean like a bloody pirate’s sloop\nScarlet running over on the silvers and the golds\nBreaking of the hatches up and bursting of the holds\nThronging of the thousands up that labour under sex\nWhite for bliss and blind for sun and stunned for liberty.\n_Vivat Hispania!_\n_Domino Gloria!_\nDon John of Austria\nHas set his people free!\n\nCervantes on his galley sets the sword back in the sheath\n_(Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath.)_\nAnd he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain\nUp which a lean and foolish knight for ever rides in vain\nAnd he smiles but not as Sultans smile and settles back the blade …\n_(But Don John of Austria rides home from the Crusade_.)", + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + } + } }, "lost": { "title": "“Lost”", "body": "So you have gained the golden crowns so you have piled together\nThe laurels and the jewels the pearls out of the blue\nBut I will beat the bounding drum and I will fly the feather\nFor all the glory I have lost the good I never knew.\n\nI saw the light of morning pale on princely human faces\nIn tales irrevocably gone in final night enfurled\nI saw the tail of flying fights a glimpse of burning blisses\nAnd laughed to think what I had lost--the wealth of all the world.\n\nYea ruined in a royal game I was before my cradle;\nWas ever gambler hurling gold who lost such things as I?\nThe purple moth that died an hour ere I was born of\nThat great green sunset God shall make three days after I die.\n\nWhen all the lights are lost and done when all the skies are broken\nAbove the ruin of the stars my soul shall sit in state\nWith a brain made rich with the irrevocable sunsets\nAnd a closed heart happy in the fullness of a fate.\n\nSo you have gained the golden crowns and grasped the golden weather\nThe kingdoms and the hemispheres that all men buy and sell\nBut I will lash the leaping drum and swing the flaring feather\nFor the light of seven heavens that are lost to me like hell.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + } + } }, "loves-trappist": { "title": "“Love’s Trappist”", "body": "There is a place where lute and lyre are broken.\nWhere scrolls are torn and on a wild wind go\nWhere tablets stand wiped naked for a token\nWhere laurels wither and the daisies grow.\n\nLo: I too join the brotherhood of silence\nI am Love’s Trappist and you ask in vain\nFor man through Love’s gate even as through Death’s gate\nGoeth alone and comes not back again.\n\nYet here I pause look back across the threshold.\nCry to my brethren though the world be old\nProphets and sages questioners and doubters\nO world old world the best hath ne’er been told!", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + } + } }, "the-march-of-the-black-mountain": { "title": "“The March of the Black Mountain”", "body": "What will there be to remember\nOf us in the days to be?\nWhose faith was a trodden ember\nAnd even our doubt not free;\nParliaments built of paper\nAnd the soft swords of gold\nThat twist like a waxen taper\nIn the weak aggressor’s hold;\nA hush around Hunger slaying\nA city of serfs unfed;\nWhat shall we leave for a saying\nTo praise us when we are dead?\nBut men shall remember the Mountain\nThat broke its forest chains\nAnd men shall remember the Mountain\nWhen it arches against the plains:\nAnd christen their children from it\nAnd season and ship and street\nWhen the Mountain came to Mahomet\nAnd looked small before his feet.\n\nHis head was as high as the crescent\nOf the moon that seemed his crown\nAnd on glory of past and present\nThe light of his eyes looked down;\nOne hand went out to the morning\nOver Brahmin and Buddhist slain\nAnd one to the West in scorning\nTo point at the scars of Spain;\nOne foot on the hills for warden\nBy the little Mountain trod;\nAnd one was in a garden\nAnd stood on the grave of God.\nBut men shall remember the Mountain\nThough it fall down like a tree\nThey shall see the sign of the Mountain\nFaith cast into the sea;\nThough the crooked swords overcome it\nAnd the Crooked Moon ride free\nWhen the Mountain comes to Mahomet\nIt has more life than he.\n\nBut what will there be to remember\nOr what will there be to see--\nThough our towns through a long November\nAbide to the end and be?\nStrength of slave and mechanic\nWhose iron is ruled by gold\nPeace of immortal panic\nLove that is hate grown cold--\nAre these a bribe or a warning\nThat we turn not to the sun\nNor look on the lands of morning\nWhere deeds at last are done?\nWhere men shall remember the Mountain\nWhen truth forgets the plain--\nAnd walk in the way of the Mountain\nThat did not fail in vain;\nDeath and eclipse and comet\nThunder and seals that rend:\nWhen the Mountain came to Mahomet;\nBecause it was the end.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + } + } }, "a-marriage-song": { "title": "“A Marriage Song”", - "body": "Why should we reck of hours that rend\nWhile we two ride together?\nThe heavens rent from end to end\nWould be but windy weather\nThe strong stars shaken down in spate\nWould be a shower of spring\nAnd we should list the trump of fate\nAnd hear a linnet sing.\n\nWe break the line with stroke and luck\nThe arrows run like rain\nIf you be struck or I be struck\nThere’s one to strike again.\nIf you befriend or I befriend\nThe strength is in us twain\nAnd good things end and bad things end\nAnd you and I remain.\n\nWhy should we reck of ill or well\nWhile we two ride together?\nThe fires that over Sodom fell\nWould be but sultry weather.\nBeyond all ends to all men given\nOur race is far and fell\nWe shall but wash our feet in heaven\nAnd warm our hands in hell.\n\nBattles unborn and vast shall view\nOur faltered standards stream\nNew friends shall come and frenzies new.\nNew troubles toil and teem;\nNew friends shall pass and still renew\nOne truth that does not seem\nThat I am I and you are you\nAnd Death a morning dream.\n\nWhy should we reck of scorn or praise\nWhile we two ride together?\nThe icy air of godless days\nShall be but wintry weather.\nIf hell were highest if the heaven\nWere blue with devils blue\nI should have guessed that all was even\nIf I had dreamed of you.\n\nLittle I reck of empty prides\nOf creeds more cold than clay;\nTo nobler ends and longer rides\nMy lady rides to-day.\nTo swing our swords and take our sides\nIn that all-ending fray\nWhen stars fall down and darkness hides\nWhen God shall turn to bay.\n\nWhy should we reck of grin and groan\nWhile we two ride together?\nThe triple thunders of the throne\nWould be but stormy weather.\nFor us the last great fight shall roar\nUpon the ultimate plains\nAnd we shall turn and tell once more\nOur love in English lanes.", - "metadata": {} + "body": "Why should we reck of hours that rend\n While we two ride together?\nThe heavens rent from end to end\n Would be but windy weather,\nThe strong stars shaken down in spate\n Would be a shower of spring,\nAnd we should list the trump of fate\n And hear a linnet sing.\n\nWe break the line with stroke and luck,\n The arrows run like rain,\nIf you be struck, or I be struck,\n There’s one to strike again.\nIf you befriend, or I befriend,\n The strength is in us twain,\nAnd good things end and bad things end,\n And you and I remain.\n\nWhy should we reck of ill or well\n While we two ride together?\nThe fires that over Sodom fell\n Would be but sultry weather.\nBeyond all ends to all men given\n Our race is far and fell,\nWe shall but wash our feet in heaven,\n And warm our hands in hell.\n\nBattles unborn and vast shall view\n Our faltered standards stream,\nNew friends shall come and frenzies new.\n New troubles toil and teem;\nNew friends shall pass and still renew\n One truth that does not seem,\nThat I am I, and you are you,\n And Death a morning dream.\n\nWhy should we reck of scorn or praise\n While we two ride together?\nThe icy air of godless days\n Shall be but wintry weather.\nIf hell were highest, if the heaven\n Were blue with devils blue,\nI should have guessed that all was even,\n If I had dreamed of you.\n\nLittle I reck of empty prides,\n Of creeds more cold than clay;\nTo nobler ends and longer rides,\n My lady rides to-day.\nTo swing our swords and take our sides\n In that all-ending fray\nWhen stars fall down and darkness hides,\n When God shall turn to bay.\n\nWhy should we reck of grin and groan\n While we two ride together?\nThe triple thunders of the throne\n Would be but stormy weather.\nFor us the last great fight shall roar,\n Upon the ultimate plains,\nAnd we shall turn and tell once more\n Our love in English lanes.", + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + } + } + }, + "modern-elfland": { + "title": "“Modern Elfland”", + "body": "I cut a staff in a churchyard copse,\nI clad myself in ragged things,\nI set a feather in my cap\nThat fell out of an angel’s wings.\n\nI filled my wallet with white stones,\nI took three foxgloves in my hand,\nI slung my shoes across my back,\nAnd so I went to fairyland.\n\nBut lo, within that ancient place\nScience had reared her iron crown,\nAnd the great cloud of steam went up\nThat telleth where she takes a town.\n\nBut cowled with smoke and starred with lamps,\nThat strange land’s light was still its own;\nThe word that witched the woods and hills\nSpoke in the iron and the stone.\n\nNot Nature’s hand had ever curved\nThat mute unearthly porter’s spine.\nLike sleeping dragon’s sudden eyes\nThe signals leered along the line.\n\nThe chimneys thronging crooked or straight\nWere fingers signalling the sky;\nThe dog that strayed across the street\nSeemed four-legged by monstrosity.\n\n‘In vain,’ I cried, ‘though you too touch\nThe new time’s desecrating hand,\nThrough all the noises of a town\nI hear the heart of fairyland.’\n\nI read the name above a door,\nThen through my spirit pealed and passed:\n‘This is the town of thine own home,\nAnd thou hast looked on it at last.’", + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1927" + } + } + }, + "the-mortal-answers": { + "title": "“The Mortal Answers”", + "body": "_“… come away--\nwith the fairies, hand in hand,\nfor the world is more full of weeping\nthan you can understand.”_\n --W. B. Yeats\n\nFrom the Wood of the Old Wives’ Fables\n They glittered out of the grey,\nAnd with all the Armies of Elf-land\n I strove like a beast at bay;\n\nWith only a right arm wearied,\n Only a red sword worn,\nAnd the pride of the House of Adam\n That holdeth the stars in scorn.\n\nFor they came with chains of flowers\n And lilies lances free,\nThere in the quiet greenwood\n To take my grief from me.\n\nAnd I said, “Now all is shaken\n When heavily hangs the brow,\nWhen the hope of the years is taken\n The last star sunken. Now--\n\nHear, you chattering cricket,\n Hear, you spawn of the sod,\nThe strange strong cry in the darkness\n Of one man praising God,\n\nThat out of the night and nothing\n With travail of birth he came\nTo stand one hour in the sunlight\n Only to say her name.\n\nFalls through her hair the sunshine\n In showers; it touches, see,\nHer high bright cheeks in turning;\n Ah, Elfin Company,\n\nThe world is hot and cruel,\n We are weary of heart and hand.\nBut the world is more full of glory\n Than you can understand.”", + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + } + } }, "music": { "title": "“Music”", "body": "Sounding brass and tinkling cymbal\nHe that made me sealed my ears\nAnd the pomp of gorgeous noises\nWaves of triumph waves of tears\n\nThundered empty round and past me\nShattered lost for ever more\nAncient gold of pride and passion\nWrecked like treasure on a shore.\n\nBut I saw her cheek and forehead\nChange as at a spoken word\nAnd I saw her head uplifted\nLike a lily to the Lord.\n\nNought is lost but all transmuted\nEars are sealed yet eyes have seen;\nSaw her smiles (O soul be worthy!)\nSaw her tears (O heart be clean!).", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + } + } }, "the-mystery": { "title": "“The Mystery”", "body": "If sunset clouds could grow on trees\nIt would but match the may in flower;\nAnd skies be underneath the seas\nNo topsyturvier than a shower.\n\nIf mountains rose on wings to wander\nThey were no wilder than a cloud;\nYet all my praise is mean as slander,\nMean as these mean words spoken aloud.\n\nAnd never more than now I know\nThat man’s first heaven is far behind;\nUnless the blazing seraph’s blow\nHas left him in the garden blind.\n\nWitness, O Sun that blinds our eyes,\nUnthinkable and unthankable King,\nThat though all other wonder dies\nI wonder at not wondering.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + } + } }, "the-nativity": { "title": "“The Nativity”", "body": "The thatch on the roof was as golden\nThough dusty the straw was and old\nThe wind had a peal as of trumpets\nThough blowing and barren and cold\nThe mother’s hair was a glory\nThough loosened and torn\nFor under the eaves in the gloaming\n A child was born.\n\nHave a myriad children been quickened.\nHave a myriad children grown old\nGrown gross and unloved and embittered\nGrown cunning and savage and cold?\nGod abides In a terrible patience\nUnangered unworn\nAnd again for the child that was squandered\n A child is born.\n\nWhat know we of aeons behind us\nDim dynasties lost long ago\nHuge empires like dreams unremembered\nHuge cities for ages laid low?\nThis at least--that with blight and with blessing\nWith flower and with thorn\nLove was there and his cry was among them\n “A child is born.”\n\nThough the darkness be noisy with systems\nDark fancies that fret and disprove\nStill the plumes stir around us above us\nThe wings of the shadow of love:\nOh! princes and priests have ye seen it\nGrow pale through your scorn.\nHuge dawns sleep before us deep changes\n A child is born.\n\nAnd the rafters of toil still are gilded\nWith the dawn of the star of the heart\nAnd the wise men draw near in the twilight\nWho are weary of learning and art\nAnd the face of the tyrant is darkened.\nHis spirit is torn\nFor a new King is enthroned; yea the sternest\n A child is born.\n\nAnd the mother still joys for the whispered\nFirst stir of unspeakable things\nStill feels that high moment unfurling\nRed glory of Gabriel’s wings.\nStill the babe of an hour is a master\nWhom angels adorn\nEmmanuel prophet anointed\n A child is born.\n\nAnd thou that art still in thy cradle\nThe sun being crown for thy brow.\nMake answer our flesh make an answer\nSay whence art thou come--who art thou?\nArt thou come back on earth for our teaching\nTo train or to warn--?\nHush--how may we know?--knowing only\n A child is born.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + }, "context": { "holiday": "christmas_day" } @@ -13652,32 +13857,55 @@ "the-new-freethinker": { "title": "“The New Freethinker”", "body": "John Grubby who was short and stout\nAnd troubled with religious doubt\nRefused about the age of three\nTo sit upon the curate’s knee;\n(For so the eternal strife must rage\nBetween the spirit of the age\nAnd Dogma which as is well known.\nDoes simply hate to be outgrown).\nGrubby the young idea that shoots\nOutgrew the ages like old boots;\nWhile still to all appearance small\nWould have no Miracles at all;\nAnd just before the age of ten\nFirmly refused Free Will to men.\nThe altars reeled the hen-ens shook\nJust as he read of in the book;\nFlung from his house went forth the youth\nAlone with tempests and the Truth\nUp to the distant city and dim\nWhere his papa had bought for him\nA partnership in Chepe and Deer\nWorth say twelve hundred pounds a year.\nBut he was resolute. Lord Brute\nHad found him useful; and Lord Loot\nWith whom few other men would act\nValued his promptitude and tact;\nNever did even philanthropy\nEnrich a man more rapidly:\nTwas he that stopped the Strike in Coal\nFor hungry children racked his soul;\nTo end their misery there and then\nHe filled the mines with Chinamen--\nSat in that House that broke the Kings\nAnd voted for all sores of things--\nAnd rose from Under-Sec. to Sec.\nSome grumbled. Growlers who gave less\nThan generous worship to success\nThe little printers in Dundee\nWho got ten years for blasphemy\n(Although he let them off with seven)\nRespect him rather less than heaven.\nNo matter. This can still be said:\nNever to supernatural dread\nNever to unseen deity\nDid Sir John Grubby bend the knee;\nNever did dream of hell or wrath\nTurn Viscount Grubby from his path;\nNor was he bribed by fabled bliss\nTo kneel to any world but this.\nThe curate lives in Camden Town\nHis lap still empty of renown\nAnd still across the waste of years\nJohn Grubby in the House of Peers\nFaces that curate proud and free\nAnd never sits upon his knee.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + } + } }, "nightmare": { "title": "“Nightmare”", "body": "The silver and violet leopard of the night\nSpotted with stars and smooth with silence sprang;\nAnd though three doors stood open, the end of light\nClosed like a trap; and stillness was a clang.\n\nUnder the leopard sky of lurid stars\nI strove with evil sleep the hot night long,\nDreams dumb and swollen of triumphs without wars,\nOf tongueless trumpet and unanswering gong.\n\nI saw a pale imperial pomp go by,\nHelmet and hornèd mitre and heavy wreath;\nTheir high strange ensigns hung upon the sky\nAnd their great shields were like the doors of death.\n\nTheir mitres were as moving pyramids\nAnd all their crowns as marching towers were tall;\nTheir eyes were cold under their carven lids\nAnd the same carven smile was on them all.\n\nOver a paven plain that seemed unending\nThey passed unfaltering till it found an end\nIn one long shallow step; and these descending\nFared forth anew as long away to wend.\n\nI thought they travelled for a thousand years;\nAnd at the end was nothing for them all,\nFor all that splendour of sceptres and of spears,\nBut a new step, another easy fall.\n\nThe smile of stone seemed but a little less,\nThe load of silver but a little more:\nAnd ever was that terraced wilderness\nAnd falling plain paved like a palace floor.\n\nRust red as gore crawled on their arms of might\nAnd on their faces wrinkles and not scars:\nTill the dream suddenly ended; noise and light\nLoosened the tyranny of the tropic stars.\n\nBut over them like a subterranean sun\nI saw the sign of all the fiends that fell;\nAnd a wild voice cried “Hasten and be done,\nIs there no steepness in the stairs of hell?”\n\nHe that returns, He that remains the same,\nTurned the round real world, His iron vice;\nDown the grey garden paths a bird called twice,\nAnd through three doors mysterious daylight came.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + } + } }, "the-old-song": { "title": "“The Old Song”", "body": "A livid sky on London\nAnd like the iron steeds that rear\nA shock of engines halted\nAnd I knew the end was near:\nAnd something said that far away, over the hills and far away\nThere came a crawling thunder and the end of all things here.\nFor London Bridge is broken down, broken down, broken down,\nAs digging lets the daylight on the sunken streets of yore,\nThe lightning looked on London town, the broken bridge of London town.\nThe ending of a broken road where men shall go no more.\n\nI saw the kings of London town,\nThe kings that buy and sell,\nThat built it up with penny loaves\nAnd penny lies as well:\n\nAnd where the streets were paved with gold the shrivelled paper shone for gold,\nThe scorching light of promises that pave the streets of hell.\nFor penny loaves will melt away, melt away, melt away,\nMock the men that haggled in the grain they did not grow;\nWith hungry faces in the gate, a hundred thousand in the gate,\nA thunder-flash on London and the finding of the foe.\n\nI heard the hundred pin-makers\nSlow down their racking din,\nTill in the stillness men could hear\nThe dropping of the pin:\nAnd somewhere men without the wall, beneath the wood, without the wall,\nHad found the place where London ends and England can begin.\nFor pins and needles bend and break, bend and break, bend and break,\nFaster than the breaking spears or the bending of the bow,\nOf pagents pale in thunder-light, ’twixt thunderload and thunderlight,\nThe Hundreds marching on the hills in the wars of long ago.\n\nI saw great Cobbett riding,\nThe horseman of the shires;\nAnd his face was red with judgement\nAnd a light of Luddite fires:\nAnd south to Sussex and the sea the lights leapt up for liberty,\nThe trumpet of the yeomanry, the hammer of the squires;\nFor bars of iron rust away, rust away, rust away,\nRend before the hammer and the horseman riding in,\nCrying that all men at the last, and at the worst and at the last,\nHave found the place where England ends and England can begin.\n\nHis horse-hoofs go before you\nFar beyond your bursting tyres;\nAnd time is bridged behind him\nAnd our sons are with our sires.\n\nA trailing meteor on the Downs he rides above the rotting towns,\nThe Horseman of Apocalypse, the Rider of the Shires.\nFor London Bridge is broken down, broken down, broken down;\nBlow the horn of Huntington from Scotland to the sea--\n… Only flash of thunder-light, a flying dream of thunder-light,\nHad shown under the shattered sky a people that were free.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + } + } }, "on-righteous-indignation": { "title": "“On Righteous Indignation”", "body": "When Adam went from Paradise\nHe saw the Sword and ran;\nThe dreadful shape the new device\nThe pointed end of Paradise\nAnd saw what Peril is and Price\nAnd knew he was a man.\n\nWhen Adam went from Paradise\nHe turned him back and cried\nFor a little flower from Paradise;\nThere came no flower from Paradise;\nThe woods were dark in Paradise\nAnd not a bird replied.\n\nFor only comfort or contempt\nFor jest or great reward\nOver the walls of Paradise\nThe flameless gates of Paradise\nThe dumb shut doors of Paradise\nGod flung the flaming sword.\n\nIt burns the hand that holds it\nMore than the skull it scores;\nIt doubles like a snake and stings\nYet he in whose hand it swings\nHe is the most masterful of things\nA scorner of the stars.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + } + } }, "on-the-downs": { "title": "“On the Downs”", "body": "When you came over the top of the world\nIn the great day on the Downs,\nThe air was crisp and the clouds were curled,\nWhen you came over the top of the world,\nAnd under your feet were spire and street\nAnd seven English towns.\n\nAnd I could not think that the pride was perished\nAs you came over the down;\nLiberty, chivalry, all we cherished,\nLost in a rattle of pelf and perished;\nOr the land we love that you walked above\nWithering town by town.\n\nFor you came out on the dome of the earth\nLike a vision of victory,\nOut on the great green dome of the earth\nAs the great blue dome of the sky for girth,\nAnd under your feet the shires could meet\nAnd your eyes went out to sea.\n\nUnder your feet the towns were seven,\nAlive and alone on high,\nYour back to the broad white wall of heaven;\nYou were one and the towns were seven,\nSingle and one as the soaring sun\nAnd your head upheld the sky.\n\nAnd I thought of a thundering flag unfurled\nAnd the roar of the burghers’ bell:\nBeacons crackled and bolts were hurled\nAs you came over the top of the world;\nAnd under your feet were chance and cheat\nAnd the slime of the slopes of hell.\n\nIt has not been as the great wind spoke\nOn the great green down that day:\nWe have seen, wherever the wide wind spoke,\nSlavery slaying the English folk:\nThe robbers of land we have seen command\nThe rulers of land obey.\n\nWe have seen the gigantic golden worms\nIn the garden of paradise:\nWe have seen the great and the wise make terms\nWith the peace of snakes and the pride of worms,\nand them that plant make covenant\nWith the locust and the lice.\n\nAnd the wind blows and the world goes on\nAnd the world can say that we,\nWho stood on the cliffs where the quarries shone,\nStood upon clouds that the sun shone on:\nAnd the clouds dissunder and drown in thunder\nThe news that will never be.\n\nLady of all that have loved the people,\nLight over roads astray,\nMaze of steading and street and steeple,\nGreat as a heart that has loved the people:\nStand on the crown of the soaring down,\nLift up your arms and pray.\n\nOnly you I have not forgotten\nFor wreck of the world’s renown,\nRending and ending of things gone rotten,\nOnly the face of you unforgotten:\nAnd your head upthrown in the skies alone\nAs you came over the down.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + } + } }, "a-prayer-in-darkness": { "title": "“A Prayer in Darkness”", "body": "This much, O heaven--if I should brood or rave,\nPity me not; but let the world be fed,\nYea, in my madness if I strike me dead,\nHeed you the grass that grows upon my grave.\n\nIf I dare snarl between this sun and sod,\nWhimper and clamour, give me grace to own,\nIn sun and rain and fruit in season shown,\nThe shining silence of the scorn of God.\n\nThank God the stars are set beyond my power,\nIf I must travail in a night of wrath,\nThank God my tears will never vex a moth,\nNor any curse of mine cut down a flower.\n\nMen say the sun was darkened: yet I had\nThought it beat brightly, even on Calvary:\nAnd He that hung upon the Torturing Tree\nHeard all the crickets singing, and was glad.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + }, "context": { "holiday": "holy_saturday" } @@ -13686,27 +13914,49 @@ "the-red-sea": { "title": "“The Red Sea”", "body": "Our souls shall be Leviathans\nIn purple seas of wine\nWhen drunkenness is dead with death,\nAnd drink is all divine;\nLearning in those immortal vats\nWhat mortal vineyards mean;\nFor only in heaven we shall know\nHow happy we have been.\n\nLike clouds that wallow in the wind\nBe free to drift and drink;\nTower without insolence when we rise,\nWithout surrender sink:\nDreams dizzy and crazy we shall know\nAnd have no need to write\nOur blameless blasphemies of praise,\nOur nightmares of delight.\n\nFor so in such misshapen shape\nThe vision came to me,\nWhere such titanian dolphins dark\nRoll in a sunset sea:\nDark with dense colours, strange and strong\nAs terrible true love,\nHaloed like fish in phospher light\nThe holy monsters move.\n\nMeasure is here and law, to learn,\nWhen honour rules it so,\nTo lift the glass and lay it down\nOr break the glass and go.\nBut when the world’s New Deluge boils\nFrom the New Noah’s vine,\nOur souls shall be Leviathans\nIn sanguine seas of wine.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + } + } }, "a-second-childhood": { "title": "“A Second Childhood”", "body": "When all my days are ending\nAnd I have no song to sing,\nI think I shall not be too old\nTo stare at everything;\nAs I stared once at a nursery door\nOr a tall tree and a swing.\n\nWherein God’s ponderous mercy hangs\nOn all my sins and me,\nBecause He does not take away\nThe terror from the tree\nAnd stones still shine along the road\nThat are and cannot be.\n\nMen grow too old for love, my love,\nMen grow too old for wine,\nBut I shall not grow too old to see\nUnearthly daylight shine,\nChanging my chamber’s dust to snow\nTill I doubt if it be mine.\n\nBehold, the crowning mercies melt,\nThe first surprises stay;\nAnd in my dross is dropped a gift\nFor which I dare not pray:\nThat a man grow used to grief and joy\nBut not to night and day.\n\nMen grow too old for love, my love,\nMen grow too old for lies;\nBut I shall not grow too old to see\nEnormous night arise,\nA cloud that is larger than the world\nAnd a monster made of eyes.\n\nNor am I worthy to unloose\nThe latchet of my shoe;\nOr shake the dust from off my feet\nOr the staff that bears me through\nOn ground that is too good to last,\nToo solid to be true.\n\nMen grow too old to woo, my love,\nMen grow too old to wed:\nBut I shall not grow too old to see\nHung crazily overhead\nIncredible rafters when I wake\nAnd find I am not dead.\n\nA thrill of thunder in my hair:\nThough blackening clouds be plain,\nStill I am stung and startled\nBy the first drop of the rain:\nRomance and pride and passion pass\nAnd these are what remain.\n\nStrange crawling carpets of the grass,\nWide windows of the sky:\nSo in this perilous grace of God\nWith all my sins go I:\nAnd things grow new though I grow old,\nThough I grow old and die.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + }, + "context": { + "liturgy": "advent" + } + } }, "the-secret-people": { "title": "“The Secret People”", "body": "Smile at us pay us pass us; but do not quite forget.\nFor we are the people of England that never has spoken yet.\nThere is many a fat farmer that drinks less cheerfully\nThere is many a free French peasant who is richer and sadder than we.\nThere are no folk in the whole world so helpless or so wise.\nThere is hunger in our bellies there is laughter in our eyes;\nYou laugh at us and love us both mugs and eyes are wet:\nOnly you do not know us. For we have not spoken yet.\n\nThe fine French kings came over in a flutter of flags and dames.\nWe liked their smiles and battles but we never could say their names.\nThe blood ran red to Bosworth and the High French lords went down;\nThere was naught but a naked people under a naked crown.\n\nAnd the eyes of the King’s Servants turned terribly every way\nAnd the gold of the King’s Servants rose higher every day.\nThey burnt the homes of the shaven men that had been quaint and kind\nTill there was no bed in a monk’s house nor food that man could find.\nThe inns of God where no man paid that were the wall of the weak\nThe King’s Servants ate them all. And Still we did not speak.\n\nAnd the face of the King’s Servants grew greater than the King:\nHe tricked them and they trapped him and stood round him in a ring.\nThe new grave lords closed round him that had eaten the abbey’s fruits.\nAnd the men of the new religion with their bibles in their boots.\nWe saw their shoulders moving to menace or discuss\nAnd some were pure and some were vile; but none took heed of us.\nWe saw the King as they killed him and his face was proud and pale;\nAnd a few men talked of freedom while England talked of ale.\n\nA war that we understood not came over the world and woke\nAmericans Frenchmen Irish; but we knew not the things they spoke.\nThey talked about rights and nature and peace and the people’s reign:\nAnd the squires our masters bade us fight; and never scorned us again.\nWeak if we be for ever could none condemn us then;\nMen called us serfs and drudges; men knew that we were men.\nIn foam and flame at Trafalgar on Albuera plains\nWe did and died like lions to keep ourselves in chains\nWe lay in living ruins; firing and fearing not\nThe strange fierce face of the Frenchmen who knew for what they fought\nAnd the man who seemed to be more than man we strained against and broke;\nAnd we broke our own rights with him. And still we never spoke.\n\nOur patch of glory ended; we never heard guns again.\nBut the squire seemed struck in the saddle; he was foolish as if in pain\nHe leaned on a staggering lawyer he clutched a cringing Jew\nHe was stricken; it may be after all he was stricken at Waterloo.\nOr perhaps the shades of the shaven men whose spoil is in his house\nCome back in shining shapes at last to spoil his last carouse:\nWe only know the last sad squires ride slowly towards the sea.\nAnd a new people takes the land: and still it is not we.\n\nThey have given us into the hand of the new unhappy lords\nLords without anger and honour who dare not carry their swords.\nThey fight by shuffling papers; they have bright dead alien eyes;\nThey look at our labour and laughter as a tired man looks at flies.\nAnd the load 01 their loveless pity is worse than the ancient wrongs\nTheir doors are shut in the evening; and they know no songs.\n\nWe hear men speaking for us of new laws strong and sweet\nYet is there no man speaketh as we speak in the street.\nIt may be we shall rise the last as Frenchmen rose the first\nOur wrath come after Russia’s wrath and our wrath be the worst.\nIt may be we are meant to mark with our riot and our rest\nGod’s scorn for all men governing. It may be beer is best.\nBut we are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet.\nSmile at us pay us pass us. But do not quite forget.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + } + } }, "a-song-of-defeat": { "title": "“A Song of Defeat”", "body": "The line breaks and the guns go under\nThe lords and the lackeys ride the plain;\nI draw deep breaths of the dawn and thunder\nAnd the whole of my heart grows young again.\nFor our Chiefs said “Done” and I did not deem it;\nOur Seers said “Peace” and it was not peace;\nEarth will grow worse till men redeem it\nAnd wars more evil ere all wars cease.\nBut the old flags reel and the old drums rattle.\nAs once in my life they throbbed and reeled;\nI have found ray youth in the lost battle\nI have found my heart on the battlefield.\n For we that fight till the world is free\n We are not easy in victory:\n We have known each other too long my brother\n And fought each other the world and we.\n\nAnd I dream of the days when work was scrappy\nAnd rare in our pockets the mark of the mint\nWhen we were angry and poor and happy\nAnd proud of seeing our names in print.\nFor so they conquered and so we scattered\nWhen the Devil rode and his dogs smelt gold\nAnd the peace of a harmless folk was shattered;\nWhen I was twenty and odd years old.\nWhen the mongrel men that the market classes\nHad slimy hands upon England’s rod\nAnd sword in hand upon Afric’s passes\nHer last Republic cried to God.\n For the men no lords can buy or sell\n They sit not easy when all goes well.\n They have said to each other what naught can smother\n They have seen each other our souls and hell.\n\nIt is all as of old; the empty clangour.\nThe Nothing scrawled on a five-foot page\nThe huckster who mocking holy anger\nPainfully paints his face with rage.\nAnd the faith of the poor is faint and partial\nAnd the pride of the rich is all for sale\nAnd the chosen heralds of England’s Marshal\nAre the sandwich-men of the “Daily Mail.”\nAnd the niggards that dare not give are glutted\nAnd the feeble that dare not fail are strong\nSo while the City of Toil is gutted\nI sit in the saddle and sing my song.\n For we that fight till the world is free\n We have no comfort in victory;\n We have read each other as Cain his brother\n We know each other these slaves and we.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + } + } }, "a-song-of-gifts-to-god": { "title": "“A Song of Gifts to God”", "body": "When the first Christmas presents came the straw where Christ was rolled\nSmelt sweeter than their frankincense burnt brighter than their gold\nAnd a wise man said “We will not give; the thanks would be but cold.”\n\n“Nay” said the next “To all new gifts to this gift or another\nBends the high gratitude of God; even as He now my brother\nWho had a Father for all time yet thanks Him for a Mother.”\n\n“Yet scarce for Him this yellow stone or prickly-smells and sparse.\nWho holds the gold heart of the sun that fed these timber bars\nNor any scentless lily lives for One that smells the stars.”\n\nThen spake the third of the Wise Men; the wisest of the three:\n“We may not with the widest lives enlarge His liberty\nWhose wings are wider than the world. It is not He but we.”\n\n“We say not He has more to gain but we have more to lose.\nLess gold shall go astray we say less gold if thus we choose\nGo to make harlots of the Greeks and hucksters of the Jews.”\n\n“Less clouds before colossal feet redden in the under-light\nTo the blind gods from Babylon less incense burn to-night\nTo the high beasts of Babylon whose mouths make mock of right.”\n\nBabe of the thousand birthdays we that are young yet grey\nWhite with the centuries still can find no better thing to say\nWe that with sects and whims and wars have wasted Christmas Day.\n\nLight Thou Thy censer to Thyself for all our fires are dim\nStamp Thou Thine image on our coin for Caesar’s face grows dim\nAnd a dumb devil of pride and greed has taken hold of him.\n\nWe bring Thee back great Christendom churches and towns and towers.\nAnd if our hands are glad O God to cast them down like flowers\n’Tis not that they enrich Thine hands but they are saved from ours.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + }, "context": { "holiday": "epiphany" } @@ -13716,30 +13966,57 @@ "title": "“The Song of Quoodle”", "body": "They haven’t got no noses,\nThe fallen sons of Eve;\nEven the smell of roses\nIs not what they supposes;\nBut more than mind discloses\nAnd more than men believe.\n\nThey haven’t got no noses,\nThey cannot even tell\nWhen door and darkness closes\nThe park a Jew encloses,\nWhere even the law of Moses\nWill let you steal a smell.\n\nThe brilliant smell of water,\nThe brave smell of a stone,\nThe smell of dew and thunder,\nThe old bones buried under,\nAre things in which they blunder\nAnd err, if left alone.\n\nThe wind from winter forests,\nThe scent of scentless flowers,\nThe breath of brides’ adorning,\nThe smell of snare and warning,\nThe smell of Sunday morning,\nGod gave to us for ours.\n\nAnd Quoodle here discloses\nAll things that Quoodle can,\nThey haven’t got no noses,\nThey haven’t got no noses,\nAnd goodness only knowses\nThe Noselessness of Man.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + }, "context": { "weekday": "sunday" } } }, + "the-song-of-the-strange-ascetic": { + "title": "“The Song of the Strange Ascetic”", + "body": "If I had been a Heathen,\nI’d have praised the purple vine,\nMy slaves should dig the vineyards,\nAnd I would drink the wine.\nBut Higgins is a Heathen,\nAnd his slaves grow lean and grey,\nThat he may drink some tepid milk\nExactly twice a day.\n\nIf I had been a Heathen,\nI’d have crowned Neaera’s curls,\nAnd filled my life with love affairs,\nMy house with dancing girls;\nBut Higgins is a Heathen,\nAnd to lecture rooms is forced,\nWhere his aunts, who are not married,\nDemand to be divorced.\n\nIf I had been a Heathen,\nI’d have sent my armies forth,\nAnd dragged behind my chariots\nThe Chieftains of the North.\nBut Higgins is a Heathen,\nAnd he drives the dreary quill,\nTo lend the poor that funny cash\nThat makes them poorer still.\n\nIf I had been a Heathen,\nI’d have piled my pyre on high,\nAnd in a great red whirlwind\nGone roaring to the sky;\nBut Higgins is a Heathen,\nAnd a richer man than I:\nAnd they put him in an oven,\nJust as if he were a pie.\n\nNow who that runs can read it,\nThe riddle that I write,\nOf why this poor old sinner,\nShould sin without delight-\nBut I, I cannot read it\n(Although I run and run),\nOf them that do not have the faith,\nAnd will not have the fun.", + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + } + } + }, "the-song-of-the-wheels": { "title": "“The Song of the Wheels”", "body": "King Dives he was waiting in his garden all alone\nWhere his flowers are made of iron and his trees are made of stone\nAnd his hives are full of thunder and the lightning leaps and kills\nFor the mills of God grind slowly; and he works with other mills.\nDives found a mighty silence; and he missed the throb and leap\nThe noise of all the sleepless creatures singing him to sleep.\nAnd he said: “A screw has fallen--or a bolt has slipped aside--\nSome little thing has shifted”: and the little things replied:\n\n“Call upon the wheels master call upon the wheels;\nWe are taking rest master finding how it feels\nStrict the law of thine and mine: theft we ever shun--\nAll the wheels are thine master--tell the wheels to run!\nYea the Wheels are mighty gods--set them going then!\nWe are only men master have you heard of men?”\n\n“O they live on earth like fishes and a gasp is all their breath.\nGod for empty honours only gave them death and scorn of death\nAnd you walk the worms for carpet and you tread a stone that squeals--\nOnly God that made them worms did not make them wheels.\nMan shall shut his heart against you and you shall not find the spring.\nMan who wills the thing he wants not the intolerable thing--\nOnce he likes his empty belly better than your empty head\nEarth and heaven are dumb before him: he is stronger than the dead.”\n\n“Call upon the wheels master call upon the wheels\nSteel is beneath your hand stone beneath your heels\nSteel will never laugh aloud hearing what we heard\nStone will never break its heart mad with hope deferred--\nMen of tact that arbitrate slow reform that heals--\nSave the stinking grease master save it for the wheels.”\n\n“King Dives in the garden we have naught to give or hold--\n(Even while the baby came alive the rotten sticks were sold.)\nThe savage knows a cavern and the peasants keep a plot\nOf all the things that men have had--lo! we have them not.\nNot a scrap of earth where ants could lay their eggs--\nOnly this poor lump of earth that walks about on legs--\nOnly this poor wandering mansion only these two walking trees.\nOnly hands and hearts and stomachs--what have you to do with these?\nYou have engines big and burnished tall beyond our fathers’ ken\nWhy should you make peace and traffic with such feeble folk as men?”\n\n“Call upon the wheels master call upon the wheels\nThey are deaf to demagogues deaf to crude appeals;\nAre our hands our own master?--how the doctors doubt!\nAre our legs our own master? wheels can run without--\nProve the points are delicate--they will understand.\nAll the wheels are loyal; see how still they stand!”\n\nKing Dives he was walking in his garden in the sun\nHe shook his hand at heaven and he called the wheels to run\nAnd the eyes of him were hateful eyes the lips of him were curled\nAnd he called upon his father that is lord below the world\nSitting in the Gate of Treason in the gate of broken seals\n“Bend and bind them bend and bind them bend and bind them into wheels\nThen once more in all my garden there may swing and sound and sweep--\nThe noise of all the sleepless things that sing the soul to sleep.”\n\n_Call upon the wheels master call upon the wheels.\nWeary grow the holidays when you miss the meals\nThrough the Gate of Treason through the gate within\nCometh fear and greed of fame cometh deadly sin;\nIf a man grow faint master take him ere he kneels.\nTake him break him rend him end him roll him crush him with the wheels._", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + } + } }, "the-strange-music": { "title": "“The Strange Music”", "body": "Other loves may sink and settle other loves may loose and slack\nBut I wander like a minstrel with a harp upon his back\nThough the harp be on my bosom though I finger and I fret\nStill my hope is all before me: for I cannot play it yet.\n\nIn your strings is hid a music that no hand hath ere let fall\nIn your soul is sealed a pleasure that you have not known at all;\nPleasure subtle as your spirit strange and slender as your frame\nFiercer than the pain that folds you softer than your sorrow’s name.\n\nNot as mine my soul’s anointed not as mine the rude and light\nEasy mirth of many faces swaggering pride of song and fight;\nSomething stranger something sweeter something waiting you afar\nSecret as your stricken senses magic as your sorrows are.\n\nBut on this God’s harp supernal stretched but to be stricken once.\nHoary Time is a beginner Life a bungler Death a dunce.\nBut I will not fear to match them--no by God I will not fear\nI will learn you I will play you and the stars stand still to hear.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + } + } }, "the-sword-of-surprise": { "title": "“The Sword of Surprise”", "body": "Sunder me from my bones, O sword of God,\nTill they stand stark and strange as do the trees;\nThat I whose heart goes up with the soaring woods\nMay marvel as much at these.\n\nSunder me from my blood that in the dark\nI hear that red ancestral river run,\nLike branching buried floods that find the sea\nBut never see the sun.\n\nGive me miraculous eyes to see my eyes,\nThose rolling mirrors made alive in me,\nTerrible crystal more incredible\nThan all the things they see.\n\nSunder me from my soul, that I may see\nThe sins like streaming wounds, the life’s brave beat;\nTill I shall save myself, as I would save\nA stranger in the street.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + } + } }, "the-trinkets": { "title": "“The Trinkets”", "body": "A wandering world of rivers,\nA wavering world of trees,\nIf the world grow dim and dizzy\nWith all changes and degrees,\nIt is but Our Lady’s mirror\nHung dreaming in its place,\nShining with only shadows\nTill she wakes it with her face.\n\nThe standing whirlpool of the stars,\nThe wheel of all the world,\nIs a ring on Our Lady’s finger\nWith the suns and moons empearled\nWith stars for stones to please her\nWho sits playing with her rings\nWith the great heart that a woman has\nAnd the love of little things.\n\nWings of the whirlwind of the world\nFrom here to Ispahan,\nSpurning the flying forests\nAre light as Our Lady’s fan:\nFor all things violent here and vain\nLie open and all at ease\nWhere God has girded heaven to guard\nHer holy vanities.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + }, "context": { "holiday": "assumption" } @@ -13749,6 +14026,9 @@ "title": "“The Truce of Christmas”", "body": "Passionate peace is in the sky--\nAnd in the snow in silver sealed\nThe beasts are perfect in the field\nAnd men seem men so suddenly--\n(But take ten swords and ten times ten\nAnd blow the bugle in praising men;\nFor we are for all men under the sun\nAnd they are against us every one;\nAnd misers haggle and madmen clutch\nAnd there is peril in praising much.\nAnd we have the terrible tongues uncurled\nThat praise the world to the sons of the world.)\n\nThe idle humble hill and wood\nAre bowed upon the sacred birth\nAnd for one little hour the earth\nIs lazy with the love of good--\n(But ready are you and ready am I\nIf the battle blow and the guns go by;\nFor we are for all men under the sun\nAnd they are against us every one;\nAnd the men that hate herd all together\nTo pride and gold and the great white feather\nAnd the thing is graven in star and stone\nThat the men who love are all alone.)\n\nHunger is hard and time is tough\nBut bless the beggars and kiss the kings\nFor hope has broken the heart of things\nAnd nothing was ever praised enough.\n(But bold the shield for a sudden swing\nAnd point the sword when you praise a thing\nFor we are for all men under the sun\nAnd they are against us every one;\nAnd mime and merchant thane and thrall\nHate us because we love them all;\nOnly till Christmastide go by\nPassionate peace is in the sky.)", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + }, "context": { "liturgy": "christmastide" } @@ -13757,22 +14037,37 @@ "a-wedding-in-war-time": { "title": "“A Wedding in War-Time”", "body": "Our God who made two lovers in a garden,\nAnd smote them separate and set them free,\nTheir four eyes wild for wonder and wrath and pardon\nAnd their kiss thunder as lips of land and sea:\nEach rapt unendingly beyond the other,\nTwo starry worlds of unknown gods at war,\nWife and not mate, a man and not a brother,\nWe thank thee thou hast made us what we are.\n\nMake not the grey slime of infinity\nTo swamp these flowers thou madest one by one;\nLet not the night that was thine enemy\nMix a mad twilight of the moon and sun;\nWaken again to thunderclap and clamour\nThe wonder of our sundering and the song,\nOr break our hearts with thine hell-shattering hammer\nBut leave a shade between us all day long.\n\nShade of high shame and honourable blindness\nWhen youth, in storm of dizzy and distant things,\nFinds the wild windfall of a little kindness\nAnd shakes to think that all the world has wings.\nWhen the one head that turns the heavens in turning\nMoves yet as lightly as a lingering bird,\nAnd red and random, blown astray but burning,\nLike a lost spark goes by the glorious word.\n\nMake not this sex, this other side of things,\nA thing less distant than the world’s desire;\nWhat colour to the end of evening clings\nAnd what far cry of frontiers and what fire\nFallen too far beyond the sun for seeking,\nLet it divide us though our kingdom come;\nWith a far signal in our secret speaking\nTo hang the proud horizon in our home.\n\nOnce we were one, a shapeless cloud that lingers\nLoading the seas and shutting out the skies,\nOne with the woods, a monster of myriad fingers,\nYou laid on me no finger of surprise.\nOne with the stars, a god with myriad eyes,\nI saw you nowhere and was blind for scorn:\nOne till the world was riven and the rise\nOf the white days when you and I were born.\n\nDarkens the world: the world-old fetters rattle;\nAnd these that have no hope behind the sun\nMay feed like bondmen and may breed like cattle,\nOne in the darkness as the dead are one;\nUs if the rended grave give up its glory\nTrumpets shall summon asunder and face to face:\nWe will be strangers in so strange a story\nAnd wonder, meeting in so wild a place.\n\nAh, not in vain or utterly for loss\nCome even the black flag and the battle-hordes,\nIf these grey devils flee the sign of the cross\nEven in the symbol of the crossing swords.\nNor shall death doubt Who made our souls alive\nSwords meeting and not stakes set side by side,\nBade us in the sunburst and the thunder thrive\nEarthquake and Dawn; the bridegroom and the bride.\n\nDeath and not dreams or doubt of things undying,\nOf whose the holy hearth or whose the sword;\nThough sacred spirits dissever in strong crying\nInto Thy hands, but Thy two hands, O Lord,\nThough not in Earth as once in Eden standing\nSo plain again we see Thee what thou art,\nAs in this blaze, the blasting and the branding\nOf this wild wedding where we meet and part.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + } + } }, "the-wife-of-flanders": { "title": "“The Wife of Flanders”", "body": "Low and brown barns thatched and repatched and tattered\nWhere I had seven sons until to-day\nA little hill of hay your spur has scattered …\nThis is not Paris. You have lost the way.\n\nYou staring at your sword to find it brittle\nSurprised at the surprise that was your plan\nWho shaking and breaking barriers not a little\nFind never more the death-door of Sedan.\n\nMust I for more than carnage call you claimant\nPaying you a penny for each son you slay?\nMan the whole globe in gold were no repayment\nFor what _you_ have lost. And how shall I repay?\n\nWhat is the price of that red spark that caught me\nFrom a kind farm that never had a name?\nWhat is the price of that dead man they brought me?\nFor other dead men do not look the same.\n\nHow should I pay for one poor graven steeple\nWhereon you shattered what you shall not know\nHow should I pay you miserable people?\nHow should I pay you everything you owe?34\n\nUnhappy can I give you back your honour?\nThough I forgave would any man forget?\nWhile all the great green land has trampled on her\nThe treason and terror of the night we met.\n\nNot any more in vengeance or in pardon\nAn old wife bargains for a bean that’s hers.\nYou have no word to break: no heart to harden.\nRide on and prosper. You have lost your spurs.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + } + } }, "wine-and-water": { "title": "“Wine and Water”", "body": "Old Noah he had an ostrich farm and fowls on the largest scale,\nHe ate his egg with a ladle in a egg-cup big as a pail,\nAnd the soup he took was Elephant Soup and fish he took was Whale,\nBut they all were small to the cellar he took when he set out to sail,\nAnd Noah he often said to his wife when he sat down to dine,\n“I don’t care where the water goes if it doesn’t get into the wine.”\n\nThe cataract of the cliff of heaven fell blinding off the brink\nAs if it would wash the stars away as suds go down a sink,\nThe seven heavens came roaring down for the throats of hell to drink,\nAnd Noah he cocked his eye and said, “It looks like rain, I think,\nThe water has drowned the Matterhorn as deep as a Mendip mine,\nBut I don’t care where the water goes if it doesn’t get into the wine.”\n\nBut Noah he sinned, and we have sinned; on tipsy feet we trod,\nTill a great big black teetotaller was sent to us for a rod,\nAnd you can’t get wine at a P.S.A., or chapel, or Eisteddfod,\nFor the Curse of Water has come again because of the wrath of God,\nAnd water is on the Bishop’s board and the Higher Thinker’s shrine,\nBut I don’t care where the water goes if it doesn’t get into the wine.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + } + } }, "the-wise-men": { "title": "“The Wise Men”", "body": "Step softly under snow or rain\nTo find the place where men can pray;\nThe way is all so very plain\nThat we may lose the way.\n\nOh we have learnt to peer and pore\nOn tortured puzzles from our youth\nWe know all labyrinthine lore\nWe are the three wise mert of yore\nAnd we know all things but the truth.\n\nWe have gone round and round the hill\nAnd lost the wood among the trees\nAnd learnt long names for every ill\nAnd served the mad gods naming still\nThe Furies the Eumenides.\n\nThe gods of violence took the veil\nOf vision and philosophy\nThe Serpent that brought all men bale\nHe bites his own accursed tail\nAnd calls himself Eternity.\n\nGo humbly … it has hailed and snowed …\nWith voices low and lanterns lit;\nSo very simple is the road\nThat we may stray from it.\n\nThe world grows terrible and white\nAnd blinding white the breaking day;\nWe walk bewildered in the light\nFor something is too large for sight\nAnd something much too plain to say.\n\nThe Child that was ere worlds begun\n( … We need but walk a little way\nWe need but see a latch undone …)\nThe Child that played with moon and sun\nIs playing with a little hay.\n\nThe house from which the heavens are fed\nThe old strange house that is our own\nWhere tricks of words are never said.\nAnd Mercy is as plain as bread\nAnd Honour is as hard as stone.\n\nGo humbly; humble are the skies\nAnd low and large and fierce the Star;\nSo very near the Manger lies\nThat we may travel far.\n\nHark! Laughter like a lion wakes\nTo roar to the resounding plain\nAnd the whole heaven shouts and shakes\nFor God Himself is born again\nAnd we are little children walking\nThrough the snow and rain.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + }, "context": { "holiday": "epiphany" } @@ -13782,6 +14077,9 @@ "title": "“A Word”", "body": "A word came forth in Galilee a word like to a star;\nIt climbed and rang and blessed and burnt wherever brave hearts are;\nA word of sudden secret hope of trial and increase\nOf wrath and pity fused in fire and passion kissing peace.\nA star that o’er the citied world beckoned a sword of flame;\nA star with myriad thunders tongued: a mighty word there came.\n\nThe wedge’s dart passed into it the groan of timberwains\nThe ringing of the rivet nails the shrieking of the planes;\nThe hammering on the roofs at morn the busy workshop roar;\nThe hiss of shavings drifted deep along the windy floor;\nThe heat-browned toiler’s crooning song the hum of human worth--\nMingled of all the noise of crafts the ringing word went forth.\n\nThe splash of nets passed into it the grind of sand and shell\nThe boat-hook’s clash the boat-oars’ jar the cries to buy and sell\nThe flapping of the landed shoals the canvas crackling free\nAnd through all varied notes and cries the roaring of the sea\nThe noise of little lives and brave of needy lives and high;\nIn gathering all the throes of earth the living word went by.\n\nEarth’s giant sins bowed down to it in Empire’s huge eclipse\nWhen darkness sat above the thrones seven thunders on her lips\nThe woe of cities entered it the clang of idols’ falls\nThe scream of filthy Caesars stabbed high in their brazen halls\nThe dim hoarse Hoods of naked men the worldrealms snapping girth\nThe trumpets of Apocalypse the darkness of the earth:\n\nThe wrath that brake the eternal lamp and hid the eternal hill\nA world’s destruction loading the word went onward still--\nThe blaze of creeds passed into it the hiss of horrid fires\nThe headlong spear the scarlet cross the hair-shirt and the briars\nThe cloistered brethren’s thunderous chaunt the errant champion’s song\nThe shifting of the crowns and thrones the tangle of the strong.\n\nThe shattering fall of crest and crown and shield and cross and cope\nThe tearing of the gauds of time the blight of prince and pope\nThe reign of ragged millions leagued to wrench a loaded debt\nLoud with the many throated roar the word went forward yet.\nThe song of wheels passed into it the roaring and the smoke\n\nThe riddle of the want and wage the fogs that burn and choke.\nThe breaking of the girths of gold the needs that creep and swell.\nThe strengthening hope the dazing light the deafening evangel\nThrough kingdoms dead and empires damned through changes without cease\nWith earthquake chaos born and fed rose--and the word was “Peace.”", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1916" + }, "context": { "holiday": "annunciation" } @@ -14783,7 +15081,11 @@ "the-door": { "title": "“The Door”", "body": "It is hard going to the door\ncut so small in the wall where\nthe vision which echoes loneliness\nbrings a scent of wild flowers in a wood.\n\nWhat I understood, I understand.\nMy mind is sometime torment,\nsometimes good and filled with livelihood,\nand feels the ground.\n\nBut I see the door,\nand knew the wall, and wanted the wood,\nand would get there if I could\nwith my feet and hands and mind.\n\nLady, do not banish me\nfor digressions. My nature\nis a quagmire of unresolved\nconfessions. Lady, I follow.\n\nI walked away from myself,\nI left the room, I found the garden,\nI knew the woman\nin it, together we lay down.\n\nDead night remembers. In December\nwe change, not multiplied but dispersed,\nsneaked out of childhood,\nthe ritual of dismemberment.\n\nMighty magic is a mother,\nin her there is another issue\nof fixture, repeated form, the race renewal,\nthe charge of the command.\n\nThe garden echoes across the room.\nIt is fixed in the wall like a mirror\nthat faces a window behind you\nand reflects the shadows.\n\nMay I go now?\nAm I allowed to bow myself down\nin the ridiculous posture of renewal,\nof the insistence of which I am the virtue?\n\nNothing for You is untoward.\nInside You would also be tall,\nmore tall, more beautiful.\nCome toward me from the wall, I want to be with You.\n\nSo I screamed to You,\nwho hears as the wind, and changes\nmultiply, invariably,\nchanges in the mind.\n\nRunning to the door, I ran down\nas a clock runs down. Walked backwards,\nstumbled, sat down\nhard on the floor near the wall.\n\nWhere were You.\nHow absurd, how vicious.\nThere is nothing to do but get up.\nMy knees were iron, I rusted in worship, of You.\n\nFor that one sings, one\nwrites the spring poem, one goes on walking.\nThe Lady has always moved to the next town\nand you stumble on after Her.\n\nThe door in the wall leads to the garden\nwhere in the sunlight sit\nthe Graces in long Victorian dresses,\nof which my grandmother had spoken.\n\nHistory sings in their faces.\nThey are young, they are obtainable,\nand you follow after them also\nin the service of God and Truth.\n\nBut the Lady is indefinable,\nshe will be the door in the wall\nto the garden in sunlight.\nI will go on talking forever.\n\nI will never get there.\nOh Lady, remember me\nwho in Your service grows older\nnot wiser, no more than before.\n\nHow can I die alone.\nWhere will I be then who am now alone,\nwhat groans so pathetically\nin this room where I am alone?\n\nI will go to the garden.\nI will be a romantic. I will sell\nmyself in hell,\nin heaven also I will be.\n\nIn my mind I see the door,\nI see the sunlight before me across the floor\nbeckon to me, as the Lady’s skirt\nmoves small beyond it.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "context": { + "liturgy": "advent" + } + } }, "for-no-clear-reason": { "title": "“For No Clear Reason”", @@ -14889,6 +15191,40 @@ } } }, + "pablo-antonio-cuadra": { + "metadata": { + "name": "Pablo Antonio Cuadra", + "birth": "1912", + "death": "2002", + "gender": "male", + "religion": "", + "nationality": "nicaraguan", + "language": "spanish", + "flag": "🇳🇮", + "link": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Antonio_Cuadra", + "favorite": false, + "tags": [ + "nicaraguan" + ], + "n_poems": 2 + }, + "poems": { + "the-despairing-man-draws-a-serpent": { + "title": "“The Despairing Man Draws a Serpent”", + "body": "I went up the hill \nAt moonrise.\n\nShe swore that she would come \nBy the south way.\n\nA dusky hawk \nCaught up the path \nIn his talons.", + "metadata": { + "translator": "Thomas Merton" + } + }, + "manuscript-in-a-bottle": { + "title": "“Manuscript in a Bottle”", + "body": "I had seen coconut trees and tamarinds\nand mangos\nthe white sails drying in the sun\nthe smoke of breakfast across the sky\nat dawn\nand fish jumping in the net\nand a girl in red\nwho would go down to the shore and come up with a jug\nand pass behind a grove\nand appear and disappear\nand for a long time\nI could not sail without that image\nof the girl in red\nand the coconut trees and tamarinds and mangos\nthat seemed to live only\nbecause she lived\nand the white sails were white only\nwhen she lay down\nin her red dress and the smoke was blue\nand the fish and the reflection of the fish\nwere happy\nand for a long time I wanted to write a poem\nabout that girl in red\nand couldn’t find the way to describe\nthe strange things that fascinated me\nand when I told my friends they laughed\nbut when I sailed away and returned\nI always passed the island of the girl in red\nuntil one day I entered the bay of her island\nand cast anchor and leaped to land\nand now I write these lines and throw them into the waves in a bottle\nbecause this is my story\nbecause I am gazing at coconut trees and tamarinds\nand mangos\nthe white sails drying in the sun\nand the smoke of breakfast across the sky\nand time passes\nand we wait and wait\nand we grunt\nand she does not come with ears of corn\nthe girl in red.", + "metadata": { + "translator": "Grace Schulman & Ann McCarthy de Zavala" + } + } + } + }, "e-e-cummings": { "metadata": { "name": "E. E. Cummings", @@ -18813,7 +19149,7 @@ }, "the-ringed-moon-sits-eerily": { "title": "“The ringèd moon sits eerily …”", - "body": "The ringèd moon sits eerily \nLike a mad woman in the sky,\nDropping flat hands to caress\nThe far world’s shaggy flanks and breast,\nPlunging white hands in the glade\nElbow deep in leafy shade\nWhere birds sleep in each silent brake\nSilverly, there to wake\nThe quivering loud nightingales \nWhose cries like scattered silver sails\nSpread across the azure sea.\nHer hands also caress me:\nMy keen heart also does she dare;\nWhile turning always through the skies\nHer white feet mirrored in my eyes \nWeave a snare about my brain\nUnbreakable by surge or strain,\nFor the moon is mad, for she is old,\nAnd many’s the bead of a life she’s told;\nAnd many’s the fair one she’s seen wither:\nThey pass, they pass, and know not whither.\n\nThe hushèd earth, so calm, so old,\nDreams beneath its heath and wold--\nAnd heavy scent from thorny hedge \nPaused and snowy on the edge \nOf some dark ravine, from where\nMists as soft and thick as hair\nFloat silver in the moon.\n\nStars sweep down--or are they stars?--\nAgainst the pines’ dark etchèd bars.\nAlong a brooding moon-wet hill\nDogwood shine so cool and still,\nLike hands that, palm up, rigid lie\nIn invocation to the sky\nAs they spread there, frozen white,\nUpon the velvet of the night.", + "body": "The ringèd moon sits eerily\nLike a mad woman in the sky,\nDropping flat hands to caress\nThe far world’s shaggy flanks and breast,\nPlunging white hands in the glade\nElbow deep in leafy shade\nWhere birds sleep in each silent brake\nSilverly, there to wake\nThe quivering loud nightingales\nWhose cries like scattered silver sails\nSpread across the azure sea.\nHer hands also caress me:\nMy keen heart also does she dare;\nWhile turning always through the skies\nHer white feet mirrored in my eyes\nWeave a snare about my brain\nUnbreakable by surge or strain,\nFor the moon is mad, for she is old,\nAnd many’s the bead of a life she’s told;\nAnd many’s the fair one she’s seen wither:\nThey pass, they pass, and know not whither.\n\nThe hushèd earth, so calm, so old,\nDreams beneath its heath and wold--\nAnd heavy scent from thorny hedge\nPaused and snowy on the edge\nOf some dark ravine, from where\nMists as soft and thick as hair\nFloat silver in the moon.\n\nStars sweep down--or are they stars?--\nAgainst the pines’ dark etchèd bars.\nAlong a brooding moon-wet hill\nDogwood shine so cool and still,\nLike hands that, palm up, rigid lie\nIn invocation to the sky\nAs they spread there, frozen white,\nUpon the velvet of the night.", "metadata": { "context": { "season": "winter" @@ -24918,7 +25254,7 @@ }, "i-like-canadians": { "title": "“I Like Canadians”", - "body": "_By A Foreigner._\n\nI like Canadians.\nThey are so unlike Americans.\nThey go home at night.\nTheir cigarettes don’t smell bad.\nTheir hats fit.\nThey really believe that they won the war.\nThey don’t believe in Literature.\nThey think Art has been exaggerated.\nBut they are wonderful on ice skates.\nA few of them are very rich.\nBut when they are rich they buy more horses\nThan motor cars.\nChicago calls Toronto a puritan town.\nBut both boxing and horse-racing are illegal\nIn Chicago.\nNobody works on Sunday.\nNobody.\nThat doesn’t make me mad.\nThere is only one Woodbine.\nBut were you ever at Blue Bonnets?\nIf you kill somebody with a motor car in Ontario\nYou are liable to go to jail.\nSo it isn’t done.\nThere have been over 500 people killed by motor cars\nIn Chicago\nSo far this year.\nIt is hard to get rich in Canada.\nBut it is easy to make money.\nThere are too many tea rooms.\nBut, then, there are no cabarets.\nIf you tip a waiter a quarter\nHe says ‘Thank you.’\nInstead of calling the bouncer.\nThey let women stand up in the street cars.\nEven if they are good-looking.\nThey are all in a hurry to get home to supper\nAnd their radio sets.\nThey are a fine people.\nI like them. ", + "body": "_By A Foreigner._\n\nI like Canadians.\nThey are so unlike Americans.\nThey go home at night.\nTheir cigarettes don’t smell bad.\nTheir hats fit.\nThey really believe that they won the war.\nThey don’t believe in Literature.\nThey think Art has been exaggerated.\nBut they are wonderful on ice skates.\nA few of them are very rich.\nBut when they are rich they buy more horses\nThan motor cars.\nChicago calls Toronto a puritan town.\nBut both boxing and horse-racing are illegal\nIn Chicago.\nNobody works on Sunday.\nNobody.\nThat doesn’t make me mad.\nThere is only one Woodbine.\nBut were you ever at Blue Bonnets?\nIf you kill somebody with a motor car in Ontario\nYou are liable to go to jail.\nSo it isn’t done.\nThere have been over 500 people killed by motor cars\nIn Chicago\nSo far this year.\nIt is hard to get rich in Canada.\nBut it is easy to make money.\nThere are too many tea rooms.\nBut, then, there are no cabarets.\nIf you tip a waiter a quarter\nHe says ‘Thank you.’\nInstead of calling the bouncer.\nThey let women stand up in the street cars.\nEven if they are good-looking.\nThey are all in a hurry to get home to supper\nAnd their radio sets.\nThey are a fine people.\nI like them.", "metadata": {} }, "im-offn-wild-wimmen": { @@ -24934,7 +25270,7 @@ }, "killed-paive": { "title": "“Killed Paive”", - "body": "Desire and\nAll the sweet pulsing aches\nAnd gentle hurtings\nThat were you,\nAre gone into the sullen dark.\nNow in the night you come unsmiling\nTo lie with me\nA dull, cold, rigid bayonet\nOn my hot-swollen, throbbing soul. ", + "body": "Desire and\nAll the sweet pulsing aches\nAnd gentle hurtings\nThat were you,\nAre gone into the sullen dark.\nNow in the night you come unsmiling\nTo lie with me\nA dull, cold, rigid bayonet\nOn my hot-swollen, throbbing soul.", "metadata": { "date": { "year": "1922", @@ -24993,7 +25329,7 @@ }, "to-crazy-christian": { "title": "“To Crazy Christian”", - "body": "There was a cat named Crazy Christian\nWho never lived long enough to screw\nHe was gay hearted, young and handsome\nAnd all the secrets of life he knew\nHe would always arrive on time for breakfast\nScamper on your feet and chase the ball\nHe was faster than any polo pony\nHe never worried a minute at all\nHis tail was a plume that scampered with him\nHe was black as night and as fast as light.\nSo the bad cats killed him in the fall. ", + "body": "There was a cat named Crazy Christian\nWho never lived long enough to screw\nHe was gay hearted, young and handsome\nAnd all the secrets of life he knew\nHe would always arrive on time for breakfast\nScamper on your feet and chase the ball\nHe was faster than any polo pony\nHe never worried a minute at all\nHis tail was a plume that scampered with him\nHe was black as night and as fast as light.\nSo the bad cats killed him in the fall.", "metadata": { "date": { "year": "1922", @@ -27143,7 +27479,7 @@ }, "that-nature-is-a-heraclitean-fire-and-of-the-comfort-of-the-resurrection": { "title": "“That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection”", - "body": "Cloud-puffball, torn tufts, tossed pillows | flaunt forth, then chevy on an air-\nbuilt thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs | they throng; they glitter in marches.\nDown roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, | wherever an elm arches,\nShivelights and shadowtackle in long | lashes lace, lance, and pair.\nDelightfully the bright wind boisterous | ropes, wrestles, beats earth bare\nOf yestertempest’s creases; in pool and rut peel parches\nSquandering ooze to squeezed | dough, crust, dust; stanches, starches\nSquadroned masks and manmarks | treadmire toil there\nFootfretted in it. Million-fuelèd, | nature’s bonfire burns on.\nBut quench her bonniest, dearest | to her, her clearest-selvèd spark\nMan, how fast his firedint, | his mark on mind, is gone!\nBoth are in an unfathomable, all is in an enormous dark\nDrowned. O pity and indig | nation! Manshape, that shone\nSheer off, disseveral, a star, | death blots black out; nor mark \n Is any of him at all so stark\nBut vastness blurs and time | beats level. Enough! the Resurrection,\nA heart’s-clarion! Away grief’s gasping, | joyless days, dejection.\n Across my foundering deck shone\nA beacon, an eternal beam. | Flesh fade, and mortal trash\nFall to the residuary worm; | world’s wildfire, leave but ash:\n In a flash, at a trumpet crash,\nI am all at once what Christ is, | since he was what I am, and\nThis Jack, joke, poor potsherd, | patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,\n Is immortal diamond.", + "body": "Cloud-puffball, torn tufts, tossed pillows | flaunt forth, then chevy on an air-\nbuilt thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs | they throng; they glitter in marches.\nDown roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, | wherever an elm arches,\nShivelights and shadowtackle in long | lashes lace, lance, and pair.\nDelightfully the bright wind boisterous | ropes, wrestles, beats earth bare\nOf yestertempest’s creases; in pool and rut peel parches\nSquandering ooze to squeezed | dough, crust, dust; stanches, starches\nSquadroned masks and manmarks | treadmire toil there\nFootfretted in it. Million-fuelèd, | nature’s bonfire burns on.\nBut quench her bonniest, dearest | to her, her clearest-selvèd spark\nMan, how fast his firedint, | his mark on mind, is gone!\nBoth are in an unfathomable, all is in an enormous dark\nDrowned. O pity and indig | nation! Manshape, that shone\nSheer off, disseveral, a star, | death blots black out; nor mark\n Is any of him at all so stark\nBut vastness blurs and time | beats level. Enough! the Resurrection,\nA heart’s-clarion! Away grief’s gasping, | joyless days, dejection.\n Across my foundering deck shone\nA beacon, an eternal beam. | Flesh fade, and mortal trash\nFall to the residuary worm; | world’s wildfire, leave but ash:\n In a flash, at a trumpet crash,\nI am all at once what Christ is, | since he was what I am, and\nThis Jack, joke, poor potsherd, | patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,\n Is immortal diamond.", "metadata": { "date": { "year": "1888" @@ -35301,7 +35637,10 @@ "title": "“Last night as I was sleeping …”", "body": "Last night as I was sleeping,\nI dreamt--marvelous error!--\nthat a spring was breaking\nout in my heart.\nI said: Along which secret aqueduct,\nOh water, are you coming to me,\nwater of a new life\nthat I have never drunk?\n\nLast night as I was sleeping,\nI dreamt--marvelous error!--\nthat I had a beehive\nhere inside my heart.\nAnd the golden bees\nwere making white combs\nand sweet honey\nfrom my old failures.\n\nLast night as I was sleeping,\nI dreamt--marvelous error!--\nthat a fiery sun was giving\nlight inside my heart.\nIt was fiery because I felt\nwarmth as from a hearth,\nand sun because it gave light\nand brought tears to my eyes.\n\nLast night as I slept,\nI dreamt--marvelous error!--\nthat it was God I had\nhere inside my heart.", "metadata": { - "translator": "Roberty Bly" + "translator": "Roberty Bly", + "date": { + "year": "1903" + } } }, "the-wind-one-brilliant-day": { @@ -35538,7 +35877,7 @@ }, "carric-thura": { "title": "“Carric-Thura”", - "body": "Hast thou left thy blue course in heaven, golden-haired son of the sky! The west has opened its gates; the bed of thy repose is there. The waves come to behold thy beauty: they lift their trembling heads: they see thee lovely in thy sleep; but they shrink away with fear. Rest, in thy shadowy cave, O sun! and let thy return be in joy.--But let a thousand lights arise to the sound of the harps of Selma: let the beam spread in the hall, the king of shells is returned! The strife of Crona is past, like sounds that are no more: raise the song, O bards, the king is returned, with his fame!\n\nSuch was the song of Ullin, when Fingal returned from battle: when he returned in the fair blushing of youth; with all his heavy locks. His blue arms were on the hero; like a gray cloud on the sun, when he moves in his robes of mist, and shews but half his beams. His heroes follow the king: the feast of shells is spread. Fingal turns to his bards, and bids the song to rise.\n\nVoices of ecchoing Cona! he said, O bards of other times! Ye, on whose souls the blue hosts of our fathers rise! strike the harp in my hall; and let Fingal hear the song. Pleasant is the joy of grief! it is like the shower of spring, when it softens the branch of the oak, and the young leaf lifts its green head. Sing on, O bards, to-morrow we lift the sail. My blue course is through the ocean, to Carric-thura’s walls; the mossy walls of Sarno, where Comála dwelt. There the noble Cathulla, spreads the feast of shells. The boars of his woods are many, and the sound of the chace shall arise.\n\nCronnan, son of the song! said Ullin, Minona, graceful at the harp! raise the song of Shilric, to please the king of Morven. Let Vinvela come in her beauty, like the showery bow, when it shews its lovely head on the lake, and the setting sun is bright. And she comes, O Fingal! her voice is soft but sad.\n\n> _Vinvela:_\nMy love is a son of the hill. He pursues the flying deer. His gray dogs are panting around him; his bow-string sounds in the wind. Dost thou rest by the sount of the rock, or by the noise of the mountain-stream? the rushes are nodding with the wind, the mist is flying over the hill. I will approach my love unperceived, and see him from the rock. Lovely I saw thee first by the aged oak of Branno; thou wert returning tall from the chace; the fairest among thy friends.\n\n> _Shilric:_\nWhat voice is that I hear? that voice like the summer-wind.--I sit not by the nodding rushes; I hear not the fount of the rock. Afar, Vinvela, afar I go to the wars of Fingal. My dogs attend me no more. No more I tread the hill. No more from on high I see thee, fair-moving by the stream of the plain; bright as the bow of heaven; as the moon on the western wave.\n\n> _Vinvela:_\nThen thou art gone, O Shilric! and I am alone on the hill. The deer are seen on the brow; void of fear they graze along. No more they dread the wind; no more the rustling tree. The hunter is far removed; he is in the field of graves. Strangers! sons of the waves! spare my lovely \n\n> _Shilric:_\nIf fall I must in the field, raise high my grave, Vinvela. Gray stones and heaped-up earth, shall mark me to future times. When the hunter shall sit by the mound, and produce his food at noon, “Some warrior rests here,”he will say; and my fame shall live in his praise. Remember me, Vinvela, when low on earth I lie!\n\n> _Vinvela:_\nYes!--I will remember thee--Indeed my Shilric will fall. What shall I do, my love! when thou art gone for ever? Through these hills I will go at noon: I will go through the silent heath. There I will see the place of thy rest, returning from the chace. Indeed, my Shilric will fall; but I will remember him.\n\nAnd I remember the chief, said the king of woody Morven; he consumed the battle in his rage. But now my eyes behold him not. I met him, one day, on the hill; his cheek was pale; his brow was dark. The sigh was frequent in his breast: his steps were towards the desart. But now he is not in the crowd of my chiefs, when the sounds of my shields arise. Dwells he in the narrow house, the chief of high Carmora?\n\nCronnan! said Ullin of other times, raise the song of Shilric; when he returned to his hills, and Vinvela was no more. He leaned on her gray mossy stone; he thought Vinvela lived. He saw her fair-moving on the plain: but the bright form lasted not: the sun-beam fled from the field, and she was seen no more. Hear the song of Shilric, it is soft but sad.\n\nI Sit by the mossy fountain; on the top of the hill of winds. One tree is rustling above me. Dark waves roll over the heath. The lake is troubled below. The deer descend from the hill. No hunter at a distance is seen; no whistling cow-herd is nigh. It is mid-day: but all is silent. Sad are my thoughts alone. Didst thou but appear, O my love, a wanderer on the heath! thy hair floating on the wind behind thee; thy bosom heaving on the sight; thine eyes full of tears for thy friends, whom the mist of the hill had concealed! Thee I would comfort, my love, and bring thee to thy father’s house.\n\nBut is it she that there appears, like a beam of light on the heath? bright as the moon in autumn, as the sun in a summerstorm, comest thou, lovely maid, over rocks, over mountains to me?--She speaks: but how weak her voice! like the breeze in the reeds of the pool.\n\nReturnest thou safe from the war? Where are thy friends, my love? I heard of thy death on the hill; I heard and mourned thee, Shilric!\n\nYes, my fair, I return; but I alone of my race. Thou shalt see them no more: their graves I raised on the plain. But why art thou on the desert hill? Why on the heath, alone?\n\nAlone I am, O Shilric! alone in the winter-house. With grief for thee I expired. Shilric, I am pale in the tomb.\n\nShe fleets, she sails away; as gray mist before the wind!--and, wilt thou not stay, my love? Stay and behold my tears? fair thou appearest, Vinvela! fair thou wast, when alive!\n\nBy the mossy fountain I will sit; on the top of the hill of winds. When mid-day is silent around, converse, O my love, with me! come on the wings of the gale! on the blast of the mountain, come! Let me hear thy voice, as thou passest, when mid-day is silent around.\n\nSuch was the song of Cronnan, on the night of Selma’s joy. But morning rose in the east; the blue waters rolled in light. Fingal bade his sails to rise, and the winds come rustling, from their hills. Inis-tore rose to sight, and Carric-thura’s mossy towers. But the sign of distress was on their top: the green flame edged with smoke. The king of Morven struck his breast: he assumed, at once, his spear. His darkened brow bends forward to the coast: he looks back to the lagging winds. His hair is disordered on his back. The silence of the king is terrible.\n\nNight came down on the sea; Rotha’s bay received the ship. A rock bends along the coast with all its ecchoing wood. On the top is the circle of Loda, and the mossy stone of power. A narrow plain spreads beneath, covered with grass and aged trees, which the midnight winds, in their wrath, had torn from the shaggy rock. The blue course of a stream is there; and the lonely blast of ocean pursues the thistle’s beard.\n\nThe flame of three oaks arose: the feast is spread around: but the soul of the king is sad, for Carric-thura’s battling chief. The wan, cold moon rose, in the east. Sleep descended on the youths! Their blue helmets glitter to the beam; the fading fire decays. But sleep did not rest on the king: he rose in the midst of his arms, and slowly ascended the hill to behold the flame of Sarno’s tower.\n\nThe flame was dim and distant; the moon hid her red face in the east. A blast came from the mountain, and bore, on its wings, the spirit of Loda. He came to his place in his terrors, and he shook his dusky spear.--His eyes appear like flames in his dark face; and his voice is like distant thunder. Fingal advanced with the spear of his strength, and raised his voice on high.\n\nSon of night, retire: call thy winds and fly! Why dost thou come to my presence, with thy shadowy arms? Do I fear thy gloomy form, dismal spirit of Loda? Weak is thy shield of clouds: feeble is that meteor, thy sword. The blast rolls them together; and thou thyself dost vanish. Fly from my presence son of night! call thy winds and fly!\n\nDost thou force me from my place, replied the hollow voice? The people bend before me. I turn the battle in the field of the valiant. I look on the nations and they vanish: my nostrils pour the blast of death. I come abroad on the winds: the tempests are before my face. But my dwelling is calm, above the clouds, the fields of my rest are pleasant.\n\nDwell then in thy calm fields, said Fingal, and let Comhal’s son be forgot. Do my steps ascend, from my hills, into thy peaceful plains? Do I meet thee, with a spear, on thy cloud, spirit of dismal Loda? Why then dost thou frown on Fingal? or shake thine airy spear? But thou frownest in vain: I never fled from mighty men. And shall the sons of the wind frighten the king of Morven? No: he knows the weakness of their arms.\n\nFly to thy land, replied the form: receive the wind and fly. The blasts are in the hollow of my hand: the course of the storm is mine. The king of Sora is my son, he bends at the stone of my power. His battle is around Carric-thura; and he will prevail. Fly to thy land, son of Comhal, or feel my flaming wrath.\n\nHe lifted high his shadowy spear; and bent forward his terrible height. But the king, advancing, drew his sword; the blade of dark-brown Luno. The gleaming path of the steel winds thro’ the gloomy ghost. The form fell shapeless into air, like a column of smoke, which the staff of the boy disturbs, as it rises from the half-extinguished furnace.\n\nThe spirit of Loda shrieked, as, rolled into himself, he rose on the wind. Inistore shook at the sound. The waves heard it on the deep: they stopped, in their course, with fear: the companions of Fingal started, at once; and took their heavy spears. They missed the king: they rose with rage; all their arms resound.\n\nThe moon came forth in the east. The king returned in the gleam of his arms. The joy of his youths was great, their souls settled, as a sea from a storm. Ullin raised the song of gladness. The hills of Inistore rejoiced. The flame of the oak arose; and the tales of heroes are told.\n\nBut Frothal, Sora’s battling king, sits in sadness beneath a tree. The host spreads around Carric-thura. He looks towards the walls with rage. He longs for the blood of Cathulla, who, once, overcame the king in war.--When Annir reigned in Sora, the father of car-borne Frothal, a blast rose on the sea, and carried Frothal to Inistore. Three days he feasted in Sarno’s halls, and saw the slow rolling eyes of Comála. He loved her, in the rage of youth, and rushed to seize the white-armed maid. Cathulla met the chief. The gloomy battle rose. Frothal is bound in the hall: three days he pined alone. On the fourth, Sarno sent him to his ship, and he returned to his land. But wrath darkened in his soul against the noble Cathulla. When Annir’s stone of fame arose, Frothal came in his strength. The battle burned round Carric-thura, and Sarno’s mossy walls.\n\nMorning rose on Inistore. Frothal struck his dark-brown shield. His chiefs started at the sound; they stood, but their eyes were turned to the sea. They saw Fingal coming in his strength; and first the noble Thubar spoke.\n\nWho comes like the stag of the mountain, with all his herd behind him? Frothal, it is a foe; I see his forward spear. Perhaps it is the king of Morven, Fingal the first of men. His actions are well known on Gormal; the blood of his foes is in Starno’s halls. Shall I ask the peace of kings? He is like the thunder of heaven.\n\nSon of the feeble hand, said Frothal, shall my days begin in darkness? Shall I yield before I have conquered in battle, chief of streamy Tora? The people would say in Sora, Frothal flew forth like a meteor; but the dark cloud met it, and it is no more. No: Thubar, I will never yield; my fame shall surround me like light. No: I will never yield, king of streamy Tora.\n\nHe went forth with the stream of his people, but they met a rock: Fingal stood unmoved, broken they rolled back from his side. Nor did they roll in safety; the spear of the king pursued their flight. The field is covered with heroes. A rising hill preserved the flying host.\n\nFrothal saw their flight. The rage of his bosom rose. He bent his eyes to the ground, and called the noble Thubar.--Thubar! my people fled. My fame has ceased to rise. I will fight the king; I feel my burning soul. Send a bard to demand the combat. Speak not against Frothal’s words.--But, Thubar! I love a maid; she dwells by Thano’s stream, the white-bosomed daughter of Herman, Utha with the softly-rolling eyes. She feared the daughter of Inistore, and her soft sighs rose, at my departure. Tell to Utha that I am low; but that my soul delighted in her.\n\nSuch were his words, resolved to fight. But the soft sigh of Utha was near. She had followed her hero over the sea, in the armour of a man. She rolled her eye on the youth, in secret, from beneath a glittering helmet. But now she saw the bard as he went, and the spear fell thrice from her hand. Her loose hair flew on the wind. Her white breast rose, with sighs. She lifted up her eyes to the king; she would speak, but thrice she failed.\n\nFingal heard the words of the bard; he came in the strength of steel. They mixed their deathful spears, and raised the gleam of their swords. But the steel of Fingal descended and cut Frothal’s shield in twain. His fair side is exposed; half bent he foresees his death.\n\nDarkness gathered on Utha’s soul. The tear rolled down her cheek. She rushed to cover the chief with her shield; but a fallen oak met her steps. She fell on her arm of snow; her shield, her helmet flew wide. Her white bosom heaved to the sight; her dark-brown hair is spread on earth.\n\nFingal pitied the white-armed maid: he stayed the uplifted sword. The tear was in the eye of the king, as, bending forward, he spoke. King of streamy Sora! fear not the sword of Fingal. It was never stained with the blood of the vanquished; it never pierced a fallen foe. Let thy people rejoice along the blue waters of Tora: let the maids of thy love be glad. Why shouldest thou fall in thy youth, king of streamy Sora?\n\nFrothal heard the words of Fingal, and saw the rising maid: they stood in silence, in their beauty: like two young trees of the plain, when the shower of spring is on their leaves, and the loud winds are laid.\n\nDaughter of Herman, said Frothal, didst thou come from Tora’s streams; didst thou come, in thy beauty, to behold thy warrior low? But he was low before the mighty, maid of the slow-rolling eye! The feeble did not overcome the son of car-borne Annir. Terrible art thou, O king of Morven! in battles of the spear. But, in peace, thou art like the sun, when he looks thro’ a silent shower: the flowers lift their fair heads before him; and the gales shake their rustling wings. O that thou wert in Sora! that my feast were spread!--The future kings of Sora would see thy arms and rejoice. They would rejoice at the fame of their fathers, who beheld the mighty Fingal.\n\nSon of Annir, replied the king, the fame of Sora’s race shall be heard.--When chiefs are strong in battle, then does the song arise! But if their swords are stretched over the feeble: if the blood of the weak has stained their arms; the bard shall forget them in the song, and their tombs shall not be known. The stranger shall come and build there, and remove the heaped-up earth. An half-worn sword shall rise before him; and bending above it, he will say, “These are the arms of chiefs of old, but their names are not in the song.”--Come thou, O Frothal, to the feast of Inistore; let the maid of thy love be there; and our faces will brighten with joy.\n\nFingal took his spear, moving in the steps of his might. The gates of Carric-thura are opened. The feast of shells is spread.--The voice of music arose. Gladness brightened in the hall.--The voice of Ullin was heard; the harp of Selma was strung.--Utha rejoiced in his presence, and demanded the song of grief; the big tear hung in her eye, when the soft Crimora spoke. Crimora the daughter of Rinval, who dwelt at Lotha’s mighty stream. The tale was long, but lovely; and pleased the blushing maid of Tora.\n\n> _Crimora:_\nWho cometh from the hill, like a cloud tinged with the beam of the west? Whose voice is that, loud as the wind, but pleasant as the harp of Carril? It is my love in the light of steel; but sad is his darkened brow. Live the mighty race of Fingal? or what disturbs my Connal?\n\n> _Connal:_\nThey live. I saw them return from the chace, like a stream of light. The sun was on their shields. Like a ridge of fire they descended the hill. Loud is the voice of the youth; the war, my love, is near. To-morrow the terrible Dargo comes to try the force of our race. The race of Fingal he defies; the race of battle and wounds.\n\n> _Crimora:_\nConnal, I saw his sails like gray mist on the sable wave. They slowly came to land. Connal, many are the warriors of Dargo!\n\n> _Connal:_\nBring me thy father’s shield; the bossy, iron shield of Rinval; that shield like the full moon when it moves darkened through heaven.\n\n> _Crimora:_\nThat shield I bring, O Connal; but it did not defend my father. By the spear of Gormar he fell. Thou may’st fall, O Connal!\n\n> _Connal:_\nFall indeed I may: But raise my tomb, Crimora. Gray stones, a mound of earth, shall keep my memory. Bend thy red eye over my tomb, and beat thy mournful heaving breast. Though fair thou art, my love, as the light; more pleasant than the gale of the hill; yet I will not stay. Raise my tomb, \n\n> _Crimora:_\nThen give me those arms of light; that sword, and that spear of steel. I shall meet Dargo with thee, and aid my lovely Connal. Farewel, ye rocks of Ardven! ye deer! and ye streams of the hill!--We shall return no more. Our tombs are distant far.\n\nAnd did they return no more? said Utha’s bursting sigh. Fell the mighty in battle, and did Crimora live?--Her steps were lonely, and her soul was sad for Connal. Was he not young and lovely; like the beam of the setting sun? Ullin saw the virgin’s tear, and took the softly-trembling harp: the song was lovely, but sad, and silence was in Carric-thura.\n\nAutumn is dark on the mountains; gray mist rests on the hills. The whirlwind is heard on the heath. Dark rolls the river through the narrow plain. A tree stands alone on the hill, and marks the slumbering Connal. The leaves whirl round with the wind, and strew the grave of the dead. At times are seen here the ghosts of the deceased, when the musing hunter alone stalks slowly over the heath.\n\nWho can reach the source of thy race, O Connal? and who recount thy fathers? Thy family grew like an oak on the mountain, which meeteth the wind with its lofty head. But now it is torn from the earth. Who shall supply the place of Connal?\n\nHere was the din of arms; and here the groans of the dying. Bloody are the wars of Fingal! O Connal! it was here thou didst fall. Thine arm was like a storm; thy sword a beam of the sky; thy height, a rock on the plain; thine eyes, a furnace of fire. Louder than a storm was thy voice, in the battles of thy steel. Warriors fell by thy sword, as the thistle by the staff of a boy.\n\nDargo the mighty came on, like a cloud of thunder. His brows were contracted and dark. His eyes like two caves in a rock. Bright rose their swords on each side; dire was the clang of their steel.\n\nThe daughter of Rinval was near; Crimora bright in the armour of man; her yellow hair is loose behind, her bow is in her hand. She followed the youth to the war, Connal her much-beloved. She drew the string on Dargo; but erring pierced her Connal. He falls like an oak on the plain; like a rock from the shaggy hill. What shall she do, hapless maid!--He bleeds; her Connal dies. All the night long she cries, and all the day, O Connal, my love, and my friend! With grief the sad mourner dies.\n\nEarth here incloses the loveliest pair on the hill. The grass grows between the stones of the tomb; I often sit in the mournful shade. The wind sighs through the grass; their memory rushes on my mind. Undisturbed you now sleep together; in the tomb of the mountain you rest alone.\n\nAnd soft be your rest, said Utha, children of streamy Lotha. I will remember you with tears, and my secret song shall rise; when the wind is in the groves of Tora, and the stream is roaring near. Then shall ye come on my soul, with all your lovely grief.\n\nThree days feasted the kings: on the fourth their white sails arose. The winds of the north carry the ship of Fingal to Morven’s woody land.--But the spirit of Loda sat, in his cloud, behind the ships of Frothal. He hung forward with all his blasts, and spread the white-bosomed sails.--The wounds of his form were not forgot; he still feared the hand of the king.", + "body": "Hast thou left thy blue course in heaven, golden-haired son of the sky! The west has opened its gates; the bed of thy repose is there. The waves come to behold thy beauty: they lift their trembling heads: they see thee lovely in thy sleep; but they shrink away with fear. Rest, in thy shadowy cave, O sun! and let thy return be in joy.--But let a thousand lights arise to the sound of the harps of Selma: let the beam spread in the hall, the king of shells is returned! The strife of Crona is past, like sounds that are no more: raise the song, O bards, the king is returned, with his fame!\n\nSuch was the song of Ullin, when Fingal returned from battle: when he returned in the fair blushing of youth; with all his heavy locks. His blue arms were on the hero; like a gray cloud on the sun, when he moves in his robes of mist, and shews but half his beams. His heroes follow the king: the feast of shells is spread. Fingal turns to his bards, and bids the song to rise.\n\nVoices of ecchoing Cona! he said, O bards of other times! Ye, on whose souls the blue hosts of our fathers rise! strike the harp in my hall; and let Fingal hear the song. Pleasant is the joy of grief! it is like the shower of spring, when it softens the branch of the oak, and the young leaf lifts its green head. Sing on, O bards, to-morrow we lift the sail. My blue course is through the ocean, to Carric-thura’s walls; the mossy walls of Sarno, where Comála dwelt. There the noble Cathulla, spreads the feast of shells. The boars of his woods are many, and the sound of the chace shall arise.\n\nCronnan, son of the song! said Ullin, Minona, graceful at the harp! raise the song of Shilric, to please the king of Morven. Let Vinvela come in her beauty, like the showery bow, when it shews its lovely head on the lake, and the setting sun is bright. And she comes, O Fingal! her voice is soft but sad.\n\n> _Vinvela:_\nMy love is a son of the hill. He pursues the flying deer. His gray dogs are panting around him; his bow-string sounds in the wind. Dost thou rest by the sount of the rock, or by the noise of the mountain-stream? the rushes are nodding with the wind, the mist is flying over the hill. I will approach my love unperceived, and see him from the rock. Lovely I saw thee first by the aged oak of Branno; thou wert returning tall from the chace; the fairest among thy friends.\n\n> _Shilric:_\nWhat voice is that I hear? that voice like the summer-wind.--I sit not by the nodding rushes; I hear not the fount of the rock. Afar, Vinvela, afar I go to the wars of Fingal. My dogs attend me no more. No more I tread the hill. No more from on high I see thee, fair-moving by the stream of the plain; bright as the bow of heaven; as the moon on the western wave.\n\n> _Vinvela:_\nThen thou art gone, O Shilric! and I am alone on the hill. The deer are seen on the brow; void of fear they graze along. No more they dread the wind; no more the rustling tree. The hunter is far removed; he is in the field of graves. Strangers! sons of the waves! spare my lovely\n\n> _Shilric:_\nIf fall I must in the field, raise high my grave, Vinvela. Gray stones and heaped-up earth, shall mark me to future times. When the hunter shall sit by the mound, and produce his food at noon, “Some warrior rests here,”he will say; and my fame shall live in his praise. Remember me, Vinvela, when low on earth I lie!\n\n> _Vinvela:_\nYes!--I will remember thee--Indeed my Shilric will fall. What shall I do, my love! when thou art gone for ever? Through these hills I will go at noon: I will go through the silent heath. There I will see the place of thy rest, returning from the chace. Indeed, my Shilric will fall; but I will remember him.\n\nAnd I remember the chief, said the king of woody Morven; he consumed the battle in his rage. But now my eyes behold him not. I met him, one day, on the hill; his cheek was pale; his brow was dark. The sigh was frequent in his breast: his steps were towards the desart. But now he is not in the crowd of my chiefs, when the sounds of my shields arise. Dwells he in the narrow house, the chief of high Carmora?\n\nCronnan! said Ullin of other times, raise the song of Shilric; when he returned to his hills, and Vinvela was no more. He leaned on her gray mossy stone; he thought Vinvela lived. He saw her fair-moving on the plain: but the bright form lasted not: the sun-beam fled from the field, and she was seen no more. Hear the song of Shilric, it is soft but sad.\n\nI Sit by the mossy fountain; on the top of the hill of winds. One tree is rustling above me. Dark waves roll over the heath. The lake is troubled below. The deer descend from the hill. No hunter at a distance is seen; no whistling cow-herd is nigh. It is mid-day: but all is silent. Sad are my thoughts alone. Didst thou but appear, O my love, a wanderer on the heath! thy hair floating on the wind behind thee; thy bosom heaving on the sight; thine eyes full of tears for thy friends, whom the mist of the hill had concealed! Thee I would comfort, my love, and bring thee to thy father’s house.\n\nBut is it she that there appears, like a beam of light on the heath? bright as the moon in autumn, as the sun in a summerstorm, comest thou, lovely maid, over rocks, over mountains to me?--She speaks: but how weak her voice! like the breeze in the reeds of the pool.\n\nReturnest thou safe from the war? Where are thy friends, my love? I heard of thy death on the hill; I heard and mourned thee, Shilric!\n\nYes, my fair, I return; but I alone of my race. Thou shalt see them no more: their graves I raised on the plain. But why art thou on the desert hill? Why on the heath, alone?\n\nAlone I am, O Shilric! alone in the winter-house. With grief for thee I expired. Shilric, I am pale in the tomb.\n\nShe fleets, she sails away; as gray mist before the wind!--and, wilt thou not stay, my love? Stay and behold my tears? fair thou appearest, Vinvela! fair thou wast, when alive!\n\nBy the mossy fountain I will sit; on the top of the hill of winds. When mid-day is silent around, converse, O my love, with me! come on the wings of the gale! on the blast of the mountain, come! Let me hear thy voice, as thou passest, when mid-day is silent around.\n\nSuch was the song of Cronnan, on the night of Selma’s joy. But morning rose in the east; the blue waters rolled in light. Fingal bade his sails to rise, and the winds come rustling, from their hills. Inis-tore rose to sight, and Carric-thura’s mossy towers. But the sign of distress was on their top: the green flame edged with smoke. The king of Morven struck his breast: he assumed, at once, his spear. His darkened brow bends forward to the coast: he looks back to the lagging winds. His hair is disordered on his back. The silence of the king is terrible.\n\nNight came down on the sea; Rotha’s bay received the ship. A rock bends along the coast with all its ecchoing wood. On the top is the circle of Loda, and the mossy stone of power. A narrow plain spreads beneath, covered with grass and aged trees, which the midnight winds, in their wrath, had torn from the shaggy rock. The blue course of a stream is there; and the lonely blast of ocean pursues the thistle’s beard.\n\nThe flame of three oaks arose: the feast is spread around: but the soul of the king is sad, for Carric-thura’s battling chief. The wan, cold moon rose, in the east. Sleep descended on the youths! Their blue helmets glitter to the beam; the fading fire decays. But sleep did not rest on the king: he rose in the midst of his arms, and slowly ascended the hill to behold the flame of Sarno’s tower.\n\nThe flame was dim and distant; the moon hid her red face in the east. A blast came from the mountain, and bore, on its wings, the spirit of Loda. He came to his place in his terrors, and he shook his dusky spear.--His eyes appear like flames in his dark face; and his voice is like distant thunder. Fingal advanced with the spear of his strength, and raised his voice on high.\n\nSon of night, retire: call thy winds and fly! Why dost thou come to my presence, with thy shadowy arms? Do I fear thy gloomy form, dismal spirit of Loda? Weak is thy shield of clouds: feeble is that meteor, thy sword. The blast rolls them together; and thou thyself dost vanish. Fly from my presence son of night! call thy winds and fly!\n\nDost thou force me from my place, replied the hollow voice? The people bend before me. I turn the battle in the field of the valiant. I look on the nations and they vanish: my nostrils pour the blast of death. I come abroad on the winds: the tempests are before my face. But my dwelling is calm, above the clouds, the fields of my rest are pleasant.\n\nDwell then in thy calm fields, said Fingal, and let Comhal’s son be forgot. Do my steps ascend, from my hills, into thy peaceful plains? Do I meet thee, with a spear, on thy cloud, spirit of dismal Loda? Why then dost thou frown on Fingal? or shake thine airy spear? But thou frownest in vain: I never fled from mighty men. And shall the sons of the wind frighten the king of Morven? No: he knows the weakness of their arms.\n\nFly to thy land, replied the form: receive the wind and fly. The blasts are in the hollow of my hand: the course of the storm is mine. The king of Sora is my son, he bends at the stone of my power. His battle is around Carric-thura; and he will prevail. Fly to thy land, son of Comhal, or feel my flaming wrath.\n\nHe lifted high his shadowy spear; and bent forward his terrible height. But the king, advancing, drew his sword; the blade of dark-brown Luno. The gleaming path of the steel winds thro’ the gloomy ghost. The form fell shapeless into air, like a column of smoke, which the staff of the boy disturbs, as it rises from the half-extinguished furnace.\n\nThe spirit of Loda shrieked, as, rolled into himself, he rose on the wind. Inistore shook at the sound. The waves heard it on the deep: they stopped, in their course, with fear: the companions of Fingal started, at once; and took their heavy spears. They missed the king: they rose with rage; all their arms resound.\n\nThe moon came forth in the east. The king returned in the gleam of his arms. The joy of his youths was great, their souls settled, as a sea from a storm. Ullin raised the song of gladness. The hills of Inistore rejoiced. The flame of the oak arose; and the tales of heroes are told.\n\nBut Frothal, Sora’s battling king, sits in sadness beneath a tree. The host spreads around Carric-thura. He looks towards the walls with rage. He longs for the blood of Cathulla, who, once, overcame the king in war.--When Annir reigned in Sora, the father of car-borne Frothal, a blast rose on the sea, and carried Frothal to Inistore. Three days he feasted in Sarno’s halls, and saw the slow rolling eyes of Comála. He loved her, in the rage of youth, and rushed to seize the white-armed maid. Cathulla met the chief. The gloomy battle rose. Frothal is bound in the hall: three days he pined alone. On the fourth, Sarno sent him to his ship, and he returned to his land. But wrath darkened in his soul against the noble Cathulla. When Annir’s stone of fame arose, Frothal came in his strength. The battle burned round Carric-thura, and Sarno’s mossy walls.\n\nMorning rose on Inistore. Frothal struck his dark-brown shield. His chiefs started at the sound; they stood, but their eyes were turned to the sea. They saw Fingal coming in his strength; and first the noble Thubar spoke.\n\nWho comes like the stag of the mountain, with all his herd behind him? Frothal, it is a foe; I see his forward spear. Perhaps it is the king of Morven, Fingal the first of men. His actions are well known on Gormal; the blood of his foes is in Starno’s halls. Shall I ask the peace of kings? He is like the thunder of heaven.\n\nSon of the feeble hand, said Frothal, shall my days begin in darkness? Shall I yield before I have conquered in battle, chief of streamy Tora? The people would say in Sora, Frothal flew forth like a meteor; but the dark cloud met it, and it is no more. No: Thubar, I will never yield; my fame shall surround me like light. No: I will never yield, king of streamy Tora.\n\nHe went forth with the stream of his people, but they met a rock: Fingal stood unmoved, broken they rolled back from his side. Nor did they roll in safety; the spear of the king pursued their flight. The field is covered with heroes. A rising hill preserved the flying host.\n\nFrothal saw their flight. The rage of his bosom rose. He bent his eyes to the ground, and called the noble Thubar.--Thubar! my people fled. My fame has ceased to rise. I will fight the king; I feel my burning soul. Send a bard to demand the combat. Speak not against Frothal’s words.--But, Thubar! I love a maid; she dwells by Thano’s stream, the white-bosomed daughter of Herman, Utha with the softly-rolling eyes. She feared the daughter of Inistore, and her soft sighs rose, at my departure. Tell to Utha that I am low; but that my soul delighted in her.\n\nSuch were his words, resolved to fight. But the soft sigh of Utha was near. She had followed her hero over the sea, in the armour of a man. She rolled her eye on the youth, in secret, from beneath a glittering helmet. But now she saw the bard as he went, and the spear fell thrice from her hand. Her loose hair flew on the wind. Her white breast rose, with sighs. She lifted up her eyes to the king; she would speak, but thrice she failed.\n\nFingal heard the words of the bard; he came in the strength of steel. They mixed their deathful spears, and raised the gleam of their swords. But the steel of Fingal descended and cut Frothal’s shield in twain. His fair side is exposed; half bent he foresees his death.\n\nDarkness gathered on Utha’s soul. The tear rolled down her cheek. She rushed to cover the chief with her shield; but a fallen oak met her steps. She fell on her arm of snow; her shield, her helmet flew wide. Her white bosom heaved to the sight; her dark-brown hair is spread on earth.\n\nFingal pitied the white-armed maid: he stayed the uplifted sword. The tear was in the eye of the king, as, bending forward, he spoke. King of streamy Sora! fear not the sword of Fingal. It was never stained with the blood of the vanquished; it never pierced a fallen foe. Let thy people rejoice along the blue waters of Tora: let the maids of thy love be glad. Why shouldest thou fall in thy youth, king of streamy Sora?\n\nFrothal heard the words of Fingal, and saw the rising maid: they stood in silence, in their beauty: like two young trees of the plain, when the shower of spring is on their leaves, and the loud winds are laid.\n\nDaughter of Herman, said Frothal, didst thou come from Tora’s streams; didst thou come, in thy beauty, to behold thy warrior low? But he was low before the mighty, maid of the slow-rolling eye! The feeble did not overcome the son of car-borne Annir. Terrible art thou, O king of Morven! in battles of the spear. But, in peace, thou art like the sun, when he looks thro’ a silent shower: the flowers lift their fair heads before him; and the gales shake their rustling wings. O that thou wert in Sora! that my feast were spread!--The future kings of Sora would see thy arms and rejoice. They would rejoice at the fame of their fathers, who beheld the mighty Fingal.\n\nSon of Annir, replied the king, the fame of Sora’s race shall be heard.--When chiefs are strong in battle, then does the song arise! But if their swords are stretched over the feeble: if the blood of the weak has stained their arms; the bard shall forget them in the song, and their tombs shall not be known. The stranger shall come and build there, and remove the heaped-up earth. An half-worn sword shall rise before him; and bending above it, he will say, “These are the arms of chiefs of old, but their names are not in the song.”--Come thou, O Frothal, to the feast of Inistore; let the maid of thy love be there; and our faces will brighten with joy.\n\nFingal took his spear, moving in the steps of his might. The gates of Carric-thura are opened. The feast of shells is spread.--The voice of music arose. Gladness brightened in the hall.--The voice of Ullin was heard; the harp of Selma was strung.--Utha rejoiced in his presence, and demanded the song of grief; the big tear hung in her eye, when the soft Crimora spoke. Crimora the daughter of Rinval, who dwelt at Lotha’s mighty stream. The tale was long, but lovely; and pleased the blushing maid of Tora.\n\n> _Crimora:_\nWho cometh from the hill, like a cloud tinged with the beam of the west? Whose voice is that, loud as the wind, but pleasant as the harp of Carril? It is my love in the light of steel; but sad is his darkened brow. Live the mighty race of Fingal? or what disturbs my Connal?\n\n> _Connal:_\nThey live. I saw them return from the chace, like a stream of light. The sun was on their shields. Like a ridge of fire they descended the hill. Loud is the voice of the youth; the war, my love, is near. To-morrow the terrible Dargo comes to try the force of our race. The race of Fingal he defies; the race of battle and wounds.\n\n> _Crimora:_\nConnal, I saw his sails like gray mist on the sable wave. They slowly came to land. Connal, many are the warriors of Dargo!\n\n> _Connal:_\nBring me thy father’s shield; the bossy, iron shield of Rinval; that shield like the full moon when it moves darkened through heaven.\n\n> _Crimora:_\nThat shield I bring, O Connal; but it did not defend my father. By the spear of Gormar he fell. Thou may’st fall, O Connal!\n\n> _Connal:_\nFall indeed I may: But raise my tomb, Crimora. Gray stones, a mound of earth, shall keep my memory. Bend thy red eye over my tomb, and beat thy mournful heaving breast. Though fair thou art, my love, as the light; more pleasant than the gale of the hill; yet I will not stay. Raise my tomb,\n\n> _Crimora:_\nThen give me those arms of light; that sword, and that spear of steel. I shall meet Dargo with thee, and aid my lovely Connal. Farewel, ye rocks of Ardven! ye deer! and ye streams of the hill!--We shall return no more. Our tombs are distant far.\n\nAnd did they return no more? said Utha’s bursting sigh. Fell the mighty in battle, and did Crimora live?--Her steps were lonely, and her soul was sad for Connal. Was he not young and lovely; like the beam of the setting sun? Ullin saw the virgin’s tear, and took the softly-trembling harp: the song was lovely, but sad, and silence was in Carric-thura.\n\nAutumn is dark on the mountains; gray mist rests on the hills. The whirlwind is heard on the heath. Dark rolls the river through the narrow plain. A tree stands alone on the hill, and marks the slumbering Connal. The leaves whirl round with the wind, and strew the grave of the dead. At times are seen here the ghosts of the deceased, when the musing hunter alone stalks slowly over the heath.\n\nWho can reach the source of thy race, O Connal? and who recount thy fathers? Thy family grew like an oak on the mountain, which meeteth the wind with its lofty head. But now it is torn from the earth. Who shall supply the place of Connal?\n\nHere was the din of arms; and here the groans of the dying. Bloody are the wars of Fingal! O Connal! it was here thou didst fall. Thine arm was like a storm; thy sword a beam of the sky; thy height, a rock on the plain; thine eyes, a furnace of fire. Louder than a storm was thy voice, in the battles of thy steel. Warriors fell by thy sword, as the thistle by the staff of a boy.\n\nDargo the mighty came on, like a cloud of thunder. His brows were contracted and dark. His eyes like two caves in a rock. Bright rose their swords on each side; dire was the clang of their steel.\n\nThe daughter of Rinval was near; Crimora bright in the armour of man; her yellow hair is loose behind, her bow is in her hand. She followed the youth to the war, Connal her much-beloved. She drew the string on Dargo; but erring pierced her Connal. He falls like an oak on the plain; like a rock from the shaggy hill. What shall she do, hapless maid!--He bleeds; her Connal dies. All the night long she cries, and all the day, O Connal, my love, and my friend! With grief the sad mourner dies.\n\nEarth here incloses the loveliest pair on the hill. The grass grows between the stones of the tomb; I often sit in the mournful shade. The wind sighs through the grass; their memory rushes on my mind. Undisturbed you now sleep together; in the tomb of the mountain you rest alone.\n\nAnd soft be your rest, said Utha, children of streamy Lotha. I will remember you with tears, and my secret song shall rise; when the wind is in the groves of Tora, and the stream is roaring near. Then shall ye come on my soul, with all your lovely grief.\n\nThree days feasted the kings: on the fourth their white sails arose. The winds of the north carry the ship of Fingal to Morven’s woody land.--But the spirit of Loda sat, in his cloud, behind the ships of Frothal. He hung forward with all his blasts, and spread the white-bosomed sails.--The wounds of his form were not forgot; he still feared the hand of the king.", "metadata": { "source": "Fingal: an ancient epic poem, in six books: together with several other poems, composed by Ossian the son of Fingal. Translated from the Galic language", "date": { @@ -35637,7 +35976,7 @@ }, "fragment-4": { "title": "“Fragment 4”", - "body": "> _Crimora:_\nWho cometh from the hill, like a cloud tinged with the beam of the west? Whose voice is that, loud as the wind, but pleasant as the harp of Carryl? It is my love in the light of steel; but sad is his darkened brow. Live the mighty race of Fingal? or what disturbs my Connal?\n\n> _Connal:_\nThey live. I saw them return from the chace, like a stream of light. The sun was on their shields: In a line they descended the hill. Loud is the voice of the youth; the war, my love, is near. To-morrow the enormous Dargo comes to try the force of our race. The race of Fingal he defies; the race of battle and wounds.\n\n> _Crimora:_\nConnal, I saw his sails like grey mist on the sable wave. They came to land. Connnal, many are the warriors of Dargo!\n\n> _Connal:_\nBring me thy father’s shield; the iron shield of Rinval; that shield like the full moon when it is darkened in the sky.\n\n> _Crimora:_\nThat shield I bring, O Connal; but it did not defend my father. By the spear of Gauror he fell. Thou mayst fall, O Connal!\n\n> _Connal:_\nFall indeed I may: But raise my tomb, Crimora. Some stones, a mound of earth, shall keep my memory. Though fair thou art, my love, as the light; more pleasant than the gale of the hill; yet I will not stay. Raise my tomb, \n> _Crimora:_\n> _Crimora:_\nThen give me those arms of light; that sword, and that spear of steel. I shall meet Dargo with thee, and aid my lovely Connal. Farewell, ye rocks of Ardven! ye deer! and ye streams of the hill!--We shall return no more. Our tombs are distant far.", + "body": "> _Crimora:_\nWho cometh from the hill, like a cloud tinged with the beam of the west? Whose voice is that, loud as the wind, but pleasant as the harp of Carryl? It is my love in the light of steel; but sad is his darkened brow. Live the mighty race of Fingal? or what disturbs my Connal?\n\n> _Connal:_\nThey live. I saw them return from the chace, like a stream of light. The sun was on their shields: In a line they descended the hill. Loud is the voice of the youth; the war, my love, is near. To-morrow the enormous Dargo comes to try the force of our race. The race of Fingal he defies; the race of battle and wounds.\n\n> _Crimora:_\nConnal, I saw his sails like grey mist on the sable wave. They came to land. Connnal, many are the warriors of Dargo!\n\n> _Connal:_\nBring me thy father’s shield; the iron shield of Rinval; that shield like the full moon when it is darkened in the sky.\n\n> _Crimora:_\nThat shield I bring, O Connal; but it did not defend my father. By the spear of Gauror he fell. Thou mayst fall, O Connal!\n\n> _Connal:_\nFall indeed I may: But raise my tomb, Crimora. Some stones, a mound of earth, shall keep my memory. Though fair thou art, my love, as the light; more pleasant than the gale of the hill; yet I will not stay. Raise my tomb,\n> _Crimora:_\n> _Crimora:_\nThen give me those arms of light; that sword, and that spear of steel. I shall meet Dargo with thee, and aid my lovely Connal. Farewell, ye rocks of Ardven! ye deer! and ye streams of the hill!--We shall return no more. Our tombs are distant far.", "metadata": { "source": "Fingal: an ancient epic poem, in six books: together with several other poems, composed by Ossian the son of Fingal. Translated from the Galic language", "date": { @@ -35790,7 +36129,7 @@ }, "the-war-of-caros-a-poem": { "title": "“The War of Caros: A Poem”", - "body": "Bring, daughter of Toscar, bring the harp; the light of the song rises in Ossian’s soul. It is like the field, when darkness covers the hills around, and the shadow grows slowly on the plain of the sun.\n\nI Behold my son, O Malvina, near the mossy rock of Crona; but it is the mist of the desart tinged with the beam of the west: Lovely is the mist that assumes the form of Oscar! turn from it, ye winds, when ye roar on the side of Ardven.\n\nWho comes towards my son, with the murmur of a song? His staff is in his hand, his gray hair loose on the wind. Surly joy lightens his face; and he often looks back to Caros. It is Ryno of the song, he that went to view the foe.\n\nWhat does Caros king of ships, said the son of the now mournful Ossian? spreads he the wings of his pride, bard of the times of old?\n\nHe spreads them, Oscar, replied the bard, but it is behind his gathered heap. He looks over his stones with fear, and beholds thee terrible, as the ghost of night that rolls the wave to his ships.\n\nGo, thou first of my bards, says Oscar, and take the spear of Fingal. Fix a flame on its point, and shake it to the winds of heaven. Bid him, in songs, to advance, and leave the rolling of his wave. Tell to Caros that I long for battle; and that my bow is weary of the chace of Cona. Tell him the mighty are not here; and that my arm is young.\n\nHe went with the murmur of his song. Oscar reared his voice on high. It reached his heroes on Ardven, like the noise of a cave; when the sea of Togorma rolls before it; and its trees meet the roaring winds.--They gather round my son like the streams of the hill; when, after rain, they roll in the pride of their course.\n\nRyno came to the mighty Caros, and struck his flaming spear. Come to the battle of Oscar, O thou that sittest on the rolling of waters. Fingal is distant far; he hears the songs of his bards in Morven: and the wind of his hall is in his hair. His terrible spear is at his side; and his shield that is like that darkened moon. Come to the battle of Oscar; the hero is alone.\n\nHe came not over the streamy Carun; the bard returned with his song. Gray night grows dim on Crona. The feast of shells is spread. A hundred oaks burn to the wind, and faint light gleams over the heath. The ghosts of Ardven pass through the beam, and shew their dim and distant forms. Comala is half-unseen on her meteor; and Hidallan is sullen and dim, like the darkened moon behind the mist of night.\n\nWhy art thou sad? said Ryno; for he alone beheld the chief. Why art thou sad, Hidallan, hast thou not received thy fame? The songs of Ossian have been heard, and thy ghost has brightened in the wind, when thou didst bend from thy cloud to hear the song of Morven’s bard.\n\nAnd do thine eyes behold the hero, said Oscar, like the dim meteor of night? Say, Ryno, say, how fell the chief that was so renowned in the days of our fathers?--His name remains on the rocks of Cona; and I have often seen the streams of his hills.\n\nFingal, replied the bard, had driven Hidallan from his wars. The king’s soul was sad for Comala, and his eyes could not behold Hidallan.\n\nLonely, sad along the heath he slowly moved with silent steps. His arms hang disordered on his side. His hair flies loose from his helmet. The tear is in his down-cast eyes; and the sigh half-silent in his breast.\n\nThree days he strayed unseen, alone, before he came to Lamor’s halls: the mossy halls of his fathers, at the stream of Balva.--There Lamor sat alone beneath a tree; for he had sent his people with Hidallan to war. The stream ran at his feet, and his gray head rested on his staff. Sightless are his aged eyes. He hums the song of other times.--The noise of Hidallan’s feet came to his ear: he knew the tread of his son.\n\nIs the son of Lamor returned; or is it the sound of his ghost? Hast thou fallen on the banks of Carun, son of the aged Lamor? Or, if I hear the sound of Hidallan’s feet; where are the mighty in the war? where are my people, Hidallan, that were wont to return with their echoing shields?--Have they fallen on the banks of Carun?\n\nNo: replied the sighing youth, the people of Lamor live. They are renowned in battle, my father; but Hidallan is renowned no more. I must sit alone on the banks of Balva, when the roar of the battle grows.\n\nBut thy fathers never sat alone, replied the rising pride of Lamor; they never sat alone on the banks of Balva, when the roar of battle rose.--Dost thou not behold that tomb? My eyes discern it not; there rests the noble Garmállon who never fled from war.--Come, thou renowned in battle, he says, come to thy father’s tomb.--How am I renowned, Garmállon, for my son has fled from war?\n\nKing of the streamy Balva! said Hidallan with a sigh, why dost thou torment my soul? Lamor, I never feared.--Fingal was sad for Comala, and denied his wars to Hidallan; go to the gray streams of thy land, he said, and moulder like a leafless oak, which the winds have bent over Balva, never more to grow.\n\nAnd must I hear, Lamor replied, the lonely tread of Hidallan’s feet? When thousands are renowned in battle, shall he bend over my gray streams? Spirit of the noble Garmállon! carry Lamor to his place; his eyes are dark; his soul is sad; and his son has lost his fame.\n\nWhere, said the youth, shall I search for same to gladden the soul of Lamor? From whence shall I return with renown, that the sound of my arms may be pleasant in his ear?--If I go to the chace of hinds, my name will not be heard.--Lamor will not feel my dogs, with his hands, glad at my arrival from the hill. He will not enquire of his mountains, or of the dark-brown deer of his desarts.\n\nI Must fall, said Lamor, like a leafless oak: it grew on a rock, but the winds have overturned it.--My ghost will be seen on my hills, mournful for my young Hidallan. Will not ye, ye mists, as ye rise, hide him from my sight?--My son!--go to Lamor’s hall: there the arms of our fathers hang.--Bring the sword of Garmállon;--he took it from a foe.\n\nHe went and brought the sword with all its studded thongs.--He gave it to his father. The gray-haired hero felt the point with his hand.--\n\nMy son!--lead me to Garmállon’s tomb: it rises beside that rustling tree. The long grass is withered;--I heard the breeze whistling there.--A little fountain murmurs near, and sends its water to Balva. There let me rest; it is noon: and the sun is on our fields.\n\nHe led him to Garmállon’s tomb. Lamor pierced the side of his son.--They sleep together: and their ancient halls moulder on Balva’s banks.--Ghosts are seen there at noon: the valley is silent, and the people shun the place of Lamor.\n\nMournful is thy tale, said Oscar, son of the times of old!--My soul sighs for Hidallan; he fell in the days of his youth. He flies on the blast of the desart, and his wandering is in a foreign land.--\n\nSons of the ecchoing Morven! draw near to the foes of Fingal. Send the night away in songs; and watch the strength of Caros. Oscar goes to the people of other times; to the shades of silent Ardven; where his fathers sit dim in their clouds, and behold the future war.--And art thou there, Hidallan, like a half-extinguished meteor? Come to my sight, in thy sorrow, chief of the roaring Balva!\n\nThe heroes move with their songs.--Oscar slowly ascends the hill.--The meteors of night set on the heath before him. A distant torrent faintly roars.--Unfrequent blasts rush through aged oaks. The half-enlightened moon sinks dim and red behind her hill.--Feeble voices are heard on the heath.--Oscar drew his sword.\n\nCome, said the hero, O ye ghosts of my fathers! ye that fought against the kings of the world!--Tell me the deeds of future times; and your converse in your caves; when you talk together and behold your sons in the fields of the valiant.\n\nTrenmor came, from his hill, at the voice of his mighty son.--A cloud, like the steed of the stranger, supported his airy limbs. His robe is of the mist of Lano, that brings death to the people. His sword is a green meteor half-extinguished. His face is without form, and dark. He sighed thrice over the hero: and thrice the winds of the night roared around. Many were his words to Oscar: but they only came by halves to our ears: they were dark as the tales of other times, before the light of the song arose. He slowly vanished, like a mist that melts on the sunny hill.\n\nIt was then, O daughter of Toscar, my son begun first to be sad. He foresaw the fall of his race; and, at times, he was thoughtful and dark; like the sun when he carries a cloud on his face; but he looks afterwards on the hills of Cona.\n\nOscar passed the night among his fathers, gray morning met him on the banks of Carun.\n\nA Green vale surrounded a tomb which arose in the times of old. Little hills lift their head at a distance; and stretch their old trees to the wind. The warriors of Caros sat there, for they had passed the stream by night. They appeared, like the trunks of aged pines, to the pale light of the morning.\n\nOscar stood at the tomb, and raised thrice his terrible voice. The rocking hills ecchoed around: the starting roes bounded away. And the trembling ghosts of the dead fled, shrieking on their clouds. So terrible was the voice of my son, when he called his friends.\n\nA Thousand spears rose around; the people of Caros rose.--Why, daughter of Toscar, why that tear? My son, though alone, is brave. Oscar is like a beam of the sky; he turns around and the people fall. His hand is like the arm of a ghost, when he stretches it from a cloud: the rest of his thin form is unseen: but the people die in the vale.\n\nMy son beheld the approach of the foe; and he stood in the silent darkness of his strength.--”Am I alone, said Oscar, in the midst of a thousand foes?--Many a spear is there!--many a darkly-rolling eye!--Shall I fly to Ardven?--But did my fathers ever fly!--The mark of their arm is in a thousand battles.--Oscar too will be renowned.--Come, ye dim ghosts of my fathers, and behold my deeds in war!--I may fall; but I will be renowned like the race of the ecchoing Morven “.\n\nHe stood, growing in his place, like the flood of the narrow vale. The battle came, but they fell: bloody was the sword of Oscar.\n\nThe noise reached his people at Crona; they came like a hundred streams. The warriors of Caros fled, and Oscar remained like a rock left by the ebbing sea.\n\nNow dark and deep, with all his steeds, Caros rolled his might along: the little streams are lost in his course; and the earth is rocking round.--Battle spreads from wing to wing: ten thousand swords gleam at once in the sky.--But why should Ossian sing of battles?--For never more shall my steel shine in war. I remember the days of my youth with sorrow; when I feel the weakness of my arm. Happy are they who fell in their youth, in the midst of their renown!--They have not beheld the tombs of their friend: or failed to bend the bow of their strength.--Happy art thou, O Oscar, in the midst of thy rushing blast. Thou often goest to the fields of thy fame, where Caros fled from thy lifted sword.\n\nDarkness comes on my soul, O fair daughter of Toscar, I behold not the form of my son at Carun; nor the figure of Oscar on Crona. The rustling winds have carried him far away; and the heart of his father is sad.\n\nBut lead me, O Malvina, to the found of my woods, and the roar of my mountain streams. Let the chace be heard on Cona; that I may think on the days of other years.--And bring me the harp, O maid, that I may touch it when the light of my soul shall arise.--Be thou near, to learn the song; and future times shall hear of Ossian.\n\nThe sons of the feeble hereafter will lift the voice on Cona; and, looking up to the rocks, say, “Here Ossian dwelt.”They shall admire the chiefs of old, and the race that are no more: while we ride on our clouds, Malvina, on the wings of the roaring winds. Our voices shall be heard, at times, in the desart; and we shall sing on the winds of the rock.", + "body": "Bring, daughter of Toscar, bring the harp; the light of the song rises in Ossian’s soul. It is like the field, when darkness covers the hills around, and the shadow grows slowly on the plain of the sun.\n\nI Behold my son, O Malvina, near the mossy rock of Crona; but it is the mist of the desart tinged with the beam of the west: Lovely is the mist that assumes the form of Oscar! turn from it, ye winds, when ye roar on the side of Ardven.\n\nWho comes towards my son, with the murmur of a song? His staff is in his hand, his gray hair loose on the wind. Surly joy lightens his face; and he often looks back to Caros. It is Ryno of the song, he that went to view the foe.\n\nWhat does Caros king of ships, said the son of the now mournful Ossian? spreads he the wings of his pride, bard of the times of old?\n\nHe spreads them, Oscar, replied the bard, but it is behind his gathered heap. He looks over his stones with fear, and beholds thee terrible, as the ghost of night that rolls the wave to his ships.\n\nGo, thou first of my bards, says Oscar, and take the spear of Fingal. Fix a flame on its point, and shake it to the winds of heaven. Bid him, in songs, to advance, and leave the rolling of his wave. Tell to Caros that I long for battle; and that my bow is weary of the chace of Cona. Tell him the mighty are not here; and that my arm is young.\n\nHe went with the murmur of his song. Oscar reared his voice on high. It reached his heroes on Ardven, like the noise of a cave; when the sea of Togorma rolls before it; and its trees meet the roaring winds.--They gather round my son like the streams of the hill; when, after rain, they roll in the pride of their course.\n\nRyno came to the mighty Caros, and struck his flaming spear. Come to the battle of Oscar, O thou that sittest on the rolling of waters. Fingal is distant far; he hears the songs of his bards in Morven: and the wind of his hall is in his hair. His terrible spear is at his side; and his shield that is like that darkened moon. Come to the battle of Oscar; the hero is alone.\n\nHe came not over the streamy Carun; the bard returned with his song. Gray night grows dim on Crona. The feast of shells is spread. A hundred oaks burn to the wind, and faint light gleams over the heath. The ghosts of Ardven pass through the beam, and shew their dim and distant forms. Comala is half-unseen on her meteor; and Hidallan is sullen and dim, like the darkened moon behind the mist of night.\n\nWhy art thou sad? said Ryno; for he alone beheld the chief. Why art thou sad, Hidallan, hast thou not received thy fame? The songs of Ossian have been heard, and thy ghost has brightened in the wind, when thou didst bend from thy cloud to hear the song of Morven’s bard.\n\nAnd do thine eyes behold the hero, said Oscar, like the dim meteor of night? Say, Ryno, say, how fell the chief that was so renowned in the days of our fathers?--His name remains on the rocks of Cona; and I have often seen the streams of his hills.\n\nFingal, replied the bard, had driven Hidallan from his wars. The king’s soul was sad for Comala, and his eyes could not behold Hidallan.\n\nLonely, sad along the heath he slowly moved with silent steps. His arms hang disordered on his side. His hair flies loose from his helmet. The tear is in his down-cast eyes; and the sigh half-silent in his breast.\n\nThree days he strayed unseen, alone, before he came to Lamor’s halls: the mossy halls of his fathers, at the stream of Balva.--There Lamor sat alone beneath a tree; for he had sent his people with Hidallan to war. The stream ran at his feet, and his gray head rested on his staff. Sightless are his aged eyes. He hums the song of other times.--The noise of Hidallan’s feet came to his ear: he knew the tread of his son.\n\nIs the son of Lamor returned; or is it the sound of his ghost? Hast thou fallen on the banks of Carun, son of the aged Lamor? Or, if I hear the sound of Hidallan’s feet; where are the mighty in the war? where are my people, Hidallan, that were wont to return with their echoing shields?--Have they fallen on the banks of Carun?\n\nNo: replied the sighing youth, the people of Lamor live. They are renowned in battle, my father; but Hidallan is renowned no more. I must sit alone on the banks of Balva, when the roar of the battle grows.\n\nBut thy fathers never sat alone, replied the rising pride of Lamor; they never sat alone on the banks of Balva, when the roar of battle rose.--Dost thou not behold that tomb? My eyes discern it not; there rests the noble Garmállon who never fled from war.--Come, thou renowned in battle, he says, come to thy father’s tomb.--How am I renowned, Garmállon, for my son has fled from war?\n\nKing of the streamy Balva! said Hidallan with a sigh, why dost thou torment my soul? Lamor, I never feared.--Fingal was sad for Comala, and denied his wars to Hidallan; go to the gray streams of thy land, he said, and moulder like a leafless oak, which the winds have bent over Balva, never more to grow.\n\nAnd must I hear, Lamor replied, the lonely tread of Hidallan’s feet? When thousands are renowned in battle, shall he bend over my gray streams? Spirit of the noble Garmállon! carry Lamor to his place; his eyes are dark; his soul is sad; and his son has lost his fame.\n\nWhere, said the youth, shall I search for same to gladden the soul of Lamor? From whence shall I return with renown, that the sound of my arms may be pleasant in his ear?--If I go to the chace of hinds, my name will not be heard.--Lamor will not feel my dogs, with his hands, glad at my arrival from the hill. He will not enquire of his mountains, or of the dark-brown deer of his desarts.\n\nI Must fall, said Lamor, like a leafless oak: it grew on a rock, but the winds have overturned it.--My ghost will be seen on my hills, mournful for my young Hidallan. Will not ye, ye mists, as ye rise, hide him from my sight?--My son!--go to Lamor’s hall: there the arms of our fathers hang.--Bring the sword of Garmállon;--he took it from a foe.\n\nHe went and brought the sword with all its studded thongs.--He gave it to his father. The gray-haired hero felt the point with his hand.--\n\nMy son!--lead me to Garmállon’s tomb: it rises beside that rustling tree. The long grass is withered;--I heard the breeze whistling there.--A little fountain murmurs near, and sends its water to Balva. There let me rest; it is noon: and the sun is on our fields.\n\nHe led him to Garmállon’s tomb. Lamor pierced the side of his son.--They sleep together: and their ancient halls moulder on Balva’s banks.--Ghosts are seen there at noon: the valley is silent, and the people shun the place of Lamor.\n\nMournful is thy tale, said Oscar, son of the times of old!--My soul sighs for Hidallan; he fell in the days of his youth. He flies on the blast of the desart, and his wandering is in a foreign land.--\n\nSons of the ecchoing Morven! draw near to the foes of Fingal. Send the night away in songs; and watch the strength of Caros. Oscar goes to the people of other times; to the shades of silent Ardven; where his fathers sit dim in their clouds, and behold the future war.--And art thou there, Hidallan, like a half-extinguished meteor? Come to my sight, in thy sorrow, chief of the roaring Balva!\n\nThe heroes move with their songs.--Oscar slowly ascends the hill.--The meteors of night set on the heath before him. A distant torrent faintly roars.--Unfrequent blasts rush through aged oaks. The half-enlightened moon sinks dim and red behind her hill.--Feeble voices are heard on the heath.--Oscar drew his sword.\n\nCome, said the hero, O ye ghosts of my fathers! ye that fought against the kings of the world!--Tell me the deeds of future times; and your converse in your caves; when you talk together and behold your sons in the fields of the valiant.\n\nTrenmor came, from his hill, at the voice of his mighty son.--A cloud, like the steed of the stranger, supported his airy limbs. His robe is of the mist of Lano, that brings death to the people. His sword is a green meteor half-extinguished. His face is without form, and dark. He sighed thrice over the hero: and thrice the winds of the night roared around. Many were his words to Oscar: but they only came by halves to our ears: they were dark as the tales of other times, before the light of the song arose. He slowly vanished, like a mist that melts on the sunny hill.\n\nIt was then, O daughter of Toscar, my son begun first to be sad. He foresaw the fall of his race; and, at times, he was thoughtful and dark; like the sun when he carries a cloud on his face; but he looks afterwards on the hills of Cona.\n\nOscar passed the night among his fathers, gray morning met him on the banks of Carun.\n\nA Green vale surrounded a tomb which arose in the times of old. Little hills lift their head at a distance; and stretch their old trees to the wind. The warriors of Caros sat there, for they had passed the stream by night. They appeared, like the trunks of aged pines, to the pale light of the morning.\n\nOscar stood at the tomb, and raised thrice his terrible voice. The rocking hills ecchoed around: the starting roes bounded away. And the trembling ghosts of the dead fled, shrieking on their clouds. So terrible was the voice of my son, when he called his friends.\n\nA Thousand spears rose around; the people of Caros rose.--Why, daughter of Toscar, why that tear? My son, though alone, is brave. Oscar is like a beam of the sky; he turns around and the people fall. His hand is like the arm of a ghost, when he stretches it from a cloud: the rest of his thin form is unseen: but the people die in the vale.\n\nMy son beheld the approach of the foe; and he stood in the silent darkness of his strength.--Am I alone, said Oscar, in the midst of a thousand foes?--Many a spear is there!--many a darkly-rolling eye!--Shall I fly to Ardven?--But did my fathers ever fly!--The mark of their arm is in a thousand battles.--Oscar too will be renowned.--Come, ye dim ghosts of my fathers, and behold my deeds in war!--I may fall; but I will be renowned like the race of the ecchoing Morven.\n\nHe stood, growing in his place, like the flood of the narrow vale. The battle came, but they fell: bloody was the sword of Oscar.\n\nThe noise reached his people at Crona; they came like a hundred streams. The warriors of Caros fled, and Oscar remained like a rock left by the ebbing sea.\n\nNow dark and deep, with all his steeds, Caros rolled his might along: the little streams are lost in his course; and the earth is rocking round.--Battle spreads from wing to wing: ten thousand swords gleam at once in the sky.--But why should Ossian sing of battles?--For never more shall my steel shine in war. I remember the days of my youth with sorrow; when I feel the weakness of my arm. Happy are they who fell in their youth, in the midst of their renown!--They have not beheld the tombs of their friend: or failed to bend the bow of their strength.--Happy art thou, O Oscar, in the midst of thy rushing blast. Thou often goest to the fields of thy fame, where Caros fled from thy lifted sword.\n\nDarkness comes on my soul, O fair daughter of Toscar, I behold not the form of my son at Carun; nor the figure of Oscar on Crona. The rustling winds have carried him far away; and the heart of his father is sad.\n\nBut lead me, O Malvina, to the found of my woods, and the roar of my mountain streams. Let the chace be heard on Cona; that I may think on the days of other years.--And bring me the harp, O maid, that I may touch it when the light of my soul shall arise.--Be thou near, to learn the song; and future times shall hear of Ossian.\n\nThe sons of the feeble hereafter will lift the voice on Cona; and, looking up to the rocks, say, “Here Ossian dwelt.”They shall admire the chiefs of old, and the race that are no more: while we ride on our clouds, Malvina, on the wings of the roaring winds. Our voices shall be heard, at times, in the desart; and we shall sing on the winds of the rock.", "metadata": { "source": "Fingal: an ancient epic poem, in six books: together with several other poems, composed by Ossian the son of Fingal. Translated from the Galic language", "date": { @@ -37224,7 +37563,7 @@ }, "madman": { "title": "“Madman”", - "body": "They cut my face, there’s blood upon my brow.\nSo, let it run, I am an old man now,\nAn old, blind beggar picking filth for bread.\nOnce I wore silk, drank wine,\nSpent gold on women, feasted, all was mine;\nBut this uneasy current in my head\nBurst, one full moon, and cleansed me, then I saw\nTruth like a perfect crystal, life its flaw,\nI told the world, but I was mad, they said.\n\nI had a valley farm above a brook,\nMy sheep bells there were sweet,\nAnd in the summer heat\nMy mill wheels turned, yet all these things they took;\nAh, and I gave them, all things I forsook\nBut that green blade of wheat,\nMy own soul’s courage, that they did not take.\nI will go on, although my old heart ache.\nNot long, not long.\nSoon I shall pass behind\nThis changing veil to that which does not change,\nMy tired feet will range\nIn some green valley of eternal mind\nWhere Truth is daily like the water’s song.\n\nThe wild-duck, stringing through the sky,\nAre south away.\nTheir green necks glitter as they fly,\nThe lake is gray,\nSo still, so lone, the fowler never heeds.\nThe wind goes rustle, rustle, through the reeds.\n\nThere they find peace to have their own wild souls.\nIn that still lake,\nOnly the moonrise or the wind controls\nThe way they take,\nThrough the gray reeds, the cocking moorhen’s lair,\nRippling the pool, or over leagues of air.\n\nNot thus, not thus are the wild souls of men.\nNo peace for those\nWho step beyond the blindness of the pen\nTo where the skies unclose.\nFor them the spitting mob, the cross, the crown of thorns,\nThe bull gone mad, the saviour on his horns.\n\nBeauty and Peace have made\nNo peace, no still retreat,\nNo solace, none.\nOnly the unafraid\nBefore life’s roaring street\nTouch Beauty’s feet,\nKnow Truth, do as God bade,\nBecome God’s son. \n\n[_Pause._]\n\nDarkness come down, cover a brave man’s pain.\nLet the bright soul go back to God again.\nCover that tortured flesh, it only serves\nTo hold that thing which other power nerves.\nDarkness, come down, let it be midnight here,\nIn the dark night the untroubled soul sings clear.\n\n[_It darkens._]\n\nI have been scourged, blinded and crucified,\nMy blood burns on the stones of every street\nIn every town; wherever people meet\nI have been hounded down, in anguish died.\n\n[_It darkens._]\n\nThe creaking door of flesh rolls slowly back.\nNerve by red nerve the links of living crack,\nLoosing the soul to tread another track.\n\nBeyond the pain, beyond the broken clay,\nA glimmering country lies\nWhere life is being wise,\nAll of the beauty seen by truthful eyes\nAre lilies there, growing beside the way.\nThose golden ones will loose the torted hands,\nSmooth the scarred brow, gather the breaking soul,\nWhose earthly moments drop like falling sands\nTo leave the spirit whole.\n\nOnly a penny, a penny,\nLilies brighter than any,\nLilies whiter than snow.\nBeautiful lilies grow\nWherever the truth so sweet\nHas trodden with bloody feet,\nHas stood with a bloody brow.\nFriend, it is over now,\nThe passion, the sweat, the pains,\nOnly the truth remains.\n\nI cannot see what others see;\nWisdom alone is kind to me,\nWisdom that comes from Agony.\n\nWisdom that lives in the pure skies,\nThe untouched star, the spirit’s eyes;\nO Beauty, touch me, make me wise.", + "body": "They cut my face, there’s blood upon my brow.\nSo, let it run, I am an old man now,\nAn old, blind beggar picking filth for bread.\nOnce I wore silk, drank wine,\nSpent gold on women, feasted, all was mine;\nBut this uneasy current in my head\nBurst, one full moon, and cleansed me, then I saw\nTruth like a perfect crystal, life its flaw,\nI told the world, but I was mad, they said.\n\nI had a valley farm above a brook,\nMy sheep bells there were sweet,\nAnd in the summer heat\nMy mill wheels turned, yet all these things they took;\nAh, and I gave them, all things I forsook\nBut that green blade of wheat,\nMy own soul’s courage, that they did not take.\nI will go on, although my old heart ache.\nNot long, not long.\nSoon I shall pass behind\nThis changing veil to that which does not change,\nMy tired feet will range\nIn some green valley of eternal mind\nWhere Truth is daily like the water’s song.\n\nThe wild-duck, stringing through the sky,\nAre south away.\nTheir green necks glitter as they fly,\nThe lake is gray,\nSo still, so lone, the fowler never heeds.\nThe wind goes rustle, rustle, through the reeds.\n\nThere they find peace to have their own wild souls.\nIn that still lake,\nOnly the moonrise or the wind controls\nThe way they take,\nThrough the gray reeds, the cocking moorhen’s lair,\nRippling the pool, or over leagues of air.\n\nNot thus, not thus are the wild souls of men.\nNo peace for those\nWho step beyond the blindness of the pen\nTo where the skies unclose.\nFor them the spitting mob, the cross, the crown of thorns,\nThe bull gone mad, the saviour on his horns.\n\nBeauty and Peace have made\nNo peace, no still retreat,\nNo solace, none.\nOnly the unafraid\nBefore life’s roaring street\nTouch Beauty’s feet,\nKnow Truth, do as God bade,\nBecome God’s son.\n\n[_Pause._]\n\nDarkness come down, cover a brave man’s pain.\nLet the bright soul go back to God again.\nCover that tortured flesh, it only serves\nTo hold that thing which other power nerves.\nDarkness, come down, let it be midnight here,\nIn the dark night the untroubled soul sings clear.\n\n[_It darkens._]\n\nI have been scourged, blinded and crucified,\nMy blood burns on the stones of every street\nIn every town; wherever people meet\nI have been hounded down, in anguish died.\n\n[_It darkens._]\n\nThe creaking door of flesh rolls slowly back.\nNerve by red nerve the links of living crack,\nLoosing the soul to tread another track.\n\nBeyond the pain, beyond the broken clay,\nA glimmering country lies\nWhere life is being wise,\nAll of the beauty seen by truthful eyes\nAre lilies there, growing beside the way.\nThose golden ones will loose the torted hands,\nSmooth the scarred brow, gather the breaking soul,\nWhose earthly moments drop like falling sands\nTo leave the spirit whole.\n\nOnly a penny, a penny,\nLilies brighter than any,\nLilies whiter than snow.\nBeautiful lilies grow\nWherever the truth so sweet\nHas trodden with bloody feet,\nHas stood with a bloody brow.\nFriend, it is over now,\nThe passion, the sweat, the pains,\nOnly the truth remains.\n\nI cannot see what others see;\nWisdom alone is kind to me,\nWisdom that comes from Agony.\n\nWisdom that lives in the pure skies,\nThe untouched star, the spirit’s eyes;\nO Beauty, touch me, make me wise.", "metadata": { "source": "Good Friday", "date": { @@ -38355,7 +38694,7 @@ "tags": [ "american" ], - "n_poems": 90 + "n_poems": 91 }, "poems": { "1941": { @@ -38375,7 +38714,11 @@ "advice-to-a-young-prophet": { "title": "“Advice to a Young Prophet”", "body": "Keep away, son, these lakes are salt. These flowers\nEat insects. Here private lunatics\nYell and skip in a very dry country.\n\nOr where some haywire monument\nSome badfaced daddy of fear\nCommands an unintelligent rite.\n\nTo dance on the unlucky mountain,\nTo dance they go, and shake the sin\nOut of their feet and hands,\n\nFrenzied until the sudden night\nFalls very quiet, and magic sin\nCreeps, secret, back again.\n\nBadlands echo with omens of ruin:\nSeven are very satisfied, regaining possession:\n(Bring a little mescaline, you’ll get along!)\n\nThere’s something in your bones,\nThere’s someone dirty in your critical skin,\nThere’s a tradition in your cruel misdirected finger\nWhich you must obey, and scribble in the hot sand:\n\n“Let everybody come and attend\nWhere lights and airs are fixed\nTo teach and entertain. O watch the sandy people\nHopping in the naked bull’s-eye,\n\nShake the wildness out of their limbs,\nTry to make peace like John in skins\nElijah in the timid air\nor Anthony in tombs:\n\nPluck the imaginary trigger, brothers.\nShoot the devil: he’ll be back again!”\n\nAmerica needs these fatal friends\nOf God and country, to grovel in mystical ashes,\nPretty big prophets whose words don’t burn,\nFighting the strenuous imago all day long.\n\nOnly these lunatics, (O happy chance)\nOnly these are sent. Only this anaemic thunder\nGrumbles on the salt flats, in rainless night:\n\nO go home, brother, go home!\nThe devil’s back again,\nAnd magic Hell is swallowing flies.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1963" + } + } }, "and-the-children-of-birmingham": { "title": "“And the Children of Birmingham”", @@ -38403,12 +38746,20 @@ "at-this-precise-moment-of-history": { "title": "“At This Precise Moment of History”", "body": "1.\n\nAt this precise moment of history\nWith Goody-two-shoes running for Congress\nWe are testing supersonic engines\nTo keep God safe in the cherry tree.\nWhen I said so in this space last Thursday\nI meant what I said: power struggles.\n\n\n2.\n\nYou would never dream of such corn. The colonials in sandalwood like running wide open and available for protection. You can throw them away without a refund.\n\n3.\n\nDr. Hanfstaengel who was not called Putzi except by those who did not know him is taped in the national archives. J. Edgar Hoover he ought to know\nAnd does know.\n\nBut calls Dr. Hanfstaengel Putzi nevertheless\nSomewhere on tape in the\nArchives.\n\nHe (Dr. H.) is not a silly man.\nHe left in disgust\nAbout the same time Shirley Temple\nSat on Roosevelt’s knee\nAn accomplished pianist\nA remembered personality.\nHe (Dr. H.) began to teach\nImmortal anecdotes\nTo his mother a Queen Bee\nIn the American colony.\n\n\n4.\n\nWhat is your attitude toward historical subjects?\n--Perhaps it’s their size!\n\n\n5.\n\nWhen I said this in space you would never believe\nCorn Colonel was so expatriated.\n--If you think you know,\nTake this wheel\nAnd become standard.\n\n\n6.\n\nShe is my only living mother\nThis bee of the bloody arts\nBandaging victims of Saturday’s dance\nLike a veritable sphinx\nIn a totally new combination.\n\n\n7.\n\nThe Queen Mother is an enduring vignette at an early age.\nNow she ought to be kept in submersible decompression chambers\n\nFor a while.\n\n\n8.\n\nWhat is your attitude toward historical subjects\nLike Queen Colonies?\n--They are permanently fortified\nFor shape retention.\n\n\n9.\n\nSolid shades\nSeven zippered pockets\nClose to my old place\nWaiting by the road\nBig disk brakes\nSpinoff\nZoom\nLong lights stabbing at the\nTwo together piggyback\nIn a stark sports roadster\n\nRegretting his previous outburst\nAl loads his Cadillac\nWith lovenests.\n\n\n10.\n\nShe is my only living investment\nShe examines the housing industry\nCounts 3.5 million postwar children\nTurning twenty-one\nAnd draws her own conclusion\nIn the commercial fishing field.\n\n\n11.\n\nVoice of little sexy ventriloquist mignonne:\n“Well I think all of us are agreed and sincerely I myself believe that honest people on both sides have got it all on tape. Governor Reagan thinks that nuclear wampums are a last resort that ought not to be resorted.” (But little mignonne went right to the point with: “We have a commitment to fulfill and we better do it quick.” No dupe she!)\nAll historians die of the same events at least twice.\n\n\n13.\n\nI feel that I ought to open this case with an apology. Dr. H. certainly has a beautiful voice. He is not a silly man. He is misunderstood even by Presidents.\n\n\n14.\n\nYou people are criticizing the Church but what are you going to put in her place? Sometime sit down with a pencil and paper and ask yourself what you’ve got that the Church hasn’t.\n\n\n15.\n\nNothing to add\nBut the big voice of a detective\nUsing the wrong first names\nIn national archives.\n\n\n16.\n\nShe sat in shocking pink with an industrial zipper specially designed for sitting on the knees of presidents in broad daylight. She spoke the president’s mind. “We have a last resort to be resorted and we better do it quick.” He wondered at what he had just said.\n\n\n17.\n\nIt was all like running wideopen in a loose gown\nWithout slippers\nAt least someplace.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1968" + } + } }, "aubade-harlem": { "title": "“Aubade: Harlem”", "body": "Across the cages of the keyless aviaries,\nThe lines and wires, the gallows of the broken kites,\nCrucify, against the fearful light,\nThe ragged dresses of the little children.\nSoon, in the sterile jungles of the waterpipes and ladders,\nThe bleeding sun, a bird of prey, will terrify the poor,\nThese will forget the unbelievable moon.\n\nBut in the cells of whiter buildings,\nWhere the glass dawn is brighter than the knives of surgeons,\nPaler than alcohol or ether, shinier than money,\nThe white men’s wives, like Pilate’s,\nCry in the peril of their frozen dreams:\n\n“Daylight has driven iron spikes,\nInto the flesh of Jesus’ hands and feet:\nFour flowers of blood have nailed Him to the walls of Harlem.”\n\nAlong the white halls of the clinics and the hospitals\nPilate evaporates with a cry:\nThey have cut down two hundred Judases,\nHanged by the neck in the opera houses and the museum.\n\nAcross the cages of the keyless aviaries,\nThe lines and wires, the gallows of the broken kites,\nCrucify, against the fearful light,\nThe ragged dresses of the little children.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1948" + } + } }, "aubade-the-city": { "title": "“Aubade: The City”", @@ -38427,7 +38778,11 @@ "birdcage-walk": { "title": "“Birdcage Walk”", "body": "# I.\n\nOne royal afternoon\nWhen I was young and easily surprised\nBy uncles coming from the park\nAt the command of nurses and of guards,\n\nI wondered, over trees and ponds,\nAt the sorry, rude walls\nAnd the white windows of the apartments.\n\n“These,” said my uncle, “are the tallest houses.”\n\n\n# II.\n\nYes, in the spring of my joy\nWhen I was visibly affected by a gaitered bishop,\nLarge and unsteady in the flagged yard,\nGuards, dogs and blackbirds fled on every hand.\n\n“He is an old one,” said uncle,\n“The gaiters are real.”\n\n\n# III.\n\nRippled, fistfed windows of your\nDun high houses! Then\nCome cages made of pretty willows\nWhere they put the palace girls!\nGreen ducks wade slowly from the marble water.\nOne swan reproves a saucy daughter.\n\nI consider my own true pond,\nLook for the beginning and the end.\nI lead the bishop down lanes and islands.\n\n\n# IV.\n\nYes, in the windows of my first existence\nBefore my yawns became seasons,\nWhen nurses and uncles were sure,\nChinese fowl fought the frosty water\nStartled by this old pontifex.\n\n“No bridge” (He smiled\nBetween the budding branches),\n“No crossing to the cage\nOf the paradise bird!”\n\nAstounded by the sermons in the leaves\nI cried, “No! No! The stars have higher houses!”\n\nKicking the robins and ganders\nFrom the floor of his insular world\nThe magic bishop leaned his blessing on the children.\n\n\n# V.\n\nThat was the bold day when\nMoved by the unexpected summons\nI opened all the palace aviaries\nAs by a king’s representative\nI was appointed fowler.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1957" + } + } }, "the-blessed-virgin-mary-compared-to-a-window": { "title": "“The Blessed Virgin Mary Compared to a Window”", @@ -38487,7 +38842,15 @@ "the-dark-morning": { "title": "“The Dark Morning”", "body": "This is the black day when\nFog rides the ugly air:\nWater wades among the buildings\nTo the prisoner’s curled ear.\n\nThen rain, in thin sentences,\nSlakes him like danger,\nWhose heart is his Germany\nFevered with anger.\n\nThis is the dark day when\nLocks let the enemy in\nThrough all the coiling passages of\n(Curled ear) my prison!", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1942", + "month": "april" + }, + "context": { + "month": "april" + } + } }, "death": { "title": "“Death”", @@ -38497,7 +38860,15 @@ "a-dirge": { "title": "“A Dirge”", "body": "Some one who hears the bugle neigh will know\nHow cold it is, when sentries die by starlight.\n\nBut none who love to hear the hammering drum\nWill look, when the betrayer\nLaughs in the desert like a broken monument,\nRinging his tongue in the red bell of his head,\nGesturing like a flag.\n\nThe air that quivered after the earthquake\n(When God died like a thief)\nStill plays the ancient forums like pianos;\nThe treacherous wind, lover of the demented,\nWill harp forever in the haunted temples.\n\nWhat speeches do the birds make\nWith their beaks, to the desolate dead?\nAnd yet we love those carsick amphitheaters,\n\nNor hear our messenger come home from hell\nWith hands shot full of blood.\n\nNo one who loves the fleering fife, will feel\nThe light of morning stab his flesh,\n\nBut some who hear the trumpet’s raving, in the ruined sky,\nWill dread the burnished helmet of the sun\nWhose anger goes before the King.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1942", + "month": "april" + }, + "context": { + "month": "april" + } + } }, "dry-places": { "title": "“Dry Places”", @@ -38619,6 +38990,10 @@ "title": "“From the Legend of St. Clement”", "body": "I have seen the sun\nSpilling its copper petals on the Black Sea\nBy the base of the prisoners’ cliff\nWhere, from the acts of martyrs,\nTall poems grow up like buildings.\n\nDeep in the wall of the wounded mountain\n(Where seas no longer frown)\nThe songs of the martyrs come up like cities or buildings.\nTheir chains shine with hymns\nAnd their hands cut down the giant blocks of stone.\n\nPoetry, psalms\nFlower with a huge architecture\nRaising their grandeur on the gashed cape.\nWords of God blaze like a disaster\nIn the windows of their prophetic cathedral.\nBut the sighs of the deep multitude\nGrow out of the mountain’s heart as clean as vines.\n\nO martyrs! O tremendous prisoners!\nBurying your murder in this marble hill!\nThe Lamb shall soon stand\nWhite as a shout against the sky:\nHis feet shall soon strike rainbows from the rock.\nThe cliffs give up their buried streams.\nThrow down the chains of your wrists, prisoners!\nDrink, and swim!\n\nThe winds have carried your last sentences\nAcross Ukraine.\nYour poetry shall grow in distant places.\nAsia, Greece, Egypt, England know your name.\nYour hymns shall stand like vineyards\nAnd swing with fruit in other worlds, in other centuries.\n\nAnd your ecstasy shall make shade,\nFoliage for summers unforeseen\nTo cover travellers in continents you have not known\nWhen the temples have fallen,\nThe theaters cemented in your blood have long ago fallen.\n\nYour joy echoes across the carved ridge\nPlays across mountains\nStands like fleets or islands\nSailing the seas to Greece\nAnd after twenty times one hundred\nYears of repercussion\nYour waters shatter the land at my feet with seas forever young.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1949", + "month": "february" + }, "context": { "holiday": "saint_clement" } @@ -38626,8 +39001,11 @@ }, "hagia-sofia": { "title": "“Hagia Sofia”", - "body": "# I. _Dawn. The Hour of Lauds._\n\nThere is in all visible things an invisible fecundity, a\ndimmed light, a meek namelessness, a hidden whole-\nness. This mysterious Unity and Integrity is Wisdom,\nthe Mother of all, Natura naturans. There is in all\nthings an inexhaustible sweetness and purity, a silence\nthat is a fount of action and joy. It rises up in word-\nless gentleness and flows out to me from the unseen\nroots of all created being, welcoming me tenderly,\nsaluting me with indescribable humility. This is at\nonce my own being, my own nature, and the Gift of\nmy Creator’s Thought and Art within me, speaking\nas Hagia Sophia, speaking as my sister, Wisdom.\n\nI am awakened, I am born again at the voice of this,\nmy Sister, sent to me from the depths of the divine\nfecundity.\n\nLet us suppose I am a man lying asleep in a hospital.\nI am indeed this man lying asleep. It is July the second,\nthe Feast of Our Lady’s Visitation. A Feast of Wisdom.\n\nAt five-thirty in the morning I am dreaming in a very\nquiet room when a soft voice awakens me from my\ndream. I am like all mankind awakening from all the\ndreams that ever were dreamed in all the nights of the\nworld. It is like the One Christ awakening in all the\nseparate selves that ever were separate and isolated\nand alone in all the lands of the earth. It is like all minds\ncoming back together into awareness from all distractions,\ncross-purposes and confusions, into unity of love. It is like\nthe first morning of the world (when Adam, at the sweet voice\nof Wisdom awoke from nonentity and knew her), and like the Last\nMorning of the world when all the fragments of Adam will return from\ndeath at the voice of Hagia Sophia, and will know where they stand.\n\nSuch is the awakening of one man, one morning, at\nthe voice of a nurse in the hospital. Awakening out\nof languor and darkness, out of helplessness, out of\nsleep, newly confronting reality and finding it to be\ngentleness.\n\nIt is like being awakened by Eve. It is like being\nawakened by the Blessed Virgin. It is like coming\nforth from primordial nothingness and standing in\nclarity, in Paradise.\n\nIn the cool hand of the nurse there is the touch of all\nlife, the touch of Spirit.\n\nThus Wisdom cries out to all who will hear (Sapientia\nclamitat in plateis) and she cries out particularly\nto the little, to the ignorant and the helpless.\n\nWho is more little, who is more poor than the helpless\nman who lies asleep in his bed without awareness and\nwithout defense? Who is more trusting than\nhe who must entrust himself each night to sleep?\nWhat is the reward of his trust? Gentleness comes to\nhim when he is most helpless and awakens him,\nrefreshed, beginning to be made whole. Love takes him\nby the hand, and opens to him the doors of another\nlife, another day.\n\n(But he who has defended himself, fought for himself\nin sickness, planned for himself, guarded himself, loved\nhimself alone and watched over his own life all night, is\nkilled at last by exhaustion. For him there is no newness.\nEverything is stale and old.)\n\nWhen the helpless one awakens strong as the voice of\nmercy, it is as if Life his Sister, as if the Blessed Virgin,\n(his own flesh, his own sister), as if Nature made wise\nby God’s Art and Incarnation were to stand over him and\ninvite him with unutterable sweetness to be awake and to\nlive. This is what it means to recognize Hagia Sophia.\n\n\n# II. _Early Morning. The Hour of Prime._\n\nO blessed, silent one, who speaks everywhere!\n\nWe do not hear the soft voice, the gentle voice, the\nmerciful and feminine.\n\nWe do not hear mercy, or yielding love, or non-resistance,\nor non-reprisal. In her there are no reasons and no answers.\nYet she is the candor of God’s light, the expression of His\nsimplicity.\n\nWe do not hear the uncomplaining pardon that bows\ndown the innocent visages of flowers to the dewy\nearth. We do not see the Child who is prisoner in all\nthe people, and who says nothing. She smiles, for\nthough they have bound her, she cannot be a prisoner.\nNot that she is strong, or clever, but simply that\nshe does not understand imprisonment.\n\nThe helpless one, abandoned to sweet sleep, him the\ngentle one will awake: Sophia.\n\nAll that is sweet in her tenderness will speak to him\non all sides in everything, without ceasing, and he\nwill never be the same again. He will have awakened\nnot to conquest and dark pleasure but to the impeccable\npure simplicity of One consciousness in all and through all:\none Wisdom, one Child, one Meaning, one Sister.\n\nThe stars rejoice in their setting, and in the rising of\nthe Sun. The heavenly lights rejoice in the going\nforth of one man to make a new world in the morning,\nbecause he has come out of the confused primordial dark\nnight into consciousness. He has expressed the clear silence\nof Sophia in his own heart. He has become eternal.\n\n\n# III. _High Morning. The Hour of Tierce._\n\nThe Sun burns in the sky like the Face of God, but\nwe do not know his countenance as terrible. His light\nis diffused in the air and the light of God is diffused\nby Hagia Sophia.\n\nWe do not see the Blinding One in black emptiness.\nHe speaks to us gently in ten thousand things, in\nwhich His light is one fullness and one Wisdom.\nThus He shines not on them but from within them.\nSuch is the loving-kindness of Wisdom.\n\nAll the perfections of created things are also in God;\nand therefore He is at once Father and Mother. As\nFather He stands in solitary might surrounded by\ndarkness. As Mother His shining is diffused, embracing\nall His creatures with merciful tenderness and light.\nThe Diffuse Shining of God is Hagia Sophia.\nWe call her His “glory.” In Sophia His power is\nexperienced only as mercy and as love.\n\n(When the recluses of fourteenth-century England\nheard their Church Bells and looked out upon the\nwolds and fens under a kind sky, they spoke in their\nhearts to “Jesus our Mother.” It was Sophia that had\nawakened in their childlike hearts.)\n\nPerhaps in a certain very primitive aspect Sophia is\nthe unknown, the dark, the nameless Ousia. Perhaps\nshe is even the Divine Nature, One in Father, Son, and\nHoly Ghost. And perhaps she is in infinite light unmanifest,\nnot even waiting to be known as Light. This I do not know.\nOut of the silence Light is spoken. We do not hear it or see\nit until it is spoken.\n\nIn the Nameless Beginning, without Beginning, was\nthe Light. We have not seen this Beginning. I do not know\nwhere she is, in this Beginning. I do not speak of her as a\nBeginning, but as a manifestation.\n\nNow the Wisdom of God, Sophia, comes forth, reaching\nfrom “end to end mightily.” She wills to be also\nthe unseen pivot of all nature, the center and significance\nof all the light that is in all and for all. That which is poorest\nand humblest, that which is most hidden in all things is\nnevertheless most obvious in them, and quite manifest, for it\nis their own self that stands before us, naked and without care.\n\nSophia, the feminine child, is playing in the world,\nobvious and unseen, playing at all times before the Creator.\nHer delights are to be with the children of men. She is their sister.\nThe core of life that exists in all things is tenderness, mercy, virginity\nthe Light, the Life considered as passive, as received, as given, as\ntaken, as inexhaustibly renewed by the Gift of God. Sophia is\nGift, is Spirit, Donum Dei. She is God-given and God\nHimself as Gift. God as all, and God reduced to Nothing:\ninexhaustible nothingness. Exinanivit semetipsum. Humility as\nthe source of unfailing light.\n\nHagia Sophia in all things is the Divine Light reflected in them,\nconsidered as a spontaneous participation, as their invitation\nto the Wedding Feast.\n\nSophia is God’s sharing of Himself with creatures. His outporing,\nand the Love by which He is given, and known, held and loved.\n\nShe is in all things like the air receiving the sunlight. In her\nthey prosper. In her they glorigy God. In her they rejoice to reflect\nHim. In her they are united with him. She is the union between them.\nShe is the Love that unites them. She is life as communion, life as\nthanksgiving, life as praise, life as festival, life as glory.\n\nBecause she receives perfectly there is in her no stain.\nShe is love without blemish, and gratitude without\nself-complacency. All things praise her by being themselves\nand by sharing in the Wedding Feast. She is the Bride and the\nFeast and the Wedding.\n\nThe feminine principle in the world is the inexhaustible source\nof creative realizations of the Father’s glory. She is His\nmanifestation in radiant splendor! But she remains unseen,\nglimpsed only by a few. Sometimes there are none who\nknow her at all.\n\nSophia is the mercy of God in us. She is the tenderness\nwith which the infinitely mysterious power of pardon\nturns the darkness of our sins into the light of grace.\nShe is the inexhaustible fountain of kindness, and would\nalmost seem to be, in herself, all mercy. So she does in us\na greater work than that of Creation: the work of new being\nin grace, the work of pardon, the work of transformation from\nbrightness to brightness tamquam a Domini Spiritu. She\nis in us the yielding and tender counterpart of the power, justice\nand creative dynamism of the Father.\n\n\n# IV. _Sunset. The Hour of Compline. Salve Regina._\n\nNow the Blessed Virgin Mary is the one created being\nwho enacts and shows forth in her life all that is hidden in Sophia.\nBecause of this she can be said to be a personal manifestation\nof Sophia, Who in God is Ousia rather than Person.\n\nNatura in Mary becomes pure Mother. In her, Natura\nis as she was from the origin from her divine birth. In Mary Natura\nis all wise and is manifested as an all-prudent, all-loving, all-pure person:\nnot a Creator, and not a Redeemer, but perfect Creature, perfectly\nRedeemed, the fruit of all God’s great power, the perfect expression\nof wisdom in mercy.\n\nIt is she, it is Mary, Sophia, who in sadness and joy, with the full awareness\nof what she is doing, sets upon the Second Person, the Logos, a crown\nwhich is His Human Nature. Thus her consent opens the door of created\nnature, of time, of history, to the Word of God.\n\nGod enters into His creation. Through her wise answer, through her obedient\nunderstanding, through the sweet yielding consent of Sophia, God enters\nwithout publicity into the city of rapacious men.\n\nShe crowns Him not with what is glorious, but with\nwhat is greater than glory: the one thing greater than\nglory is weakness, nothingness, poverty.\n\nShe sends the infinitely Rich and Powerful One forth\nas poor and helpless, in His mission of inexpressible\nmercy, to die for us on the Cross.\n\nThe shadows fall. The stars appear. The birds begin to sleep.\nNight embraces the silent half of the earth. A vagrant, a destitute\nwanderer with dusty feet, finds his way down a new road. A\nhomeless God, lost in the night, without papers, without\nidentifications, without even a number, a frail expendable exile\nlies down in desolation under the sweet stars of the world and\nentrusts Himself to sleep.", + "body": "# I. _Dawn. The Hour of Lauds._\n\nThere is in all visible things an invisible fecundity, a dimmed light, a meek namelessness, a hidden wholeness. This mysterious Unity and Integrity is Wisdom, the Mother of all, Natura naturans. There is in all things an inexhaustible sweetness and purity, a silence that is a fount of action and joy. It rises up in wordless gentleness and flows out to me from the unseen roots of all created being, welcoming me tenderly, saluting me with indescribable humility. This is at once my own being, my own nature, and the Gift of my Creator’s Thought and Art within me, speaking as Hagia Sophia, speaking as my sister, Wisdom.\n\nI am awakened, I am born again at the voice of this, my Sister, sent to me from the depths of the divine fecundity.\n\nLet us suppose I am a man lying asleep in a hospital. I am indeed this man lying asleep. It is July the second, the Feast of Our Lady’s Visitation. A Feast of Wisdom.\n\nAt five-thirty in the morning I am dreaming in a very quiet room when a soft voice awakens me from my dream. I am like all mankind awakening from all the dreams that ever were dreamed in all the nights of the world. It is like the One Christ awakening in all the separate selves that ever were separate and isolated and alone in all the lands of the earth. It is like all minds coming back together into awareness from all distractions, cross-purposes and confusions, into unity of love. It is like the first morning of the world (when Adam, at the sweet voice of Wisdom awoke from nonentity and knew her), and like the Last Morning of the world when all the fragments of Adam will return from death at the voice of Hagia Sophia, and will know where they stand.\n\nSuch is the awakening of one man, one morning, at the voice of a nurse in the hospital. Awakening out of languor and darkness, out of helplessness, out of sleep, newly confronting reality and finding it to be gentleness.\n\nIt is like being awakened by Eve. It is like being awakened by the Blessed Virgin. It is like coming forth from primordial nothingness and standing in clarity, in Paradise.\n\nIn the cool hand of the nurse there is the touch of all life, the touch of Spirit.\n\nThus Wisdom cries out to all who will hear (Sapientia clamitat in plateis) and she cries out particularly to the little, to the ignorant and the helpless.\n\nWho is more little, who is more poor than the helpless man who lies asleep in his bed without awareness and without defense? Who is more trusting than he who must entrust himself each night to sleep? What is the reward of his trust? Gentleness comes to him when he is most helpless and awakens him, refreshed, beginning to be made whole. Love takes him by the hand, and opens to him the doors of another life, another day.\n\n(But he who has defended himself, fought for himself in sickness, planned for himself, guarded himself, loved himself alone and watched over his own life all night, is killed at last by exhaustion. For him there is no newness. Everything is stale and old.)\n\nWhen the helpless one awakens strong as the voice of mercy, it is as if Life his Sister, as if the Blessed Virgin, (his own flesh, his own sister), as if Nature made wise by God’s Art and Incarnation were to stand over him and invite him with unutterable sweetness to be awake and to live. This is what it means to recognize Hagia Sophia.\n\n\n# II. _Early Morning. The Hour of Prime._\n\nO blessed, silent one, who speaks everywhere!\n\nWe do not hear the soft voice, the gentle voice, the merciful and feminine.\n\nWe do not hear mercy, or yielding love, or non-resistance, or non-reprisal. In her there are no reasons and no answers. Yet she is the candor of God’s light, the expression of His simplicity.\n\nWe do not hear the uncomplaining pardon that bows down the innocent visages of flowers to the dewy earth. We do not see the Child who is prisoner in all the people, and who says nothing. She smiles, for though they have bound her, she cannot be a prisoner. Not that she is strong, or clever, but simply that she does not understand imprisonment.\n\nThe helpless one, abandoned to sweet sleep, him the gentle one will awake: Sophia.\n\nAll that is sweet in her tenderness will speak to him on all sides in everything, without ceasing, and he will never be the same again. He will have awakened not to conquest and dark pleasure but to the impeccable pure simplicity of One consciousness in all and through all: one Wisdom, one Child, one Meaning, one Sister.\n\nThe stars rejoice in their setting, and in the rising of the Sun. The heavenly lights rejoice in the going forth of one man to make a new world in the morning, because he has come out of the confused primordial dark night into consciousness. He has expressed the clear silence of Sophia in his own heart. He has become eternal.\n\n\n# III. _High Morning. The Hour of Tierce._\n\nThe Sun burns in the sky like the Face of God, but we do not know his countenance as terrible. His light is diffused in the air and the light of God is diffused by Hagia Sophia.\n\nWe do not see the Blinding One in black emptiness. He speaks to us gently in ten thousand things, in which His light is one fullness and one Wisdom. Thus He shines not on them but from within them. Such is the loving-kindness of Wisdom.\n\nAll the perfections of created things are also in God; and therefore He is at once Father and Mother. As Father He stands in solitary might surrounded by darkness. As Mother His shining is diffused, embracing all His creatures with merciful tenderness and light. The Diffuse Shining of God is Hagia Sophia. We call her His “glory.” In Sophia His power is experienced only as mercy and as love.\n\n(When the recluses of fourteenth-century England heard their Church Bells and looked out upon the wolds and fens under a kind sky, they spoke in their hearts to “Jesus our Mother.” It was Sophia that had awakened in their childlike hearts.)\n\nPerhaps in a certain very primitive aspect Sophia is the unknown, the dark, the nameless Ousia. Perhaps she is even the Divine Nature, One in Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. And perhaps she is in infinite light unmanifest, not even waiting to be known as Light. This I do not know. Out of the silence Light is spoken. We do not hear it or see it until it is spoken.\n\nIn the Nameless Beginning, without Beginning, was the Light. We have not seen this Beginning. I do not know where she is, in this Beginning. I do not speak of her as a Beginning, but as a manifestation.\n\nNow the Wisdom of God, Sophia, comes forth, reaching from “end to end mightily.” She wills to be also the unseen pivot of all nature, the center and significance of all the light that is in all and for all. That which is poorest and humblest, that which is most hidden in all things is nevertheless most obvious in them, and quite manifest, for it is their own self that stands before us, naked and without care.\n\nSophia, the feminine child, is playing in the world, obvious and unseen, playing at all times before the Creator. Her delights are to be with the children of men. She is their sister. The core of life that exists in all things is tenderness, mercy, virginity the Light, the Life considered as passive, as received, as given, as taken, as inexhaustibly renewed by the Gift of God. Sophia is Gift, is Spirit, Donum Dei. She is God-given and God Himself as Gift. God as all, and God reduced to Nothing: inexhaustible nothingness. Exinanivit semetipsum. Humility as the source of unfailing light.\n\nHagia Sophia in all things is the Divine Light reflected in them, considered as a spontaneous participation, as their invitation to the Wedding Feast.\n\nSophia is God’s sharing of Himself with creatures. His outporing, and the Love by which He is given, and known, held and loved.\n\nShe is in all things like the air receiving the sunlight. In her they prosper. In her they glorigy God. In her they rejoice to reflect Him. In her they are united with him. She is the union between them. She is the Love that unites them. She is life as communion, life as thanksgiving, life as praise, life as festival, life as glory.\n\nBecause she receives perfectly there is in her no stain. She is love without blemish, and gratitude without self-complacency. All things praise her by being themselves and by sharing in the Wedding Feast. She is the Bride and the Feast and the Wedding.\n\nThe feminine principle in the world is the inexhaustible source of creative realizations of the Father’s glory. She is His manifestation in radiant splendor! But she remains unseen, glimpsed only by a few. Sometimes there are none who know her at all.\n\nSophia is the mercy of God in us. She is the tenderness with which the infinitely mysterious power of pardon turns the darkness of our sins into the light of grace. She is the inexhaustible fountain of kindness, and would almost seem to be, in herself, all mercy. So she does in us a greater work than that of Creation: the work of new being in grace, the work of pardon, the work of transformation from brightness to brightness tamquam a Domini Spiritu. She is in us the yielding and tender counterpart of the power, justice and creative dynamism of the Father.\n\n\n# IV. _Sunset. The Hour of Compline. Salve Regina._\n\nNow the Blessed Virgin Mary is the one created being\nwho enacts and shows forth in her life all that is hidden in Sophia.\nBecause of this she can be said to be a personal manifestation\nof Sophia, Who in God is Ousia rather than Person.\n\nNatura in Mary becomes pure Mother. In her, Natura\nis as she was from the origin from her divine birth. In Mary Natura\nis all wise and is manifested as an all-prudent, all-loving, all-pure person:\nnot a Creator, and not a Redeemer, but perfect Creature, perfectly\nRedeemed, the fruit of all God’s great power, the perfect expression\nof wisdom in mercy.\n\nIt is she, it is Mary, Sophia, who in sadness and joy, with the full awareness\nof what she is doing, sets upon the Second Person, the Logos, a crown\nwhich is His Human Nature. Thus her consent opens the door of created\nnature, of time, of history, to the Word of God.\n\nGod enters into His creation. Through her wise answer, through her obedient\nunderstanding, through the sweet yielding consent of Sophia, God enters\nwithout publicity into the city of rapacious men.\n\nShe crowns Him not with what is glorious, but with\nwhat is greater than glory: the one thing greater than\nglory is weakness, nothingness, poverty.\n\nShe sends the infinitely Rich and Powerful One forth\nas poor and helpless, in His mission of inexpressible\nmercy, to die for us on the Cross.\n\nThe shadows fall. The stars appear. The birds begin to sleep.\nNight embraces the silent half of the earth. A vagrant, a destitute\nwanderer with dusty feet, finds his way down a new road. A\nhomeless God, lost in the night, without papers, without\nidentifications, without even a number, a frail expendable exile\nlies down in desolation under the sweet stars of the world and\nentrusts Himself to sleep.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1962" + }, "context": { "month": "july", "day": "02" @@ -38643,10 +39021,13 @@ } } }, - "how-to-enter-the-big-city": { - "title": "“How to Enter the Big City”", + "how-to-enter-a-big-city": { + "title": "“How to Enter a Big City”", "body": "# I.\n\nSwing by starwhite bones and\nLights tick in the middle.\nBlue and white steel\nBlack and white\nPeople hurrying along the wall.\n“Here you are, bury my dead bones.”\n\nCurve behind the sun again\nTowers full of ice. Rich\nGlass houses, “Here,\nHave a little of my blood,\nRich people!”\n\nWheat in towers. Meat on ice.\nCattlecars. Miles of wide-open walls.\nBaseball between these sudden tracks.\nYell past the red street--\nHave you any water to drink, City?\nRich glass buildings, give us milk!\nGive us coffee! Give us rum!\n\nThere are huge clouds all over the sky.\nRiver smells of gasoline.\nCars after cars after cars, and then\nA little yellow street goes by without a murmur.\n\nThere came a man\n(“Those are radios, that were his eyes”)\nWho offered to sell us his bones.\n\nSwing by starwhite buildings and\nLights come to life with a sound\nOf bugs under the dead rib.\n\nMiles of it. Still the same city.\n\n\n# II.\n\nDo you know where you are going?\nDo you know whom you must meet?\n\nFortune, perhaps, or good news\nOr the doctor, or the ladies\nIn the long bookstore,\nThe angry man in the milkbar\nThe drunkard under the clock.\nFortune, perhaps, or wonder\nOr, perhaps, death.\n\nIn any case, our tracks\nAre aimed at a working horizon.\nThe buildings, turning twice about the sun,\nSettle in their respective positions.\nCentered in its own incurable discontent, the City\nConsents to be recognized.\n\n\n# III.\n\nThen people come out into the light of afternoon,\nCovered all over with black powder,\nAnd begin to attack one another with statements\nOr to ignore one another with horror.\nCustoms have not changed.\nYoung men full of coffee and\nOld women with medicine under their skin\nAre all approaching death at twenty miles an hour.\n\nEverywhere there is optimism without love\nAnd pessimism without understanding,\nThey who have new clothes, and smell of haircuts\nCannot agree to be at peace\nWith their own images, shadowing them in windows\nFrom store to store.\n\n\n# IV.\n\nUntil the lights come on with a swagger of frauds\nAnd savage ferns,\nThe brown-eyed daughters of ravens,\nSing in the lucky doors\nWhile night comes down the street like the millennium\nWrapping the houses in dark feathers\nSoothing the town with a sign\nHealing the strong wings of sunstroke.\nThen the wind of an easy river wipes the flies\nOff my Kentucky collarbone.\n\nThe claws of the treacherous stars\nRenegade drums of wood\nEndure the heavenward protest.\nTheir music heaves and hides.\nRain and foam and oil\nMake sabbaths for our wounds.\n(Come, come, let all come home!)\nThe summer sighs, and runs.\nMy broken bird is under the whole town,\nMy cross is for the gypsies I am leaving\nAnd there are real fountains under the floor.\n\n\n# V.\n\nBranches baptize our faces with silver\nWhere the sweet silent avenue escapes into the hills.\nWinds at last possess our empty country\nThere, there under the moon\nIn parabolas of milk and iron\nThe ghosts of historical men\n(Figures of sorrow and dust)\nWeep along the hills like turpentine.\nAnd seas of flowering tobacco\nSurround the drowning sons of Daniel Boone.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1957" + }, "context": { "season": "summer" } @@ -38747,7 +39128,15 @@ "the-night-train": { "title": "“The Night Train”", "body": "In the unreason of a rainy midnight\nFrance blooms along the windows\nOf my sleepy bathysphere,\nAnd runs to seed, in a luxuriance of curious lights.\n\nEscape is drawn straight through my dream\nAnd shines to Paris, clean as a violin string,\nWhile springtides of commotion,\n(The third-class pianos of the Orient Express)\nFill up the hollow barrels of my ears.\n\nCities that stood, by day, as gay as lancers\nAre lost, in the night, like old men dying.\nAt a point where polished rails branch off forever,\nThe steel laments, like crazy mothers.\nWe wake, and weep the deaths of the cathedrals\nThat we have never seen,\nBecause we hear the jugulars of the country\nFly in the wind, and vanish with a cry.\n\nAt once the diplomats start up, as white as bread.\nBuckle the careless cases of their minds,\nThat just fell open in the sleepers,\nAnd lock them under pillows:\n\nFor, by the rockets of imaginary sieges\nThey see to read big, terrible print,\nEach in the other’s face,\nThat spells the undecoded names\nOf the assassins they will recognize too late:\nThe ones that seem to be secret police,\nNow all in place, all armed, in the obvious ambush!", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1942", + "month": "april" + }, + "context": { + "month": "april" + } + } }, "night-flowering-cactus": { "title": "“Night-Flowering Cactus”", @@ -38758,15 +39147,40 @@ } } }, + "no-room-at-the-inn": { + "title": "“No Room At the Inn”", + "body": "Into this world, this demented inn\nin which there is absolutely no room for him at all,\nChrist comes uninvited.\n\nBut because he cannot be at home in it,\nbecause he is out of place in it,\nand yet he must be in it,\nHis place is with the others for whom\nthere is no room.\n\nHis place is with those who do not belong,\nwho are rejected by power, because\nthey are regarded as weak,\nthose who are discredited,\nwho are denied status of persons,\nwho are tortured, bombed and exterminated.\n\nWith those for whom there is no room,\nChrist is present in this world.", + "metadata": { + "source": "Raids on the Unspeakable", + "date": { + "year": "1966" + }, + "context": { + "holiday": "christmas_eve" + } + } + }, "notes-for-a-new-liturgy": { "title": "“Notes for a New Liturgy”", "body": "There’s a big Zulu runs our congregation\nA woe doctor cherubim chaser\nPuts his finger on the chief witch\nHas a mind to deter foes\nIs by the Star Archangel shown a surprise\nWrites his letters in vision mentions his B.A.\nFrom many a college\nHas a fan to scatter flies\nReceives a penetrating look\nFrom an imaginary visitant in white\nKnows all the meanings at once\nKnows he is in heaven in rectangles\nOf invented saints\nFlaming with new degrees and orders every day\n\n“I dreamt this Church I dreamt\nSeven precious mitres over my head\nMy word is final.”\n\n“I now General Overseer Concession Registrar\nOf rains and weather Committeeman\nFor Pepsi-Cola all over the islands\nFlail of incontinent clergy\nWave my highstrung certificate in times of change\nDon’t you need a Defender with a medical guarantee?”\n\n“You think that I am only a clown-healer from the out-district?\nHold this black bag while I lay hands on children\nSteady my followers with magic curios”\n\n“When I sleep I watch you with eyes in my feet\nLast night I dreamt of four beds\nI must marry again must go get\nAnother angel-nun\nCome holy deaconess we’ll ride\nBarefoot in yellow busses to Jordan River\nWearing emblems of the common vow.”\n\n“Subleaders keep telling the message\nLike it was new\nConfirming my charism as Prime-Mover in Management\nI shall continue in office as President\nFor all time until the earth melt\nAs all Full-Leaders stand over you wearing their watches\nMoulding you by government of thought\nAnd I return a while to the Origin\nRuling through a female medium from an obscure place:”\n\n“HOLD THIS MITRE WHILE I STRANGLE CHICKENS\nAND THROW THEM IN THE AIR\nCOVERING THE SACRED STONE WITH BLOODY FEATHERS\n(And surround the altar\nWith lie detectors.”)", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1968", + "month": "july" + }, + "context": { + "month": "july" + } + } }, - "now-you-are-all-here": { - "title": "“Now You Are All Here”", + "now-you-are-all-here-you-might-as-well-know": { + "title": "“Now you are all here you might as well know …”", "body": "1. Now you are all here you might as well know this is America we do what we like.\n\n2. Be spontaneous it is the right way.\n\n3. Mothers you have met before still defy comprehension.\n\n4. Our scene is foggy we are asking you to clarify.\n\n5. Explains geomoetry of life. Where? At Catholic Worker.\n\n6. Very glad you came. With our mouths full of cornflakes we were expecting an emergency.\n\n7. Cynics declare you are in Greece.\n\n8. Better get back quick before the place is all used up.\n\n9. The night court: the mumbling judge: confused.\n\n10. Well-wishers are there to meet you head on.\n\n11. For the journal: soldiers, harbingers of change.\n\n12. You came just in time, the score is even.\n\n13. None of the machines has yet been broken.\n\n14. Come on we know you have seen Popes.\n\n15. People have been a little self-conscious around here in the emergency.\n\n16. Who cares what the cynics declare. But you have been in Greece.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1944" + } + } }, "the-oracle": { "title": "“The Oracle”", @@ -38870,12 +39284,24 @@ "seneca": { "title": "“Seneca”", "body": "When the torch is taken\nAnd the room is dark\nThe mute wife\nKnowing Seneca’s ways\nListens to night\nTo rumors\nAll around the house\nWhile her wise\nLord promenades\nWithin his own temple\nMaster and censor\nOverseeing\nHis own ways\nWith his philosophical\nsconce\nPolicing the streets\nOf this secret Rome\nWhile the wife\nSilent as a sea\nPolicing nothing\nWaits in darkness\nFor the Night Bird’s\nInscrutable cry.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1964", + "month": "march" + }, + "context": { + "month": "march" + } + } }, "sincerity": { "title": "“Sincerity”", "body": "_Omnis homo mendax_\n\nAs for the liar, fear him less\nThan one who thinks himself sincere\nWho, having deceived himself,\nCan deceive you with a good conscience.\n\nOne who doubts his own truth\nMay mistrust another less:\n\nKnowing, in his own heart,\nThat all men are liars\nHe will be less outraged\nWhen he is deceived by another.\n\nSo, too, will he sooner believe\nIn the sincerity of God.\n\nThe sincerity of God! Who never justifies\nHis actions to men! Who makes no bargains\nWith any other sincerity, because He knows\nThere is no other! Who does what He pleases\nAnd never protests His innocence!\n\nWhich of us can stand the sincerity of God?\n\nWhich of us can bear a Lord\nWho is neither guilty nor innocent\n(Who cannot be innocent because He cannot\nbe guilty)?\n\nWhat has our sincerity to do with His\nWhose truth is no approval of our truth\nAnd is not judged by anyone,\nEven by Himself?\n\n(Yet if I think myself sincere\nI will approve the purity of God\nConvinced that my own purity\nIs approved by Him)\n\nSo, when the Lord speaks, we go to sleep\nOr turn quickly to some congenial business\nSince, as every liar knows,\nNo man can bear such sincerity.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1956", + "month": "december" + }, "context": { "liturgy": "lent" } @@ -38911,7 +39337,11 @@ "song": { "title": "“Song”", "body": "The bottom of the sea has come\nAnd builded in my noiseless room\nThe fishes’ and the mermaids’ home,\n\nWhose it is most, most hell to be\nOut of the heavy-hanging sea\nAnd in the thin, thin changeable air\n\nOr unroom sleep some other where;\nBut play their coral violins\nWhere waters most lock music in:\n\nThe bottom of my room, the sea.\nFull of voiceless curtaindeep\nThere mermaid somnambules come sleep\nWhere fluted half-lights show the way,\n\nAnd there, there lost orchestras play\nAnd down the many quarterlights come\nTo the dim mirth of my aquadrome:\nThe bottom of my sea, the room.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1946" + } + } }, "the-sowing-of-meanings": { "title": "“The Sowing of Meanings”", @@ -38926,6 +39356,9 @@ "title": "“St. Malachy”", "body": "In November, in the days to remember the dead\nWhen air smells cold as earth,\nSt. Malachy, who is very old, gets up,\nParts the thin curtain of trees and dawns upon our land.\n\nHis coat is filled with drops of rain, and he is bearded\nWith all the seas of Poseidon.\n(Is it a crozier, or a trident in his hand?)\nHe weeps against the gothic window, and the empty\ncloister\nMourns like an ocean shell.\n\nTwo bells in the steeple\nTalk faintly to the old stranger\nAnd the tower considers his waters.\n“I have been sent to see my festival,” (his cavern speaksl)\n“For I am the saint of the day.\nShall I shake the drops from my locks and stand in your\ntransept,\nOr, leaving you, rest in the silence of my history?”\n\nSo the bells rang and we opened the antiphoners\nAnd the wrens and larks flew up out of the pages.\nOur thoughts became lambs. Our hearts swam like seas.\nOne monk believed that we should sing to him\nSome stone-age hymn\nOr something in the giant language.\nSo we played to him in the plainsong of the giant Gregory\nAnd oceans of Scripture sang upon bony Eire.\n\nThen the last salvage of flowers\n(Fostered under glass after the gardens foundered)\nHeld up their little lanterns on Malachy’s altar\nTo peer into his wooden eyes before the Mass began.\n\nRain sighed down the sides of the stone church.\nStorms sailed by all day in battle fleets.\nAt five o’clock, when we tried to see the sun, the speechless\nvisitor\nSighed and arose and shook the humus from his feet\nAnd with his trident stirred our trees\nAnd left down-wood, shaking some drops upon the ground.\n\nThus copper flames fall, tongues of fire fall\nThe leaves in hundreds fall upon his passing\nWhile night sends down her dreadnought darkness\nUpon this spurious Pentecost.\n\nAnd the Melchisedec of our year’s end\nWho came without a parent, leaves without a trace,\nAnd rain comes rattling down upon our forest\nLike the doors of a country jail.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1949" + }, "context": { "holiday": "saint_malachy" } @@ -46321,23 +46754,46 @@ "tags": [ "american" ], - "n_poems": 39 + "n_poems": 44 }, "poems": { "the-applicant": { "title": "“The Applicant”", "body": "First, are you our sort of a person?\nDo you wear\nA glass eye, false teeth or a crutch,\nA brace or a hook,\nRubber breasts or a rubber crotch,\n\nStitches to show something’s missing? No, no? Then\nHow can we give you a thing?\nStop crying.\nOpen your hand.\nEmpty? Empty. Here is a hand\n\nTo fill it and willing\nTo bring teacups and roll away headaches\nAnd do whatever you tell it.\nWill you marry it?\nIt is guaranteed\n\nTo thumb shut your eyes at the end\nAnd dissolve of sorrow.\nWe make new stock from the salt.\nI notice you are stark naked.\nHow about this suit--\n\nBlack and stiff, but not a bad fit.\nWill you marry it?\nIt is waterproof, shatterproof, proof\nAgainst fire and bombs through the roof.\nBelieve me, they’ll bury you in it.\n\nNow your head, excuse me, is empty.\nI have the ticket for that.\nCome here, sweetie, out of the closet.\nWell, what do you think of _that?_\nNaked as paper to start\n\nBut in twenty-five years she’ll be silver,\nIn fifty, gold.\nA living doll, everywhere you look.\nIt can sew, it can cook,\nIt can talk, talk, talk.\n\nIt works, there is nothing wrong with it.\nYou have a hole, it’s a poultice.\nYou have an eye, it’s an image.\nMy boy, it’s your last resort.\nWill you marry it, marry it, marry it.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1963" + } + } }, "ariel": { "title": "“Ariel”", "body": "Stasis in darkness.\nThen the substanceless blue\nPour of tor and distances.\n\nGod’s lioness,\nHow one we grow,\nPivot of heels and knees!--The furrow\n\nSplits and passes, sister to\nThe brown arc\nOf the neck I cannot catch,\n\nNigger-eye\nBerries cast dark\nHooks--\n\nBlack sweet blood mouthfuls,\nShadows.\nSomething else\n\nHauls me through air--\nThighs, hair;\nFlakes from my heels.\n\nWhite\nGodiva, I unpeel--\nDead hands, dead stringencies.\n\nAnd now I\nFoam to wheat, a glitter of seas.\nThe child’s cry\n\nMelts in the wall.\nAnd I\nAm the arrow,\n\nThe dew that flies\nSuicidal, at one with the drive\nInto the red\n\nEye, the cauldron of morning.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1960" + } + } + }, + "the-babysitters": { + "title": "“The Babysitters”", + "body": "It is ten years, now, since we rowed to Children’s Island.\nThe sun flamed straight down that noon on the water off Marblehead.\nThat summer we wore black glasses to hide our eyes.\nWe were always crying, in our spare rooms, little put-upon sisters,\nIn the two, huge, white, handsome houses in Swampscott.\nWhen the sweetheart from England appeared, with her cream skin and Yardley cosmetics,\nI had to sleep in the same room with the baby on a too-short cot,\nAnd the seven-year-old wouldn’t go out unless his jersey stripes\nMatched the stripes of his socks.\n\nOr it was richness!--eleven rooms and a yacht\nWith a polished mahogany stair to let into the water\nAnd a cabin boy who could decorate cakes in six-colored frosting.\nBut I didn’t know how to cook, and babies depressed me.\nNights, I wrote in my diary spitefully, my fingers red\nWith triangular scorch marks from ironing tiny ruchings and puffed sleeves.\nWhen the sporty wife and her doctor husband went on one of their cruises\nThey left me a borrowed maid named Ellen, “for protection,”\nAnd a small Dalmation.\n\nIn your house, the main house, you were better off.\nYou had a rose garden and a guest cottage and a model apothecary shop\nAnd a cook and a maid, and knew about the key to the bourbon.\nI remember you playing “Ja-Da” in a pink piqué dress\nOn the game-room piano, when the “big people” were out,\nAnd the maid smoked and shot pool under a green shaded lamp.\nThe cook had one walleye and couldn’t sleep, she was so nervous.\nOn trial, from Ireland, she burned batch after batch of cookies\nTill she was fired.\n\nO what has come over us, my sister!\nOn that day-off the two of us cried so hard to get\nWe lifted a sugared ham and a pineapple from the grownups’ icebox\nAnd rented an old green boat. I rowed. You read\nAloud, cross-legged on the stern seat, from the Generation of Vipers.\nSo we bobbed out to the island. It was deserted--\nA gallery of creaking porches and still interiors,\nStopped and awful as a photograph of somebody laughing\nBut ten years dead.\n\nThe bold gulls dove as if they owned it all.\nWe picked up sticks of driftwood and beat them off,\nThen stepped down the steep beach shelf and into the water.\nWe kicked and talked. The thick salt kept us up.\nI see us floating there yet, inseparable--two cork dolls.\nWhat keyhole have we slipped through, what door has shut?\nThe shadows of the grasses inched round like hands of a clock,\nAnd from our opposite continents we wave and call.\nEverything has happened.", + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1961" + }, + "context": { + "season": "summer" + } + } }, "blackberrying": { "title": "“Blackberrying”", "body": "Nobody in the lane, and nothing, nothing but blackberries,\nBlackberries on either side, though on the right mainly,\nA blackberry alley, going down in hooks, and a sea\nSomewhere at the end of it, heaving. Blackberries\nBig as the ball of my thumb, and dumb as eyes\nEbon in the hedges, fat\nWith blue-red juices. These they squander on my fingers.\nI had not asked for such a blood sisterhood; they must love me.\nThey accommodate themselves to my milkbottle, flattening their sides.\n\nOverhead go the choughs in black, cacophonous flocks--\nBits of burnt paper wheeling in a blown sky.\nTheirs is the only voice, protesting, protesting.\nI do not think the sea will appear at all.\nThe high, green meadows are glowing, as if lit from within.\nI come to one bush of berries so ripe it is a bush of flies,\nHanging their bluegreen bellies and their wing panes in a Chinese screen.\nThe honey-feast of the berries has stunned them; they believe in heaven.\nOne more hook, and the berries and bushes end.\n\nThe only thing to come now is the sea.\nFrom between two hills a sudden wind funnels at me,\nSlapping its phantom laundry in my face.\nThese hills are too green and sweet to have tasted salt.\nI follow the sheep path between them. A last hook brings me\nTo the hills’ northern face, and the face is orange rock\nThat looks out on nothing, nothing but a great space\nOf white and pewter lights, and a din like silversmiths\nBeating and beating at an intractable metal.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1960" + }, "context": { "month": "august" } @@ -46346,7 +46802,11 @@ "the-colossus": { "title": "“The Colossus”", "body": "I shall never get you put together entirely,\nPieced, glued, and properly jointed.\nMule-bray, pig-grunt and bawdy cackles\nProceed from your great lips.\nIt’s worse than a barnyard.\n\nPerhaps you consider yourself an oracle,\nMouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or other.\nThirty years now I have labored\nTo dredge the silt from your throat.\nI am none the wiser.\n\nScaling little ladders with glue pots and pails of lysol\nI crawl like an ant in mourning\nOver the weedy acres of your brow\nTo mend the immense skull plates and clear\nThe bald, white tumuli of your eyes.\n\nA blue sky out of the Oresteia\nArches above us. O father, all by yourself\nYou are pithy and historical as the Roman Forum.\nI open my lunch on a hill of black cypress.\nYour fluted bones and acanthine hair are littered\n\nIn their old anarchy to the horizon-line.\nIt would take more than a lightning-stroke\nTo create such a ruin.\nNights, I squat in the cornucopia\nOf your left ear, out of the wind,\n\nCounting the red stars and those of plum-color.\nThe sun rises under the pillar of your tongue.\nMy hours are married to shadow.\nNo longer do I listen for the scrape of a keel\nOn the blank stones of the landing.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1957" + } + } }, "crossing-the-water": { "title": "“Crossing the Water”", @@ -46360,17 +46820,32 @@ "daddy": { "title": "“Daddy”", "body": "You do not do, you do not do\nAny more, black shoe\nIn which I have lived like a foot\nFor thirty years, poor and white,\nBarely daring to breathe or Achoo.\n\nDaddy, I have had to kill you.\nYou died before I had time--\nMarble-heavy, a bag full of God,\nGhastly statue with one gray toe\nBig as a Frisco seal\n\nAnd a head in the freakish Atlantic\nWhere it pours bean green over blue\nIn the waters off beautiful Nauset.\nI used to pray to recover you.\nAch, du.\n\nIn the German tongue, in the Polish town\nScraped flat by the roller\nOf wars, wars, wars.\nBut the name of the town is common.\nMy Polack friend\n\nSays there are a dozen or two.\nSo I never could tell where you\nPut your foot, your root,\nI never could talk to you.\nThe tongue stuck in my jaw.\n\nIt stuck in a barb wire snare.\nIch, ich, ich, ich,\nI could hardly speak.\nI thought every German was you.\nAnd the language obscene\n\nAn engine, an engine\nChuffing me off like a Jew.\nA Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.\nI began to talk like a Jew.\nI think I may well be a Jew.\n\nThe snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna\nAre not very pure or true.\nWith my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck\nAnd my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack\nI may be a bit of a Jew.\n\nI have always been scared of _you,_\nWith your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.\nAnd your neat mustache\nAnd your Aryan eye, bright blue.\nPanzer-man, panzer-man, O You--\n\nNot God but a swastika\nSo black no sky could squeak through.\nEvery woman adores a Fascist,\nThe boot in the face, the brute\nBrute heart of a brute like you.\n\nYou stand at the blackboard, daddy,\nIn the picture I have of you,\nA cleft in your chin instead of your foot\nBut no less a devil for that, no not\nAny less the black man who\n\nBit my pretty red heart in two.\nI was ten when they buried you.\nAt twenty I tried to die\nAnd get back, back, back to you.\nI thought even the bones would do.\n\nBut they pulled me out of the sack,\nAnd they stuck me together with glue.\nAnd then I knew what to do.\nI made a model of you,\nA man in black with a Meinkampf look\n\nAnd a love of the rack and the screw.\nAnd I said I do, I do.\nSo daddy, I’m finally through.\nThe black telephone’s off at the root,\nThe voices just can’t worm through.\n\nIf I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two--\nThe vampire who said he was you\nAnd drank my blood for a year,\nSeven years, if you want to know.\nDaddy, you can lie back now.\n\nThere’s a stake in your fat black heart\nAnd the villagers never liked you.\nThey are dancing and stamping on you.\nThey always _knew_ it was you.\nDaddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1960" + } + } }, "the-death-of-myth-making": { "title": "“The Death of Myth-Making”", "body": "Two virtues ride, by stallion, by nag,\nTo grind our knives and scissors:\nLantern-jawed Reason, squat Common Sense,\nOne courting doctors of all sorts,\nOne, housewives and shopkeepers.\n\nThe trees are lopped, the poodles trim,\nThe laborer’s nails pared level\nSince those two civil servants set\nTheir whetstone to the blunted edge\nAnd minced the muddling devil\n\nWhose owl-eyes in the scraggly wood\nScared mothers to miscarry,\nDrove the dogs to cringe and whine,\nAnd turned the farmboy’s temper wolfish,\nThe housewife’s, desultory.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1959", + "month": "september" + }, + "context": { + "month": "september" + } + } }, "dream-with-clam-diggers": { "title": "“Dream with Clam-Diggers”", "body": "This dream budded bright with leaves around the edges,\nIts clear air winnowed by angels; she was come\nBack to her early sea-town home\nScathed, stained after tedious pilgrimages.\n\nBarefoot, she stood, in shock of that returning,\nBeside a neighbor’s house\nWith shingles burnished as glass,\nBlinds lowered on that hot morning.\n\nNo change met her: garden terrace, all summer\nTanged by melting tar,\nSloped seaward to plunge in blue; fed by white fire,\nThe whole scene flared welcome to this roamer.\n\nHigh against heaven, gulls went wheeling soundless\nOver tidal-fats where three children played\nSilent and shining on a green rock bedded in mud,\nTheir fabulous heyday endless.\n\nWith green rock gliding, a delicate schooner\nDecked forth in cockle-shells,\nThey sailed till tide foamed round their ankles\nAnd the fair ship sank, its crew knelled home for dinner.\n\nPlucked back thus sudden to that far innocence,\nShe, in her shabby travel garb, began\nWalking eager toward water, when there, one by one,\nClam-diggers rose up out of dark slime at her offense.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1956" + }, "context": { "month": "august" } @@ -46379,27 +46854,54 @@ "eavesdropper": { "title": "“Eavesdropper”", "body": "Your brother will trim my hedges!\nThey darken your house,\nNosey grower,\nMole on my shoulder,\nTo be scratched absently,\nTo bleed, if it comes to that.\nThe stain of the tropics\nStill urinous on you, a sin,\nA kind of bush-stink.\n\nYou may be local,\nBut that yellow!\nGodawful!\nYour body one\nLong nicotine-finger\nOn which I,\nWhite cigarette,\nBurn, for your inhalation,\nDriving the dull cells wild.\n\nLet me roost in you!\nMy distractions, my pallors.\nLet them start the queer alchemy\nThat melts the skin\nGrey tallow, from bone and bone.\nSo I saw your much sicker\nPredecessor wrapped up,\nA six and a half foot wedding cake.\nAnd he was not even malicious.\n\nDo not think I don’t notice your curtain--\nMidnight, four o’clock,\nLit (you are reading),\nTarting with the drafts that pass,\nLittle whore tongue,\nChenille beckoner,\nBeckoning my words in--\nThe zoo yowl, the mad soft\nMirror talk you love to catch me at.\n\nHow you jumped when I jumped on you\nArms folded, ear cocked,\nToad-yellow under the drop\nThat would not, would not drop\nIn a desert of cow people\nTrundling their udders home\nTo the electric milker, the wifey, the big blue eye\nThat watches, like God, or the sky\nThe ciphers that watch it.\n\nO yellow\nWeasel unable\nTo rearrange the bitchy starvation, the dust lust!\nI had you hooked.\nI called. You crawled out,\nA weather figure, boggling,\nChink-yellow, Belge troll,\nThe Low Church smile\nSpreading itself, bad butter.\n\nThis is what I am in for!\nYour bone plates,\nYour creaky biscuits,\nSweater sets and treachery!\nCome to tea! Come to tea!\nI shall stuff you with pillows!\nPillow after pillow of pure silence.\nFlea body!\nEyes like mice\n\nFlicking over my property,\nLevering letter flaps,\nScrutinizing the fly\nOf the man’s pants\nDead on the chair back,\nOpening the fat smiles, the eyes\nOf two babies\nTust to make sure--\nToad-stone! Sister bitch! Sweet neighbor!", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1963", + "month": "august" + }, + "context": { + "month": "august" + } + } }, "edge": { "title": "“Edge”", "body": "The woman is perfected.\nHer dead\n\nBody wears the smile of accomplishment,\nThe illusion of a Greek necessity\n\nFlows in the scrolls of her toga,\nHer bare\n\nFeet seem to be saying:\nWe have come so far, it is over.\n\nEach dead child coiled, a white serpent,\nOne at each little\n\nPitcher of milk, now empty.\nShe has folded\n\nThem back into her body as petals\nOf a rose close when the garden\n\nStiffens and odors bleed\nFrom the sweet, deep throats of the night flower.\n\nThe moon has nothing to be sad about,\nStaring from her hood of bone.\n\nShe is used to this sort of thing.\nHer blacks crackle and drag.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1960" + } + } }, "ella-mason-and-her-eleven-cats": { "title": "“Ella Mason and Her Eleven Cats”", "body": "Old Ella Mason keeps cats, eleven at last count,\nIn her ramshackle house off Somerset Terrace;\nPeople make queries\nOn seeing our neighbor’s cat-haunt,\nSaying: “Something’s addled in a woman who accommodates\nThat many cats.”\n\nRum and red-faced as a watermelon, her voice\nLong gone to wheeze and seed, Ella Mason\nFor no good reason\nPlays hostess to tabby, tom and increase,\nWith cream and chicken-gut feasting the palates\nOf finical cats.\n\nVillage stories go that in olden days\nElla flounced about minx-thin and haughty,\nA fashionable beauty\nSlaying the dandies with her emerald eyes;\nNow, run to fat, she’s a spinster whose door shuts\nOn all but cats.\n\nOnce we children sneaked over to spy Miss Mason\nNapping in her kitchen paved with saucers.\nOn antimacassars,\nTable-top, cupboard shelf, cats lounged brazen,\nOne gruff-timbred purr rolling from furred throats:\nSuch stentorian cats!\n\nWith poke and giggle, ready to skedaddle,\nWe peered agog through the cobwebbed door\nStraight into yellow glare\nOf guardian cats crouched round their idol,\nWhile Ella drowsed whiskered with sleek face, sly wits:\nSphinx-queen of cats.\n\n“Look! there she goes, Cat-Lady Mason!”\nWe snickered as she shambled down Somerset Terrace\nTo market for her dearies,\nMore mammoth and blowzy with every season;\n“Miss Ella’s got loony from keeping in cahoots\nWith eleven cats.”\n\nBut now turned kinder with time, we mark Miss Mason\nBlinking green-eyed and solitary\nAt girls who marry--\nDemure ones, lithe ones, needing no lesson\nThat vain jades sulk single down bridal nights,\nAccurst as wild-cats.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1957", + "month": "july" + }, + "context": { + "month": "july" + } + } }, "elm": { "title": "“Elm”", "body": "I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root:\nIt is what you fear.\nI do not fear it: I have been there.\n\nIs it the sea you hear in me,\nIts dissatisfactions?\nOr the voice of nothing, that was your madness?\n\nLove is a shadow.\nHow you lie and cry after it\nListen: these are its hooves: it has gone off, like a horse.\n\nAll night I shall gallop thus, impetuously,\nTill your head is a stone, your pillow a little turf,\nEchoing, echoing.\n\nOr shall I bring you the sound of poisons?\nThis is rain now, this big hush.\nAnd this is the fruit of it: tin-white, like arsenic.\n\nI have suffered the atrocity of sunsets.\nScorched to the root\nMy red filaments burn and stand, a hand of wires.\n\nNow I break up in pieces that fly about like clubs.\nA wind of such violence\nWill tolerate no bystanding: I must shriek.\n\nThe moon, also, is merciless: she would drag me\nCruelly, being barren.\nHer radiance scathes me. Or perhaps I have caught her.\n\nI let her go. I let her go\nDiminished and flat, as after radical surgery.\nHow your bad dreams possess and endow me.\n\nI am inhabited by a cry.\nNightly it flaps out\nLooking, with its hooks, for something to love.\n\nI am terrified by this dark thing\nThat sleeps in me;\nAll day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.\n\nClouds pass and disperse.\nAre those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables?\nIs it for such I agitate my heart?\n\nI am incapable of more knowledge.\nWhat is this, this face\nSo murderous in its strangle of branches?--\n\nIts snaky acids hiss.\nIt petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults\nThat kill, that kill, that kill.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1960" + } + } }, "epitaph-for-fire-and-flower": { "title": "“Epitaph for Fire and Flower”", "body": "You might as well string up\nThis wave’s green peak on wire\nTo prevent fall, or anchor the fluent air\nIn quartz, as crack your skull to keep\nThese two most perishable lovers from the touch\nThat will kindle angels’ envy, scorch and drop\nTheir fond hearts charred as any match.\n\nSeek no stony camera-eye to fix\nThe passing dazzle of each face\nIn black and white, or put on ice\nMouth’s instant flare for future looks;\nStars shoot their petals, and suns run to seed,\nHowever you may sweat to hold such darling wrecks\nHived like honey in your head.\n\nNow in the crux of their vows, hang your ear\nStill as a shell: hear what an age of glass\nThese lovers prophesy to lock embrace\nSecure in museum diamond for the stare\nOf astounded generations; they wrestle\nTo conquer cinder’s kingdom in the stroke of an hour\nAnd hoard faith safe in a fossil.\n\nBut though they’d rivet sinews in rock\nAnd have every weathercock kiss hang fire\nAs if to outflame a phoenix, the moment’s spur\nDrives nimble blood too quick\nFor a wish to tether: they ride nightlong\nIn their heartbeats’ blazing wake until red cock\nPlucks bare that comet’s flowering.\n\nDawn snuffs out star’s spent wick\nEven as love’s dear fools cry evergreen,\nAnd a languor of wax congeals the vein\nNo matter how fiercely lit; staunch contracts break\nAnd recoil in the altering light: the radiant limb\nBlows ash in each lover’s eye; the ardent look\nBlackens flesh to bone and devours them.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1957" + }, "context": { "season": "summer" } @@ -46419,6 +46921,9 @@ "title": "“Face Lift”", "body": "You bring me good news from the clinic,\nWhipping off your silk scarf, exhibiting the tight white\nMummy-cloths, smiling: I’m all right.\nWhen I was nine, a lime-green anesthetist\nFed me banana gas through a frog-mask. The nauseous vault\nBoomed with bad dreams and the Jovian voices of surgeons.\nThen mother swam up, holding a tin basin.\nO I was sick.\n\nThey’ve changed all that. Traveling\nNude as Cleopatra in my well-boiled hospital shift,\nFizzy with sedatives and unusually humorous,\nI roll to an anteroom where a kind man\nFists my fingers for me. He makes me feel something precious\nIs leaking from the funger-vents. At the count of two\nDarkness wipes me out like chalk on a blackboard …\nI don’t know a thing.\n\nFor five days I lie in secret,\nTapped like a cask, the years draining into my pillow.\nEven my best friend thinks I’m in the country.\nSkin doesn’t have roots, it peels away easy as paper.\nWhen I grin, the stitches tauten. I grow backward. I’m twenty,\nBroody and in long skirts on my first husband’s sofa, my fingers\nBuried in the lambswool of the dead poodle;\nI hadn’t a cat yet.\n\nNow she’s done for, the dewlapped lady\nI watched settle, line by line, in my mirror--\nOld sock-face, sagged on a darning egg.\nThey’ve trapped her in some laboratory jar.\nLet her die there, or wither incessantly for the next fifty years,\nNodding and rocking and fingering her thin hair.\nMother to myself, I wake swaddled in gauze,\nPink and smooth as a baby.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1962" + }, "context": { "season": "summer" } @@ -46427,17 +46932,46 @@ "fever-103deg": { "title": "“Fever 103°”", "body": "Pure? What does it mean?\nThe tongues of hell\nAre dull, dull as the triple\n\nTongues of dull, fat Cerberus\nWho wheezes at the gate. Incapable\nOf licking clean\n\nThe aguey tendon, the sin, the sin.\nThe tinder cries.\nThe indelible smell\n\nOf a snuffed candle!\nLove, love, the low smokes roll\nFrom me like Isadora’s scarves, I’m in a fright\n\nOne scarf will catch and anchor in the wheel,\nSuch yellow sullen smokes\nMake their own element. They will not rise,\n\nBut trundle round the globe\nChoking the aged and the meek,\nThe weak\n\nHothouse baby in its crib,\nThe ghastly orchid\nHanging its hanging garden in the air,\n\nDevilish leopard!\nRadiation turned it white\nAnd killed it in an hour.\n\nGreasing the bodies of adulterers\nLike Hiroshima ash and eating in.\nThe sin. The sin.\n\nDarling, all night\nI have been flickering, off, on, off, on.\nThe sheets grow heavy as a lecher’s kiss.\n\nThree days. Three nights.\nLemon water, chicken\nWater, water make me retch.\n\nI am too pure for you or anyone.\nYour body\nHurts me as the world hurts God. I am a lantern--\n\nMy head a moon\nOf Japanese paper, my gold beaten skin\nInfinitely delicate and infinitely expensive.\n\nDoes not my heat astound you! And my light!\nAll by myself I am a huge camellia\nGlowing and coming and going, flush on flush.\n\nI think I am going up,\nI think I may rise--\nThe beads of hot metal fly, and I love, I\n\nAm a pure acetylene\nVirgin\nAttended by roses,\n\nBy kisses, by cherubim,\nBy whatever these pink things mean!\nNot you, nor him\n\nNor him, nor him\n(My selves dissolving, old whore petticoats)--\nTo Paradise.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1962", + "month": "october", + "day": "20" + }, + "context": { + "month": "october", + "day": "20" + } + } }, "full-fathom-five": { "title": "“Full Fathom Five”", "body": "Old man, you surface seldom.\nThen you come in with the tide’s coming\nWhen seas wash cold, foam-\n\nCapped: white hair, white beard, far-flung,\nA dragnet, rising, falling, as waves\nCrest and trough. Miles long\n\nExtend the radial sheaves\nOf your spread hair, in which wrinkling skeins\nKnotted, caught, survives\n\nThe old myth of origins\nUnimaginable. You float near\nAs keeled ice-mountains\n\nOf the north, to be steered clear\nOf, not fathomed. All obscurity\nStarts with a danger:\n\nYour dangers are many. I\nCannot look much but your form suffers\nSome strange injury\n\nAnd seems to die: so vapors\nRavel to clearness on the dawn sea.\nThe muddy rumors\n\nOf your burial move me\nTo half-believe: your reappearance\nProves rumors shallow,\n\nFor the archaic trenched lines\nOf your grained face shed time in runnels:\nAges beat like rains\n\nOn the unbeaten channels\nOf the ocean. Such sage humor and\nDurance are whirlpools\n\nTo make away with the ground--\nWork of the earth and the sky’s ridgepole.\nWaist down, you may wind\n\nOne labyrinthine tangle\nTo root deep among knuckles, shinbones,\nSkulls. Inscrutable,\n\nBelow shoulders not once\nSeen by any man who kept his head,\nYou defy questions;\n\nYou defy godhood.\nI walk dry on your kingdom’s border\nExiled to no good.\n\nYour shelled bed I remember.\nFather, this thick air is murderous.\nI would breathe water.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1958" + } + } + }, + "green-rock-winthrop-bay": { + "title": "“Green Rock, Winthrop Bay”", + "body": "No lame excuses can gloss over\nBarge-tar clotted at the tide-line, the wrecked pier.\nI should have known better.\nFifteen years between me and the bay\nProfited memory, but did away with the old scenery\nAnd patched this shoddy\nMakeshift of a view to quit\nMy promise of an idyll. The blue’s worn out:\nIt’s a niggard estate,\nInimical now. The great green rock\nWe gave good use as ship and house is black\nWith tarry muck\nAnd periwinkles, shrunk to common\nSize. The cries of scavenging gulls sound thin\nIn the traffic of planes\nFrom Logan Airport opposite.\nGulls circle gray under shadow of a steelier flight.\nLoss cancels profit.\nUnless you do this tawdry harbor\nA service and ignore it, I go a liar\nGilding what’s eyesore,\nOr must take loophole and blame time\nFor the rock’s dwarfed lump, for the drabbled scum,\nFor a churlish welcome.", + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1959" + }, + "context": { + "season": "winter" + } + } }, "lady-lazarus": { "title": "“Lady Lazarus”", "body": "I have done it again.\nOne year in every ten\nI manage it--\n\nA sort of walking miracle, my skin\nBright as a Nazi lampshade,\nMy right foot\n\nA paperweight,\nMy face a featureless, fine\nJew linen.\n\nPeel off the napkin\nO my enemy.\nDo I terrify?--\n\nThe nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?\nThe sour breath\nWill vanish in a day.\n\nSoon, soon the flesh\nThe grave cave ate will be\nAt home on me\n\nAnd I a smiling woman.\nI am only thirty.\nAnd like the cat I have nine times to die.\n\nThis is Number Three.\nWhat a trash\nTo annihilate each decade.\n\nWhat a million filaments.\nThe peanut-crunching crowd\nShoves in to see\n\nThem unwrap me hand and foot--\nThe big strip tease.\nGentlemen, ladies\n\nThese are my hands\nMy knees.\nI may be skin and bone,\n\nNevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.\nThe first time it happened I was ten.\nIt was an accident.\n\nThe second time I meant\nTo last it out and not come back at all.\nI rocked shut\n\nAs a seashell.\nThey had to call and call\nAnd pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.\n\nDying\nIs an art, like everything else.\nI do it exceptionally well.\n\nI do it so it feels like hell.\nI do it so it feels real.\nI guess you could say I’ve a call.\n\nIt’s easy enough to do it in a cell.\nIt’s easy enough to do it and stay put.\nIt’s the theatrical\n\nComeback in broad day\nTo the same place, the same face, the same brute\nAmused shout:\n\n‘A miracle!’\nThat knocks me out.\nThere is a charge\n\nFor the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge\nFor the hearing of my heart--\nIt really goes.\n\nAnd there is a charge, a very large charge\nFor a word or a touch\nOr a bit of blood\n\nOr a piece of my hair or my clothes.\nSo, so, Herr Doktor.\nSo, Herr Enemy.\n\nI am your opus,\nI am your valuable,\nThe pure gold baby\n\nThat melts to a shriek.\nI turn and burn.\nDo not think I underestimate your great concern.\n\nAsh, ash--\nYou poke and stir.\nFlesh, bone, there is nothing there--\n\nA cake of soap,\nA wedding ring,\nA gold filling.\n\nHerr God, Herr Lucifer\nBeware\nBeware.\n\nOut of the ash\nI rise with my red hair\nAnd I eat men like air.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1960" + }, "context": { "season": "summer" } @@ -46446,31 +46980,70 @@ "a-lesson-in-vengeance": { "title": "“A Lesson in Vengeance”", "body": "In the dour ages\nOf drafty cells and draftier castles,\nOf dragons breathing without the frame of fables,\nSaint and king unfisted obstruction’s knuckles\nBy no miracle or majestic means,\n\nBut by such abuses\nAs smack of spite and the overscrupulous\nTwisting of thumbscrews: one soul tied in sinews,\nOne white horse drowned, and all the unconquered pinnacles\nOf God’s city and Babylon’s\n\nMust wait, while here Suso’s\nHand hones his tacks and needles,\nScourging to sores his own red sluices\nFor the relish of heaven, relentless, dousing with prickles\nOf horsehair and lice his horny loins;\n\nWhile there irate Cyrus\nSquanders a summer and the brawn of his heroes\nTo rebuke the horse-swallowing River Gyndes:\nHe split it into three hundred and sixty trickles\nA girl could wade without wetting her shins.\n\nStill, latter-day sages,\nSmiling at this behavior, subjugating their enemies\nNeatly, nicely, by disbelief or bridges,\nNever grip, as their grandsires did, that devil who chuckles\nFrom grain of the marrow and the river-bed grains.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1959", + "month": "september" + }, + "context": { + "month": "september" + } + } }, "love-letter": { "title": "“Love Letter”", "body": "Not easy to state the change you made.\nIf I’m alive now, then I was dead,\nThough, like a stone, unbothered by it,\nStaying put according to habit.\nYou didn’t just toe me an inch, no--\nNor leave me to set my small bald eye\nSkyward again, without hope, of course,\nOf apprehending blueness, or stars.\n\nThat wasn’t it. I slept, say: a snake\nMasked among black rocks as a black rock\nIn the white hiatus of winter--\nLike my neighbors, taking no pleasure\nIn the million perfectly-chiseled\nCheeks alighting each moment to melt\nMy cheek of basalt. They turned to tears,\nAngels weeping over dull natures,\nBut didn’t convince me. Those tears froze.\nEach dead head had a visor of ice.\n\nAnd I slept on like a bent finger.\nThe first thing I saw was sheer air\nAnd the locked drops rising in a dew\nLimpid as spirits. Many stones lay\nDense and expressionless round about.\nI didn’t know what to make of it.\nI shone, mica-scaled, and unfolded\nTo pour myself out like a fluid\nAmong bird feet and the stems of plants.\nI wasn’t fooled. I knew you at once.\n\nTree and stone glittered, without shadows.\nMy finger-length grew lucent as glass.\nI started to bud like a March twig:\nAn arm and a leg, an arm, a leg.\nFrom stone to cloud, so I ascended.\nNow I resemble a sort of god\nFloating through the air in my soul-shift\nPure as a pane of ice. It’s a gift.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1962" + }, "context": { "month": "march" } } }, + "magnolia-shoals": { + "title": "“Magnolia Shoals”", + "body": "Up here among the gull cries\nwe stroll through a maze of pale\nred-mottled relics, shells, claws\n\nas if it were summer still.\nThat season has turned its back.\nThrough the green sea gardens stall,\n\nbow, and recover their look\nof the imperishable\ngardens in an antique book\n\nor tapestries on a wall,\nleaves behind us warp and lapse.\nThe late month withers, as well.\n\nBelow us a white gull keeps\nthe weed-slicked shelf for his own,\nhustles other gulls off. Crabs\n\nrove over his field of stone;\nmussels cluster blue as grapes :\nhis beak brings the harvest in.\n\nThe watercolorist grips\nhis brush in the stringent air.\nThe horizon’s bare of ships,\n\nthe beach and the rocks are bare.\nHe paints a blizzard of gulls,\nwings drumming in the winter.", + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1959" + }, + "context": { + "season": "winter" + } + } + }, "metamorphosis": { "title": "“Metamorphosis”", "body": "Haunched like a faun, he hooed\nfrom grove of moon-glint and fen-frost\nuntil all owls in the twigged forest\nflapped black to look and brood\non the call this man made.\n\nNo sound but a drunken coot\nlurching home along river bank;\nstars hung water-sunk, so a rank\nof double star-eyes lit\nboughs where those owls sat.\n\nAn arena of yellow eyes\nwatched the changing shape he cut,\nsaw hoof harden from foot, saw sprout\ngoat-horns; marked how god rose\nand galloped woodward in that guise.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1957", + "month": "january" + }, + "context": { + "month": "january" + } + } }, "monologue-at-3-am": { - "title": "“Monologue at 3 Am”", + "title": "“Monologue at 3 A.M.”", "body": "Better that every fiber crack\nand fury make head,\nblood drenching vivid\ncouch, carpet, floor\nand the snake-figured almanac\nvouching you are\na million green counties from here,\n\nthan to sit mute, twitching so\nunder prickling stars,\nwith stare, with curse\nblackening the time\ngoodbyes were said, trains let go,\nand I, great magnanimous fool, thus wrenched from\nmy one kingdom.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1956" + } + } }, "morning-song": { "title": "“Morning Song”", "body": "Love set you going like a fat gold watch.\nThe midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry\nTook its place among the elements.\n\nOur voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.\nIn a drafty museum, your nakedness\nShadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.\n\nI’m no more your mother\nThan the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow\nEffacement at the wind’s hand.\n\nAll night your moth-breath\nFlickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen:\nA far sea moves in my ear.\n\nOne cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral\nIn my Victorian nightgown.\nYour mouth opens clean as a cat’s. The window square\n\nWhitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try\nYour handful of notes;\nThe clear vowels rise like balloons.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1962" + } + } }, "mussel-hunter-at-rock-harbor": { "title": "“Mussel Hunter at Rock Harbor”", @@ -46481,15 +47054,40 @@ } } }, + "nick-and-the-candlestick": { + "title": "“Nick and the Candlestick”", + "body": "I am a miner. The light burns blue.\nWaxy stalactites\nDrip and thicken, tears\n\nThe earthen womb\nExudes from its dead boredom.\nBlack bat airs\n\nWrap me, raggy shawls,\nCold homicides.\nThey weld to me like plums.\n\nOld cave of calcium\nIcicles, old echoer.\nEven the newts are white,\n\nThose holy Joes.\nAnd the fish, the fish--\nChrist! they are panes of ice,\n\nA vice of knives,\nA piranha\nReligion, drinking\n\nIts first communion out of my live toes.\nThe candle\nGulps and recovers its small altitude,\n\nIts yellows hearten.\nO love, how did you get here?\nO embryo\n\nRemembering, even in sleep,\nYour crossed position.\nThe blood blooms clean\n\nIn you, ruby.\nThe pain\nYou wake to is not yours.\n\nLove, love,\nI have hung our cave with roses,\nWith soft rugs--\n\nThe last of Victoriana.\nLet the stars\nPlummet to their dark address,\n\nLet the mercuric\nAtoms that cripple drip\nInto the terrible well,\n\nYou are the one\nSolid the spaces lean on, envious.\nYou are the baby in the barn.", + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1960" + } + } + }, "on-the-decline-of-oracles": { "title": "“On the Decline of Oracles”", - "body": "_Inside a ruined temple the broken statue of a god spoke a mysterious language._\n--Giorgio de Chirico\n\n\nMy father kept a speckled conch\nBy two bronze bookends of ships in sail,\nAnd as I listened its cold teeth seethed\nWith voices of that ambiguous sea\nOld Böcklin missed, who held a shell\nTo hear the sea he could not hear.\nWhat the seashell spoke to his inner ear\nHe knew, but no peasants know.\n\nMy father died, and when he died\nHe willed his books and shell away;\nThe books burned up, sea took the shell,\nBut I, I keep the voices he\nSet in my ear, and in my eye\nThe sight of those blue, unseen waves\nFor which the ghost of Böcklin grieves.\nThe peasants feast and multiply\n\nAnd never need see what I see.\nIn the Temple of Broken Stones, above\nA worn curtain, rears the white head\nOf a god or madman. Nobody knows\nWhich, or dares ask. From him I have\nTomorrow’s gossip and doldrums. So much\nIs vision good for: like a persistent stitch\nIn the side, it nags, is tedious.\n\nStraddling a stool in the third-floor window-\nBooth of the Alexandra House\nOver Petty Cury, I regard\nWith some fatigue the smoky rooms\nOf the restaurant opposite; see impose\nItself on the cook at the steaming stove\nA picture of what’s going to happen. I’ve\nTo wait it out. It will come. It comes:\n\nThree barely-known men are coming up\nA stair: this veils both stove and cook.\nOne is pale, with orange hair;\nBehind glasses the second’s eyes are blurred;\nThe third walks leaning on a stick\nAnd smiling. These trivial images\nInvade the cloistral eye like pages\nFrom a gross comic strip, and toward\n\nThe happening of this happening\nThe earth turns now. In half an hour\nI shall go down the shabby stair and meet,\nComing up, those three. Worth\nLess than present, past--this future.\nWorthless such vision to eyes gone dull\nThat once descried Troy’s towers fall,\nSaw evil break out of the north.", - "metadata": {} + "body": "_Inside a ruined temple the broken statue of a god spoke a mysterious language._\n --Giorgio de Chirico\n\nMy father kept a speckled conch\nBy two bronze bookends of ships in sail,\nAnd as I listened its cold teeth seethed\nWith voices of that ambiguous sea\nOld Böcklin missed, who held a shell\nTo hear the sea he could not hear.\nWhat the seashell spoke to his inner ear\nHe knew, but no peasants know.\n\nMy father died, and when he died\nHe willed his books and shell away;\nThe books burned up, sea took the shell,\nBut I, I keep the voices he\nSet in my ear, and in my eye\nThe sight of those blue, unseen waves\nFor which the ghost of Böcklin grieves.\nThe peasants feast and multiply\n\nAnd never need see what I see.\nIn the Temple of Broken Stones, above\nA worn curtain, rears the white head\nOf a god or madman. Nobody knows\nWhich, or dares ask. From him I have\nTomorrow’s gossip and doldrums. So much\nIs vision good for: like a persistent stitch\nIn the side, it nags, is tedious.\n\nStraddling a stool in the third-floor window-\nBooth of the Alexandra House\nOver Petty Cury, I regard\nWith some fatigue the smoky rooms\nOf the restaurant opposite; see impose\nItself on the cook at the steaming stove\nA picture of what’s going to happen. I’ve\nTo wait it out. It will come. It comes:\n\nThree barely-known men are coming up\nA stair: this veils both stove and cook.\nOne is pale, with orange hair;\nBehind glasses the second’s eyes are blurred;\nThe third walks leaning on a stick\nAnd smiling. These trivial images\nInvade the cloistral eye like pages\nFrom a gross comic strip, and toward\n\nThe happening of this happening\nThe earth turns now. In half an hour\nI shall go down the shabby stair and meet,\nComing up, those three. Worth\nLess than present, past--this future.\nWorthless such vision to eyes gone dull\nThat once descried Troy’s towers fall,\nSaw evil break out of the north.", + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1959", + "month": "september" + }, + "context": { + "month": "september" + } + } }, "on-the-difficulty-of-conjuring-up-a-dryad": { "title": "“On the Difficulty of Conjuring up a Dryad”", "body": "Ravening through the persistent bric-a-brac\nOf blunt pencils, rose-sprigged coffee cup,\nPostage stamps, stacked books’ clamor and yawp,\nNeighborhood cockcrow--all nature’s prodigal backtalk,\nThe vaunting mind\nSnubs impromptu spiels of wind\nAnd wrestles to impose\nIts own order on what is.\n\n“With my fantasy alone,” brags the importunate head,\nArrogant among rook-tongued spaces,\nSheep greens, finned falls, “I shall compose a Crisis\nTo stun sky black out, drive gibbering mad\nTrout, cock, ram,\nThat bulk so calm\nOn my jealous stare,\nSelf-sufficient as they are.”\n\nBut no hocus-pocus of green angels\nDamasks with dazzle the threadbare eye;\n“My trouble, doctor, is: I see a tree,\nAnd that damn scrupulous tree won’t practise wiles\nTo beguile sight:\nE.g., by cant of light\nConcoct a Daphne;\nMy tree stays tree.”\n\n“However I wrench obstinate bark and trunk\nTo my sweet will, no luminous shape\nSteps out radiant in limb, eye, lip,\nTo hoodwink the honest earth which pointblank\nSpurns such fiction\nAs nymphs; cold vision\nWill have no counterfeit\nPalmed off on it.”\n\n“No doubt now in dream-propertied fall some moon-eyed,\nStar-lucky sleight-of-hand man watches\nMy jilting lady squander coin, gold leaf stock ditches,\nAnd the affluent air go studded with seed,\nWhile this beggared brain\nHatches no fortune,\nBut from leaf, from grass,\nThieves what it has.”", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1957", + "month": "july" + }, + "context": { + "month": "july" + } + } }, "poppies-in-october": { "title": "“Poppies in October”", @@ -46503,12 +47101,19 @@ "purdah": { "title": "“Purdah”", "body": "Jade--\nStone of the side,\nThe agonized\n\nSide of a green Adam, I\nSmile, cross-legged,\nEnigmatical,\n\nShifting my clarities.\nSo valuable!\nHow the sun polishes this shoulder!\n\nAnd should\nThe moon, my\nIndefatigable cousin\n\nRise, with her cancerous pallors,\nDragging trees--\nLittle bushy polyps,\n\nLittle nets,\nMy visibilities hide.\nI gleam like a mirror.\n\nAt this facet the bridegroom arrives.\nLord of the mirrors!\nIt is himself he guides\n\nIn among these silk\nScreens, these rustling appurtenances.\nI breathe, and the mouth\n\nVeil stirs its curtain.\nMy eye\nVeil is\n\nA concatenation of rainbows.\nI am his.\nEven in his\n\nAbsence, I\nRevolve in my\nSheath of impossibles,\n\nPriceless and quiet\nAmong these parakeets, macaws!\nO chatterers\n\nAttendants of the eyelash!\nI shall unloose\nOne feather, like the peacock.\n\nAttendants of the lip!\nI shall unloose\nOne note\n\nShattering\nThe chandelier\nOf air that all day plies\n\nIts crystals,\nA million ignorants.\nAttendants!\n\nAttendants!\nAnd at his next step\nI shall unloose\n\nI shall unloose--\nFrom the small jeweled\nDoll he guards like a heart--\n\nThe lioness,\nThe shriek in the bath,\nThe cloak of holes.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1963" + } + } }, "the-snowman-on-the-moors": { "title": "“The Snowman on the Moors”", "body": "Stalemated their armies stood, with tottering banners:\nShe flung from a room\nStill ringing with bruit of insults and dishonors\n\nAnd in fury left him\nGlowering at the coal-fire: “Come find me”--her last taunt.\nHe did not come\n\nBut sat on, guarding his grim battlement.\nBy the doorstep\nHer winter-beheaded daisies, marrowless, gaunt,\n\nWarned her to keep\nIndoors with politic goodwill, not haste\nInto a landscape\n\nOf stark wind-harrowed hills and weltering mist;\nBut from the house\nShe stalked intractable as a driven ghost\n\nAcross moor snows\nPocked by rook-claw and rabbit-track: she must yet win\nHim to his knees--\n\nLet him send police and hounds to bring her in.\nNursing her rage\nThrough bare whistling heather, over stiles of black stone,\n\nTo the world’s white edge\nShe came, and called hell to subdue an unruly man\nAnd join her siege.\n\nIt was no fire-blurting fork-tailed demon\nVolcanoed hot\nFrom marble snow-heap of moor to ride that woman\n\nWith spur and knout\nDown from pride’s size: instead, a grisly-thewed\nAustere, corpse-white\n\nGiant heaved into the distance, stone-hatcheted,\nSky-high, and snow\nFloured his whirling beard, and at his tread\n\nAmbushed birds by\nDozens dropped dead in the hedges: o she felt\nNo love in his eye,\n\nWorse--saw dangling from that spike-studded belt\nLadies’ sheaved skulls:\nMournfully the dry tongues clacked their guilt:\n\n“Our wit made fools\nOf kings, unmanned kings’ sons: our masteries\nAmused court halls:\n\nFor that brag, we barnacle these iron thighs.”\nThroned in the thick\nOf a blizzard, the giant roared up with his chittering trophies.\n\nFrom brunt of axe-crack\nShe shied sideways: a white fizz! and the giant, pursuing,\nCrumbled to smoke.\n\nHumbled then, and crying,\nThe girl bent homeward, brimful of gentle talk\nAnd mild obeying.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1957" + }, "context": { "season": "winter" } @@ -46518,6 +47123,10 @@ "title": "“Sow”", "body": "God knows how our neighbor managed to breed\nHis great sow:\nWhatever his shrewd secret, he kept it hid\n\nIn the same way\nHe kept the sow: impounded from public stare,\nPrize ribbon and pig show.\n\nBut one dusk our questions commended us to a tour\nThrough his lantern-lit\nMaze of barns to the lintel of the sunk sty door\n\nTo gape at it:\nBehold! no rose-and-larkspurred china suckling\nWith a penny slot\n\nFor thrifty children, nor dolt pig ripe for heckling,\nAbout to be\nGlorified for prime flesh and golden crackling\n\nIn a parsley halo;\nNor even one of the common barnyard sows,\nMire-smirched, blowzy,\n\nMunching thistle and knotweed on her snout-cruise--\nBloat tun of milk\nOn the move, hedged by a litter of feat-foot ninnies\n\nShrilling her hulk\nTo halt for a swig at the pink teats. No. This vast\nBrobdingnag bulk\n\nOf a sow lounged belly-bedded on that black compost,\nFat-rutted eyes\nDream-filmed. What a vision of ancient hoghood must\n\nThus wholly engross\nThe great grandam!--our marvel blazoned a knight\nIn glittering guise\n\nUnhorsed and shredded in the grove of combat\nBy a grisly-bristled\nBoar: fabulous enough to straddle that sow’s heat.\n\nBut our farmer whistled,\nThen, with a jocular fist thwacked the barrel nape,\nAnd the green-copse-castled\n\nPig hove, letting legend like dried mud drop,\nSlowly, grunt\nOn grunt, up in the flickering light to shape\n\nA monument\nProdigious in gluttonies as that hog whose want\nMade lean Lent\n\nOf kitchen slops and, stomaching no constraint,\nProceeded to swill\nThe seven troughed seas and every earthquaking continent.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1957", + "month": "july" + }, "context": { "liturgy": "lent" } @@ -46527,6 +47136,9 @@ "title": "“Stars over the Dordogne”", "body": "Stars are dropping thick as stones into the twiggy\nPicket of trees whose silhouette is darker\nThan the dark of the sky because it is quite starless.\nThe woods are a well. The stars drop silently.\nThey seem large, yet they drop, and no gap is visible.\nNor do they send up fires where they fall\nOr any signal of distress or anxiousness.\nThey are eaten immediately by the pines.\n\nWhere I am at home, only the sparsest stars\nArrive at twilight, and then after some effort.\nAnd they are wan, dulled by much traveling.\nThe smaller and more timid never arrive at all\nBut stay, sitting far out, in their own dust.\nThey are orphans. I cannot see them. They are lost.\nBut tonight they have discovered this river with no trouble;\nThey are scrubbed and self-assured as the great planets.\n\nThe Big Dipper is my only familiar.\nI miss Orion and Cassiopeia’s Chair. Maybe they are\nHanging shyly under the studded horizon\nLike a child’s too-simple mathematical problem.\nInfinite number seems to be the issue up there.\nOr else they are present, and their disguise so bright\nI am overlooking them by looking too hard\nPerhaps it is the season that is not right.\n\nAnd what if the sky here is no different,\nAnd it is my eyes that have been sharpening themselves?\nSuch a luxury of stars would embarrass me.\nThe few I am used to are plain and durable;\nI think they would not wish for this dressy backcloth\nOr much company, or the mildness of the south\nThey are too puritan and solitary for that--\nWhen one of them falls it leaves a space,\n\nA sense of absence in its old shining place.\nAnd where I lie now, back to my own dark star,\nI see those constellations in my head,\nUnwarmed by the sweet air of this peach orchard.\nThere is too much ease here; these stars treat me too well.\nOn this hill, with its view of lit castles, each swung bell\nIs accounting for its cow. I shut my eyes\nAnd drink the small night chill like news of home.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1962" + }, "context": { "season": "summer" } @@ -46536,15 +47148,33 @@ "title": "“Strumpet Song”", "body": "With white frost gone\nand all green dreams not worth much,\nafter a lean day’s work\ntime comes round for that foul slut:\nmere bruit of her takes our street\nuntil every man,\nbe he red, pale or dark,\nveers to her slouch.\n\nMark, I cry, that mouth\nmade to do violence on,\nthat seamed face\naskew with blotch, dint, scar\nstruck by each dour year;\nstalks there not some such wild man\nas can find ruth\nto patch with brand of love this rank grimace\nwhich out from black tarn, ditch and cup\ninto my most chaste own eyes\nlooks up.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1957" + }, "context": { "season": "spring" } } }, + "suicide-off-egg-rock": { + "title": "“Suicide off Egg Rock”", + "body": "Behind him the hotdogs split and drizzled\nOn the public grills, and the ochreous salt flats,\nGas tanks, factory stacks- that landscape\nOf imperfections his bowels were part of-\nRippled and pulsed in the glassy updraught.\nSun struck the water like a damnation.\nNo pit of shadow to crawl into,\nAnd his blood beating the old tattoo\nI am, I am, I am. Children\nWere squealing where combers broke and the spindrift\nRaveled wind-ripped from the crest of the wave.\nA mongrel working his legs to a gallop\nHustled a gull flock to flap off the sandspit.\n\nHe smoldered, as if stone-deaf, blindfold,\nHis body beached with the sea’s garbage,\nA machine to breathe and beat forever.\nFlies filing in through a dead skate’s eyehole\nBuzzed and assailed the vaulted brainchamber.\nThe words in his book wormed off the pages.\nEverything glittered like blank paper.\n\nEverything shrank in the sun’s corrosive\nRay but Egg Rock on the blue wastage.\nHe heard when he walked into the water\n\nThe forgetful surf creaming on those ledges.", + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1959" + }, + "context": { + "season": "winter" + } + } + }, "tulips": { "title": "“Tulips”", "body": "The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here.\nLook how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in.\nI am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly\nAs the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands.\nI am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.\nI have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses\nAnd my history to the anesthetist and my body to surgeons.\n\nThey have propped my head between the pillow and the sheet-cuff\nLike an eye between two white lids that will not shut.\nStupid pupil, it has to take everything in.\nThe nurses pass and pass, they are no trouble,\nThey pass the way gulls pass inland in their white caps,\nDoing things with their hands, one just the same as another,\nSo it is impossible to tell how many there are.\n\nMy body is a pebble to them, they tend it as water\nTends to the pebbles it must run over, smoothing them gently.\nThey bring me numbness in their bright needles, they bring me sleep.\nNow I have lost myself I am sick of baggage--\nMy patent leather overnight case like a black pillbox,\nMy husband and child smiling out of the family photo;\nTheir smiles catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks.\n\nI have let things slip, a thirty-year-old cargo boat\nstubbornly hanging on to my name and address.\nThey have swabbed me clear of my loving associations.\nScared and bare on the green plastic-pillowed trolley\nI watched my teaset, my bureaus of linen, my books\nSink out of sight, and the water went over my head.\nI am a nun now, I have never been so pure.\n\nI didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted\nTo lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty.\nHow free it is, you have no idea how free--\nThe peacefulness is so big it dazes you,\nAnd it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets.\nIt is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them\nShutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet.\n\nThe tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me.\nEven through the gift paper I could hear them breathe\nLightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby.\nTheir redness talks to my wound, it corresponds.\nThey are subtle: they seem to float, though they weigh me down,\nUpsetting me with their sudden tongues and their color,\nA dozen red lead sinkers round my neck.\n\nNobody watched me before, now I am watched.\nThe tulips turn to me, and the window behind me\nWhere once a day the light slowly widens and slowly thins,\nAnd I see myself, flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow\nBetween the eye of the sun and the eyes of the tulips,\nAnd I have no face, I have wanted to efface myself.\nThe vivid tulips eat my oxygen.\n\nBefore they came the air was calm enough,\nComing and going, breath by breath, without any fuss.\nThen the tulips filled it up like a loud noise.\nNow the air snags and eddies round them the way a river\nSnags and eddies round a sunken rust-red engine.\nThey concentrate my attention, that was happy\nPlaying and resting without committing itself.\n\nThe walls, also, seem to be warming themselves.\nThe tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals;\nThey are opening like the mouth of some great African cat,\nAnd I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes\nIts bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me.\nThe water I taste is warm and salt, like the sea,\nAnd comes from a country far away as health.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1961" + }, "context": { "month": "april" } @@ -46554,6 +47184,9 @@ "title": "“Two Sisters of Persephone”", "body": "Two girls there are: within the house\nOne sits; the other, without;\nDaylong a duet of shade and light\nPlays between these.\n\nIn her dark wainscotted room,\nThe furst works problems on\nA mathematical machine;\nDry ticks mark time\n\nAs she calculates each sum;\nAt this barren enterprise\nRat-shrewd go her squint eyes,\nRoot-pale her meager frame.\n\nBronzed as earth, the second lies,\nHearing ticks blown gold\nLike pollen on bright air; lulled\nNear a bed of poppies,\n\nShe sees how their red silk flare\nOf petalled blood\nBurns open to sun’s blade;\nOn that green altar\n\nFreely become sun’s bride, the latter\nGrows quick with seed;\nGrass-couched in her labour’s pride,\nShe bears a king. Turned bitter\n\nAnd sallow as any lemon,\nThe other, wry virgin to the last,\nGoes graveward with flesh laid waste,\nWorm-husbanded, yet no woman;\n\nInscribed above her head, these lines:\nWhile flowering, ladies, scant love not\nLest all your fruit\nBe but this black outcrop of stones.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1956" + }, "context": { "month": "june" } @@ -46571,7 +47204,11 @@ "widow": { "title": "“Widow”", "body": "Widow. The word consumes itself--\nBody, a sheet of newsprint on the fire\nLevitating a numb minute in the updraft\nOver the scalding, red topography\nThat will put her heart out like an only eye.\n\nWidow. The dead syllable, with its shadow\nOf an echo, exposes the panel in the wall\nBehind which the secret passage lies--stale air,\nFusty remembrances, the coiled-spring stair\nThat opens at the top onto nothing at all\n\nWidow. The bitter spider sits\nAnd sits in the center of her loveless spokes.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1962" + } + } }, "winter-trees": { "title": "“Winter Trees”", @@ -46586,6 +47223,9 @@ "title": "“Wreath for a Bridal”", "body": "What though green leaves only witness\nSuch pact as is made once only; what matter\nThat owl voice sole “yes,” while cows utter\nLow moos of approve; let sun surpliced in brightness\nStand stock still to laud these mated ones\nWhose stark act all coming double luck joins.\n\nCouched daylong in cloisters of stinging nettle\nThey lie, cut-grass assaulting each separate sense\nWith savor; coupled so, pure paragons of constance,\nThis pair seek single state from that dual battle.\nNow speak some sacrament to parry scruple\nFor wedlock wrought within love’s proper chapel.\n\nCall here with flying colors all watchful birds\nTo people the twigged aisles; lead babel tongues\nOf animals to choir: “Look what thresh of wings\nWields guard of honor over these!” Starred with words,\nLet night bless that luck-rooted mead of clover\nWhere, bedded like angels, two burn one in fever.\n\nFrom this holy day on, all pollen blown\nShall strew broadcast so rare a seed on wind\nThat every breath, thus teeming, set the land\nSprouting fruit, flowers, children most fair in legion\nTo slay spawn of dragon’s teeth: speaking this promise,\nLet flesh be knit, and each step hence go famous.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1956" + }, "context": { "season": "summer" } @@ -46594,7 +47234,11 @@ "youre": { "title": "“You’re”", "body": "Clownlike, happiest on your hands,\nFeet to the stars, and moon-skulled,\nGilled like a fish. A common-sense\nThumbs-down on the dodo’s mode.\nWrapped up in yourself like a spool,\nTrawling your dark as owls do.\nMute as a turnip from the Fourth\nOf July to All Fools’ Day,\nO high-riser, my little loaf.\n\nVague as fog and looked for like mail.\nFarther off than Australia.\nBent-backed Atlas, our traveled prawn.\nSnug as a bud and at home\nLike a sprat in a pickle jug.\nA creel of eels, all ripples.\nJumpy as a Mexican bean.\nRight, like a well-done sum.\nA clean slate, with your own face on.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1960" + } + } } } }, @@ -46915,17 +47559,20 @@ "language": "english", "flag": "🇺🇸", "link": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Allan_Poe", - "favorite": false, + "favorite": true, "tags": [ "american" ], - "n_poems": 56 + "n_poems": 54 }, "poems": { "al-aaraaf": { "title": "“Al Aaraaf”", - "body": "# I.\n\nO! nothing earthly save the ray\n(Thrown back from flowers) of Beauty’s eye,\nAs in those gardens where the day\nSprings from the gems of Circassy--\nO! nothing earthly save the thrill\nOf melody in woodland rill--\nOr (music of the passion-hearted)\nJoy’s voice so peacefully departed\nThat like the murmur in the shell,\nIts echo dwelleth and will dwell--\nO! nothing of the dross of ours--\nYet all the beauty--all the flowers\nThat list our Love, and deck our bowers--\nAdorn yon world afar, afar--\nThe wandering star.\n\n’Twas a sweet time for Nesace--for there\nHer world lay lolling on the golden air,\nNear four bright suns--a temporary rest--\nAn oasis in desert of the blest.\nAway away--’mid seas of rays that roll\nEmpyrean splendor o’er th’ unchained soul--\nThe soul that scarce (the billows are so dense)\nCan struggle to its destin’d eminence--\nTo distant spheres, from time to time, she rode,\nAnd late to ours, the favour’d one of God--\nBut, now, the ruler of an anchor’d realm,\nShe throws aside the sceptre--leaves the helm,\nAnd, amid incense and high spiritual hymns,\nLaves in quadruple light her angel limbs.\n\nNow happiest, loveliest in yon lovely Earth,\nWhence sprang the “Idea of Beauty” into birth,\n(Falling in wreaths thro’ many a startled star,\nLike woman’s hair ’mid pearls, until, afar,\nIt lit on hills Achaian, and there dwelt),\nShe look’d into Infinity--and knelt.\nRich clouds, for canopies, about her curled--\nFit emblems of the model of her world--\nSeen but in beauty--not impeding sight--\nOf other beauty glittering thro’ the light--\nA wreath that twined each starry form around,\nAnd all the opal’d air in color bound.\n\nAll hurriedly she knelt upon a bed\nOf flowers: of lilies such as rear’d the head\nOn the fair Capo Deucato, and sprang\nSo eagerly around about to hang\nUpon the flying footsteps of--deep pride--\nOf her who lov’d a mortal--and so died.\nThe Sephalica, budding with young bees,\nUprear’d its purple stem around her knees:\nAnd gemmy flower, of Trebizond misnam’d--\nInmate of highest stars, where erst it sham’d\nAll other loveliness: its honied dew\n(The fabled nectar that the heathen knew)\nDeliriously sweet, was dropp’d from Heaven,\nAnd fell on gardens of the unforgiven In Trebizond--and on a sunny flower\nSo like its own above that, to this hour,\nIt still remaineth, torturing the bee\nWith madness, and unwonted reverie:\nIn Heaven, and all its environs, the leaf\nAnd blossom of the fairy plant, in grief\nDisconsolate linger--grief that hangs her head,\nRepenting follies that full long have fled,\nHeaving her white breast to the balmy air,\nLike guilty beauty, chasten’d, and more fair:\nNyctanthes too, as sacred as the light\nShe fears to perfume, perfuming the night:\nAnd Clytia pondering between many a sun,\nWhile pettish tears adown her petals run:\nAnd that aspiring flower that sprang on Earth--\nAnd died, ere scarce exalted into birth,\nBursting its odorous heart in spirit to wing Its way to Heaven, from garden of a king:\nAnd Valisnerian lotus thither flown\nFrom struggling with the waters of the Rhone:\nAnd thy most lovely purple perfume, Zante!\nIsola d’oro!--Fior di Levante!\nAnd the Nelumbo bud that floats for ever\nWith Indian Cupid down the holy river--\nFair flowers, and fairy! to whose care is given\nTo bear the Goddess’ song, in odors, up to Heaven:\n\n“Spirit! that dwellest where,\nIn the deep sky,\nThe terrible and fair,\nIn beauty vie!\nBeyond the line of blue--\nThe boundary of the star\nWhich turneth at the view\nOf thy barrier and thy bar--\nOf the barrier overgone\nBy the comets who were cast\nFrom their pride, and from their throne\nTo be drudges till the last--\nTo be carriers of fire\n(The red fire of their heart)\nWith speed that may not tire\nAnd with pain that shall not part--\nWho livest--_that_ we know--\nIn Eternity--we feel--\nBut the shadow of whose brow\nWhat spirit shall reveal?\nTho’ the beings whom thy Nesace,\nThy messenger hath known\nHave dream’d for thy Infinity\nA model of their own--\nThy will is done, O God!\nThe star hath ridden high\nThro’ many a tempest, but she rode\nBeneath thy burning eye;\nAnd here, in thought, to thee--\nIn thought that can alone\nAscend thy empire and so be\nA partner of thy throne--\nBy winged Fantasy,\n My embassy is given,\nTill secrecy shall knowledge be\nIn the environs of Heaven.”\n\nShe ceas’d--and buried then her burning cheek\nAbash’d, amid the lilies there, to seek\nA shelter from the fervor of His eye;\nFor the stars trembled at the Deity.\nShe stirr’d not--breath’d not--for a voice was there\nHow solemnly pervading the calm air!\nA sound of silence on the startled ear\nWhich dreamy poets name “the music of the sphere.”\nOurs is a world of words: Quiet we call\n“Silence”--which is the merest word of all.\n\nAll Nature speaks, and ev’n ideal things\nFlap shadowy sounds from the visionary wings--\nBut ah! not so when, thus, in realms on high\nThe eternal voice of God is passing by,\nAnd the red winds are withering in the sky!\n“What tho’ in worlds which sightless cycles run,\nLink’d to a little system, and one sun--\nWhere all my love is folly, and the crowd\nStill think my terrors but the thunder cloud,\nThe storm, the earthquake, and the ocean-wrath\n(Ah! will they cross me in my angrier path?)\nWhat tho’ in worlds which own a single sun\nThe sands of time grow dimmer as they run,\nYet thine is my resplendency, so given\nTo bear my secrets thro’ the upper Heaven.\nLeave tenantless thy crystal home, and fly,\nWith all thy train, athwart the moony sky--\nApart--like fire-flies in Sicilian night,\nAnd wing to other worlds another light!\nDivulge the secrets of thy embassy\nTo the proud orbs that twinkle--and so be\nTo ev’ry heart a barrier and a ban\nLest the stars totter in the guilt of man!”\n\nUp rose the maiden in the yellow night,\nThe single-mooned eve!--on earth we plight\nOur faith to one love--and one moon adore--\nThe birth-place of young Beauty had no more.\nAs sprang that yellow star from downy hours,\nUp rose the maiden from her shrine of flowers,\nAnd bent o’er sheeny mountain and dim plain\nHer way--but left not yet her Therasaean reign.\n\n\n# II.\n\nHigh on a mountain of enamell’d head--\nSuch as the drowsy shepherd on his bed\nOf giant pasturage lying at his ease,\nRaising his heavy eyelid, starts and sees\nWith many a mutter’d “hope to be forgiven”\nWhat time the moon is quadrated in Heaven--\nOf rosy head, that towering far away Into the sunlit ether, caught the ray\nOf sunken suns at eve--at noon of night,\nWhile the moon danc’d with the fair stranger light--\nUprear’d upon such height arose a pile\nOf gorgeous columns on th’ uuburthen’d air,\nFlashing from Parian marble that twin smile\nFar down upon the wave that sparkled there,\nAnd nursled the young mountain in its lair.\nOf molten stars their pavement, such as fall\nThro’ the ebon air, besilvering the pall\nOf their own dissolution, while they die--\nAdorning then the dwellings of the sky.\nA dome, by linked light from Heaven let down,\nSat gently on these columns as a crown--\nA window of one circular diamond, there,\nLook’d out above into the purple air\nAnd rays from God shot down that meteor chain\nAnd hallow’d all the beauty twice again,\nSave when, between th’ Empyrean and that ring,\nSome eager spirit flapp’d his dusky wing.\nBut on the pillars Seraph eyes have seen\nThe dimness of this world: that grayish green\nThat Nature loves the best for Beauty’s grave\nLurk’d in each cornice, round each architrave--\nAnd every sculptured cherub thereabout\nThat from his marble dwelling peered out,\nSeem’d earthly in the shadow of his niche--\nAchaian statues in a world so rich?\nFriezes from Tadmor and Persepolis--\nFrom Balbec, and the stilly, clear abyss\nOf beautiful Gomorrah! Oh, the wave Is now upon thee--but too late to save!\nSound loves to revel in a summer night:\nWitness the murmur of the gray twilight\nThat stole upon the ear, in Eyraco,\nOf many a wild star-gazer long ago--\nThat stealeth ever on the ear of him\nWho, musing, gazeth on the distance dim,\nAnd sees the darkness coming as a cloud--\nIs not its form--its voice--most palpable and loud?\nBut what is this?--it cometh--and it brings\nA music with it--’tis the rush of wings--\nA pause--and then a sweeping, falling strain,\nAnd Nesace is in her halls again.\nFrom the wild energy of wanton haste\nHer cheeks were flushing, and her lips apart;\nThe zone that clung around her gentle waist\nHad burst beneath the heaving of her heart.\nWithin the centre of that hall to breathe\nShe paus’d and panted, Zanthe! all beneath,\nThe fairy light that kiss’d her golden hair\nAnd long’d to rest, yet could but sparkle there!\n\nYoung flowers were whispering in melody\nTo happy flowers that night--and tree to tree;\nFountains were gushing music as they fell In many a star-lit grove, or moon-light dell;\nYet silence came upon material things--\nFair flowers, bright waterfalls and angel wings--\nAnd sound alone that from the spirit sprang\nBore burthen to the charm the maiden sang:\n\n“Neath blue-bell or streamer--\nOr tufted wild spray\nThat keeps, from the dreamer,\nThe moonbeam away--\nBright beings! that ponder,\nWith half-closing eyes,\nOn the stars which your wonder\nHath drawn from the skies,\nTill they glance thro’ the shade, and\nCome down to your brow\nLike--eyes of the maiden\nWho calls on you now--\nArise! from your dreaming\nIn violet bowers,\nTo duty beseeming\nThese star-litten hours--\nAnd shake from your tresses\nEncumber’d with dew\n\nThe breath of those kisses\nThat cumber them too--\n(O! how, without you, Love!\nCould angels be blest?)\nThose kisses of true love\nThat lull’d ye to rest!\nUp! shake from your wing\nEach hindering thing:\nThe dew of the night--\nIt would weigh down your flight;\nAnd true love caresses--\nO! leave them apart!\nThey are light on the tresses,\nBut lead on the heart.\n\nLigeia! Ligeia!\nMy beautiful one!\nWhose harshest idea\nWill to melody run,\nO! is it thy will\nOn the breezes to toss?\nOr, capriciously still,\nLike the lone Albatross,\nIncumbent on night\n(As she on the air)\nTo keep watch with delight\nOn the harmony there?\n\nLigeia! wherever\nThy image may be,\nNo magic shall sever\nThy music from thee.\nThou hast bound many eyes\nIn a dreamy sleep--\nBut the strains still arise\nWhich _thy_ vigilance keep--\n\nThe sound of the rain\nWhich leaps down to the flower,\nAnd dances again\nIn the rhythm of the shower--\nThe murmur that springs\nFrom the growing of grass\nAre the music of things--\nBut are modell’d, alas!\nAway, then, my dearest,\nO! hie thee away\nTo springs that lie clearest\nBeneath the moon-ray--\nTo lone lake that smiles,\nIn its dream of deep rest,\nAt the many star-isles\nThat enjewel its breast--\nWhere wild flowers, creeping,\nHave mingled their shade,\nOn its margin is sleeping\nFull many a maid--\nSome have left the cool glade, and\nHave slept with the bee--\nArouse them, my maiden,\nOn moorland and lea--\n\nGo! breathe on their slumber,\nAll softly in ear,\nThe musical number\nThey slumber’d to hear--\nFor what can awaken\nAn angel so soon\nWhose sleep hath been taken\nBeneath the cold moon,\nAs the spell which no slumber\nOf witchery may test,\nThe rhythmical number\nWhich lull’d him to rest?”\n\nSpirits in wing, and angels to the view,\nA thousand seraphs burst th’ Empyrean thro’,\nYoung dreams still hovering on their drowsy flight--\nSeraphs in all but “Knowledge,” the keen light\nThat fell, refracted, thro’ thy bounds afar,\nO death! from eye of God upon that star;\nSweet was that error--sweeter still that death--\nSweet was that error--ev’n with _us_ the breath\nOf Science dims the mirror of our joy--\nTo them ’twere the Simoom, and would destroy--\nFor what (to them) availeth it to know\nThat Truth is Falsehood--or that Bliss is Woe?\nSweet was their death--with them to die was rife\nWith the last ecstasy of satiate life--\nBeyond that death no immortality--\nBut sleep that pondereth and is not “to be”--\nAnd there--oh! may my weary spirit dwell--\nApart from Heaven’s Eternity--and yet how far from Hell!\n\nWhat guilty spirit, in what shrubbery dim\nHeard not the stirring summons of that hymn?\nBut two: they fell: for heaven no grace imparts\nTo those who hear not for their beating hearts.\nA maiden-angel and her seraph-lover--\nO! where (and ye may seek the wide skies over)\nWas Love, the blind, near sober Duty known?\nUnguided Love hath fallen--’mid “tears of perfect moan.”\n\nHe was a goodly spirit--he who fell:\nA wanderer by mossy-mantled well--\nA gazer on the lights that shine above--\nA dreamer in the moonbeam by his love:\nWhat wonder? for each star is eye-like there,\nAnd looks so sweetly down on Beauty’s hair--\nAnd they, and ev’ry mossy spring were holy\nTo his love-haunted heart and melancholy.\nThe night had found (to him a night of wo)\nUpon a mountain crag, young Angelo--\nBeetling it bends athwart the solemn sky,\nAnd scowls on starry worlds that down beneath it lie.\nHere sate he with his love--his dark eye bent\nWith eagle gaze along the firmament:\nNow turn’d it upon her--but ever then It trembled to the orb of EARTH again.\n\n“Ianthe, dearest, see! how dim that ray!\nHow lovely ’tis to look so far away!\nShe seemed not thus upon that autumn eve I left her gorgeous halls--nor mourned to leave,\nThat eve--that eve--I should remember well--\nThe sun-ray dropped, in Lemnos with a spell\nOn th’ Arabesque carving of a gilded hall\nWherein I sate, and on the draperied wall--\nAnd on my eyelids--O, the heavy light!\nHow drowsily it weighed them into night!\nOn flowers, before, and mist, and love they ran\nWith Persian Saadi in his Gulistan:\nBut O, that light!--I slumbered--Death, the while,\nStole o’er my senses in that lovely isle\nSo softly that no single silken hair\nAwoke that slept--or knew that he was there.”\n\n“The last spot of Earth’s orb I trod upon\nWas a proud temple called the Parthenon;\nMore beauty clung around her columned wall\nThen even thy glowing bosom beats withal,\nAnd when old Time my wing did disenthral\nThence sprang I--as the eagle from his tower,\nAnd years I left behind me in an hour.\nWhat time upon her airy bounds I hung,\nOne half the garden of her globe was flung\nUnrolling as a chart unto my view--\nTenantless cities of the desert too!\nIanthe, beauty crowded on me then,\nAnd half I wished to be again of men.”\n\n“My Angelo! and why of them to be?\nA brighter dwelling-place is here for thee--\nAnd greener fields than in yon world above,\nAnd woman’s loveliness--and passionate love.”\n“But list, Ianthe! when the air so soft\nFailed, as my pennoned spirit leapt aloft,\nPerhaps my brain grew dizzy--but the world I left so late was into chaos hurled,\nSprang from her station, on the winds apart,\nAnd rolled a flame, the fiery Heaven athwart.\nMethought, my sweet one, then I ceased to soar,\nAnd fell--not swiftly as I rose before,\nBut with a downward, tremulous motion thro’\nLight, brazen rays, this golden star unto!\nNor long the measure of my falling hours,\nFor nearest of all stars was thine to ours--\nDread star! that came, amid a night of mirth,\nA red Daedalion on the timid Earth.”\n\n“We came--and to thy Earth--but not to us\nBe given our lady’s bidding to discuss:\nWe came, my love; around, above, below,\nGay fire-fly of the night we come and go,\nNor ask a reason save the angel-nod\n_She_ grants to us as granted by her God--\nBut, Angelo, than thine gray Time unfurled\nNever his fairy wing o’er fairer world!\nDim was its little disk, and angel eyes\nAlone could see the phantom in the skies,\nWhen first Al Aaraaf knew her course to be\nHeadlong thitherward o’er the starry sea--\nBut when its glory swelled upon the sky,\nAs glowing Beauty’s bust beneath man’s eye,\nWe paused before the heritage of men,\nAnd thy star trembled--as doth Beauty then!”\n\nThus in discourse, the lovers whiled away\nThe night that waned and waned and brought no day.\nThey fell: for Heaven to them no hope imparts\nWho hear not for the beating of their hearts.", + "body": "# I.\n\nO! nothing earthly save the ray\n(Thrown back from flowers) of Beauty’s eye,\nAs in those gardens where the day\nSprings from the gems of Circassy--\nO! nothing earthly save the thrill\nOf melody in woodland rill--\nOr (music of the passion-hearted)\nJoy’s voice so peacefully departed\nThat like the murmur in the shell,\nIts echo dwelleth and will dwell--\nO! nothing of the dross of ours--\nYet all the beauty--all the flowers\nThat list our Love, and deck our bowers--\nAdorn yon world afar, afar--\nThe wandering star.\n\n’Twas a sweet time for Nesace--for there\nHer world lay lolling on the golden air,\nNear four bright suns--a temporary rest--\nAn oasis in desert of the blest.\nAway away--’mid seas of rays that roll\nEmpyrean splendor o’er th’ unchained soul--\nThe soul that scarce (the billows are so dense)\nCan struggle to its destin’d eminence--\nTo distant spheres, from time to time, she rode,\nAnd late to ours, the favour’d one of God--\nBut, now, the ruler of an anchor’d realm,\nShe throws aside the sceptre--leaves the helm,\nAnd, amid incense and high spiritual hymns,\nLaves in quadruple light her angel limbs.\n\nNow happiest, loveliest in yon lovely Earth,\nWhence sprang the “Idea of Beauty” into birth,\n(Falling in wreaths thro’ many a startled star,\nLike woman’s hair ’mid pearls, until, afar,\nIt lit on hills Achaian, and there dwelt),\nShe look’d into Infinity--and knelt.\nRich clouds, for canopies, about her curled--\nFit emblems of the model of her world--\nSeen but in beauty--not impeding sight--\nOf other beauty glittering thro’ the light--\nA wreath that twined each starry form around,\nAnd all the opal’d air in color bound.\n\nAll hurriedly she knelt upon a bed\nOf flowers: of lilies such as rear’d the head\nOn the fair Capo Deucato, and sprang\nSo eagerly around about to hang\nUpon the flying footsteps of--deep pride--\nOf her who lov’d a mortal--and so died.\nThe Sephalica, budding with young bees,\nUprear’d its purple stem around her knees:\nAnd gemmy flower, of Trebizond misnam’d--\nInmate of highest stars, where erst it sham’d\nAll other loveliness: its honied dew\n(The fabled nectar that the heathen knew)\nDeliriously sweet, was dropp’d from Heaven,\nAnd fell on gardens of the unforgiven \nIn Trebizond--and on a sunny flower\nSo like its own above that, to this hour,\nIt still remaineth, torturing the bee\nWith madness, and unwonted reverie:\nIn Heaven, and all its environs, the leaf\nAnd blossom of the fairy plant, in grief\nDisconsolate linger--grief that hangs her head,\nRepenting follies that full long have fled,\nHeaving her white breast to the balmy air,\nLike guilty beauty, chasten’d, and more fair:\nNyctanthes too, as sacred as the light\nShe fears to perfume, perfuming the night:\nAnd Clytia pondering between many a sun,\nWhile pettish tears adown her petals run:\nAnd that aspiring flower that sprang on Earth--\nAnd died, ere scarce exalted into birth,\nBursting its odorous heart in spirit to wing \nIts way to Heaven, from garden of a king:\nAnd Valisnerian lotus thither flown\nFrom struggling with the waters of the Rhone:\nAnd thy most lovely purple perfume, Zante!\nIsola d’oro!--Fior di Levante!\nAnd the Nelumbo bud that floats for ever\nWith Indian Cupid down the holy river--\nFair flowers, and fairy! to whose care is given\nTo bear the Goddess’ song, in odors, up to Heaven:\n\n“Spirit! that dwellest where,\nIn the deep sky,\nThe terrible and fair,\nIn beauty vie!\nBeyond the line of blue--\nThe boundary of the star\nWhich turneth at the view\nOf thy barrier and thy bar--\nOf the barrier overgone\nBy the comets who were cast\nFrom their pride, and from their throne\nTo be drudges till the last--\nTo be carriers of fire\n(The red fire of their heart)\nWith speed that may not tire\nAnd with pain that shall not part--\nWho livest--_that_ we know--\nIn Eternity--we feel--\nBut the shadow of whose brow\nWhat spirit shall reveal?\nTho’ the beings whom thy Nesace,\nThy messenger hath known\nHave dream’d for thy Infinity\nA model of their own--\nThy will is done, O God!\nThe star hath ridden high\nThro’ many a tempest, but she rode\nBeneath thy burning eye;\nAnd here, in thought, to thee--\nIn thought that can alone\nAscend thy empire and so be\nA partner of thy throne--\nBy winged Fantasy,\n My embassy is given,\nTill secrecy shall knowledge be\nIn the environs of Heaven.”\n\nShe ceas’d--and buried then her burning cheek\nAbash’d, amid the lilies there, to seek\nA shelter from the fervor of His eye;\nFor the stars trembled at the Deity.\nShe stirr’d not--breath’d not--for a voice was there\nHow solemnly pervading the calm air!\nA sound of silence on the startled ear\nWhich dreamy poets name “the music of the sphere.”\nOurs is a world of words: Quiet we call\n“Silence”--which is the merest word of all.\n\nAll Nature speaks, and ev’n ideal things\nFlap shadowy sounds from the visionary wings--\nBut ah! not so when, thus, in realms on high\nThe eternal voice of God is passing by,\nAnd the red winds are withering in the sky!\n“What tho’ in worlds which sightless cycles run,\nLink’d to a little system, and one sun--\nWhere all my love is folly, and the crowd\nStill think my terrors but the thunder cloud,\nThe storm, the earthquake, and the ocean-wrath\n(Ah! will they cross me in my angrier path?)\nWhat tho’ in worlds which own a single sun\nThe sands of time grow dimmer as they run,\nYet thine is my resplendency, so given\nTo bear my secrets thro’ the upper Heaven.\nLeave tenantless thy crystal home, and fly,\nWith all thy train, athwart the moony sky--\nApart--like fire-flies in Sicilian night,\nAnd wing to other worlds another light!\nDivulge the secrets of thy embassy\nTo the proud orbs that twinkle--and so be\nTo ev’ry heart a barrier and a ban\nLest the stars totter in the guilt of man!”\n\nUp rose the maiden in the yellow night,\nThe single-mooned eve!--on earth we plight\nOur faith to one love--and one moon adore--\nThe birth-place of young Beauty had no more.\nAs sprang that yellow star from downy hours,\nUp rose the maiden from her shrine of flowers,\nAnd bent o’er sheeny mountain and dim plain\nHer way--but left not yet her Therasaean reign.\n\n\n# II.\n\nHigh on a mountain of enamell’d head--\nSuch as the drowsy shepherd on his bed\nOf giant pasturage lying at his ease,\nRaising his heavy eyelid, starts and sees\nWith many a mutter’d “hope to be forgiven”\nWhat time the moon is quadrated in Heaven--\nOf rosy head, that towering far away \nInto the sunlit ether, caught the ray\nOf sunken suns at eve--at noon of night,\nWhile the moon danc’d with the fair stranger light--\nUprear’d upon such height arose a pile\nOf gorgeous columns on th’ uuburthen’d air,\nFlashing from Parian marble that twin smile\nFar down upon the wave that sparkled there,\nAnd nursled the young mountain in its lair.\nOf molten stars their pavement, such as fall\nThro’ the ebon air, besilvering the pall\nOf their own dissolution, while they die--\nAdorning then the dwellings of the sky.\nA dome, by linked light from Heaven let down,\nSat gently on these columns as a crown--\nA window of one circular diamond, there,\nLook’d out above into the purple air\nAnd rays from God shot down that meteor chain\nAnd hallow’d all the beauty twice again,\nSave when, between th’ Empyrean and that ring,\nSome eager spirit flapp’d his dusky wing.\nBut on the pillars Seraph eyes have seen\nThe dimness of this world: that grayish green\nThat Nature loves the best for Beauty’s grave\nLurk’d in each cornice, round each architrave--\nAnd every sculptured cherub thereabout\nThat from his marble dwelling peered out,\nSeem’d earthly in the shadow of his niche--\nAchaian statues in a world so rich?\nFriezes from Tadmor and Persepolis--\nFrom Balbec, and the stilly, clear abyss\nOf beautiful Gomorrah! Oh, the wave \nIs now upon thee--but too late to save!\nSound loves to revel in a summer night:\nWitness the murmur of the gray twilight\nThat stole upon the ear, in Eyraco,\nOf many a wild star-gazer long ago--\nThat stealeth ever on the ear of him\nWho, musing, gazeth on the distance dim,\nAnd sees the darkness coming as a cloud--\nIs not its form--its voice--most palpable and loud?\nBut what is this?--it cometh--and it brings\nA music with it--’tis the rush of wings--\nA pause--and then a sweeping, falling strain,\nAnd Nesace is in her halls again.\nFrom the wild energy of wanton haste\nHer cheeks were flushing, and her lips apart;\nThe zone that clung around her gentle waist\nHad burst beneath the heaving of her heart.\nWithin the centre of that hall to breathe\nShe paus’d and panted, Zanthe! all beneath,\nThe fairy light that kiss’d her golden hair\nAnd long’d to rest, yet could but sparkle there!\n\nYoung flowers were whispering in melody\nTo happy flowers that night--and tree to tree;\nFountains were gushing music as they fell \nIn many a star-lit grove, or moon-light dell;\nYet silence came upon material things--\nFair flowers, bright waterfalls and angel wings--\nAnd sound alone that from the spirit sprang\nBore burthen to the charm the maiden sang:\n\n“Neath blue-bell or streamer--\nOr tufted wild spray\nThat keeps, from the dreamer,\nThe moonbeam away--\nBright beings! that ponder,\nWith half-closing eyes,\nOn the stars which your wonder\nHath drawn from the skies,\nTill they glance thro’ the shade, and\nCome down to your brow\nLike--eyes of the maiden\nWho calls on you now--\nArise! from your dreaming\nIn violet bowers,\nTo duty beseeming\nThese star-litten hours--\nAnd shake from your tresses\nEncumber’d with dew\n\nThe breath of those kisses\nThat cumber them too--\n(O! how, without you, Love!\nCould angels be blest?)\nThose kisses of true love\nThat lull’d ye to rest!\nUp! shake from your wing\nEach hindering thing:\nThe dew of the night--\nIt would weigh down your flight;\nAnd true love caresses--\nO! leave them apart!\nThey are light on the tresses,\nBut lead on the heart.\n\nLigeia! Ligeia!\nMy beautiful one!\nWhose harshest idea\nWill to melody run,\nO! is it thy will\nOn the breezes to toss?\nOr, capriciously still,\nLike the lone Albatross,\nIncumbent on night\n(As she on the air)\nTo keep watch with delight\nOn the harmony there?\n\nLigeia! wherever\nThy image may be,\nNo magic shall sever\nThy music from thee.\nThou hast bound many eyes\nIn a dreamy sleep--\nBut the strains still arise\nWhich _thy_ vigilance keep--\n\nThe sound of the rain\nWhich leaps down to the flower,\nAnd dances again\nIn the rhythm of the shower--\nThe murmur that springs\nFrom the growing of grass\nAre the music of things--\nBut are modell’d, alas!\nAway, then, my dearest,\nO! hie thee away\nTo springs that lie clearest\nBeneath the moon-ray--\nTo lone lake that smiles,\nIn its dream of deep rest,\nAt the many star-isles\nThat enjewel its breast--\nWhere wild flowers, creeping,\nHave mingled their shade,\nOn its margin is sleeping\nFull many a maid--\nSome have left the cool glade, and\nHave slept with the bee--\nArouse them, my maiden,\nOn moorland and lea--\n\nGo! breathe on their slumber,\nAll softly in ear,\nThe musical number\nThey slumber’d to hear--\nFor what can awaken\nAn angel so soon\nWhose sleep hath been taken\nBeneath the cold moon,\nAs the spell which no slumber\nOf witchery may test,\nThe rhythmical number\nWhich lull’d him to rest?”\n\nSpirits in wing, and angels to the view,\nA thousand seraphs burst th’ Empyrean thro’,\nYoung dreams still hovering on their drowsy flight--\nSeraphs in all but “Knowledge,” the keen light\nThat fell, refracted, thro’ thy bounds afar,\nO death! from eye of God upon that star;\nSweet was that error--sweeter still that death--\nSweet was that error--ev’n with _us_ the breath\nOf Science dims the mirror of our joy--\nTo them ’twere the Simoom, and would destroy--\nFor what (to them) availeth it to know\nThat Truth is Falsehood--or that Bliss is Woe?\nSweet was their death--with them to die was rife\nWith the last ecstasy of satiate life--\nBeyond that death no immortality--\nBut sleep that pondereth and is not “to be”--\nAnd there--oh! may my weary spirit dwell--\nApart from Heaven’s Eternity--and yet how far from Hell!\n\nWhat guilty spirit, in what shrubbery dim\nHeard not the stirring summons of that hymn?\nBut two: they fell: for heaven no grace imparts\nTo those who hear not for their beating hearts.\nA maiden-angel and her seraph-lover--\nO! where (and ye may seek the wide skies over)\nWas Love, the blind, near sober Duty known?\nUnguided Love hath fallen--’mid “tears of perfect moan.”\n\nHe was a goodly spirit--he who fell:\nA wanderer by mossy-mantled well--\nA gazer on the lights that shine above--\nA dreamer in the moonbeam by his love:\nWhat wonder? for each star is eye-like there,\nAnd looks so sweetly down on Beauty’s hair--\nAnd they, and ev’ry mossy spring were holy\nTo his love-haunted heart and melancholy.\nThe night had found (to him a night of wo)\nUpon a mountain crag, young Angelo--\nBeetling it bends athwart the solemn sky,\nAnd scowls on starry worlds that down beneath it lie.\nHere sate he with his love--his dark eye bent\nWith eagle gaze along the firmament:\nNow turn’d it upon her--but ever then \nIt trembled to the orb of EARTH again.\n\n“Ianthe, dearest, see! how dim that ray!\nHow lovely ’tis to look so far away!\nShe seemed not thus upon that autumn eve \nI left her gorgeous halls--nor mourned to leave,\nThat eve--that eve--I should remember well--\nThe sun-ray dropped, in Lemnos with a spell\nOn th’ Arabesque carving of a gilded hall\nWherein I sate, and on the draperied wall--\nAnd on my eyelids--O, the heavy light!\nHow drowsily it weighed them into night!\nOn flowers, before, and mist, and love they ran\nWith Persian Saadi in his Gulistan:\nBut O, that light!--I slumbered--Death, the while,\nStole o’er my senses in that lovely isle\nSo softly that no single silken hair\nAwoke that slept--or knew that he was there.”\n\n“The last spot of Earth’s orb I trod upon\nWas a proud temple called the Parthenon;\nMore beauty clung around her columned wall\nThen even thy glowing bosom beats withal,\nAnd when old Time my wing did disenthral\nThence sprang I--as the eagle from his tower,\nAnd years I left behind me in an hour.\nWhat time upon her airy bounds I hung,\nOne half the garden of her globe was flung\nUnrolling as a chart unto my view--\nTenantless cities of the desert too!\nIanthe, beauty crowded on me then,\nAnd half I wished to be again of men.”\n\n“My Angelo! and why of them to be?\nA brighter dwelling-place is here for thee--\nAnd greener fields than in yon world above,\nAnd woman’s loveliness--and passionate love.”\n“But list, Ianthe! when the air so soft\nFailed, as my pennoned spirit leapt aloft,\nPerhaps my brain grew dizzy--but the world \nI left so late was into chaos hurled,\nSprang from her station, on the winds apart,\nAnd rolled a flame, the fiery Heaven athwart.\nMethought, my sweet one, then I ceased to soar,\nAnd fell--not swiftly as I rose before,\nBut with a downward, tremulous motion thro’\nLight, brazen rays, this golden star unto!\nNor long the measure of my falling hours,\nFor nearest of all stars was thine to ours--\nDread star! that came, amid a night of mirth,\nA red Daedalion on the timid Earth.”\n\n“We came--and to thy Earth--but not to us\nBe given our lady’s bidding to discuss:\nWe came, my love; around, above, below,\nGay fire-fly of the night we come and go,\nNor ask a reason save the angel-nod\n_She_ grants to us as granted by her God--\nBut, Angelo, than thine gray Time unfurled\nNever his fairy wing o’er fairer world!\nDim was its little disk, and angel eyes\nAlone could see the phantom in the skies,\nWhen first Al Aaraaf knew her course to be\nHeadlong thitherward o’er the starry sea--\nBut when its glory swelled upon the sky,\nAs glowing Beauty’s bust beneath man’s eye,\nWe paused before the heritage of men,\nAnd thy star trembled--as doth Beauty then!”\n\nThus in discourse, the lovers whiled away\nThe night that waned and waned and brought no day.\nThey fell: for Heaven to them no hope imparts\nWho hear not for the beating of their hearts.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1829" + }, "context": { "month": "september" } @@ -46933,71 +47580,130 @@ }, "alone": { "title": "“Alone”", - "body": "From childhood’s hour I have not been\nAs others were--I have not seen\nAs others saw--I could not bring\nMy passions from a common spring--\nFrom the same source I have not taken\nMy sorrow--I could not awaken\nMy heart to joy at the same tone--\nAnd all I loved--_I_ loved alone--\n_Thou_--in my childhood--in the dawn\nOf a most stormy life--was drawn\nFrom every depth of good and ill\nThe mystery which binds me still--\nFrom the torrent, or the fountain--\nFrom the red cliff of the mountain--\nFrom the sun that round me roll’d In its autumn tint of gold--\nFrom the lightning in the sky\nAs it passed me flying by--\nFrom the thunder and the storm--\nAnd the cloud that took the form\n(When the rest of Heaven was blue)\nOf a demon in my view.", + "body": "From childhood’s hour I have not been\nAs others were--I have not seen\nAs others saw--I could not bring\nMy passions from a common spring--\nFrom the same source I have not taken\nMy sorrow--I could not awaken\nMy heart to joy at the same tone--\nAnd all I loved--_I_ loved alone--\n_Thou_--in my childhood--in the dawn\nOf a most stormy life--was drawn\nFrom every depth of good and ill\nThe mystery which binds me still--\nFrom the torrent, or the fountain--\nFrom the red cliff of the mountain--\nFrom the sun that round me roll’d\nIn its autumn tint of gold--\nFrom the lightning in the sky\nAs it passed me flying by--\nFrom the thunder and the storm--\nAnd the cloud that took the form\n(When the rest of Heaven was blue)\nOf a demon in my view.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1829", + "month": "march", + "day": "17" + }, + "location": "Baltimore", "context": { - "season": "autumn" + "liturgy": "lent" } } }, "annabel-lee": { "title": "“Annabel Lee”", "body": "It was many and many a year ago,\nIn a kingdom by the sea,\nThat a maiden there lived whom you may know\nBy the name of ANNABEL LEE;\nAnd this maiden she lived with no other thought\nThan to love and be loved by me.\n\n_I_ was a child and _she_ was a child,\nIn this kingdom by the sea:\nBut we loved with a love that was more than love--\nI and my ANNABEL LEE;\nWith a love that the winged seraphs of heaven\nCoveted her and me.\n\nAnd this was the reason that, long ago,\nIn this kingdom by the sea,\nA wind blew out of a cloud, chilling\nMy beautiful ANNABEL LEE;\nSo that her highborn kinsmen came\nAnd bore her away from me,\nTo shut her up in a sepulchre\nIn this kingdom by the sea.\n\nThe angels, not half so happy in heaven,\nWent envying her and me--\nYes!--that was the reason (as all men know,\nIn this kingdom by the sea)\nThat the wind came out of the cloud by night,\nChilling and killing my ANNABEL LEE.\n\nBut our love it was stronger by far than the love\nOf those who were older than we--\nOf many far wiser than we--\nAnd neither the angels in heaven above,\nNor the demons down under the sea,\nCan ever dissever my soul from the soul\nOf the beautiful ANNABEL LEE.\n\nFor the moon never beams without bringing me dreams\nOf the beautiful ANNABEL LEE;\nAnd the stars never rise but I see the bright eyes\nOf the beautiful ANNABEL LEE;\nAnd so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side\nOf my darling, my darling, my life and my bride,\nIn her sepulchre there by the sea--\nIn her tomb by the side of the sea.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1849" + } + } }, "the-bells": { "title": "“The Bells”", "body": "# I.\n\nHear the sledges with the bells--\nSilver bells!\nWhat a world of merriment their melody foretells!\nHow they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,\nIn their icy air of night!\nWhile the stars, that oversprinkle\nAll the heavens, seem to twinkle\nWith a crystalline delight;\nKeeping time, time, time,\nIn a sort of Runic rhyme,\nTo the tintinnabulation that so musically wells\nFrom the bells, bells, bells, bells,\nBells, bells, bells--\nFrom the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.\n\n\n# II.\n\nHear the mellow wedding bells,\nGolden bells!\nWhat a world of happiness their harmony foretells!\nThrough the balmy air of night\nHow they ring out their delight!\nFrom the molten golden-notes,\nAnd all in tune,\nWhat a liquid ditty floats\nTo the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats\nOn the moon!\nOh, from out the sounding cells,\nWhat a gush of euphony voluminously wells!\nHow it swells!\nHow it dwells\nOn the future! how it tells\nOf the rapture that impels\nTo the swinging and the ringing\nOf the bells, bells, bells,\nOf the bells, bells, bells, bells,\nBells, bells, bells--\nTo the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!\n\n\n# III.\n\nHear the loud alarum bells--\nBrazen bells!\nWhat a tale of terror now their turbulency tells!\nIn the startled ear of night\nHow they scream out their affright!\nToo much horrified to speak,\nThey can only shriek, shriek,\nOut of tune,\nIn a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,\nIn a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire\nLeaping higher, higher, higher,\nWith a desperate desire,\nAnd a resolute endeavor\nNow--now to sit or never,\nBy the side of the pale-faced moon.\nOh, the bells, bells, bells!\nWhat a tale their terror tells\nOf Despair!\nHow they clang, and clash, and roar!\nWhat a horror they outpour\nOn the bosom of the palpitating air!\nYet the ear it fully knows,\nBy the twanging,\nAnd the clanging,\nHow the danger ebbs and flows;\nYet the ear distinctly tells,\nIn the jangling,\nAnd the wrangling,\nHow the danger sinks and swells,\nBy the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells--\nOf the bells--\nOf the bells, bells, bells, bells,\nBells, bells, bells--\nIn the clamor and the clangor of the bells!\n\n\n# IV.\n\nHear the tolling of the bells--\nIron bells!\nWhat a world of solemn thought their monody compels!\nIn the silence of the night,\nHow we shiver with affright\nAt the melancholy menace of their tone!\nFor every sound that floats\nFrom the rust within their throats\n Is a groan.\nAnd the people--ah, the people--\nThey that dwell up in the steeple.\n All alone,\nAnd who tolling, tolling, tolling,\nIn that muffled monotone,\nFeel a glory in so rolling\nOn the human heart a stone--\nThey are neither man nor woman--\nThey are neither brute nor human--\n They are Ghouls:\nAnd their king it is who tolls;\nAnd he rolls, rolls, rolls,\n Rolls\nA paean from the bells!\nAnd his merry bosom swells\nWith the paean of the bells!\nAnd he dances, and he yells;\nKeeping time, time, time,\nIn a sort of Runic rhyme,\nTo the paean of the bells--\n Of the bells:\nKeeping time, time, time,\nIn a sort of Runic rhyme,\nTo the throbbing of the bells--\nOf the bells, bells, bells--\nTo the sobbing of the bells;\nKeeping time, time, time,\nAs he knells, knells, knells,\nIn a happy Runic rhyme,\nTo the rolling of the bells--\nOf the bells, bells, bells--\nTo the tolling of the bells,\nOf the bells, bells, bells, bells,\nBells, bells, bells--\nTo the moaning and the groaning of the bells.", - "metadata": {} - }, - "the-bowers-whereat-in-dreams-i-see": { - "title": "“The Bowers Whereat in Dreams I See”", - "body": "The bowers whereat, in dreams, I see\nThe wantonest singing birds,\n\nAre lips--and all thy melody\nOf lip-begotten words--\n\nThine eyes, in Heaven of heart enshrined\nThen desolately fall,\nO God! on my funereal mind\nLike starlight on a pall--\n\nThy heart--_thy_ heart!--I wake and sigh,\nAnd sleep to dream till day\nOf the truth that gold can never buy--\nOf the baubles that it may.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1848", + "month": "may" + }, + "context": { + "month": "may" + } + } }, "bridal-ballad": { "title": "“Bridal Ballad”", "body": "The ring is on my hand,\nAnd the wreath is on my brow;\nSatins and jewels grand\nAre all at my command.\nAnd I am happy now.\n\nAnd my lord he loves me well;\nBut, when first he breathed his vow,\nI felt my bosom swell--\nFor the words rang as a knell,\nAnd the voice seemed _his_ who fell\nIn the battle down the dell,\nAnd who is happy now.\n\nBut he spoke to reassure me,\nAnd he kissed my pallid brow,\nWhile a reverie came o’er me,\nAnd to the churchyard bore me,\nAnd I sighed to him before me,\nThinking him dead D’Elormie,\n“Oh, I am happy now!”\n\nAnd thus the words were spoken,\nAnd thus the plighted vow,\nAnd, though my faith be broken,\nAnd, though my heart be broken,\nBehold the golden keys\nThat _proves_ me happy now!\n\nWould to God I could awaken\nFor I dream I know not how,\nAnd my soul is sorely shaken\nLest an evil step be taken,--\nLest the dead who is forsaken\nMay not be happy now.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1845" + } + } }, "the-city-in-the-sea": { "title": "“The City in the Sea”", - "body": "Lo! Death has reared himself a throne In a strange city lying alone\nFar down within the dim West,\nWhere the good and the bad and the worst and the best\nHave gone to their eternal rest.\nThere shrines and palaces and towers\n(Time-eaten towers and tremble not!)\nResemble nothing that is ours.\nAround, by lifting winds forgot,\nResignedly beneath the sky\nThe melancholy waters lie.\n\nNo rays from the holy Heaven come down\nOn the long night-time of that town;\nBut light from out the lurid sea\nStreams up the turrets silently--\nGleams up the pinnacles far and free--\nUp domes--up spires--up kingly halls--\nUp fanes--up Babylon-like walls--\nUp shadowy long-forgotten bowers\nOf sculptured ivy and stone flowers--\nUp many and many a marvellous shrine\nWhose wreathed friezes intertwine\nThe viol, the violet, and the vine.\n\nResignedly beneath the sky\nThe melancholy waters lie.\nSo blend the turrets and shadows there\nThat all seem pendulous in air,\nWhile from a proud tower in the town\nDeath looks gigantically down.\n\nThere open fanes and gaping graves\nYawn level with the luminous waves;\nBut not the riches there that lie In each idol’s diamond eye--\nNot the gaily-jewelled dead\nTempt the waters from their bed;\nFor no ripples curl, alas!\nAlong that wilderness of glass--\nNo swellings tell that winds may be\nUpon some far-off happier sea--\nNo heavings hint that winds have been\nOn seas less hideously serene.\n\nBut lo, a stir is in the air!\nThe wave--there is a movement there!\nAs if the towers had thrust aside,\nIn slightly sinking, the dull tide--\nAs if their tops had feebly given\nA void within the filmy Heaven.\nThe waves have now a redder glow--\nThe hours are breathing faint and low--\nAnd when, amid no earthly moans,\nDown, down that town shall settle hence,\nHell, rising from a thousand thrones,\nShall do it reverence.", - "metadata": {} + "body": "Lo! Death has reared himself a throne \nIn a strange city lying alone\nFar down within the dim West,\nWhere the good and the bad and the worst and the best\nHave gone to their eternal rest.\nThere shrines and palaces and towers\n(Time-eaten towers and tremble not!)\nResemble nothing that is ours.\nAround, by lifting winds forgot,\nResignedly beneath the sky\nThe melancholy waters lie.\n\nNo rays from the holy Heaven come down\nOn the long night-time of that town;\nBut light from out the lurid sea\nStreams up the turrets silently--\nGleams up the pinnacles far and free--\nUp domes--up spires--up kingly halls--\nUp fanes--up Babylon-like walls--\nUp shadowy long-forgotten bowers\nOf sculptured ivy and stone flowers--\nUp many and many a marvellous shrine\nWhose wreathed friezes intertwine\nThe viol, the violet, and the vine.\n\nResignedly beneath the sky\nThe melancholy waters lie.\nSo blend the turrets and shadows there\nThat all seem pendulous in air,\nWhile from a proud tower in the town\nDeath looks gigantically down.\n\nThere open fanes and gaping graves\nYawn level with the luminous waves;\nBut not the riches there that lie \nIn each idol’s diamond eye--\nNot the gaily-jewelled dead\nTempt the waters from their bed;\nFor no ripples curl, alas!\nAlong that wilderness of glass--\nNo swellings tell that winds may be\nUpon some far-off happier sea--\nNo heavings hint that winds have been\nOn seas less hideously serene.\n\nBut lo, a stir is in the air!\nThe wave--there is a movement there!\nAs if the towers had thrust aside,\nIn slightly sinking, the dull tide--\nAs if their tops had feebly given\nA void within the filmy Heaven.\nThe waves have now a redder glow--\nThe hours are breathing faint and low--\nAnd when, amid no earthly moans,\nDown, down that town shall settle hence,\nHell, rising from a thousand thrones,\nShall do it reverence.", + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1831" + } + } }, "the-coliseum": { "title": "“The Coliseum”", "body": "Type of the antique Rome! Rich reliquary\nOf lofty contemplation left to Time\nBy buried centuries of pomp and power!\nAt length--at length--after so many days\nOf weary pilgrimage and burning thirst,\n(Thirst for the springs of lore that in thee lie,)\nI kneel, an altered and an humble man,\nAmid thy shadows, and so drink within\nMy very soul thy grandeur, gloom, and glory!\n\nVastness! and Age! and Memories of Eld!\nSilence! and Desolation! and dim Night!\nI feel ye now--I feel ye in your strength--\nO spells more sure than e’er Judaean king\nTaught in the gardens of Gethsemane!\nO charms more potent than the rapt Chaldee\nEver drew down from out the quiet stars!\n\nHere, where a hero fell, a column falls!\nHere, where the mimic eagle glared in gold,\nA midnight vigil holds the swarthy bat!\nHere, where the dames of Rome their gilded hair\nWaved to the wind, now wave the reed and thistle!\nHere, where on golden throne the monarch lolled,\nGlides, spectre-like, unto his marble home,\nLit by the wan light of the horned moon,\nThe swift and silent lizard of the stones!\n\nBut stay! these walls--these ivy-clad arcades--\nThese mouldering plinths--these sad and blackened shafts--\nThese vague entablatures--this crumbling frieze--\nThese shattered cornices--this wreck--this ruin--\nThese stones--alas! these gray stones--are they all--\nAll of the famed, and the colossal left\nBy the corrosive Hours to Fate and me?\n\n“Not all”--the Echoes answer me--“not all!\nProphetic sounds and loud, arise forever\nFrom us, and from all Ruin, unto the wise,\nAs melody from Memnon to the Sun.\nWe rule the hearts of mightiest men--we rule\nWith a despotic sway all giant minds.\nWe are not impotent--we pallid stones.\nNot all our power is gone--not all our fame--\nNot all the magic of our high renown--\nNot all the wonder that encircles us--\nNot all the mysteries that in us lie--\nNot all the memories that hang upon\nAnd cling around about us as a garment,\nClothing us in a robe of more than glory.”", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1838" + } + } }, "the-colloquy-of-monos-and-una": { "title": "“The Colloquy of Monos and Una”", - "body": "_“These things are in the future.”_\n --Sophocles--_Antig._\n\n\n> _Una:_\n“Born again?”\n\n> _Monos:_\nYes, fairest and best beloved Una, “born again.” These were the words upon whose mystical meaning I had so long pondered, rejecting the explanations of the priesthood, until Death itself resolved for me the secret.\n\n> _Una:_\nDeath!\n\n> _Monos:_\nHow strangely, sweet _Una_, you echo my words! I observe, too, a vacillation in your step, a joyous inquietude in your eyes. You are confused and oppressed by the majestic novelty of the Life Eternal.\nYes, it was of Death I spoke. And here how singularly sounds that word which of old was wont to bring terror to all hearts, throwing a mildew upon all pleasures!\n\n> _Una:_\nAh, Death, the spectre which sate at all feasts! How often, Monos, did we lose ourselves in speculations upon its nature! How mysteriously did it act as a check to human bliss, saying unto it, “thus far, and no farther!” That earnest mutual love, my own Monos, which burned within our bosoms, how vainly did we flatter ourselves, feeling happy in its first upspringing that our happiness would strengthen with its strength! Alas, as it grew, so grew in our hearts the dread of that evil hour which was hurrying to separate us forever! Thus in time it became painful to love. Hate would have been mercy then.\n\n> _Monos:_\nSpeak not here of these griefs, dear Una--mine, mine forever now!\n\n> _Una:_\nBut the memory of past sorrow, is it not present joy? I have much to say yet of the things which have been. Above all, I burn to know the incidents of your own passage through the dark Valley and Shadow.\n\n> _Monos:_\nAnd when did the radiant Una ask anything of her Monos in vain? I will be minute in relating all, but at what point shall the weird narrative begin?\n\n> _Una:_\nAt what point?\n\n> _Monos:_\nYou have said.\n\n> _Una:_\nMonos, I comprehend you. In Death we have both learned the propensity of man to define the indefinable. I will not say, then, commence with the moment of life’s cessation--but commence with that sad, sad instant when, the fever having abandoned you, you sank into a breathless and motionless torpor, and I pressed down your pallid eyelids with the passionate fingers of love.\n\n> _Monos:_\nOne word first, my Una, in regard to man’s general condition at this epoch. You will remember that one or two of the wise among our forefathers--wise in fact, although not in the world’s esteem--had ventured to doubt the propriety of the term “improvement,” as applied to the progress of our civilization. There were periods in each of the five or six centuries immediately preceding our dissolution when arose some vigorous intellect, boldly contending for those principles whose truth appears now, to our disenfranchised reason, so utterly obvious--principles which should have taught our race to submit to the guidance of the natural laws rather than attempt their control. At long intervals some master-minds appeared, looking upon each advance in practical science as a retrogradation in the true utility. Occasionally the poetic intellect--that intellect which we now feel to have been the most exalted of all--since those truths which to us were of the most enduring importance could only be reached by that _analogy_ which speaks in proof-tones to the imagination alone, and to the unaided reason bears no weight--occasionally did this poetic intellect proceed a step farther in the evolving of the vague idea of the philosophic, and find in the mystic parable that tells of the tree of knowledge, and of its forbidden fruit, death-producing, a distinct intimation that knowledge was not meet for man in the infant condition of his soul. And these men--the poets--living and perishing amid the scorn of the “utilitarians”--of rough pedants, who arrogated to themselves a title which could have been properly applied only to the scorned--these men, the poets, pondered piningly, yet not unwisely, upon the ancient days when our wants were not more simple than our enjoyments were keen--days when _mirth_ was a word unknown, so solemnly deep-toned was happiness--holy, august, and blissful days, blue rivers ran undammed, between hills unhewn, into far forest solitudes, primeval, odorous, and unexplored. Yet these noble exceptions from the general misrule served but to strengthen it by opposition. Alas! we had fallen upon the most evil of all our evil days. The great “movement”--that was the cant term--went on: a diseased commotion, moral and physical. Art--the Arts--arose supreme, and once enthroned, cast chains upon the intellect which had elevated them to power. Man, because he could not but acknowledge the majesty of Nature, fell into childish exultation at his acquired and still-increasing dominion over her elements. Even while he stalked a God in his own fancy, an infantine imbecility came over him. As might be supposed from the origin of his disorder, he grew infected with system, and with abstraction. He enwrapped himself in generalities. Among other odd ideas, that of universal equality gained ground; and in the face of analogy and of God--in despite of the loud warning voice of the laws of _gradation_ so visibly pervading all things in Earth and Heaven--wild attempts at an omniprevalent Democracy were made. Yet this evil sprang necessarily from the leading evil, Knowledge. Man could not both know and succumb. Meantime huge smoking cities arose, innumerable. Green leaves shrank before the hot breath of furnaces. The fair face of Nature was deformed as with the ravages of some loathsome disease. And methinks, sweet Una, even our slumbering sense of the forced and of the far-fetched might have arrested us here. But now it appears that we had worked out our own destruction in the perversion of our _taste_, or rather in the blind neglect of its culture in the schools. For, in truth, it was at this crisis that taste alone--that faculty which, holding a middle position between the pure intellect and the moral sense, could never safely have been disregarded--it was now that taste alone could have led us gently back to Beauty, to Nature, and to Life. But alas for the pure contemplative spirit and majestic intuition of Plato! Alas for the which he justly regarded as an all-sufficient education for the soul! Alas for him and for it!--since both were most desperately needed, when both were most entirely forgotten or despised. Pascal, a philosopher whom we both love, has said, how truly!--“_Que tout notre raisonnement se réduit à céder au sentiment;_” and it is not impossible that the sentiment of the natural, had time permitted it, would have regained its old ascendency over the harsh mathematical reason of the schools. But this thing was not to be. Prematurely induced by intemperance of knowledge, the old age of the world drew near. This the mass of mankind saw not, or, living lustily although unhappily, affected not to see. But, for myself, the Earth’s records had taught me to look for widest ruin as the price of highest civilization. I had imbibed a prescience of our Fate from comparison of China the simple and enduring, with Assyria the architect, with Egypt the astrologer, with Nubia, more crafty than either, the turbulent mother of all Arts. In the history of these regions I met with a ray from the Future. The individual artificialities of the three latter were local diseases of the Earth, and in their individual overthrows we had seen local remedies applied; but for the infected world at large I could anticipate no regeneration save in death. That man, as a race, should not become extinct, I saw that he must be “_born again._”\nAnd now it was, fairest and dearest, that we wrapped our spirits, daily, in dreams. Now it was that, in twilight, we discoursed of the days to come, when the Art-scarred surface of the Earth, having undergone that purification which alone could efface its rectangular obscenities, should clothe itself anew in the verdure and the mountain-slopes and the smiling waters of Paradise, and be rendered at length a fit dwelling-place for man:--for man the Death-purged--for man to whose now exalted intellect there should be poison in knowledge no more--for the redeemed, regenerated, blissful, and now immortal, but still for the _material_, man.\n\n> _Una:_\nWell do I remember these conversations, dear Monos; but the epoch of the fiery overthrow was not so near at hand as we believed, and as the corruption you indicate did surely warrant us in believing. Men lived; and died individually. You yourself sickened, and passed into the grave; and thither your constant Una speedily followed you. And though the century which has since elapsed, and whose conclusion brings up together once more, tortured our slumbering senses with no impatience of duration, yet my Monos, it was a century still.\n\n> _Monos:_\nSay, rather, a point in the vague infinity. Unquestionably, it was in the Earth’s dotage that I died. Wearied at heart with anxieties which had their origin in the general turmoil and decay, I succumbed to the fierce fever. After some few days of pain, and many of dreamy delirium replete with ecstasy, the manifestations of which you mistook for pain, while I longed but was impotent to undeceive you--after some days there came upon me, as you have said, a breathless and motionless torpor; and this was termed _Death_ by those who stood around me.\nWords are vague things. My condition did not deprive me of sentience. It appeared to me not greatly dissimilar to the extreme quiescence of him, who, having slumbered long and profoundly, lying motionless and fully prostrate in a mid-summer noon, begins to steal slowly back into consciousness, through the mere sufficiency of his sleep, and without being awakened by external disturbances.\nI breathed no longer. The pulses were still. The heart had ceased to beat. Volition had not departed, but was powerless. The senses were unusually active, although eccentrically so--assuming often each other’s functions at random. The taste and the smell were inextricably confounded, and became one sentiment, abnormal and intense. The rose-water with which your tenderness had moistened my lips to the last, affected me with sweet fancies of flowers--fantastic flowers, far more lovely than any of the old Earth, but whose prototypes we have here blooming around us. The eye-lids, transparent and bloodless, offered no complete impediment to vision. As volition was in abeyance, the balls could not roll in their sockets--but all objects within the range of the visual hemisphere were seen with more or less distinctness; the rays which fell upon the external retina, or into the corner of the eye, producing a more vivid effect than those which struck the front or interior surface. Yet, in the former instance, this effect was so far anomalous that I appreciated it only as _sound_--sound sweet or discordant as the matters presenting themselves at my side were light or dark in shade--curved or angular in outline. The hearing, at the same time, although excited in degree, was not irregular in action--estimating real sounds with an extravagance of precision, not less than of sensibility. Touch had undergone a modification more peculiar. Its impressions were tardily received, but pertinaciously retained, and resulted always in the highest physical pleasure. Thus the pressure of your sweet fingers upon my eyelids, at first only recognized through vision, at length, long after their removal, filled my whole being with a sensual delight immeasurable. I say with a sensual delight. _All_ my perceptions were purely sensual. The materials furnished the passive brain by the senses were not in the least degree wrought into shape by the deceased understanding. Of pain there was some little; of pleasure there was much; but of moral pain or pleasure none at all. Thus your wild sobs floated into my ear with all their mournful cadences, and were appreciated in their every variation of sad tone; but they were soft musical sounds and no more; they conveyed to the extinct reason no intimation of the sorrows which gave them birth; while large and constant tears which fell upon my face, telling the bystanders of a heart which broke, thrilled every fibre of my frame with ecstasy alone. And this was in truth the _Death_ of which these bystanders spoke reverently, in low whispers--you, sweet Una, gaspingly, with loud cries.\nThey attired me for the coffin--three or four dark figures which flitted busily to and fro. As these crossed the direct line of my vision they affected me as _forms;_ but upon passing to my side their images impressed me with the idea of shrieks, groans, and, other dismal expressions of terror, of horror, or of woe. You alone, habited in a white robe, passed in all directions musically about.\nThe day waned; and, as its light faded away, I became possessed by a vague uneasiness--an anxiety such as the sleeper feels when sad real sounds fall continuously within his ear--low distant bell-tones, solemn, at long but equal intervals, and commingling with melancholy dreams. Night arrived; and with its shadows a heavy discomfort. It oppressed my limbs with the oppression of some dull weight, and was palpable. There was also a moaning sound, not unlike the distant reverberation of surf, but more continuous, which, beginning with the first twilight, had grown in strength with the darkness. Suddenly lights were brought into the rooms, and this reverberation became forthwith interrupted into frequent unequal bursts of the same sound, but less dreary and less distinct. The ponderous oppression was in a great measure relieved; and, issuing from the flame of each lamp (for there were many), there flowed unbrokenly into my ears a strain of melodious monotone. And when now, dear Una, approaching the bed upon which I lay outstretched, you sat gently by my side, breathing odor from your sweet lips, and pressing them upon my brow, there arose tremulously within my bosom, and mingling with the merely physical sensations which circumstances had called forth, a something akin to sentiment itself--a feeling that, half appreciating, half responded to your earnest love and sorrow; but this feeling took no root in the pulseless heart, and seemed indeed rather a shadow than a reality, and faded quickly away, first into extreme quiescence, and then into a purely sensual pleasure as before.\nAnd now, from the wreck and the chaos of the usual senses, there appeared to have arisen within me a sixth, all perfect. In its exercise I found a wild delight--yet a delight still physical, inasmuch as the understanding had in it no part. Motion in the animal frame had fully ceased. No muscle quivered; no nerve thrilled; no artery throbbed. But there seemed to have sprung up in the brain _that_ of which no words could convey to the merely human intelligence even an indistinct conception. Let me term it a mental pendulous pulsation. It was the moral embodiment of man’s abstract idea of _Time_. By the absolute equalization of this movement--or of such as this--had the cycles of the firmamental orbs themselves been adjusted. By its aid I measured the irregularities of the clock upon the mantel, and of the watches of the attendants. Their tickings came sonorously to my ears. The slightest deviations from the true proportion--and these deviations were omniprevalent--affected me just as violations of abstract truth were wont on earth to affect the moral sense. Although no two of the timepieces in the chamber struck the individual seconds accurately together, yet I had no difficulty in holding steadily in mind the tones, and the respective momentary errors of each. And this--this keen, perfect self-existing sentiment of _duration_--this sentiment existing (as man could not possibly have conceived it to exist) independently of any succession of events--this idea--this sixth sense, upspringing from the ashes of the rest, was the first obvious and certain step of the intemporal soul upon the threshold of the temporal eternity.\nIt was midnight; and you still sat by my side. All others had departed from the chamber of Death. They had deposited me in the coffin. The lamps burned flickeringly; for this I knew by the tremulousness of the monotonous strains. But suddenly these strains diminished in distinctness and in volume. Finally they ceased. The perfume in my nostrils died away. Forms affected my vision no longer. The oppression of the Darkness uplifted itself from my bosom. A dull shot like that of electricity pervaded my frame, and was followed by total loss of the idea of contact. All of what man has termed sense was merged in the sole consciousness of entity, and in the one abiding sentiment of duration. The mortal body had been at length stricken with the hand of the deadly _Decay_.\nYet had not all of sentience departed; for the consciousness and the sentiment remaining supplied some of its functions by a lethargic intuition. I appreciated the direful change now in operation upon the flesh, and, as the dreamer is sometimes aware of the bodily presence of one who leans over him, so, sweet Una, I still dully felt that you sat by my side. So, too, when the noon of the second day came, I was not unconscious of those movements which displaced you from my side, which confined me within the coffin, which deposited me within the hearse, which bore me to the grave, which lowered me within it, which heaped heavily the mould upon me, and which thus left me, in blackness and corruption, to my sad and solemn slumbers with the worm.\nAnd here in the prison-house which has few secrets to disclose, there rolled away days and weeks and months; and the soul watched narrowly each second as it flew, and, without effort, took record of its flight--without effort and without object.\nA year passed. The consciousness of _being_ had grown hourly more indistinct, and that of mere _locality_ had in great measure usurped its position. The idea of entity was becoming merged in that of _place_. The narrow space immediately surrounding what had been the body was now growing to be the body itself. At length, as often happens to the sleeper (by sleep and its world alone is _Death_ imaged)--at length, as sometimes happened on Earth to the deep slumberer, when some flitting light half startled him into awaking, yet left him half enveloped in dreams--so to me, in the strict embrace of the _Shadow_, came _that_ light which alone might have had power to startle--the light of enduring _Love_. Men toiled at the grave in which I lay darkling. They upthrew the damp earth. Upon my mouldering bones there descended the coffin of Una. And now again all was void. That nebulous light had been extinguished. That feeble thrill had vibrated itself into quiescence. Many _lustra_ had supervened. Dust had returned to dust. The worm had food no more. The sense of being had at length utterly departed, and there reigned in its stead--instead of all things, dominant and perpetual--the autocrats _Place_ and _Time._ For _that_ which _was not_--for that which had no form--for that which had no thought--for that which had no sentience--for that which was soundless, yet of which matter formed no portion--for all this nothingness, yet for all this immortality, the grave was still a home, and the corrosive hours, co-mates.", - "metadata": {} + "body": "_“These things are in the future.”_\n --Sophocles--_Antig._\n\n> _Una:_\n“Born again?”\n\n> _Monos:_\nYes, fairest and best beloved Una, “born again.” These were the words upon whose mystical meaning I had so long pondered, rejecting the explanations of the priesthood, until Death itself resolved for me the secret.\n\n> _Una:_\nDeath!\n\n> _Monos:_\nHow strangely, sweet _Una_, you echo my words! I observe, too, a vacillation in your step, a joyous inquietude in your eyes. You are confused and oppressed by the majestic novelty of the Life Eternal.\nYes, it was of Death I spoke. And here how singularly sounds that word which of old was wont to bring terror to all hearts, throwing a mildew upon all pleasures!\n\n> _Una:_\nAh, Death, the spectre which sate at all feasts! How often, Monos, did we lose ourselves in speculations upon its nature! How mysteriously did it act as a check to human bliss, saying unto it, “thus far, and no farther!” That earnest mutual love, my own Monos, which burned within our bosoms, how vainly did we flatter ourselves, feeling happy in its first upspringing that our happiness would strengthen with its strength! Alas, as it grew, so grew in our hearts the dread of that evil hour which was hurrying to separate us forever! Thus in time it became painful to love. Hate would have been mercy then.\n\n> _Monos:_\nSpeak not here of these griefs, dear Una--mine, mine forever now!\n\n> _Una:_\nBut the memory of past sorrow, is it not present joy? I have much to say yet of the things which have been. Above all, I burn to know the incidents of your own passage through the dark Valley and Shadow.\n\n> _Monos:_\nAnd when did the radiant Una ask anything of her Monos in vain? I will be minute in relating all, but at what point shall the weird narrative begin?\n\n> _Una:_\nAt what point?\n\n> _Monos:_\nYou have said.\n\n> _Una:_\nMonos, I comprehend you. In Death we have both learned the propensity of man to define the indefinable. I will not say, then, commence with the moment of life’s cessation--but commence with that sad, sad instant when, the fever having abandoned you, you sank into a breathless and motionless torpor, and I pressed down your pallid eyelids with the passionate fingers of love.\n\n> _Monos:_\nOne word first, my Una, in regard to man’s general condition at this epoch. You will remember that one or two of the wise among our forefathers--wise in fact, although not in the world’s esteem--had ventured to doubt the propriety of the term “improvement,” as applied to the progress of our civilization. There were periods in each of the five or six centuries immediately preceding our dissolution when arose some vigorous intellect, boldly contending for those principles whose truth appears now, to our disenfranchised reason, so utterly obvious--principles which should have taught our race to submit to the guidance of the natural laws rather than attempt their control. At long intervals some master-minds appeared, looking upon each advance in practical science as a retrogradation in the true utility. Occasionally the poetic intellect--that intellect which we now feel to have been the most exalted of all--since those truths which to us were of the most enduring importance could only be reached by that _analogy_ which speaks in proof-tones to the imagination alone, and to the unaided reason bears no weight--occasionally did this poetic intellect proceed a step farther in the evolving of the vague idea of the philosophic, and find in the mystic parable that tells of the tree of knowledge, and of its forbidden fruit, death-producing, a distinct intimation that knowledge was not meet for man in the infant condition of his soul. And these men--the poets--living and perishing amid the scorn of the “utilitarians”--of rough pedants, who arrogated to themselves a title which could have been properly applied only to the scorned--these men, the poets, pondered piningly, yet not unwisely, upon the ancient days when our wants were not more simple than our enjoyments were keen--days when _mirth_ was a word unknown, so solemnly deep-toned was happiness--holy, august, and blissful days, blue rivers ran undammed, between hills unhewn, into far forest solitudes, primeval, odorous, and unexplored. Yet these noble exceptions from the general misrule served but to strengthen it by opposition. Alas! we had fallen upon the most evil of all our evil days. The great “movement”--that was the cant term--went on: a diseased commotion, moral and physical. Art--the Arts--arose supreme, and once enthroned, cast chains upon the intellect which had elevated them to power. Man, because he could not but acknowledge the majesty of Nature, fell into childish exultation at his acquired and still-increasing dominion over her elements. Even while he stalked a God in his own fancy, an infantine imbecility came over him. As might be supposed from the origin of his disorder, he grew infected with system, and with abstraction. He enwrapped himself in generalities. Among other odd ideas, that of universal equality gained ground; and in the face of analogy and of God--in despite of the loud warning voice of the laws of _gradation_ so visibly pervading all things in Earth and Heaven--wild attempts at an omniprevalent Democracy were made. Yet this evil sprang necessarily from the leading evil, Knowledge. Man could not both know and succumb. Meantime huge smoking cities arose, innumerable. Green leaves shrank before the hot breath of furnaces. The fair face of Nature was deformed as with the ravages of some loathsome disease. And methinks, sweet Una, even our slumbering sense of the forced and of the far-fetched might have arrested us here. But now it appears that we had worked out our own destruction in the perversion of our _taste_, or rather in the blind neglect of its culture in the schools. For, in truth, it was at this crisis that taste alone--that faculty which, holding a middle position between the pure intellect and the moral sense, could never safely have been disregarded--it was now that taste alone could have led us gently back to Beauty, to Nature, and to Life. But alas for the pure contemplative spirit and majestic intuition of Plato! Alas for the which he justly regarded as an all-sufficient education for the soul! Alas for him and for it!--since both were most desperately needed, when both were most entirely forgotten or despised. Pascal, a philosopher whom we both love, has said, how truly!--“_Que tout notre raisonnement se réduit à céder au sentiment;_” and it is not impossible that the sentiment of the natural, had time permitted it, would have regained its old ascendency over the harsh mathematical reason of the schools. But this thing was not to be. Prematurely induced by intemperance of knowledge, the old age of the world drew near. This the mass of mankind saw not, or, living lustily although unhappily, affected not to see. But, for myself, the Earth’s records had taught me to look for widest ruin as the price of highest civilization. I had imbibed a prescience of our Fate from comparison of China the simple and enduring, with Assyria the architect, with Egypt the astrologer, with Nubia, more crafty than either, the turbulent mother of all Arts. In the history of these regions I met with a ray from the Future. The individual artificialities of the three latter were local diseases of the Earth, and in their individual overthrows we had seen local remedies applied; but for the infected world at large I could anticipate no regeneration save in death. That man, as a race, should not become extinct, I saw that he must be “_born again._”\nAnd now it was, fairest and dearest, that we wrapped our spirits, daily, in dreams. Now it was that, in twilight, we discoursed of the days to come, when the Art-scarred surface of the Earth, having undergone that purification which alone could efface its rectangular obscenities, should clothe itself anew in the verdure and the mountain-slopes and the smiling waters of Paradise, and be rendered at length a fit dwelling-place for man:--for man the Death-purged--for man to whose now exalted intellect there should be poison in knowledge no more--for the redeemed, regenerated, blissful, and now immortal, but still for the _material_, man.\n\n> _Una:_\nWell do I remember these conversations, dear Monos; but the epoch of the fiery overthrow was not so near at hand as we believed, and as the corruption you indicate did surely warrant us in believing. Men lived; and died individually. You yourself sickened, and passed into the grave; and thither your constant Una speedily followed you. And though the century which has since elapsed, and whose conclusion brings up together once more, tortured our slumbering senses with no impatience of duration, yet my Monos, it was a century still.\n\n> _Monos:_\nSay, rather, a point in the vague infinity. Unquestionably, it was in the Earth’s dotage that I died. Wearied at heart with anxieties which had their origin in the general turmoil and decay, I succumbed to the fierce fever. After some few days of pain, and many of dreamy delirium replete with ecstasy, the manifestations of which you mistook for pain, while I longed but was impotent to undeceive you--after some days there came upon me, as you have said, a breathless and motionless torpor; and this was termed _Death_ by those who stood around me.\nWords are vague things. My condition did not deprive me of sentience. It appeared to me not greatly dissimilar to the extreme quiescence of him, who, having slumbered long and profoundly, lying motionless and fully prostrate in a mid-summer noon, begins to steal slowly back into consciousness, through the mere sufficiency of his sleep, and without being awakened by external disturbances.\nI breathed no longer. The pulses were still. The heart had ceased to beat. Volition had not departed, but was powerless. The senses were unusually active, although eccentrically so--assuming often each other’s functions at random. The taste and the smell were inextricably confounded, and became one sentiment, abnormal and intense. The rose-water with which your tenderness had moistened my lips to the last, affected me with sweet fancies of flowers--fantastic flowers, far more lovely than any of the old Earth, but whose prototypes we have here blooming around us. The eye-lids, transparent and bloodless, offered no complete impediment to vision. As volition was in abeyance, the balls could not roll in their sockets--but all objects within the range of the visual hemisphere were seen with more or less distinctness; the rays which fell upon the external retina, or into the corner of the eye, producing a more vivid effect than those which struck the front or interior surface. Yet, in the former instance, this effect was so far anomalous that I appreciated it only as _sound_--sound sweet or discordant as the matters presenting themselves at my side were light or dark in shade--curved or angular in outline. The hearing, at the same time, although excited in degree, was not irregular in action--estimating real sounds with an extravagance of precision, not less than of sensibility. Touch had undergone a modification more peculiar. Its impressions were tardily received, but pertinaciously retained, and resulted always in the highest physical pleasure. Thus the pressure of your sweet fingers upon my eyelids, at first only recognized through vision, at length, long after their removal, filled my whole being with a sensual delight immeasurable. I say with a sensual delight. _All_ my perceptions were purely sensual. The materials furnished the passive brain by the senses were not in the least degree wrought into shape by the deceased understanding. Of pain there was some little; of pleasure there was much; but of moral pain or pleasure none at all. Thus your wild sobs floated into my ear with all their mournful cadences, and were appreciated in their every variation of sad tone; but they were soft musical sounds and no more; they conveyed to the extinct reason no intimation of the sorrows which gave them birth; while large and constant tears which fell upon my face, telling the bystanders of a heart which broke, thrilled every fibre of my frame with ecstasy alone. And this was in truth the _Death_ of which these bystanders spoke reverently, in low whispers--you, sweet Una, gaspingly, with loud cries.\nThey attired me for the coffin--three or four dark figures which flitted busily to and fro. As these crossed the direct line of my vision they affected me as _forms;_ but upon passing to my side their images impressed me with the idea of shrieks, groans, and, other dismal expressions of terror, of horror, or of woe. You alone, habited in a white robe, passed in all directions musically about.\nThe day waned; and, as its light faded away, I became possessed by a vague uneasiness--an anxiety such as the sleeper feels when sad real sounds fall continuously within his ear--low distant bell-tones, solemn, at long but equal intervals, and commingling with melancholy dreams. Night arrived; and with its shadows a heavy discomfort. It oppressed my limbs with the oppression of some dull weight, and was palpable. There was also a moaning sound, not unlike the distant reverberation of surf, but more continuous, which, beginning with the first twilight, had grown in strength with the darkness. Suddenly lights were brought into the rooms, and this reverberation became forthwith interrupted into frequent unequal bursts of the same sound, but less dreary and less distinct. The ponderous oppression was in a great measure relieved; and, issuing from the flame of each lamp (for there were many), there flowed unbrokenly into my ears a strain of melodious monotone. And when now, dear Una, approaching the bed upon which I lay outstretched, you sat gently by my side, breathing odor from your sweet lips, and pressing them upon my brow, there arose tremulously within my bosom, and mingling with the merely physical sensations which circumstances had called forth, a something akin to sentiment itself--a feeling that, half appreciating, half responded to your earnest love and sorrow; but this feeling took no root in the pulseless heart, and seemed indeed rather a shadow than a reality, and faded quickly away, first into extreme quiescence, and then into a purely sensual pleasure as before.\nAnd now, from the wreck and the chaos of the usual senses, there appeared to have arisen within me a sixth, all perfect. In its exercise I found a wild delight--yet a delight still physical, inasmuch as the understanding had in it no part. Motion in the animal frame had fully ceased. No muscle quivered; no nerve thrilled; no artery throbbed. But there seemed to have sprung up in the brain _that_ of which no words could convey to the merely human intelligence even an indistinct conception. Let me term it a mental pendulous pulsation. It was the moral embodiment of man’s abstract idea of _Time_. By the absolute equalization of this movement--or of such as this--had the cycles of the firmamental orbs themselves been adjusted. By its aid I measured the irregularities of the clock upon the mantel, and of the watches of the attendants. Their tickings came sonorously to my ears. The slightest deviations from the true proportion--and these deviations were omniprevalent--affected me just as violations of abstract truth were wont on earth to affect the moral sense. Although no two of the timepieces in the chamber struck the individual seconds accurately together, yet I had no difficulty in holding steadily in mind the tones, and the respective momentary errors of each. And this--this keen, perfect self-existing sentiment of _duration_--this sentiment existing (as man could not possibly have conceived it to exist) independently of any succession of events--this idea--this sixth sense, upspringing from the ashes of the rest, was the first obvious and certain step of the intemporal soul upon the threshold of the temporal eternity.\nIt was midnight; and you still sat by my side. All others had departed from the chamber of Death. They had deposited me in the coffin. The lamps burned flickeringly; for this I knew by the tremulousness of the monotonous strains. But suddenly these strains diminished in distinctness and in volume. Finally they ceased. The perfume in my nostrils died away. Forms affected my vision no longer. The oppression of the Darkness uplifted itself from my bosom. A dull shot like that of electricity pervaded my frame, and was followed by total loss of the idea of contact. All of what man has termed sense was merged in the sole consciousness of entity, and in the one abiding sentiment of duration. The mortal body had been at length stricken with the hand of the deadly _Decay_.\nYet had not all of sentience departed; for the consciousness and the sentiment remaining supplied some of its functions by a lethargic intuition. I appreciated the direful change now in operation upon the flesh, and, as the dreamer is sometimes aware of the bodily presence of one who leans over him, so, sweet Una, I still dully felt that you sat by my side. So, too, when the noon of the second day came, I was not unconscious of those movements which displaced you from my side, which confined me within the coffin, which deposited me within the hearse, which bore me to the grave, which lowered me within it, which heaped heavily the mould upon me, and which thus left me, in blackness and corruption, to my sad and solemn slumbers with the worm.\nAnd here in the prison-house which has few secrets to disclose, there rolled away days and weeks and months; and the soul watched narrowly each second as it flew, and, without effort, took record of its flight--without effort and without object.\nA year passed. The consciousness of _being_ had grown hourly more indistinct, and that of mere _locality_ had in great measure usurped its position. The idea of entity was becoming merged in that of _place_. The narrow space immediately surrounding what had been the body was now growing to be the body itself. At length, as often happens to the sleeper (by sleep and its world alone is _Death_ imaged)--at length, as sometimes happened on Earth to the deep slumberer, when some flitting light half startled him into awaking, yet left him half enveloped in dreams--so to me, in the strict embrace of the _Shadow_, came _that_ light which alone might have had power to startle--the light of enduring _Love_. Men toiled at the grave in which I lay darkling. They upthrew the damp earth. Upon my mouldering bones there descended the coffin of Una. And now again all was void. That nebulous light had been extinguished. That feeble thrill had vibrated itself into quiescence. Many _lustra_ had supervened. Dust had returned to dust. The worm had food no more. The sense of being had at length utterly departed, and there reigned in its stead--instead of all things, dominant and perpetual--the autocrats _Place_ and _Time._ For _that_ which _was not_--for that which had no form--for that which had no thought--for that which had no sentience--for that which was soundless, yet of which matter formed no portion--for all this nothingness, yet for all this immortality, the grave was still a home, and the corrosive hours, co-mates.", + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1841", + "month": "august" + }, + "context": { + "month": "august" + } + } }, "the-conqueror-worm": { "title": "“The Conqueror Worm”", "body": "Lo! ’tis a gala night\nWithin the lonesome latter years!\nAn angel throng, bewinged, bedight\nIn veils, and drowned in tears,\nSit in a theatre, to see\nA play of hopes and fears,\nWhile the orchestra breathes fitfully\nThe music of the spheres.\n\nMimes, in the form of God on high,\nMutter and mumble low,\nAnd hither and thither fly--\nMere puppets they, who come and go\nAt bidding of vast formless things\nThat shift the scenery to and fro,\nFlapping from out their Condor wings\nInvisible Wo!\n\nThat motley drama--oh, be sure\nIt shall not be forgot!\nWith its Phantom chased for evermore,\nBy a crowd that seize it not,\nThrough a circle that ever returneth in\nTo the self-same spot,\nAnd much of Madness, and more of Sin,\nAnd Horror the soul of the plot.\n\nBut see, amid the mimic rout\nA crawling shape intrude!\nA blood-red thing that writhes from out\nThe scenic solitude!\nIt writhes!--it writhes!--with mortal pangs\nThe mimes become its food,\nAnd the angels sob at vermin fangs\nIn human gore imbued.\n\nOut--out are the lights--out all!\nAnd, over each quivering form,\nThe curtain, a funeral pall,\nComes down with the rush of a storm,\nAnd the angels, all pallid and wan,\nUprising, unveiling, affirm\nThat the play is the tragedy, “Man,”\nAnd its hero the Conqueror Worm.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1843" + } + } }, "the-conversation-of-eiros-and-charmion": { "title": "“The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion”", "body": "_“I will bring fire to thee.”_\n --Euripides--_Androm._\n\n> _Eiros:_\nWhy do you call me Eiros?\n\n> _Charmion:_\nSo henceforward will you always be called. You must forget, too, _my_ earthly name, and speak to me as Charmion.\n\n> _Eiros:_\nThis is indeed no dream!\n\n> _Charmion:_\nDreams are with us no more;--but of these mysteries anon. I rejoice to see you looking life-like and rational. The film of the shadow has already passed from off your eyes. Be of heart, and fear nothing. Your allotted days of stupor have expired, and to-morrow I will myself induct you into the full joys and wonders of your novel existence.\n\n> _Eiros:_\nTrue--I feel no stupor--none at all. The wild sickness and the terrible darkness have left me, and I hear no longer that mad, rushing, horrible sound, like the “voice of many waters.” Yet my senses are bewildered, Charmion, with the keenness of their perception of _the new_.\n\n> _Charmion:_\nA few days will remove all this;--but I fully understand you, and feel for you. It is now ten earthly years since I underwent what you undergo--yet the remembrance of it hangs by me still. You have now suffered all of pain, however, which you will suffer in Aidenn.\n\n> _Eiros:_\nIn Aidenn?\n\n> _Charmion:_\nIn Aidenn.\n\n> _Eiros:_\nO God!--pity me, Charmion!--I am overburthened with the majesty of all things--of the unknown now known--of the speculative Future merged in the august and certain Present.\n\n> _Charmion:_\nGrapple not now with such thoughts. To-morrow we will speak of this. Your mind wavers, and its agitation will find relief in the exercise of simple memories. Look not around, nor forward--but back. I am burning with anxiety to hear the details of that stupendous event which threw you among us. Tell me of it. Let us converse of familiar things, in the old familiar language of the world which has so fearfully perished.\n\n> _Eiros:_\nMost fearfully, fearfully!--this is indeed no dream.\n\n> _Charmion:_\nDreams are no more. Was I much mourned, my Eiros?\n\n> _Eiros:_\nMourned, Charmion?--oh, deeply. To that last hour of all there hung a cloud of intense gloom and devout sorrow over your household.\n\n> _Charmion:_\nAnd that last hour--speak of it. Remember that, beyond the naked fact of the catastrophe itself, I know nothing. When, coming out from among mankind, I passed into Night through the Grave--at that period, if I remember aright, the calamity which overwhelmed you was utterly unanticipated. But, indeed, I knew little of the speculative philosophy of the day.\n\n_Eiros_. The individual calamity was, as you say, entirely unanticipated; but analogous misfortunes had been long a subject of discussion with astronomers. I need scarce tell you, my friend, that, even when you left us, men had agreed to understand those passages in the most holy writings which speak of the final destruction of all things by fire as having reference to the orb of the earth alone, But in regard to the immediate agency of the ruin, speculation had been at fault from that epoch in astronomical knowledge in which the comets were divested of the terrors of flame. The very moderate density of these bodies had been well established. They had been observed to pass among the satellites of Jupiter without bringing about any sensible alteration either in the masses or in the orbits of these secondary planets. We had long regarded the wanderers as vapory creations of inconceivable tenuity, and as altogether incapable of doing injury to our substantial globe, even in the event of contact. But contact was not in any degree dreaded; for the elements of all the comets were accurately known. That among _them_ we should look for the agency of the threatened fiery destruction had been for many years considered an inadmissible idea. But wonders and wild fancies had been of late days strangely rife among mankind; and, although it was only with a few of the ignorant that actual apprehension prevailed, upon the announcement by astronomers of a _new_ comet, yet this announcement was generally received with I know not what of agitation and mistrust.\nThe elements of the strange orb were immediately calculated, and it was at once conceded by all observers that its path, at perihelion would bring it into very close proximity with the earth. There were two or three astronomers of secondary note who resolutely maintained that a contact was inevitable. I cannot very well express to you the effect of this intelligence upon the people. For a few short days they would not believe an assertion which their intellect, so long employed among worldly considerations, could not in any manner grasp. But the truth of a vitally important fact soon makes its way into the understanding of even the most stolid. Finally, all men saw that astronomical knowledge lies not, and they awaited the comet. Its approach was not at first seemingly rapid, nor was its appearance of very unusual character. It was of a dull red, and had little perceptible train. For seven or eight days we saw no material increase in its apparent diameter, and but a partial alteration in its color. Meantime, the ordinary affairs of men were discarded, and all interest absorbed in a growing discussion instituted by the philosophic in respect to the cometary nature. Even the grossly ignorant aroused their sluggish capacities to such considerations. The learned _now_ gave their intellect--their soul--to no such points as the allaying of fear, or to the sustenance of loved theory. They sought--they panted for right views. They groaned for perfected knowledge. _Truth_ arose in the purity of her strength and exceeding majesty, and the wise bowed down and adored.\nThat material injury to our globe or to its inhabitants would result from the apprehended contact was an opinion which hourly lost ground among the wise; and the wise were now freely permitted to rule the reason and the fancy of the crowd. It was demonstrated that the density of the comet’s _nucleus_ was far less than that of our rarest gas; and the harmless passage of a similar visitor among the satellites of Jupiter was a point strongly insisted upon, and which served greatly to allay terror. Theologists, with an earnestness fear-enkindled, dwelt upon the biblical prophecies, and expounded them to the people with a directness and simplicity of which no previous instance had been known. That the final destruction of the earth must be brought about by the agency of fire, was urged with a spirit that enforced everywhere conviction; and that the comets were of no fiery nature (as all men now knew) was a truth which relieved all, in a great measure, from the apprehension of the great calamity foretold. It is noticeable that the popular prejudices and vulgar errors in regard to pestilences and wars--errors which were wont to prevail upon every appearance of a comet--were now altogether unknown, as if by some sudden convulsive exertion reason had at once hurled superstition from her throne. The feeblest intellect had derived vigor from excessive interest.\nWhat minor evils might arise from the contact were points of elaborate question. The learned spoke of slight geological disturbances, of probable alterations in climate, and consequently in vegetation; of possible magnetic and electric influences. Many held that no visible or perceptible effect would in any manner be produced. While such discussions were going on, their subject gradually approached, growing larger in apparent diameter, and of a more brilliant lustre. Mankind grew paler as it came. All human operations were suspended.\nThere was an epoch in the course of the general sentiment when the comet had attained, at length, a size surpassing that of any previously recorded visitation. The people now, dismissing any lingering hope that the astronomers were wrong, experienced all the certainty of evil. The chimerical aspect of their terror was gone. The hearts of the stoutest of our race beat violently within their bosoms. A very few days suffered, however, to merge even such feelings in sentiments more unendurable. We could no longer apply to the strange orb any _accustomed_ thoughts. Its _historical_ attributes had disappeared. It oppressed us with a hideous _novelty_ of emotion. We saw it not as an astronomical phenomenon in the heavens, but as an incubus upon our hearts and a shadow upon our brains. It had taken, with unconceivable rapidity, the character of a gigantic mantle of rare flame, extending from horizon to horizon.\nYet a day, and men breathed with greater freedom. It was clear that we were already within the influence of the comet; yet we lived. We even felt an unusual elasticity of frame and vivacity of mind. The exceeding tenuity of the object of our dread was apparent; for all heavenly objects were plainly visible through it. Meantime, our vegetation had perceptibly altered; and we gained faith, from this predicted circumstance, in the foresight of the wise. A wild luxuriance of foliage, utterly unknown before, burst out upon every vegetable thing.\nYet another day--and the evil was not altogether upon us. It was now evident that its nucleus would first reach us. A wild change had come over all men; and the first sense of _pain_ was the wild signal for general lamentation and horror. The first sense of pain lay in a rigorous construction of the breast and lungs, and an insufferable dryness of the skin. It could not be denied that our atmosphere was radically affected; the conformation of this atmosphere and the possible modifications to which it might be subjected, were now the topics of discussion. The result of investigation sent an electric thrill of the intensest terror through the universal heart of man.\nIt had been long known that the air which encircled us was a compound of oxygen and nitrogen gases, in the proportion of twenty-one measures of oxygen and seventy-nine of nitrogen in every one hundred of the atmosphere. Oxygen, which was the principle of combustion, and the vehicle of heat, was absolutely necessary to the support of animal life, and was the most powerful and energetic agent in nature. Nitrogen, on the contrary, was incapable of supporting either animal life or flame. An unnatural excess of oxygen would result, it had been ascertained, in just such an elevation of the animal spirits as we had latterly experienced. It was the pursuit, the extension of the idea, which had engendered awe. What would be the result of a _total extraction of the nitrogen_? A combustion irresistible, all-devouring, omni-prevalent, immediate;--the entire fulfilment, in all their minute and terrible details, of the fiery and horror-inspiring denunciations of the prophecies of the Holy Book.\nWhy need I paint, Charmion, the now disenchained frenzy of mankind? That tenuity in the comet which had previously inspired us with hope, was now the source of the bitterness of despair. In its impalpable gaseous character we clearly perceived the consummation of Fate. Meantime a day again passed--bearing away with it the last shadow of Hope. We gasped in the rapid modification of the air. The red blood bounded tumultuously through its strict channels. A furious delirium possessed all men; and with arms rigidly outstretched towards the threatening heavens, they trembled and shrieked aloud. But the nucleus of the destroyer was now upon us;--even here in Aidenn I shudder while I speak. Let me be brief--brief as the ruin that overwhelmed. For a moment there was a wild lurid light alone, visiting and penetrating all things. Then--let us bow down, Charmion, before the excessive majesty of the great God!--then, there came a shouting and pervading sound, as if from the mouth itself of HIM; while the whole incumbent mass of ether in which we existed, burst at once into a species of intense flame, for whose surpassing brilliancy and all-fervid heat even the angels in the high Heaven of pure knowledge have no name. Thus ended all.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1839", + "month": "december" + }, + "context": { + "month": "december" + } + } }, "a-dream-within-a-dream": { "title": "“A Dream within a Dream”", - "body": "Take this kiss upon the brow!\nAnd, in parting from you now,\nThus much let me avow--\nYou are not wrong, who deem\nThat my days have been a dream:\nYet if hope has flown away In a night, or in a day,\nIn a vision or in none,\nIs it therefore the less _gone_?\n_All_ that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream.\n\nI stand amid the roar\nOf a surf-tormented shore,\nAnd I hold within my hand\nGrains of the golden sand--\nHow few! yet how they creep\nThrough my fingers to the deep\nWhile I weep--while I weep!\nO God! can I not grasp\nThem with a tighter clasp?\nO God! can I not save\n_One_ from the pitiless wave?\nIs _all_ that we see or seem\nBut a dream within a dream?", - "metadata": {} + "body": "Take this kiss upon the brow!\nAnd, in parting from you now,\nThus much let me avow--\nYou are not wrong, who deem\nThat my days have been a dream:\nYet if hope has flown away \nIn a night, or in a day,\nIn a vision or in none,\nIs it therefore the less _gone_?\n_All_ that we see or seem \nIs but a dream within a dream.\n\nI stand amid the roar\nOf a surf-tormented shore,\nAnd I hold within my hand\nGrains of the golden sand--\nHow few! yet how they creep\nThrough my fingers to the deep\nWhile I weep--while I weep!\nO God! can I not grasp\nThem with a tighter clasp?\nO God! can I not save\n_One_ from the pitiless wave?\nIs _all_ that we see or seem\nBut a dream within a dream?", + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1849", + "month": "march", + "day": "31" + }, + "context": { + "month": "march", + "day": "31" + } + } }, - "dreamland": { - "title": "“Dreamland”", - "body": "By a route obscure and lonely,\nHaunted by ill angels only,\nWhere an Eidolon, named NIGHT,\nOn a black throne reigns upright,\nI have reached these lands but newly\nFrom an ultimate dim Thule--\nFrom a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime,\nOut of SPACE--out of TIME.\n\nBottomless vales and boundless floods,\nAnd chasms, and caves, and Titan woods,\nWith forms that no man can discover\nFor the dews that drip all over;\nMountains toppling evermore Into seas without a shore;\nSeas that restlessly aspire,\nSurging, unto skies of fire;\nLakes that endlessly outspread\nTheir lone waters--lone and dead,\nTheir still waters--still and chilly\nWith the snows of the lolling lily.\n\nBy the lakes that thus outspread\nTheir lone waters, lone and dead,--\nTheir sad waters, sad and chilly\nWith the snows of the lolling lily,--\n\nBy the mountains--near the river\nMurmuring lowly, murmuring ever,--\nBy the gray woods,--by the swamp\nWhere the toad and the newt encamp,--\nBy the dismal tarns and pools\nWhere dwell the Ghouls,--\nBy each spot the most unholy--\nIn each nook most melancholy,--\n\nThere the traveller meets aghast\nSheeted Memories of the past--\nShrouded forms that start and sigh\nAs they pass the wanderer by--\nWhite-robed forms of friends long given,\nIn agony, to the Earth--and Heaven.\n\nFor the heart whose woes are legion\n’Tis a peaceful, soothing region--\nFor the spirit that walks in shadow\n’Tis--oh, ’tis an Eldorado!\nBut the traveller, travelling through it,\nMay not--dare not openly view it;\nNever its mysteries are exposed\nTo the weak human eye unclosed;\nSo wills its King, who hath forbid\nThe uplifting of the fringed lid;\nAnd thus the sad Soul that here passes\nBeholds it but through darkened glasses.\n\nBy a route obscure and lonely,\nHaunted by ill angels only.\n\nWhere an Eidolon, named NIGHT,\nOn a black throne reigns upright,\nI have wandered home but newly\nFrom this ultimate dim Thule.", - "metadata": {} + "dream-land": { + "title": "“Dream-land”", + "body": "By a route obscure and lonely,\nHaunted by ill angels only,\nWhere an Eidolon, named NIGHT,\nOn a black throne reigns upright,\nI have reached these lands but newly\nFrom an ultimate dim Thule--\nFrom a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime,\nOut of SPACE--out of TIME.\n\nBottomless vales and boundless floods,\nAnd chasms, and caves, and Titan woods,\nWith forms that no man can discover\nFor the dews that drip all over;\nMountains toppling evermore \nInto seas without a shore;\nSeas that restlessly aspire,\nSurging, unto skies of fire;\nLakes that endlessly outspread\nTheir lone waters--lone and dead,\nTheir still waters--still and chilly\nWith the snows of the lolling lily.\n\nBy the lakes that thus outspread\nTheir lone waters, lone and dead,--\nTheir sad waters, sad and chilly\nWith the snows of the lolling lily,--\n\nBy the mountains--near the river\nMurmuring lowly, murmuring ever,--\nBy the gray woods,--by the swamp\nWhere the toad and the newt encamp,--\nBy the dismal tarns and pools\nWhere dwell the Ghouls,--\nBy each spot the most unholy--\nIn each nook most melancholy,--\n\nThere the traveller meets aghast\nSheeted Memories of the past--\nShrouded forms that start and sigh\nAs they pass the wanderer by--\nWhite-robed forms of friends long given,\nIn agony, to the Earth--and Heaven.\n\nFor the heart whose woes are legion\n’Tis a peaceful, soothing region--\nFor the spirit that walks in shadow\n’Tis--oh, ’tis an Eldorado!\nBut the traveller, travelling through it,\nMay not--dare not openly view it;\nNever its mysteries are exposed\nTo the weak human eye unclosed;\nSo wills its King, who hath forbid\nThe uplifting of the fringed lid;\nAnd thus the sad Soul that here passes\nBeholds it but through darkened glasses.\n\nBy a route obscure and lonely,\nHaunted by ill angels only.\n\nWhere an Eidolon, named NIGHT,\nOn a black throne reigns upright,\nI have wandered home but newly\nFrom this ultimate dim Thule.", + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1844" + } + } }, "dreams": { "title": "“Dreams”", - "body": "Oh! that my young life were a lasting dream!\nMy spirit not awakening, till the beam\nOf an Eternity should bring the morrow.\nYes! though that long dream were of hopeless sorrow,\n’Twere better than the cold reality\nOf waking life, to him whose heart must be,\nAnd hath been still, upon the lovely earth,\nA chaos of deep passion, from his birth.\nBut should it be--that dream eternally\nContinuing--as dreams have been to me In my young boyhood--should it thus be given,\n’Twere folly still to hope for higher Heaven.\nFor I have revelled when the sun was bright I’ the summer sky, in dreams of living light\nAnd loveliness,--have left my very heart Inclines of my imaginary apart\nFrom mine own home, with beings that have been\nOf mine own thought--what more could I have seen?\n’Twas once--and only once--and the wild hour\nFrom my remembrance shall not pass--some power\nOr spell had bound me--’twas the chilly wind\nCame o’er me in the night, and left behind Its image on my spirit--or the moon\nShone on my slumbers in her lofty noon\nToo coldly--or the stars--howe’er it was\nThat dream was that that night-wind--let it pass.\n_I have been_ happy, though in a dream.\nI have been happy--and I love the theme:\nDreams! in their vivid coloring of life\nAs in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife\nOf semblance with reality which brings\nTo the delirious eye, more lovely things\nOf Paradise and Love--and all my own!--\nThan young Hope in his sunniest hour hath known.", + "body": "Oh! that my young life were a lasting dream!\nMy spirit not awakening, till the beam\nOf an Eternity should bring the morrow.\nYes! though that long dream were of hopeless sorrow,\n’Twere better than the cold reality\nOf waking life, to him whose heart must be,\nAnd hath been still, upon the lovely earth,\nA chaos of deep passion, from his birth.\nBut should it be--that dream eternally\nContinuing--as dreams have been to me \nIn my young boyhood--should it thus be given,\n’Twere folly still to hope for higher Heaven.\nFor I have revelled when the sun was bright \nI’ the summer sky, in dreams of living light\nAnd loveliness,--have left my very heart \nInclines of my imaginary apart\nFrom mine own home, with beings that have been\nOf mine own thought--what more could I have seen?\n’Twas once--and only once--and the wild hour\nFrom my remembrance shall not pass--some power\nOr spell had bound me--’twas the chilly wind\nCame o’er me in the night, and left behind \nIts image on my spirit--or the moon\nShone on my slumbers in her lofty noon\nToo coldly--or the stars--howe’er it was\nThat dream was that that night-wind--let it pass.\n_I have been_ happy, though in a dream.\nI have been happy--and I love the theme:\nDreams! in their vivid coloring of life\nAs in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife\nOf semblance with reality which brings\nTo the delirious eye, more lovely things\nOf Paradise and Love--and all my own!--\nThan young Hope in his sunniest hour hath known.", "metadata": { "context": { "season": "summer" @@ -47007,41 +47713,81 @@ "a-dream": { "title": "“A Dream”", "body": "In visions of the dark night\nI have dreamed of joy departed--\nBut a waking dream of life and light\nHath left me broken-hearted.\n\nAh! what is not a dream by day\nTo him whose eyes are cast\nOn things around him with a ray\nTurned back upon the past?\n\nThat holy dream--that holy dream,\nWhile all the world were chiding,\nHath cheered me as a lovely beam,\nA lonely spirit guiding.\n\nWhat though that light, thro’ storm and night,\nSo trembled from afar--\nWhat could there be more purely bright\nIn Truth’s day star?", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1849", + "month": "march", + "day": "31" + }, + "context": { + "month": "march", + "day": "31" + } + } }, "eldorado": { "title": "“Eldorado”", "body": "Gaily bedight,\nA gallant knight,\nIn sunshine and in shadow,\nHad journeyed long,\nSinging a song,\nIn search of Eldorado.\nBut he grew old--\nThis knight so bold--\nAnd o’er his heart a shadow\nFell as he found\nNo spot of ground\nThat looked like Eldorado.\n\nAnd, as his strength\nFailed him at length,\nHe met a pilgrim shadow--\n“Shadow,” said he,\n“Where can it be--\nThis land of Eldorado?”\n\n“Over the Mountains\nOf the Moon,\nDown the Valley of the Shadow,\nRide, boldly ride,”\nThe shade replied,\n“If you seek for Eldorado!”", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1849", + "month": "april" + }, + "context": { + "month": "april" + } + } }, "eulalie": { "title": "“Eulalie”", - "body": " I dwelt alone\n In a world of moan,\n And my soul was a stagnant tide,\nTill the fair and gentle Eulalie became my blushing bride--\nTill the yellow-haired young Eulalie became my smiling bride.\n Ah, less--less bright\n The stars of the night\n Than the eyes of the radiant girl!\n And never a flake\n That the vapor can make\n With the moon-tints of purple and pearl,\nCan vie with the modest Eulalie’s most unregarded curl--\nCan compare with the bright-eyed Eulalie’s most humble and careless\ncurl.\n Now Doubt--now Pain\n Come never again,\n For her soul gives me sigh for sigh,\n And all day long\n Shines, bright and strong,\n Astarté within the sky,\nWhile ever to her dear Eulalie upturns her matron eye--\nWhile ever to her young Eulalie upturns her violet eye.", - "metadata": {} + "body": " I dwelt alone\n In a world of moan,\n And my soul was a stagnant tide,\nTill the fair and gentle Eulalie became my blushing bride--\nTill the yellow-haired young Eulalie became my smiling bride.\n Ah, less--less bright\n The stars of the night\n Than the eyes of the radiant girl!\n And never a flake\n That the vapor can make\n With the moon-tints of purple and pearl,\nCan vie with the modest Eulalie’s most unregarded curl--\nCan compare with the bright-eyed Eulalie’s most humble and careless curl.\n Now Doubt--now Pain\n Come never again,\n For her soul gives me sigh for sigh,\n And all day long\n Shines, bright and strong,\n Astarté within the sky,\nWhile ever to her dear Eulalie upturns her matron eye--\nWhile ever to her young Eulalie upturns her violet eye.", + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1845", + "month": "july" + }, + "context": { + "month": "july" + } + } }, "evening-star": { "title": "“Evening Star”", "body": "’Twas noontide of summer,\nAnd midtime of night,\nAnd stars, in their orbits,\nShone pale, through the light\nOf the brighter, cold moon.\n’Mid planets her slaves,\nHerself in the Heavens,\nHer beam on the waves.\n\nI gazed awhile\nOn her cold smile;\nToo cold--too cold for me--\nThere passed, as a shroud,\nA fleecy cloud,\nAnd I turned away to thee,\nProud Evening Star,\nIn thy glory afar\nAnd dearer thy beam shall be;\nFor joy to my heart\nIs the proud part\nThou bearest in Heaven at night,\nAnd more I admire\nThy distant fire,\nThan that colder, lowly light.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1827" + }, "context": { "month": "july" } } }, - "fairyland": { - "title": "“Fairyland”", - "body": "Dim vales--and shadowy floods--\nAnd cloudy-looking woods,\nWhose forms we can’t discover\nFor the tears that drip all over\nHuge moons there wax and wane--\nAgain--again--again--\nEvery moment of the night--\nForever changing places--\nAnd they put out the star-light\nWith the breath from their pale faces.\nAbout twelve by the moon-dial\nOne more filmy than the rest\n(A kind which, upon trial,\nThey have found to be the best)\nComes down--still down--and down\nWith its centre on the crown\nOf a mountain’s eminence,\nWhile its wide circumference In easy drapery falls\nOver hamlets, over halls,\nWherever they may be--\nO’er the strange woods--o’er the sea--\nOver spirits on the wing--\nOver every drowsy thing--\nAnd buries them up quite In a labyrinth of light--\nAnd then, how deep!--O, deep!\nIs the passion of their sleep.\nIn the morning they arise,\nAnd their moony covering Is soaring in the skies,\nWith the tempests as they toss,\nLike--almost any thing--\nOr a yellow Albatross.\nThey use that moon no more\nFor the same end as before--\nVidelicet a tent--\nWhich I think extravagant:\nIts atomies, however,\nInto a shower dissever,\nOf which those butterflies,\nOf Earth, who seek the skies,\nAnd so come down again\n(Never-contented thing!)\nHave brought a specimen\nUpon their quivering wings.", - "metadata": {} + "fairy-land": { + "title": "“Fairy-land”", + "body": "Dim vales--and shadowy floods--\nAnd cloudy-looking woods,\nWhose forms we can’t discover\nFor the tears that drip all over\nHuge moons there wax and wane--\nAgain--again--again--\nEvery moment of the night--\nForever changing places--\nAnd they put out the star-light\nWith the breath from their pale faces.\nAbout twelve by the moon-dial\nOne more filmy than the rest\n(A kind which, upon trial,\nThey have found to be the best)\nComes down--still down--and down\nWith its centre on the crown\nOf a mountain’s eminence,\nWhile its wide circumference \nIn easy drapery falls\nOver hamlets, over halls,\nWherever they may be--\nO’er the strange woods--o’er the sea--\nOver spirits on the wing--\nOver every drowsy thing--\nAnd buries them up quite \nIn a labyrinth of light--\nAnd then, how deep!--O, deep!\nIs the passion of their sleep.\nIn the morning they arise,\nAnd their moony covering \nIs soaring in the skies,\nWith the tempests as they toss,\nLike--almost any thing--\nOr a yellow Albatross.\nThey use that moon no more\nFor the same end as before--\nVidelicet a tent--\nWhich I think extravagant:\nIts atomies, however,\nInto a shower dissever,\nOf which those butterflies,\nOf Earth, who seek the skies,\nAnd so come down again\n(Never-contented thing!)\nHave brought a specimen\nUpon their quivering wings.", + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1831" + } + } }, "for-annie": { "title": "“For Annie”", "body": "Thank Heaven! the crisis--\nThe danger is past,\nAnd the lingering illness\nIs over at last--\nAnd the fever called “Living”\nIs conquered at last.\n\nSadly, I know,\nI am shorn of my strength,\nAnd no muscle I move\nAs I lie at full length--\nBut no matter!--I feel\nI am better at length.\n\nAnd I rest so composedly,\nNow in my bed,\nThat any beholder\nMight fancy me dead--\nMight start at beholding me\nThinking me dead.\n\nThe moaning and groaning,\nThe sighing and sobbing,\nAre quieted now,\nWith that horrible throbbing\nAt heart:--ah, that horrible,\nHorrible throbbing!\n\nThe sickness--the nausea--\nThe pitiless pain--\nHave ceased, with the fever\nThat maddened my brain--\nWith the fever called “Living”\nThat burned in my brain.\n\nAnd oh! of all tortures\n_That_ torture the worst\nHas abated--the terrible\nTorture of thirst,\nFor the naphthaline river\nOf Passion accurst:--\nI have drank of a water\nThat quenches all thirst:--\n\nOf a water that flows,\nWith a lullaby sound,\nFrom a spring but a very few\nFeet under ground--\nFrom a cavern not very far\nDown under ground.\n\nAnd ah! let it never\nBe foolishly said\nThat my room it is gloomy\nAnd narrow my bed--\nFor man never slept\nIn a different bed;\nAnd, to _sleep_, you must slumber\nIn just such a bed.\n\nMy tantalized spirit\nHere blandly reposes,\nForgetting, or never\nRegretting its roses--\nIts old agitations\nOf myrtles and roses:\n\nFor now, while so quietly\nLying, it fancies\nA holier odor\nAbout it, of pansies--\nA rosemary odor,\nCommingled with pansies--\nWith rue and the beautiful\nPuritan pansies.\n\nAnd so it lies happily,\nBathing in many\nA dream of the truth\nAnd the beauty of Annie--\nDrowned in a bath\nOf the tresses of Annie.\n\nShe tenderly kissed me,\nShe fondly caressed,\nAnd then I fell gently\nTo sleep on her breast--\nDeeply to sleep\nFrom the heaven of her breast.\n\nWhen the light was extinguished,\nShe covered me warm,\nAnd she prayed to the angels\nTo keep me from harm--\nTo the queen of the angels\nTo shield me from harm.\n\nAnd I lie so composedly,\nNow in my bed\n(Knowing her love)\nThat you fancy me dead--\nAnd I rest so contentedly,\nNow in my bed,\n(With her love at my breast)\nThat you fancy me dead--\nThat you shudder to look at me.\nThinking me dead.\n\nBut my heart it is brighter\nThan all of the many\nStars in the sky,\nFor it sparkles with Annie--\nIt glows with the light\nOf the love of my Annie--\nWith the thought of the light\nOf the eyes of my Annie.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1849" + } + } }, "the-forest-reverie": { "title": "“The Forest Reverie”", "body": " ’Tis said that when\n The hands of men\nTamed this primeval wood,\nAnd hoary trees with groans of wo,\nLike warriors by an unknown foe,\nWere in their strength subdued,\n The virgin Earth\n Gave instant birth\nTo springs that ne’er did flow--\n That in the sun\n Did rivulets run,\nAnd all around rare flowers did blow--\n The wild rose pale\n Perfumed the gale,\nAnd the queenly lily adown the dale\n (Whom the sun and the dew\n And the winds did woo),\nWith the gourd and the grape luxuriant grew.\n\n So when in tears\n The love of years\nIs wasted like the snow,\nAnd the fine fibrils of its life\nBy the rude wrong of instant strife\nAre broken at a blow--\n Within the heart\n Do springs upstart\nOf which it doth now know,\n And strange, sweet dreams,\n Like silent streams\nThat from new fountains overflow,\n With the earlier tide\n Of rivers glide\nDeep in the heart whose hope has died--\nQuenching the fires its ashes hide,--\nIts ashes, whence will spring and grow\n Sweet flowers, ere long,--\nThe rare and radiant flowers of song!", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1845" + }, "context": { "month": "march", "month_epoch": "late" @@ -47056,14 +47802,22 @@ "the-haunted-palace": { "title": "“The Haunted Palace”", "body": "In the greenest of our valleys\nBy good angels tenanted,\nOnce a fair and stately palace--\nRadiant palace--reared its head.\nIn the monarch Thought’s dominion--\nIt stood there!\nNever seraph spread a pinion\nOver fabric half so fair!\n\nBanners yellow, glorious, golden,\nOn its roof did float and flow,\n(This--all this--was in the olden\nTime long ago),\nAnd every gentle air that dallied,\nIn that sweet day,\nAlong the ramparts plumed and pallid,\nA winged odor went away.\n\nWanderers in that happy valley,\nThrough two luminous windows, saw\nSpirits moving musically,\nTo a lute’s well-tunëd law,\nBound about a throne where, sitting\n(Porphyrogene!)\nIn state his glory well befitting,\nThe ruler of the realm was seen.\n\nAnd all with pearl and ruby glowing\nWas the fair palace door,\nThrough which came flowing, flowing, flowing,\nAnd sparkling evermore,\nA troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty\nWas but to sing,\nIn voices of surpassing beauty,\nThe wit and wisdom of their king.\n\nBut evil things, in robes of sorrow,\nAssailed the monarch’s high estate.\n(Ah, let us mourn!--for never morrow\nShall dawn upon him desolate!)\nAnd round about his home the glory\nThat blushed and bloomed,\nIs but a dim-remembered story\nOf the old time entombed.\n\nAnd travellers, now, within that valley,\nThrough the red-litten windows see\nVast forms, that move fantastically\nTo a discordant melody,\nWhile, like a ghastly rapid river,\nThrough the pale door\nA hideous throng rush out forever\nAnd laugh--but smile no more.", - "metadata": {} - }, - "helen": { - "title": "“Helen”", - "body": "I saw thee once--once only--years ago:\nI must not say _how_ many--but _not_ many.\nIt was a July midnight; and from out\nA full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, soaring,\nSought a precipitate pathway up through heaven,\nThere fell a silvery-silken veil of light,\nWith quietude, and sultriness and slumber,\nUpon the upturn’d faces of a thousand\nRoses that grew in an enchanted garden,\nWhere no wind dared to stir, unless on tiptoe--\nFell on the upturn’d faces of these roses\nThat gave out, in return for the love-light,\nTheir odorous souls in an ecstatic death--\nFell on the upturn’d faces of these roses\nThat smiled and died in this parterre, enchanted\nBy thee, and by the poetry of thy presence.\n\nClad all in white, upon a violet bank I saw thee half-reclining; while the moon\nFell on the upturn’d faces of the roses,\nAnd on thine own, upturn’d--alas, in sorrow!\n\nWas it not Fate, that, on this July midnight--\nWas it not Fate (whose name is also Sorrow),\nThat bade me pause before that garden-gate,\nTo breathe the incense of those slumbering roses?\nNo footstep stirred: the hated world all slept,\nSave only thee and me--(O Heaven!--O God!\nHow my heart beats in coupling those two words!)--\nSave only thee and me. I paused--I looked--\nAnd in an instant all things disappeared.\n(Ah, bear in mind this garden was enchanted!)\nThe pearly lustre of the moon went out:\nThe mossy banks and the meandering paths,\nThe happy flowers and the repining trees,\nWere seen no more: the very roses’ odors\nDied in the arms of the adoring airs.\nAll--all expired save thee--save less than thou:\nSave only the divine light in thine eyes--\nSave but the soul in thine uplifted eyes.\nI saw but them--they were the world to me.\nI saw but them--saw only them for hours--\nSaw only them until the moon went down.\nWhat wild heart-histories seemed to lie unwritten\nUpon those crystalline, celestial spheres!\nHow dark a woe! yet how sublime a hope!\nHow silently serene a sea of pride!\nHow daring an ambition! yet how deep--\nHow fathomless a capacity for love!\n\nBut now, at length, dear Dian sank from sight,\nInto a western couch of thunder-cloud;\nAnd thou, a ghost, amid the entombing trees\nDidst glide away. _Only thine eyes remained._\nThey _would not_ go--they never yet have gone.\nLighting my lonely pathway home that night,\n_They_ have not left me (as my hopes have) since.\nThey follow me--they lead me through the years.\n\nThey are my ministers--yet I their slave.\nTheir office is to illumine and enkindle--\nMy duty, _to be saved_ by their bright light,\nAnd purified in their electric fire,\nAnd sanctified in their elysian fire.\nThey fill my soul with Beauty (which is Hope),\nAnd are far up in Heaven--the stars I kneel to In the sad, silent watches of my night;\nWhile even in the meridian glare of day I see them still--two sweetly scintillant\nVenuses, unextinguished by the sun!", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1839", + "month": "april" + }, "context": { - "month": "july" + "month": "april" + } + } + }, + "helen-thy-beauty-is-to-me": { + "title": "“Helen, thy beauty is to me …”", + "body": "Helen, thy beauty is to me\nLike those Nicean barks of yore,\nThat gently, o’er a perfumed sea,\nThe weary, wayworn wanderer bore\nTo his own native shore.\n\nOn desperate seas long wont to roam,\nThy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,\nThy Naiad airs have brought me home\nTo the glory that was Greece,\nTo the grandeur that was Rome.\n\nLo! in yon brilliant window niche,\nHow statue-like I see thee stand,\nThe agate lamp within thy hand!\nAh, Psyche, from the regions which\nAre Holy Land!", + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1831" } } }, @@ -47076,20 +47830,31 @@ "title": "“Hymn”", "body": "At morn--at noon--at twilight dim--\nMaria! thou hast heard my hymn!\nIn joy and woe--in good and ill--\nMother of God, be with me still!\nWhen the Hours flew brightly by,\nAnd not a cloud obscured the sky,\nMy soul, lest it should truant be,\nThy grace did guide to thine and thee\nNow, when storms of Fate o’ercast\nDarkly my Present and my Past,\nLet my future radiant shine\nWith sweet hopes of thee and thine!", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1845" + }, "context": { "holiday": "assumption" } } }, "i-heed-not-that-my-earthly-lot": { - "title": "“I Heed Not that My Earthly Lot”", + "title": "“I heed not that my earthly lot …”", "body": "I heed not that my earthly lot\nHath--little of Earth in it--\nThat years of love have been forgot\nIn the hatred of a minute:--\nI mourn not that the desolate\nAre happier, sweet, than I,\nBut that _you_ sorrow for _my_ fate\nWho am a passer-by.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1829" + } + } }, "imitation": { "title": "“Imitation”", "body": "A dark unfathomed tide\nOf interminable pride--\nA mystery, and a dream,\nShould my early life seem;\nI say that dream was fraught\nWith a wild and waking thought\nOf beings that have been,\nWhich my spirit hath not seen,\nHad I let them pass me by,\nWith a dreaming eye!\nLet none of earth inherit\nThat vision on my spirit;\nThose thoughts I would control,\nAs a spell upon his soul:\nFor that bright hope at last\nAnd that light time have past,\nAnd my wordly rest hath gone\nWith a sigh as it passed on:\nI care not though it perish\nWith a thought I then did cherish.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1827" + } + } }, "in-youth-i-have-known-one": { "title": "“In Youth I Have Known One”", @@ -47102,13 +47867,24 @@ }, "the-island-of-the-fay": { "title": "“The Island of the Fay”", - "body": "_“Nullus enim locus sine genio est.”_\n --Servius.\n\n“_La musique_,” says Marmontel, in those ‘Contes Moraux’ which in all our translations we have insisted upon calling ‘Moral Tales,’ as if in mockery of their spirit--“_la musique est le seul des talens qui jouisse de lui-meme: tous les autres veulent des temoins_.” He here confounds the pleasure derivable from sweet sounds with the capacity for creating them. No more than any other _talent_, is that for music susceptible of complete enjoyment where there is no second party to appreciate its exercise; and it is only in common with other talents that it produces _effects_ which may be fully enjoyed in solitude. The idea which the _raconteur_ has either failed to entertain clearly, or has sacrificed in its expression to his national love of _point_, is doubtless the very tenable one that the higher order of music is the most thoroughly estimated when we are exclusively alone. The proposition in this form will be admitted at once by those who love the lyre for its own sake and for its spiritual uses. But there is one pleasure still within the reach of fallen mortality, and perhaps only one, which owes even more than does music to the accessory sentiment of seclusion. I mean the happiness experienced in the contemplation of natural scenery. In truth, the man who would behold aright the glory of God upon earth must in solitude behold that glory. To me at least the presence, not of human life only, but of life, in any other form than that of the green things which grow upon the soil and are voiceless, is a stain upon the landscape, is at war with the genius of the scene. I love, indeed, to regard the dark valleys, and the gray rocks, and the waters that silently smile, and the forests that sigh in uneasy slumbers, and the proud watchful mountains that look down upon all,--I love to regard these as themselves but the colossal members of one vast animate and sentient whole--a whole whose form (that of the sphere) is the most perfect and most inclusive of all; whose path is among associate planets; whose meek handmaiden is the moon; whose mediate sovereign is the sun; whose life is eternity; whose thought is that of a god; whose enjoyment is knowledge; whose destinies are lost in immensity; whose cognizance of ourselves is akin with our own cognizance of the _animalculae_ which infest the brain, a being which we in consequence regard as purely inanimate and material, much in the same manner as these _animalculae_ must thus regard us.\nOur telescopes and our mathematical investigations assure us on every hand, notwithstanding the cant of the more ignorant of the priesthood, that space, and therefore that bulk, is an important consideration in the eyes of the Almighty. The cycles in which the stars move are those best adapted for the evolution, without collision, of the greatest possible number of bodies. The forms of those bodies are accurately such as within a given surface to include the greatest possible amount of matter; while the surfaces themselves are so disposed as to accommodate a denser population than could be accommodated on the same surfaces otherwise arranged. Nor is it any argument against bulk being an object with God that space itself is infinite; for there may be an infinity of matter to fill it; and since we see clearly that the endowment of matter with vitality is a principle--indeed, as far as our judgments extend, the _leading_ principle in the operations of Deity, it is scarcely logical to imagine it confined to the regions of the minute, where we daily trace it, and not extending to those of the august. As we find cycle within cycle without end, yet all revolving around one far-distant centre which is the Godhead, may we not analogically suppose, in the same manner, life within life, the less within the greater, and all within the Spirit Divine? In short, we are madly erring through self-esteem in believing man, in either his temporal or future destinies, to be of more moment in the universe than that vast “clod of the valley” which he tills and contemns, and to which he denies a soul, for no more profound reason than that he does not behold it in operation.\nThese fancies, and such as these, have always given to my meditations among the mountains and the forests, by the rivers and the ocean, a tinge of what the every-day world would not fail to term the fantastic. My wanderings amid such scenes have been many and far-searching, and often solitary; and the interest with which I have strayed through many a dim deep valley, or gazed into the reflected heaven of many a bright lake, has been an interest greatly deepened by the thought that I have strayed and gazed _alone._ What flippant Frenchman was it who said, in allusion to the well known work of Zimmermann, that _“la solitude est une belle chose; mais il faut quelqu’un pour vous dire que la solitude est une belle chose”_? The epigram cannot be gainsaid; but the necessity is a thing that does not exist.\nIt was during one of my lonely journeyings, amid a far distant region of mountain locked within mountain, and sad rivers and melancholy tarns writhing or sleeping within all, that I chanced upon a certain rivulet and island. I came upon them suddenly in the leafy June, and threw myself upon the turf beneath the branches of an unknown odorous shrub, that I might doze as I contemplated the scene. I felt that thus only should I look upon it, such was the character of phantasm which it wore.\nOn all sides, save to the west where the sun was about sinking, arose the verdant walls of the forest. The little river which turned sharply in its course, and was thus immediately lost to sight, seemed to have no exit from its prison, but to be absorbed by the deep green foliage of the trees to the east; while in the opposite quarter (so it appeared to me as I lay at length and glanced upward) there poured down noiselessly and continuously into the valley a rich golden and crimson waterfall from the sunset fountains of the sky.\nAbout midway in the short vista which my dreamy vision took in, one small circular island, profusely verdured, reposed upon the bosom of the stream. So blended bank and shadow there, that each seemed pendulous in air--so mirror-like was the glassy water, that it was scarcely possible to say at what point upon the slope of the emerald turf its crystal dominion began. My position enabled me to include in a single view both the eastern and western extremities of the islet, and I observed a singularly-marked difference in their aspects. The latter was all one radiant harem of garden beauties. It glowed and blushed beneath the eye of the slant sunlight, and fairly laughed with flowers. The grass was short, springy, sweet-scented, and Asphodel-interspersed. The trees were lithe, mirthful, erect, bright, slender, and graceful, of eastern figure and foliage, with bark smooth, glossy, and parti-colored. There seemed a deep sense of life and joy about all, and although no airs blew from out the heavens, yet everything had motion through the gentle sweepings to and fro of innumerable butterflies, that might have been mistaken for tulips with wings.\nThe other or eastern end of the isle was whelmed in the blackest shade. A sombre, yet beautiful and peaceful gloom, here pervaded all things. The trees were dark in color and mournful in form and attitude--wreathing themselves into sad, solemn, and spectral shapes, that conveyed ideas of mortal sorrow and untimely death. The grass wore the deep tint of the cypress, and the heads of its blades hung droopingly, and hither and thither among it were many small unsightly hillocks, low and narrow, and not very long, that had the aspect of graves, but were not, although over and all about them the rue and the rosemary clambered. The shades of the trees fell heavily upon the water, and seemed to bury itself therein, impregnating the depths of the element with darkness. I fancied that each shadow, as the sun descended lower and lower, separated itself sullenly from the trunk that gave it birth, and thus became absorbed by the stream, while other shadows issued momently from the trees, taking the place of their predecessors thus entombed.\nThis idea having once seized upon my fancy greatly excited it, and I lost myself forthwith in reverie. “If ever island were enchanted,” said I to myself, “this is it. This is the haunt of the few gentle Fays who remain from the wreck of the race. Are these green tombs theirs?--or do they yield up their sweet lives as mankind yield up their own? In dying, do they not rather waste away mournfully, rendering unto God little by little their existence, as these trees render up shadow after shadow, exhausting their substance unto dissolution? What the wasting tree is to the water that imbibes its shade, growing thus blacker by what it preys upon, may not the life of the Fay be to the death which engulfs it?”\nAs I thus mused, with half-shut eyes, while the sun sank rapidly to rest, and eddying currents careered round and round the island, bearing upon their bosom large dazzling white flakes of the bark of the sycamore, flakes which, in their multiform positions upon the water, a quick imagination might have converted into anything it pleased; while I thus mused, it appeared to me that the form of one of those very Fays about whom I had been pondering, made its way slowly into the darkness from out the light at the western end of the island. She stood erect in a singularly fragile canoe, and urged it with the mere phantom of an oar. While within the influence of the lingering sunbeams, her attitude seemed indicative of joy, but sorrow deformed it as she passed within the shade. Slowly she glided along, and at length rounded the islet and re-entered the region of light. “The revolution which has just been made by the Fay,” continued I musingly, “is the cycle of the brief year of her life. She has floated through her winter and through her summer. She is a year nearer unto death: for I did not fail to see that as she came into the shade, her shadow fell from her, and was swallowed up in the dark water, making its blackness more black.”\nAnd again the boat appeared and the Fay, but about the attitude of the latter there was more of care and uncertainty and less of elastic joy. She floated again from out the light and into the gloom (which deepened momently), and again her shadow fell from her into the ebony water, and became absorbed into its blackness. And again and again she made the circuit of the island (while the sun rushed down to his slumbers), and at each issuing into the light there was more sorrow about her person, while it grew feebler and far fainter and more indistinct, and at each passage into the gloom there fell from her a darker shade, which became whelmed in a shadow more black. But at length, when the sun had utterly departed, the Fay, now the mere ghost of her former self, went disconsolately with her boat into the region of the ebony flood, and that she issued thence at all I cannot say, for darkness fell over all things, and I beheld her magical figure no more.", - "metadata": {} + "body": "_“Nullus enim locus sine genio est.”_\n --Servius.\n\n“_La musique_,” says Marmontel, in those ‘Contes Moraux’ which in all our translations we have insisted upon calling ‘Moral Tales,’ as if in mockery of their spirit--“_la musique est le seul des talens qui jouisse de lui-meme: tous les autres veulent des temoins_.” He here confounds the pleasure derivable from sweet sounds with the capacity for creating them. No more than any other _talent_, is that for music susceptible of complete enjoyment where there is no second party to appreciate its exercise; and it is only in common with other talents that it produces _effects_ which may be fully enjoyed in solitude. The idea which the _raconteur_ has either failed to entertain clearly, or has sacrificed in its expression to his national love of _point_, is doubtless the very tenable one that the higher order of music is the most thoroughly estimated when we are exclusively alone. The proposition in this form will be admitted at once by those who love the lyre for its own sake and for its spiritual uses. But there is one pleasure still within the reach of fallen mortality, and perhaps only one, which owes even more than does music to the accessory sentiment of seclusion. I mean the happiness experienced in the contemplation of natural scenery. In truth, the man who would behold aright the glory of God upon earth must in solitude behold that glory. To me at least the presence, not of human life only, but of life, in any other form than that of the green things which grow upon the soil and are voiceless, is a stain upon the landscape, is at war with the genius of the scene. I love, indeed, to regard the dark valleys, and the gray rocks, and the waters that silently smile, and the forests that sigh in uneasy slumbers, and the proud watchful mountains that look down upon all,--I love to regard these as themselves but the colossal members of one vast animate and sentient whole--a whole whose form (that of the sphere) is the most perfect and most inclusive of all; whose path is among associate planets; whose meek handmaiden is the moon; whose mediate sovereign is the sun; whose life is eternity; whose thought is that of a god; whose enjoyment is knowledge; whose destinies are lost in immensity; whose cognizance of ourselves is akin with our own cognizance of the _animalculae_ which infest the brain, a being which we in consequence regard as purely inanimate and material, much in the same manner as these _animalculae_ must thus regard us.\n\nOur telescopes and our mathematical investigations assure us on every hand, notwithstanding the cant of the more ignorant of the priesthood, that space, and therefore that bulk, is an important consideration in the eyes of the Almighty. The cycles in which the stars move are those best adapted for the evolution, without collision, of the greatest possible number of bodies. The forms of those bodies are accurately such as within a given surface to include the greatest possible amount of matter; while the surfaces themselves are so disposed as to accommodate a denser population than could be accommodated on the same surfaces otherwise arranged. Nor is it any argument against bulk being an object with God that space itself is infinite; for there may be an infinity of matter to fill it; and since we see clearly that the endowment of matter with vitality is a principle--indeed, as far as our judgments extend, the _leading_ principle in the operations of Deity, it is scarcely logical to imagine it confined to the regions of the minute, where we daily trace it, and not extending to those of the august. As we find cycle within cycle without end, yet all revolving around one far-distant centre which is the Godhead, may we not analogically suppose, in the same manner, life within life, the less within the greater, and all within the Spirit Divine? In short, we are madly erring through self-esteem in believing man, in either his temporal or future destinies, to be of more moment in the universe than that vast “clod of the valley” which he tills and contemns, and to which he denies a soul, for no more profound reason than that he does not behold it in operation.\n\nThese fancies, and such as these, have always given to my meditations among the mountains and the forests, by the rivers and the ocean, a tinge of what the every-day world would not fail to term the fantastic. My wanderings amid such scenes have been many and far-searching, and often solitary; and the interest with which I have strayed through many a dim deep valley, or gazed into the reflected heaven of many a bright lake, has been an interest greatly deepened by the thought that I have strayed and gazed _alone._ What flippant Frenchman was it who said, in allusion to the well known work of Zimmermann, that _“la solitude est une belle chose; mais il faut quelqu’un pour vous dire que la solitude est une belle chose”_? The epigram cannot be gainsaid; but the necessity is a thing that does not exist.\n\nIt was during one of my lonely journeyings, amid a far distant region of mountain locked within mountain, and sad rivers and melancholy tarns writhing or sleeping within all, that I chanced upon a certain rivulet and island. I came upon them suddenly in the leafy June, and threw myself upon the turf beneath the branches of an unknown odorous shrub, that I might doze as I contemplated the scene. I felt that thus only should I look upon it, such was the character of phantasm which it wore.\n\nOn all sides, save to the west where the sun was about sinking, arose the verdant walls of the forest. The little river which turned sharply in its course, and was thus immediately lost to sight, seemed to have no exit from its prison, but to be absorbed by the deep green foliage of the trees to the east; while in the opposite quarter (so it appeared to me as I lay at length and glanced upward) there poured down noiselessly and continuously into the valley a rich golden and crimson waterfall from the sunset fountains of the sky.\n\nAbout midway in the short vista which my dreamy vision took in, one small circular island, profusely verdured, reposed upon the bosom of the stream. So blended bank and shadow there, that each seemed pendulous in air--so mirror-like was the glassy water, that it was scarcely possible to say at what point upon the slope of the emerald turf its crystal dominion began. My position enabled me to include in a single view both the eastern and western extremities of the islet, and I observed a singularly-marked difference in their aspects. The latter was all one radiant harem of garden beauties. It glowed and blushed beneath the eye of the slant sunlight, and fairly laughed with flowers. The grass was short, springy, sweet-scented, and Asphodel-interspersed. The trees were lithe, mirthful, erect, bright, slender, and graceful, of eastern figure and foliage, with bark smooth, glossy, and parti-colored. There seemed a deep sense of life and joy about all, and although no airs blew from out the heavens, yet everything had motion through the gentle sweepings to and fro of innumerable butterflies, that might have been mistaken for tulips with wings.\n\nThe other or eastern end of the isle was whelmed in the blackest shade. A sombre, yet beautiful and peaceful gloom, here pervaded all things. The trees were dark in color and mournful in form and attitude--wreathing themselves into sad, solemn, and spectral shapes, that conveyed ideas of mortal sorrow and untimely death. The grass wore the deep tint of the cypress, and the heads of its blades hung droopingly, and hither and thither among it were many small unsightly hillocks, low and narrow, and not very long, that had the aspect of graves, but were not, although over and all about them the rue and the rosemary clambered. The shades of the trees fell heavily upon the water, and seemed to bury itself therein, impregnating the depths of the element with darkness. I fancied that each shadow, as the sun descended lower and lower, separated itself sullenly from the trunk that gave it birth, and thus became absorbed by the stream, while other shadows issued momently from the trees, taking the place of their predecessors thus entombed.\n\nThis idea having once seized upon my fancy greatly excited it, and I lost myself forthwith in reverie. “If ever island were enchanted,” said I to myself, “this is it. This is the haunt of the few gentle Fays who remain from the wreck of the race. Are these green tombs theirs?--or do they yield up their sweet lives as mankind yield up their own? In dying, do they not rather waste away mournfully, rendering unto God little by little their existence, as these trees render up shadow after shadow, exhausting their substance unto dissolution? What the wasting tree is to the water that imbibes its shade, growing thus blacker by what it preys upon, may not the life of the Fay be to the death which engulfs it?”\n\nAs I thus mused, with half-shut eyes, while the sun sank rapidly to rest, and eddying currents careered round and round the island, bearing upon their bosom large dazzling white flakes of the bark of the sycamore, flakes which, in their multiform positions upon the water, a quick imagination might have converted into anything it pleased; while I thus mused, it appeared to me that the form of one of those very Fays about whom I had been pondering, made its way slowly into the darkness from out the light at the western end of the island. She stood erect in a singularly fragile canoe, and urged it with the mere phantom of an oar. While within the influence of the lingering sunbeams, her attitude seemed indicative of joy, but sorrow deformed it as she passed within the shade. Slowly she glided along, and at length rounded the islet and re-entered the region of light. “The revolution which has just been made by the Fay,” continued I musingly, “is the cycle of the brief year of her life. She has floated through her winter and through her summer. She is a year nearer unto death: for I did not fail to see that as she came into the shade, her shadow fell from her, and was swallowed up in the dark water, making its blackness more black.”\n\nAnd again the boat appeared and the Fay, but about the attitude of the latter there was more of care and uncertainty and less of elastic joy. She floated again from out the light and into the gloom (which deepened momently), and again her shadow fell from her into the ebony water, and became absorbed into its blackness. And again and again she made the circuit of the island (while the sun rushed down to his slumbers), and at each issuing into the light there was more sorrow about her person, while it grew feebler and far fainter and more indistinct, and at each passage into the gloom there fell from her a darker shade, which became whelmed in a shadow more black. But at length, when the sun had utterly departed, the Fay, now the mere ghost of her former self, went disconsolately with her boat into the region of the ebony flood, and that she issued thence at all I cannot say, for darkness fell over all things, and I beheld her magical figure no more.", + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1841", + "month": "june" + }, + "context": { + "month": "june" + } + } }, "israfel": { "title": "“Israfel”", - "body": "_“And the angel Israfel, whose heart-strings are a lute, and who has the sweetest voice of all God’s creatures.”_\n --Koran\n\nIn Heaven a spirit doth dwell\n“Whose heart-strings are a lute;”\nNone sing so wildly well\nAs the angel Israfel,\nAnd the giddy Stars (so legends tell),\nCeasing their hymns, attend the spell\nOf his voice, all mute.\n\nTottering above\nIn her highest noon,\nThe enamoured Moon\nBlushes with love,\nWhile, to listen, the red levin\n(With the rapid Pleiads, even,\nWhich were seven),\nPauses in Heaven.\n\nAnd they say (the starry choir\nAnd the other listening things)\nThat Israfeli’s fire Is owing to that lyre\nBy which he sits and sings--\nThe trembling living wire\nOf those unusual strings.\n\nBut the skies that angel trod,\nWhere deep thoughts are a duty--\nWhere Love’s a grow-up God--\nWhere the Houri glances are Imbued with all the beauty\nWhich we worship in a star.\n\nTherefore, thou art not wrong,\nIsrafeli, who despisest\nAn unimpassioned song;\nTo thee the laurels belong,\nBest bard, because the wisest!\nMerrily live and long!\n\nThe ecstasies above\nWith thy burning measures suit--\nThy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love,\nWith the fervor of thy lute--\nWell may the stars be mute!\n\nYes, Heaven is thine; but this\nIs a world of sweets and sours;\nOur flowers are merely--flowers,\nAnd the shadow of thy perfect bliss\nIs the sunshine of ours.\n\nIf I could dwell\nWhere Israfel\nHath dwelt, and he where I,\nHe might not sing so wildly well\nA mortal melody,\nWhile a bolder note than this might swell\nFrom my lyre within the sky.", + "body": "_“And the angel Israfel, whose heart-strings are a lute, and who has the sweetest voice of all God’s creatures.”_\n --Koran\n\nIn Heaven a spirit doth dwell\n“Whose heart-strings are a lute;”\nNone sing so wildly well\nAs the angel Israfel,\nAnd the giddy Stars (so legends tell),\nCeasing their hymns, attend the spell\nOf his voice, all mute.\n\nTottering above\nIn her highest noon,\nThe enamoured Moon\nBlushes with love,\nWhile, to listen, the red levin\n(With the rapid Pleiads, even,\nWhich were seven),\nPauses in Heaven.\n\nAnd they say (the starry choir\nAnd the other listening things)\nThat Israfeli’s fire \nIs owing to that lyre\nBy which he sits and sings--\nThe trembling living wire\nOf those unusual strings.\n\nBut the skies that angel trod,\nWhere deep thoughts are a duty--\nWhere Love’s a grow-up God--\nWhere the Houri glances are \nImbued with all the beauty\nWhich we worship in a star.\n\nTherefore, thou art not wrong,\nIsrafeli, who despisest\nAn unimpassioned song;\nTo thee the laurels belong,\nBest bard, because the wisest!\nMerrily live and long!\n\nThe ecstasies above\nWith thy burning measures suit--\nThy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love,\nWith the fervor of thy lute--\nWell may the stars be mute!\n\nYes, Heaven is thine; but this\nIs a world of sweets and sours;\nOur flowers are merely--flowers,\nAnd the shadow of thy perfect bliss\nIs the sunshine of ours.\n\nIf I could dwell\nWhere Israfel\nHath dwelt, and he where I,\nHe might not sing so wildly well\nA mortal melody,\nWhile a bolder note than this might swell\nFrom my lyre within the sky.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1836" + }, "context": { "season": "spring" } @@ -47117,41 +47893,59 @@ "the-lake": { "title": "“The Lake”", "body": "In spring of youth it was my lot\nTo haunt of the wide world a spot\nThe which I could not love the less--\nSo lovely was the loneliness\nOf a wild lake, with black rock bound,\nAnd the tall pines that towered around.\n\nBut when the Night had thrown her pall\nUpon the spot, as upon all,\nAnd the mystic wind went by\nMurmuring in melody--\nThen--ah, then, I would awake\nTo the terror of the lone lake.\n\nYet that terror was not fright,\nBut a tremulous delight--\nA feeling not the jewelled mine\nCould teach or bribe me to define--\nNor Love--although the Love were thine.\n\nDeath was in that poisonous wave,\nAnd in its gulf a fitting grave\nFor him who thence could solace bring\nTo his lone imagining--\nWhose solitary soul could make\nAn Eden of that dim lake.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1827" + } + } }, "lenore": { "title": "“Lenore”", "body": "Ah, broken is the golden bowl! the spirit flown forever!\nLet the bell toll!--a saintly soul floats on the Stygian river.\nAnd, Guy de Vere, hast _thou_ no tear?--weep now or never more!\nSee! on yon drear and rigid bier low lies thy love, Lenore!\nCome! let the burial rite be read--the funeral song be sung!--\nAn anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young--\nA dirge for her, the doubly dead in that she died so young.\n\n“Wretches! ye loved her for her wealth and hated her for her pride,\nAnd when she fell in feeble health, ye blessed her--that she died!\nHow _shall_ the ritual, then, be read?--the requiem how be sung\nBy you--by yours, the evil eye,--by yours, the slanderous tongue\nThat did to death the innocence that died, and died so young?”\n\n_Peccavimus;_ but rave not thus! and let a Sabbath song\nGo up to God so solemnly the dead may feel no wrong!\nThe sweet Lenore hath “gone before,” with Hope, that flew beside,\nLeaving thee wild for the dear child that should have been thy bride--\nFor her, the fair and _débonnaire_, that now so lowly lies,\nThe life upon her yellow hair but not within her eyes--\nThe life still there, upon her hair--the death upon her eyes.\n\n“Avaunt! to-night my heart is light. No dirge will I upraise,\nBut waft the angel on her flight with a paean of old days!\nLet _no_ bell toll!--lest her sweet soul, amid its hallowed mirth,\nShould catch the note, as it doth float up from the damned Earth.\nTo friends above, from fiends below, the indignant ghost is riven--\nFrom Hell unto a high estate far up within the Heaven--\nFrom grief and groan to a golden throne beside the King of Heaven.”", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1831" + } + } }, - "myserious-star": { - "title": "“Myserious Star”", - "body": "Mysterious star!\nThou wert my dream\nAll a long summer night--\nBe now my theme!\nBy this clear stream,\nOf thee will I write;\nMeantime from afar\nBathe me in light!\n\nThy world has not the dross of ours,\nYet all the beauty--all the flowers\nThat list our love or deck our bowers In dreamy gardens, where do lie\nDreamy maidens all the day;\nWhile the silver winds of Circassy\nOn violet couches faint away.\nLittle--oh! little dwells in thee\nLike unto what on earth we see:\nBeauty’s eye is here the bluest In the falsest and untruest--\nOn the sweetest air doth float\nThe most sad and solemn note--\nIf with thee be broken hearts,\nJoy so peacefully departs,\nThat its echo still doth dwell,\nLike the murmur in the shell.\nThou! thy truest type of grief Is the gently falling leaf--\nThou! thy framing is so holy\nSorrow is not melancholy.", + "mysterious-star": { + "title": "“Mysterious Star”", + "body": "Mysterious star!\nThou wert my dream\nAll a long summer night--\nBe now my theme!\nBy this clear stream,\nOf thee will I write;\nMeantime from afar\nBathe me in light!\n\nThy world has not the dross of ours,\nYet all the beauty--all the flowers\nThat list our love or deck our bowers \nIn dreamy gardens, where do lie\nDreamy maidens all the day;\nWhile the silver winds of Circassy\nOn violet couches faint away.\nLittle--oh! little dwells in thee\nLike unto what on earth we see:\nBeauty’s eye is here the bluest \nIn the falsest and untruest--\nOn the sweetest air doth float\nThe most sad and solemn note--\nIf with thee be broken hearts,\nJoy so peacefully departs,\nThat its echo still doth dwell,\nLike the murmur in the shell.\nThou! thy truest type of grief \nIs the gently falling leaf--\nThou! thy framing is so holy\nSorrow is not melancholy.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1831" + }, "context": { - "season": "summer" + "liturgy": "advent" } } }, - "not-long-ago": { - "title": "“Not Long Ago”", - "body": "Not long ago, the writer of these lines,\nIn the mad pride of intellectuality,\nMaintained “the power of words”--denied that ever\nA thought arose within the human brain\nBeyond the utterance of the human tongue:\nAnd now, as if in mockery of that boast,\nTwo words--two foreign soft dissyllables--\nItalian tones, made only to be murmured\nBy angels dreaming in the moonlit “dew\nThat hangs like chains of pearl on Hermon hill,”--\nHave stirred from out the abysses of his heart,\nUnthought-like thoughts that are the souls of thought,\nRicher, far wilder, far diviner visions\nThan even the seraph harper, Israfel,\n(Who has “the sweetest voice of all God’s creatures,”)\nCould hope to utter. And I! my spells are broken.\nThe pen falls powerless from my shivering hand.\nWith thy dear name as text, though hidden by thee,\nI cannot write--I cannot speak or think--\nAlas, I cannot feel; for ’tis not feeling,\nThis standing motionless upon the golden\nThreshold of the wide-open gate of dreams,\nGazing, entranced, adown the gorgeous vista,\nAnd thrilling as I see, upon the right,\nUpon the left, and all the way along,\nAmid empurpled vapors, far away\nTo where the prospect terminates--_thee only_!", - "metadata": {} - }, "a-paean": { "title": "“A Paean”", "body": "How shall the burial rite be read?\nThe solemn song be sung?\nThe requiem for the loveliest dead,\nThat ever died so young?\n\nHer friends are gazing on her\nAnd on her gaudy bier,\nAnd weep!--oh! to dishonor\nDead beauty with a tear!\n\nThey loved her for her wealth--\nAnd they hated her for her pride--\nBut she grew in feeble health,\nAnd they _love_ her--that she died.\n\nThey tell me (while they speak\nOf her “costly broider’d pall”)\nThat my voice is growing weak--\nThat I should not sing at all--\n\nOr that my tone should be\nTun’d to such solemn song\nSo mournfully--so mournfully,\nThat the dead may feel no wrong.\n\nBut she is gone above\nWith young Hope at her side,\nAnd I am drunk with love\nOf the dead, who is my bride.--\n\nOf the dead--dead who lies\nAll perfum’d there,\nWith the death upon her eyes.\nAnd the life upon her hair.\n\nThus on the coffin loud and long\nI strike--the murmur sent\nThrough the gray chambers to my song,\nShall be the accompaniment.\n\nThou diedst in thy life’s June--\nBut thou didst not die too fair:\nThou didst not die too soon,\nNor with too calm an air.\n\nFrom more than friends on earth\nThy life and love are riven,\nTo join the untainted mirth\nOf more than thrones in heaven.--\n\nTherefore, to thee this night\nI will no requiem raise,\nBut waft thee on thy flight,\nWith a Paean of old days.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1836" + } + } }, "the-power-of-words": { "title": "“The Power of Words”", "body": "> _Oinos:_\nPardon, Agathos, the weakness of a spirit new-fledged with immortality!\n\n> _Agathos:_\nYou have spoken nothing, my Oinos, for which pardon is to be demanded. Not even here is knowledge a thing of intuition. For wisdom, ask of the angels freely, that it may be given!\n\n> _Oinos:_\nBut in this existence I dreamed that I should be at once cognizant of all things, and thus at once happy in being cognizant of all.\n\n> _Agathos:_\nAh, not in knowledge is happiness, but in the acquisition of knowledge! In forever knowing, we are forever blessed; but to know all, were the curse of a fiend.\n\n> _Oinos:_\nBut does not The Most High know all?\n\n> _Agathos:_\n_That_ (since he is The Most Happy) must be still the _one_ thing unknown even to HIM.\n\n> _Oinos:_\nBut, since we grow hourly in knowledge, must not _at last_ all things be known?\n\n> _Agathos:_\nLook down into the abysmal distances!--attempt to force the gaze down the multitudinous vistas of the stars, as we sweep slowly through them thus--and thus--and thus! Even the spiritual vision, is it not at all points arrested by the continuous golden walls of the universe?--the walls of the myriads of the shining bodies that mere number has appeared to blend into unity?\n\n> _Oinos:_\nI clearly perceive that the infinity of matter is no dream.\n\n> _Agathos:_\nThere are no dreams in Aidenn--but it is here whispered that, of this infinity of matter, the _sole_ purpose is to afford infinite springs at which the soul may allay the thirst _to know_ which is forever unquenchable within it--since to quench it would be to extinguish the soul’s self. Question me then, my Oinos, freely and without fear. Come! we will leave to the left the loud harmony of the Pleiades, and swoop outward from the throne into the starry meadows beyond Orion, where, for pansies and violets, and heart’s-ease, are the beds of the triplicate and triple-tinted suns.\n\n> _Oinos:_\nAnd now, Agathos, as we proceed, instruct me!--speak to me in the earth’s familiar tones! I understand not what you hinted to me just now of the modes or of the methods of what during mortality, we were accustomed to call Creation. Do you mean to say that the Creator is not God?\n\n> _Agathos:_\nI mean to say that the Deity does not create.\n\n> _Oinos:_\nExplain!\n\n> _Agathos:_\nIn the beginning only, he created. The seeming creatures which are now throughout the universe so perpetually springing into being can only be considered as the mediate or indirect, not as the direct or immediate results of the Divine creative power.\n\n> _Oinos:_\nAmong men, my Agathos, this idea would be considered heretical in the extreme.\n\n> _Agathos:_\nAmong the angels, my Oinos, it is seen to be simply true.\n\n> _Oinos:_\nI can comprehend you thus far--that certain operations of what we term Nature, or the natural laws, will, under certain conditions, give rise to that which has all the _appearance_ of creation. Shortly before the final overthrow of the earth, there were, I well remember, many very successful experiments in what some philosophers were weak enough to denominate the creation of animalculae.\n\n> _Agathos:_\nThe cases of which you speak were, in fact, instances of the secondary creation, and of the _only_ species of creation which has ever been since the first word spoke into existence the first law.\n\n> _Oinos:_\nAre not the starry worlds that, from the abyss of nonentity, burst hourly forth into the heavens--are not these stars, Agathos, the immediate handiwork of the King?\n\n> _Agathos:_\nLet me endeavor, my Oinos, to lead you, step by step, to the conception I intend. You are well aware that, as no thought can perish, so no act is without infinite result. We moved our hands, for example, when we were dwellers on the earth, and in so doing we gave vibration to the atmosphere which engirdled it. This vibration was indefinitely extended till it gave impulse to every particle of the earth’s air, which thenceforward, _and forever_, was actuated by the one movement of the hand. This fact the mathematicians of our globe well knew. They made the special effects, indeed, wrought in the fluid by special impulses, the subject of exact calculation--so that it became easy to determine in what precise period an impulse of given extent would engirdle the orb, and impress (forever) every atom of the atmosphere circumambient. Retrograding, they found no difficulty; from a given effect, under given conditions, in determining the value of the original impulse. Now the mathematicians who saw that the results of any given impulse were absolutely endless--and who saw that a portion of these results were accurately traceable through the agency of algebraic analysis--who saw, too, the facility of the retrogradation--these men saw, at the same time, that this species of analysis itself had within itself a capacity for indefinite progress--that there were no bounds conceivable to its advancement and applicability, except within the intellect of him who advanced or applied it. But at this point our mathematicians paused.\n\n> _Oinos:_\nAnd why, Agathos, should they have proceeded?\n\n> _Agathos:_\nBecause there were some considerations of deep interest beyond. It was deducible from what they knew, that to a being of infinite understanding--one to whom the _perfection_ of the algebraic analysis lay unfolded--there could be no difficulty in tracing every impulse given the air--and the ether through the air--to the remotest consequences at any even infinitely remote epoch of time. It is indeed demonstrable that every such impulse _given the air_, must _in the end_ impress every individual thing that exists _within the universe;_--and the being of infinite understanding--the being whom we have imagined--might trace the remote undulations of the impulse--trace them upward and onward in their influences upon all particles of all matter--upward and onward forever in their modifications of old forms--or, in other words, _in their creation of new_--until he found them reflected--unimpressive _at last_--back from the throne of the Godhead. And not only could such a being do this, but at any epoch, should a given result be afforded him--should one of these numberless comets, for example, be presented to his inspection--he could have no difficulty in determining, by the analytic retrogradation, to what original impulse it was due. This power of retrogradation in its absolute fulness and perfection--this faculty of referring at _all_ epochs, _all_ effects to _all_ causes--is of course the prerogative of the Deity alone--but in every variety of degree, short of the absolute perfection, is the power itself exercised by the whole host of the Angelic Intelligences.\n\n> _Oinos:_\nBut you speak merely of impulses upon the air.\n\n> _Agathos:_\nIn speaking of the air, I referred only to the earth: but the general proposition has reference to impulses upon the ether--which, since it pervades, and alone pervades all space, is thus the great medium of _creation_.\n\n> _Oinos:_\nThen all motion, of whatever nature, creates?\n\n> _Agathos:_\nIt must: but a true philosophy has long taught that the source of all motion is thought--and the source of all thought is--\n\n> _Oinos:_\nGod.\n\n> _Agathos:_\nI have spoken to you, Oinos, as to a child, of the fair Earth which lately perished--of impulses upon the atmosphere of the earth.\n\n> _Oinos:_\nYou did.\n\n> _Agathos:_\nAnd while I thus spoke, did there not cross your mind some thought of the _physical power of words_? Is not every word an impulse on the air?\n\n> _Oinos:_\nBut why, Agathos, do you weep--and why, oh, why do your wings droop as we hover above this fair star--which is the greenest and yet most terrible of all we have encountered in our flight? Its brilliant flowers look like a fairy dream--but its fierce volcanoes like the passions of a turbulent heart.\n\n> _Agathos:_\nThey _are_!--they _are_!--This wild star--it is now three centuries since, with clasped hands, and with streaming eyes, at the feet of my beloved--I spoke it--with a few passionate sentences--into birth. Its brilliant flowers _are_ the dearest of all unfulfilled dreams, and its raging volcanoes _are_ the passions of the most turbulent and unhallowed of hearts!", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1845" + } + } }, "the-raven": { "title": "“The Raven”", "body": "Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,\nOver many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore--\nWhile I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,\nAs of some one gently rapping--rapping at my chamber door.\n“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door--\n Only this and nothing more.”\n\nAh, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December,\nAnd each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.\nEagerly I wished the morrow;--vainly I had sought to borrow\nFrom my books surcease of sorrow--sorrow for the lost Lenore--\nFor the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore--\n Nameless here for evermore.\n\nAnd the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain\nThrilled me--filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;\nSo that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating\n“’Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door--\nSome late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;--\n This it is and nothing more.”\n\nPresently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,\n“Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;\nBut the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,\nAnd so faintly you came tapping--tapping at my chamber door,\nThat I scarce was sure I heard you”--here I opened wide the door:--\n Darkness there and nothing more.\n\nDeep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,\nDoubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;\nBut the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token,\nAnd the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore!”\nThis I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!”\n Merely this and nothing more.\n\nBack into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,\nSoon I heard again a tapping, somewhat louder than before.\n“Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice;\nLet me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore--\nLet my heart be still a moment, and this mystery explore;--\n ’Tis the wind and nothing more.”\n\nOpen here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,\nIn there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore;\nNot the least obeisance made he: not an instant stopped or stayed he;\nBut, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door--\nPerched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door--\n Perched, and sat, and nothing more.\n\nThen this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,\nBy the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,\n“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no craven,\nGhastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore--\nTell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”\n Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”\n\nMuch I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,\nThough its answer little meaning--little relevancy bore;\nFor we cannot help agreeing that no living human being\nEver yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door--\nBird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,\n With such name as “Nevermore.”\n\nBut the Raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust, spoke only\nThat one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.\nNothing further then he uttered--not a feather then he fluttered--\nTill I scarcely more than muttered, “Other friends have flown before--\nOn the morrow _he_ will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.”\n Then the bird said, “Nevermore.”\n\nStartled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,\n“Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters is its only stock and store,\nCaught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster\nFollowed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore--\nTill the dirges of his Hope the melancholy burden bore\n Of ‘Never--nevermore.’”\n\nBut the Raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling,\nStraight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door;\nThen, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking\nFancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore--\nWhat this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore\n Meant in croaking “Nevermore.”\n\nThis I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing\nTo the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom’s core;\nThis and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining\nOn the cushion’s velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o’er,\nBut whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o’er,\n _She_ shall press, ah, nevermore!\n\nThen, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer\nSwung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.\n“Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee--by these angels he hath sent thee\nRespite--respite aad nepenthé from thy memories of Lenore!\nQuaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthé, and forget this lost Lenore!”\n Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”\n\n“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!--prophet still, if bird or devil!--\nWhether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,\nDesolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted--\nOn this home by Horror haunted--tell me truly, I implore--\nIs there--_is_ there balm in Gilead?--tell me--tell me, I implore!”\n Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”\n\n“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!--prophet still, if bird or devil!\nBy that Heaven that bends above us--by that God we both adore--\nTell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,\nIt shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore--\nClasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.”\n Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”\n\n“Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked, upstarting--\n“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!\nLeave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!\nLeave my loneliness unbroken!--quit the bust above my door!\nTake thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”\n Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”\n\nAnd the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting\nOn the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;\nAnd his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,\nAnd the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;\nAnd my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor\n Shall be lifted--nevermore!", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1845", + "month": "january" + }, "context": { "month": "december" } @@ -47159,13 +47953,20 @@ }, "romance": { "title": "“Romance”", - "body": "Romance, who loves to nod and sing,\nWith drowsy head and folded wing,\nAmong the green leaves as they shake\nFar down within some shadowy lake,\nTo me a painted paroquet\nHath been--a most familiar bird--\nTaught me my alphabet to say--\nTo lisp my very earliest word\nWhile in the wild wood I did lie,\nA child--with a most knowing eye.\n\nOf late, eternal Condor years\nSo shake the very Heaven on high\nWith tumult as they thunder by,\nI have no time for idle cares\nThough gazing on the unquiet sky.\nAnd when an hour with calmer wings Its down upon my spirit flings--\nThat little time with lyre and rhyme\nTo while away--forbidden things!\nMy heart would feel to be a crime\nUnless it trembled with the strings.\n\n\nSucceeding years, too wild for song,\nThen rolled like tropic storms along,\nWhere, though the garish lights that fly\nDying along the troubled sky,\nLay bare, through vistas thunder-riven,\nThe blackness of the general Heaven,\nThat very blackness yet doth fling\nLight on the lightning’s silver wing.\n\nFor being an idle boy lang syne,\nWho read Anacreon and drank wine,\nI early found Anacreon rhymes\nWere almost passionate sometimes--\nAnd by strange alchemy of brain\nHis pleasures always turned to pain--\nHis naïveté to wild desire--\nHis wit to love--his wine to fire--\nAnd so, being young and dipt in folly,\nI fell in love with melancholy.\n\nAnd used to throw my earthly rest\nAnd quiet all away in jest--\nI could not love except where Death\nWas mingling his with Beauty’s breath--\nOr Hymen, Time, and Destiny,\nWere stalking between her and me.\n\nBut _now_ my soul hath too much room--\nGone are the glory and the gloom--\nThe black hath mellow’d into gray,\nAnd all the fires are fading away.\n\nMy draught of passion hath been deep--\nI revell’d, and I now would sleep--\nAnd after drunkenness of soul\nSucceeds the glories of the bowl--\nAn idle longing night and day\nTo dream my very life away.\n\nBut dreams--of those who dream as I,\nAspiringly, are damned, and die:\nYet should I swear I mean alone,\nBy notes so very shrilly blown,\nTo break upon Time’s monotone,\nWhile yet my vapid joy and grief\nAre tintless of the yellow leaf--\nWhy not an imp the greybeard hath,\nWill shake his shadow in my path--\nAnd e’en the greybeard will o’erlook\nConnivingly my dreaming-book.", - "metadata": {} + "body": "Romance, who loves to nod and sing,\nWith drowsy head and folded wing,\nAmong the green leaves as they shake\nFar down within some shadowy lake,\nTo me a painted paroquet\nHath been--a most familiar bird--\nTaught me my alphabet to say--\nTo lisp my very earliest word\nWhile in the wild wood I did lie,\nA child--with a most knowing eye.\n\nOf late, eternal Condor years\nSo shake the very Heaven on high\nWith tumult as they thunder by,\nI have no time for idle cares\nThough gazing on the unquiet sky.\nAnd when an hour with calmer wings \nIts down upon my spirit flings--\nThat little time with lyre and rhyme\nTo while away--forbidden things!\nMy heart would feel to be a crime\nUnless it trembled with the strings.\n\nSucceeding years, too wild for song,\nThen rolled like tropic storms along,\nWhere, though the garish lights that fly\nDying along the troubled sky,\nLay bare, through vistas thunder-riven,\nThe blackness of the general Heaven,\nThat very blackness yet doth fling\nLight on the lightning’s silver wing.\n\nFor being an idle boy lang syne,\nWho read Anacreon and drank wine,\nI early found Anacreon rhymes\nWere almost passionate sometimes--\nAnd by strange alchemy of brain\nHis pleasures always turned to pain--\nHis naïveté to wild desire--\nHis wit to love--his wine to fire--\nAnd so, being young and dipt in folly,\nI fell in love with melancholy.\n\nAnd used to throw my earthly rest\nAnd quiet all away in jest--\nI could not love except where Death\nWas mingling his with Beauty’s breath--\nOr Hymen, Time, and Destiny,\nWere stalking between her and me.\n\nBut _now_ my soul hath too much room--\nGone are the glory and the gloom--\nThe black hath mellow’d into gray,\nAnd all the fires are fading away.\n\nMy draught of passion hath been deep--\nI revell’d, and I now would sleep--\nAnd after drunkenness of soul\nSucceeds the glories of the bowl--\nAn idle longing night and day\nTo dream my very life away.\n\nBut dreams--of those who dream as I,\nAspiringly, are damned, and die:\nYet should I swear I mean alone,\nBy notes so very shrilly blown,\nTo break upon Time’s monotone,\nWhile yet my vapid joy and grief\nAre tintless of the yellow leaf--\nWhy not an imp the greybeard hath,\nWill shake his shadow in my path--\nAnd e’en the greybeard will o’erlook\nConnivingly my dreaming-book.", + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1831" + } + } }, "sancta-maria": { "title": "“Sancta Maria”", "body": "Sancta Maria! turn thine eyes--\nUpon the sinner’s sacrifice,\nOf fervent prayer and humble love,\nFrom thy holy throne above.\nAt morn; at noon; at twilight dim--\nMaria! thou hast heard my hymn!\nIn joy and woe; in good and ill--\nMother of God, be with me still!\nWhen the Hours flew brightly by,\nAnd not a cloud obscured the sky,\nMy soul, lest it should truant be,\nThy grace did guide to thine and thee;\nNow, when storms of Fate o’ercast\nDarkly my Present and my Past,\nLet my Future radiant shine\nWith sweet hopes of thee and thine!", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1835" + }, "context": { "holiday": "immaculate_conception" } @@ -47174,45 +47975,62 @@ "shadow": { "title": "“Shadow”", "body": "Yea! though I walk through the valley of the _Shadow_.\n--_Psalm of David_\n\nYe who read are still among the living; but I who write shall have long since gone my way into the region of shadows. For indeed strange things shall happen, and secret things be known, and many centuries shall pass away, ere these memorials be seen of men. And, when seen, there will be some to disbelieve and some to doubt, and yet a few who will find much to ponder upon in the characters here graven with a stylus of iron.\nThe year had been a year of terror, and of feeling more intense than terror for which there is no name upon the earth. For many prodigies and signs had taken place, and far and wide, over sea and land, the black wings of the Pestilence were spread abroad. To those, nevertheless, cunning in the stars, it was not unknown that the heavens wore an aspect of ill; and to me, the Greek Oinos, among others, it was evident that now had arrived the alternation of that seven hundred and ninety-fourth year when, at the entrance of Aries, the planet Jupiter is enjoined with the red ring of the terrible Saturnus. The peculiar spirit of the skies, if I mistake not greatly, made itself manifest, not only in the physical orb of the earth, but in the souls, imaginations, and meditations of mankind.\nOver some flasks of the red Chian wine, within the walls of a noble hall, in a dim city called Ptolemais, we sat, at night, a company of seven. And to our chamber there was no entrance save by a lofty door of brass: and the door was fashioned by the artisan Corinnos, and, being of rare workmanship, was fastened from within. Black draperies, likewise in the gloomy room, shut out from our view the moon, the lurid stars, and the peopleless streets--but the boding and the memory of Evil, they would not be so excluded. There were things around us and about of which I can render no distinct account--things material and spiritual--heaviness in the atmosphere--a sense of suffocation--anxiety--and, above all, that terrible state of existence which the nervous experience when the senses are keenly living and awake, and meanwhile the powers of thought lie dormant. A dead weight hung upon us. It hung upon our limbs--upon the household furniture--upon the goblets from which we drank; and all things were depressed, and borne down thereby--all things save only the flames of the seven iron lamps which illumined our revel. Uprearing themselves in tall slender lines of light, they thus remained burning all pallid and motionless; and in the mirror which their lustre formed upon the round table of ebony at which we sat each of us there assembled beheld the pallor of his own countenance, and the unquiet glare in the downcast eyes of his companions. Yet we laughed and were merry in our proper way--which was hysterical; and sang the songs of Anacreon--which are madness; and drank deeply--although the purple wine reminded us of blood. For there was yet another tenant of our chamber in the person of young Zoilus. Dead and at full length he lay, enshrouded;--the genius and the demon of the scene. Alas! he bore no portion in our mirth, save that his countenance, distorted with the plague, and his eyes in which Death had but half extinguished the fire of the pestilence, seemed to take such an interest in our merriment as the dead may haply take in the merriment of those who are to die. But although I, Oinos, felt that the eyes of the departed were upon me, still I forced myself not to perceive the bitterness of their expression, and gazing down steadily into the depths of the ebony mirror, sang with a loud and sonorous voice the songs of the son of Teos. But gradually my songs they ceased, and their echoes, rolling afar off among the sable draperies of the chamber, became weak, and undistinguishable, and so faded away. And lo! from among those sable draperies, where the sounds of the song departed, there came forth a dark and undefiled shadow--a shadow such as the moon, when low in heaven, might fashion from the figure of a man: but it was the shadow neither of man nor of God, nor of any familiar thing. And quivering awhile among the draperies of the room it at length rested in full view upon the surface of the door of brass. But the shadow was vague, and formless, and indefinite, and was the shadow neither of man nor God--neither God of Greece, nor God of Chaldaea, nor any Egyptian God. And the shadow rested upon the brazen doorway, and under the arch of the entablature of the door and moved not, nor spoke any word, but there became stationary and remained. And the door whereupon the shadow rested was, if I remember aright, over against the feet of the young Zoilus enshrouded. But we, the seven there assembled, having seen the shadow as it came out from among the draperies, dared not steadily behold it, but cast down our eyes, and gazed continually into the depths of the mirror of ebony. And at length I, Oinos, speaking some low words, demanded of the shadow its dwelling and its appellation. And the shadow answered, “I am SHADOW, and my dwelling is near to the Catacombs of Ptolemais, and hard by those dim plains of Helusion which border upon the foul Charonian canal.” And then did we, the seven, start from our seats in horror, and stand trembling, and shuddering, and aghast: for the tones in the voice of the shadow were not the tones of any one being, but of a multitude of beings, and varying in their cadences from syllable to syllable, fell duskily upon our ears in the well remembered and familiar accents of many thousand departed friends.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1833", + "month": "may" + }, + "context": { + "month": "may" + } + } }, "silence-a-fable": { "title": "“Silence: A Fable”", "body": "The mountain pinnacles slumber; valleys, crags, and caves _are silent_.\n“LISTEN to _me_,” said the Demon, as he placed his hand upon my head. “The region of which I speak is a dreary region in Libya, by the borders of the river Zäire. And there is no quiet there, nor silence.”\n“The waters of the river have a saffron and sickly hue; and they flow not onward to the sea, but palpitate forever and forever beneath the red eye of the sun with a tumultuous and convulsive motion. For many miles on either side of the river’s oozy bed is a pale desert of gigantic water-lilies. They sigh one unto the other in that solitude, and stretch towards the heaven their long and ghastly necks, and nod to and fro their everlasting heads. And there is an indistinct murmur which cometh out from among them like the rushing of subterrene water. And they sigh one unto the other.”\n“But there is a boundary to their realm--the boundary of the dark, horrible, lofty forest. There, like the waves about the Hebrides, the low underwood is agitated continually. But there is no wind throughout the heaven. And the tall primeval trees rock eternally hither and thither with a crashing and mighty sound. And from their high summits, one by one, drop everlasting dews. And at the roots, strange poisonous flowers lie writhing in perturbed slumber. And overhead, with a rustling and loud noise, the gray clouds rush westwardly forever until they roll, a cataract, over the fiery wall of the horizon. But there is no wind throughout the heaven. And by the shores of the river Zäire there is neither quiet nor silence.”\n“It was night, and the rain fell; and, falling, it was rain, but, having fallen, it was blood. And I stood in the morass among the tall lilies, and the rain fell upon my head--and the lilies sighed one unto the other in the solemnity of their desolation.”\n“And, all at once, the moon arose through the thin ghastly mist, and was crimson in color. And mine eyes fell upon a huge gray rock which stood by the shore of the river and was lighted by the light of the moon. And the rock was gray and ghastly, and tall,--and the rock was gray. Upon its front were characters engraven in the stones; and I walked through the morass of water-lilies, until I came close unto the shore, that I might read the characters upon the stone. But I could not decipher them. And I was going back into the morass when the moon shone with a fuller red, and I turned and looked again upon the rock and upon the characters;--and the characters were DESOLATION.”\n“And I looked upwards, and there stood a man upon the summit of the rock; and I hid myself among the water-lilies that I might discover the action of the man. And the man was tall and stately in form, and wrapped up from his shoulders to his feet in the toga of old Rome. And the outlines of his figure were indistinct--but his features were the features of a deity; for the mantle of the night, and of the mist, and of the moon, and of the dew, had left uncovered the features of his face. And his brow was lofty with thought, and his eye wild with care; and in the few furrows upon his cheek, I read the fables of sorrow, and weariness, and disgust with mankind, and a longing after solitude.”\n“And the man sat upon the rock, and leaned his head upon his hand, and looked out upon the desolation. He looked down into the low unquiet shrubbery, and up into the tall primeval trees, and up higher at the rustling heaven, and into the crimson moon. And I lay close within shelter of the lilies, and observed the actions of the man. And the man trembled in the solitude;--but the night waned, and he sat upon the rock.”\n“And the man turned his attention from the heaven, and looked out upon the dreary river Zäire, and upon the yellow ghastly waters, and upon the pale legions of the water-lilies. And the man listened to the sighs of the water-lilies, and to the murmur that came up from among them. And I lay close within my covert and observed the actions of the man. And the man trembled in the solitude;--but the night waned, and he sat upon the rock.”\n“Then I went down into the recesses of the morass, and waded afar in among the wilderness of the lilies, and called unto the hippopotami which dwelt among the fens in the recesses of the morass. And the hippopotami heard my call, and came, with the behemoth, unto the foot of the rock, and roared loudly and fearfully beneath the moon. And I lay close within my covert and observed the actions of the man. And the man trembled in the solitude;--but the night waned, and he sat upon the rock.”\n“Then I cursed the elements with the curse of tumult; and a frightful tempest gathered in the heaven, where before there had been no wind. And the heaven became livid with the violence of the tempest--and the rain beat upon the head of the man--and the floods of the river came down--and the river was tormented into foam--and the water-lilies shrieked within their beds--and the forest crumbled before the wind--and the thunder rolled--and the lightning fell--and the rock rocked to its foundation. And I lay close within my covert and observed the actions of the man. And the man trembled in the solitude;--but the night waned, and he sat upon the rock.”\n“Then I grew angry and cursed, with the curse of silence, the river, and the lilies, and the wind, and the forest, and the heaven, and the thunder, and the sighs of the water-lilies. And they became accursed, and _were still._ And the moon ceased to totter up its pathway to heaven--and the thunder died away--and the lightning did not flash--and the clouds hung motionless--and the waters sunk to their level and remained--and the trees ceased to rock--and the water-lilies sighed no more--and the murmur was heard no longer from among them, nor any shadow of sound throughout the vast illimitable desert. And I looked upon the characters of the rock, and they were changed;--and the characters were SILENCE.”\n“And mine eyes fell upon the countenance of the man, and his countenance was wan with terror. And, hurriedly, he raised his head from his hand, and stood forth upon the rock and listened. But there was no voice throughout the vast illimitable desert, and the characters upon the rock were SILENCE. And the man shuddered, and turned his face away, and fled afar off, in haste, so that I beheld him no more.”\nNow there are fine tales in the volumes of the Magi--in the iron-bound, melancholy volumes of the Magi. Therein, I say, are glorious histories of the Heaven, and of the Earth, and of the mighty Sea--and of the Genii that overruled the sea, and the earth, and the lofty heaven. There was much lore, too, in the sayings which were said by the sybils; and holy, holy things were heard of old by the dim leaves that trembled around Dodona--but, as Allah liveth, that fable which the demon told me as he sat by my side in the shadow of the tomb, I hold to be the most wonderful of all! And as the Demon made an end of his story, he fell back within the cavity of the tomb and laughed. And I could not laugh with the Demon, and he cursed me because I could not laugh. And the lynx which dwelleth forever in the tomb, came out therefrom, and lay down at the feet of the Demon, and looked at him steadily in the face.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1837" + } + } }, "silence": { "title": "“Silence”", "body": "There are some qualities--some incorporate things,\nThat have a double life, which thus is made\nA type of that twin entity which springs\nFrom matter and light, evinced in solid and shade.\nThere is a twofold _Silence_--sea and shore--\nBody and soul. One dwells in lonely places,\nNewly with grass o’ergrown; some solemn graces,\nSome human memories and tearful lore,\nRender him terrorless: his name’s “No More.”\nHe is the corporate Silence: dread him not!\nNo power hath he of evil in himself;\nBut should some urgent fate (untimely lot!)\nBring thee to meet his shadow (nameless elf,\nThat haunteth the lone regions where hath trod\nNo foot of man), commend thyself to God!", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1840" + } + } }, "the-sleeper": { "title": "“The Sleeper”", - "body": "At midnight, in the month of June,\nI stand beneath the mystic moon.\nAn opiate vapor, dewy, dim,\nExhales from out her golden rim,\nAnd, softly dripping, drop by drop,\nUpon the quiet mountain top,\nSteals drowsily and musically Into the universal valley.\nThe rosemary nods upon the grave;\nThe lily lolls upon the wave;\nWrapping the fog about its breast,\nThe ruin moulders into rest;\nLooking like Lethe, see! the lake\nA conscious slumber seems to take,\nAnd would not, for the world, awake.\nAll Beauty sleeps!--and lo! where lies\n(Her casement open to the skies)\nIrene, with her Destinies!\n\nOh, lady bright! can it be right--\nThis window open to the night!\nThe wanton airs, from the tree-top,\nLaughingly through the lattice-drop--\nThe bodiless airs, a wizard rout,\nFlit through thy chamber in and out,\nAnd wave the curtain canopy\nSo fitfully--so fearfully--\nAbove the closed and fringed lid\n’Neath which thy slumb’ring soul lies hid,\nThat, o’er the floor and down the wall,\nLike ghosts the shadows rise and fall!\nOh, lady dear, hast thou no fear?\nWhy and what art thou dreaming here?\nSure thou art come o’er far-off seas,\nA wonder to these garden trees!\nStrange is thy pallor! strange thy dress!\nStrange, above all, thy length of tress,\nAnd this all-solemn silentness!\n\nThe lady sleeps! Oh, may her sleep\nWhich is enduring, so be deep!\nHeaven have her in its sacred keep!\nThis chamber changed for one more holy,\nThis bed for one more melancholy,\nI pray to God that she may lie\nFor ever with unopened eye,\nWhile the dim sheeted ghosts go by!\n\nMy love, she sleeps! Oh, may her sleep,\nAs it is lasting, so be deep;\nSoft may the worms about her creep!\nFar in the forest, dim and old,\nFor her may some tall vault unfold--\nSome vault that oft hath flung its black\nAnd winged panels fluttering back,\nTriumphant, o’er the crested palls,\nOf her grand family funerals--\nSome sepulchre, remote, alone,\nAgainst whose portal she hath thrown,\nIn childhood many an idle stone--\nSome tomb from out whose sounding door\nShe ne’er shall force an echo more,\nThrilling to think, poor child of sin!\nIt was the dead who groaned within.", + "body": "At midnight, in the month of June,\nI stand beneath the mystic moon.\nAn opiate vapor, dewy, dim,\nExhales from out her golden rim,\nAnd, softly dripping, drop by drop,\nUpon the quiet mountain top,\nSteals drowsily and musically \nInto the universal valley.\nThe rosemary nods upon the grave;\nThe lily lolls upon the wave;\nWrapping the fog about its breast,\nThe ruin moulders into rest;\nLooking like Lethe, see! the lake\nA conscious slumber seems to take,\nAnd would not, for the world, awake.\nAll Beauty sleeps!--and lo! where lies\n(Her casement open to the skies)\nIrene, with her Destinies!\n\nOh, lady bright! can it be right--\nThis window open to the night!\nThe wanton airs, from the tree-top,\nLaughingly through the lattice-drop--\nThe bodiless airs, a wizard rout,\nFlit through thy chamber in and out,\nAnd wave the curtain canopy\nSo fitfully--so fearfully--\nAbove the closed and fringed lid\n’Neath which thy slumb’ring soul lies hid,\nThat, o’er the floor and down the wall,\nLike ghosts the shadows rise and fall!\nOh, lady dear, hast thou no fear?\nWhy and what art thou dreaming here?\nSure thou art come o’er far-off seas,\nA wonder to these garden trees!\nStrange is thy pallor! strange thy dress!\nStrange, above all, thy length of tress,\nAnd this all-solemn silentness!\n\nThe lady sleeps! Oh, may her sleep\nWhich is enduring, so be deep!\nHeaven have her in its sacred keep!\nThis chamber changed for one more holy,\nThis bed for one more melancholy,\nI pray to God that she may lie\nFor ever with unopened eye,\nWhile the dim sheeted ghosts go by!\n\nMy love, she sleeps! Oh, may her sleep,\nAs it is lasting, so be deep;\nSoft may the worms about her creep!\nFar in the forest, dim and old,\nFor her may some tall vault unfold--\nSome vault that oft hath flung its black\nAnd winged panels fluttering back,\nTriumphant, o’er the crested palls,\nOf her grand family funerals--\nSome sepulchre, remote, alone,\nAgainst whose portal she hath thrown,\nIn childhood many an idle stone--\nSome tomb from out whose sounding door\nShe ne’er shall force an echo more,\nThrilling to think, poor child of sin!\nIt was the dead who groaned within.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1846" + }, "context": { "month": "june" } } }, - "sonnet-to-science": { - "title": "“Sonnet to Science”", - "body": "Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art!\nWho alterest all things with thy peering eyes.\nWhy preyest thou thus upon the poet’s heart,\nVulture, whose wings are dull realities\nHow should he love thee? or how deem thee wise,\nWho wouldst not leave him in his wandering\nTo seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,\nAlbeit he soared with an undaunted wing!\nHast thou not dragged Diana from her car?\nAnd driven the Hamadryad from the wood\nTo seek a shelter in some happier star?\nHast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,\nThe Elfin from the green grass, and from me\nThe summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?", + "spirits-of-the-dead": { + "title": "“Spirits of the Dead”", + "body": "Thy soul shall find itself alone\n’Mid dark thoughts of the gray tombstone\nNot one, of all the crowd, to pry \nInto thine hour of secrecy.\nBe silent in that solitude\nWhich is not loneliness--for then\nThe spirits of the dead who stood\nIn life before thee are again \nIn death around thee--and their will\nShall overshadow thee: be still.\nThe night--tho’ clear--shall frown--\nAnd the stars shall not look down\nFrom their high thrones in the Heaven,\nWith light like Hope to mortals given--\nBut their red orbs, without beam,\nTo thy weariness shall seem\nAs a burning and a fever\nWhich would cling to thee forever.\nNow are thoughts thou shalt not banish--\nNow are visions ne’er to vanish--\nFrom thy spirit shall they pass\nNo more--like dew-drops from the grass.\nThe breeze--the breath of God--is still--\nAnd the mist upon the hill\nShadowy--shadowy--yet unbroken,\nIs a symbol and a token--\nHow it hangs upon the trees,\nA mystery of mysteries!", "metadata": { - "context": { - "season": "summer" + "date": { + "year": "1829" } } }, - "spirits-of-the-dead": { - "title": "“Spirits of the Dead”", - "body": "Thy soul shall find itself alone\n’Mid dark thoughts of the gray tombstone\nNot one, of all the crowd, to pry Into thine hour of secrecy.\nBe silent in that solitude\nWhich is not loneliness--for then\nThe spirits of the dead who stood\nIn life before thee are again In death around thee--and their will\nShall overshadow thee: be still.\nThe night--tho’ clear--shall frown--\nAnd the stars shall not look down\nFrom their high thrones in the Heaven,\nWith light like Hope to mortals given--\nBut their red orbs, without beam,\nTo thy weariness shall seem\nAs a burning and a fever\nWhich would cling to thee forever.\nNow are thoughts thou shalt not banish--\nNow are visions ne’er to vanish--\nFrom thy spirit shall they pass\nNo more--like dew-drops from the grass.\nThe breeze--the breath of God--is still--\nAnd the mist upon the hill\nShadowy--shadowy--yet unbroken,\nIs a symbol and a token--\nHow it hangs upon the trees,\nA mystery of mysteries!", - "metadata": {} - }, "tamerlane": { "title": "“Tamerlane”", - "body": "Kind solace in a dying hour!\nSuch, father, is not (now) my theme--\nI will not madly deem that power\nOf Earth may shrive me of the sin\nUnearthly pride hath revelled in--\nI have no time to dote or dream:\nYou call it hope--that fire of fire!\nIt is but agony of desire:\nIf I _can_ hope--O God! I can--\nIts fount is holier--more divine--\nI would not call thee fool, old man,\nBut such is not a gift of thine.\n\nKnow thou the secret of a spirit\nBowed from its wild pride into shame\nO yearning heart! I did inherit\nThy withering portion with the fame,\nThe searing glory which hath shone\nAmid the Jewels of my throne,\nHalo of Hell! and with a pain\nNot Hell shall make me fear again--\nO craving heart, for the lost flowers\nAnd sunshine of my summer hours!\nThe undying voice of that dead time,\nWith its interminable chime,\nRings, in the spirit of a spell,\nUpon thy emptiness--a knell.\n\nI have not always been as now:\nThe fevered diadem on my brow I claimed and won usurpingly--\nHath not the same fierce heirdom given\nRome to the Caesar--this to me?\nThe heritage of a kingly mind,\nAnd a proud spirit which hath striven\nTriumphantly with human kind.\nOn mountain soil I first drew life:\nThe mists of the Taglay have shed\nNightly their dews upon my head,\nAnd, I believe, the winged strife\nAnd tumult of the headlong air\nHave nestled in my very hair.\n\nSo late from Heaven--that dew--it fell\n(’Mid dreams of an unholy night)\nUpon me with the touch of Hell,\nWhile the red flashing of the light\nFrom clouds that hung, like banners, o’er,\nAppeared to my half-closing eye\nThe pageantry of monarchy;\nAnd the deep trumpet-thunder’s roar\nCame hurriedly upon me, telling\nOf human battle, where my voice,\nMy own voice, silly child!--was swelling\n(O! how my spirit would rejoice,\nAnd leap within me at the cry)\nThe battle-cry of Victory!\n\nThe rain came down upon my head\nUnsheltered--and the heavy wind\nRendered me mad and deaf and blind.\nIt was but man, I thought, who shed\nLaurels upon me: and the rush--\nThe torrent of the chilly air\nGurgled within my ear the crush\nOf empires--with the captive’s prayer--\nThe hum of suitors--and the tone\nOf flattery ’round a sovereign’s throne.\n\nMy passions, from that hapless hour,\nUsurped a tyranny which men\nHave deemed since I have reached to power,\nMy innate nature--be it so:\nBut, father, there lived one who, then,\nThen--in my boyhood--when their fire\nBurned with a still intenser glow\n(For passion must, with youth, expire)\nE’en _then_ who knew this iron heart In woman’s weakness had a part.\n\nI have no words--alas!--to tell\nThe loveliness of loving well!\nNor would I now attempt to trace\nThe more than beauty of a face\nWhose lineaments, upon my mind,\nAre--shadows on th’ unstable wind:\nThus I remember having dwelt\nSome page of early lore upon,\nWith loitering eye, till I have felt\nThe letters--with their meaning--melt\nTo fantasies--with none.\n\nO, she was worthy of all love!\nLove as in infancy was mine--\n’Twas such as angel minds above\nMight envy; her young heart the shrine\nOn which my every hope and thought\nWere incense--then a goodly gift,\nFor they were childish and upright--\nPure--as her young example taught:\nWhy did I leave it, and, adrift,\nTrust to the fire within, for light?\n\nWe grew in age--and love--together--\nRoaming the forest, and the wild;\nMy breast her shield in wintry weather--\nAnd, when the friendly sunshine smiled.\nAnd she would mark the opening skies,\n_I_ saw no Heaven--but in her eyes.\nYoung Love’s first lesson is the heart:\nFor ’mid that sunshine, and those smiles,\nWhen, from our little cares apart,\nAnd laughing at her girlish wiles,\nI’d throw me on her throbbing breast,\nAnd pour my spirit out in tears--\nThere was no need to speak the rest--\nNo need to quiet any fears\nOf her--who asked no reason why,\nBut turned on me her quiet eye!\n\nYet _more_ than worthy of the love\nMy spirit struggled with, and strove\nWhen, on the mountain peak, alone,\nAmbition lent it a new tone--\nI had no being--but in thee:\nThe world, and all it did contain In the earth--the air--the sea--\nIts joy--its little lot of pain\nThat was new pleasure--the ideal,\nDim, vanities of dreams by night--\nAnd dimmer nothings which were real--\n(Shadows--and a more shadowy light!)\nParted upon their misty wings,\nAnd, so, confusedly, became\nThine image and--a name--a name!\nTwo separate--yet most intimate things.\n\nI was ambitious--have you known\nThe passion, father? You have not:\nA cottager, I marked a throne\nOf half the world as all my own,\nAnd murmured at such lowly lot--\nBut, just like any other dream,\nUpon the vapor of the dew\nMy own had past, did not the beam\nOf beauty which did while it thro’\nThe minute--the hour--the day--oppress\nMy mind with double loveliness.\n\nWe walked together on the crown\nOf a high mountain which looked down\nAfar from its proud natural towers\nOf rock and forest, on the hills--\nThe dwindled hills! begirt with bowers\nAnd shouting with a thousand rills.\n\nI spoke to her of power and pride,\nBut mystically--in such guise\nThat she might deem it nought beside\nThe moment’s converse; in her eyes I read, perhaps too carelessly--\nA mingled feeling with my own--\nThe flush on her bright cheek, to me\nSeemed to become a queenly throne\nToo well that I should let it be\nLight in the wilderness alone.\n\nI wrapped myself in grandeur then,\nAnd donned a visionary crown--\nYet it was not that Fantasy\nHad thrown her mantle over me--\nBut that, among the rabble--men,\nLion ambition is chained down--\nAnd crouches to a keeper’s hand--\nNot so in deserts where the grand--\nThe wild--the terrible conspire\nWith their own breath to fan his fire.\n\nLook ’round thee now on Samarcand!--\nIs she not queen of Earth? her pride\nAbove all cities? in her hand\nTheir destinies? in all beside\nOf glory which the world hath known\nStands she not nobly and alone?\nFalling--her veriest stepping-stone\nShall form the pedestal of a throne--\nAnd who her sovereign? Timour--he\nWhom the astonished people saw\nStriding o’er empires haughtily\nA diademed outlaw!\n\nO, human love! thou spirit given,\nOn Earth, of all we hope in Heaven!\nWhich fall’st into the soul like rain\nUpon the Siroc-withered plain,\nAnd, failing in thy power to bless,\nBut leav’st the heart a wilderness!\nIdea! which bindest life around\nWith music of so strange a sound\nAnd beauty of so wild a birth--\nFarewell! for I have won the Earth.\n\nWhen Hope, the eagle that towered, could see\nNo cliff beyond him in the sky,\nHis pinions were bent droopingly--\nAnd homeward turned his softened eye.\n’Twas sunset: When the sun will part\nThere comes a sullenness of heart\nTo him who still would look upon\nThe glory of the summer sun.\nThat soul will hate the ev’ning mist\nSo often lovely, and will list\nTo the sound of the coming darkness (known\nTo those whose spirits hearken) as one\nWho, in a dream of night, _would_ fly,\nBut _cannot_, from a danger nigh.\n\nWhat tho’ the moon--tho’ the white moon\nShed all the splendor of her noon,\n_Her_ smile is chilly--and _her_ beam,\nIn that time of dreariness, will seem\n(So like you gather in your breath)\nA portrait taken after death.\nAnd boyhood is a summer sun\nWhose waning is the dreariest one--\nFor all we live to know is known,\nAnd all we seek to keep hath flown--\nLet life, then, as the day-flower, fall\nWith the noon-day beauty--which is all.\nI reached my home--my home no more--\nFor all had flown who made it so.\nI passed from out its mossy door,\nAnd, tho’ my tread was soft and low,\nA voice came from the threshold stone\nOf one whom I had earlier known--\nO, I defy thee, Hell, to show\nOn beds of fire that burn below,\nAn humbler heart--a deeper woe.\n\nFather, I firmly do believe--\nI _know_--for Death who comes for me\nFrom regions of the blest afar,\nWhere there is nothing to deceive,\nHath left his iron gate ajar.\nAnd rays of truth you cannot see\nAre flashing thro’ Eternity--\nI do believe that Eblis hath\nA snare in every human path--\nElse how, when in the holy grove I wandered of the idol, Love,--\nWho daily scents his snowy wings\nWith incense of burnt-offerings\nFrom the most unpolluted things,\nWhose pleasant bowers are yet so riven\nAbove with trellised rays from Heaven\nNo mote may shun--no tiniest fly--\nThe light’ning of his eagle eye--\nHow was it that Ambition crept,\nUnseen, amid the revels there,\nTill growing bold, he laughed and leapt In the tangles of Love’s very hair!", + "body": "Kind solace in a dying hour!\nSuch, father, is not (now) my theme--\nI will not madly deem that power\nOf Earth may shrive me of the sin\nUnearthly pride hath revelled in--\nI have no time to dote or dream:\nYou call it hope--that fire of fire!\nIt is but agony of desire:\nIf I _can_ hope--O God! I can--\nIts fount is holier--more divine--\nI would not call thee fool, old man,\nBut such is not a gift of thine.\n\nKnow thou the secret of a spirit\nBowed from its wild pride into shame\nO yearning heart! I did inherit\nThy withering portion with the fame,\nThe searing glory which hath shone\nAmid the Jewels of my throne,\nHalo of Hell! and with a pain\nNot Hell shall make me fear again--\nO craving heart, for the lost flowers\nAnd sunshine of my summer hours!\nThe undying voice of that dead time,\nWith its interminable chime,\nRings, in the spirit of a spell,\nUpon thy emptiness--a knell.\n\nI have not always been as now:\nThe fevered diadem on my brow I claimed and won usurpingly--\nHath not the same fierce heirdom given\nRome to the Caesar--this to me?\nThe heritage of a kingly mind,\nAnd a proud spirit which hath striven\nTriumphantly with human kind.\nOn mountain soil I first drew life:\nThe mists of the Taglay have shed\nNightly their dews upon my head,\nAnd, I believe, the winged strife\nAnd tumult of the headlong air\nHave nestled in my very hair.\n\nSo late from Heaven--that dew--it fell\n(’Mid dreams of an unholy night)\nUpon me with the touch of Hell,\nWhile the red flashing of the light\nFrom clouds that hung, like banners, o’er,\nAppeared to my half-closing eye\nThe pageantry of monarchy;\nAnd the deep trumpet-thunder’s roar\nCame hurriedly upon me, telling\nOf human battle, where my voice,\nMy own voice, silly child!--was swelling\n(O! how my spirit would rejoice,\nAnd leap within me at the cry)\nThe battle-cry of Victory!\n\nThe rain came down upon my head\nUnsheltered--and the heavy wind\nRendered me mad and deaf and blind.\nIt was but man, I thought, who shed\nLaurels upon me: and the rush--\nThe torrent of the chilly air\nGurgled within my ear the crush\nOf empires--with the captive’s prayer--\nThe hum of suitors--and the tone\nOf flattery ’round a sovereign’s throne.\n\nMy passions, from that hapless hour,\nUsurped a tyranny which men\nHave deemed since I have reached to power,\nMy innate nature--be it so:\nBut, father, there lived one who, then,\nThen--in my boyhood--when their fire\nBurned with a still intenser glow\n(For passion must, with youth, expire)\nE’en _then_ who knew this iron heart \nIn woman’s weakness had a part.\n\nI have no words--alas!--to tell\nThe loveliness of loving well!\nNor would I now attempt to trace\nThe more than beauty of a face\nWhose lineaments, upon my mind,\nAre--shadows on th’ unstable wind:\nThus I remember having dwelt\nSome page of early lore upon,\nWith loitering eye, till I have felt\nThe letters--with their meaning--melt\nTo fantasies--with none.\n\nO, she was worthy of all love!\nLove as in infancy was mine--\n’Twas such as angel minds above\nMight envy; her young heart the shrine\nOn which my every hope and thought\nWere incense--then a goodly gift,\nFor they were childish and upright--\nPure--as her young example taught:\nWhy did I leave it, and, adrift,\nTrust to the fire within, for light?\n\nWe grew in age--and love--together--\nRoaming the forest, and the wild;\nMy breast her shield in wintry weather--\nAnd, when the friendly sunshine smiled.\nAnd she would mark the opening skies,\n_I_ saw no Heaven--but in her eyes.\nYoung Love’s first lesson is the heart:\nFor ’mid that sunshine, and those smiles,\nWhen, from our little cares apart,\nAnd laughing at her girlish wiles,\nI’d throw me on her throbbing breast,\nAnd pour my spirit out in tears--\nThere was no need to speak the rest--\nNo need to quiet any fears\nOf her--who asked no reason why,\nBut turned on me her quiet eye!\n\nYet _more_ than worthy of the love\nMy spirit struggled with, and strove\nWhen, on the mountain peak, alone,\nAmbition lent it a new tone--\nI had no being--but in thee:\nThe world, and all it did contain \nIn the earth--the air--the sea--\nIts joy--its little lot of pain\nThat was new pleasure--the ideal,\nDim, vanities of dreams by night--\nAnd dimmer nothings which were real--\n(Shadows--and a more shadowy light!)\nParted upon their misty wings,\nAnd, so, confusedly, became\nThine image and--a name--a name!\nTwo separate--yet most intimate things.\n\nI was ambitious--have you known\nThe passion, father? You have not:\nA cottager, I marked a throne\nOf half the world as all my own,\nAnd murmured at such lowly lot--\nBut, just like any other dream,\nUpon the vapor of the dew\nMy own had past, did not the beam\nOf beauty which did while it thro’\nThe minute--the hour--the day--oppress\nMy mind with double loveliness.\n\nWe walked together on the crown\nOf a high mountain which looked down\nAfar from its proud natural towers\nOf rock and forest, on the hills--\nThe dwindled hills! begirt with bowers\nAnd shouting with a thousand rills.\n\nI spoke to her of power and pride,\nBut mystically--in such guise\nThat she might deem it nought beside\nThe moment’s converse; in her eyes \nI read, perhaps too carelessly--\nA mingled feeling with my own--\nThe flush on her bright cheek, to me\nSeemed to become a queenly throne\nToo well that I should let it be\nLight in the wilderness alone.\n\nI wrapped myself in grandeur then,\nAnd donned a visionary crown--\nYet it was not that Fantasy\nHad thrown her mantle over me--\nBut that, among the rabble--men,\nLion ambition is chained down--\nAnd crouches to a keeper’s hand--\nNot so in deserts where the grand--\nThe wild--the terrible conspire\nWith their own breath to fan his fire.\n\nLook ’round thee now on Samarcand!--\nIs she not queen of Earth? her pride\nAbove all cities? in her hand\nTheir destinies? in all beside\nOf glory which the world hath known\nStands she not nobly and alone?\nFalling--her veriest stepping-stone\nShall form the pedestal of a throne--\nAnd who her sovereign? Timour--he\nWhom the astonished people saw\nStriding o’er empires haughtily\nA diademed outlaw!\n\nO, human love! thou spirit given,\nOn Earth, of all we hope in Heaven!\nWhich fall’st into the soul like rain\nUpon the Siroc-withered plain,\nAnd, failing in thy power to bless,\nBut leav’st the heart a wilderness!\nIdea! which bindest life around\nWith music of so strange a sound\nAnd beauty of so wild a birth--\nFarewell! for I have won the Earth.\n\nWhen Hope, the eagle that towered, could see\nNo cliff beyond him in the sky,\nHis pinions were bent droopingly--\nAnd homeward turned his softened eye.\n’Twas sunset: When the sun will part\nThere comes a sullenness of heart\nTo him who still would look upon\nThe glory of the summer sun.\nThat soul will hate the ev’ning mist\nSo often lovely, and will list\nTo the sound of the coming darkness (known\nTo those whose spirits hearken) as one\nWho, in a dream of night, _would_ fly,\nBut _cannot_, from a danger nigh.\n\nWhat tho’ the moon--tho’ the white moon\nShed all the splendor of her noon,\n_Her_ smile is chilly--and _her_ beam,\nIn that time of dreariness, will seem\n(So like you gather in your breath)\nA portrait taken after death.\nAnd boyhood is a summer sun\nWhose waning is the dreariest one--\nFor all we live to know is known,\nAnd all we seek to keep hath flown--\nLet life, then, as the day-flower, fall\nWith the noon-day beauty--which is all.\nI reached my home--my home no more--\nFor all had flown who made it so.\nI passed from out its mossy door,\nAnd, tho’ my tread was soft and low,\nA voice came from the threshold stone\nOf one whom I had earlier known--\nO, I defy thee, Hell, to show\nOn beds of fire that burn below,\nAn humbler heart--a deeper woe.\n\nFather, I firmly do believe--\nI _know_--for Death who comes for me\nFrom regions of the blest afar,\nWhere there is nothing to deceive,\nHath left his iron gate ajar.\nAnd rays of truth you cannot see\nAre flashing thro’ Eternity--\nI do believe that Eblis hath\nA snare in every human path--\nElse how, when in the holy grove \nI wandered of the idol, Love,--\nWho daily scents his snowy wings\nWith incense of burnt-offerings\nFrom the most unpolluted things,\nWhose pleasant bowers are yet so riven\nAbove with trellised rays from Heaven\nNo mote may shun--no tiniest fly--\nThe light’ning of his eagle eye--\nHow was it that Ambition crept,\nUnseen, amid the revels there,\nTill growing bold, he laughed and leapt \nIn the tangles of Love’s very hair!", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1827" + }, "context": { "season": "summer" } @@ -47220,23 +48038,32 @@ }, "to-helen": { "title": "“To Helen”", - "body": "Helen, thy beauty is to me\nLike those Nicean barks of yore,\nThat gently, o’er a perfumed sea,\nThe weary, wayworn wanderer bore\nTo his own native shore.\n\nOn desperate seas long wont to roam,\nThy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,\nThy Naiad airs have brought me home\nTo the glory that was Greece,\nTo the grandeur that was Rome.\n\nLo! in yon brilliant window niche,\nHow statue-like I see thee stand,\nThe agate lamp within thy hand!\nAh, Psyche, from the regions which\nAre Holy Land!", - "metadata": {} + "body": "I saw thee once--once only--years ago:\nI must not say _how_ many--but _not_ many.\nIt was a July midnight; and from out\nA full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, soaring,\nSought a precipitate pathway up through heaven,\nThere fell a silvery-silken veil of light,\nWith quietude, and sultriness and slumber,\nUpon the upturn’d faces of a thousand\nRoses that grew in an enchanted garden,\nWhere no wind dared to stir, unless on tiptoe--\nFell on the upturn’d faces of these roses\nThat gave out, in return for the love-light,\nTheir odorous souls in an ecstatic death--\nFell on the upturn’d faces of these roses\nThat smiled and died in this parterre, enchanted\nBy thee, and by the poetry of thy presence.\n\nClad all in white, upon a violet bank I saw thee half-reclining; while the moon\nFell on the upturn’d faces of the roses,\nAnd on thine own, upturn’d--alas, in sorrow!\n\nWas it not Fate, that, on this July midnight--\nWas it not Fate (whose name is also Sorrow),\nThat bade me pause before that garden-gate,\nTo breathe the incense of those slumbering roses?\nNo footstep stirred: the hated world all slept,\nSave only thee and me--(O Heaven!--O God!\nHow my heart beats in coupling those two words!)--\nSave only thee and me. I paused--I looked--\nAnd in an instant all things disappeared.\n(Ah, bear in mind this garden was enchanted!)\nThe pearly lustre of the moon went out:\nThe mossy banks and the meandering paths,\nThe happy flowers and the repining trees,\nWere seen no more: the very roses’ odors\nDied in the arms of the adoring airs.\nAll--all expired save thee--save less than thou:\nSave only the divine light in thine eyes--\nSave but the soul in thine uplifted eyes.\nI saw but them--they were the world to me.\nI saw but them--saw only them for hours--\nSaw only them until the moon went down.\nWhat wild heart-histories seemed to lie unwritten\nUpon those crystalline, celestial spheres!\nHow dark a woe! yet how sublime a hope!\nHow silently serene a sea of pride!\nHow daring an ambition! yet how deep--\nHow fathomless a capacity for love!\n\nBut now, at length, dear Dian sank from sight,\nInto a western couch of thunder-cloud;\nAnd thou, a ghost, amid the entombing trees\nDidst glide away. _Only thine eyes remained._\nThey _would not_ go--they never yet have gone.\nLighting my lonely pathway home that night,\n_They_ have not left me (as my hopes have) since.\nThey follow me--they lead me through the years.\n\nThey are my ministers--yet I their slave.\nTheir office is to illumine and enkindle--\nMy duty, _to be saved_ by their bright light,\nAnd purified in their electric fire,\nAnd sanctified in their elysian fire.\nThey fill my soul with Beauty (which is Hope),\nAnd are far up in Heaven--the stars I kneel to \nIn the sad, silent watches of my night;\nWhile even in the meridian glare of day \nI see them still--two sweetly scintillant\nVenuses, unextinguished by the sun!", + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1848" + }, + "context": { + "month": "july" + } + } }, "to-isadore": { "title": "“To Isadore”", "body": "Beneath the vine-clad eaves\n Whose shadows fall before\n Thy lowly cottage door--\nUnder the lilac’s tremulous leaves--\nWithin thy snowy clasped hand\n The purple flowers it bore.\nLast eve in dreams, I saw thee stand,\nLike queenly nymph from Fairy-land--\nEnchantress of the flowery wand,\n Most beauteous Isadore!\n\nAnd when I bade the dream\n Upon thy spirit flee,\n Thy violet eyes to me\nUpturned, did overflowing seem\nWith the deep, untold delight\n Of Love’s serenity;\nThy classic brow, like lilies white\nAnd pale as the Imperial Night\nUpon her throne, with stars bedight,\n Enthralled my soul to thee!\n\nAh! ever I behold\n Thy dreamy, passionate eyes,\n Blue as the languid skies\nHung with the sunset’s fringe of gold;\nNow strangely clear thine image grows,\n And olden memories\nAre startled from their long repose\nLike shadows on the silent snows\nWhen suddenly the night-wind blows\n Where quiet moonlight lies.\n\nLike music heard in dreams\n Like strains of harps unknown,\n Of birds for ever flown,--\nAudible as the voice of streams\nThat murmur in some leafy dell,\n I hear thy gentlest tone,\nAnd Silence cometh with her spell\nLike that which on my tongue doth dwell,\nWhen tremulous in dreams I tell\n My love to thee alone!\n\nIn every valley heard\n Floating from tree to tree,\n Less beautiful to me,\nThe music of the radiant bird,\nThan artless accents such as thine\n Whose echoes never flee!\nAh! how for thy sweet voice I pine:--\nFor uttered in thy tones benign\n(Enchantress!) this rude name of mine\n Doth seem a melody!", - "metadata": {} - }, - "to-marie-louise": { - "title": "“To Marie Louise”", - "body": "Of all who hail thy presence as the morning--\nOf all to whom thine absence is the night--\nThe blotting utterly from out high heaven\nThe sacred sun--of all who, weeping, bless thee\nHourly for hope--for life--ah, above all,\nFor the resurrection of deep buried faith In truth, in virtue, in humanity--\nOf all who, on despair’s unhallowed bed\nLying down to die, have suddenly arisen\nAt thy soft-murmured words, “Let there be light!”\nAt thy soft-murmured words that were fulfilled In thy seraphic glancing of thine eyes--\nOf all who owe thee most, whose gratitude\nNearest resembles worship,--oh, remember\nThe truest, the most fervently devoted,\nAnd think that these weak lines are written by him--\nBy him who, as he pens them, thrills to think\nHis spirit is communing with an angel’s.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1845" + } + } }, "to-my-mother": { "title": "“To My Mother”", "body": "Because I feel that, in the Heavens above,\nThe angels, whispering to one another,\nCan find, among their burning terms of love,\nNone so devotional as that of “Mother,”\nTherefore by that dear name I long have called you--\nYou who are more than mother unto me,\nAnd fill my heart of hearts, where Death installed you,\nIn setting my Virginia’s spirit free.\nMy mother--my own mother, who died early,\nWas but the mother of myself; but you\nAre mother to the one I loved so dearly,\nAnd thus are dearer than the mother I knew\nBy that infinity with which my wife\nWas dearer to my soul than its soul-life.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1849" + }, "context": { "holiday": "mothers_day" } @@ -47245,17 +48072,37 @@ "to-one-in-paradise": { "title": "“To One in Paradise”", "body": "Thou wast that all to me, love,\nFor which my soul did pine--\nA green isle in the sea, love,\nA fountain and a shrine,\nAll wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,\nAnd all the flowers were mine.\n\nAh, dream too bright to last!\nAh, starry Hope! that didst arise\nBut to be overcast!\nA voice from out the Future cries,\n“On! on!”--but o’er the Past\n(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies\nMute, motionless, aghast!\n\nFor, alas! alas! with me\nThe light of Life is o’er!\n“No more--no more--no more”--\n(Such language holds the solemn sea\nTo the sands upon the shore)\nShall bloom the thunder-blasted tree,\nOr the stricken eagle soar!\n\nAnd all my days are trances,\nAnd all my nightly dreams\nAre where thy dark eye glances,\nAnd where thy footstep gleams--\nIn what ethereal dances,\nBy what eternal streams!\n\nAlas! for that accursed time\nThey bore thee o’er the billow,\nFrom love to titled age and crime,\nAnd an unholy pillow!\nFrom me, and from our misty clime,\nWhere weeps the silver willow!", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1835" + } + } + }, + "to-science": { + "title": "“To Science”", + "body": "Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art!\n Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.\nWhy preyest thou thus upon the poet’s heart,\n Vulture, whose wings are dull realities\nHow should he love thee? or how deem thee wise,\n Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering\nTo seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,\n Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing!\nHast thou not dragged Diana from her car?\n And driven the Hamadryad from the wood\nTo seek a shelter in some happier star?\n Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,\nThe Elfin from the green grass, and from me\nThe summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?", + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1829" + } + } }, "to-the-river": { "title": "“To the River”", "body": "Fair river! in thy bright, clear flow\nOf crystal, wandering water,\nThou art an emblem of the glow\nOf beauty--the unhidden heart--\nThe playful maziness of art\nIn old Alberto’s daughter;\n\nBut when within thy wave she looks--\nWhich glistens then, and trembles--\nWhy, then, the prettiest of brooks\nHer worshipper resembles;\nFor in his heart, as in thy stream,\nHer image deeply lies--\nHis heart which trembles at the beam\nOf her soul-searching eyes.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1845" + } + } }, "ulalume": { "title": "“Ulalume”", "body": "The skies they were ashen and sober;\nThe leaves they were crisped and sere--\nThe leaves they were withering and sere;\nIt was night in the lonesome October\nOf my most immemorial year;\nIt was hard by the dim lake of Auber,\nIn the misty mid region of Weir--\nIt was down by the dank tarn of Auber,\nIn the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.\n\nHere once, through an alley Titanic.\nOf cypress, I roamed with my Soul--\nOf cypress, with Psyche, my Soul.\nThese were days when my heart was volcanic\nAs the scoriac rivers that roll--\nAs the lavas that restlessly roll\nTheir sulphurous currents down Yaanek\nIn the ultimate climes of the pole--\nThat groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek\nIn the realms of the boreal pole.\n\nOur talk had been serious and sober,\nBut our thoughts they were palsied and sere--\nOur memories were treacherous and sere--\nFor we knew not the month was October,\nAnd we marked not the night of the year--\n(Ah, night of all nights in the year!)\nWe noted not the dim lake of Auber--\n(Though once we had journeyed down here)--\nRemembered not the dank tarn of Auber,\nNor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.\n\nAnd now as the night was senescent\nAnd star-dials pointed to morn--\nAs the sun-dials hinted of morn--\nAt the end of our path a liquescent\nAnd nebulous lustre was born,\nOut of which a miraculous crescent\nArose with a duplicate horn--\nAstarte’s bediamonded crescent\nDistinct with its duplicate horn.\n\nAnd I said--“She is warmer than Dian:\nShe rolls through an ether of sighs--\nShe revels in a region of sighs:\nShe has seen that the tears are not dry on\nThese cheeks, where the worm never dies,\nAnd has come past the stars of the Lion\nTo point us the path to the skies--\nTo the Lethean peace of the skies--\nCome up, in despite of the Lion,\nTo shine on us with her bright eyes--\nCome up through the lair of the Lion,\nWith love in her luminous eyes.”\n\nBut Psyche, uplifting her finger,\nSaid--“Sadly this star I mistrust--\nHer pallor I strangely mistrust:--\nOh, hasten!--oh, let us not linger!\nOh, fly!--let us fly!--for we must.”\nIn terror she spoke, letting sink her\nWings till they trailed in the dust--\nIn agony sobbed, letting sink her\nPlumes till they trailed in the dust--\nTill they sorrowfully trailed in the dust.\n\nI replied--“This is nothing but dreaming:\nLet us on by this tremulous light!\nLet us bathe in this crystalline light!\nIts Sibyllic splendor is beaming\nWith Hope and in Beauty to-night:--\nSee!--it flickers up the sky through the night!\nAh, we safely may trust to its gleaming,\nAnd be sure it will lead us aright--\nWe safely may trust to a gleaming\nThat cannot but guide us aright,\nSince it flickers up to Heaven through the night.”\n\nThus I pacified Psyche and kissed her,\nAnd tempted her out of her gloom--\nAnd conquered her scruples and gloom;\nAnd we passed to the end of a vista,\nBut were stopped by the door of a tomb--\nBy the door of a legended tomb;\nAnd I said--“What is written, sweet sister,\nOn the door of this legended tomb?”\nShe replied--“Ulalume--Ulalume--\n’Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume!”\n\nThen my heart it grew ashen and sober\nAs the leaves that were crisped and sere--\nAs the leaves that were withering and sere;\nAnd I cried--“It was surely October\nOn _this_ very night of last year\nThat I journeyed--I journeyed down here--\nThat I brought a dread burden down here!\nOn this night of all nights in the year,\nAh, what demon has tempted me here?\nWell I know, now, this dim lake of Auber--\nThis misty mid region of Weir--\nWell I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber,--\nThis ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.”", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1847" + }, "context": { "month": "october" } @@ -47263,8 +48110,11 @@ }, "the-valley-of-unrest": { "title": "“The Valley of Unrest”", - "body": "_Once_ it smiled a silent dell\nWhere the people did not dwell;\nThey had gone unto the wars,\nTrusting to the mild-eyed stars,\nNightly, from their azure towers,\nTo keep watch above the flowers,\nIn the midst of which all day\nThe red sun-light lazily lay,\n_Now_ each visitor shall confess\nThe sad valley’s restlessness.\nNothing there is motionless--\nNothing save the airs that brood\nOver the magic solitude.\nAh, by no wind are stirred those trees\nThat palpitate like the chill seas\nAround the misty Hebrides!\nAh, by no wind those clouds are driven\nThat rustle through the unquiet Heaven\nUnceasingly, from morn till even,\nOver the violets there that lie In myriad types of the human eye--\nOver the lilies that wave\nAnd weep above a nameless grave!\nThey wave:--from out their fragrant tops\nEternal dews come down in drops.\nThey weep:--from off their delicate stems\nPerennial tears descend in gems.", + "body": "_Once_ it smiled a silent dell\nWhere the people did not dwell;\nThey had gone unto the wars,\nTrusting to the mild-eyed stars,\nNightly, from their azure towers,\nTo keep watch above the flowers,\nIn the midst of which all day\nThe red sun-light lazily lay,\n_Now_ each visitor shall confess\nThe sad valley’s restlessness.\nNothing there is motionless--\nNothing save the airs that brood\nOver the magic solitude.\nAh, by no wind are stirred those trees\nThat palpitate like the chill seas\nAround the misty Hebrides!\nAh, by no wind those clouds are driven\nThat rustle through the unquiet Heaven\nUnceasingly, from morn till even,\nOver the violets there that lie \nIn myriad types of the human eye--\nOver the lilies that wave\nAnd weep above a nameless grave!\nThey wave:--from out their fragrant tops\nEternal dews come down in drops.\nThey weep:--from off their delicate stems\nPerennial tears descend in gems.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1831" + }, "context": { "season": "spring" } @@ -47278,6 +48128,15 @@ "season": "autumn" } } + }, + "the-bowers-whereat-in-dreams-i-see": { + "title": "“The bowers whereat, in dreams, I see …”", + "body": "The bowers whereat, in dreams, I see\nThe wantonest singing birds,\n\nAre lips--and all thy melody\nOf lip-begotten words--\n\nThine eyes, in Heaven of heart enshrined\nThen desolately fall,\nO God! on my funereal mind\nLike starlight on a pall--\n\nThy heart--_thy_ heart!--I wake and sigh,\nAnd sleep to dream till day\nOf the truth that gold can never buy--\nOf the baubles that it may.", + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1845" + } + } } } }, @@ -55559,12 +56418,19 @@ "sonnet-1": { "title": "“Sonnet 1”", "body": "From fairest creatures we desire increase,\nThat thereby beauty’s rose might never die,\nBut as the riper should by time decease,\nHis tender heir might bear his memory:\nBut thou contracted to thine own bright eyes,\nFeed’st thy light’s flame with self-substantial fuel,\nMaking a famine where abundance lies,\nThy self thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel:\nThou that art now the world’s fresh ornament,\nAnd only herald to the gaudy spring,\nWithin thine own bud buriest thy content,\nAnd tender churl mak’st waste in niggarding:\nPity the world, or else this glutton be,\nTo eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-2": { "title": "“Sonnet 2”", "body": "When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,\nAnd dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field,\nThy youth’s proud livery so gazed on now,\nWill be a tattered weed of small worth held:\nThen being asked, where all thy beauty lies,\nWhere all the treasure of thy lusty days;\nTo say within thine own deep sunken eyes,\nWere an all-eating shame, and thriftless praise.\nHow much more praise deserved thy beauty’s use,\nIf thou couldst answer “This fair child of mine\nShall sum my count, and make my old excuse”\nProving his beauty by succession thine.\nThis were to be new made when thou art old,\nAnd see thy blood warm when thou feel’st it cold.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + }, "context": { "season": "winter" } @@ -55573,17 +56439,28 @@ "sonnet-3": { "title": "“Sonnet 3”", "body": "Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest,\nNow is the time that face should form another,\nWhose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,\nThou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.\nFor where is she so fair whose uneared womb\nDisdains the tillage of thy husbandry?\nOr who is he so fond will be the tomb,\nOf his self-love to stop posterity?\nThou art thy mother’s glass and she in thee\nCalls back the lovely April of her prime,\nSo thou through windows of thine age shalt see,\nDespite of wrinkles this thy golden time.\nBut if thou live remembered not to be,\nDie single and thine image dies with thee.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-4": { "title": "“Sonnet 4”", "body": "Unthrifty loveliness why dost thou spend,\nUpon thy self thy beauty’s legacy?\nNature’s bequest gives nothing but doth lend,\nAnd being frank she lends to those are free:\nThen beauteous niggard why dost thou abuse,\nThe bounteous largess given thee to give?\nProfitless usurer why dost thou use\nSo great a sum of sums yet canst not live?\nFor having traffic with thy self alone,\nThou of thy self thy sweet self dost deceive,\nThen how when nature calls thee to be gone,\nWhat acceptable audit canst thou leave?\nThy unused beauty must be tombed with thee,\nWhich used lives th’ executor to be.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-5": { "title": "“Sonnet 5”", "body": "Those hours that with gentle work did frame\nThe lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell\nWill play the tyrants to the very same,\nAnd that unfair which fairly doth excel:\nFor never-resting time leads summer on\nTo hideous winter and confounds him there,\nSap checked with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,\nBeauty o’er-snowed and bareness every where:\nThen were not summer’s distillation left\nA liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,\nBeauty’s effect with beauty were bereft,\nNor it nor no remembrance what it was.\nBut flowers distilled though they with winter meet,\nLeese but their show, their substance still lives sweet.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + }, "context": { "season": "winter" } @@ -55593,6 +56470,9 @@ "title": "“Sonnet 6”", "body": "Then let not winter’s ragged hand deface,\nIn thee thy summer ere thou be distilled:\nMake sweet some vial; treasure thou some place,\nWith beauty’s treasure ere it be self-killed:\nThat use is not forbidden usury,\nWhich happies those that pay the willing loan;\nThat’s for thy self to breed another thee,\nOr ten times happier be it ten for one,\nTen times thy self were happier than thou art,\nIf ten of thine ten times refigured thee:\nThen what could death do if thou shouldst depart,\nLeaving thee living in posterity?\nBe not self-willed for thou art much too fair,\nTo be death’s conquest and make worms thine heir.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + }, "context": { "season": "autumn" } @@ -55601,37 +56481,64 @@ "sonnet-7": { "title": "“Sonnet 7”", "body": "Lo in the orient when the gracious light\nLifts up his burning head, each under eye\nDoth homage to his new-appearing sight,\nServing with looks his sacred majesty,\nAnd having climbed the steep-up heavenly hill,\nResembling strong youth in his middle age,\nYet mortal looks adore his beauty still,\nAttending on his golden pilgrimage:\nBut when from highmost pitch with weary car,\nLike feeble age he reeleth from the day,\nThe eyes (fore duteous) now converted are\nFrom his low tract and look another way:\nSo thou, thy self out-going in thy noon:\nUnlooked on diest unless thou get a son.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-8": { "title": "“Sonnet 8”", "body": "Music to hear, why hear’st thou music sadly?\nSweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy:\nWhy lov’st thou that which thou receiv’st not gladly,\nOr else receiv’st with pleasure thine annoy?\nIf the true concord of well-tuned sounds,\nBy unions married do offend thine ear,\nThey do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds\nIn singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear:\nMark how one string sweet husband to another,\nStrikes each in each by mutual ordering;\nResembling sire, and child, and happy mother,\nWho all in one, one pleasing note do sing:\nWhose speechless song being many, seeming one,\nSings this to thee, “Thou single wilt prove none”.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-9": { "title": "“Sonnet 9”", "body": "Is it for fear to wet a widow’s eye,\nThat thou consum’st thy self in single life?\nAh, if thou issueless shalt hap to die,\nThe world will wail thee like a makeless wife,\nThe world will be thy widow and still weep,\nThat thou no form of thee hast left behind,\nWhen every private widow well may keep,\nBy children’s eyes, her husband’s shape in mind:\nLook what an unthrift in the world doth spend\nShifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it;\nBut beauty’s waste hath in the world an end,\nAnd kept unused the user so destroys it:\nNo love toward others in that bosom sits\nThat on himself such murd’rous shame commits.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-10": { "title": "“Sonnet 10”", "body": "For shame deny that thou bear’st love to any\nWho for thy self art so unprovident.\nGrant if thou wilt, thou art beloved of many,\nBut that thou none lov’st is most evident:\nFor thou art so possessed with murd’rous hate,\nThat ’gainst thy self thou stick’st not to conspire,\nSeeking that beauteous roof to ruinate\nWhich to repair should be thy chief desire:\nO change thy thought, that I may change my mind,\nShall hate be fairer lodged than gentle love?\nBe as thy presence is gracious and kind,\nOr to thy self at least kind-hearted prove,\nMake thee another self for love of me,\nThat beauty still may live in thine or thee.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-11": { "title": "“Sonnet 11”", "body": "As fast as thou shalt wane so fast thou grow’st,\nIn one of thine, from that which thou departest,\nAnd that fresh blood which youngly thou bestow’st,\nThou mayst call thine, when thou from youth convertest,\nHerein lives wisdom, beauty, and increase,\nWithout this folly, age, and cold decay,\nIf all were minded so, the times should cease,\nAnd threescore year would make the world away:\nLet those whom nature hath not made for store,\nHarsh, featureless, and rude, barrenly perish:\nLook whom she best endowed, she gave thee more;\nWhich bounteous gift thou shouldst in bounty cherish:\nShe carved thee for her seal, and meant thereby,\nThou shouldst print more, not let that copy die.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-12": { "title": "“Sonnet 12”", "body": "When I do count the clock that tells the time,\nAnd see the brave day sunk in hideous night,\nWhen I behold the violet past prime,\nAnd sable curls all silvered o’er with white:\nWhen lofty trees I see barren of leaves,\nWhich erst from heat did canopy the herd\nAnd summer’s green all girded up in sheaves\nBorne on the bier with white and bristly beard:\nThen of thy beauty do I question make\nThat thou among the wastes of time must go,\nSince sweets and beauties do themselves forsake,\nAnd die as fast as they see others grow,\nAnd nothing ’gainst Time’s scythe can make defence\nSave breed to brave him, when he takes thee hence.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-13": { "title": "“Sonnet 13”", "body": "O that you were your self, but love you are\nNo longer yours, than you your self here live,\nAgainst this coming end you should prepare,\nAnd your sweet semblance to some other give.\nSo should that beauty which you hold in lease\nFind no determination, then you were\nYour self again after your self’s decease,\nWhen your sweet issue your sweet form should bear.\nWho lets so fair a house fall to decay,\nWhich husbandry in honour might uphold,\nAgainst the stormy gusts of winter’s day\nAnd barren rage of death’s eternal cold?\nO none but unthrifts, dear my love you know,\nYou had a father, let your son say so.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + }, "context": { "season": "winter" } @@ -55640,27 +56547,46 @@ "sonnet-14": { "title": "“Sonnet 14”", "body": "Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck,\nAnd yet methinks I have astronomy,\nBut not to tell of good, or evil luck,\nOf plagues, of dearths, or seasons’ quality,\nNor can I fortune to brief minutes tell;\nPointing to each his thunder, rain and wind,\nOr say with princes if it shall go well\nBy oft predict that I in heaven find.\nBut from thine eyes my knowledge I derive,\nAnd constant stars in them I read such art\nAs truth and beauty shall together thrive\nIf from thy self, to store thou wouldst convert:\nOr else of thee this I prognosticate,\nThy end is truth’s and beauty’s doom and date.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-15": { "title": "“Sonnet 15”", "body": "When I consider every thing that grows\nHolds in perfection but a little moment.\nThat this huge stage presenteth nought but shows\nWhereon the stars in secret influence comment.\nWhen I perceive that men as plants increase,\nCheered and checked even by the self-same sky:\nVaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease,\nAnd wear their brave state out of memory.\nThen the conceit of this inconstant stay,\nSets you most rich in youth before my sight,\nWhere wasteful time debateth with decay\nTo change your day of youth to sullied night,\nAnd all in war with Time for love of you,\nAs he takes from you, I engraft you new.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-16": { "title": "“Sonnet 16”", "body": "But wherefore do not you a mightier way\nMake war upon this bloody tyrant Time?\nAnd fortify your self in your decay\nWith means more blessed than my barren rhyme?\nNow stand you on the top of happy hours,\nAnd many maiden gardens yet unset,\nWith virtuous wish would bear you living flowers,\nMuch liker than your painted counterfeit:\nSo should the lines of life that life repair\nWhich this (Time’s pencil) or my pupil pen\nNeither in inward worth nor outward fair\nCan make you live your self in eyes of men.\nTo give away your self, keeps your self still,\nAnd you must live drawn by your own sweet skill.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-17": { "title": "“Sonnet 17”", "body": "Who will believe my verse in time to come\nIf it were filled with your most high deserts?\nThough yet heaven knows it is but as a tomb\nWhich hides your life, and shows not half your parts:\nIf I could write the beauty of your eyes,\nAnd in fresh numbers number all your graces,\nThe age to come would say this poet lies,\nSuch heavenly touches ne’er touched earthly faces.\nSo should my papers (yellowed with their age)\nBe scorned, like old men of less truth than tongue,\nAnd your true rights be termed a poet’s rage,\nAnd stretched metre of an antique song.\nBut were some child of yours alive that time,\nYou should live twice in it, and in my rhyme.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-18": { "title": "“Sonnet 18”", "body": "Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?\nThou art more lovely and more temperate:\nRough winds do shake the darling buds of May,\nAnd summer’s lease hath all too short a date:\nSometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,\nAnd often is his gold complexion dimmed,\nAnd every fair from fair sometime declines,\nBy chance, or nature’s changing course untrimmed:\nBut thy eternal summer shall not fade,\nNor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,\nNor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,\nWhen in eternal lines to time thou grow’st,\nSo long as men can breathe or eyes can see,\nSo long lives this, and this gives life to thee.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + }, "context": { "month": "may" } @@ -55669,17 +56595,28 @@ "sonnet-19": { "title": "“Sonnet 19”", "body": "Devouring Time blunt thou the lion’s paws,\nAnd make the earth devour her own sweet brood,\nPluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger’s jaws,\nAnd burn the long-lived phoenix, in her blood,\nMake glad and sorry seasons as thou fleet’st,\nAnd do whate’er thou wilt swift-footed Time\nTo the wide world and all her fading sweets:\nBut I forbid thee one most heinous crime,\nO carve not with thy hours my love’s fair brow,\nNor draw no lines there with thine antique pen,\nHim in thy course untainted do allow,\nFor beauty’s pattern to succeeding men.\nYet do thy worst old Time: despite thy wrong,\nMy love shall in my verse ever live young.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-20": { "title": "“Sonnet 20”", "body": "A woman’s face with nature’s own hand painted,\nHast thou the master mistress of my passion,\nA woman’s gentle heart but not acquainted\nWith shifting change as is false women’s fashion,\nAn eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling:\nGilding the object whereupon it gazeth,\nA man in hue all hues in his controlling,\nWhich steals men’s eyes and women’s souls amazeth.\nAnd for a woman wert thou first created,\nTill nature as she wrought thee fell a-doting,\nAnd by addition me of thee defeated,\nBy adding one thing to my purpose nothing.\nBut since she pricked thee out for women’s pleasure,\nMine be thy love and thy love’s use their treasure.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-21": { "title": "“Sonnet 21”", "body": "So is it not with me as with that muse,\nStirred by a painted beauty to his verse,\nWho heaven it self for ornament doth use,\nAnd every fair with his fair doth rehearse,\nMaking a couplement of proud compare\nWith sun and moon, with earth and sea’s rich gems:\nWith April’s first-born flowers and all things rare,\nThat heaven’s air in this huge rondure hems.\nO let me true in love but truly write,\nAnd then believe me, my love is as fair,\nAs any mother’s child, though not so bright\nAs those gold candles fixed in heaven’s air:\nLet them say more that like of hearsay well,\nI will not praise that purpose not to sell.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + }, "context": { "month": "april" } @@ -55688,62 +56625,109 @@ "sonnet-22": { "title": "“Sonnet 22”", "body": "My glass shall not persuade me I am old,\nSo long as youth and thou are of one date,\nBut when in thee time’s furrows I behold,\nThen look I death my days should expiate.\nFor all that beauty that doth cover thee,\nIs but the seemly raiment of my heart,\nWhich in thy breast doth live, as thine in me,\nHow can I then be elder than thou art?\nO therefore love be of thyself so wary,\nAs I not for my self, but for thee will,\nBearing thy heart which I will keep so chary\nAs tender nurse her babe from faring ill.\nPresume not on thy heart when mine is slain,\nThou gav’st me thine not to give back again.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-23": { "title": "“Sonnet 23”", "body": "As an unperfect actor on the stage,\nWho with his fear is put beside his part,\nOr some fierce thing replete with too much rage,\nWhose strength’s abundance weakens his own heart;\nSo I for fear of trust, forget to say,\nThe perfect ceremony of love’s rite,\nAnd in mine own love’s strength seem to decay,\nO’ercharged with burthen of mine own love’s might:\nO let my looks be then the eloquence,\nAnd dumb presagers of my speaking breast,\nWho plead for love, and look for recompense,\nMore than that tongue that more hath more expressed.\nO learn to read what silent love hath writ,\nTo hear with eyes belongs to love’s fine wit.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-24": { "title": "“Sonnet 24”", "body": "Mine eye hath played the painter and hath stelled,\nThy beauty’s form in table of my heart,\nMy body is the frame wherein ’tis held,\nAnd perspective it is best painter’s art.\nFor through the painter must you see his skill,\nTo find where your true image pictured lies,\nWhich in my bosom’s shop is hanging still,\nThat hath his windows glazed with thine eyes:\nNow see what good turns eyes for eyes have done,\nMine eyes have drawn thy shape, and thine for me\nAre windows to my breast, where-through the sun\nDelights to peep, to gaze therein on thee;\nYet eyes this cunning want to grace their art,\nThey draw but what they see, know not the heart.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-25": { "title": "“Sonnet 25”", "body": "Let those who are in favour with their stars,\nOf public honour and proud titles boast,\nWhilst I whom fortune of such triumph bars\nUnlooked for joy in that I honour most;\nGreat princes’ favourites their fair leaves spread,\nBut as the marigold at the sun’s eye,\nAnd in themselves their pride lies buried,\nFor at a frown they in their glory die.\nThe painful warrior famoused for fight,\nAfter a thousand victories once foiled,\nIs from the book of honour razed quite,\nAnd all the rest forgot for which he toiled:\nThen happy I that love and am beloved\nWhere I may not remove nor be removed.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-26": { "title": "“Sonnet 26”", "body": "Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage\nThy merit hath my duty strongly knit;\nTo thee I send this written embassage\nTo witness duty, not to show my wit.\nDuty so great, which wit so poor as mine\nMay make seem bare, in wanting words to show it;\nBut that I hope some good conceit of thine\nIn thy soul’s thought (all naked) will bestow it:\nTill whatsoever star that guides my moving,\nPoints on me graciously with fair aspect,\nAnd puts apparel on my tattered loving,\nTo show me worthy of thy sweet respect,\nThen may I dare to boast how I do love thee,\nTill then, not show my head where thou mayst prove me.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-27": { "title": "“Sonnet 27”", "body": "Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,\nThe dear respose for limbs with travel tired,\nBut then begins a journey in my head\nTo work my mind, when body’s work’s expired.\nFor then my thoughts (from far where I abide)\nIntend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,\nAnd keep my drooping eyelids open wide,\nLooking on darkness which the blind do see.\nSave that my soul’s imaginary sight\nPresents thy shadow to my sightless view,\nWhich like a jewel (hung in ghastly night)\nMakes black night beauteous, and her old face new.\nLo thus by day my limbs, by night my mind,\nFor thee, and for my self, no quiet find.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-28": { "title": "“Sonnet 28”", "body": "How can I then return in happy plight\nThat am debarred the benefit of rest?\nWhen day’s oppression is not eased by night,\nBut day by night and night by day oppressed.\nAnd each (though enemies to either’s reign)\nDo in consent shake hands to torture me,\nThe one by toil, the other to complain\nHow far I toil, still farther off from thee.\nI tell the day to please him thou art bright,\nAnd dost him grace when clouds do blot the heaven:\nSo flatter I the swart-complexioned night,\nWhen sparkling stars twire not thou gild’st the even.\nBut day doth daily draw my sorrows longer,\nAnd night doth nightly make grief’s length seem stronger", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-29": { "title": "“Sonnet 29”", "body": "When in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes,\nI all alone beweep my outcast state,\nAnd trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,\nAnd look upon my self and curse my fate,\nWishing me like to one more rich in hope,\nFeatured like him, like him with friends possessed,\nDesiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,\nWith what I most enjoy contented least,\nYet in these thoughts my self almost despising,\nHaply I think on thee, and then my state,\n(Like to the lark at break of day arising\nFrom sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate,\nFor thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings,\nThat then I scorn to change my state with kings.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-30": { "title": "“Sonnet 30”", "body": "When to the sessions of sweet silent thought,\nI summon up remembrance of things past,\nI sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,\nAnd with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste:\nThen can I drown an eye (unused to flow)\nFor precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,\nAnd weep afresh love’s long since cancelled woe,\nAnd moan th’ expense of many a vanished sight.\nThen can I grieve at grievances foregone,\nAnd heavily from woe to woe tell o’er\nThe sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,\nWhich I new pay as if not paid before.\nBut if the while I think on thee (dear friend)\nAll losses are restored, and sorrows end.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-31": { "title": "“Sonnet 31”", "body": "Thy bosom is endeared with all hearts,\nWhich I by lacking have supposed dead,\nAnd there reigns love and all love’s loving parts,\nAnd all those friends which I thought buried.\nHow many a holy and obsequious tear\nHath dear religious love stol’n from mine eye,\nAs interest of the dead, which now appear,\nBut things removed that hidden in thee lie.\nThou art the grave where buried love doth live,\nHung with the trophies of my lovers gone,\nWho all their parts of me to thee did give,\nThat due of many, now is thine alone.\nTheir images I loved, I view in thee,\nAnd thou (all they) hast all the all of me.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-32": { "title": "“Sonnet 32”", "body": "If thou survive my well-contented day,\nWhen that churl death my bones with dust shall cover\nAnd shalt by fortune once more re-survey\nThese poor rude lines of thy deceased lover:\nCompare them with the bett’ring of the time,\nAnd though they be outstripped by every pen,\nReserve them for my love, not for their rhyme,\nExceeded by the height of happier men.\nO then vouchsafe me but this loving thought,\n“Had my friend’s Muse grown with this growing age,\nA dearer birth than this his love had brought\nTo march in ranks of better equipage:\nBut since he died and poets better prove,\nTheirs for their style I’ll read, his for his love”.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-33": { "title": "“Sonnet 33”", "body": "Full many a glorious morning have I seen,\nFlatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye,\nKissing with golden face the meadows green;\nGilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy:\nAnon permit the basest clouds to ride,\nWith ugly rack on his celestial face,\nAnd from the forlorn world his visage hide\nStealing unseen to west with this disgrace:\nEven so my sun one early morn did shine,\nWith all triumphant splendour on my brow,\nBut out alack, he was but one hour mine,\nThe region cloud hath masked him from me now.\nYet him for this, my love no whit disdaineth,\nSuns of the world may stain, when heaven’s sun staineth.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + }, "context": { "season": "summer" } @@ -55752,12 +56736,19 @@ "sonnet-34": { "title": "“Sonnet 34”", "body": "Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day,\nAnd make me travel forth without my cloak,\nTo let base clouds o’ertake me in my way,\nHiding thy brav’ry in their rotten smoke?\n’Tis not enough that through the cloud thou break,\nTo dry the rain on my storm-beaten face,\nFor no man well of such a salve can speak,\nThat heals the wound, and cures not the disgrace:\nNor can thy shame give physic to my grief,\nThough thou repent, yet I have still the loss,\nTh’ offender’s sorrow lends but weak relief\nTo him that bears the strong offence’s cross.\nAh but those tears are pearl which thy love sheds,\nAnd they are rich, and ransom all ill deeds.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-35": { "title": "“Sonnet 35”", "body": "No more be grieved at that which thou hast done,\nRoses have thorns, and silver fountains mud,\nClouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,\nAnd loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.\nAll men make faults, and even I in this,\nAuthorizing thy trespass with compare,\nMy self corrupting salving thy amiss,\nExcusing thy sins more than thy sins are:\nFor to thy sensual fault I bring in sense,\nThy adverse party is thy advocate,\nAnd ’gainst my self a lawful plea commence:\nSuch civil war is in my love and hate,\nThat I an accessary needs must be,\nTo that sweet thief which sourly robs from me.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + }, "context": { "liturgy": "lent" } @@ -55766,97 +56757,172 @@ "sonnet-36": { "title": "“Sonnet 36”", "body": "Let me confess that we two must be twain,\nAlthough our undivided loves are one:\nSo shall those blots that do with me remain,\nWithout thy help, by me be borne alone.\nIn our two loves there is but one respect,\nThough in our lives a separable spite,\nWhich though it alter not love’s sole effect,\nYet doth it steal sweet hours from love’s delight.\nI may not evermore acknowledge thee,\nLest my bewailed guilt should do thee shame,\nNor thou with public kindness honour me,\nUnless thou take that honour from thy name:\nBut do not so, I love thee in such sort,\nAs thou being mine, mine is thy good report.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-37": { "title": "“Sonnet 37”", "body": "As a decrepit father takes delight,\nTo see his active child do deeds of youth,\nSo I, made lame by Fortune’s dearest spite\nTake all my comfort of thy worth and truth.\nFor whether beauty, birth, or wealth, or wit,\nOr any of these all, or all, or more\nEntitled in thy parts, do crowned sit,\nI make my love engrafted to this store:\nSo then I am not lame, poor, nor despised,\nWhilst that this shadow doth such substance give,\nThat I in thy abundance am sufficed,\nAnd by a part of all thy glory live:\nLook what is best, that best I wish in thee,\nThis wish I have, then ten times happy me.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-38": { "title": "“Sonnet 38”", "body": "How can my muse want subject to invent\nWhile thou dost breathe that pour’st into my verse,\nThine own sweet argument, too excellent,\nFor every vulgar paper to rehearse?\nO give thy self the thanks if aught in me,\nWorthy perusal stand against thy sight,\nFor who’s so dumb that cannot write to thee,\nWhen thou thy self dost give invention light?\nBe thou the tenth Muse, ten times more in worth\nThan those old nine which rhymers invocate,\nAnd he that calls on thee, let him bring forth\nEternal numbers to outlive long date.\nIf my slight muse do please these curious days,\nThe pain be mine, but thine shall be the praise.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-39": { "title": "“Sonnet 39”", "body": "O how thy worth with manners may I sing,\nWhen thou art all the better part of me?\nWhat can mine own praise to mine own self bring:\nAnd what is’t but mine own when I praise thee?\nEven for this, let us divided live,\nAnd our dear love lose name of single one,\nThat by this separation I may give:\nThat due to thee which thou deserv’st alone:\nO absence what a torment wouldst thou prove,\nWere it not thy sour leisure gave sweet leave,\nTo entertain the time with thoughts of love,\nWhich time and thoughts so sweetly doth deceive.\nAnd that thou teachest how to make one twain,\nBy praising him here who doth hence remain.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-40": { "title": "“Sonnet 40”", "body": "Take all my loves, my love, yea take them all,\nWhat hast thou then more than thou hadst before?\nNo love, my love, that thou mayst true love call,\nAll mine was thine, before thou hadst this more:\nThen if for my love, thou my love receivest,\nI cannot blame thee, for my love thou usest,\nBut yet be blamed, if thou thy self deceivest\nBy wilful taste of what thy self refusest.\nI do forgive thy robbery gentle thief\nAlthough thou steal thee all my poverty:\nAnd yet love knows it is a greater grief\nTo bear love’s wrong, than hate’s known injury.\nLascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows,\nKill me with spites yet we must not be foes.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-41": { "title": "“Sonnet 41”", "body": "Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits,\nWhen I am sometime absent from thy heart,\nThy beauty, and thy years full well befits,\nFor still temptation follows where thou art.\nGentle thou art, and therefore to be won,\nBeauteous thou art, therefore to be assailed.\nAnd when a woman woos, what woman’s son,\nWill sourly leave her till he have prevailed?\nAy me, but yet thou mightst my seat forbear,\nAnd chide thy beauty, and thy straying youth,\nWho lead thee in their riot even there\nWhere thou art forced to break a twofold truth:\nHers by thy beauty tempting her to thee,\nThine by thy beauty being false to me.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-42": { "title": "“Sonnet 42”", "body": "That thou hast her it is not all my grief,\nAnd yet it may be said I loved her dearly,\nThat she hath thee is of my wailing chief,\nA loss in love that touches me more nearly.\nLoving offenders thus I will excuse ye,\nThou dost love her, because thou know’st I love her,\nAnd for my sake even so doth she abuse me,\nSuff’ring my friend for my sake to approve her.\nIf I lose thee, my loss is my love’s gain,\nAnd losing her, my friend hath found that loss,\nBoth find each other, and I lose both twain,\nAnd both for my sake lay on me this cross,\nBut here’s the joy, my friend and I are one,\nSweet flattery, then she loves but me alone.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-43": { "title": "“Sonnet 43”", "body": "When most I wink then do mine eyes best see,\nFor all the day they view things unrespected,\nBut when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee,\nAnd darkly bright, are bright in dark directed.\nThen thou whose shadow shadows doth make bright\nHow would thy shadow’s form, form happy show,\nTo the clear day with thy much clearer light,\nWhen to unseeing eyes thy shade shines so!\nHow would (I say) mine eyes be blessed made,\nBy looking on thee in the living day,\nWhen in dead night thy fair imperfect shade,\nThrough heavy sleep on sightless eyes doth stay!\nAll days are nights to see till I see thee,\nAnd nights bright days when dreams do show thee me.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-44": { "title": "“Sonnet 44”", "body": "If the dull substance of my flesh were thought,\nInjurious distance should not stop my way,\nFor then despite of space I would be brought,\nFrom limits far remote, where thou dost stay,\nNo matter then although my foot did stand\nUpon the farthest earth removed from thee,\nFor nimble thought can jump both sea and land,\nAs soon as think the place where he would be.\nBut ah, thought kills me that I am not thought\nTo leap large lengths of miles when thou art gone,\nBut that so much of earth and water wrought,\nI must attend, time’s leisure with my moan.\nReceiving nought by elements so slow,\nBut heavy tears, badges of either’s woe.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-45": { "title": "“Sonnet 45”", "body": "The other two, slight air, and purging fire,\nAre both with thee, wherever I abide,\nThe first my thought, the other my desire,\nThese present-absent with swift motion slide.\nFor when these quicker elements are gone\nIn tender embassy of love to thee,\nMy life being made of four, with two alone,\nSinks down to death, oppressed with melancholy.\nUntil life’s composition be recured,\nBy those swift messengers returned from thee,\nWho even but now come back again assured,\nOf thy fair health, recounting it to me.\nThis told, I joy, but then no longer glad,\nI send them back again and straight grow sad.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-46": { "title": "“Sonnet 46”", "body": "Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war,\nHow to divide the conquest of thy sight,\nMine eye, my heart thy picture’s sight would bar,\nMy heart, mine eye the freedom of that right,\nMy heart doth plead that thou in him dost lie,\n(A closet never pierced with crystal eyes)\nBut the defendant doth that plea deny,\nAnd says in him thy fair appearance lies.\nTo side this title is impanelled\nA quest of thoughts, all tenants to the heart,\nAnd by their verdict is determined\nThe clear eye’s moiety, and the dear heart’s part.\nAs thus, mine eye’s due is thy outward part,\nAnd my heart’s right, thy inward love of heart.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-47": { "title": "“Sonnet 47”", "body": "Betwixt mine eye and heart a league is took,\nAnd each doth good turns now unto the other,\nWhen that mine eye is famished for a look,\nOr heart in love with sighs himself doth smother;\nWith my love’s picture then my eye doth feast,\nAnd to the painted banquet bids my heart:\nAnother time mine eye is my heart’s guest,\nAnd in his thoughts of love doth share a part.\nSo either by thy picture or my love,\nThy self away, art present still with me,\nFor thou not farther than my thoughts canst move,\nAnd I am still with them, and they with thee.\nOr if they sleep, thy picture in my sight\nAwakes my heart, to heart’s and eye’s delight.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-48": { "title": "“Sonnet 48”", "body": "How careful was I when I took my way,\nEach trifle under truest bars to thrust,\nThat to my use it might unused stay\nFrom hands of falsehood, in sure wards of trust!\nBut thou, to whom my jewels trifles are,\nMost worthy comfort, now my greatest grief,\nThou best of dearest, and mine only care,\nArt left the prey of every vulgar thief.\nThee have I not locked up in any chest,\nSave where thou art not, though I feel thou art,\nWithin the gentle closure of my breast,\nFrom whence at pleasure thou mayst come and part,\nAnd even thence thou wilt be stol’n I fear,\nFor truth proves thievish for a prize so dear.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-49": { "title": "“Sonnet 49”", "body": "Against that time (if ever that time come)\nWhen I shall see thee frown on my defects,\nWhen as thy love hath cast his utmost sum,\nCalled to that audit by advised respects,\nAgainst that time when thou shalt strangely pass,\nAnd scarcely greet me with that sun thine eye,\nWhen love converted from the thing it was\nShall reasons find of settled gravity;\nAgainst that time do I ensconce me here\nWithin the knowledge of mine own desert,\nAnd this my hand, against my self uprear,\nTo guard the lawful reasons on thy part,\nTo leave poor me, thou hast the strength of laws,\nSince why to love, I can allege no cause.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-50": { "title": "“Sonnet 50”", "body": "How heavy do I journey on the way,\nWhen what I seek (my weary travel’s end)\nDoth teach that case and that repose to say\n“Thus far the miles are measured from thy friend.”\nThe beast that bears me, tired with my woe,\nPlods dully on, to bear that weight in me,\nAs if by some instinct the wretch did know\nHis rider loved not speed being made from thee:\nThe bloody spur cannot provoke him on,\nThat sometimes anger thrusts into his hide,\nWhich heavily he answers with a groan,\nMore sharp to me than spurring to his side,\nFor that same groan doth put this in my mind,\nMy grief lies onward and my joy behind.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-51": { "title": "“Sonnet 51”", "body": "Thus can my love excuse the slow offence,\nOf my dull bearer, when from thee I speed,\nFrom where thou art, why should I haste me thence?\nTill I return of posting is no need.\nO what excuse will my poor beast then find,\nWhen swift extremity can seem but slow?\nThen should I spur though mounted on the wind,\nIn winged speed no motion shall I know,\nThen can no horse with my desire keep pace,\nTherefore desire (of perfect’st love being made)\nShall neigh (no dull flesh) in his fiery race,\nBut love, for love, thus shall excuse my jade,\nSince from thee going, he went wilful-slow,\nTowards thee I’ll run, and give him leave to go.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-52": { "title": "“Sonnet 52”", "body": "So am I as the rich whose blessed key,\nCan bring him to his sweet up-locked treasure,\nThe which he will not every hour survey,\nFor blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure.\nTherefore are feasts so solemn and so rare,\nSince seldom coming in that long year set,\nLike stones of worth they thinly placed are,\nOr captain jewels in the carcanet.\nSo is the time that keeps you as my chest\nOr as the wardrobe which the robe doth hide,\nTo make some special instant special-blest,\nBy new unfolding his imprisoned pride.\nBlessed are you whose worthiness gives scope,\nBeing had to triumph, being lacked to hope.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-53": { "title": "“Sonnet 53”", "body": "What is your substance, whereof are you made,\nThat millions of strange shadows on you tend?\nSince every one, hath every one, one shade,\nAnd you but one, can every shadow lend:\nDescribe Adonis and the counterfeit,\nIs poorly imitated after you,\nOn Helen’s cheek all art of beauty set,\nAnd you in Grecian tires are painted new:\nSpeak of the spring, and foison of the year,\nThe one doth shadow of your beauty show,\nThe other as your bounty doth appear,\nAnd you in every blessed shape we know.\nIn all external grace you have some part,\nBut you like none, none you for constant heart.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-54": { "title": "“Sonnet 54”", "body": "O how much more doth beauty beauteous seem,\nBy that sweet ornament which truth doth give!\nThe rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem\nFor that sweet odour, which doth in it live:\nThe canker blooms have full as deep a dye,\nAs the perfumed tincture of the roses,\nHang on such thorns, and play as wantonly,\nWhen summer’s breath their masked buds discloses:\nBut for their virtue only is their show,\nThey live unwooed, and unrespected fade,\nDie to themselves. Sweet roses do not so,\nOf their sweet deaths, are sweetest odours made:\nAnd so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,\nWhen that shall vade, by verse distills your truth.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + }, "context": { "season": "summer" } @@ -55865,12 +56931,19 @@ "sonnet-55": { "title": "“Sonnet 55”", "body": "Not marble, nor the gilded monuments\nOf princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme,\nBut you shall shine more bright in these contents\nThan unswept stone, besmeared with sluttish time.\nWhen wasteful war shall statues overturn,\nAnd broils root out the work of masonry,\nNor Mars his sword, nor war’s quick fire shall burn:\nThe living record of your memory.\n’Gainst death, and all-oblivious enmity\nShall you pace forth, your praise shall still find room,\nEven in the eyes of all posterity\nThat wear this world out to the ending doom.\nSo till the judgment that your self arise,\nYou live in this, and dwell in lovers’ eyes.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-56": { "title": "“Sonnet 56”", "body": "Sweet love renew thy force, be it not said\nThy edge should blunter be than appetite,\nWhich but to-day by feeding is allayed,\nTo-morrow sharpened in his former might.\nSo love be thou, although to-day thou fill\nThy hungry eyes, even till they wink with fulness,\nTo-morrow see again, and do not kill\nThe spirit of love, with a perpetual dulness:\nLet this sad interim like the ocean be\nWhich parts the shore, where two contracted new,\nCome daily to the banks, that when they see:\nReturn of love, more blest may be the view.\nOr call it winter, which being full of care,\nMakes summer’s welcome, thrice more wished, more rare.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + }, "context": { "season": "winter" } @@ -55879,37 +56952,64 @@ "sonnet-57": { "title": "“Sonnet 57”", "body": "Being your slave what should I do but tend,\nUpon the hours, and times of your desire?\nI have no precious time at all to spend;\nNor services to do till you require.\nNor dare I chide the world-without-end hour,\nWhilst I (my sovereign) watch the clock for you,\nNor think the bitterness of absence sour,\nWhen you have bid your servant once adieu.\nNor dare I question with my jealous thought,\nWhere you may be, or your affairs suppose,\nBut like a sad slave stay and think of nought\nSave where you are, how happy you make those.\nSo true a fool is love, that in your will,\n(Though you do any thing) he thinks no ill.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-58": { "title": "“Sonnet 58”", "body": "That god forbid, that made me first your slave,\nI should in thought control your times of pleasure,\nOr at your hand th’ account of hours to crave,\nBeing your vassal bound to stay your leisure.\nO let me suffer (being at your beck)\nTh’ imprisoned absence of your liberty,\nAnd patience tame to sufferance bide each check,\nWithout accusing you of injury.\nBe where you list, your charter is so strong,\nThat you your self may privilage your time\nTo what you will, to you it doth belong,\nYour self to pardon of self-doing crime.\nI am to wait, though waiting so be hell,\nNot blame your pleasure be it ill or well.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-59": { "title": "“Sonnet 59”", "body": "If there be nothing new, but that which is,\nHath been before, how are our brains beguiled,\nWhich labouring for invention bear amis\nThe second burthen of a former child!\nO that record could with a backward look,\nEven of five hundred courses of the sun,\nShow me your image in some antique book,\nSince mind at first in character was done.\nThat I might see what the old world could say,\nTo this composed wonder of your frame,\nWhether we are mended, or whether better they,\nOr whether revolution be the same.\nO sure I am the wits of former days,\nTo subjects worse have given admiring praise.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-60": { "title": "“Sonnet 60”", "body": "Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,\nSo do our minutes hasten to their end,\nEach changing place with that which goes before,\nIn sequent toil all forwards do contend.\nNativity once in the main of light,\nCrawls to maturity, wherewith being crowned,\nCrooked eclipses ’gainst his glory fight,\nAnd Time that gave, doth now his gift confound.\nTime doth transfix the flourish set on youth,\nAnd delves the parallels in beauty’s brow,\nFeeds on the rarities of nature’s truth,\nAnd nothing stands but for his scythe to mow.\nAnd yet to times in hope, my verse shall stand\nPraising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-61": { "title": "“Sonnet 61”", "body": "Is it thy will, thy image should keep open\nMy heavy eyelids to the weary night?\nDost thou desire my slumbers should be broken,\nWhile shadows like to thee do mock my sight?\nIs it thy spirit that thou send’st from thee\nSo far from home into my deeds to pry,\nTo find out shames and idle hours in me,\nThe scope and tenure of thy jealousy?\nO no, thy love though much, is not so great,\nIt is my love that keeps mine eye awake,\nMine own true love that doth my rest defeat,\nTo play the watchman ever for thy sake.\nFor thee watch I, whilst thou dost wake elsewhere,\nFrom me far off, with others all too near.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-62": { "title": "“Sonnet 62”", "body": "Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye,\nAnd all my soul, and all my every part;\nAnd for this sin there is no remedy,\nIt is so grounded inward in my heart.\nMethinks no face so gracious is as mine,\nNo shape so true, no truth of such account,\nAnd for my self mine own worth do define,\nAs I all other in all worths surmount.\nBut when my glass shows me my self indeed\nbeated and chopt with tanned antiquity,\nMine own self-love quite contrary I read:\nSelf, so self-loving were iniquity.\n’Tis thee (my self) that for my self I praise,\nPainting my age with beauty of thy days.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-63": { "title": "“Sonnet 63”", "body": "Against my love shall be as I am now\nWith Time’s injurious hand crushed and o’erworn,\nWhen hours have drained his blood and filled his brow\nWith lines and wrinkles, when his youthful morn\nHath travelled on to age’s steepy night,\nAnd all those beauties whereof now he’s king\nAre vanishing, or vanished out of sight,\nStealing away the treasure of his spring:\nFor such a time do I now fortify\nAgainst confounding age’s cruel knife,\nThat he shall never cut from memory\nMy sweet love’s beauty, though my lover’s life.\nHis beauty shall in these black lines be seen,\nAnd they shall live, and he in them still green.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + }, "context": { "season": "autumn" } @@ -55918,12 +57018,19 @@ "sonnet-64": { "title": "“Sonnet 64”", "body": "When I have seen by Time’s fell hand defaced\nThe rich-proud cost of outworn buried age,\nWhen sometime lofty towers I see down-rased,\nAnd brass eternal slave to mortal rage.\nWhen I have seen the hungry ocean gain\nAdvantage on the kingdom of the shore,\nAnd the firm soil win of the watery main,\nIncreasing store with loss, and loss with store.\nWhen I have seen such interchange of State,\nOr state it self confounded, to decay,\nRuin hath taught me thus to ruminate\nThat Time will come and take my love away.\nThis thought is as a death which cannot choose\nBut weep to have, that which it fears to lose.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-65": { "title": "“Sonnet 65”", "body": "Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,\nBut sad mortality o’ersways their power,\nHow with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,\nWhose action is no stronger than a flower?\nO how shall summer’s honey breath hold out,\nAgainst the wrackful siege of batt’ring days,\nWhen rocks impregnable are not so stout,\nNor gates of steel so strong but time decays?\nO fearful meditation, where alack,\nShall Time’s best jewel from Time’s chest lie hid?\nOr what strong hand can hold his swift foot back,\nOr who his spoil of beauty can forbid?\nO none, unless this miracle have might,\nThat in black ink my love may still shine bright.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + }, "context": { "month": "september" } @@ -55932,17 +57039,28 @@ "sonnet-66": { "title": "“Sonnet 66”", "body": "Tired with all these for restful death I cry,\nAs to behold desert a beggar born,\nAnd needy nothing trimmed in jollity,\nAnd purest faith unhappily forsworn,\nAnd gilded honour shamefully misplaced,\nAnd maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,\nAnd right perfection wrongfully disgraced,\nAnd strength by limping sway disabled\nAnd art made tongue-tied by authority,\nAnd folly (doctor-like) controlling skill,\nAnd simple truth miscalled simplicity,\nAnd captive good attending captain ill.\nTired with all these, from these would I be gone,\nSave that to die, I leave my love alone.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-67": { "title": "“Sonnet 67”", "body": "Ah wherefore with infection should he live,\nAnd with his presence grace impiety,\nThat sin by him advantage should achieve,\nAnd lace it self with his society?\nWhy should false painting imitate his cheek,\nAnd steal dead seeming of his living hue?\nWhy should poor beauty indirectly seek,\nRoses of shadow, since his rose is true?\nWhy should he live, now nature bankrupt is,\nBeggared of blood to blush through lively veins,\nFor she hath no exchequer now but his,\nAnd proud of many, lives upon his gains?\nO him she stores, to show what wealth she had,\nIn days long since, before these last so bad.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-68": { "title": "“Sonnet 68”", "body": "Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn,\nWhen beauty lived and died as flowers do now,\nBefore these bastard signs of fair were born,\nOr durst inhabit on a living brow:\nBefore the golden tresses of the dead,\nThe right of sepulchres, were shorn away,\nTo live a second life on second head,\nEre beauty’s dead fleece made another gay:\nIn him those holy antique hours are seen,\nWithout all ornament, it self and true,\nMaking no summer of another’s green,\nRobbing no old to dress his beauty new,\nAnd him as for a map doth Nature store,\nTo show false Art what beauty was of yore.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + }, "context": { "season": "autumn" } @@ -55951,27 +57069,46 @@ "sonnet-69": { "title": "“Sonnet 69”", "body": "Those parts of thee that the world’s eye doth view,\nWant nothing that the thought of hearts can mend:\nAll tongues (the voice of souls) give thee that due,\nUttering bare truth, even so as foes commend.\nThy outward thus with outward praise is crowned,\nBut those same tongues that give thee so thine own,\nIn other accents do this praise confound\nBy seeing farther than the eye hath shown.\nThey look into the beauty of thy mind,\nAnd that in guess they measure by thy deeds,\nThen churls their thoughts (although their eyes were kind)\nTo thy fair flower add the rank smell of weeds:\nBut why thy odour matcheth not thy show,\nThe soil is this, that thou dost common grow.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-70": { "title": "“Sonnet 70”", "body": "That thou art blamed shall not be thy defect,\nFor slander’s mark was ever yet the fair,\nThe ornament of beauty is suspect,\nA crow that flies in heaven’s sweetest air.\nSo thou be good, slander doth but approve,\nThy worth the greater being wooed of time,\nFor canker vice the sweetest buds doth love,\nAnd thou present’st a pure unstained prime.\nThou hast passed by the ambush of young days,\nEither not assailed, or victor being charged,\nYet this thy praise cannot be so thy praise,\nTo tie up envy, evermore enlarged,\nIf some suspect of ill masked not thy show,\nThen thou alone kingdoms of hearts shouldst owe.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-71": { "title": "“Sonnet 71”", "body": "No longer mourn for me when I am dead,\nThan you shall hear the surly sullen bell\nGive warning to the world that I am fled\nFrom this vile world with vilest worms to dwell:\nNay if you read this line, remember not,\nThe hand that writ it, for I love you so,\nThat I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,\nIf thinking on me then should make you woe.\nO if (I say) you look upon this verse,\nWhen I (perhaps) compounded am with clay,\nDo not so much as my poor name rehearse;\nBut let your love even with my life decay.\nLest the wise world should look into your moan,\nAnd mock you with me after I am gone.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-72": { "title": "“Sonnet 72”", "body": "O lest the world should task you to recite,\nWhat merit lived in me that you should love\nAfter my death (dear love) forget me quite,\nFor you in me can nothing worthy prove.\nUnless you would devise some virtuous lie,\nTo do more for me than mine own desert,\nAnd hang more praise upon deceased I,\nThan niggard truth would willingly impart:\nO lest your true love may seem false in this,\nThat you for love speak well of me untrue,\nMy name be buried where my body is,\nAnd live no more to shame nor me, nor you.\nFor I am shamed by that which I bring forth,\nAnd so should you, to love things nothing worth.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-73": { "title": "“Sonnet 73”", "body": "That time of year thou mayst in me behold,\nWhen yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang\nUpon those boughs which shake against the cold,\nBare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.\nIn me thou seest the twilight of such day,\nAs after sunset fadeth in the west,\nWhich by and by black night doth take away,\nDeath’s second self that seals up all in rest.\nIn me thou seest the glowing of such fire,\nThat on the ashes of his youth doth lie,\nAs the death-bed, whereon it must expire,\nConsumed with that which it was nourished by.\nThis thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,\nTo love that well, which thou must leave ere long.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + }, "context": { "liturgy": "advent" } @@ -55980,22 +57117,37 @@ "sonnet-74": { "title": "“Sonnet 74”", "body": "But be contented when that fell arrest,\nWithout all bail shall carry me away,\nMy life hath in this line some interest,\nWhich for memorial still with thee shall stay.\nWhen thou reviewest this, thou dost review,\nThe very part was consecrate to thee,\nThe earth can have but earth, which is his due,\nMy spirit is thine the better part of me,\nSo then thou hast but lost the dregs of life,\nThe prey of worms, my body being dead,\nThe coward conquest of a wretch’s knife,\nToo base of thee to be remembered,\nThe worth of that, is that which it contains,\nAnd that is this, and this with thee remains.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-75": { "title": "“Sonnet 75”", "body": "So are you to my thoughts as food to life,\nOr as sweet-seasoned showers are to the ground;\nAnd for the peace of you I hold such strife\nAs ’twixt a miser and his wealth is found.\nNow proud as an enjoyer, and anon\nDoubting the filching age will steal his treasure,\nNow counting best to be with you alone,\nThen bettered that the world may see my pleasure,\nSometime all full with feasting on your sight,\nAnd by and by clean starved for a look,\nPossessing or pursuing no delight\nSave what is had, or must from you be took.\nThus do I pine and surfeit day by day,\nOr gluttoning on all, or all away.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-76": { "title": "“Sonnet 76”", "body": "Why is my verse so barren of new pride?\nSo far from variation or quick change?\nWhy with the time do I not glance aside\nTo new-found methods, and to compounds strange?\nWhy write I still all one, ever the same,\nAnd keep invention in a noted weed,\nThat every word doth almost tell my name,\nShowing their birth, and where they did proceed?\nO know sweet love I always write of you,\nAnd you and love are still my argument:\nSo all my best is dressing old words new,\nSpending again what is already spent:\nFor as the sun is daily new and old,\nSo is my love still telling what is told.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-77": { "title": "“Sonnet 77”", "body": "Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear,\nThy dial how thy precious minutes waste,\nThese vacant leaves thy mind’s imprint will bear,\nAnd of this book, this learning mayst thou taste.\nThe wrinkles which thy glass will truly show,\nOf mouthed graves will give thee memory,\nThou by thy dial’s shady stealth mayst know,\nTime’s thievish progress to eternity.\nLook what thy memory cannot contain,\nCommit to these waste blanks, and thou shalt find\nThose children nursed, delivered from thy brain,\nTo take a new acquaintance of thy mind.\nThese offices, so oft as thou wilt look,\nShall profit thee, and much enrich thy book.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + }, "context": { "season": "autumn" } @@ -56004,87 +57156,154 @@ "sonnet-78": { "title": "“Sonnet 78”", "body": "So oft have I invoked thee for my muse,\nAnd found such fair assistance in my verse,\nAs every alien pen hath got my use,\nAnd under thee their poesy disperse.\nThine eyes, that taught the dumb on high to sing,\nAnd heavy ignorance aloft to fly,\nHave added feathers to the learned’s wing,\nAnd given grace a double majesty.\nYet be most proud of that which I compile,\nWhose influence is thine, and born of thee,\nIn others’ works thou dost but mend the style,\nAnd arts with thy sweet graces graced be.\nBut thou art all my art, and dost advance\nAs high as learning, my rude ignorance.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-79": { "title": "“Sonnet 79”", "body": "Whilst I alone did call upon thy aid,\nMy verse alone had all thy gentle grace,\nBut now my gracious numbers are decayed,\nAnd my sick muse doth give an other place.\nI grant (sweet love) thy lovely argument\nDeserves the travail of a worthier pen,\nYet what of thee thy poet doth invent,\nHe robs thee of, and pays it thee again,\nHe lends thee virtue, and he stole that word,\nFrom thy behaviour, beauty doth he give\nAnd found it in thy cheek: he can afford\nNo praise to thee, but what in thee doth live.\nThen thank him not for that which he doth say,\nSince what he owes thee, thou thy self dost pay.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-80": { "title": "“Sonnet 80”", "body": "O how I faint when I of you do write,\nKnowing a better spirit doth use your name,\nAnd in the praise thereof spends all his might,\nTo make me tongue-tied speaking of your fame.\nBut since your worth (wide as the ocean is)\nThe humble as the proudest sail doth bear,\nMy saucy bark (inferior far to his)\nOn your broad main doth wilfully appear.\nYour shallowest help will hold me up afloat,\nWhilst he upon your soundless deep doth ride,\nOr (being wrecked) I am a worthless boat,\nHe of tall building, and of goodly pride.\nThen if he thrive and I be cast away,\nThe worst was this, my love was my decay.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-81": { "title": "“Sonnet 81”", "body": "Or I shall live your epitaph to make,\nOr you survive when I in earth am rotten,\nFrom hence your memory death cannot take,\nAlthough in me each part will be forgotten.\nYour name from hence immortal life shall have,\nThough I (once gone) to all the world must die,\nThe earth can yield me but a common grave,\nWhen you entombed in men’s eyes shall lie,\nYour monument shall be my gentle verse,\nWhich eyes not yet created shall o’er-read,\nAnd tongues to be, your being shall rehearse,\nWhen all the breathers of this world are dead,\nYou still shall live (such virtue hath my pen)\nWhere breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-82": { "title": "“Sonnet 82”", "body": "I grant thou wert not married to my muse,\nAnd therefore mayst without attaint o’erlook\nThe dedicated words which writers use\nOf their fair subject, blessing every book.\nThou art as fair in knowledge as in hue,\nFinding thy worth a limit past my praise,\nAnd therefore art enforced to seek anew,\nSome fresher stamp of the time-bettering days.\nAnd do so love, yet when they have devised,\nWhat strained touches rhetoric can lend,\nThou truly fair, wert truly sympathized,\nIn true plain words, by thy true-telling friend.\nAnd their gross painting might be better used,\nWhere cheeks need blood, in thee it is abused.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-83": { "title": "“Sonnet 83”", "body": "I never saw that you did painting need,\nAnd therefore to your fair no painting set,\nI found (or thought I found) you did exceed,\nThat barren tender of a poet’s debt:\nAnd therefore have I slept in your report,\nThat you your self being extant well might show,\nHow far a modern quill doth come too short,\nSpeaking of worth, what worth in you doth grow.\nThis silence for my sin you did impute,\nWhich shall be most my glory being dumb,\nFor I impair not beauty being mute,\nWhen others would give life, and bring a tomb.\nThere lives more life in one of your fair eyes,\nThan both your poets can in praise devise.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-84": { "title": "“Sonnet 84”", "body": "Who is it that says most, which can say more,\nThan this rich praise, that you alone, are you?\nIn whose confine immured is the store,\nWhich should example where your equal grew.\nLean penury within that pen doth dwell,\nThat to his subject lends not some small glory,\nBut he that writes of you, if he can tell,\nThat you are you, so dignifies his story.\nLet him but copy what in you is writ,\nNot making worse what nature made so clear,\nAnd such a counterpart shall fame his wit,\nMaking his style admired every where.\nYou to your beauteous blessings add a curse,\nBeing fond on praise, which makes your praises worse.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-85": { "title": "“Sonnet 85”", "body": "My tongue-tied muse in manners holds her still,\nWhile comments of your praise richly compiled,\nReserve their character with golden quill,\nAnd precious phrase by all the Muses filed.\nI think good thoughts, whilst other write good words,\nAnd like unlettered clerk still cry Amen,\nTo every hymn that able spirit affords,\nIn polished form of well refined pen.\nHearing you praised, I say ’tis so, ’tis true,\nAnd to the most of praise add something more,\nBut that is in my thought, whose love to you\n(Though words come hindmost) holds his rank before,\nThen others, for the breath of words respect,\nMe for my dumb thoughts, speaking in effect.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-86": { "title": "“Sonnet 86”", "body": "Was it the proud full sail of his great verse,\nBound for the prize of (all too precious) you,\nThat did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse,\nMaking their tomb the womb wherein they grew?\nWas it his spirit, by spirits taught to write,\nAbove a mortal pitch, that struck me dead?\nNo, neither he, nor his compeers by night\nGiving him aid, my verse astonished.\nHe nor that affable familiar ghost\nWhich nightly gulls him with intelligence,\nAs victors of my silence cannot boast,\nI was not sick of any fear from thence.\nBut when your countenance filled up his line,\nThen lacked I matter, that enfeebled mine.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-87": { "title": "“Sonnet 87”", "body": "Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing,\nAnd like enough thou know’st thy estimate,\nThe charter of thy worth gives thee releasing:\nMy bonds in thee are all determinate.\nFor how do I hold thee but by thy granting,\nAnd for that riches where is my deserving?\nThe cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,\nAnd so my patent back again is swerving.\nThy self thou gav’st, thy own worth then not knowing,\nOr me to whom thou gav’st it, else mistaking,\nSo thy great gift upon misprision growing,\nComes home again, on better judgement making.\nThus have I had thee as a dream doth flatter,\nIn sleep a king, but waking no such matter.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-88": { "title": "“Sonnet 88”", "body": "When thou shalt be disposed to set me light,\nAnd place my merit in the eye of scorn,\nUpon thy side, against my self I’ll fight,\nAnd prove thee virtuous, though thou art forsworn:\nWith mine own weakness being best acquainted,\nUpon thy part I can set down a story\nOf faults concealed, wherein I am attainted:\nThat thou in losing me, shalt win much glory:\nAnd I by this will be a gainer too,\nFor bending all my loving thoughts on thee,\nThe injuries that to my self I do,\nDoing thee vantage, double-vantage me.\nSuch is my love, to thee I so belong,\nThat for thy right, my self will bear all wrong.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-89": { "title": "“Sonnet 89”", "body": "Say that thou didst forsake me for some fault,\nAnd I will comment upon that offence,\nSpeak of my lameness, and I straight will halt:\nAgainst thy reasons making no defence.\nThou canst not (love) disgrace me half so ill,\nTo set a form upon desired change,\nAs I’ll my self disgrace, knowing thy will,\nI will acquaintance strangle and look strange:\nBe absent from thy walks and in my tongue,\nThy sweet beloved name no more shall dwell,\nLest I (too much profane) should do it wrong:\nAnd haply of our old acquaintance tell.\nFor thee, against my self I’ll vow debate,\nFor I must ne’er love him whom thou dost hate.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-90": { "title": "“Sonnet 90”", "body": "Then hate me when thou wilt, if ever, now,\nNow while the world is bent my deeds to cross,\njoin with the spite of fortune, make me bow,\nAnd do not drop in for an after-loss:\nAh do not, when my heart hath ’scaped this sorrow,\nCome in the rearward of a conquered woe,\nGive not a windy night a rainy morrow,\nTo linger out a purposed overthrow.\nIf thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last,\nWhen other petty griefs have done their spite,\nBut in the onset come, so shall I taste\nAt first the very worst of fortune’s might.\nAnd other strains of woe, which now seem woe,\nCompared with loss of thee, will not seem so.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-91": { "title": "“Sonnet 91”", "body": "Some glory in their birth, some in their skill,\nSome in their wealth, some in their body’s force,\nSome in their garments though new-fangled ill:\nSome in their hawks and hounds, some in their horse.\nAnd every humour hath his adjunct pleasure,\nWherein it finds a joy above the rest,\nBut these particulars are not my measure,\nAll these I better in one general best.\nThy love is better than high birth to me,\nRicher than wealth, prouder than garments’ costs,\nOf more delight than hawks and horses be:\nAnd having thee, of all men’s pride I boast.\nWretched in this alone, that thou mayst take,\nAll this away, and me most wretchcd make.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-92": { "title": "“Sonnet 92”", "body": "But do thy worst to steal thy self away,\nFor term of life thou art assured mine,\nAnd life no longer than thy love will stay,\nFor it depends upon that love of thine.\nThen need I not to fear the worst of wrongs,\nWhen in the least of them my life hath end,\nI see, a better state to me belongs\nThan that, which on thy humour doth depend.\nThou canst not vex me with inconstant mind,\nSince that my life on thy revolt doth lie,\nO what a happy title do I find,\nHappy to have thy love, happy to die!\nBut what’s so blessed-fair that fears no blot?\nThou mayst be false, and yet I know it not.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-93": { "title": "“Sonnet 93”", "body": "So shall I live, supposing thou art true,\nLike a deceived husband, so love’s face,\nMay still seem love to me, though altered new:\nThy looks with me, thy heart in other place.\nFor there can live no hatred in thine eye,\nTherefore in that I cannot know thy change,\nIn many’s looks, the false heart’s history\nIs writ in moods and frowns and wrinkles strange.\nBut heaven in thy creation did decree,\nThat in thy face sweet love should ever dwell,\nWhate’er thy thoughts, or thy heart’s workings be,\nThy looks should nothing thence, but sweetness tell.\nHow like Eve’s apple doth thy beauty grow,\nIf thy sweet virtue answer not thy show.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-94": { "title": "“Sonnet 94”", "body": "They that have power to hurt, and will do none,\nThat do not do the thing, they most do show,\nWho moving others, are themselves as stone,\nUnmoved, cold, and to temptation slow:\nThey rightly do inherit heaven’s graces,\nAnd husband nature’s riches from expense,\nTibey are the lords and owners of their faces,\nOthers, but stewards of their excellence:\nThe summer’s flower is to the summer sweet,\nThough to it self, it only live and die,\nBut if that flower with base infection meet,\nThe basest weed outbraves his dignity:\nFor sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds,\nLilies that fester, smell far worse than weeds.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + }, "context": { "season": "autumn" } @@ -56093,17 +57312,28 @@ "sonnet-95": { "title": "“Sonnet 95”", "body": "How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame,\nWhich like a canker in the fragrant rose,\nDoth spot the beauty of thy budding name!\nO in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose!\nThat tongue that tells the story of thy days,\n(Making lascivious comments on thy sport)\nCannot dispraise, but in a kind of praise,\nNaming thy name, blesses an ill report.\nO what a mansion have those vices got,\nWhich for their habitation chose out thee,\nWhere beauty’s veil doth cover every blot,\nAnd all things turns to fair, that eyes can see!\nTake heed (dear heart) of this large privilege,\nThe hardest knife ill-used doth lose his edge.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-96": { "title": "“Sonnet 96”", "body": "Some say thy fault is youth, some wantonness,\nSome say thy grace is youth and gentle sport,\nBoth grace and faults are loved of more and less:\nThou mak’st faults graces, that to thee resort:\nAs on the finger of a throned queen,\nThe basest jewel will be well esteemed:\nSo are those errors that in thee are seen,\nTo truths translated, and for true things deemed.\nHow many lambs might the stern wolf betray,\nIf like a lamb he could his looks translate!\nHow many gazers mightst thou lead away,\nif thou wouldst use the strength of all thy state!\nBut do not so, I love thee in such sort,\nAs thou being mine, mine is thy good report.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-97": { "title": "“Sonnet 97”", "body": "How like a winter hath my absence been\nFrom thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!\nWhat freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!\nWhat old December’s bareness everywhere!\nAnd yet this time removed was summer’s time,\nThe teeming autumn big with rich increase,\nBearing the wanton burden of the prime,\nLike widowed wombs after their lords’ decease:\nYet this abundant issue seemed to me\nBut hope of orphans, and unfathered fruit,\nFor summer and his pleasures wait on thee,\nAnd thou away, the very birds are mute.\nOr if they sing, ’tis with so dull a cheer,\nThat leaves look pale, dreading the winter’s near.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + }, "context": { "month": "december" } @@ -56113,6 +57343,9 @@ "title": "“Sonnet 98”", "body": "From you have I been absent in the spring,\nWhen proud-pied April (dressed in all his trim)\nHath put a spirit of youth in every thing:\nThat heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him.\nYet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell\nOf different flowers in odour and in hue,\nCould make me any summer’s story tell:\nOr from their proud lap pluck them where they grew:\nNor did I wonder at the lily’s white,\nNor praise the deep vermilion in the rose,\nThey were but sweet, but figures of delight:\nDrawn after you, you pattern of all those.\nYet seemed it winter still, and you away,\nAs with your shadow I with these did play.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + }, "context": { "month": "april" } @@ -56122,6 +57355,9 @@ "title": "“Sonnet 99”", "body": "The forward violet thus did I chide,\nSweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells,\nIf not from my love’s breath? The purple pride\nWhich on thy soft check for complexion dwells,\nIn my love’s veins thou hast too grossly dyed.\nThe lily I condemned for thy hand,\nAnd buds of marjoram had stol’n thy hair,\nThe roses fearfully on thorns did stand,\nOne blushing shame, another white despair:\nA third nor red, nor white, had stol’n of both,\nAnd to his robbery had annexed thy breath,\nBut for his theft in pride of all his growth\nA vengeful canker eat him up to death.\nMore flowers I noted, yet I none could see,\nBut sweet, or colour it had stol’n from thee.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + }, "context": { "season": "spring" } @@ -56130,17 +57366,28 @@ "sonnet-100": { "title": "“Sonnet 100”", "body": "Where art thou Muse that thou forget’st so long,\nTo speak of that which gives thee all thy might?\nSpend’st thou thy fury on some worthless song,\nDarkening thy power to lend base subjects light?\nReturn forgetful Muse, and straight redeem,\nIn gentle numbers time so idly spent,\nSing to the ear that doth thy lays esteem,\nAnd gives thy pen both skill and argument.\nRise resty Muse, my love’s sweet face survey,\nIf time have any wrinkle graven there,\nIf any, be a satire to decay,\nAnd make time’s spoils despised everywhere.\nGive my love fame faster than Time wastes life,\nSo thou prevent’st his scythe, and crooked knife.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-101": { "title": "“Sonnet 101”", "body": "O truant Muse what shall be thy amends,\nFor thy neglect of truth in beauty dyed?\nBoth truth and beauty on my love depends:\nSo dost thou too, and therein dignified:\nMake answer Muse, wilt thou not haply say,\n“Truth needs no colour with his colour fixed,\nBeauty no pencil, beauty’s truth to lay:\nBut best is best, if never intermixed”?\nBecause he needs no praise, wilt thou be dumb?\nExcuse not silence so, for’t lies in thee,\nTo make him much outlive a gilded tomb:\nAnd to be praised of ages yet to be.\nThen do thy office Muse, I teach thee how,\nTo make him seem long hence, as he shows now.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-102": { "title": "“Sonnet 102”", "body": "My love is strengthened though more weak in seeming,\nI love not less, though less the show appear,\nThat love is merchandized, whose rich esteeming,\nThe owner’s tongue doth publish every where.\nOur love was new, and then but in the spring,\nWhen I was wont to greet it with my lays,\nAs Philomel in summer’s front doth sing,\nAnd stops her pipe in growth of riper days:\nNot that the summer is less pleasant now\nThan when her mournful hymns did hush the night,\nBut that wild music burthens every bough,\nAnd sweets grown common lose their dear delight.\nTherefore like her, I sometime hold my tongue:\nBecause I would not dull you with my song.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + }, "context": { "season": "summer" } @@ -56149,12 +57396,19 @@ "sonnet-103": { "title": "“Sonnet 103”", "body": "Alack what poverty my muse brings forth,\nThat having such a scope to show her pride,\nThe argument all bare is of more worth\nThan when it hath my added praise beside.\nO blame me not if I no more can write!\nLook in your glass and there appears a face,\nThat over-goes my blunt invention quite,\nDulling my lines, and doing me disgrace.\nWere it not sinful then striving to mend,\nTo mar the subject that before was well?\nFor to no other pass my verses tend,\nThan of your graces and your gifts to tell.\nAnd more, much more than in my verse can sit,\nYour own glass shows you, when you look in it.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-104": { "title": "“Sonnet 104”", "body": "To me fair friend you never can be old,\nFor as you were when first your eye I eyed,\nSuch seems your beauty still: three winters cold,\nHave from the forests shook three summers’ pride,\nThree beauteous springs to yellow autumn turned,\nIn process of the seasons have I seen,\nThree April perfumes in three hot Junes burned,\nSince first I saw you fresh which yet are green.\nAh yet doth beauty like a dial hand,\nSteal from his figure, and no pace perceived,\nSo your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand\nHath motion, and mine eye may be deceived.\nFor fear of which, hear this thou age unbred,\nEre you were born was beauty’s summer dead.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + }, "context": { "season": "autumn" } @@ -56163,122 +57417,217 @@ "sonnet-105": { "title": "“Sonnet 105”", "body": "Let not my love be called idolatry,\nNor my beloved as an idol show,\nSince all alike my songs and praises be\nTo one, of one, still such, and ever so.\nKind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind,\nStill constant in a wondrous excellence,\nTherefore my verse to constancy confined,\nOne thing expressing, leaves out difference.\nFair, kind, and true, is all my argument,\nFair, kind, and true, varying to other words,\nAnd in this change is my invention spent,\nThree themes in one, which wondrous scope affords.\nFair, kind, and true, have often lived alone.\nWhich three till now, never kept seat in one.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-106": { "title": "“Sonnet 106”", "body": "When in the chronicle of wasted time,\nI see descriptions of the fairest wights,\nAnd beauty making beautiful old rhyme,\nIn praise of ladies dead, and lovely knights,\nThen in the blazon of sweet beauty’s best,\nOf hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,\nI see their antique pen would have expressed,\nEven such a beauty as you master now.\nSo all their praises are but prophecies\nOf this our time, all you prefiguring,\nAnd for they looked but with divining eyes,\nThey had not skill enough your worth to sing:\nFor we which now behold these present days,\nHave eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-107": { "title": "“Sonnet 107”", "body": "Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul,\nOf the wide world, dreaming on things to come,\nCan yet the lease of my true love control,\nSupposed as forfeit to a confined doom.\nThe mortal moon hath her eclipse endured,\nAnd the sad augurs mock their own presage,\nIncertainties now crown themselves assured,\nAnd peace proclaims olives of endless age.\nNow with the drops of this most balmy time,\nMy love looks fresh, and death to me subscribes,\nSince spite of him I’ll live in this poor rhyme,\nWhile he insults o’er dull and speechless tribes.\nAnd thou in this shalt find thy monument,\nWhen tyrants’ crests and tombs of brass are spent.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-108": { "title": "“Sonnet 108”", "body": "What’s in the brain that ink may character,\nWhich hath not figured to thee my true spirit,\nWhat’s new to speak, what now to register,\nThat may express my love, or thy dear merit?\nNothing sweet boy, but yet like prayers divine,\nI must each day say o’er the very same,\nCounting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine,\nEven as when first I hallowed thy fair name.\nSo that eternal love in love’s fresh case,\nWeighs not the dust and injury of age,\nNor gives to necessary wrinkles place,\nBut makes antiquity for aye his page,\nFinding the first conceit of love there bred,\nWhere time and outward form would show it dead.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-109": { "title": "“Sonnet 109”", "body": "O never say that I was false of heart,\nThough absence seemed my flame to qualify,\nAs easy might I from my self depart,\nAs from my soul which in thy breast doth lie:\nThat is my home of love, if I have ranged,\nLike him that travels I return again,\nJust to the time, not with the time exchanged,\nSo that my self bring water for my stain,\nNever believe though in my nature reigned,\nAll frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,\nThat it could so preposterously be stained,\nTo leave for nothing all thy sum of good:\nFor nothing this wide universe I call,\nSave thou my rose, in it thou art my all.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-110": { "title": "“Sonnet 110”", "body": "Alas ’tis true, I have gone here and there,\nAnd made my self a motley to the view,\nGored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,\nMade old offences of affections new.\nMost true it is, that I have looked on truth\nAskance and strangely: but by all above,\nThese blenches gave my heart another youth,\nAnd worse essays proved thee my best of love.\nNow all is done, have what shall have no end,\nMine appetite I never more will grind\nOn newer proof, to try an older friend,\nA god in love, to whom I am confined.\nThen give me welcome, next my heaven the best,\nEven to thy pure and most most loving breast.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-111": { "title": "“Sonnet 111”", "body": "O for my sake do you with Fortune chide,\nThe guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,\nThat did not better for my life provide,\nThan public means which public manners breeds.\nThence comes it that my name receives a brand,\nAnd almost thence my nature is subdued\nTo what it works in, like the dyer’s hand:\nPity me then, and wish I were renewed,\nWhilst like a willing patient I will drink,\nPotions of eisel ’gainst my strong infection,\nNo bitterness that I will bitter think,\nNor double penance to correct correction.\nPity me then dear friend, and I assure ye,\nEven that your pity is enough to cure me.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-112": { "title": "“Sonnet 112”", "body": "Your love and pity doth th’ impression fill,\nWhich vulgar scandal stamped upon my brow,\nFor what care I who calls me well or ill,\nSo you o’er-green my bad, my good allow?\nYou are my all the world, and I must strive,\nTo know my shames and praises from your tongue,\nNone else to me, nor I to none alive,\nThat my steeled sense or changes right or wrong.\nIn so profound abysm I throw all care\nOf others’ voices, that my adder’s sense,\nTo critic and to flatterer stopped are:\nMark how with my neglect I do dispense.\nYou are so strongly in my purpose bred,\nThat all the world besides methinks are dead.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-113": { "title": "“Sonnet 113”", "body": "Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind,\nAnd that which governs me to go about,\nDoth part his function, and is partly blind,\nSeems seeing, but effectually is out:\nFor it no form delivers to the heart\nOf bird, of flower, or shape which it doth latch,\nOf his quick objects hath the mind no part,\nNor his own vision holds what it doth catch:\nFor if it see the rud’st or gentlest sight,\nThe most sweet favour or deformed’st creature,\nThe mountain, or the sea, the day, or night:\nThe crow, or dove, it shapes them to your feature.\nIncapable of more, replete with you,\nMy most true mind thus maketh mine untrue.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-114": { "title": "“Sonnet 114”", "body": "Or whether doth my mind being crowned with you\nDrink up the monarch’s plague this flattery?\nOr whether shall I say mine eye saith true,\nAnd that your love taught it this alchemy?\nTo make of monsters, and things indigest,\nSuch cherubins as your sweet self resemble,\nCreating every bad a perfect best\nAs fast as objects to his beams assemble:\nO ’tis the first, ’tis flattery in my seeing,\nAnd my great mind most kingly drinks it up,\nMine eye well knows what with his gust is ’greeing,\nAnd to his palate doth prepare the cup.\nIf it be poisoned, ’tis the lesser sin,\nThat mine eye loves it and doth first begin.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-115": { "title": "“Sonnet 115”", "body": "Those lines that I before have writ do lie,\nEven those that said I could not love you dearer,\nYet then my judgment knew no reason why,\nMy most full flame should afterwards burn clearer,\nBut reckoning time, whose millioned accidents\nCreep in ’twixt vows, and change decrees of kings,\nTan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp’st intents,\nDivert strong minds to the course of alt’ring things:\nAlas why fearing of time’s tyranny,\nMight I not then say “Now I love you best,”\nWhen I was certain o’er incertainty,\nCrowning the present, doubting of the rest?\nLove is a babe, then might I not say so\nTo give full growth to that which still doth grow.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-116": { "title": "“Sonnet 116”", "body": "Let me not to the marriage of true minds\nAdmit impediments, love is not love\nWhich alters when it alteration finds,\nOr bends with the remover to remove.\nO no, it is an ever-fixed mark\nThat looks on tempests and is never shaken;\nIt is the star to every wand’ring bark,\nWhose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.\nLove’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks\nWithin his bending sickle’s compass come,\nLove alters not with his brief hours and weeks,\nBut bears it out even to the edge of doom:\nIf this be error and upon me proved,\nI never writ, nor no man ever loved.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-117": { "title": "“Sonnet 117”", "body": "Accuse me thus, that I have scanted all,\nWherein I should your great deserts repay,\nForgot upon your dearest love to call,\nWhereto all bonds do tie me day by day,\nThat I have frequent been with unknown minds,\nAnd given to time your own dear-purchased right,\nThat I have hoisted sail to all the winds\nWhich should transport me farthest from your sight.\nBook both my wilfulness and errors down,\nAnd on just proof surmise, accumulate,\nBring me within the level of your frown,\nBut shoot not at me in your wakened hate:\nSince my appeal says I did strive to prove\nThe constancy and virtue of your love.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-118": { "title": "“Sonnet 118”", "body": "Like as to make our appetite more keen\nWith eager compounds we our palate urge,\nAs to prevent our maladies unseen,\nWe sicken to shun sickness when we purge.\nEven so being full of your ne’er-cloying sweetness,\nTo bitter sauces did I frame my feeding;\nAnd sick of welfare found a kind of meetness,\nTo be diseased ere that there was true needing.\nThus policy in love t’ anticipate\nThe ills that were not, grew to faults assured,\nAnd brought to medicine a healthful state\nWhich rank of goodness would by ill be cured.\nBut thence I learn and find the lesson true,\nDrugs poison him that so feil sick of you.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-119": { "title": "“Sonnet 119”", "body": "What potions have I drunk of Siren tears\nDistilled from limbecks foul as hell within,\nApplying fears to hopes, and hopes to fears,\nStill losing when I saw my self to win!\nWhat wretched errors hath my heart committed,\nWhilst it hath thought it self so blessed never!\nHow have mine eyes out of their spheres been fitted\nIn the distraction of this madding fever!\nO benefit of ill, now I find true\nThat better is, by evil still made better.\nAnd ruined love when it is built anew\nGrows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater.\nSo I return rebuked to my content,\nAnd gain by ills thrice more than I have spent.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-120": { "title": "“Sonnet 120”", "body": "That you were once unkind befriends me now,\nAnd for that sorrow, which I then did feel,\nNeeds must I under my transgression bow,\nUnless my nerves were brass or hammered steel.\nFor if you were by my unkindness shaken\nAs I by yours, y’have passed a hell of time,\nAnd I a tyrant have no leisure taken\nTo weigh how once I suffered in your crime.\nO that our night of woe might have remembered\nMy deepest sense, how hard true sorrow hits,\nAnd soon to you, as you to me then tendered\nThe humble salve, which wounded bosoms fits!\nBut that your trespass now becomes a fee,\nMine ransoms yours, and yours must ransom me.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-121": { "title": "“Sonnet 121”", "body": "’Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed,\nWhen not to be, receives reproach of being,\nAnd the just pleasure lost, which is so deemed,\nNot by our feeling, but by others’ seeing.\nFor why should others’ false adulterate eyes\nGive salutation to my sportive blood?\nOr on my frailties why are frailer spies,\nWhich in their wills count bad what I think good?\nNo, I am that I am, and they that level\nAt my abuses, reckon up their own,\nI may be straight though they themselves be bevel;\nBy their rank thoughts, my deeds must not be shown\nUnless this general evil they maintain,\nAll men are bad and in their badness reign.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-122": { "title": "“Sonnet 122”", "body": "Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain\nFull charactered with lasting memory,\nWhich shall above that idle rank remain\nBeyond all date even to eternity.\nOr at the least, so long as brain and heart\nHave faculty by nature to subsist,\nTill each to razed oblivion yield his part\nOf thee, thy record never can be missed:\nThat poor retention could not so much hold,\nNor need I tallies thy dear love to score,\nTherefore to give them from me was I bold,\nTo trust those tables that receive thee more:\nTo keep an adjunct to remember thee\nWere to import forgetfulness in me.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-123": { "title": "“Sonnet 123”", "body": "No! Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change,\nThy pyramids built up with newer might\nTo me are nothing novel, nothing strange,\nThey are but dressings Of a former sight:\nOur dates are brief, and therefore we admire,\nWhat thou dost foist upon us that is old,\nAnd rather make them born to our desire,\nThan think that we before have heard them told:\nThy registers and thee I both defy,\nNot wond’ring at the present, nor the past,\nFor thy records, and what we see doth lie,\nMade more or less by thy continual haste:\nThis I do vow and this shall ever be,\nI will be true despite thy scythe and thee.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-124": { "title": "“Sonnet 124”", "body": "If my dear love were but the child of state,\nIt might for Fortune’s bastard be unfathered,\nAs subject to time’s love or to time’s hate,\nWeeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gathered.\nNo it was builded far from accident,\nIt suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls\nUnder the blow of thralled discontent,\nWhereto th’ inviting time our fashion calls:\nIt fears not policy that heretic,\nWhich works on leases of short-numbered hours,\nBut all alone stands hugely politic,\nThat it nor grows with heat, nor drowns with showers.\nTo this I witness call the fools of time,\nWhich die for goodness, who have lived for crime.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-125": { "title": "“Sonnet 125”", "body": "Were’t aught to me I bore the canopy,\nWith my extern the outward honouring,\nOr laid great bases for eternity,\nWhich proves more short than waste or ruining?\nHave I not seen dwellers on form and favour\nLose all, and more by paying too much rent\nFor compound sweet; forgoing simple savour,\nPitiful thrivers in their gazing spent?\nNo, let me be obsequious in thy heart,\nAnd take thou my oblation, poor but free,\nWhich is not mixed with seconds, knows no art,\nBut mutual render, only me for thee.\nHence, thou suborned informer, a true soul\nWhen most impeached, stands least in thy control.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-126": { "title": "“Sonnet 126”", "body": "O thou my lovely boy who in thy power,\nDost hold Time’s fickle glass his fickle hour:\nWho hast by waning grown, and therein show’st,\nThy lovers withering, as thy sweet self grow’st.\nIf Nature (sovereign mistress over wrack)\nAs thou goest onwards still will pluck thee back,\nShe keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill\nMay time disgrace, and wretched minutes kill.\nYet fear her O thou minion of her pleasure,\nShe may detain, but not still keep her treasure!\nHer audit (though delayed) answered must be,\nAnd her quietus is to render thee.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-127": { "title": "“Sonnet 127”", "body": "In the old age black was not counted fair,\nOr if it were it bore not beauty’s name:\nBut now is black beauty’s successive heir,\nAnd beauty slandered with a bastard shame,\nFor since each hand hath put on nature’s power,\nFairing the foul with art’s false borrowed face,\nSweet beauty hath no name no holy bower,\nBut is profaned, if not lives in disgrace.\nTherefore my mistress’ eyes are raven black,\nHer eyes so suited, and they mourners seem,\nAt such who not born fair no beauty lack,\nSlandering creation with a false esteem,\nYet so they mourn becoming of their woe,\nThat every tongue says beauty should look so.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-128": { "title": "“Sonnet 128”", "body": "How oft when thou, my music, music play’st,\nUpon that blessed wood whose motion sounds\nWith thy sweet fingers when thou gently sway’st\nThe wiry concord that mine ear confounds,\nDo I envy those jacks that nimble leap,\nTo kiss the tender inward of thy hand,\nWhilst my poor lips which should that harvest reap,\nAt the wood’s boldness by thee blushing stand.\nTo be so tickled they would change their state\nAnd situation with those dancing chips,\nO’er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait,\nMaking dead wood more blest than living lips,\nSince saucy jacks so happy are in this,\nGive them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + }, "context": { "season": "summer" } @@ -56287,132 +57636,236 @@ "sonnet-129": { "title": "“Sonnet 129”", "body": "Th’ expense of spirit in a waste of shame\nIs lust in action, and till action, lust\nIs perjured, murd’rous, bloody full of blame,\nSavage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,\nEnjoyed no sooner but despised straight,\nPast reason hunted, and no sooner had\nPast reason hated as a swallowed bait,\nOn purpose laid to make the taker mad.\nMad in pursuit and in possession so,\nHad, having, and in quest, to have extreme,\nA bliss in proof and proved, a very woe,\nBefore a joy proposed behind a dream.\nAll this the world well knows yet none knows well,\nTo shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-130": { "title": "“Sonnet 130”", "body": "My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun,\nCoral is far more red, than her lips red,\nIf snow be white, why then her breasts are dun:\nIf hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head:\nI have seen roses damasked, red and white,\nBut no such roses see I in her cheeks,\nAnd in some perfumes is there more delight,\nThan in the breath that from my mistress reeks.\nI love to hear her speak, yet well I know,\nThat music hath a far more pleasing sound:\nI grant I never saw a goddess go,\nMy mistress when she walks treads on the ground.\nAnd yet by heaven I think my love as rare,\nAs any she belied with false compare.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-131": { "title": "“Sonnet 131”", "body": "Thou art as tyrannous, so as thou art,\nAs those whose beauties proudly make them cruel;\nFor well thou know’st to my dear doting heart\nThou art the fairest and most precious jewel.\nYet in good faith some say that thee behold,\nThy face hath not the power to make love groan;\nTo say they err, I dare not be so bold,\nAlthough I swear it to my self alone.\nAnd to be sure that is not false I swear,\nA thousand groans but thinking on thy face,\nOne on another’s neck do witness bear\nThy black is fairest in my judgment’s place.\nIn nothing art thou black save in thy deeds,\nAnd thence this slander as I think proceeds.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-132": { "title": "“Sonnet 132”", "body": "Thine eyes I love, and they as pitying me,\nKnowing thy heart torment me with disdain,\nHave put on black, and loving mourners be,\nLooking with pretty ruth upon my pain.\nAnd truly not the morning sun of heaven\nBetter becomes the grey cheeks of the east,\nNor that full star that ushers in the even\nDoth half that glory to the sober west\nAs those two mourning eyes become thy face:\nO let it then as well beseem thy heart\nTo mourn for me since mourning doth thee grace,\nAnd suit thy pity like in every part.\nThen will I swear beauty herself is black,\nAnd all they foul that thy complexion lack.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-133": { "title": "“Sonnet 133”", "body": "Beshrew that heart that makes my heart to groan\nFor that deep wound it gives my friend and me;\nIs’t not enough to torture me alone,\nBut slave to slavery my sweet’st friend must be?\nMe from my self thy cruel eye hath taken,\nAnd my next self thou harder hast engrossed,\nOf him, my self, and thee I am forsaken,\nA torment thrice three-fold thus to be crossed:\nPrison my heart in thy steel bosom’s ward,\nBut then my friend’s heart let my poor heart bail,\nWhoe’er keeps me, let my heart be his guard,\nThou canst not then use rigour in my gaol.\nAnd yet thou wilt, for I being pent in thee,\nPerforce am thine and all that is in me.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-134": { "title": "“Sonnet 134”", "body": "So now I have confessed that he is thine,\nAnd I my self am mortgaged to thy will,\nMy self I’ll forfeit, so that other mine,\nThou wilt restore to be my comfort still:\nBut thou wilt not, nor he will not be free,\nFor thou art covetous, and he is kind,\nHe learned but surety-like to write for me,\nUnder that bond that him as fist doth bind.\nThe statute of thy beauty thou wilt take,\nThou usurer that put’st forth all to use,\nAnd sue a friend, came debtor for my sake,\nSo him I lose through my unkind abuse.\nHim have I lost, thou hast both him and me,\nHe pays the whole, and yet am I not free.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-135": { "title": "“Sonnet 135”", "body": "Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy will,\nAnd ‘Will’ to boot, and ‘Will’ in over-plus,\nMore than enough am I that vex thee still,\nTo thy sweet will making addition thus.\nWilt thou whose will is large and spacious,\nNot once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine?\nShall will in others seem right gracious,\nAnd in my will no fair acceptance shine?\nThe sea all water, yet receives rain still,\nAnd in abundance addeth to his store,\nSo thou being rich in will add to thy will\nOne will of mine to make thy large will more.\nLet no unkind, no fair beseechers kill,\nThink all but one, and me in that one ‘Will.’", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-136": { "title": "“Sonnet 136”", "body": "If thy soul check thee that I come so near,\nSwear to thy blind soul that I was thy ‘Will’,\nAnd will thy soul knows is admitted there,\nThus far for love, my love-suit sweet fulfil.\n‘Will’, will fulfil the treasure of thy love,\nAy, fill it full with wills, and my will one,\nIn things of great receipt with case we prove,\nAmong a number one is reckoned none.\nThen in the number let me pass untold,\nThough in thy store’s account I one must be,\nFor nothing hold me, so it please thee hold,\nThat nothing me, a something sweet to thee.\nMake but my name thy love, and love that still,\nAnd then thou lov’st me for my name is Will.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-137": { "title": "“Sonnet 137”", "body": "Thou blind fool Love, what dost thou to mine eyes,\nThat they behold and see not what they see?\nThey know what beauty is, see where it lies,\nYet what the best is, take the worst to be.\nIf eyes corrupt by over-partial looks,\nBe anchored in the bay where all men ride,\nWhy of eyes’ falsehood hast thou forged hooks,\nWhereto the judgment of my heart is tied?\nWhy should my heart think that a several plot,\nWhich my heart knows the wide world’s common place?\nOr mine eyes seeing this, say this is not\nTo put fair truth upon so foul a face?\nIn things right true my heart and eyes have erred,\nAnd to this false plague are they now transferred.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-138": { "title": "“Sonnet 138”", "body": "When my love swears that she is made of truth,\nI do believe her though I know she lies,\nThat she might think me some untutored youth,\nUnlearned in the world’s false subtleties.\nThus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,\nAlthough she knows my days are past the best,\nSimply I credit her false-speaking tongue,\nOn both sides thus is simple truth suppressed:\nBut wherefore says she not she is unjust?\nAnd wherefore say not I that I am old?\nO love’s best habit is in seeming trust,\nAnd age in love, loves not to have years told.\nTherefore I lie with her, and she with me,\nAnd in our faults by lies we flattered be.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-139": { "title": "“Sonnet 139”", "body": "O call not me to justify the wrong,\nThat thy unkindness lays upon my heart,\nWound me not with thine eye but with thy tongue,\nUse power with power, and slay me not by art,\nTell me thou lov’st elsewhere; but in my sight,\nDear heart forbear to glance thine eye aside,\nWhat need’st thou wound with cunning when thy might\nIs more than my o’erpressed defence can bide?\nLet me excuse thee, ah my love well knows,\nHer pretty looks have been mine enemies,\nAnd therefore from my face she turns my foes,\nThat they elsewhere might dart their injuries:\nYet do not so, but since I am near slain,\nKill me outright with looks, and rid my pain.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-140": { "title": "“Sonnet 140”", "body": "Be wise as thou art cruel, do not press\nMy tongue-tied patience with too much disdain:\nLest sorrow lend me words and words express,\nThe manner of my pity-wanting pain.\nIf I might teach thee wit better it were,\nThough not to love, yet love to tell me so,\nAs testy sick men when their deaths be near,\nNo news but health from their physicians know.\nFor if I should despair I should grow mad,\nAnd in my madness might speak ill of thee,\nNow this ill-wresting world is grown so bad,\nMad slanderers by mad ears believed be.\nThat I may not be so, nor thou belied,\nBear thine eyes straight, though thy proud heart go wide.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-141": { "title": "“Sonnet 141”", "body": "In faith I do not love thee with mine eyes,\nFor they in thee a thousand errors note,\nBut ’tis my heart that loves what they despise,\nWho in despite of view is pleased to dote.\nNor are mine cars with thy tongue’s tune delighted,\nNor tender feeling to base touches prone,\nNor taste, nor smell, desire to be invited\nTo any sensual feast with thee alone:\nBut my five wits, nor my five senses can\nDissuade one foolish heart from serving thee,\nWho leaves unswayed the likeness of a man,\nThy proud heart’s slave and vassal wretch to be:\nOnly my plague thus far I count my gain,\nThat she that makes me sin, awards me pain.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-142": { "title": "“Sonnet 142”", "body": "Love is my sin, and thy dear virtue hate,\nHate of my sin, grounded on sinful loving,\nO but with mine, compare thou thine own state,\nAnd thou shalt find it merits not reproving,\nOr if it do, not from those lips of thine,\nThat have profaned their scarlet ornaments,\nAnd sealed false bonds of love as oft as mine,\nRobbed others’ beds’ revenues of their rents.\nBe it lawful I love thee as thou lov’st those,\nWhom thine eyes woo as mine importune thee,\nRoot pity in thy heart that when it grows,\nThy pity may deserve to pitied be.\nIf thou dost seek to have what thou dost hide,\nBy self-example mayst thou be denied.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-143": { "title": "“Sonnet 143”", "body": "Lo as a careful huswife runs to catch,\nOne of her feathered creatures broke away,\nSets down her babe and makes all swift dispatch\nIn pursuit of the thing she would have stay:\nWhilst her neglected child holds her in chase,\nCries to catch her whose busy care is bent,\nTo follow that which flies before her face:\nNot prizing her poor infant’s discontent;\nSo run’st thou after that which flies from thee,\nWhilst I thy babe chase thee afar behind,\nBut if thou catch thy hope turn back to me:\nAnd play the mother’s part, kiss me, be kind.\nSo will I pray that thou mayst have thy Will,\nIf thou turn back and my loud crying still.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-144": { "title": "“Sonnet 144”", "body": "Two loves I have of comfort and despair,\nWhich like two spirits do suggest me still,\nThe better angel is a man right fair:\nThe worser spirit a woman coloured ill.\nTo win me soon to hell my female evil,\nTempteth my better angel from my side,\nAnd would corrupt my saint to be a devil:\nWooing his purity with her foul pride.\nAnd whether that my angel be turned fiend,\nSuspect I may, yet not directly tell,\nBut being both from me both to each friend,\nI guess one angel in another’s hell.\nYet this shall I ne’er know but live in doubt,\nTill my bad angel fire my good one out.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-145": { "title": "“Sonnet 145”", "body": "Those lips that Love’s own hand did make,\nBreathed forth the sound that said “I hate,”\nTo me that languished for her sake:\nBut when she saw my woeful state,\nStraight in her heart did mercy come,\nChiding that tongue that ever sweet,\nWas used in giving gentle doom:\nAnd taught it thus anew to greet:\n“I hate” she altered with an end,\nThat followed it as gentle day,\nDoth follow night who like a fiend\nFrom heaven to hell is flown away.\n“I hate,” from hate away she threw,\nAnd saved my life saying “not you”.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-146": { "title": "“Sonnet 146”", "body": "Poor soul the centre of my sinful earth,\nMy sinful earth these rebel powers array,\nWhy dost thou pine within and suffer dearth\nPainting thy outward walls so costly gay?\nWhy so large cost having so short a lease,\nDost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?\nShall worms inheritors of this excess\nEat up thy charge? is this thy body’s end?\nThen soul live thou upon thy servant’s loss,\nAnd let that pine to aggravate thy store;\nBuy terms divine in selling hours of dross;\nWithin be fed, without be rich no more,\nSo shall thou feed on death, that feeds on men,\nAnd death once dead, there’s no more dying then.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-147": { "title": "“Sonnet 147”", "body": "My love is as a fever longing still,\nFor that which longer nurseth the disease,\nFeeding on that which doth preserve the ill,\nTh’ uncertain sickly appetite to please:\nMy reason the physician to my love,\nAngry that his prescriptions are not kept\nHath left me, and I desperate now approve,\nDesire is death, which physic did except.\nPast cure I am, now reason is past care,\nAnd frantic-mad with evermore unrest,\nMy thoughts and my discourse as mad men’s are,\nAt random from the truth vainly expressed.\nFor I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,\nWho art as black as hell, as dark as night.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-148": { "title": "“Sonnet 148”", "body": "O me! what eyes hath love put in my head,\nWhich have no correspondence with true sight,\nOr if they have, where is my judgment fled,\nThat censures falsely what they see aright?\nIf that be fair whereon my false eyes dote,\nWhat means the world to say it is not so?\nIf it be not, then love doth well denote,\nLove’s eye is not so true as all men’s: no,\nHow can it? O how can love’s eye be true,\nThat is so vexed with watching and with tears?\nNo marvel then though I mistake my view,\nThe sun it self sees not, till heaven clears.\nO cunning love, with tears thou keep’st me blind,\nLest eyes well-seeing thy foul faults should find.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-149": { "title": "“Sonnet 149”", "body": "Canst thou O cruel, say I love thee not,\nWhen I against my self with thee partake?\nDo I not think on thee when I forgot\nAm of my self, all-tyrant, for thy sake?\nWho hateth thee that I do call my friend,\nOn whom frown’st thou that I do fawn upon,\nNay if thou lour’st on me do I not spend\nRevenge upon my self with present moan?\nWhat merit do I in my self respect,\nThat is so proud thy service to despise,\nWhen all my best doth worship thy defect,\nCommanded by the motion of thine eyes?\nBut love hate on for now I know thy mind,\nThose that can see thou lov’st, and I am blind.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-150": { "title": "“Sonnet 150”", "body": "O from what power hast thou this powerful might,\nWith insufficiency my heart to sway,\nTo make me give the lie to my true sight,\nAnd swear that brightness doth not grace the day?\nWhence hast thou this becoming of things ill,\nThat in the very refuse of thy deeds,\nThere is such strength and warrantise of skill,\nThat in my mind thy worst all best exceeds?\nWho taught thee how to make me love thee more,\nThe more I hear and see just cause of hate?\nO though I love what others do abhor,\nWith others thou shouldst not abhor my state.\nIf thy unworthiness raised love in me,\nMore worthy I to be beloved of thee.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-151": { "title": "“Sonnet 151”", "body": "Love is too young to know what conscience is,\nYet who knows not conscience is born of love?\nThen gentle cheater urge not my amiss,\nLest guilty of my faults thy sweet self prove.\nFor thou betraying me, I do betray\nMy nobler part to my gross body’s treason,\nMy soul doth tell my body that he may,\nTriumph in love, flesh stays no farther reason,\nBut rising at thy name doth point out thee,\nAs his triumphant prize, proud of this pride,\nHe is contented thy poor drudge to be,\nTo stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side.\nNo want of conscience hold it that I call,\nHer love, for whose dear love I rise and fall.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-152": { "title": "“Sonnet 152”", "body": "In loving thee thou know’st I am forsworn,\nBut thou art twice forsworn to me love swearing,\nIn act thy bed-vow broke and new faith torn,\nIn vowing new hate after new love bearing:\nBut why of two oaths’ breach do I accuse thee,\nWhen I break twenty? I am perjured most,\nFor all my vows are oaths but to misuse thee:\nAnd all my honest faith in thee is lost.\nFor I have sworn deep oaths of thy deep kindness:\nOaths of thy love, thy truth, thy constancy,\nAnd to enlighten thee gave eyes to blindness,\nOr made them swear against the thing they see.\nFor I have sworn thee fair: more perjured I,\nTo swear against the truth so foul a be.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-153": { "title": "“Sonnet 153”", "body": "Cupid laid by his brand and fell asleep,\nA maid of Dian’s this advantage found,\nAnd his love-kindling fire did quickly steep\nIn a cold valley-fountain of that ground:\nWhich borrowed from this holy fire of Love,\nA dateless lively heat still to endure,\nAnd grew a seeting bath which yet men prove,\nAgainst strange maladies a sovereign cure:\nBut at my mistress’ eye Love’s brand new-fired,\nThe boy for trial needs would touch my breast,\nI sick withal the help of bath desired,\nAnd thither hied a sad distempered guest.\nBut found no cure, the bath for my help lies,\nWhere Cupid got new fire; my mistress’ eyes.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "sonnet-154": { "title": "“Sonnet 154”", "body": "The little Love-god lying once asleep,\nLaid by his side his heart-inflaming brand,\nWhilst many nymphs that vowed chaste life to keep,\nCame tripping by, but in her maiden hand,\nThe fairest votary took up that fire,\nWhich many legions of true hearts had warmed,\nAnd so the general of hot desire,\nWas sleeping by a virgin hand disarmed.\nThis brand she quenched in a cool well by,\nWhich from Love’s fire took heat perpetual,\nGrowing a bath and healthful remedy,\nFor men discased, but I my mistress’ thrall,\nCame there for cure and this by that I prove,\nLove’s fire heats water, water cools not love.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": "1609" + } + } }, "spring": { "title": "“Spring”", @@ -56781,7 +58234,7 @@ }, "indian-serenade": { "title": "“Indian Serenade”", - "body": "I arise from dreams of thee\nIn the first sweet sleep of night,\nWhen the winds are breathing low,\nAnd the stars are shining bright:\nI arise from dreams of thee,\nAnd a spirit in my feet\nHath led me--who knows how?\nTo thy chamber window, Sweet!\n\nThe wandering airs they faint\nOn the dark, the silent stream--\nThe Champak odours fail\nLike sweet thoughts in a dream;\nThe Nightingale’s complaint,\nIt dies upon her heart;--\nAs I must on thine,\nOh, belovèd as thou art!\n\nOh lift me from the grass!\nI die! I faint! I fail!\nLet thy love in kisses rain\nOn my lips and eyelids pale.\nMy cheek is cold and white, alas!\nMy heart beats loud and fast;--\nOh! press it to thine own again,\nWhere it will break at last. ", + "body": "I arise from dreams of thee\nIn the first sweet sleep of night,\nWhen the winds are breathing low,\nAnd the stars are shining bright:\nI arise from dreams of thee,\nAnd a spirit in my feet\nHath led me--who knows how?\nTo thy chamber window, Sweet!\n\nThe wandering airs they faint\nOn the dark, the silent stream--\nThe Champak odours fail\nLike sweet thoughts in a dream;\nThe Nightingale’s complaint,\nIt dies upon her heart;--\nAs I must on thine,\nOh, belovèd as thou art!\n\nOh lift me from the grass!\nI die! I faint! I fail!\nLet thy love in kisses rain\nOn my lips and eyelids pale.\nMy cheek is cold and white, alas!\nMy heart beats loud and fast;--\nOh! press it to thine own again,\nWhere it will break at last.", "metadata": { "date": { "year": "1824" @@ -56790,7 +58243,7 @@ }, "the-indian-serenade": { "title": "“The Indian Serenade”", - "body": "I arise from dreams of thee\nIn the first sweet sleep of night,\nWhen the winds are breathing low,\nAnd the stars are shining bright:\nI arise from dreams of thee,\nAnd a spirit in my feet\nHath led me--who knows how?\nTo thy chamber window, Sweet!\n\nThe wandering airs they faint\nOn the dark, the silent stream--\nThe Champak odours fail\nLike sweet thoughts in a dream;\nThe Nightingale’s complaint,\nIt dies upon her heart;--\nAs I must on thine,\nOh, belovèd as thou art!\n\nOh lift me from the grass!\nI die! I faint! I fail!\nLet thy love in kisses rain\nOn my lips and eyelids pale.\nMy cheek is cold and white, alas!\nMy heart beats loud and fast;--\nOh! press it to thine own again,\nWhere it will break at last. ", + "body": "I arise from dreams of thee\nIn the first sweet sleep of night,\nWhen the winds are breathing low,\nAnd the stars are shining bright:\nI arise from dreams of thee,\nAnd a spirit in my feet\nHath led me--who knows how?\nTo thy chamber window, Sweet!\n\nThe wandering airs they faint\nOn the dark, the silent stream--\nThe Champak odours fail\nLike sweet thoughts in a dream;\nThe Nightingale’s complaint,\nIt dies upon her heart;--\nAs I must on thine,\nOh, belovèd as thou art!\n\nOh lift me from the grass!\nI die! I faint! I fail!\nLet thy love in kisses rain\nOn my lips and eyelids pale.\nMy cheek is cold and white, alas!\nMy heart beats loud and fast;--\nOh! press it to thine own again,\nWhere it will break at last.", "metadata": {} }, "the-invitation": { @@ -60581,7 +62034,7 @@ }, "a-ballad-of-dreamland": { "title": "“A Ballad of Dreamland”", - "body": "I hid my heart in a nest of roses,\n Out of the sun’s way, hidden apart;\nIn a softer bed than the soft white snow’s is,\n Under the roses I hid my heart.\n Why would it sleep not? why should it start,\nWhen never a leaf of the rose-tree stirred?\n What made sleep flutter his wings and part?\nOnly the song of a secret bird.\n\nLie still, I said, for the wind’s wing closes,\n And mild leaves muffle the keen sun’s dart;\nLie still, for the wind on the warm sea dozes,\n And the wind is unquieter yet than thou art.\n Does a thought in thee still as a thorn’s wound smart?\nDoes the fang still fret thee of hope deferred?\n What bids the lids of thy sleep dispart?\nOnly the song of a secret bird.\n\nThe green land’s name that a charm encloses,\n It never was writ in the traveller’s chart,\nAnd sweet on its trees as the fruit that grows is,\n It never was sold in the merchant’s mart.\n The swallows of dreams through its dim fields dart,\nAnd sleep’s are the tunes in its tree-tops heard;\n No hound’s note wakens the wildwood hart,\nOnly the song of a secret bird.\n\n\n# _Envoi_\n\nIn the world of dreams I have chosen my part,\n To sleep for a season and hear no word\nOf true love’s truth or of light love’s art,\n Only the song of a secret bird. ", + "body": "I hid my heart in a nest of roses,\n Out of the sun’s way, hidden apart;\nIn a softer bed than the soft white snow’s is,\n Under the roses I hid my heart.\n Why would it sleep not? why should it start,\nWhen never a leaf of the rose-tree stirred?\n What made sleep flutter his wings and part?\nOnly the song of a secret bird.\n\nLie still, I said, for the wind’s wing closes,\n And mild leaves muffle the keen sun’s dart;\nLie still, for the wind on the warm sea dozes,\n And the wind is unquieter yet than thou art.\n Does a thought in thee still as a thorn’s wound smart?\nDoes the fang still fret thee of hope deferred?\n What bids the lids of thy sleep dispart?\nOnly the song of a secret bird.\n\nThe green land’s name that a charm encloses,\n It never was writ in the traveller’s chart,\nAnd sweet on its trees as the fruit that grows is,\n It never was sold in the merchant’s mart.\n The swallows of dreams through its dim fields dart,\nAnd sleep’s are the tunes in its tree-tops heard;\n No hound’s note wakens the wildwood hart,\nOnly the song of a secret bird.\n\n\n# _Envoi_\n\nIn the world of dreams I have chosen my part,\n To sleep for a season and hear no word\nOf true love’s truth or of light love’s art,\n Only the song of a secret bird.", "metadata": { "date": { "year": "1878" @@ -60939,7 +62392,7 @@ }, "prelude": { "title": "“Prelude”", - "body": "Between the green bud and the red\nYouth sat and sang by Time, and shed\n From eyes and tresses flowers and tears,\n From heart and spirit hopes and fears,\nUpon the hollow stream whose bed\n Is channelled by the foamless years;\nAnd with the white the gold-haired head\n Mixed running locks, and in Time’s ears\nYouth’s dreams hung singing, and Time’s truth\nWas half not harsh in the ears of Youth.\n\nBetween the bud and the blown flower\nYouth talked with joy and grief an hour,\n With footless joy and wingless grief\n And twin-born faith and disbelief\nWho share the seasons to devour;\n And long ere these made up their sheaf\nFelt the winds round him shake and shower\n The rose-red and the blood-red leaf,\nDelight whose germ grew never grain,\nAnd passion dyed in its own pain.\n\nThen he stood up, and trod to dust\nFear and desire, mistrust and trust,\n And dreams of bitter sleep and sweet,\n And bound for sandals on his feet\nKnowledge and patience of what must\n And what things may be, in the heat\nAnd cold of years that rot and rust\n And alter; and his spirit’s meat\nWas freedom, and his staff was wrought\nOf strength, and his cloak woven of thought.\n\nFor what has he whose will sees clear\nTo do with doubt and faith and fear,\n Swift hopes and slow despondencies?\n His heart is equal with the sea’s\nAnd with the sea-wind’s, and his ear\n Is level to the speech of these,\nAnd his soul communes and takes cheer\n With the actual earth’s equalities,\nAir, light, and night, hills, winds, and streams,\nAnd seeks not strength from strengthless dreams.\n\nHis soul is even with the sun\nWhose spirit and whose eye are one,\n Who seeks not stars by day, nor light\n And heavy heat of day by night.\nHim can no God cast down, whom none\n Can lift in hope beyond the height\nOf fate and nature and things done\n By the calm rule of might and right\nThat bids men be and bear and do,\nAnd die beneath blind skies or blue.\n\nTo him the lights of even and morn\nSpeak no vain things of love or scorn,\n Fancies and passions miscreate\n By man in things dispassionate.\nNor holds he fellowship forlorn\n With souls that pray and hope and hate,\nAnd doubt they had better not been born,\n And fain would lure or scare off fate\nAnd charm their doomsman from their doom\nAnd make fear dig its own false tomb.\n\nHe builds not half of doubts and half\nOf dreams his own soul’s cenotaph,\n Whence hopes and fears with helpless eyes,\n Wrapt loose in cast-off cerecloths, rise\nAnd dance and wring their hands and laugh,\n And weep thin tears and sigh light sighs,\nAnd without living lips would quaff\n The living spring in man that lies,\nAnd drain his soul of faith and strength\nIt might have lived on a life’s length.\n\nHe hath given himself and hath not sold\nTo God for heaven or man for gold,\n Or grief for comfort that it gives,\n Or joy for grief’s restoratives.\nHe hath given himself to time, whose fold\n Shuts in the mortal flock that lives\nOn its plain pasture’s heat and cold\n And the equal year’s alternatives.\nEarth, heaven, and time, death, life, and he,\nEndure while they shall be to be.\n\n“Yet between death and life are hours\nTo flush with love and hide in flowers;\n What profit save in these?” men cry:\n “Ah, see, between soft earth and sky,\nWhat only good things here are ours!”\n They say, “what better wouldst thou try,\nWhat sweeter sing of? or what powers\n Serve, that will give thee ere thou die\nMore joy to sing and be less sad,\nMore heart to play and grow more glad?”\n\nPlay then and sing; we too have played,\nWe likewise, in that subtle shade.\n We too have twisted through our hair\n Such tendrils as the wild Loves wear,\nAnd heard what mirth the Mænads made,\n Till the wind blew our garlands bare\nAnd left their roses disarrayed,\n And smote the summer with strange air,\nAnd disengirdled and discrowned\nThe limbs and locks that vine-wreaths bound.\n\nWe too have tracked by star-proof trees\nThe tempest of the Thyiades\n Scare the loud night on hills that hid\n The blood-feasts of the Bassarid,\nHeard their song’s iron cadences\n Fright the wolf hungering from the kid,\nOutroar the lion-throated seas,\n Outchide the north-wind if it chid,\nAnd hush the torrent-tongued ravines\nWith thunders of their tambourines.\n\nBut the fierce flute whose notes acclaim\nDim goddesses of fiery fame,\n Cymbal and clamorous kettledrum,\n Timbrels and tabrets, all are dumb\nThat turned the high chill air to flame;\n The singing tongues of fire are numb\nThat called on Cotys by her name\n Edonian, till they felt her come\nAnd maddened, and her mystic face\nLightened along the streams of Thrace.\n\nFor Pleasure slumberless and pale,\nAnd Passion with rejected veil,\n Pass, and the tempest-footed throng\n Of hours that follow them with song\nTill their feet flag and voices fail,\n And lips that were so loud so long\nLearn silence, or a wearier wail;\n So keen is change, and time so strong,\nTo weave the robes of life and rend\nAnd weave again till life have end.\n\nBut weak is change, but strengthless time,\nTo take the light from heaven, or climb\n The hills of heaven with wasting feet.\n Songs they can stop that earth found meet,\nBut the stars keep their ageless rhyme;\n Flowers they can slay that spring thought sweet,\nBut the stars keep their spring sublime;\n Passions and pleasures can defeat,\nActions and agonies control,\nAnd life and death, but not the soul.\n\nBecause man’s soul is man’s God still,\nWhat wind soever waft his will\n Across the waves of day and night\n To port or shipwreck, left or right,\nBy shores and shoals of good and ill;\n And still its flame at mainmast height\nThrough the rent air that foam-flakes fill\n Sustains the indomitable light\nWhence only man hath strength to steer\nOr helm to handle without fear.\n\nSave his own soul’s light overhead,\nNone leads him, and none ever led,\n Across birth’s hidden harbour-bar,\n Past youth where shoreward shallows are,\nThrough age that drives on toward the red\n Vast void of sunset hailed from far,\nTo the equal waters of the dead;\n Save his own soul he hath no star,\nAnd sinks, except his own soul guide,\nHelmless in middle turn of tide.\n\nNo blast of air or fire of sun\nPuts out the light whereby we run\n With girded loins our lamplit race,\n And each from each takes heart of grace\nAnd spirit till his turn be done,\n And light of face from each man’s face\nIn whom the light of trust is one;\n Since only souls that keep their place\nBy their own light, and watch things roll,\nAnd stand, have light for any soul.\n\nA little time we gain from time\nTo set our seasons in some chime,\n For harsh or sweet or loud or low,\n With seasons played out long ago\nAnd souls that in their time and prime\n Took part with summer or with snow,\nLived abject lives out or sublime,\n And had their chance of seed to sow\nFor service or disservice done\nTo those days daed and this their son.\n\nA little time that we may fill\nOr with such good works or such ill\n As loose the bonds or make them strong\n Wherein all manhood suffers wrong.\nBy rose-hung river and light-foot rill\n There are who rest not; who think long\nTill they discern as from a hill\n At the sun’s hour of morning song,\nKnown of souls only, and those souls free,\nThe sacred spaces of the sea. ", + "body": "Between the green bud and the red\nYouth sat and sang by Time, and shed\n From eyes and tresses flowers and tears,\n From heart and spirit hopes and fears,\nUpon the hollow stream whose bed\n Is channelled by the foamless years;\nAnd with the white the gold-haired head\n Mixed running locks, and in Time’s ears\nYouth’s dreams hung singing, and Time’s truth\nWas half not harsh in the ears of Youth.\n\nBetween the bud and the blown flower\nYouth talked with joy and grief an hour,\n With footless joy and wingless grief\n And twin-born faith and disbelief\nWho share the seasons to devour;\n And long ere these made up their sheaf\nFelt the winds round him shake and shower\n The rose-red and the blood-red leaf,\nDelight whose germ grew never grain,\nAnd passion dyed in its own pain.\n\nThen he stood up, and trod to dust\nFear and desire, mistrust and trust,\n And dreams of bitter sleep and sweet,\n And bound for sandals on his feet\nKnowledge and patience of what must\n And what things may be, in the heat\nAnd cold of years that rot and rust\n And alter; and his spirit’s meat\nWas freedom, and his staff was wrought\nOf strength, and his cloak woven of thought.\n\nFor what has he whose will sees clear\nTo do with doubt and faith and fear,\n Swift hopes and slow despondencies?\n His heart is equal with the sea’s\nAnd with the sea-wind’s, and his ear\n Is level to the speech of these,\nAnd his soul communes and takes cheer\n With the actual earth’s equalities,\nAir, light, and night, hills, winds, and streams,\nAnd seeks not strength from strengthless dreams.\n\nHis soul is even with the sun\nWhose spirit and whose eye are one,\n Who seeks not stars by day, nor light\n And heavy heat of day by night.\nHim can no God cast down, whom none\n Can lift in hope beyond the height\nOf fate and nature and things done\n By the calm rule of might and right\nThat bids men be and bear and do,\nAnd die beneath blind skies or blue.\n\nTo him the lights of even and morn\nSpeak no vain things of love or scorn,\n Fancies and passions miscreate\n By man in things dispassionate.\nNor holds he fellowship forlorn\n With souls that pray and hope and hate,\nAnd doubt they had better not been born,\n And fain would lure or scare off fate\nAnd charm their doomsman from their doom\nAnd make fear dig its own false tomb.\n\nHe builds not half of doubts and half\nOf dreams his own soul’s cenotaph,\n Whence hopes and fears with helpless eyes,\n Wrapt loose in cast-off cerecloths, rise\nAnd dance and wring their hands and laugh,\n And weep thin tears and sigh light sighs,\nAnd without living lips would quaff\n The living spring in man that lies,\nAnd drain his soul of faith and strength\nIt might have lived on a life’s length.\n\nHe hath given himself and hath not sold\nTo God for heaven or man for gold,\n Or grief for comfort that it gives,\n Or joy for grief’s restoratives.\nHe hath given himself to time, whose fold\n Shuts in the mortal flock that lives\nOn its plain pasture’s heat and cold\n And the equal year’s alternatives.\nEarth, heaven, and time, death, life, and he,\nEndure while they shall be to be.\n\n“Yet between death and life are hours\nTo flush with love and hide in flowers;\n What profit save in these?” men cry:\n “Ah, see, between soft earth and sky,\nWhat only good things here are ours!”\n They say, “what better wouldst thou try,\nWhat sweeter sing of? or what powers\n Serve, that will give thee ere thou die\nMore joy to sing and be less sad,\nMore heart to play and grow more glad?”\n\nPlay then and sing; we too have played,\nWe likewise, in that subtle shade.\n We too have twisted through our hair\n Such tendrils as the wild Loves wear,\nAnd heard what mirth the Mænads made,\n Till the wind blew our garlands bare\nAnd left their roses disarrayed,\n And smote the summer with strange air,\nAnd disengirdled and discrowned\nThe limbs and locks that vine-wreaths bound.\n\nWe too have tracked by star-proof trees\nThe tempest of the Thyiades\n Scare the loud night on hills that hid\n The blood-feasts of the Bassarid,\nHeard their song’s iron cadences\n Fright the wolf hungering from the kid,\nOutroar the lion-throated seas,\n Outchide the north-wind if it chid,\nAnd hush the torrent-tongued ravines\nWith thunders of their tambourines.\n\nBut the fierce flute whose notes acclaim\nDim goddesses of fiery fame,\n Cymbal and clamorous kettledrum,\n Timbrels and tabrets, all are dumb\nThat turned the high chill air to flame;\n The singing tongues of fire are numb\nThat called on Cotys by her name\n Edonian, till they felt her come\nAnd maddened, and her mystic face\nLightened along the streams of Thrace.\n\nFor Pleasure slumberless and pale,\nAnd Passion with rejected veil,\n Pass, and the tempest-footed throng\n Of hours that follow them with song\nTill their feet flag and voices fail,\n And lips that were so loud so long\nLearn silence, or a wearier wail;\n So keen is change, and time so strong,\nTo weave the robes of life and rend\nAnd weave again till life have end.\n\nBut weak is change, but strengthless time,\nTo take the light from heaven, or climb\n The hills of heaven with wasting feet.\n Songs they can stop that earth found meet,\nBut the stars keep their ageless rhyme;\n Flowers they can slay that spring thought sweet,\nBut the stars keep their spring sublime;\n Passions and pleasures can defeat,\nActions and agonies control,\nAnd life and death, but not the soul.\n\nBecause man’s soul is man’s God still,\nWhat wind soever waft his will\n Across the waves of day and night\n To port or shipwreck, left or right,\nBy shores and shoals of good and ill;\n And still its flame at mainmast height\nThrough the rent air that foam-flakes fill\n Sustains the indomitable light\nWhence only man hath strength to steer\nOr helm to handle without fear.\n\nSave his own soul’s light overhead,\nNone leads him, and none ever led,\n Across birth’s hidden harbour-bar,\n Past youth where shoreward shallows are,\nThrough age that drives on toward the red\n Vast void of sunset hailed from far,\nTo the equal waters of the dead;\n Save his own soul he hath no star,\nAnd sinks, except his own soul guide,\nHelmless in middle turn of tide.\n\nNo blast of air or fire of sun\nPuts out the light whereby we run\n With girded loins our lamplit race,\n And each from each takes heart of grace\nAnd spirit till his turn be done,\n And light of face from each man’s face\nIn whom the light of trust is one;\n Since only souls that keep their place\nBy their own light, and watch things roll,\nAnd stand, have light for any soul.\n\nA little time we gain from time\nTo set our seasons in some chime,\n For harsh or sweet or loud or low,\n With seasons played out long ago\nAnd souls that in their time and prime\n Took part with summer or with snow,\nLived abject lives out or sublime,\n And had their chance of seed to sow\nFor service or disservice done\nTo those days daed and this their son.\n\nA little time that we may fill\nOr with such good works or such ill\n As loose the bonds or make them strong\n Wherein all manhood suffers wrong.\nBy rose-hung river and light-foot rill\n There are who rest not; who think long\nTill they discern as from a hill\n At the sun’s hour of morning song,\nKnown of souls only, and those souls free,\nThe sacred spaces of the sea.", "metadata": { "date": { "year": "1871" @@ -60951,7 +62404,7 @@ }, "a-reminiscence": { "title": "“A Reminiscence”", - "body": "The rose to the wind has yielded: all its leaves\n Lie strewn on the graveyard grass, and all their light\n And colour and fragrance leave our sense and sight\nBereft as a man whom bitter time bereaves\nOf blossom at once and hope of garnered sheaves,\n Of April at once and August. Day to night\n Calls wailing, and life to death, and depth to height,\nAnd soul upon soul of man that hears and grieves.\n\nWho knows, though he see the snow-cold blossom shed,\n If haply the heart that burned within the rose,\nThe spirit in sense, the life of life be dead?\n If haply the wind that slays with storming snows\nBe one with the wind that quickens? Bow thine head,\n O Sorrow, and commune with thine heart: who knows? ", + "body": "The rose to the wind has yielded: all its leaves\n Lie strewn on the graveyard grass, and all their light\n And colour and fragrance leave our sense and sight\nBereft as a man whom bitter time bereaves\nOf blossom at once and hope of garnered sheaves,\n Of April at once and August. Day to night\n Calls wailing, and life to death, and depth to height,\nAnd soul upon soul of man that hears and grieves.\n\nWho knows, though he see the snow-cold blossom shed,\n If haply the heart that burned within the rose,\nThe spirit in sense, the life of life be dead?\n If haply the wind that slays with storming snows\nBe one with the wind that quickens? Bow thine head,\n O Sorrow, and commune with thine heart: who knows?", "metadata": { "date": { "year": "1894" @@ -61640,11 +63093,8 @@ "body": "The beautiful one studies anatomy from dawn to dusk and then just sits there crying. No one speaks to her in a friendly manner. They know she is dying inside, they can see in her beautiful face. They exchange glances that say “It won’t be long now. Soon we’ll have this city back to ourselves and our ugliness will become the standard.” But the beautiful one must walk the streets to escape her mirrors, and she must read her anatomy book in the park under the maple tree to understand the looks the others give her. She needs love, she tries to approach them with kindness, with a smile and a kind word, but they shuffle past her growling, their faces stuffed down into their overcoats. She is shunned in the little vegetable store, she is shunned in the museum, and in the church. The beautiful one is dying, all alone, no merciful words, no soft touch, no flowers. Perhaps the city will be a better place to visit, I don’t know.", "metadata": { "date": { - "year": "1989", - "month": "july" - }, - "context": { - "month": "july" + "season": "Summer", + "year": "1989" } } }, @@ -61685,11 +63135,8 @@ "body": "I tugged at her sleeve: doorbell? She hugged the arm: magpie. Intervals went by spotlessly, but somehow foetid, too. She stitched, I read the Apocrypha, abruptly slammed shut the covers, suspicious of fumes rippling through the room. I was poking around under cushions, bracing myself for the worst, dead fruit, something under the rug, a gelatinous potato. Would you stop? she pleaded. Vm cooking. Oh, I said, that explains everything. I stared at her for a very long time, I felt horns growing, meagre horns denting my baldspot. That book was a fake, a neon sneer across the ages, a prolonged rasp corrupting the squeamish, among whom I loomed as a negligible connoisseur. I felt discouraged now as I watched her leathery fingers unfold her munificent banner: Endurance, it read, as though the Bridegroom had endowed her, and she were the Bride? I tugged at her sleeve: telephone? She rocked in her trance: coyotes.", "metadata": { "date": { - "year": "1988", - "month": "july" - }, - "context": { - "month": "july" + "season": "Summer", + "year": "1988" } } }, @@ -61710,11 +63157,8 @@ "body": "I was standing in the lobby, some irritant in my eye, thinking back on a soloist I once heard in Venezuela, and then, for some reason, on a crate of oranges recently arrived from a friend in Florida, and then this colleague came up to me and asked me what time it was, and I don’t know what came over me but I was certain that I was standing there naked and I was certain she could see my thoughts, so I tried to hide them quickly, I was embarrassed that there was no apparent connection to them, will-o’-the-wisps, and I needed an alibi, so I told her I had seen a snapshot of a murder victim recently that greatly resembled her, and that she should take precaution, my intonation getting me into deeper trouble and I circled the little space I had cut out as if looking for all the sidereal years she had inquired into moments before, and the dazzling lunar poverty of some thoughts had me pinned like a moth and my dubious tactic to hide my malady had prompted this surreptitious link to the whirling Sufi dancers, once so popular in these halls. “It’s five minutes past four,” I said, knowing I had perjured myself for all time. I veered into the men’s room, astonished to have prevailed, my necktie, a malediction stapled in place, my zipper synchronized with the feminine motive. In Zagreb, just now, a hunter is poaching some cherries.", "metadata": { "date": { - "year": "1988", - "month": "july" - }, - "context": { - "month": "july" + "season": "Summer", + "year": "1988" } } }, @@ -61759,11 +63203,8 @@ "body": "Those were my orders, issued with a sense of Tightness I’d rarely known. I was tired of how June was treating John, how Mary was victimizing herself with nearly everyone, Mark was a loose cannon, and Carlotta would never find any peace; It seemed to me that there could be no acceptable resolution for anyone, except those who didn’t deserve one. And when, for a moment, I held the power, I surveyed the landscape?it was just a typical mid-sized town in the middle of nowhere?and the citizens showed no signs of remorse, as if what they were doing to one another (and to me) was what we were here for (and I recognize the mistake in that kind of thinking, but still?) a bold and decisive action seemed so appealing, even healing. I was with a friend’s wife, her wild mane would make such ideal kindling? I could have loved her but it would have been just more of the same, more petty crimes and slow death, more passion leading to betrayal, more ecstasy guaranteeing tears. I saw how dangerous and fragile I had become. I could have loved a fig right then with my gasoline in one hand, and the other fluttering between her breast and a packet of matches. My contagious laughter frightening us both, “No survivors,” I repeated, and we looked through one another, the work already completed.", "metadata": { "date": { - "year": "1988", - "month": "july" - }, - "context": { - "month": "july" + "season": "Summer", + "year": "1988" } } }, @@ -61790,11 +63231,8 @@ "body": "The way a lady entertaining an illicit desire touches her earlobe in a crowded room, and the way that room seems to single her out and undress her with murmuring torchlight? if the right spectator is present, even though the band is playing loudly and the myriad celebrants are toasting their near-tragic rise to glory, and the Vice President of an important bank is considering an assassination, and even the mice in the boiler room are planning a raid on an old bag of cookies in the attic? Even so, this spectator senses the moisture on her palms, can feel her thoughts wander in and out of the cavernous room; knows, too, their approximate destination. Beyond this, he refuses to follow. She stands alone there on the quay, waiting. The river of life is flowing. The spectator returns to his room, a few hours closer to his own death or ecstacy. He makes a few hasty entries into his diary before turning off the light. And, yes, he dreams, but of a gazelle frozen in the path of a runaway truck.", "metadata": { "date": { - "year": "1989", - "month": "july" - }, - "context": { - "month": "july" + "season": "Summer", + "year": "1989" } } }, @@ -61845,11 +63283,8 @@ "body": "The condemned man clutches his lucky penny. He paces the park, famished, recounting incurable injuries, condemning the scoundrel in him, banishing the swindler, pleading with his jury to show no mercy. The grocer watches from his doorway, recoiling from the dreary display?he has goatcheese and radishes to consider, turnips under intense surveillance. A limousine squeezes through the traffic, smothering the thoughts of little people. An errand boy percolates down the sidewalk, cracking codes in his mind, lumping forecasts and rituals into sure treasure by tomorrow. A plump and dusky woman with something on a leash pauses to inspect some loaves’ and peppers, licking her lips and speaking a private language to her nervous pet, who’s ready to croak. “Fiber, Mrs. Zumstein, fiber’s the only thing!” the grocer quips, swatting flies from the lumpy morsels. And, across the street, a net is dropped from the trees. Men in blue costumes fan-out and sweep through the park. Dogs pick up a scent in the breeze and dash yapping over the ridge where, in their teeming zest, they up-end a baby carriage and frighten a young mother nearly to death. The condemned man briskly apologizes to his condemned god and withdraws from the park quietly.", "metadata": { "date": { - "year": "1988", - "month": "july" - }, - "context": { - "month": "july" + "season": "Summer", + "year": "1988" } } }, @@ -61858,8 +63293,8 @@ "body": "My plants are whispering to one another: they are planning a little party later on in the week about watering time. I have quilts on beds and walls that think it is still the 19th century. They know nothing of automobiles and jet planes. For them a wheat field in January is their mother and enough. I’ve discovered that I don’t need a retirement plan, a plan to succeed. A snow leopard sleeps beside me like a slow, warm breeze. And I can hear the inner birds singing alone in this house I love.", "metadata": { "date": { - "year": "1989", - "month": "july" + "season": "Summer", + "year": "1989" }, "context": { "month": "january" @@ -61954,8 +63389,8 @@ "body": "It was a foggy day anyway, and my cockatoo was scorched, and my bikini was moping in the ruins, so I started reading a journal some poky guy had written and dropped on my doorstep disguised in a baboon uniform. The rhythms were all crooked, and he seemed to live at the margins, outcast even by himself, snatching limps from the vast gaps and presuming to slip through checkpoints with official documents stuffed in his bloodshot eyeballs, when, in fact, the hatcheck girl’s own torpor beheld the preposterous sloth with pinched nostrils. He claims he was born with thirteen digits. Years later he pirated a schooner and sailed it over a waterfall. He was in London during the blitz. He lived on crayfish alone in a swamp for seven years. Then he procured white women for a famous eastern emperor. He was implicated in an assassination plot and has been working at a school crossing since. He feels the time has come to tell his story. I feel some old shrapnel crawling around in my head. I want fresh bandages. I want to shoot out his stoplight.", "metadata": { "date": { - "year": "1988", - "month": "july" + "season": "Summer", + "year": "1988" }, "context": { "season": "summer" @@ -62022,11 +63457,8 @@ "body": "A white pigeon is digging for something in the snow.\nAs it digs further, it is disappearing.\nA young girl finds it in the Spring,\na handkerchief of thin bones,\nor a powder-puff she carries in her purse\nfor the rest of her days. Toward the end,\nshe gives it to her granddaughter,\nwho immediately recognizes it as the death\nof the grandmother herself,\nand flings it out the window.\nIt takes flight, utterly thankful\nto feel like its old self again.\nFor a few precious moments it flies\nin circles, then back in the window.\nThe grandmother pitches forward, dead.\nThe granddaughter lugs her toward the window:\n_Adieu! Godspeed!_\n\nShe and the pigeon talk long into the night.\n\nAt breakfast, the grandmother says nothing.", "metadata": { "date": { - "year": "1989", - "month": "july" - }, - "context": { - "month": "july" + "season": "Summer", + "year": "1989" } } }, @@ -62058,11 +63490,8 @@ "body": "After a morning of miniature golf, everything everything seemed smaller. The cardplayers at the club?tiny. And what I wanted most was grandeur! So I checked into the Grand Hotel. Things were beginning to turn around. On an outing, I clambered up the tomb of some monstrous dictator?feeling really excellent now. I had tea with several obese bluestockings, a beer with an encyclopedist who himself resembled a mosque. Some days nothing arrives in its proper package, and I hate that. There are the flattened bodies, the diaphanous tabloids, the speckled sauces. All I can do is clutch the phone in my Thinkery, popping seedless grapes? poor seeds? and in an almost devotional or neutral voice I ask room service for an eagle sandwich? I am suddenly suffocating?cancel that? make that a knuckle sandwich, chopped lips? oh, hell?please connect me with the horticulture consultant standing this minute beneath the pyramids. I’m checking out, I’m going home to my little bungalow? actually, it’s the perfect size. I’m going to kneel down on the veranda and toss kisses at the setting sun. On the horizon, a pregnant woman blots out the sun. It’s okay, I tell myself, since she herself is crimson. Chopped hps, nodding off in a life of perpetual learning. Tranquility weaves its dim web around my imperfect rags.", "metadata": { "date": { - "year": "1988", - "month": "july" - }, - "context": { - "month": "july" + "season": "Summer", + "year": "1988" } } }, @@ -62134,11 +63563,8 @@ "body": "Some genetic prodding in the termite’s nest, accomplished by servants with arrows, led to some dodgy sandwiches in the petshop. I was yelping with a pitchfork at some gummy weathervane. Predatory delicacies were sifting through the cradle. I assigned myself the task of pasting up itineraries for the victims. Once in a motel I put some electrodes on a chimp, I’m sorry about that. I turned newts into astronauts, that was a mistake. Maybe my cousin is a dolphin, I don’t know. There are networks of cells that form sponges on which this galaxy exists. Their urgent criteria woven into the buffeting, if feeble, sensory geometry of woebegone trains, immolating distinct convenience. It’s the maintenance of hierarchies that breaks our backs. I find peace in lava, in plums, in kernels with exact instructions. I am hushed when it comes to an arsenal of viscera, I am piqued when the soggy grasp at me in tubs. I provide, casually; incidentally, I partake. I have sampled some devotions, I have envisioned being perpetually hitched. I have set myself on fire with kerosene. And now I walk among my town’s folk, immune, beseeching.", "metadata": { "date": { - "year": "1988", - "month": "july" - }, - "context": { - "month": "july" + "season": "Summer", + "year": "1988" } } }, @@ -62241,11 +63667,8 @@ "body": "I found a skull on the beach, it was just a little skull, maybe that of a canary. White sand trickled through the sockets. It seemed to smile at me and I tried feeding it some crumbs. Oh well, cookies are for frogs, and maybe this isn’t a skull at all, but an egg or a bulb of some sort. Maybe I will glue some sequins on it and donate it to the local monastery. It would be happy there, supervising the luncheon menu, pounding its forehead through the lilac sermons, patrolling the starched brainwaves in the library. But what if it’s my own long lost ancestor? Shouldn’t I guzzle a toast about now? Raise a kite, or faint in a spiral upward? The whole episode is lamentable, I’m simply rehearsing for another kind of scrutiny, an expedition into the heart of heresy where dowdy, abusive hobgoblins lounge yanking at one another’s hair and snapping newcomers with hot towels. I expect to be incarcerated there for some time. All nectar will taste like insecticide. Privileges, such as holding this bird’s skull in the palm of my hand, will surely be rare. And so, better to forfeit it now, savor forever its twirling arc back into the sea, and circulate among the clustered natives, sniffing for honey, whisking flies from laughing faces.", "metadata": { "date": { - "year": "1988", - "month": "july" - }, - "context": { - "month": "july" + "season": "Summer", + "year": "1988" } } }, @@ -62339,11 +63762,8 @@ "body": "After the train wreck I found her hat in the top branches of a catalpa tree. It was all feathers, green and pink and blue, and it shivered in my hands like a starveling from Fiji too happy or frightened to remember its way home. Oh, it’s true, she drank too much champagne on all the wrong occasions. She hired a limousine when she could have crawled. Her laughter made me freeze, and when she exposed her breast I was a Naval Cadet about to leave for a losing war. “Something to die for,” she said. And I did, every night, every day. I told her not to take this train, puzzle of hot steel beside the river we never swam. But there was something out there that she needed more than me. So she donned her hat of tragic feathers and vanished from this life. And I am left in the present with a history that could never matter. I know what day it is, what hour, and I see many strangers whose Christmases did not work out, who broke under the pressure. And the frozen hare over there, isn’t he some kind of freedom fighter? Tribulations over rations. A hat that wants to fly to the moon.", "metadata": { "date": { - "year": "1989", - "month": "july" - }, - "context": { - "month": "july" + "season": "Summer", + "year": "1989" } } }, @@ -62466,8 +63886,8 @@ "body": "With lukewarm tongs I hold this swaying cow. She’s dripping cubes into the cove below. And little Hank fills his glass and blows the bubbles in my face and I laugh: ho ho … O blissful, plump swimmer in Life’s disfigured crossword, don’t frown. I’ll set you down unchurned-up. Now you’re happy and dumb and Hank can dip his donut in the wind … A hooded figure slithers by, an oblong reptile with dahlias for eyes. I pause, curse, and bend, pick up a squeezed-out tube of something blue. The hooded figure sneezes. “Kazoontite,” I say. “Well, I guess I’ll be moseying back to the barn. If I don’t get back soon I’ll miss the Farm Report.” “Is that you in there, Ma,” little Hank detected. “You sure scared Pa, fooled him good this time.” This farm-funning is going to give me a nervous breakdown. And I suppose this squeezed-out tube of blue means something, too, like bald-faced vexation. The hooded one shakes her beak: yes.", "metadata": { "date": { - "year": "1988", - "month": "july" + "season": "Summer", + "year": "1988" }, "context": { "season": "summer" @@ -62511,11 +63931,8 @@ "body": "All morning, skipping stones on the creamy lake, I thought I heard a lute being played, high up, in the birch trees, or a faun speaking French with a Brooklyn accent. A snowy owl watched me with half-closed eyes. “What have you done for me philately,” I wanted to ask it, licking the air. There was a village at the bottom of the lake, and I could just make out the old pos toff ice, and, occasionally, when the light struck it just right, I glimpsed several mailmen swimming in or out of it, letters and packages escaping randomly, 1938, 1937, it didn’t matter to them any longer. Void. No such address. Soft blazes squirmed across the surface and I could see their church, now home to druid squatters, rock in the intoxicating current, as if to an ancient hymn. And a thousand elbowing reeds conducted the drowsy band pavilion: awake, awake, you germs of habit! Alas, I fling my final stone, my callingcard, my gift of porphyry to the citizens of the deep, and disappear into a copse, raving like a butterfly to a rosebud: I love you.", "metadata": { "date": { - "year": "1988", - "month": "july" - }, - "context": { - "month": "july" + "season": "Summer", + "year": "1988" } } }, @@ -62578,11 +63995,8 @@ "body": "I am thinking about Betsy almost all the time now. I am also thinking about the relationship between a man and his watch. I am amazed at how each sort of animal and plant manages to keep its kind alive. Shocking poultry. Maybe there’s a movie playing downtown about a dotty fat woman with a long knife who dismembers innocent ducks and chickens. But it is the reconstruction of the villa of the mysteries that is killing me. How each sort of animal and plant prevents itself from returning to dust just a little while longer while I transfer some assets to a region where there are no thinking creatures, just worshipping ones. They oscillate along like magicians, deranged seaweed fellows and their gals, a Nile landscape littered with Pygmies. I’m lolling on the banks. I am not just a bunch of white stuff inside my skull. No, there is this villa, and in the villa there is a bathing pool, and on Saturdays Betsy always visits. I am not the first rational man, but my tongue does resemble a transmitter. And, when wet, she is a triangle. And when she’s wet, time has a fluffiness about it, and that has me trotting about, loathing any locomotion not yoked to her own.", "metadata": { "date": { - "year": "1988", - "month": "july" - }, - "context": { - "month": "july" + "season": "Summer", + "year": "1988" } } }, @@ -62893,11 +64307,8 @@ "body": "Dawn animal, why don’t you come out now and have a nice cuppa? I am reading the obituaries, strenuously, which is what one does to get ready. I am counting the fissures in my egg. We could go to the islands, the netherworld full of coral, and have our portraits painted in feathers and mud?I know this betokens a kinship too rickety, or even sizzling, for you. Mammoths walked there a decade ago, lonely, tottering along the channels. They looked at their thumbs and shrugged. They took out their brains and hurled them into the reefs. Fm holding a crust of bread in my palm, I see our initials rising from the lithosphere, a couple of pinpoints of utility needed elsewhere, and I remember how to cry, and I remember you, my last kin.", "metadata": { "date": { - "year": "1988", - "month": "july" - }, - "context": { - "month": "july" + "season": "Summer", + "year": "1988" } } } @@ -63253,7 +64664,7 @@ }, "love-and-death": { "title": "“Love and Death”", - "body": "What time the mighty moon was gathering light\nLove paced the thymy plots of Paradise,\nAnd all about him roll’d his lustrous eyes;\nWhen, turning round a cassia, full in view\nDeath, walking all alone beneath a yew,\nAnd talking to himself, first met his sight:\n“You must begone,” said Death, “these walks are mine.”\nLove wept and spread his sheeny vans for flight;\nYet ere he parted said, “This hour is thine:\nThou art the shadow of life, and as the tree\nStands in the sun and shadows all beneath,\nSo in the light of great eternity\nLife eminent creates the shade of death;\nThe shadow passeth when the tree shall fall,\nBut I shall reign for ever over all.” ", + "body": "What time the mighty moon was gathering light\nLove paced the thymy plots of Paradise,\nAnd all about him roll’d his lustrous eyes;\nWhen, turning round a cassia, full in view\nDeath, walking all alone beneath a yew,\nAnd talking to himself, first met his sight:\n“You must begone,” said Death, “these walks are mine.”\nLove wept and spread his sheeny vans for flight;\nYet ere he parted said, “This hour is thine:\nThou art the shadow of life, and as the tree\nStands in the sun and shadows all beneath,\nSo in the light of great eternity\nLife eminent creates the shade of death;\nThe shadow passeth when the tree shall fall,\nBut I shall reign for ever over all.”", "metadata": { "date": { "year": "1843" @@ -65224,7 +66635,7 @@ }, "the-excursion": { "title": "“The Excursion”", - "body": "_A number of young gentlemen of rank, accompanied by singing-girls, go out to enjoy the cool of evening. They encounter a shower of rain._\n\n# I.\n\nHow delightful, at sunset, to loosen the boat!\nA light wind is slow to raise waves.\nDeep in the bamboo grove, the guests linger;\nThe lotus-flowers are pure and bright in the cool evening air.\nThe young nobles stir the ice-water;\nThe Beautiful Ones wash the lotus-roots, whose fibres are like silk threads.\nA layer of clouds above our heads is black.\nIt will certainly rain, which impels me to write this poem.\n\n\n# II.\n\nThe rain comes, soaking the mats upon which we are sitting.\nA hurrying wind strikes the bow of the boat.\nThe rose-red rouge of the ladies from Yüeh is wet;\nThe Yen beauties are anxious about their kingfisher-eyebrows.\nWe throw out a rope and draw in to the sloping bank. We tie the boat to the willow-trees.\nWe roll up the curtains and watch the floating wave-flowers.\nOur return is different from our setting out. The wind whistles and blows in great gusts.\nBy the time we reach the shore, it seems as though the Fifth Month were Autumn. ", + "body": "_A number of young gentlemen of rank, accompanied by singing-girls, go out to enjoy the cool of evening. They encounter a shower of rain._\n\n# I.\n\nHow delightful, at sunset, to loosen the boat!\nA light wind is slow to raise waves.\nDeep in the bamboo grove, the guests linger;\nThe lotus-flowers are pure and bright in the cool evening air.\nThe young nobles stir the ice-water;\nThe Beautiful Ones wash the lotus-roots, whose fibres are like silk threads.\nA layer of clouds above our heads is black.\nIt will certainly rain, which impels me to write this poem.\n\n\n# II.\n\nThe rain comes, soaking the mats upon which we are sitting.\nA hurrying wind strikes the bow of the boat.\nThe rose-red rouge of the ladies from Yüeh is wet;\nThe Yen beauties are anxious about their kingfisher-eyebrows.\nWe throw out a rope and draw in to the sloping bank. We tie the boat to the willow-trees.\nWe roll up the curtains and watch the floating wave-flowers.\nOur return is different from our setting out. The wind whistles and blows in great gusts.\nBy the time we reach the shore, it seems as though the Fifth Month were Autumn.", "metadata": { "translator": "Florence Ayscough", "context": { @@ -66749,7 +68160,7 @@ "poems": { "ballade-of-the-ladies-of-time-past": { "title": "“Ballade of the Ladies of Time Past”", - "body": "Oh tell me where, in lands or seas, \nFlora, that Roman belle, has strayed,\nThais, or Archipiades, \nWho put each other in the shade, \nOr Echo, who by bank and glade \nGave back the crying of the hound,\nAnd whose sheer beauty could not fade.\n_But where shall last year’s snow be found?_\n\nWhere too is learned Heloise, \nFor whom shorn Abelard was made\nA tonsured monk upon his knees?\nSuch tribute his devotion paid. \nAnd where’s that queen who, having played \nWith Buridan, had him bagged and bound\nTo swim the Seine thus ill-arrayed?\n_But where shall last year’s snow be found?_\n\nQueen Blanche the fair, whose voice could please \nAs does the siren’s serenade, Big Bertha, Beatrice, Alice--these, \nAnd Arembourg whom Maine obeyed, \nAnd Joan whom Burgundy betrayed,\nAnd England burned, and Heaven crowned:\nWhere are they, Mary, Sovereign Maid?\n_But where shall last year’s snow be found?_\n\nNot next week, Prince, nor next decade,\nAsk me these questions I propound.\nI shall but say again, dismayed,\n_Ah, where shall last year’s snow be found?_", + "body": "Oh tell me where, in lands or seas,\nFlora, that Roman belle, has strayed,\nThais, or Archipiades,\nWho put each other in the shade,\nOr Echo, who by bank and glade\nGave back the crying of the hound,\nAnd whose sheer beauty could not fade.\n_But where shall last year’s snow be found?_\n\nWhere too is learned Heloise,\nFor whom shorn Abelard was made\nA tonsured monk upon his knees?\nSuch tribute his devotion paid.\nAnd where’s that queen who, having played\nWith Buridan, had him bagged and bound\nTo swim the Seine thus ill-arrayed?\n_But where shall last year’s snow be found?_\n\nQueen Blanche the fair, whose voice could please\nAs does the siren’s serenade, Big Bertha, Beatrice, Alice--these,\nAnd Arembourg whom Maine obeyed,\nAnd Joan whom Burgundy betrayed,\nAnd England burned, and Heaven crowned:\nWhere are they, Mary, Sovereign Maid?\n_But where shall last year’s snow be found?_\n\nNot next week, Prince, nor next decade,\nAsk me these questions I propound.\nI shall but say again, dismayed,\n_Ah, where shall last year’s snow be found?_", "metadata": { "translator": "Richard Wilbur", "date": { diff --git a/poems/utils.py b/poems/utils.py index d796615..4b15791 100644 --- a/poems/utils.py +++ b/poems/utils.py @@ -78,7 +78,7 @@ def make_author_stats(history, catalog=None): isoformat_last_sent = datetime.fromtimestamp(timestamp_last_sent).astimezone(pytz.utc).isoformat() days_since_last_sent = (timestamp - timestamp_last_sent) / 86400 stats.loc[author,"date_last_sent"] = isoformat_last_sent[:10] - stats.loc[author,"days_since_last_sent"] = int(days_since_last_sent) + stats.loc[author,"days_since_last_sent"] = int(np.round(days_since_last_sent)) if catalog: