diff --git a/README.rst b/README.rst index d88dc9f..9896721 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 8,025 poems by 544 poets. \ No newline at end of file +All of the poems in here are good, or interesting. There are currently 8,076 poems by 545 poets. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/poems/poems.json b/poems/poems.json index 528556f..5ce0e12 100644 --- a/poems/poems.json +++ b/poems/poems.json @@ -3627,7 +3627,7 @@ "tags": [ "french" ], - "n_poems": 6 + "n_poems": 45 }, "poems": { "albatross": { @@ -3640,6 +3640,26 @@ } } }, + "all-of-her": { + "title": "“All of Her”", + "body": "The Devil into my high room\nThis morning came to pay a call,\nAnd trying to find me in fault\nSaid: “I should like to know,\n\nAmong all the beautiful things\nWhich make her an enchantress,\nAmong the objects black or rose\nThat compose her charming body,\n\nWhich is the sweetest.”--O my soul!\nYou answered the loathsome Creature:\n“Since in Her all is dittany,\nNo single thing can be preferred.\n\nWhen all delights me, I don’t know\nIf some one thing entrances me.\nShe dazzles like the Dawn\nAnd consoles like the Night;\n\nAnd the harmony that governs\nHer whole body is too lovely\nFor impotent analysis\nTo note its numerous accords.\n\nO mystic metamorphosis\nOf all my senses joined in one!\nHer breath makes music,\nAnd her voice makes perfume!”", + "metadata": { + "translator": "William Aggeler", + "date": { + "year": 1857 + } + } + }, + "the-bad-monk": { + "title": "“The Bad Monk”", + "body": "Cloisters in former times portrayed on their high walls\nThe truths of Holy Writ with fitting pictures\nWhich gladdened pious hearts and lessened the coldness,\nThe austere appearance, of those monasteries.\n\nIn those days the sowing of Christ’s Gospel flourished,\nAnd more than one famed monk, seldom quoted today,\nTaking his inspiration from the graveyard,\nGlorified Death with naive simplicity.\n\n--My soul is a tomb where, bad cenobite,\nI wander and dwell eternally;\nNothing adorns the walls of that loathsome cloister.\n\nO lazy monk! When shall I learn to make\nOf the living spectacle of my bleak misery\nThe labor of my hands and the love of my eyes?", + "metadata": { + "translator": "William Aggeler", + "date": { + "year": 1857 + } + } + }, "be-drunk": { "title": "“Be Drunk”", "body": "You have to be always drunk. That’s all there is to it--it’s the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk.\n\nBut on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.\n\nAnd if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again, drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is singing, everything that is speaking … ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: “It is time to be drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish.”", @@ -3650,6 +3670,215 @@ } } }, + "beatrice": { + "title": "“Beatrice”", + "body": "One day as I was making complaint to nature\nIn a burnt, ash-gray land without vegetation,\nAnd as I wandered aimlessly, slowly whetting\nUpon my heart the dagger of my thought,\nI saw in broad daylight descending on my head\nA leaden cloud, pregnant with a tempest,\nThat carried a herd of vicious demons\nWho resembled curious, cruel dwarfs.\nThey began to look at me coldly,\nAnd I heard them laugh and whisper to each other,\nExchanging many a sign and many a wink\nLike passers-by who discuss a fool they admire:\n\n--“Let us look leisurely at this caricature,\nThis shade of Hamlet who imitates his posture\nWith indecisive look, hair streaming in the wind.\nIs it not a pity to see this bon vivant,\nThis tramp, this queer fish, this actor without a job,\nBecause he knows how to play skillfully his role,\nWish to interest in the song of his woes\nThe eagles, the crickets, the brooks, and the flowers,\nAnd even to us, authors of that hackneyed drivel,\nBellow the recital of his public tirades?”\n\nI could have (my pride as high as mountains\nDominates the clouds and the cries of the demons)\nSimply turned away my sovereign head\nIf I had not seen in that obscene troop\nA crime which did not make the sun reel in its course!\nThe queen of my heart with the peerless gaze\nLaughing with them at my somber distress\nAnd giving them at times a lewd caress.", + "metadata": { + "translator": "William Aggeler", + "date": { + "year": 1857 + } + } + }, + "beyond-redemption": { + "title": "“Beyond Redemption”", + "body": "# I.\n\nAn Idea, a Form, a Being\nWhich left the azure sky and fell\nInto a leaden, miry Styx\nThat no eye in Heaven can pierce;\n\nAn Angel, imprudent voyager\nTempted by love of the deformed,\nIn the depths of a vast nightmare\nFlailing his arms like a swimmer,\n\nAnd struggling, mortal agony!\nAgainst a gigantic whirlpool\nThat sings constantly like madmen\nAnd pirouettes in the darkness;\n\nAn unfortunate, enchanted,\nOutstretched hands groping futilely,\nLooking for the light and the key,\nTo flee a place filled with reptiles;\n\nA damned soul descending endless stairs\nWithout banisters, without light,\nOn the edge of a gulf of which\nThe odor reveals the humid depth,\n\nWhere slimy monsters are watching,\nWhose eyes, wide and phosphorescent,\nMake the darkness darker still\nAnd make visible naught but themselves;\n\nA ship caught in the polar sea\nAs though in a snare of crystal,\nSeeking the fatal strait through which\nIt came into that prison;\n\n--Patent symbols, perfect picture\nOf an irremediable fate\nWhich makes one think that the Devil\nAlways does well whatever he does!\n\n\n# II.\n\nSomber and limpid tête-à-tête--\nA heart become its own mirror!\nWell of Truth, clear and black,\nWhere a pale star flickers,\n\nA hellish, ironic beacon,\nTorch of satanical blessings,\nSole glory and only solace\n--The consciousness of doing evil.", + "metadata": { + "translator": "William Aggeler", + "date": { + "year": 1857 + } + } + }, + "benediction": { + "title": "“Bénédiction”", + "body": "When, after a decree of the supreme powers,\nThe Poet is brought forth in this wearisome world,\nHis mother terrified and full of blasphemies\nRaises her clenched fist to God, who pities her:\n\n--“Ah! would that I had spawned a whole knot of vipers\nRather than to have fed this derisive object!\nAccursed be the night of ephemeral joy\nWhen my belly conceived this, my expiation!\n\nSince of all women You have chosen me\nTo be repugnant to my sorry spouse,\nAnd since I cannot cast this misshapen monster\nInto the flames, like an old love letter,\n\nI shall spew the hatred with which you crush me down\nOn the cursed instrument of your malevolence,\nAnd twist so hard this wretched tree\nThat it cannot put forth its pestilential buds!”\n\nThus she gulps down the froth of her hatred,\nAnd not understanding the eternal designs,\nHerself prepares deep down in Gehenna\nThe pyre reserved for a mother’s crimes.\n\nHowever, protected by an unseen Angel,\nThe outcast child is enrapt by the sun,\nAnd in all that he eats, in everything he drinks,\nHe finds sweet ambrosia and rubiate nectar.\n\nHe cavorts with the wind, converses with the clouds,\nAnd singing, transported, goes the way of the cross;\nAnd the Angel who follows him on pilgrimage\nWeeps to see him as carefree as a bird.\n\nAll those whom he would love watch him with fear,\nOr, emboldened by his tranquility,\nEmulously attempt to wring a groan from him\nAnd test on him their inhumanity.\n\nWith the bread and the wine intended for his mouth\nThey mix ashes and foul spittle,\nAnd, hypocrites, cast away what he touches\nAnd feel guilty if they have trod in his footprints.\n\nHis wife goes about the market-places\nCrying: “Since he finds me fair enough to adore,\nI shall imitate the idols of old,\nAnd like them I want to be regilded;\n\nI shall get drunk with spikenard, incense, myrrh,\nAnd with genuflections, viands and wine,\nTo see if laughingly I can usurp\nIn an admiring heart the homage due to God!\n\nAnd when I tire of these impious jokes,\nI shall lay upon him my strong, my dainty hand;\nAnd my nails, like harpies’ talons,\nWill cut a path straight to his heart.\n\nThat heart which flutters like a fledgling bird\nI’ll tear, all bloody, from his breast,\nAnd scornfully I’ll throw it in the dust\nTo sate the hunger of my favorite hound!”\n\nTo Heav’n, where his eye sees a radiant throne,\nPiously, the Poet, serene, raises his arms,\nAnd the dazzling brightness of his illumined mind\nHides from his sight the raging mob:\n\n--“Praise be to You, O God, who send us suffering\nAs a divine remedy for our impurities\nAnd as the best and the purest essence\nTo prepare the strong for holy ecstasies!\n\nI know that you reserve a place for the Poet\nWithin the blessed ranks of the holy Legions,\nAnd that you invite him to the eternal feast\nOf the Thrones, the Virtues, and the Dominations.\n\nI know that suffering is the sole nobility\nWhich earth and hell shall never mar,\nAnd that to weave my mystic crown,\nYou must tax every age and every universe.\n\nBut the lost jewels of ancient Palmyra,\nThe unfound metals, the pearls of the sea,\nSet by Your own hand, would not be adequate\nFor that diadem of dazzling splendor,\n\nFor that crown will be made of nothing but pure light\nDrawn from the holy source of primal rays,\nWhereof our mortal eyes, in their fullest brightness,\nAre no more than tarnished, mournful mirrors!”", + "metadata": { + "translator": "William Aggeler", + "date": { + "year": 1857 + } + } + }, + "a-carcass": { + "title": "“A Carcass”", + "body": "My love, do you recall the object which we saw,\nThat fair, sweet, summer morn!\nAt a turn in the path a foul carcass\nOn a gravel strewn bed,\n\nIts legs raised in the air, like a lustful woman,\nBurning and dripping with poisons,\nDisplayed in a shameless, nonchalant way\nIts belly, swollen with gases.\n\nThe sun shone down upon that putrescence,\nAs if to roast it to a turn,\nAnd to give back a hundredfold to great Nature\nThe elements she had combined;\n\nAnd the sky was watching that superb cadaver\nBlossom like a flower.\nSo frightful was the stench that you believed\nYou’d faint away upon the grass.\n\nThe blow-flies were buzzing round that putrid belly,\nFrom which came forth black battalions\nOf maggots, which oozed out like a heavy liquid\nAll along those living tatters.\n\nAll this was descending and rising like a wave,\nOr poured out with a crackling sound;\nOne would have said the body, swollen with a vague breath,\nLived by multiplication.\n\nAnd this world gave forth singular music,\nLike running water or the wind,\nOr the grain that winnowers with a rhythmic motion\nShake in their winnowing baskets.\n\nThe forms disappeared and were no more than a dream,\nA sketch that slowly falls\nUpon the forgotten canvas, that the artist\nCompletes from memory alone.\n\nCrouched behind the boulders, an anxious dog\nWatched us with angry eye,\nWaiting for the moment to take back from the carcass\nThe morsel he had left.\n\n--And yet you will be like this corruption,\nLike this horrible infection,\nStar of my eyes, sunlight of my being,\nYou, my angel and my passion!\n\nYes! thus will you be, queen of the Graces,\nAfter the last sacraments,\nWhen you go beneath grass and luxuriant flowers,\nTo molder among the bones of the dead.\n\nThen, O my beauty! say to the worms who will\nDevour you with kisses,\nThat I have kept the form and the divine essence\nOf my decomposed love!", + "metadata": { + "translator": "William Aggeler", + "date": { + "year": 1857 + } + } + }, + "confession": { + "title": "“Confession”", + "body": "One time, once only, sweet, amiable woman,\nOn my arm your smooth arm\nRested (on the tenebrous background of my soul\nThat memory is not faded);\n\nIt was late; like a newly struck medal\nThe full moon spread its rays,\nAnd the solemnity of the night streamed\nLike a river over sleeping Paris.\n\nAnd along the houses, under the porte-cocheres,\nCats passed by furtively,\nWith ears pricked up, or else, like beloved shades,\nSlowly escorted us.\n\nSuddenly, in the midst of that frank intimacy\nBorn in the pale moonlight,\nFrom you, sonorous, rich instrument which vibrates\nOnly with radiant gaiety,\n\nFrom you, clear and joyful as a fanfare\nIn the glistening morning light,\nA plaintive note, a bizarre note\nEscaped, faltering\n\nLike a puny, filthy, sullen, horrible child,\nWho would make his family blush,\nAnd whom they have hidden for a long time\nIn a secret cellar.\n\nPoor angel, it sang, your discordant note:\n“That naught is certain here below,\nThat always, though it paint its face with utmost care\nMan’s selfishness reveals itself,\n\nThat it’s a hard calling to be a lovely woman,\nAnd that it is the banal task\nOf the cold and silly danseuse who faints away\nWith a mechanical smile,\n\nThat to build on hearts is a foolish thing,\nThat all things break, love, and beauty,\nTill Oblivion tosses them into his dosser\nTo give them back to Eternity!”\n\nI’ve often evoked that enchanted moon,\nThe silence and the languidness,\nAnd that horrible confidence whispered\nIn the heart’s confessional.", + "metadata": { + "translator": "William Aggeler", + "date": { + "year": 1857 + } + } + }, + "conversation": { + "title": "“Conversation”", + "body": "You are a lovely autumn sky, clear and rosy!\nBut sadness rises in me like the sea,\nAnd as it ebbs, leaves on my sullen lips\nThe burning memory of its bitter slime.\n\n--In vain does your hand slip over my swooning breast;\nWhat it seeks, darling, is a place plundered\nBy the claws and the ferocious teeth of woman.\nSeek my heart no longer; the beasts have eaten it.\n\nMy heart is a palace polluted by the mob;\nThey get drunk there, kill, tear each other’s hair!\n--A perfume floats about your naked breast! …\n\nO Beauty, ruthless scourge of souls, you desire it!\nWith the fire of your eyes, brilliant as festivals,\nBum these tatters which the beasts spared!", + "metadata": { + "translator": "William Aggeler", + "date": { + "year": 1857 + }, + "context": { + "season": "autumn" + } + } + }, + "the-dancing-serpent": { + "title": "“The Dancing Serpent”", + "body": "Indolent darling, how I love\nTo see the skin\nOf your body so beautiful\nShimmer like silk!\n\nUpon your heavy head of hair\nWith its acrid scents,\nAdventurous, odorant sea\nWith blue and brown waves,\n\nLike a vessel that awakens\nTo the morning wind,\nMy dreamy soul sets sail\nFor a distant sky.\n\nYour eyes where nothing is revealed\nOf bitter or sweet,\nAre two cold jewels where are mingled\nIron and gold.\n\nTo see you walking in cadence\nWith fine abandon,\nOne would say a snake which dances\nOn the end of a staff.\n\nUnder the weight of indolence\nYour child-like head sways\nGently to and fro like the head\nOf a young elephant,\n\nAnd your body stretches and leans\nLike a slender ship\nThat rolls from side to side and dips\nIts yards in the sea.\n\nLike a stream swollen by the thaw\nOf rumbling glaciers,\nWhen the water of your mouth rises\nTo the edge of your teeth,\n\nIt seems I drink Bohemian wine,\nBitter and conquering,\nA liquid sky that scatters\nStars in my heart!", + "metadata": { + "translator": "William Aggeler", + "date": { + "year": 1857 + } + } + }, + "dawn-of-the-spirit": { + "title": "“Dawn of the Spirit”", + "body": "When with revelers the white crimson dawn\nComes to join the persistent Ideal,\nThrough the operation of an avenging mystery\nAn angel is awakened in the sated brute.\n\nThe inaccessible blue of Spiritual Skies,\nFor the crushed man who still dreams and suffers,\nOpens and sinks down with the attraction of the abyss.\nThus, dear Goddess, lucid pure Being,\n\nOver the smoky wrecks of stupid orgies\nYour memory more clear, roseate, and charming,\nCeaselessly hovers before my wide-opened eyes.\n\nThe sun has darkened the flame of the candles;\nThus, always conquering, your phantom is like\nThe immortal sun, O soul of splendor!", + "metadata": { + "translator": "Wallace Fowlie", + "date": { + "year": 1857 + } + } + }, + "dawn": { + "title": "“Dawn”", + "body": "They were sounding reveille in the barracks’ yards,\nAnd the morning wind was blowing on the lanterns.\n\nIt was the hour when swarms of harmful dreams\nMake the sun-tanned adolescents toss in their beds;\nWhen, like a bloody eye that twitches and rolls,\nThe lamp makes a red splash against the light of day;\nWhen the soul within the heavy, fretful body\nImitates the struggle of the lamp and the sun.\nLike a tear-stained face being dried by the breeze,\nThe air is full of the shudders of things that flee,\nAnd man is tired of writing and woman of making love.\n\nHere and there the houses were beginning to smoke.\nThe ladies of pleasure, with eyelids yellow-green\nAnd mouths open, were sleeping their stupefied sleep;\nThe beggar-women, their breasts hanging thin and cold,\nWere blowing on their fires, blowing on their fingers.\nIt was the hour when amid poverty and cold\nThe pains of women in labor grow more cruel;\nThe cock’s crow in the distance tore the foggy air\nLike a sob stifled by a bloody froth;\n\nThe buildings were enveloped in a sea of mist,\nAnd in the charity-wards, the dying\nHiccupped their death-sobs at uneven intervals.\nThe rakes were going home, exhausted by their work.\n\nThe dawn, shivering in her green and rose garment,\nWas moving slowly along the deserted Seine,\nAnd somber Paris, the industrious old man,\nWas rubbing his eyes and gathering up his tools.", + "metadata": { + "translator": "William Aggeler", + "date": { + "year": 1857 + }, + "context": { + "season": "winter" + } + } + }, + "the-death-of-the-lovers": { + "title": "“The Death of the Lovers”", + "body": "We shall have beds full of subtle perfumes,\nDivans as deep as graves, and on the shelves\nWill be strange flowers that blossomed for us\nUnder more beautiful heavens.\n\nUsing their dying flames emulously,\nOur two hearts will be two immense torches\nWhich will reflect their double light\nIn our two souls, those twin mirrors.\n\nSome evening made of rose and of mystical blue\nA single flash will pass between us\nLike a long sob, charged with farewells;\n\nAnd later an Angel, setting the doors ajar,\nFaithful and joyous, will come to revive\nThe tarnished mirrors, the extinguished flames.", + "metadata": { + "translator": "William Aggeler", + "date": { + "year": 1857 + } + } + }, + "the-death-of-the-poor": { + "title": "“The Death of the Poor”", + "body": "It’s Death that comforts us, alas! and makes us live;\nIt is the goal of life; it is the only hope\nWhich, like an elixir, makes us inebriate\nAnd gives us the courage to march until evening;\n\nThrough the storm and the snow and the hoar-frost\nIt is the vibrant light on our black horizon;\nIt is the famous inn inscribed upon the book,\nWhere one can eat, and sleep, and take his rest;\n\nIt’s an Angel who holds in his magnetic hands\nSleep and the gift of ecstatic dreams\nAnd who makes the beds for the poor, naked people;\n\nIt’s the glory of the gods, the mystic granary,\nIt is the poor man’s purse, his ancient fatherland,\nIt is the portal opening on unknown Skies!", + "metadata": { + "translator": "William Aggeler", + "date": { + "year": 1857 + } + } + }, + "destruction": { + "title": "“Destruction”", + "body": "The Demon is always moving about at my side;\nHe floats about me like an impalpable air;\nI swallow him, I feel him burn my lungs\nAnd fill them with an eternal, sinful desire.\n\nSometimes, knowing my deep love for Art, he assumes\nThe form of a most seductive woman,\nAnd, with pretexts specious and hypocritical,\nAccustoms my lips to infamous philtres.\n\nHe leads me thus, far from the sight of God,\nPanting and broken with fatigue, into the midst\nOf the plains of Ennui, endless and deserted,\n\nAnd thrusts before my eyes full of bewilderment,\nDirty filthy garments and open, gaping wounds,\nAnd all the bloody instruments of Destruction!", + "metadata": { + "translator": "William Aggeler", + "date": { + "year": 1857 + } + } + }, + "don-juan-in-hell": { + "title": "“Don Juan in Hell”", + "body": "When Don Juan descended to the underground sea,\nAnd when he had given his obolus to Charon,\nThat gloomy mendicant, with Antisthenes’ proud look,\nSeized the two oars with strong, revengeful hands.\n\nShowing their pendent breasts and their unfastened gowns\nWomen writhed and twisted under the black heavens,\nAnd like a great flock of sacrificial victims,\nA continuous groan trailed along in the wake.\n\nSganarelle with a laugh was demanding his wage,\nWhile Don Luis with a trembling finger\nWas showing to the dead, wandering along the shores,\nThe impudent son who had mocked his white brow.\n\nShuddering in her grief, Elvira, chaste and thin,\nNear her treacherous spouse who was once her lover,\nSeemed to implore of him a final, parting smile\nThat would shine with the sweetness of his first promises.\n\nErect in his armor, a tall man carved from stone\nWas standing at the helm and cutting the black flood;\nBut the hero unmoved, leaning on his rapier,\nKept gazing at the wake and deigned not look aside.", + "metadata": { + "translator": "William Aggeler", + "date": { + "year": 1857 + } + } + }, + "the-enemy": { + "title": "“The Enemy”", + "body": "My youth was a dark storm,\nCrossed here and there by brilliant suns;\nThunder and rain have caused such quick ravage\nThat there remain in my garden very few red fruits.\n\nNow I have touched the autumn of my mind,\nAnd I must use the spade and rakes\nTo assemble again the drenched lands,\nWhere the water digs holes as large as graves.\n\nAnd who knows whether the new flowers I dream of\nWill find in this soil washed like a shore\nThe mystic food which would create their strength?\n\n--О grief! О grief! Time eats away life,\nAnd the dark Enemy who gnaws the heart\nGrows and thrives on the blood we lose.", + "metadata": { + "translator": "Wallace Fowlie", + "date": { + "year": 1857 + } + } + }, + "the-flawed-bell": { + "title": "“The Flawed Bell”", + "body": "It is bitter and sweet on winter nights\nTo listen by the fire that smokes and palpitates,\nTo distant souvenirs that rise up slowly\nAt the sound of the chimes that sing in the fog.\n\nHappy is the bell which in spite of age\nIs vigilant and healthy, and with lusty throat\nFaithfully sounds its religious call,\nLike an old soldier watching from his tent!\n\nI, my soul is flawed, and when, a prey to ennui,\nShe wishes to fill the cold night air with her songs,\nIt often happens that her weakened voice\n\nResembles the death rattle of a wounded man,\nForgotten beneath a heap of dead, by a lake of blood,\nWho dies without moving, striving desperately.", + "metadata": { + "translator": "William Aggeler", + "date": { + "year": 1857 + }, + "context": { + "season": "winter" + } + } + }, + "gambling": { + "title": "“Gambling”", + "body": "In faded armchairs aged courtesans,\nPale, eyebrows penciled, with alluring fatal eyes,\nSmirking and sending forth from wizened ears\nA jingling sound of metal and of gems;\n\nAround the gaming tables faces without lips,\nLips without color and jaws without teeth,\nFingers convulsed with a hellborn fever\nSearching empty pockets and fluttering bosoms;\n\nUnder dirty ceilings a row of bright lusters\nAnd enormous oil-lamps casting their rays\nOn the tenebrous brows of distinguished poets\nWho come there to squander the blood they have sweated;\n\nThat is the black picture that in a dream one night\nI saw unfold before my penetrating eyes.\nI saw myself at the back of that quiet den,\nLeaning on my elbows, cold, silent, envying,\n\nEnvying the stubborn passion of those people,\nThe dismal merriment of those old prostitutes,\nAll blithely selling right before my eyes,\nOne his ancient honor, another her beauty!\n\nMy heart took fright at its envy of so many\nWretches running fiercely to the yawning chasm,\nWho, drunk with their own blood, would prefer, in a word,\nSuffering to death and hell to nothingness!", + "metadata": { + "translator": "William Aggeler", + "date": { + "year": 1857 + } + } + }, + "the-giantess": { + "title": "“The Giantess”", + "body": "At the time when Nature with a lusty spirit\nWas conceiving monstrous children each day,\nI should have liked to live near a young giantess,\nLike a voluptuous cat at the feet of a queen.\n\nI should have liked to see her soul and body thrive\nAnd grow without restraint in her terrible games;\nTo divine by the mist swimming within her eyes\nIf her heart harbored a smoldering flame;\n\nTo explore leisurely her magnificent form;\nTo crawl upon the slopes of her enormous knees,\nAnd sometimes in summer, when the unhealthy sun\n\nMakes her stretch out, weary, across the countryside,\nTo sleep nonchalantly in the shade of her breasts,\nLike a peaceful hamlet below a mountainside.", + "metadata": { + "translator": "William Aggeler", + "date": { + "year": 1857 + } + } + }, + "grieving-and-wandering": { + "title": "“Grieving and Wandering”", + "body": "Tell me, does your heart sometimes fly away, Agatha,\nFar from the black ocean of the filthy city,\nToward another ocean where splendor glitters,\nBlue, clear, profound, as is virginity?\nTell me, does your heart sometimes fly away, Agatha?\n\nThe sea, the boundless sea, consoles us for our toil!\nWhat demon endowed the sea, that raucous singer,\nWhose accompanist is the roaring wind,\nWith the sublime function of cradle-rocker?\nThe sea, the boundless sea, consoles us for our toil!\n\nTake me away, carriage! Carry me off, frigate!\nFar, far away! Here the mud is made with our tears!\n--Is it true that sometimes the sad heart of Agatha\nSays: Far from crimes, from remorse, from sorrow,\nTake me away, carriage, carry me off, frigate?\n\nHow far away you are, O perfumed Paradise,\nWhere under clear blue sky there’s only love and joy,\nWhere all that one loves is worthy of love,\nWhere the heart is drowned in sheer enjoyment!\nHow far away you are, O perfumed Paradise!\n\nBut the green Paradise of childhood loves\nThe outings, the singing, the kisses, the bouquets,\nThe violins vibrating behind the hills,\nAnd the evenings in the woods, with jugs of wine\n--But the green Paradise of childhood loves,\n\nThat sinless Paradise, full of furtive pleasures,\nIs it farther off now than India and China?\nCan one call it back with plaintive cries,\nAnd animate it still with a silvery voice,\nThat sinless Paradise full of furtive pleasures?", + "metadata": { + "translator": "William Aggeler", + "date": { + "year": 1857 + } + } + }, + "i-am-like-the-king-of-a-rainy-land": { + "title": "“I am like the king of a rainy land …”", + "body": "I am like the king of a rainy land,\nWealthy but powerless, both young and very old,\nWho contemns the fawning manners of his tutors\nAnd is bored with his dogs and other animals.\nNothing can cheer him, neither the chase nor falcons,\nNor his people dying before his balcony.\nThe ludicrous ballads of his favorite clown\nNo longer smooth the brow of this cruel invalid;\nHis bed, adorned with fleurs-de-lis, becomes a grave;\nThe lady’s maids, to whom every prince is handsome,\nNo longer can find gowns shameless enough\nTo wring a smile from this young skeleton.\nThe alchemist who makes his gold was never able\nTo extract from him the tainted element,\nAnd in those baths of blood come down from Roman times,\nAnd which in their old age the powerful recall,\nHe failed to warm this dazed cadaver in whose veins\nFlows the green water of Lethe in place of blood.", + "metadata": { + "translator": "William Aggeler", + "date": { + "year": 1857 + } + } + }, + "i-have-more-memories-than-if-id-lived-a-thousand-years": { + "title": "“I have more memories than if I’d lived a thousand years …”", + "body": "I have more memories than if I’d lived a thousand years.\n\nA heavy chest of drawers cluttered with balance-sheets,\nProcesses, love-letters, verses, ballads,\nAnd heavy locks of hair enveloped in receipts,\nHides fewer secrets than my gloomy brain.\nIt is a pyramid, a vast burial vault\nWhich contains more corpses than potter’s field.\n--I am a cemetery abhorred by the moon,\nIn which long worms crawl like remorse\nAnd constantly harass my dearest dead.\nI am an old boudoir full of withered roses,\nWhere lies a whole litter of old-fashioned dresses,\nWhere the plaintive pastels and the pale Bouchers,\nAlone, breathe in the fragrance from an opened phial.\n\nNothing is so long as those limping days,\nWhen under the heavy flakes of snowy years\nEnnui, the fruit of dismal apathy,\nBecomes as large as immortality.\n--Henceforth you are no more, O living matter!\nThan a block of granite surrounded by vague terrors,\nDozing in the depths of a hazy Sahara\nAn old sphinx ignored by a heedless world,\nOmitted from the map, whose savage nature\nSings only in the rays of a setting sun.", + "metadata": { + "translator": "William Aggeler", + "date": { + "year": 1857 + } + } + }, "i-love-the-naked-ages-long-ago": { "title": "“I love the naked ages long ago …”", "body": "I love the thought of those old naked days\nWhen Phoebus gilded torsos with his rays,\nWhen men and women sported, strong and fleet,\nWithout anxiety or base deceit,\nAnd heaven caressed them, amorously keen\nTo prove the health of each superb machine.\nCybele then was lavish of her guerdon\nAnd did not find her sons too gross a burden:\nBut, like a she-wolf, in her love great-hearted,\nHer full brown teats to all the world imparted.\nBold, handsome, strong, Man, rightly, might evince\nPride in the glories that proclaimed him prince--\nFruits pure of outrage, by the blight unsmitten,\nWith firm, smooth flesh that cried out to be bitten.\n\nToday the Poet, when he would assess\nThose native splendours in the nakedness\nOf man or woman, feels a sombre chill\nEnveloping his spirit and his will.\nHe meets a gloomy picture, which be loathes,\nWherein deformity cries out for clothes.\nOh comic runts! Oh horror of burlesque!\nLank, flabby, skewed, pot-bellied, and grotesque!\nWhom their smug god, Utility (poor brats!)\nHas swaddled in his brazen clouts ‘ersatz’\nAs with cheap tinsel. Women tallow-pale,\nBoth gnawed and nourished by debauch, who trail\nThe heavy burden of maternal vice,\nOr of fecundity the hideous price.\n\nWe have (corrupted nations) it is true\nBeauties the ancient people never knew--\nSad faces gnawed by cancers of the heart\nAnd charms which morbid lassitudes impart.\nBut these inventions of our tardy muse\nCan’t force our ailing peoples to refuse\nJust tribute to the holiness of youth\nWith its straightforward mien, its forehead couth,\nThe limpid gaze, like running water bright,\nDiffusing, careless, through all things, like the light\nOf azure skies, the birds, the winds, the flowers,\nThe songs, and perfumes, and heart-warming powers.", @@ -3663,6 +3892,26 @@ } } }, + "i-worship-you-as-i-worship-the-firmament-of-night": { + "title": "“I worship you as I worship the firmament of night …”", + "body": "I worship you as I worship the firmament of night,\nO urn of sadness, great silent woman,\nAnd love you, beautiful one, the more you flee from me,\nAnd seem to me, ornament of my nights,\nTo accumulate ironically the leagues\nWhich separate my arms from the expanse of blue.\nI advance to the attack, and I climb to the assault,\nAs a chorus of worms climb over a corpse,\nAnd I cherish, O implacable cruel beast,\nEven that coldness by which you are for me more beautiful!", + "metadata": { + "translator": "Wallace Fowlie", + "date": { + "year": 1857 + } + } + }, + "lethe": { + "title": "“Lethe”", + "body": "Come, lie upon my breast, cruel, insensitive soul,\nAdored tigress, monster with the indolent air;\nI want to plunge trembling fingers for a long time\nIn the thickness of your heavy mane,\n\nTo bury my head, full of pain\nIn your skirts redolent of your perfume,\nTo inhale, as from a withered flower,\nThe moldy sweetness of my defunct love.\n\nI wish to sleep! to sleep rather than live!\nIn a slumber doubtful as death,\nI shall remorselessly cover with my kisses\nYour lovely body polished like copper.\n\nTo bury my subdued sobbing\nNothing equals the abyss of your bed,\nPotent oblivion dwells upon your lips\nAnd Lethe flows in your kisses.\n\nMy fate, hereafter my delight,\nI’ll obey like one predestined;\nDocile martyr, innocent man condemned,\nWhose fervor aggravates the punishment.\n\nI shall suck, to drown my rancor,\nNepenthe and the good hemlock\nFrom the charming tips of those pointed breasts\nThat have never guarded a heart.", + "metadata": { + "translator": "William Aggeler", + "date": { + "year": 1857 + } + } + }, "meditation": { "title": "“Meditation”", "body": "Be quiet and more discreet, O my Grief.\nYou cried out for the Evening; even now it falls:\nA gloomy atmosphere envelops the city,\nBringing peace to some, anxiety to others.\n\nWhile the vulgar herd of mortals, under the scourge\nOf Pleasure, that merciless torturer,\nGoes to gather remorse in the servile festival,\nMy Grief, give me your hand; come this way\n\nFar from them. See the dead years in old-fashioned gowns\nLean over the balconies of heaven;\nSmiling Regret rise from the depths of the waters;\n\nThe dying Sun fall asleep beneath an arch, and\nListen, darling, to the soft footfalls of the Night\nThat trails off to the East like a long winding-sheet.", @@ -3673,6 +3922,79 @@ } } }, + "my-former-life": { + "title": "“My Former Life”", + "body": "For a long time I dwelt under vast porticos\nWhich the ocean suns lit with a thousand colors,\nThe pillars of which, tall, straight, and majestic,\nMade them, in the evening, like basaltic grottos.\n\nThe billows which cradled the image of the sky\nMingled, in a solemn, mystical way,\nThe omnipotent chords of their rich harmonies\nWith the sunsets’ colors reflected in my eyes;\n\nIt was there that I lived in voluptuous calm,\nIn splendor, between the azure and the sea,\nAnd I was attended by slaves, naked, perfumed,\n\nWho fanned my brow with fronds of palms\nAnd whose sole task it was to fathom\nThe dolorous secret that made me pine away.", + "metadata": { + "translator": "William Aggeler", + "date": { + "year": 1857 + } + } + }, + "out-of-the-depths-have-i-cried": { + "title": "“Out of the Depths Have I Cried”", + "body": "I beg pity of Thee, the only one I love,\nFrom the depths of the dark pit where my heart has fallen,\nIt’s a gloomy world with a leaden horizon,\nWhere through the night swim horror and blasphemy;\n\nA frigid sun floats overhead six months,\nAnd the other six months darkness covers the land;\nIt’s a land more bleak than the polar wastes\n--Neither beasts, nor streams, nor verdure, nor woods!\n\nBut no horror in the world can surpass\nThe cold cruelty of that glacial sun\nAnd this vast night which is like old Chaos;\n\nI envy the lot of the lowest animals\nWho are able to sink into a stupid sleep,\nSo slowly does the skein of time unwind!", + "metadata": { + "translator": "William Aggeler", + "date": { + "year": 1857 + }, + "context": { + "liturgy": "advent" + } + } + }, + "owls": { + "title": "“Owls”", + "body": "Under the dark yews which shade them,\nThe owls are perched in rows,\nLike so many strange gods,\nDarting their red eyes. They meditate.\n\nWithout budging they will remain\nTill that melancholy hour\nWhen, pushing back the slanting sun,\nDarkness will take up its abode.\n\nTheir attitude teaches the wise\nThat in this world one must fear\nMovement and commotion;\n\nMan, enraptured by a passing shadow,\nForever bears the punishment\nOf having tried to change his place.", + "metadata": { + "translator": "William Aggeler", + "date": { + "year": 1857 + } + } + }, + "poison": { + "title": "“Poison”", + "body": "Wine knows how to adorn the most sordid hovel\nWith marvelous luxury\nAnd make more than one fabulous portal appear\nIn the gold of its red mist\nLike a sun setting in a cloudy sky.\n\nOpium magnifies that which is limitless,\nLengthens the unlimited,\nMakes time deeper, hollows out voluptuousness,\nAnd with dark, gloomy pleasures\nFills the soul beyond its capacity.\n\nAll that is not equal to the poison which flows\nFrom your eyes, from your green eyes,\nLakes where my soul trembles and sees its evil side …\nMy dreams come in multitude\nTo slake their thirst in those bitter gulfs.\n\nAll that is not equal to the awful wonder\nOf your biting saliva,\nCharged with madness, that plunges my remorseless soul\nInto oblivion\nAnd rolls it in a swoon to the shores of death.", + "metadata": { + "translator": "William Aggeler", + "date": { + "year": 1857 + } + } + }, + "punishment-for-pride": { + "title": "“Punishment for Pride”", + "body": "In that marvelous time in which Theology\nFlourished with the greatest energy and vigor,\nIt is said that one day a most learned doctor\n--After winning by force the indifferent hearts,\nHaving stirred them in the dark depths of their being;\nAfter crossing on the way to celestial glory,\nSingular and strange roads, even to him unknown,\nWhich only pure Spirits, perhaps, had reached,--\nPanic-stricken, like one who has clambered too high,\nHe cried, carried away by a satanic pride:\n“Jesus, little jesus! I raised you very high!\nBut had I wished to attack you through the defect\nIn your armor, your shame would equal your glory,\nAnd you would be no more than a despised fetus!”\n\nAt that very moment his reason departed.\nA crape of mourning veiled the brilliance of that sun;\nComplete chaos rolled in and filled that intellect,\nA temple once alive, ordered and opulent,\nWithin whose walls so much pomp had glittered.\nSilence and darkness took possession of it\nLike a cellar to which the key is lost.\n\nHenceforth he was like the beasts in the street,\nAnd when he went along, seeing nothing, across\nThe fields, distinguishing nor summer nor winter,\nDirty, useless, ugly, like a discarded thing,\nHe was the laughing-stock, the joke, of the children.", + "metadata": { + "translator": "William Aggeler", + "date": { + "year": 1857 + } + } + }, + "reversibility": { + "title": "“Reversibility”", + "body": "Angel full of gaiety, do you know anguish,\nShame, remorse, sobs, vexations,\nAnd the vague terrors of those frightful nights\nThat compress the heart like a paper one crumples?\nAngel full of gaiety, do you know anguish?\n\nAngel full of kindness, do you know hatred,\nThe clenched fists in the darkness and the tears of gall,\nWhen Vengeance beats out his hellish call to arms,\nAnd makes himself the captain of our faculties?\nAngel full of kindness, do you know hatred?\n\nAngel full of health, do you know Fever,\nWalking like an exile, moving with dragging steps,\nAlong the high, wan walls of the charity ward,\nAnd with muttering lips seeking the rare sunlight?\nAngel full of health, do you know Fever?\n\nAngel full of beauty, do you know wrinkles,\nThe fear of growing old, and the hideous torment\nOf reading in the eyes of her he once adored\nHorror at seeing love turning to devotion?\nAngel full of beauty, do you know wrinkles?\n\nAngel full of happiness, of joy and of light,\nDavid on his death-bed would have appealed for health\nTo the emanations of your enchanted flesh;\nBut of you, angel, I beg only prayers,\nAngel full of happiness, of joy and of light!", + "metadata": { + "translator": "William Aggeler", + "date": { + "year": 1857 + } + } + }, + "sepulcher": { + "title": "“Sepulcher”", + "body": "If on a dismal, sultry night\nSome good Christian, through charity,\nWill bury your vaunted body\nBehind the ruins of a building\n\nAt the hour when the chaste stars\nClose their eyes, heavy with sleep,\nThe spider will make his webs there,\nAnd the viper his progeny;\n\nYou will hear all year long\nAbove your damned head\nThe mournful cries of wolves\n\nAnd of the half-starved witches,\nThe frolics of lustful old men\nAnd the plots of vicious robbers.", + "metadata": { + "translator": "William Aggeler", + "date": { + "year": 1857 + } + } + }, "song-of-autumn": { "title": "“Song of Autumn”", "body": "# I.\n\nSoon we shall plunge into cold darkness;\nFarewell, strong light of our too brief summers!\nI already hear falling, with funereal thuds,\nThe wood resounding on the pavement of the courtyards.\n\nAll of winter will gather in my being: anger,\nHate, chills, horror, hard and forced labor,\nAnd, like the sun in its polar hell,\nMy heart will be only a red icy block.\n\nI listen shuddering to each log that falls;\nThe scaffold which is being built has not a hollower echo.\nMy mind is like the tower which falls\nUnder the blows of the indefatigable heavy battering ram.\n\nIt seems to me, lulled by the monotonous thuds,\nThat somewhere a casket is being nailed in great haste.\nFor whom? Yesterday it was summer; here is autumn!\nThis mysterious noise sounds like a departure.\n\n\n# II.\n\nI love the green light of your long eyes,\nSweet beauty, but everything today is bitter for me,\nAnd nothing, neither your love, nor the boudoir, nor the hearth,\nIs worth as much to me as the sun shining over the sea.\n\nBut despite all that, love me, tender heart! be maternal,\nEven for an ingrate, even for a wicked man;\nLover or sister, be the passing tenderness\nOf a glorious autumn or of a setting sun.\n\nA brief task! The grave is waiting; it is avid!\nMy head resting on your knees, let me\nEnjoy, as I grieve for the white torrid summer,\nThe yellow gentle ray of the earlier season!", @@ -3686,9 +4008,72 @@ } } }, + "to-an-auburn-haired-beggar-maid": { + "title": "“To an Auburn-Haired Beggar-Maid”", + "body": "Pale girl with the auburn hair,\nWhose dress through its tears and holes\nReveals your poverty\nAnd your beauty,\n\nFor me, an ailing poet,\nYour body, young and sickly,\nSpotted with countless freckles,\nHas its sweetness.\n\nYou wear with more elegance\nYour wooden clogs than the queen\nIn a romance her sandals\nTrimmed with velvet.\n\nInstead of a scanty rag,\nLet a glittering court dress\nTrail with its long, rustling folds\nOver your heels;\n\nIn place of stockings with holes,\nLet, for the eyes of roués,\nA golden poniard glisten\nIn your garter;\n\nLet ill-tied ribbons give way\nAnd unveil, so we may sin,\nYour two lovely breasts, radiant\nAs shining eyes;\n\nLet your arms demand entreating\nTo uncover your body\nAnd repel with saucy blows\nRoguish fingers,\n\nPearls of the finest water,\nSonnets by Master Belleau\nConstantly offered by swains\nHeld in love’s chains,\n\nPlebeian versifiers\nOffering first books to you\nAnd ogling your slippered foot\nFrom under the stair;\n\nMany a page fond of love’s chance,\nMany a Ronsard and lord\nFor amusement would spy on\nYour chilly hut!\n\nYou could count in your beds\nMore kisses than fleurs-de-lis\nAnd subject to your power\nMany Valois!\n\n--However, you go begging\nSome moldy refuse lying\nOn the steps of some Véfour\nAt the crossroads;\n\nYou go furtively eyeing\nBaubles at twenty-nine sous,\nOf which I can’t, oh! pardon!\nMake you a gift.\n\nGo, with no more adornment,\nPerfume or pearl or diamond,\nThan your slender nudity,\nO my beauty!", + "metadata": { + "translator": "William Aggeler", + "date": { + "year": 1857 + } + } + }, + "twilight": { + "title": "“Twilight”", + "body": "Behold the sweet evening, friend of the criminal;\nIt comes like an accomplice, stealthily; the sky\nCloses slowly like an immense alcove,\nAnd impatient man turns into a beast of prey.\nO evening, kind evening, desired by him\nWhose arms can say, without lying: “Today\nWe labored!”--It is the evening that comforts\nThose minds that are consumed by a savage sorrow,\nThe obstinate scholar whose head bends with fatigue\nAnd the bowed laborer who returns to his bed.\n\nMeanwhile in the atmosphere malefic demons\nAwaken sluggishly, like businessmen,\nAnd take flight, bumping against porch roofs and shutters.\nAmong the gas flames worried by the wind\nProstitution catches alight in the streets;\nLike an ant-hill she lets her workers out;\nEverywhere she blazes a secret path,\nLike an enemy who plans a surprise attack;\nShe moves in the heart of the city of mire\nLike a worm that steals from Man what he eats.\nHere and there one hears food sizzle in the kitchens,\nThe theaters yell, the orchestras moan;\n\nThe gambling dens, where games of chance delight,\nFill up with whores and cardsharps, their accomplices;\nThe burglars, who know neither respite nor mercy,\nAre soon going to begin their work, they also,\nAnd quietly force open cash-boxes and doors\nTo enjoy life awhile and dress their mistresses.\n\nMeditate, O my soul, in this solemn moment,\nAnd close your ears to this uproar;\nIt is now that the pains of the sick grow sharper!\nSomber Night grabs them by the throat; they reach the end\nOf their destinies and go to the common pit;\nThe hospitals are filled with their sighs.--More than one\nWill come no more to get his fragrant soup\nBy the fireside, in the evening, with a loved one.\n\nHowever, most of them have never known\nThe sweetness of a home, have never lived!", + "metadata": { + "translator": "William Aggeler", + "date": { + "year": 1857 + } + } + }, + "unslakeable-lust": { + "title": "“Unslakeable Lust”", + "body": "Singular deity, brown as the nights,\nScented with the perfume of Havana and musk,\nWork of some obeah, Faust of the savanna,\nWitch with ebony flanks, child of the black midnight,\n\nI prefer to constance, to opium, to nuits,\nThe nectar of your mouth upon which love parades;\nWhen toward you my desires set out in caravan,\nYour eyes are the cistern that gives drink to my cares.\n\nThrough those two great black eyes, the outlets of your soul,\nO pitiless demon! pour upon me less flame;\nI’m not the River Styx to embrace you nine times,\n\nAlas! and I cannot, licentious Megaera,\nTo break your spirit and bring you to bay\nIn the hell of your bed turn into Proserpine!", + "metadata": { + "translator": "William Aggeler", + "date": { + "year": 1857 + } + } + }, + "the-vampire": { + "title": "“The Vampire”", + "body": "You who, like the stab of a knife,\nEntered my plaintive heart;\nYou who, strong as a herd\nOf demons, came, ardent and adorned,\n\nTo make your bed and your domain\nOf my humiliated mind\n--Infamous bitch to whom I’m bound\nLike the convict to his chain,\n\nLike the stubborn gambler to the game,\nLike the drunkard to his wine,\nLike the maggots to the corpse,\n--Accurst, accurst be you!\n\nI begged the swift poniard\nTo gain for me my liberty,\nI asked perfidious poison\nTo give aid to my cowardice.\n\nAlas! both poison and the knife\nContemptuously said to me:\n“You do not deserve to be freed\nFrom your accursed slavery,\n\nFool!--if from her domination\nOur efforts could deliver you,\nYour kisses would resuscitate\nThe cadaver of your vampire!”", + "metadata": { + "translator": "William Aggeler", + "date": { + "year": 1857 + }, + "context": { + "holiday": "halloween" + } + } + }, + "a-voyage-to-cythera": { + "title": "“A Voyage to Cythera”", + "body": "My heart like a bird was fluttering joyously\nAnd soaring freely around the rigging;\nBeneath a cloudless sky the ship was rolling\nLike an angel drunken with the radiant sun.\n\nWhat is this black, gloomy island?--It’s Cythera,\nThey tell us, a country celebrated in song,\nThe banal Eldorado of old bachelors.\nLook at it; after all, it is a wretched land.\n\n--Island of sweet secrets, of the heart’s festivals!\nThe beautiful shade of ancient Venus\nHovers above your seas like a perfume\nAnd fills all minds with love and languidness.\n\nFair isle of green myrtle filled with full-blown flowers\nEver venerated by all nations,\nWhere the sighs of hearts in adoration\nRoll like incense over a garden of roses\n\nOr like the eternal cooing of wood-pigeons!\n--Cythera was now no more than the barrenest land,\nA rocky desert disturbed by shrill cries.\nBut I caught a glimpse of a singular object!\n\nIt was not a temple in the shade of a grove\nWhere the youthful priestess, amorous of flowers,\nWas walking, her body hot with hidden passion,\nHalf-opening her robe to the passing breezes;\n\nBut behold! as we passed, hugging the shore\nSo that we disturbed the sea-birds with our white sails,\nWe saw it was a gallows with three arms\nOutlined in black like a cypress against the sky.\n\nFerocious birds perched on their feast were savagely\nDestroying the ripe corpse of a hanged man;\nEach plunged his filthy beak as though it were a tool\nInto every corner of that bloody putrescence;\n\nThe eyes were two holes and from the gutted belly\nThe heavy intestines hung down along his thighs\nAnd his torturers, gorged with hideous delights,\nHad completely castrated him with their sharp beaks.\n\nBelow his feet a pack of jealous quadrupeds\nProwled with upraised muzzles and circled round and round;\nOne beast, larger than the others, moved in their midst\nLike a hangman surrounded by his aides.\n\nCytherean, child of a sky so beautiful,\nYou endured those insults in silence\nTo expiate your infamous adorations\nAnd the sins which denied to you a grave.\n\nRidiculous hanged man, your sufferings are mine!\nI felt at the sight of your dangling limbs\nThe long, bitter river of my ancient sorrows\nRise up once more like vomit to my teeth;\n\nBefore you, poor devil of such dear memory\nI felt all the stabbing beaks of the crows\nAnd the jaws of the black panthers who loved so much\nIn other days to tear my flesh to shreds.\n\n--The sky was charming and the sea was smooth;\nFor me thenceforth all was black and bloody,\nAlas! and I had in that allegory\nWrapped up my heart as in a heavy shroud.\n\nOn your isle, O Venus! I found upright only\nA symbolic gallows from which hung my image …\nO! Lord! give me the strength and the courage\nTo contemplate my body and soul without loathing!", + "metadata": { + "translator": "William Aggeler", + "date": { + "year": 1857 + } + } + }, + "what-will-you-say-tonight-poor-solitary-soul": { + "title": "“What will you say tonight, poor solitary soul …”", + "body": "What will you say tonight, poor solitary soul,\nWhat will you say, my heart, heart once so withered,\nTo the kindest, dearest, the fairest of women,\nWhose divine glance suddenly revived you?\n\n--We shall try our pride in singing her praises:\nThere is nothing sweeter than to do her bidding;\nHer spiritual flesh has the fragrance of Angels,\nAnd when she looks upon us we are clothed with light.\n\nBe it in the darkness of night, in solitude,\nOr in the city street among the multitude,\nHer image in the air dances like a torch flame.\n\nSometimes it speaks and says: “I am fair, I command\nThat for your love of me you love only Beauty;\nI am your guardian Angel, your Muse and Madonna.”", + "metadata": { + "translator": "William Aggeler", + "date": { + "year": 1857 + } + } + }, "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": { @@ -3698,6 +4083,29 @@ "month": "february" } } + }, + "you-would-take-the-whole-world-to-bed-with-you": { + "title": "“You would take the whole world to bed with you …”", + "body": "You would take the whole world to bed with you,\nImpure woman! Ennui makes your soul cruel;\nTo exercise your teeth at this singular game,\nYou need a new heart in the rack each day.\nYour eyes, brilliant as shop windows\nOr as blazing lamp-stands at public festivals,\nInsolently use a borrowed power\nWithout ever knowing the law of their beauty.\n\nBlind, deaf machine, fecund in cruelties!\nRemedial instrument, drinker of the world’s blood,\nWhy are you not ashamed and why have you not seen\nIn every looking-glass how your charms are fading?\nWhy have you never shrunk at the enormity\nOf this evil at which you think you are expert,\nWhen Nature, resourceful in her hidden designs,\nMakes use of you, woman, O queen of sin,\nOf you, vile animal,--to fashion a genius?\n\nO foul magnificence! Sublime ignominy!", + "metadata": { + "translator": "William Aggeler", + "date": { + "year": 1857 + } + } + }, + "the-kind-hearted-servant-of-whom-you-were-jealous": { + "title": "“The kind-hearted servant of whom you were jealous …”", + "body": "The kind-hearted servant of whom you were jealous,\nWho sleeps her sleep beneath a humble plot of grass,\nWe must by all means take her some flowers.\nThe dead, ah! the poor dead suffer great pains,\nAnd when October, the pruner of old trees, blows\nHis melancholy breath about their marble tombs,\nSurely they must think the living most ungrateful,\nTo sleep, as they do, between warm, white sheets,\nWhile, devoured by gloomy reveries,\nWithout bedfellows, without pleasant causeries,\nOld, frozen skeletons, belabored by the worm,\nThey feel the drip of winter’s snow,\nThe passing of the years; nor friends, nor family\nReplace the dead flowers that hang on their tombs.\n\nIf, some evening, when the fire-log whistles and sings\nI saw her sit down calmly in the great armchair,\nIf, on a cold, blue night in December,\nI found her ensconced in a corner of my room,\nGrave, having come from her eternal bed\nMaternally to watch over her grown-up child,\nWhat could I reply to that pious soul,\nSeeing tears fall from her hollow eyelids?", + "metadata": { + "translator": "William Aggeler", + "date": { + "year": 1857 + }, + "context": { + "month": "december" + } + } } } }, @@ -8544,17 +8952,28 @@ "the-affliction-of-richard": { "title": "“The Affliction of Richard”", "body": "Love not too much. But how,\nWhen thou hast made me such,\nAnd dost thy gifts bestow,\nHow can I love too much?\nThough I must fear to lose,\nAnd drown my joy in care,\nWith all its thorns I choose\nThe path of love and prayer.\n\nThough thou, I know not why,\nDidst kill my childish trust,\nThat breach with toil did I\nRepair, because I must:\nAnd spite of frighting schemes,\nWith which the fiends of Hell\nBlaspheme thee in my dreams,\nSo far I have hoped well.\n\nBut what the heavenly key,\nWhat marvel in me wrought\nShall quite exculpate thee,\nI have no shadow of thought.\nWhat am I that complain?\nThe love, from which began\nMy question sad and vain,\nJustifies thee to man.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + } + } }, "amiel": { "title": "“Amiel”", "body": "Why, O Maker of all, madest thou man with affections\nTender above thyself, scrupulous and passionate?\nNay, if compassionate thou art, why, thou lover of men,\nHidest thou thy face so pitilessly from us?\nIf thou in priesthoods and altar-glory delitest,\nIn torment and tears of trouble and suffering,\nThen wert thou displeas’d looking on soft human emotion,\nThou must scorn the devout love of a sire to a son.\n’Twas but vainly of old, Man, making Faith to approach thee,\nHeld an imagin’d scheme of providence in honour;\nAnd, to redeem thy praise, judg’d himself cause, took upon him\nHumbly the impossible burden of all misery.\nNow casteth he away his books and logical idols\nLeaveth again his cell of terrified penitence;\nAnd that stony goddess, his first-born fancy, dethroning,\nHath made after his own homelier art another;\nMade sweet Hope, the modest unportion’d daughter of anguish,\nWhose brimming eye sees but dimly what it looketh on;\nDreaming a day when fully, without curse or horrible cross,\nThou wilt deign to reveal her vision of happiness.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + } + } }, "among-the-tombs": { "title": "“Among the Tombs”", "body": "Sad, sombre place, beneath whose antique yews\nI come, unquiet sorrows to control;\nAmid thy silent mossgrown graves to muse\nWith my neglected solitary soul;\nAnd to poetic sadness care confide,\nTrusting sweet Melancholy for my guide:\n\nThey will not ask why in thy shades I stray,\nAmong the tombs finding my rare delight,\nBeneath the sun at indolent noonday,\nOr in the windy moon-enchanted night,\nWho have once reined in their steeds at any shrine,\nAnd given them water from the well divine.--\n\nThe orchards are all ripened, and the sun\nSpots the deserted gleanings with decay;\nThe seeds are perfected: his work is done,\nAnd Autumn lingers but to outsmile the May;\nBidding his tinted leaves glide, bidding clear\nUnto clear skies the birds applaud the year.\n\nLo, here I sit, and to the world I call,\nThe world my solemn fancy leaves behind,\nCome! pass within the inviolable wall,\nCome pride, come pleasure, come distracted mind;\nWithin the fated refuge, hither, turn,\nAnd learn your wisdom ere ’tis late to learn.\n\nCome with me now, and taste the fount of tears;\nFor many eyes have sanctified this spot,\nWhere grief’s unbroken lineage endears\nThe charm untimely Folly injures not,\nAnd slays the intruding thoughts, that overleap\nThe simple fence its holiness doth keep.\n\nRead the worn names of the forgotten dead,\nTheir pompous legends will no smile awake;\nEven the vainglorious title o’er the head\nWins its pride pardon for its sorrow’s sake;\nAnd carven Loves scorn not their dusty prize,\nThough fallen so far from tender sympathies.\n\nHere where a mother laid her only son,\nHere where a lover left his bride, below\nThe treasured names their own are added on\nTo those whom they have followed long ago:\nSealing the record of the tears they shed,\nThat ‘where their treasure there their hearts are fled.’\n\nGrandfather, father, son, and then again\nChild, grandchild, and great-grandchild laid beneath\nNumbered in turn among the sons of men,\nAnd gathered each one in his turn to death:\nWhile he that occupies their house and name\nTo-day,--to-morrow too their grave shall claim.\n\nAnd where are all the spirits? Ah! could we tell\nThe manner of our being when we die,\nAnd see beyond the scene we know so well,\nThe country that so much obscured doth lie!\nWith brightest visions our fond hopes repair,\nOr crown our melancholy with despair;\n\nFrom death, still death, still would a comfort come:\nSince of this world the essential joy must fall\nIn all distributed, in each thing some,\nIn nothing all, and all complete in all;\nTill pleasure, ageing to her full increase,\nPuts on perfection, and is throned in peace.\n\nYea, sweetest peace, unsought-for, undesired,\nLoathed and misnamed, ’tis thee I worship here:\nThough in most black habiliments attired,\nThou art sweet peace, and thee I cannot fear.\nNay, were my last hope quenched, I here would sit\nAnd praise the annihilation of the pit.\n\nNor quickly disenchanted will my feet\nBack to the busy town return, but yet\nLinger, ere I my loving friends would greet,\nOr touch their hands, or share without regret\nThe warmth of that kind hearth, whose sacred ties\nOnly shall dim with tears my dying eyes.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + }, "context": { "month": "october" } @@ -8564,6 +8983,9 @@ "title": "“April”", "body": "Wanton with long delay the gay spring leaping cometh;\nThe blackthorn starreth now his bough on the eve of May:\nAll day in the sweet box-tree the bee for pleasure hummeth:\nThe cuckoo sends afloat his note on the air all day.\n\nNow dewy nights again and rain in gentle shower\nAt root of tree and flower have quenched the winter’s drouth:\nOn high the hot sun smiles, and banks of cloud uptower\nIn bulging heads that crowd for miles the dazzling south.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + }, "context": { "month": "april", "month_epoch": "late" @@ -8573,12 +8995,19 @@ "awake-my-heart": { "title": "“Awake, My Heart”", "body": "Awake, my heart, to be loved, awake, awake!\n\nThe darkness silvers away, the morn doth break,\nIt leaps in the sky: unrisen lustres slake\nThe o’ertaken moon. Awake, O heart, awake!\n\nShe too that loveth awaketh and hopes for thee:\nHer eyes already have sped the shades that flee,\nAlready they watch the path thy feet shall take:\nAwake, O heart, to be loved, awake, awake!\n\nAnd if thou tarry from her,--if this could be,--\nShe cometh herself, O heart, to be loved, to thee;\nFor thee would unashamed herself forsake:\nAwake, to be loved, my heart, awake, awake!\n\nAwake! The land is scattered with light, and see,\nUncanopied sleep is flying from field and tree;\nAnd blossoming boughs of April in laughter shake:\nAwake, O heart, to be loved, awake, awake!\n\nLo, all things wake and tarry and look for thee:\nShe looketh and saith, “O sun, now bring him to me.\nCome, more adored, O adored, for his coming’s sake,\nAnd awake, my heart, to be loved, awake, awake!”", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + } + } }, "the-birds-that-sing-on-autumn-eves": { "title": "“The Birds that Sing on Autumn Eves”", "body": "The birds that sing on autumn eves\nAmong the golden-tinted leaves,\nAre but the few that true remain\nOf budding May’s rejoicing train.\n\nLike autumn flowers that brave the frost,\nAnd make their show when hope is lost,\nThese ’mong the fruits and mellow scent\nMourn not the high-sunned summer spent.\n\nTheir notes thro’ all the jocund spring\nWere mixed in merry musicking:\nThey sang for love the whole day long,\nBut now their love is all for song.\n\nNow each hath perfected his lay\nTo praise the year that hastes away:\nThey sit on boughs apart, and vie\nIn single songs and rich reply:\n\nAnd oft as in the copse I hear\nThese anthems of the dying year,\nThe passions, once her peace that stole,\nWith flattering love my heart console.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + }, "context": { "month": "october" } @@ -8600,6 +9029,9 @@ "title": "“Crown Winter with Green”", "body": "Crown Winter with green,\nAnd give him good drink\nTo physic his spleen\nOr ever he think.\n\nHis mouth to the bowl,\nHis feet to the fire;\nAnd let him, good soul,\nNo comfort desire.\n\nSo merry he be,\nI bid him abide:\nAnd merry be we\nThis good Yuletide.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + }, "context": { "liturgy": "christmastide" } @@ -8608,12 +9040,19 @@ "dejection": { "title": "“Dejection”", "body": "Wherefore to-night so full of care,\nMy soul, revolving hopeless strife,\nPointing at hindrance, and the bare\nPainful escapes of fitful life?\n\nShaping the doom that may befall\nBy precedent of terror past:\nBy love dishonoured, and the call\nOf friendship slighted at the last?\n\nBy treasured names, the little store\nThat memory out of wreck could save\nOf loving hearts, that gone before\nCall their old comrade to the grave?\n\nO soul, be patient: thou shall find\nA little matter mend all this;\nSome strain of music to thy mind,\nSome praise for skill not spent amiss.\n\nAgain shall pleasure overflow\nThy cup with sweetness, thou shalt taste\nNothing but sweetness, and shalt grow\nHalf sad for sweetness run to waste.\n\nO happy life! I hear thee sing,\nO rare delight of mortal stuff!\nI praise my days for all they bring,\nYet are they only not enough.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + } + } }, "dunstone-hill": { "title": "“Dunstone Hill”", "body": "A cottage built of native stone\nStands on the mountain-moor alone,\nHigh from man’s dwelling on the wide\nAnd solitary mountain-side,\n\nThe purple mountain-side, where all\nThe dewy night the meteors fall,\nAnd the pale stars musically set\nTo the watery bells of the rivulet,\n\nAnd all day long, purple and dun,\nThe vast moors stretch beneath the sun,\nThe wide wind passeth fresh and hale,\nAnd whirring grouse and blackcock sail.\n\nAh, heavenly Peace, where dost thou dwell?\nSurely ’twas here thou hadst a cell,\nTill flaming Love, wandering astray\nWith fury and blood, drove thee away.--\n\nFar down across the valley deep\nThe town is hid in smoky sleep,\nAt moonless nightfall wakening slow\nUpon the dark with lurid glow:\n\nBeyond, afar the widening view\nMerges into the soften’d blue,\nCornfield and forest, hill and stream,\nFair England in her pastoral dream.\n\nTo one who looketh from this hill\nLife seems asleep, all is so still:\nNought passeth save the travelling shade\nOf clouds on high that float and fade:\n\nNor since this landscape saw the sun\nMight other motion o’er it run,\nTill to man’s scheming heart it came\nTo make a steed of steel and flame.\n\nHim may you mark in every vale\nMoving beneath his fleecy trail,\nAnd tell whene’er the motions die\nWhere every town and hamlet lie.\n\nHe gives the distance life to-day,\nRushing upon his level’d way\nFrom man’s abode to man’s abode,\nAnd mocks the Roman’s vaunted road,\n\nWhich o’er the moor purple and dun\nStill wanders white beneath the sun,\nDeserted now of men and lone\nSave for this cot of native stone.\n\nThere ever by the whiten’d wall\nStandeth a maiden fair and tall,\nAnd all day long in vacant dream\nWatcheth afar the flying steam.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + }, "context": { "season": "summer" } @@ -8622,12 +9061,19 @@ "the-duteous-heart": { "title": "“The Duteous Heart”", "body": "Spirit of grace and beauty,\nWhom men so much miscall:\nMaidenly, modest duty,\nI cry thee fair befall!\n\nPity for them that shun thee,\nSorrow for them that hate,\nGlory, hath any won thee\nTo dwell in high estate!\n\nBut rather thou delightest\nTo walk in humble ways,\nKeeping thy favour brightest\nUncrown’d by foolish praise;\nIn such retirement dwelling,\nWhere, hath the worldling been,\nHe straight returneth telling\nOf sights that he hath seen,\n\nOf simple men and truest\nFaces of girl and boy;\nThe souls whom thou enduest\nWith gentle peace and joy.\n\nFair from my song befall thee,\nSpirit of beauty and grace!\nMen that so much miscall thee\nHave never seen thy face.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + } + } }, "elegy": { "title": "“Elegy”", "body": "Clear and gentle stream,\nKnown and loved so long,\nThat hast heard the song\nAnd the idle dream\nOf my boyish day;\nWhile I once again\nDown thy margin stray,\nIn the selfsame strain\nStill my voice is spent,\nWith my old lament,\nAnd my idle dream,\nClear and gentle stream!\n\nWhere my old seat was\nHere again I sit,\nWhere the long boughs knit\nOver stream and graís\nThick translucent eaves:\nWhere back eddies play\nShipwreck with the leaves,\nAnd the proud swans stray,\nSailing one by one\nOut of stream and sun,\nAnd the fish lie cool\nIn their chosen pool.\n\nMany an afternoon\nOf the summer day\nDreaming here I lay;\nAnd I know how soon\nIdly at its hour\nFirst the deep bell hums\nFrom the minster tower,\nAnd then evening comes,\nCreeping up the glade,\nWith her lengthening shade,\nAnd the tardy boon\nOf her brightening moon.\n\nClear and gentle stream,\nEre again I go\nWhere thou dost not flow,\nWell does it beseem\nThee to hear again\nOnce my youthful song,\nThat familiar strain\nSilent now so long:\nBe as I content\nWith my old lament,\nAnd my idle dream,\nClear and gentle stream!", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + }, "context": { "season": "summer" } @@ -8636,17 +9082,28 @@ "eros": { "title": "“Eros”", "body": "Why hast thou nothing in thy face?\nThou idol of the human race,\nThou tyrant of the human heart,\nThe flower of lovely youth that art;\nYea, and that standest in thy youth\nAn image of eternal Truth,\nWith thy exuberant flesh so fair,\nThat only Pheidias might compare,\nEre from his chaste marmoreal form\nTime had decayed the colours warm;\nLike to his gods in thy proud dress,\nThy starry sheen of nakedness.\n\nSurely thy body is thy mind,\nFor in thy face is nought to find,\nOnly thy soft unchristen’d smile,\nThat shadows neither love nor guile,\nBut shameless will and power immense,\nIn secret sensuous innocence.\n\nO king of joy, what is thy thought?\nI dream thou knowest it is nought,\nAnd wouldst in darkness come, but thou\nMakest the light where’er thou go.\nAh yet no victim of thy grace,\nNone who e’er long’d for thy embrace,\nHath cared to look upon thy face.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + } + } }, "the-evening-darkens-over": { "title": "“The Evening Darkens Over”", "body": "The evening darkens over\nAfter a day so bright\nThe windcapt waves discover\nThat wild will be the night.\nThere’s sound of distant thunder.\n\nThe latest sea-birds hover\nAlong the cliff’s sheer height;\nAs in the memory wander\nLast flutterings of delight,\nWhite wings lost on the white.\n\nThere’s not a ship in sight;\nAnd as the sun goes under\nThick clouds conspire to cover\nThe moon that should rise yonder.\nThou art alone, fond lover.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + } + } }, "first-spring-morning": { "title": "“First Spring Morning”", "body": "Look! Look! the spring is come:\nO feel the gentle air,\nThat wanders thro’ the boughs to burst\nThe thick buds everywhere!\nThe birds are glad to see\nThe high unclouded sun:\nWinter is fled away, they sing,\nThe gay time is begun.\n\nAdown the meadows green\nLet us go dance and play,\nAnd look for violets in the lane,\nAnd ramble far away\nTo gather primroses,\nThat in the woodland grow,\nAnd hunt for oxlips, or if yet\nThe blades of bluebells show:\n\nThere the old woodman gruff\nHath half the coppice cut,\nAnd weaves the hurdles all day long\nBeside his willow hut.\nWe’ll steal on him, and then\nStartle him, all with glee\nSinging our song of winter fled\nAnd summer soon to be.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + }, "context": { "month": "march", "month_epoch": "late" @@ -8657,6 +9114,9 @@ "title": "“The Garden in September”", "body": "Now thin mists temper the slow-ripening beams\nOf the September sun: his golden gleams\nOn gaudy flowers shine, that prank the rows\nOf high-grown hollyhocks, and all tall shows\nThat Autumn flaunteth in his bushy bowers;\nWhere tomtits, hanging from the drooping heads\nOf giant sunflowers, peck the nutty seeds;\nAnd in the feathery aster bees on wing\nSeize and set free the honied flowers,\nTill thousand stars leap with their visiting:\nWhile ever across the path mazily flit,\nUnpiloted in the sun,\nThe dreamy butterflies\nWith dazzling colours powdered and soft glooms,\nWhite, black and crimson stripes, and peacock eyes,\nOr on chance flowers sit,\nWith idle effort plundering one by one\nThe nectaries of deepest-throated blooms.\n\nWith gentle flaws the western breeze\nInto the garden saileth,\nScarce here and there stirring the single trees,\nFor his sharpness he vaileth:\nSo long a comrade of the bearded corn,\nNow from the stubbles whence the shocks are borne,\nO’er dewy lawns he turns to stray,\nAs mindful of the kisses and soft play\nWherewith he enamoured the light-hearted May,\nEre he deserted her;\nLover of fragrance, and too late repents;\nNor more of heavy hyacinth now may drink,\nNor spicy pink,\nNor summer’s rose, nor garnered lavender,\nBut the few lingering scents\nOf streakèd pea, and gillyflower, and stocks\nOf courtly purple, and aromatic phlox.\n\nAnd at all times to hear are drowsy tones\nOf dizzy flies, and humming drones,\nWith sudden flap of pigeon wings in the sky,\nOr the wild cry\nOf thirsty rooks, that scour ascare\nThe distant blue, to watering as they fare\nWith creaking pinions, or--on business bent,\nIf aught their ancient polity displease,--\nCome gathering to their colony, and there\nSettling in ragged parliament,\nSome stormy council hold in the high trees.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + }, "context": { "month": "september" } @@ -8666,6 +9126,9 @@ "title": "“A Hymn of Nature”", "body": "# I.\n\nPower eternal, power unknown, uncreate:\nForce of force, fate of fate.\n\nBeauty and light are thy seeing,\nWisdom and right thy decreeing,\nLife of life is thy being.\nIn the smile of thine infinite starry gleam,\nWithout beginning or end,\nMeasure or number,\nBeyond time and space,\nWithout foe or friend,\nIn the void of thy formless embrace,\nAll things pass as a dream\nOf thine unbroken slumber.\n\n\n# II.\n\nGloom and the night are thine:\nOn the face of thy mirror darkness and terror,\nThe smoke of thy blood, the frost of thy breath.\n\nIn silence and woful awe\nThy harrying angels of death\nDestroy whate’er thou makest--\nMakest, destroyest, destroyest and makest.\nThy gems of life thou dost squander,\nTheir virginal beauty givest to plunder,\nDoomest to uttermost regions of age-long ice\nTo starve and expire:\nConsumest with glance of fire,\nOr back to confusion shakest\nWith earthquake, elemental storm and thunder.\n\n\n# III.\n\nIn ways of beauty and peace\nFair desire, companion of man,\nLeadeth the children of earth.\n\nAs when the storm doth cease,\nThe loving sun the clouds dispelleth,\nAnd woodland walks are sweet in spring;\nThe birds they merrily sing\nAnd every flower-bud swelleth.\nOr where the heav’ns o’erspan\nThe lonely downs\nWhen summer is high:\nBelow their breezy crowns\nAnd grassy steep\nSpreadeth the infinite smile of the sunlit sea;\nWhereon the white ships swim,\nAnd steal to havens far\nAcross the horizon dim,\nOr lie becalm’d upon the windless deep,\nLike thoughts of beauty and peace,\nWhen the storm doth cease,\nAnd fair desire, companion of man,\nLeadeth the children of earth.\n\n\n# IV.\n\nMan, born to toil, in his labour rejoiceth;\nHis voice is heard in the morn:\nHe armeth his hand and sallieth forth\nTo engage with the generous teeming earth,\nAnd drinks from the rocky rills\nThe laughter of life.\n\nOr else, in crowded cities gathering close,\nHe traffics morn and eve\nIn thronging market-halls;\nOr within echoing walls\nOf busy arsenals\nWeldeth the stubborn iron to engines vast;\nOr tends the thousand looms\nWhere, with black smoke o’ercast,\nThe land mourns in deep glooms.\n\nLife is toil, and life is good:\nThere in loving brotherhood\nBeateth the nation’s heart of fire.\nStrife! Strife! The strife is strong!\nThere battle thought and voice, and spirits conspire\nIn joyous dance around the tree of life,\nAnd from the ringing choir\nRiseth the praise of God from hearts in tuneful song.\n\n\n# V.\n\nHark! What spirit doth entreat\nThe love-obedient air?\nAll the pomp of his delight\nRevels on the ravisht night,\nWandering wilful, soaring fair:\nThere! ’Tis there, ’tis there.\nLike a flower of primal fire\nLate redeem’d by man’s desire.\n\nAway, on wings away\nMy spirit far hath flown,\nTo a land of love and peace,\nOf beauty unknown.\nThe world that earth-born man,\nBy evil undismay’d,\nOut of the breath of God\nHath for his heaven made.\n\nWhere all his dreams soe’er\nOf holy things and fair\nIn splendour are upgrown,\nWhich thro’ the toilsome years\nMartyrs and faithful seers\nAnd poets with holy tears\nOf hope have sown.\n\nThere, beyond power of ill,\nIn joy and blessing crown’d,\nChrist with His lamp of truth\nSitteth upon the hill\nOf everlasting youth,\nAnd calls His saints around.\n\n\n# VI.\n\nSweet compassionate tears\nHave dimm’d my earthly sight,\nTears of love, the showers wherewith\nThe eternal morn is bright:\nDews of the heav’nly spheres.\nWith tears my eyes are wet,\nTears not of vain regret,\nTears of no lost delight,\nDews of the heav’nly spheres\nHave dimm’d my earthly sight,\nSweet compassionate tears.\n\n\n# VII.\n\nGird on thy sword, O man, thy strength endue,\nIn fair desire thine earth-born joy renew.\nLive thou thy life beneath the making sun\nTill Beauty, Truth, and Love in thee are one.\n\nThro’ thousand ages hath thy childhood run:\nOn timeless ruin hath thy glory been:\nFrom the forgotten night of loves fordone\nThou risest in the dawn of hopes unseen.\n\nHigher and higher shall thy thoughts aspire,\nUnto the stars of heaven, and pass away,\nAnd earth renew the buds of thy desire\nIn fleeting blooms of everlasting day.\n\nThy work with beauty crown, thy life with love;\nThy mind with truth uplift to God above:\nFor whom all is, from whom was all begun,\nIn whom all Beauty, Truth, and Love are one.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + }, "context": { "season": "summer" } @@ -8675,6 +9138,9 @@ "title": "“I Climb the Mossy Bank”", "body": "I climb the mossy bank of the glade:\nMy love awaiteth me in the shade.\n\nShe holdeth a book that she never heedeth:\nIn Goddës work her spirit readeth.\n\nShe is all to me, and I to her:\nWhen we embrace, the stars confer.\n\nO my love, from beyond the sky\nI am calling thy heart, and who but I?\n\nFresh as love is the breeze of June,\nIn the dappled shade of the summer noon.\n\nCatullus, throwing his heart away,\nGave fewer kisses every day.\n\nHeracleitus, spending his youth\nIn search of wisdom, had less of truth.\n\nFlame of fire was the poet’s desire:\nThe thinker found that life was fire.\n\nO my love! my song is done:\nMy kiss hath both their fires in one.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + }, "context": { "month": "june" } @@ -8683,15 +9149,9 @@ "i-love-all-beauteous-things": { "title": "“I Love All Beauteous Things”", "body": "I love all beauteous things,\nI seek and adore them;\nGod hath no better praise,\nAnd man in his hasty days\nIs honoured for them.\n\nI too will something make\nAnd joy in the making;\nAltho’ to-morrow it seem\nLike the empty words of a dream\nRemembered on waking.", - "metadata": {} - }, - "i-never-shall-love-the-snow-again": { - "title": "“I Never Shall Love the Snow Again”", - "body": "I never shall love the snow again\nSince Maurice died:\nWith corniced drift it blocked the lane\nAnd sheeted in a desolate plain\nThe country side.\n\nThe trees with silvery rime bedight\nTheir branches bare.\nBy day no sun appeared; by night\nThe hidden moon shed thievish light\nIn the misty air.\n\nWe fed the birds that flew around\nIn flocks to be fed:\nNo shelter in holly or brake they found.\nThe speckled thrush on the frozen ground\nLay frozen and dead.\n\nWe skated on stream and pond; we cut\nThe crinching snow\nTo Doric temple or Arctic hut;\nWe laughed and sang at nightfall, shut\nBy the fireside glow.\n\nYet grudged we our keen delights before\nMaurice should come.\nWe said, In-door or out-of-door\nWe shall love life for a month or more,\nWhen he is home.\n\nThey brought him home; ’twas two days late\nFor Christmas day:\nWrapped in white, in solemn state,\nA flower in his hand, all still and straight\nOur Maurice lay.\n\nAnd two days ere the year outgave\nWe laid him low.\nThe best of us truly were not brave,\nWhen we laid Maurice down in his grave\nUnder the snow.", "metadata": { - "context": { - "month": "december", - "day": "27" + "date": { + "year": 1890 } } }, @@ -8699,6 +9159,9 @@ "title": "“I Praise the Tender Flower”", "body": "I praise the tender flower,\nThat on a mournful day\nBloomed in my garden bower\nAnd made the winter gay.\nIts loveliness contented\nMy heart tormented.\n\nI praise the gentle maid\nWhose happy voice and smile\nTo confidence betrayed\nMy doleful heart awhile:\nAnd gave my spirit deploring\nFresh wings for soaring.\n\nThe maid for very fear\nOf love I durst not tell:\nThe rose could never hear,\nThough I bespake her well:\nSo in my song I bind them\nFor all to find them.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + }, "context": { "month": "february" } @@ -8708,15 +9171,34 @@ "title": "“I Will Not Let Thee Go”", "body": "I will not let thee go.\nEnds all our month-long love in this?\nCan it be summed up so,\nQuit in a single kiss?\nI will not let thee go.\n\nI will not let thee go.\nIf thy words’ breath could scare thy deeds,\nAs the soft south can blow\nAnd toss the feathered seeds,\nThen might I let thee go.\n\nI will not let thee go.\nHad not the great sun seen, I might;\nOr were he reckoned slow\nTo bring the false to light,\nThen might I let thee go.\n\nI will not let thee go.\nThe stars that crowd the summer skies\nHave watched us so below\nWith all their million eyes,\nI dare not let thee go.\n\nI will not let thee go.\nHave we chid the changeful moon,\nNow rising late, and now\nBecause she set too soon,\nAnd shall I let thee go?\n\nI will not let thee go.\nHave not the young flowers been content,\nPlucked ere their buds could blow,\nTo seal our sacrament?\nI cannot let thee go.\n\nI will not let thee go.\nI hold thee by too many bands:\nThou sayest farewell, and lo!\nI have thee by the hands,\nAnd will not let thee go.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + }, "context": { "season": "summer" } } }, + "i-never-shall-love-the-snow-again": { + "title": "“I never shall love the snow again …”", + "body": "I never shall love the snow again\nSince Maurice died:\nWith corniced drift it blocked the lane\nAnd sheeted in a desolate plain\nThe country side.\n\nThe trees with silvery rime bedight\nTheir branches bare.\nBy day no sun appeared; by night\nThe hidden moon shed thievish light\nIn the misty air.\n\nWe fed the birds that flew around\nIn flocks to be fed:\nNo shelter in holly or brake they found.\nThe speckled thrush on the frozen ground\nLay frozen and dead.\n\nWe skated on stream and pond; we cut\nThe crinching snow\nTo Doric temple or Arctic hut;\nWe laughed and sang at nightfall, shut\nBy the fireside glow.\n\nYet grudged we our keen delights before\nMaurice should come.\nWe said, In-door or out-of-door\nWe shall love life for a month or more,\nWhen he is home.\n\nThey brought him home; ’twas two days late\nFor Christmas day:\nWrapped in white, in solemn state,\nA flower in his hand, all still and straight\nOur Maurice lay.\n\nAnd two days ere the year outgave\nWe laid him low.\nThe best of us truly were not brave,\nWhen we laid Maurice down in his grave\nUnder the snow.", + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + }, + "context": { + "month": "december", + "day": "27" + } + } + }, "in-still-midsummer-night": { "title": "“In Still Midsummer Night”", "body": "In still midsummer night\nWhen the moon is late\nAnd the stars all watery and white\nFor her coming wait,\n\nA spirit, whose eyes are possest\nBy wonder new,\nPasseth--her arms upon her breast\nEnwrapt from the dew\nIn a raiment of azure fold\nWith diaper\nOf flower’d embroidery of gold\nBestarr’d with silver.\n\n\nThe daisy folk are awake\nTheir carpet to spread,\nAnd the thron’d stars gazing on her make\nFresh crowns for her head,\n\nNetted in her floating hair\nAs she drifteth free\nBetween the starriness of the air\nAnd the starry lea,\n\nFrom the silent-shadow’d vale\nBy the west wind drawn\nAloft to melt into the pale\nMoonrise of dawn.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + }, "context": { "month": "july" } @@ -8726,6 +9208,9 @@ "title": "“Indolence”", "body": "We left the city when the summer day\nHad verged already on its hot decline,\nAnd charmèd Indolence in languor lay\nIn her gay gardens, ’neath her towers divine:\n“Farewell,” we said, “dear city of youth and dream!”\nAnd in our boat we stepped and took the stream.\n\nAll through that idle afternoon we strayed\nUpon our proposed travel well begun,\nAs loitering by the woodland’s dreamy shade,\nPast shallow islets floating in the sun,\nOr searching down the banks for rarer flowers\nWe lingered out the pleasurable hours.\n\nTill when that loveliest came, which mowers home\nTurns from their longest labour, as we steered\nAlong a straitened channel flecked with foam,\nWe lost our landscape wide, and slowly neared\nAn ancient bridge, that like a blind wall lay\nLow on its buried vaults to block the way.\n\nThen soon the narrow tunnels broader showed,\nWhere with its arches three it sucked the mass\nOf water, that in swirl thereunder flowed,\nOr stood piled at the piers waiting to pass;\nAnd pulling for the middle span, we drew\nThe tender blades aboard and floated through.\n\nBut past the bridge what change we found below!\nThe stream, that all day long had laughed and played\nBetwixt the happy shires, ran dark and slow,\nAnd with its easy flood no murmur made:\nAnd weeds spread on its surface, and about\nThe stagnant margin reared their stout heads out.\n\nUpon the left high elms, with giant wood\nSkirting the water-meadows, interwove\nTheir slumbrous crowns, o’ershadowing where they stood\nThe floor and heavy pillars of the grove:\nAnd in the shade, through reeds and sedges dank,\nA footpath led along the moated bank.\n\nAcross, all down the right, an old brick wall,\nAbove and o’er the channel, red did lean;\nHere buttressed up, and bulging there to fall,\nTufted with grass and plants and lichen green;\nAnd crumbling to the flood, which at its base\nSlid gently nor disturbed its mirrored face.\n\nSheer on the wall the houses rose, their backs\nAll windowless, neglected and awry,\nWith tottering coigns, and crooked chimney stacks;\nAnd here and there an unused door, set high\nAbove the fragments of its mouldering stair,\nWith rail and broken step led out on air.\n\nBeyond, deserted wharfs and vacant sheds,\nWith empty boats and barges moored along,\nAnd rafts half-sunken, fringed with weedy shreds,\nAnd sodden beams, once soaked to season strong.\nNo sight of man, nor sight of life, no stroke,\nNo voice the somnolence and silence broke.\n\nThen I who rowed leant on my oar, whose drip\nFell without sparkle, and I rowed no more;\nAnd he that steered moved neither hand nor lip,\nBut turned his wondering eye from shore to shore;\nAnd our trim boat let her swift motion die,\nBetween the dim reflections floating by.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + }, "context": { "month": "july" } @@ -8735,6 +9220,9 @@ "title": "“Invitation to the Country”", "body": "Again with pleasant green\nHas Spring renewed the wood,\nAnd where the bare trunks stood\nAre leafy arbours seen;\nAnd back on budding boughs\nCome birds, to court and pair,\nWhose rival amorous vows\nAmaze the scented air.\n\nThe streams unbound anew\nRefill their mossy banks,\nThe forward season pranks\nWith flowers of varied hue:\nAnd scattered down the meads\nFrom hour to hour unfold\nA thousand buds and beads\nIn stars and cups of gold.\n\nNow hear, and see, and note,\nThe farms are all astir,\nAnd every labourer\nHas doffed his winter coat;\nAnd how with specks of white\nThey dot the brown hillside,\nOr jaunt and sing outright\nAs by their teams they stride.\n\nThey sing to feel the Sun\nRegain his wanton strength;\nTo know the year at length\nRewards their labour done;\nTo see the rootless stake\nThey set bare in the ground,\nBurst into leaf, and shake\nIts grateful scent around.\n\nAh now an evil lot\nIs his who toils for gain,\nWhere crowded chimneys stain\nThe heavens his choice forgot;\n’Tis on the blighted trees\nThat deck his garden dim,\nAnd in the tainted breeze\nThat sweet spring comes to him.\n\nFar rather would I choose\nThe grace of brutes that bask,\nThan in an eager task,\nMy inborn honour lose:\nWould rather far enjoy\nThe body, than invent\nA duty, to destroy\nThe ease which nature sent;\n\nAnd country life I praise\nAnd lead, because I find\nThe philosophic mind\nCan take no middle ways;\nShe will not leave her love\nTo mix with men, her art\nIs all to strive above\nThe crowd, or stand apart.\n\nThrice happy he, the rare\nPrometheus, who can play\nWith hidden things, and lay\nNew realms of nature bare:\nWhose venturous step has trod\nHell underfoot, and won\nA crown from man and God\nFor all that he has done.--\n\nThat highest gift of all,\nSince crabbèd fate did flood\nMy heart with sluggish blood,\nI look not mine to call;\nBut, like a truant freed,\nFly to the woods, and claim\nA pleasure for the deed\nOf my inglorious name.\n\nAnd am content, denied\nThe best, in choosing right;\nFor Nature can delight\nFancies unoccupied\nWith ecstasies so sweet\nAs none can even guess,\nWho walk not with the feet\nOf joy in idleness.\n\nThen leave your joyless ways,\nMy friend, my joys to see.\nThe day you come shall be\nThe choice of chosen days:\nYou shall be lost, and learn\nNew being, and forget\nThe world, till your return\nShall bring your first regret.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + }, "context": { "month": "may" } @@ -8744,6 +9232,9 @@ "title": "“January”", "body": "Cold is the winter day, misty and dark:\nThe sunless sky with faded gleams is rent:\nAnd patches of thin snow outlying, mark\nThe landscape with a drear disfigurement.\n\nThe trees their mournful branches lift aloft:\nThe oak with knotty twigs is full of trust,\nWith bud-thronged bough the cherry in the croft;\nThe chestnut holds her gluey knops upthrust.\n\nNo birds sing, but the starling chaps his bill\nAnd chatters mockingly; the newborn lambs\nWithin their strawbuilt fold beneath the hill\nAnswer with plaintive cry their bleating dams.\n\nTheir voices melt in welcome dreams of spring,\nGreen grass and leafy trees and sunny skies:\nMy fancy decks the woods, the thrushes sing,\nMeadows are gay, bees hum and scents arise.\n\nAnd God the Maker doth my heart grow bold\nTo praise for wintry works not understood,\nWho all the worlds and ages doth behold,\nEvil and good as one, and all as good.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + }, "context": { "month": "january" } @@ -8752,12 +9243,19 @@ "joy": { "title": "“Joy”", "body": "Joy, sweetest lifeborn joy, where dost thou dwell?\nUpon the formless moments of our being\nFlitting, to mock the ear that heareth well,\nTo escape the trainèd eye that strains in seeing,\nDost thou fly with us whither we are fleeing;\nOr home in our creations, to withstand\nBlack-wingèd death, that slays the making hand?\n\nThe making mind, that must untimely perish\nAmidst its work which time may not destroy,\nThe beauteous forms which man shall love to cherish,\nThe glorious songs that combat earth’s annoy?\nThou dost dwell here, I know, divinest Joy:\nBut they who build thy towers fair and strong,\nOf all that toil, feel most of care and wrong.\n\nSense is so tender, O and hope so high,\nThat common pleasures mock their hope and sense;\nAnd swifter than doth lightning from the sky\nThe ecstasy they pine for flashes hence,\nLeaving the darkness and the woe immense,\nWherewith it seems no thread of life was woven,\nNor doth the track remain where once ’twas cloven.\n\nAnd heaven and all the stable elements\nThat guard God’s purpose mock us, though the mind\nBe spent in searching: for his old intents\nWe see were never for our joy designed:\nThey shine as doth the bright sun on the blind,\nOr like his pensioned stars, that hymn above\nHis praise, but not toward us, that God is Love.\n\nFor who so well hath wooed the maiden hours\nAs quite to have won the worth of their rich show,\nTo rob the night of mystery, or the flowers\nOf their sweet delicacy ere they go?\nNay, even the dear occasion when we know,\nWe miss the joy, and on the gliding day\nThe special glories float and pass away.\n\nOnly life’s common plod: still to repair\nThe body and the thing which perisheth:\nThe soil, the smutch, the toil and ache and wear,\nThe grinding enginry of blood and breath,\nPain’s random darts, the heartless spade of death;\nAll is but grief, and heavily we call\nOn the last terror for the end of all.\n\nThen comes the happy moment: not a stir\nIn any tree, no portent in the sky:\nThe morn doth neither hasten nor defer,\nThe morrow hath no name to call it by,\nBut life and joy are one,--we know not why,--\nAs though our very blood long breathless lain\nHad tasted of the breath of God again.\n\nAnd having tasted it I speak of it,\nAnd praise him thinking how I trembled then\nWhen his touch strengthened me, as now I sit\nIn wonder, reaching out beyond my ken,\nReaching to turn the day back, and my pen\nUrging to tell a tale which told would seem\nThe witless phantasy of them that dream.\n\nBut O most blessèd truth, for truth thou art,\nAbide thou with me till my life shall end.\nDivinity hath surely touched my heart;\nI have possessed more joy than earth can lend:\nI may attain what time shall never spend.\nOnly let not my duller days destroy\nThe memory of thy witness and my joy.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + } + } }, "june-is-come": { "title": "“June is Come”", "body": "When June is come, then all the day\nI’ll sit with my love in the scented hay:\nAnd watch the sunshot palaces high,\nThat the white clouds build in the breezy sky.\n\nShe singeth, and I do make her a song,\nAnd read sweet poems the whole day long:\nUnseen as we lie in our haybuilt home.\nO life is delight when June is come.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + }, "context": { "month": "june", "month_epoch": "early" @@ -8768,6 +9266,9 @@ "title": "“The Last Week of February”", "body": "Hark to the merry birds, hark how they sing!\nAlthough ’tis not yet spring\nAnd keen the air;\nHale Winter, half resigning ere he go,\nDoth to his heiress shew\nHis kingdom fair.\n\nIn patient russet is his forest spread,\nAll bright with bramble red,\nWith beechen moss\nAnd holly sheen: the oak silver and stark\nSunneth his aged bark\nAnd wrinkled boss.\n\nBut neath the ruin of the withered brake\nPrimroses now awake\nFrom nursing shades:\nThe crumpled carpet of the dry leaves brown\nAvails not to keep down\nThe hyacinth blades.\n\nThe hazel hath put forth his tassels ruffed;\nThe willow’s flossy tuft\nHath slipped him free:\nThe rose amid her ransacked orange hips\nBraggeth the tender tips\nOf bowers to be.\n\nA black rook stirs the branches here and there,\nForaging to repair\nHis broken home:\nAnd hark, on the ash-boughs! Never thrush did sing\nLouder in praise of spring,\nWhen spring is come.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + }, "context": { "month": "february", "month_epoch": "late" @@ -8778,6 +9279,9 @@ "title": "“Late Spring Evening”", "body": "I saw the Virgin-mother clad in green,\nWalking the sprinkled meadows at sundown;\nWhile yet the moon’s cold flame was hung between\nThe day and night, above the dusky town:\nI saw her brighter than the Western gold,\nWhereto she faced in splendour to behold.\n\nHer dress was greener than the tenderest leaf\nThat trembled in the sunset glare aglow:\nHerself more delicate than is the brief,\nPink apple-blossom, that May showers lay low,\nAnd more delicious than’s the earliest streak\nThe blushing rose shows of her crimson cheek.\n\nWith jealous grace her idle ears to please,\nA music entered, making passion fain:\nThree nightingales sat singing in the trees,\nAnd praised the Goddess for the fallen rain;\nWhich yet their unseen motions did arouse,\nOr parting Zephyrs shook out from the boughs.\n\nAnd o’er the treetops, scattered in mid air,\nThe exhausted clouds, laden with crimson light,\nFloated, or seemed to sleep; and, highest there,\nOne planet broke the lingering ranks of night;\nDaring day’s company, so he might spy\nThe Virgin-queen once with his watchful eye.\n\nAnd when I saw her, then I worshipped her,\nAnd said,--O bounteous Spring, O beauteous Spring,\nMother of all my years, thou who dost stir\nMy heart to adore thee and my tongue to sing,\nFlower of my fruit, of my heart’s blood the fire,\nOf all my satisfaction the desire!\n\nHow art thou every year more beautiful,\nYounger for all the winters thou hast cast:\nAnd I, for all my love grows, grow more dull,\nDecaying with each season overpast!\nIn vain to teach him love must man employ thee,\nThe more he learns the less he can enjoy thee.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + }, "context": { "month": "may", "month_epoch": "late" @@ -8787,7 +9291,11 @@ "laus-deo": { "title": "“Laus Deo”", "body": "Let praise devote thy work, and skill employ\nThy whole mind, and thy heart be lost in joy.\nWell-doing bringeth pride, this constant thought\nHumility, that thy best done is nought.\n\nMan doeth nothing well, be it great or small,\nSave to praise God; but that hath savèd all:\nFor God requires no more than thou hast done,\nAnd takes thy work to bless it for his own.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + } + } }, "london-snow": { "title": "“London Snow”", @@ -8814,6 +9322,9 @@ "title": "“May”", "body": "The hill pines were sighing,\nO’ercast and chill was the day:\nA mist in the valley lying\nBlotted the pleasant May.\n\nBut deep in the glen’s bosom\nSummer slept in the fire\nOf the odorous gorse-blossom\nAnd the hot scent of the brier.\n\nA ribald cuckoo clamoured,\nAnd out of the copse the stroke\nOf the iron axe that hammered\nThe iron heart of the oak.\n\nAnon a sound appalling,\nAs a hundred years of pride\nCrashed, in the silence falling:\nAnd the shadowy pine-trees sighed.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + }, "context": { "month": "may" } @@ -8823,6 +9334,9 @@ "title": "“Morning Hymn”", "body": "O golden Sun, whose ray\nMy path illumineth:\nLight of the circling day,\nWhose night is birth and death:\n\nThat dost not stint the prime\nOf wise and strong, nor stay\nThe changeful ordering time,\nThat brings their sure decay:\n\nThough thou, the central sphere,\nDost seem to turn around\nThy creature world, and near\nAs father fond art found;\n\nThereon, as from above\nTo shine, and make rejoice\nWith beauty, life, and love,\nThe garden of thy choice,\nTo dress the jocund Spring\nWith bounteous promise gay\nOf hotter months, that bring\nThe full perfected day;\n\nTo touch with richest gold\nThe ripe fruit, ere it fall;\nAnd smile through cloud and cold\nOn Winter’s funeral.\n\nNow with resplendent flood\nGladden my waking eyes,\nAnd stir my slothful blood\nTo joyous enterprise.\n\nArise, arise, as when\nAt first God said LIGHT BE!\nThat He might make us men\nWith eyes His light to see.\n\nScatter the clouds that hide\nThe face of heaven, and show\nWhere sweet Peace doth abide,\nWhere Truth and Beauty grow.\n\nAwaken, cheer, adorn,\nInvite, inspire, assure\nThe joys that praise thy morn,\nThe toil thy noons mature:\n\nAnd soothe the eve of day,\nThat darkens back to death;\nO golden Sun, whose ray\nOur path illumineth!", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + }, "context": { "month": "february" } @@ -8832,6 +9346,9 @@ "title": "“North Wind in October”", "body": "In the golden glade the chestnuts are fallen all;\nFrom the sered boughs of the oak the acorns fall:\nThe beech scatters her ruddy fire;\nThe lime hath stripped to the cold,\nAnd standeth naked above her yellow attire:\nThe larch thinneth her spire\nTo lay the ways of the wood with cloth of gold.\n\nOut of the golden-green and white\nOf the brake the fir-trees stand upright\nIn the forest of flame, and wave aloft\nTo the blue of heaven their blue-green tuftings soft.\n\nBut swiftly in shuddering gloom the splendours fail,\nAs the harrying North-wind beareth\nA cloud of skirmishing hail\nThe grievèd woodland to smite:\nIn a hurricane through the trees he teareth,\nRaking the boughs and the leaves rending,\nAnd whistleth to the descending\nBlows of his icy flail.\nGold and snow he mixeth in spite,\nAnd whirleth afar; as away on his winnowing flight\nHe passeth, and all again for awhile is bright.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + }, "context": { "month": "october" } @@ -8841,6 +9358,9 @@ "title": "“The North Wind”", "body": "The north wind came up yesternight\nWith the new year’s full moon,\nAnd rising as she gained her height,\nGrew to a tempest soon.\nYet found he not on heaven’s face\nA task of cloud to clear;\nThere was no speck that he might chase\nOff the blue hemisphere,\nNor vapour from the land to drive:\nThe frost-bound country held\nNought motionable or alive,\nThat ’gainst his wrath rebelled.\nThere scarce was hanging in the wood\nA shrivelled leaf to reave;\nNo bud had burst its swathing hood\nThat he could rend or grieve:\nOnly the tall tree-skeletons,\nWhere they were shadowed all,\nWavered a little on the stones,\nAnd on the white church-wall.\n\n--Like as an artist in his mood,\nWho reckons all as nought,\nSo he may quickly paint his nude,\nUnutterable thought:\nSo Nature in a frenzied hour\nBy day or night will show\nDim indications of the power\nThat doometh man to woe.\nAh, many have my visions been,\nAnd some I know full well:\nI would that all that I have seen\nWere fit for speech to tell.--\n\nAnd by the churchyard as I came,\nIt seemed my spirit passed\nInto a land that hath no name,\nGrey, melancholy and vast;\nWhere nothing comes: but Memory,\nThe widowed queen of Death,\nReigns, and with fixed, sepulchral eye\nAll slumber banisheth.\nEach grain of writhen dust, that drapes\nThat sickly, staring shore,\nIts old chaotic change of shapes\nRemembers evermore.\nAnd ghosts of cities long decayed\nAnd ruined shrines of Fate\nGather the paths, that Time hath made\nFoolish and desolate.\n\nNor winter there hath hope of spring,\nNor the pale night of day,\nSince the old king with scorpion sting\nHath done himself away.\n\nThe morn was calm; the wind’s last breath\nHad fal’n: in solemn hush\nThe golden moon went down beneath\nThe dawning’s crimson flush.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + }, "context": { "season": "winter" } @@ -8850,6 +9370,9 @@ "title": "“November”", "body": "The lonely season in lonely lands, when fled\nAre half the birds, and mists lie low, and the sun\nIs rarely seen, nor strayeth far from his bed;\nThe short days pass unwelcomed one by one.\n\nOut by the ricks the mantled engine stands\nCrestfallen, deserted,--for now all hands\nAre told to the plough,--and ere it is dawn appear\nThe teams following and crossing far and near,\nAs hour by hour they broaden the brown bands\nOf the striped fields; and behind them firk and prance\nThe heavy rooks, and daws grey-pated dance:\nAs awhile, surmounting a crest, in sharp outline\n(A miniature of toil, a gem’s design,)\nThey are pictured, horses and men, or now near by\nAbove the lane they shout lifting the share,\nBy the trim hedgerow bloom’d with purple air;\nWhere, under the thorns, dead leaves in huddle lie\nPacked by the gales of Autumn, and in and out\nThe small wrens glide\nWith a happy note of cheer,\nAnd yellow amorets flutter above and about,\nGay, familiar in fear.\n\nAnd now, if the night shall be cold, across the sky\nLinnets and twites, in small flocks helter-skelter,\nAll the afternoon to the gardens fly,\nFrom thistle-pastures hurrying to gain the shelter\nOf American rhododendron or cherry-laurel:\nAnd here and there, near chilly setting of sun,\nIn an isolated tree a congregation\nOf starlings chatter and chide,\nThickset as summer leaves, in garrulous quarrel:\nSuddenly they hush as one,--\nThe tree top springs,--\nAnd off, with a whirr of wings,\nThey fly by the score\nTo the holly-thicket, and there with myriads more\nDispute for the roosts; and from the unseen nation\nA babel of tongues, like running water unceasing,\nMakes live the wood, the flocking cries increasing,\nWrangling discordantly, incessantly,\nWhile falls the night on them self-occupied;\nThe long dark night, that lengthens slow,\nDeepening with Winter to starve grass and tree,\nAnd soon to bury in snow\nThe Earth, that, sleeping ’neath her frozen stole,\nShall dream a dream crept from the sunless pole\nOf how her end shall be.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + }, "context": { "month": "november" } @@ -8858,12 +9381,19 @@ "on-a-dead-child": { "title": "“On a Dead Child”", "body": "Perfect little body, without fault or stain on thee,\nWith promise of strength and manhood full and fair!\nThough cold and stark and bare,\nThe bloom and the charm of life doth awhile remain on thee.\n\nThy mother’s treasure wert thou;--alas! no longer\nTo visit her heart with wondrous joy; to be\nThy father’s pride;--ah, he\nMust gather his faith together, and his strength make stronger.\n\nTo me, as I move thee now in the last duty,\nDost thou with a turn or gesture anon respond;\nStartling my fancy fond\nWith a chance attitude of the head, a freak of beauty.\n\nThy hand clasps, as ’twas wont, my finger, and holds it:\nBut the grasp is the clasp of Death, heartbreaking and stiff;\nYet feels to my hand as if\n’Twas still thy will, thy pleasure and trust that enfolds it.\n\nSo I lay thee there, thy sunken eyelids closing,--\nGo lie thou there in thy coffin, thy last little bed!--\nPropping thy wise, sad head,\nThy firm, pale hands across thy chest disposing.\n\nSo quiet! doth the change content thee?--Death, whither hath he taken thee?\nTo a world, do I think, that rights the disaster of this?\nThe vision of which I miss,\nWho weep for the body, and wish but to warm thee and awaken thee?\n\nAh! little at best can all our hopes avail us\nTo lift this sorrow, or cheer us, when in the dark,\nUnwilling, alone we embark,\nAnd the things we have seen and have known and have heard of, fail us.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + } + } }, "the-palm-willow": { "title": "“The Palm Willow”", "body": "See, whirling snow sprinkles the starvèd fields,\nThe birds have stayed to sing;\nNo covert yet their fairy harbour yields.\nWhen cometh Spring?\nAh! in their tiny throats what songs unborn\nAre quenched each morn.\n\nThe lenten lilies, through the frost that push,\nTheir yellow heads withhold:\nThe woodland willow stands a lonely bush\nOf nebulous gold;\nThere the Spring-goddess cowers in faint attire\nOf frightened fire.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + }, "context": { "liturgy": "lent" } @@ -8872,17 +9402,28 @@ "pater-filio": { "title": "“Pater Filio”", "body": "Sense with keenest edge unusèd,\nYet unsteel’d by scathing fire;\nLovely feet as yet unbruisèd\nOn the ways of dark desire;\nSweetest hope that lookest smiling\nO’er the wilderness defiling!\n\nWhy such beauty, to be blighted\nBy the swarm of foul destruction?\nWhy such innocence delighted,\nWhen sin stalks to thy seduction?\nAll the litanies e’er chaunted\nShall not keep thy faith undaunted.\n\nI have pray’d the sainted Morning\nTo unclasp her hands to hold thee;\nFrom resignful Eve’s adorning\nStol’n a robe of peace to enfold thee;\nWith all charms of man’s contriving\nArm’d thee for thy lonely striving.\n\nMe too once unthinking Nature,\n--Whence Love’s timeless mockery took me,--\nFashion’d so divine a creature,\nYea, and like a beast forsook me.\nI forgave, but tell the measure\nOf her crime in thee, my treasure.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + } + } }, "the-portrait-of-a-grandfather": { "title": "“The Portrait of a Grandfather”", "body": "With mild eyes agaze, and lips ready to speak,\nWhereon the yearning of love, the warning of wisdom plays,\nOne portrait ever charms me and teaches me when I seek:\nIt is of him whom I, remembering my young days,\nImagine fathering my father; when he, in sonship afore,\nLiv’d honouring and obeying the eyes now pictur’d agaze,\nThe lips ready to speak, that promise but speak no more.\n\nO high parental claim, that were not but for the knowing,\nO fateful bond of duty, O more than body that bore,\nThe smile that guides me to right, the gaze that follows my going,\nHow had I stray’d without thee! and yet how few will seek\nThe spirit-hands, that heaven, in tender-free bestowing,\nHolds to her children, to guide the wandering and aid the weak.\n\nAnd Thee! ah what of thee, thou lover of men? if truly\nA painter had stell’d thee there, with thy lips ready to speak,\nIn all-fathering passion to souls enchanted newly,\n--Tenderer call than of sire to son, or of lover to maiden,--\nEver ready to speak to us, if we will hearken duly,\n‘Come, O come unto me, ye weary and heavy-laden!’", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + } + } }, "a-robin": { "title": "“A Robin”", - "body": "Flame-throated robin on the topmost bough\nOf the leafless oak, what singest thou?\nHark! he telleth how--\n’Spring is coming now; Spring is coming now.\n\nNow ruddy are the elm-tops against the blue sky,\nThe pale larch donneth her jewelry;\nRed fir and black fir sigh,\nAnd I am lamenting the year gone by.\n\nThe bushes where I nested are all cut down,\nThey are felling the tall trees one by one,\nAnd my mate is dead and gone,\nIn the winter she died and left me lone.\n\nShe lay in the thicket where I fear to go;\nFor when the March-winds after the snow\nThe leaves away did blow,\nShe was not there, and my heart is woe:\n\nAnd sad is my song, when I begin to sing,\nAs I sit in the sunshine this merry spring:\nLike a withered leaf I cling\nTo the white oak-bough, while the wood doth ring.\n\nSpring is coming now, the sun again is gay;\nEach day like a last spring’s happy day.’--\nThus sang he; then from his spray\nHe saw me listening and flew away.", + "body": "Flame-throated robin on the topmost bough\nOf the leafless oak, what singest thou?\nHark! he telleth how--\nSpring is coming now; Spring is coming now.\n\nNow ruddy are the elm-tops against the blue sky,\nThe pale larch donneth her jewelry;\nRed fir and black fir sigh,\nAnd I am lamenting the year gone by.\n\nThe bushes where I nested are all cut down,\nThey are felling the tall trees one by one,\nAnd my mate is dead and gone,\nIn the winter she died and left me lone.\n\nShe lay in the thicket where I fear to go;\nFor when the March-winds after the snow\nThe leaves away did blow,\nShe was not there, and my heart is woe:\n\nAnd sad is my song, when I begin to sing,\nAs I sit in the sunshine this merry spring:\nLike a withered leaf I cling\nTo the white oak-bough, while the wood doth ring.\n\nSpring is coming now, the sun again is gay;\nEach day like a last spring’s happy day.’--\nThus sang he; then from his spray\nHe saw me listening and flew away.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + }, "context": { "month": "march" } @@ -8892,6 +9433,9 @@ "title": "“The Screaming Tarn”", "body": "The saddest place that e’er I saw\nIs the deep tarn above the inn\nThat crowns the mountain-road, whereby\nOne southward bound his way must win.\n\nSunk on the table of the ridge\nFrom its deep shores is nought to see:\nThe unresting wind lashes and chills\nIts shivering ripples ceaselessly.\n\nThree sides ’tis banked with stones aslant,\nAnd down the fourth the rushes grow,\nAnd yellow sedge fringing the edge\nWith lengthen’d image all arow.\n\n’Tis square and black, and on its face\nWhen noon is still, the mirror’d sky\nLooks dark and further from the earth\nThan when you gaze at it on high.\n\nAt mid of night, if one be there,\n--So say the people of the hill--\nA fearful shriek of death is heard,\nOne sudden scream both loud and shrill.\n\nAnd some have seen on stilly nights,\nAnd when the moon was clear and round,\nBubbles which to the surface swam\nAnd burst as if they held the sound.--\n\n’Twas in the days ere hapless Charles\nLosing his crown had lost his head,\nThis tale is told of him who kept\nThe inn upon the watershed:\n\nHe was a lowbred ruin’d man\nWhom lawless times set free from fear:\nOne evening to his house there rode\nA young and gentle cavalier.\n\nWith curling hair and linen fair\nAnd jewel-hilted sword he went;\nThe horse he rode he had ridden far,\nAnd he was with his journey spent.\n\nHe asked a lodging for the night,\nHis valise from his steed unbound,\nHe let none bear it but himself\nAnd set it by him on the ground.\n\n“Here’s gold or jewels,” thought the host,\n“That’s carrying south to find the king.”\nHe chattered many a loyal word,\nAnd scraps of royal airs gan sing.\n\nHis guest thereat grew more at ease\nAnd o’er his wine he gave a toast,\nBut little ate, and to his room\nCarried his sack behind the host.\n\n“Now rest you well,” the host he said,\nBut of his wish the word fell wide;\nNor did he now forget his son\nWho fell in fight by Cromwell’s side.\n\nRevenge and poverty have brought\nFull gentler heart than his to crime;\nAnd he was one by nature rude,\nBorn to foul deeds at any time.\n\nWith unshod feet at dead of night\nIn stealth he to the guest-room crept,\nLantern and dagger in his hand,\nAnd stabbed his victim while he slept.\n\nBut as he struck a scream there came,\nA fearful scream so loud and shrill:\nHe whelm’d the face with pillows o’er,\nAnd lean’d till all had long been still.\n\nThen to the face the flame he held\nTo see there should no life remain:--\nWhen lo! his brutal heart was quell’d:\n’Twas a fair woman he had slain.\n\nThe tan upon her face was paint,\nThe manly hair was torn away,\nSoft was the breast that he had pierced;\nBeautiful in her death she lay.\n\nHis was no heart to faint at crime,\nTho’ half he wished the deed undone.\nHe pulled the valise from the bed\nTo find what booty he had won.\n\nHe cut the straps, and pushed within\nHis murderous fingers to their theft.\nA deathly sweat came o’er his brow,\nHe had no sense nor meaning left.\n\nHe touched not gold, it was not cold,\nIt was not hard, it felt like flesh.\nHe drew out by the curling hair\nA young man’s head, and murder’d fresh;\n\nA young man’s head, cut by the neck.\nBut what was dreader still to see,\nHer whom he had slain he saw again,\nThe twain were like as like can be.\n\nBrother and sister if they were,\nBoth in one shroud they now were wound,--\nAcross his back and down the stair,\nOut of the house without a sound.\n\nHe made his way unto the tarn,\nThe night was dark and still and dank;\nThe ripple chuckling neath the boat\nLaughed as he drew it to the bank.\n\nUpon the bottom of the boat\nHe laid his burden flat and low,\nAnd on them laid the square sandstones\nThat round about the margin go.\n\nStone upon stone he weighed them down,\nUntil the boat would hold no more;\nThe freeboard now was scarce an inch:\nHe stripp’d his clothes and push’d from shore.\n\nAll naked to the middle pool\nHe swam behind in the dark night;\nAnd there he let the water in\nAnd sank his terror out of sight.\n\nHe swam ashore, and donn’d his dress,\nAnd scraped his bloody fingers clean;\nRan home and on his victim’s steed\nMounted, and never more was seen.\n\nBut to a comrade ere he died\nHe told his story guess’d of none:\nSo from his lips the crime returned\nTo haunt the spot where it was done.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + }, "context": { "holiday": "halloween" } @@ -8900,12 +9444,19 @@ "since-we-loved": { "title": "“Since We Loved”", "body": "Since we loved,--(the earth that shook\nAs we kissed, fresh beauty took)--\nLove hath been as poets paint,\nLife as heaven is to a saint;\n\nAll my joys my hope excel,\nAll my work hath prosper’d well,\nAll my songs have happy been,\nO my love, my life, my queen.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + } + } }, "so-sweet-love-seemed-that-april-morn": { "title": "“So Sweet Love Seemed that April Morn”", "body": "So sweet love seemed that April morn,\nWhen first we kissed beside the thorn,\nSo strangely sweet, it was not strange\nWe thought that love could never change.\n\nBut I can tell--let truth be told--\nThat love will change in growing old;\nThough day by day is naught to see,\nSo delicate his motions be.\n\nAnd in the end ’twill come to pass\nQuite to forget what once he was,\nNor even in fancy to recall\nThe pleasure that was all in all.\n\nHis little spring, that sweet we found,\nSo deep in summer floods is drowned,\nI wonder, bathed in joy complete,\nHow love so young could be so sweet.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + }, "context": { "month": "april" } @@ -8915,6 +9466,9 @@ "title": "“The South Wind”", "body": "The south wind rose at dusk of the winter day,\nThe warm breath of the western sea\nCircling wrapp’d the isle with his cloke of cloud,\nAnd it now reach’d even to me, at dusk of the day,\nAnd moan’d in the branches aloud:\nWhile here and there, in patches of dark space,\nA star shone forth from its heavenly place,\nAs a spark that is borne in the smoky chase;\nAnd, looking up, there fell on my face--\nCould it be drops of rain\nSoft as the wind, that fell on my face?\nGossamers light as threads of the summer dawn,\nSuck’d by the sun from midmost calms of the main,\nFrom groves of coral islands secretly drawn,\nO’er half the round of earth to be driven,\nNow to fall on my face\nIn silky skeins spun from the mists of heaven.\n\nWho art thou, in wind and darkness and soft rain\nThyself that robest, that bendest in sighing pines\nTo whisper thy truth? that usest for signs\nA hurried glimpse of the moon, the glance of a star\nIn the rifted sky?\nWho art thou, that with thee I\nWoo and am wooed?\nThat robing thyself in darkness and soft rain\nChoosest my chosen solitude,\nComing so far\nTo tell thy secret again,\nAs a mother her child, in her folding arm\nOf a winter night by a flickering fire,\nTelleth the same tale o’er and o’er\nWith gentle voice, and I never tire,\nSo imperceptibly changeth the charm,\nAs Love on buried ecstasy buildeth his tower,\n--Like as the stem that beareth the flower\nBy trembling is knit to power;--\nAh! long ago\nIn thy first rapture I renounced my lot,\nThe vanity, the despondency and the woe,\nAnd seeking thee to know\nWell was ’t for me, and evermore\nI am thine, I know not what.\n\nFor me thou seekest ever, me wondering a day\nIn the eternal alternations, me\nFree for a stolen moment of chance\nTo dream a beautiful dream\nIn the everlasting dance\nOf speechless worlds, the unsearchable scheme,\nTo me thou findest the way,\nMe and whomsoe’er\nI have found my dream to share\nStill with thy charm encircling; even to-night\nTo me and my love in darkness and soft rain\nUnder the sighing pines thou comest again,\nAnd staying our speech with mystery of delight,\nOf the kiss that I give a wonder thou makest,\nAnd the kiss that I take thou takest.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + }, "context": { "season": "winter" } @@ -8924,6 +9478,9 @@ "title": "“The Storm is Over”", "body": "The storm is over, the land hushes to rest:\nThe tyrannous wind, its strength fordone,\nIs fallen back in the west\nTo couch with the sinking sun.\nThe last clouds fare\nWith fainting speed, and their thin streamers fly\nIn melting drifts of the sky.\nAlready the birds in the air\nAppear again; the rooks return to their haunt,\nAnd one by one,\nProclaiming aloud their care,\nRenew their peaceful chant.\n\nTorn and shattered the trees their branches again reset,\nThey trim afresh the fair\nFew green and golden leaves withheld from the storm,\nAnd awhile will be handsome yet.\nTo-morrow’s sun shall caress\nTheir remnant of loveliness:\nIn quiet days for a time\nSad Autumn lingering warm\nShall humour their faded prime.\n\nBut ah! the leaves of summer that lie on the ground!\nWhat havoc! The laughing timbrels of June,\nThat curtained the birds’ cradles, and screened their song,\nThat sheltered the cooing doves at noon,\nOf airy fans the delicate throng,--\nTorn and scattered around:\nFar out afield they lie,\nIn the watery furrows die,\nIn grassy pools of the flood they sink and drown,\nGreen-golden, orange, vermilion, golden and brown,\nThe high year’s flaunting crown\nShattered and trampled down.\n\nThe day is done: the tired land looks for night:\nShe prays to the night to keep\nIn peace her nerves of delight:\nWhile silver mist upstealeth silently,\nAnd the broad cloud driving moon in the clear sky\nLifts o’er the firs her shining shield,\nAnd in her tranquil light\nSleep falls on forest and field.\nSée! sléep hath fallen: the trees are asleep:\nThe night is come. The land is wrapt in sleep.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + }, "context": { "month": "june" } @@ -8933,6 +9490,9 @@ "title": "“The Summer Trees”", "body": "The summer trees are tempest-torn,\nThe hills are wrapped in a mantle wide\nOf folding rain by the mad wind borne\nAcross the country side.\n\nHis scourge of fury is lashing down\nThe delicate-rankèd golden corn,\nThat never more shall rear its crown\nAnd curtsey to the morn.\n\nThere shews no care in heaven to save\nMan’s pitiful patience, or provide\nA season for the season’s slave,\nWhose trust hath toiled and died.\n\nSo my proud spirit in me is sad,\nA wreck of fairer fields to mourn,\nThe ruin of golden hopes she had,\nMy delicate-rankèd corn.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + }, "context": { "season": "summer" } @@ -8941,17 +9501,28 @@ "the-testament-of-beauty": { "title": "“The Testament of Beauty”", "body": "# I.\n\nMan’s Reason is in such deep insolvency to sense,\nthat tho’ she guide his highest flight heav’nward, and teach him\ndignity morals manners and human comfort,\nshe can delicatly and dangerously bedizen\nthe rioting joys that fringe the sad pathways of Hell.\nNot without alliance of the animal senses\nhath she any miracle: Lov’st thou in the blithe hour\nof April dawns--nay marvelest thou not--to hear\nthe ravishing music that the small birdës make\nin garden or woodland, rapturously heralding\nthe break of day; when the first lark on high hath warn’d\nthe vigilant robin already of the sun’s approach,\nand he on slender pipe calleth the nesting tribes\nto awake and fill and thrill their myriad-warbling throats\npraising life’s God, untill the blisful revel grow\nin wild profusion unfeign’d to such a hymn as man\nhath never in temple or grove pour’d to the Lord of heav’n?\nHast thou then thought that all this ravishing music,\nthat stirreth so thy heart, making thee dream of things\nillimitable unsearchable and of heavenly import,\nis but a light disturbance of the atoms of air,\nwhose jostling ripples, gather’d within the ear, are tuned\nto resonant scale, and thence by the enthron’d mind received\non the spiral stairway of her audience chamber\nas heralds of high spiritual significance?\nand that without thine ear, sound would hav no report.\nNature hav no music; nor would ther be for thee\nany better melody in the April woods at dawn\nthan what an old stone-deaf labourer, lying awake\no’night in his comfortless attic, might perchance\nbe aware of, when the rats run amok in his thatch?\nNow since the thoughtless birds not only act and enjoy\nthis music, but to their offspring teach it with care,\nhanding on those small folk-songs from father to son\nin such faithful tradition that they are familiar\nunchanging to the changeful generations of men--\nand year by year, listening to himself the nightingale\nas amorous of his art as of his brooding mate\npractiseth every phrase of his espousal lay,\nand still provoketh envy of the lesser songsters\nwith the same notes that woke poetic eloquence\nalike in Sophocles and the sick heart of Keats--\nsee then how deeply seated is the urgence whereto\nBach and Mozart obey’d, or those other minstrels\nwho pioneer’d for us on the marches of heav’n\nand paid no heed to wars that swept the world around,\nnor in their homes wer more troubled by cannon-roar\nthan late the small birds wer, that nested and carol’d\nupon the devastated battlefields of France.\nBirds are of all animals the nearest to men\nfor that they take delight in both music and dance,\nand gracefully schooling leisure to enliven life\nwer the earlier artists: moreover in their airy flight\n(which in its swiftness symboleth man’s soaring thought)\nthey hav no rival but man, and easily surpass\nin their free voyaging his most desperate daring,\naltho’ he hath fed and sped his ocean-ships with fire;\nand now, disturbing me as I write, I hear on high\nhis roaring airplanes, and idly raising my head\nsee them there; like a migratory flock of birds\nthat rustle southward from the cold fall of the year\nin order’d phalanx--so the thin-rankt squadrons ply,\ntil sound and sight failing me they are lost in the clouds.\n\nTime eateth away at many an old delusion,\nyet with civilization delusions make head;\nthe thicket of the people wil take furtiv fire\nfrom irresponsible catchwords of live ideas,\nsudden as a gorse-bush from the smouldering end\nof any loiterer’s match-splint, which, unless trodden out\nafore it spredd, or quell’d with wieldy threshing-rods\nwil burn ten years of planting with all last year’s ricks\nand blacken a countryside. ’Tis like enough that men\nignorant of fire and poison should be precondemn’d\nto sudden deaths and burnings, but ’tis mightily\nto the reproach of Reason that she cannot save\nnor guide the herd; that minds who else wer fit to rule\nmust win to power by flattery and pretence, and so\nby spiritual dishonesty in their flurried reign\nconfirm the disrepute of all authority--\nbut only in sackcloth can the Muse speak of such things.\n\n\n# II.\n\nThe Spartan General Brasidas, the strenuous man,\nwho earn’d historic favour from his conquer’d foe,\nonce caught a mouse foraging in his messbasket\namong the figs, but when it bit him let it go,\npraising its show of fight in words that Plutarch judged\nworth treasuring; and since I redd the story at school\nunto this hour I hav never thought of Brasidas\nand cannot hear his name, but that I straightway see\na table and an arm’d man smiling with hand outstretch’d\nabove a little mouse that is scampering away.\nWhy should this thing so hold me? and why do I welcome now\nthe tiny beast, that hath come running up to me\nas if here in my cantos he had spied a crevice,\nand counting on my friendship would make it his home?\n’Tis such a pictur as must by mere beauty of fitness\nconvince natural feeling with added comfort.\nThe soldier seeth the instinct of Selfhood in the mouse\nto be the same impulse that maketh virtue in him.\nFor Brasidas held that courage ennobleth man,\nand from unworth redeemeth, and that folk who shrink\nfrom ventur of battle in self-defence are thereby doom’d\nto slavery and extinction: and so this mouse, albeit\nits little teeth had done him a petty hurt, deserved\nliberty for its courage, and found grace in man.\n\n\nWhat is Beauty? saith my sufferings then.--I answer\nthe lover and poet in my loose alexandrines:\nBeauty is the highest of all these occult influences,\nthe quality of appearances that thru’ the sense\nwakeneth spiritual emotion in the mind of man:\nAnd Art, as it createth new forms of beauty,\nawakeneth new ideas that advance the spirit\nin the life of Reason to the wisdom of God.\nBut highest Art must be as rare as nativ faculty is\nand her surprise of magic winneth favor of men\nmore than her inspiration: most are led away\nby fairseeming pretences, which being wrought for gain\npursue the ephemeral fashion that assureth it;\nand their thin influences are of the same low grade\nas the unaccomplish’d forms; their poverty is exposed\nwhen they would stake their charm on ethic excellence;\nfor then weak simulations of virtues appear,\nsuch as convention approveth, but not Virtue itself,\ntho’ not void of all good: and (as I read) ’twas this\nthat Benvenuto intended, saying that not only\nVirtue was memorable but things so truly done\nthat they wer like to Virtue; and thus prefaced his book,\nthinking to justify both himself and his works.\nThe authority of Reason therefor relieth at last\nhereon--that her discernment of spiritual things,\nthe ideas of Beauty, is her conscience of instinct\nupgrown in her (as she unto conscience of all\nupgrew from lower to higher) to conscience of Beauty\njudging itself by its own beauteous judgment.\n\n\n# III.\n\nHow was November’s melancholy endear’d to me\nin the effigy of plowteams following and recrossing\npatiently the desolat landscape from dawn to dusk,\nas the slow-creeping ripple of their single furrow\nsubmerged the sodden litter of summer’s festival!\nThey are fled, those gracious teams; high on the headland now\nsquatted, a roaring engin toweth to itself\na beam of bolted shares, that glideth to and fro\ncombing the stubbled glebe: and agriculture here,\nblotting out with such daub so rich a pictur of grace,\nhath lost as much of beauty as it hath saved in toil.\nAgain where reapers, bending to the ripen’d corn,\nwere wont to scythe in rank and step with measured stroke,\na shark-tooth’d chariot rampeth biting a broad way,\nand, jerking its high swindging arms around in the air,\nswoopeth the swath. Yet this queer Pterodactyl is well,\nthat in the sinister torpor of the blazing day\nclicketeth in heartless mockery of swoon and sweat,\nas ’twer the salamandrine voice of all parch’d things:\nand the dry grasshopper wondering knoweth his God.\n\n\n# IV.\n\nBeauty, the eternal Spouse of the Wisdom of God\nand Angel of his Presence thru’ all creation,\nfashioning her new love-realm in the mind of man,\nattempteth every mortal child with influences\nof her divine supremacy … ev’n as in a plant\nwhen the sap mounteth secretly and its wintry stalk\nbreaketh out in the prolific miracle of Spring,\nor as the red blood floodeth into a beating heart\nto build the animal body comely and strong; so she\nin her transcendant rivalry would flush his spirit\nwith pleasurable ichor of heaven: and where she hath found\nresponsiv faculty in some richly favour’d soul--\nL’anima vaga delle cose belle, as saith\nthe Florentine,--she wil inaugurate her feast\nof dedication, and even in thatt earliest onset,\nwhen yet infant Desire hath neither goal nor clue\nto fix the dream, ev’n then, altho’ it graspeth nought\nand passeth in its airy vision away, and dieth\nout of remembrance, ’tis in its earnest of life\nand dawn of bliss purer and hath less of earthly tinge\nthan any other after-attainment of the understanding:\nfor all man’s knowledge kenneth also of toil and flaw\nand even his noblest works, tho’ they illume the dark\nwith individual consummation, are cast upon\nby the irrelevant black shadows of time and fate.\n\nRepudiation of pleasur is a reason’d folly\nof imperfection. Ther is no motiv can rebate\nor decompose the intrinsic joy of activ life,\nwhereon all function whatsoever in man is based.\nConsider how this mortal sensibility\nhath a wide jurisdiction of range in all degrees,\nfrom mountainous gravity to imperceptible\nfaintest tenuities:--The imponderable fragrance\nof my window-jasmin, that from her starry cup\nof red-stemm’d ivory invadeth my being,\nas she floateth it forth, and wantoning unabash’d\nasserteth her idea in the omnipotent blaze\nof the tormented sun-ball, checquering the grey wall\nwith shadow-tracery of her shapely fronds; this frail\nunique spice of perfumery, in which she holdeth\nmonopoly by royal licence of Nature,\nis but one of a thousand angelic species,\noriginal beauties that win conscience in man:\na like marvel hangeth o’er the rosebed, and where\nthe honeysuckle escapeth in serpentine sprays\nfrom its dark-cloister’d clamber thru’ the old holly-bush,\nspreading its joybunches to finger at the sky\nin revel above rivalry. Legion is their name;\nLily-of-the-vale, Violet, Verbena, Mignonette,\nHyacinth, Heliotrope, Sweet-briar, Pinks and Peas,\nLilac and Wallflower, or such white and purple blooms\nthat sleep i’ the sun, and their heavy perfumes withhold\nto mingle their heart’s incense with the wonder-dreams,\nlove-laden prayers and reveries that steal forth from earth,\nunder the dome of night: and tho’ these blossomy breaths,\nthat hav presumed the title of their gay genitors,\nenter but singly into our neighboring sense, that hath\nno panorama, yet the mind’s eye is not blind\nunto their multitudinous presences:--I know\nthat if odour wer visible as color is, I’d see\nthe summer garden aureoled in rainbow clouds,\nwith such warfare of hues as a painter might choose\nto show his sunset sky or a forest aflame;\nwhile o’er the country-side the wide clover-pastures\nand the beanfields of June would wear a mantle, thick\nas when in late October, at the drooping of day\nthe dark grey mist arising blotteth out the land\nwith ghostly shroud. Now these and such-like influences\nof tender specialty must not--so fine they be--\nfall in neglect and all their loveliness be lost,\nbeing to the soul deep springs of happiness, and full\nof lovingkindness to the natural man, who is apt\nkindly to judge of good by comfortable effect.\nThus all men ever hav judged the wholesomness of food\nfrom the comfort of body ensuing thereupon,\nwhereby all animals retrieve their proper diet;\nbut if when in discomfort ’tis for pleasant hope\nof health restored we swallow nauseous medicines,\nso mystics use asceticism, yea, and no man\nreadier than they to assert eventual happiness\nto justify their conduct. Whence it is not strange\n(for so scientific minds in search of truth digest\nassimilable hypotheses) they should extend\ntheir pragmatism, and from their happiness deduce\nthe very existence and the natur of God, and take\nreligious consolation for the ground of faith:\nas if the pleasur of life wer the sign-manual\nof Nature when she set her hand to her covenant.\nBut man, vain of his Reason and thinking more to assure\nits independence, wil disclaim complicity\nwith human emotion; and regarding his Mother\ndeemeth it dutiful and nobler in honesty\ncoldly to criticize than purblindly to love;\nand in pride of this quarrel he hath been led in the end\nto make distinction of kind ’twixt Pleasur and Happiness;\nobserving truly enough how one may hav pleasure\nand yet miss happiness; but this warpeth the sense\nand common use of speech, since all tongues in the world\ncall children and silly folk happy and sometimes ev’n brutes.\nThe name of happiness is but a wider term\nfor the unalloy’d conditions of the Pleasur of Life,\nattendant on all function, and not to be deny’d\nto th’ soul, unless forsooth in our thought of nature\nspiritual is by definition unnatural.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + } + } }, "thou-didst-delight-my-eyes": { "title": "“Thou Didst Delight My Eyes”", "body": "Thou didst delight my eyes:\nYet who am I? nor first\nNor last nor best, that durst\nOnce dream of thee for prize;\nNor this the only time\nThou shalt set love to rhyme.\n\nThou didst delight my ear:\nAh! little praise; thy voice\nMakes other hearts rejoice,\nMakes all ears glad that hear;\nAnd short my joy: but yet,\nO song, do not forget.\n\nFor what wert thou to me?\nHow shall I say? The moon,\nThat poured her midnight noon\nUpon his wrecking sea;--\nA sail, that for a day\nHas cheered the castaway.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + } + } }, "the-upper-skies": { "title": "“The Upper Skies”", "body": "The upper skies are palest blue\nMottled with pearl and fretted snow:\nWith tattered fleece of inky hue\nClose overhead the storm-clouds go.\n\nTheir shadows fly along the hill\nAnd o’er the crest mount one by one:\nThe whitened planking of the mill\nIs now in shade and now in sun.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + }, "context": { "season": "winter" } @@ -8960,17 +9531,28 @@ "a-vignette": { "title": "“A Vignette”", "body": "Among the meadows\nlightly going,\nWith worship and joy\nmy heart o’erflowing,\n\nFar from town\nand toil of living,\nTo a holy day\nmy spirit giving, …\n\nThou tender flower,\nI kneel beside thee\nWondering why God\nso beautified thee.--\n\nAn answering thought\nwithin me springeth,\nA bloom of the mind\nher vision bringeth.\n\nBetween the dim hill’s\ndistant azure\nAnd flowery foreground\nof sparkling pleasure\n\nI see the company\nof figures sainted,\nFor whom the picture\nof earth was painted.\n\nThose robèd seers\nwho made man’s story\nThe crown of Nature,\nHer cause his glory.\n\nThey walk in the city\nwhich they have builded,\nThe city of God\nfrom evil shielded:\n\nTo them for canopy\nthe vault of heaven,\nThe flowery earth\nfor carpet is given;\n\nWhereon I wander\nnot unknowing,\nWith worship and joy\nmy heart o’erflowing.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + } + } }, "a-villager": { "title": "“A Villager”", "body": "There was no lad handsomer than Willie was\nThe day that he came to father’s house:\nThere was none had an eye as soft an’ blue\nAs Willie’s was, when he came to woo.\n\nTo a labouring life though bound thee be,\nAn’ I on my father’s ground live free,\nI’ll take thee, I said, for thy manly grace,\nThy gentle voice an’ thy loving face.\n\n’Tis forty years now since we were wed:\nWe are ailing an’ grey needs not to be said:\nBut Willie’s eye is as blue an’ soft\nAs the day when he wooed me in father’s croft.\n\nYet changed am I in body an’ mind,\nFor Willie to me has ne’er been kind:\nMerrily drinking an’ singing with the men\nHe ’ud come home late six nights o’ the se’n.\n\nAn’ since the children be grown an’ gone\nHe ’as shunned the house an’ left me lone:\nAn’ less an’ less he brings me in\nOf the little he now has strength to win.\n\nThe roof lets through the wind an’ the wet,\nAn’ master won’t mend it with us in ’s debt:\nAn’ all looks every day more worn,\nAn’ the best of my gowns be shabby an’ torn.\n\nNo wonder if words hav’ a-grown to blows;\nThat matters not while nobody knows:\nFor love him I shall to the end of life,\nAn’ be, as I swore, his own true wife.\n\nAn’ when I am gone, he’ll turn, an’ see\nHis folly an’ wrong, an’ be sorry for me:\nAn’ come to me there in the land o’ bliss\nTo give me the love I looked for in this.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + } + } }, "the-voice-of-nature": { "title": "“The Voice of Nature”", "body": "I stand on the cliff and watch the veiled sun paling\nA silver field afar in the mournful sea,\nThe scourge of the surf, and plaintive gulls sailing\nAt ease on the gale that smites the shuddering lea:\n Whose smile severe and chaste\nJune never hath stirred to vanity, nor age defaced.\nIn lofty thought strive, O spirit, for ever:\nIn courage and strength pursue thine own endeavour.\n\nAh! if it were only for thee, thou restless ocean\nOf waves that follow and roar, the sweep of the tides;\nWer’t only for thee, impetuous wind, whose motion\nPrecipitate all o’errides, and turns, nor abides:\n For you sad birds and fair,\nOr only for thee, bleak cliff, erect in the air;\nThen well could I read wisdom in every feature,\nO well should I understand the voice of Nature.\n\nBut far away, I think, in the Thames valley,\nThe silent river glides by flowery banks:\nAnd birds sing sweetly in branches that arch an alley\nOf cloistered trees, moss-grown in their ancient ranks:\n Where if a light air stray,\n’Tis laden with hum of bees and scent of may.\nLove and peace be thine, O spirit, for ever:\nServe thy sweet desire: despise endeavour.\n\nAnd if it were only for thee, entrancèd river,\nThat scarce dost rock the lily on her airy stem,\nOr stir a wave to murmur, or a rush to quiver;\nWer’t but for the woods, and summer asleep in them:\n For you my bowers green,\nMy hedges of rose and woodbine, with walks between,\nThen well could I read wisdom in every feature,\nO well should I understand the voice of Nature.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + }, "context": { "month": "june" } @@ -8980,6 +9562,9 @@ "title": "“The Windmill”", "body": "The green corn waving in the dale,\nThe ripe grass waving on the hill:\nI lean across the paddock pale\nAnd gaze upon the giddy mill.\n\nIts hurtling sails a mighty sweep\nCut thro’ the air: with rushing sound\nEach strikes in fury down the steep,\nRattles, and whirls in chase around.\n\nBeside his sacks the miller stands\nOn high within the open door:\nA book and pencil in his hands,\nHis grist and meal he reckoneth o’er.\n\nHis tireless merry slave the wind\nIs busy with his work to-day:\nFrom whencesoe’er, he comes to grind;\nHe hath a will and knows the way.\n\nHe gives the creaking sails a spin,\nThe circling millstones faster flee,\nThe shuddering timbers groan within,\nAnd down the shoot the meal runs free.\n\nThe miller giveth him no thanks,\nAnd doth not much his work o’erlook:\nHe stands beside the sacks, and ranks\nThe figures in his dusty book.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + }, "context": { "season": "summer" } @@ -8989,6 +9574,9 @@ "title": "“The Winnowers”", "body": "Betwixt two billows of the downs\nThe little hamlet lies,\nAnd nothing sees but the bald crowns\nOf the hills, and the blue skies.\n\nClustering beneath the long descent\nAnd grey slopes of the wold,\nThe red roofs nestle, oversprent\nWith lichen yellow as gold.\n\nWe found it in the mid-day sun\nBasking, what time of year\nThe thrush his singing has begun,\nEre the first leaves appear.\n\nHigh from his load a woodman pitched\nHis faggots on the stack:\nKnee-deep in straw the cattle twitched\nSweet hay from crib and rack:\n\nAnd from the barn hard by was borne\nA steady muffled din,\nBy which we knew that threshèd corn\nWas winnowing, and went in.\n\nThe sunbeams on the motey air\nStreamed through the open door,\nAnd on the brown arms moving bare,\nAnd the grain upon the floor.\n\nOne turns the crank, one stoops to feed\nThe hopper, lest it lack,\nOne in the bushel scoops the seed,\nOne stands to hold the sack.\n\nWe watched the good grain rattle down,\nAnd the awns fly in the draught;\nTo see us both so pensive grown\nThe honest labourers laughed:\n\nMerry they were, because the wheat\nWas clean and plump and good,\nPleasant to hand and eye, and meet\nFor market and for food.\n\nIt chanced we from the city were,\nAnd had not gat us free\nIn spirit from the store and stir\nOf its immensity:\n\nBut here we found ourselves again.\nWhere humble harvests bring\nAfter much toil but little grain,\n’Tis merry winnowing.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + }, "context": { "month": "september" } @@ -8998,6 +9586,9 @@ "title": "“Winter Nightfall”", "body": "The day begins to droop,--\nIts course is done:\nBut nothing tells the place\nOf the setting sun.\n\nThe hazy darkness deepens,\nAnd up the lane\nYou may hear, but cannot see,\nThe homing wain.\n\nAn engine pants and hums\nIn the farm hard by:\nIts lowering smoke is lost\nIn the lowering sky.\n\nThe soaking branches drip,\nAnd all night through\nThe dropping will not cease\nIn the avenue.\n\nA tall man there in the house\nMust keep his chair:\nHe knows he will never again\nBreathe the spring air:\n\nHis heart is worn with work;\nHe is giddy and sick\nIf he rise to go as far\nAs the nearest rick:\n\nHe thinks of his morn of life,\nHis hale, strong years;\nAnd braves as he may the night\nOf darkness and tears.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + }, "context": { "season": "winter" } @@ -9007,6 +9598,9 @@ "title": "“A Winter’s Night”", "body": "A winter’s night with the snow about:\n’Twas silent within and cold without:\nBoth father and mother to bed were gone:\nThe son sat yet by the fire alone.\n\nHe gazed on the fire, and dreamed again\nOf one that was now no more among men:\nAs still he sat and never aware\nHow close was the spirit beside his chair.\n\nNay, sad were his thoughts, for he wept and said\nAh, woe for the dead! ah, woe for the dead!\nHow heavy the earth lies now on her breast,\nThe lips that I kissed, and the hand I pressed.\n\nThe spirit he saw not, he could not hear\nThe comforting word she spake in his ear:\nHis heart in the grave with her mouldering clay\nNo welcome gave--and she fled away.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1890 + }, "context": { "season": "winter" } @@ -23708,76 +24302,183 @@ "language": "english", "flag": "🇺🇸", "link": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Hemingway", - "favorite": false, + "favorite": true, "tags": [ "american" ], - "n_poems": 12 + "n_poems": 19 }, "poems": { "advice-to-a-son": { "title": "“Advice to a Son”", "body": "Never trust a white man,\nNever kill a Jew,\nNever sign a contract,\nNever rent a pew.\nDon’t enlist in armies;\nNor marry many wives;\nNever write for magazines;\nNever scratch your hives.\nAlways put paper on the seat,\nDon’t believe in wars,\nKeep yourself both clean and neat,\nNever marry whores.\nNever pay a blackmailer,\nNever go to law,\nNever trust a publisher,\nOr you’ll sleep on straw.\nAll your friends will leave you\nAll your friends will die\nSo lead a clean and wholesome life\nAnd join them in the sky.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1928 + } + } }, "along-with-youth": { "title": "“Along with Youth”", "body": "A porcupine skin,\nStiff with bad tanning,\nIt must have ended somewhere.\nStuffed horned owl\nPompous\nYellow eyed;\nChuck-wills-widow on a biassed twig\nSooted with dust.\nPiles of old magazines,\nDrawers of boy’s letters\nAnd the line of love\nThey must have ended somewhere.\nYesterday’s Tribune is gone\nAlong with youth\nAnd the canoe that went to pieces on the beach\nThe year of the big storm\nWhen the hotel burned down\nAt Seney, Michigan.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1923 + } + } + }, + "blood-is-thicker-than-water": { + "title": "“Blood is thicker than water …”", + "body": "“Blood is thicker than water.”\nThe young man said\nAs he knifed his friend\nFor a drooling old bitch\nAnd a house full of lies.", + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1922 + }, + "location": "Paris" + } }, "captives": { "title": "“Captives”", "body": "Some came in chains\nUnrepentant but tired.\nToo tired but to stumble.\nThinking and hating were finished\nThinking and fighting were finished\nRetreating and hoping were finished.\nCures thus a long campaign,\nMaking death easy.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1923 + } + } + }, + "the-earnest-liberals-lament": { + "title": "“The Earnest Liberal’s Lament”", + "body": "I know monks masturbate at night\nThat pet cats screw\nThat some girls bite\nAnd yet\nWhat can I do\nTo set things right?", + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1922 + }, + "location": "Paris" + } }, "for-we-have-thought-the-longer-thoughts": { "title": "“For we have thought the longer thoughts …”", "body": "For we have thought the longer thoughts\n And gone the shorter way.\nAnd we have danced to devils’ tunes,\n Shivering home to pray;\nTo serve one master in the night,\n Another in the day.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1923 + } + } + }, + "grass-smooth-on-the-prairies": { + "title": "“Grass smooth on the prairies …”", + "body": "Grass smooth on the prairies\n Plows breaking\nStreets smooth and shining\n Trucks crumbling.\nAsphalt, tell me what follows the asphalt.\nWops, he said, wops follow the asphalt.", + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1922 + }, + "location": "Paris" + } }, "i-like-americans": { "title": "“I Like Americans”", "body": "_By A Foreigner._\n\nI like Americans.\nThey are so unlike Canadians.\nThey do not take their policemen seriously.\nThey come to Montreal to drink.\nNot to criticize.\nThey claim they won the war.\nBut they know at heart that they didn’t.\nThey have such respect for Englishmen.\nThey like to live abroad.\nThey do not brag about how they take baths.\nBut they take them.\nTheir teeth are so good.\nAnd they wear B.V.D.’s all the year round.\nI wish they didn’t brag about it.\nThey have the second best navy in the world.\nBut they never mention it.\nThey would like to have Henry Ford for president.\nBut they will not elect him.\nThey saw through Bill Bryan.\nThey have gotten tired of Billy Sunday.\nTheir men have such funny hair cuts.\nThey are hard to suck in on Europe.\nThey have been there once.\nThey produced Barney Google, Mutt and Jeff.\nAnd Jiggs.\nThey do not hang lady murderers.\nThey put them in vaudeville.\nThey read the Saturday Evening Post\nAnd believe in Santa Claus.\nWhen they make money\nThey make a lot of money.\nThey are fine people.", "metadata": {} }, + "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. ", + "metadata": {} + }, "im-offn-wild-wimmen": { "title": "“I’m off’n wild wimmen …”", "body": "I’m off’n wild wimmen\nAn Cognac\nAn Sinnin’\nFor I’m in loOOOOOOOve.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1922 + }, + "location": "Paris" + } + }, + "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. ", + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1922 + }, + "location": "Paris" + } }, "montparnasse": { "title": "“Montparnasse”", "body": "There are never any suicides in the quarter among people one knows\nNo successful suicides.\nA Chinese boy kills himself and is dead.\n(they continue to place his mail in the letter rack at the Dome)\nA Norwegian boy kills himself and is dead.\n(no one knows where the other Norwegian boy has gone)\nThey find a model dead\nalone in bed and very dead.\n(it made almost unbearable trouble for the concierge)\nSweet oil, the white of eggs, mustard and water, soap suds\nand stomach pumps rescue the people one knows.\nEvery afternoon the people one knows can be found at the café.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1923 + } + } }, "oily-weather": { "title": "“Oily Weather”", "body": "The sea desires deep hulls--\nIt swells and rolls.\nThe screw churns a throb--\nDriving, throbbing, progressing.\nThe sea rolls with love,\nSurging, caressing,\nUndulating its great loving belly.\nThe sea is big and old--\nThrobbing ships scorn it.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1922 + }, + "location": "Paris" + } }, "oklahoma": { "title": "“Oklahoma”", "body": "All of the Indians are dead\n(a good Indian is a dead Indian)\nOr riding in motor cars--\n(the oil lands, you know, they’re all rich)\nSmoke smarts my eyes,\nCottonwood twigs and buffalo dung\nSmoke grey in the teepee--\n(or is it myopic trachoma)\n\nThe prairies are long,\nThe moon rises,\nPonies\nDrag at their pickets.\nThe grass has gone brown in the summer--\n(or is it the hay crop failing)\n\nPull an arrow out:\nIf you break it\nThe wound closes.\nSalt is good too\nAnd wood ashes.\nPounding it throbs in the night--\n(or is it the gonorrhea)", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1923 + }, "context": { "season": "summer" } } }, + "requiem": { + "title": "“Requiem”", + "body": "Under the wide and starry sky,\nGive me new glands and let me lie,\nOh how I try and try and try,\nBut I need much more than a will.", + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1922 + }, + "location": "Paris" + } + }, "the-soul-of-spain": { "title": "“The Soul of Spain”", "body": "In the rain in the rain in the rain in the rain in Spain.\nDoes it rain in Spain?\nOh yes my dear on the contrary and there are no bull fights.\nThe dancers dance in long white pants\nIt isn’t right to yence your aunts\nCome Uncle, let’s go home.\nHome is where the heart is, home is where the fart is.\nCome let us fart in the home.\nThere is no art in a fart.\nStill a fart may not be artless.\nLet us fart an artless fart in the home.\nDemocracy.\nDemocracy.\nBill says democracy must go.\nGo democracy.\nGo\nGo\nGo\n\nBill’s father would never knowingly sit down at table with a Democrat.\nNow Bill says democracy must go.\nGo on democracy.\nDemocracy is the shit.\nRelativity is the shit.\n\nDictators are the shit.\nMenken is the shit.\nWaldo Frank is the shit.\nThe Broom is the shit.\nDada is the shit.\nDempsey is the shit.\nThis is not a complete list.\nThey say Ezra is the shit.\nBut Ezra is nice.\nCome let us build a monument to Ezra.\nGood a very nice monument.\nYou did that nicely\nCan you do another?\nLet me try and do one.\nLet us all try and do one.\nLet the little girl over there on the corner try and do one.\nCome on little girl.\nDo one for Ezra.\nGood.\nYou have all been successful children.\nNow let us clean the mess up.\nThe Dial does a monument to Proust.\nWe have done a monument to Ezra.\nA monument is a monument.\nAfter all it is the spirit of the thing that counts.", "metadata": {} }, + "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. ", + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1922 + }, + "location": "Paris" + } + }, "ultimately": { "title": "“Ultimately”", "body": "He tried to spit out the truth;\nDry-mouthed at first,\nHe drooled and slobbered in the end;\nTruth dribbling his chin.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1923 + } + } }, "the-age-demanded-that-we-sing": { "title": "“The age demanded that we sing …”", - "body": "The age demanded that we sing\nAnd cut away our tongue.\n\nThe age demanded that we flow\nAnd hammered in the bung.\n\nThe age demanded that we dance\nAnd jammed us into iron pants.\n\nAnd in the end the age was handed\nThe sort of shit that it demanded.", - "metadata": {} + "body": "The age demanded that we sing\nAnd cut away our tongue.\nThe age demanded that we flow\nAnd hammered in the bung.\nThe age demanded that we dance\nAnd jammed us into iron pants.\nAnd in the end the age was handed\nThe sort of shit that it demanded.", + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1922 + }, + "location": "Paris" + } } } }, @@ -32642,7 +33343,7 @@ }, "an-indian-summer-day": { "title": "“An Indian Summer Day”", - "body": "# _In the Beginning_\nThe sun is a huntress young,\nThe sun is a red, red joy,\nThe sun is an indian girl,\nOf the tribe of the Illinois.\n\n\n# _Mid-Morning_\nThe sun is a smouldering fire,\nThat creeps through the high gray plain,\nAnd leaves not a bush of cloud\nTo blossom with flowers of rain.\n\n\n# _Noon_\nThe sun is a wounded deer,\nThat treads pale grass in the skies,\nShaking his golden horns,\nFlashing his baleful eyes.\n\n\n# _Sunset_\nThe sun is an eagle old,\nThere in the windless west.\nAtop of the spirit-cliffs\nHe builds him a crimson nest.", + "body": "# _In the Beginning_\n\nThe sun is a huntress young,\nThe sun is a red, red joy,\nThe sun is an indian girl,\nOf the tribe of the Illinois.\n\n\n# _Mid-Morning_\n\nThe sun is a smouldering fire,\nThat creeps through the high gray plain,\nAnd leaves not a bush of cloud\nTo blossom with flowers of rain.\n\n\n# _Noon_\n\nThe sun is a wounded deer,\nThat treads pale grass in the skies,\nShaking his golden horns,\nFlashing his baleful eyes.\n\n\n# _Sunset_\n\nThe sun is an eagle old,\nThere in the windless west.\nAtop of the spirit-cliffs\nHe builds him a crimson nest.", "metadata": { "context": { "season": "summer" @@ -35151,7 +35852,11 @@ "roadways": { "title": "“Roadways”", "body": "One road leads to London,\nOne road leads to Wales,\nMy road leads me seawards\nTo the white dipping sails.\n\nOne road leads to the river,\nAs it goes singing slow;\nMy road leads to shipping,\nWhere the bronzed sailors go.\n\nLeads me, lures me, calls me\nTo salt green tossing sea;\nA road without earth’s road-dust\nIs the right road for me.\n\nA wet road heaving, shining,\nAnd wild with segulls’ cries,\nA mad salt sea-wind blowing\nThe salt spray in my eyes.\n\nMy road calls me, lures me\nWest, east, south, and north;\nMost roads lead men homewards,\nMy road leads me forth\n\nTo add more miles to the tally\nOf grey miles left behind,\nIn quest of that one beauty\nGod put me here to find.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1918 + } + } }, "roses-are-beauty-but-i-never-see": { "title": "“Roses are beauty, but I never see …”", @@ -57646,28 +58351,43 @@ "tags": [ "english" ], - "n_poems": 51 + "n_poems": 55 }, "poems": { "after-death": { "title": "“After Death”", "body": "The four boards of the coffin lid\nHeard all the dead man did.\n\nThe first curse was in his mouth,\nMade of grave’s mould and deadly drouth.\n\nThe next curse was in his head,\nMade of God’s work discomfited.\n\nThe next curse was in his hands,\nMade out of two grave-bands.\n\nThe next curse was in his feet,\nMade out of a grave-sheet.\n\n“I had fair coins red and white,\nAnd my name was as great light;\n\nI had fair clothes green and red,\nAnd strong gold bound round my head.\n\nBut no meat comes in my mouth,\nNow I fare as the worm doth;\n\nAnd no gold binds in my hair,\nNow I fare as the blind fare.\n\nMy live thews were of great strength,\nNow am I waxen a span’s length;\n\nMy live sides were full of lust,\nNow are they dried with dust.”\n\nThe first board spake and said:\n“Is it best eating flesh or bread?”\n\nThe second answered it:\n“Is wine or honey the more sweet?”\n\nThe third board spake and said:\n“Is red gold worth a girl’s gold head?”\n\nThe fourth made answer thus:\n“All these things are as one with us.”\n\nThe dead man asked of them:\n“Is the green land stained brown with flame?\n\nHave they hewn my son for beasts to eat,\nAnd my wife’s body for beasts’ meat?\n\nHave they boiled my maid in a brass pan,\nAnd built a gallows to hang my man?”\n\nThe boards said to him:\n“This is a lewd thing that ye deem.\n\nYour wife has gotten a golden bed,\nAll the sheets are sewn with red.\n\nYour son has gotten a coat of silk,\nThe sleeves are soft as curded milk.\n\nYour maid has gotten a kirtle new,\nAll the skirt has braids of blue.\n\nYour man has gotten both ring and glove,\nWrought well for eyes to love.”\n\nThe dead man answered thus:\n“What good gift shall God give us?”\n\nThe boards answered him anon:\n“Flesh to feed hell’s worm upon.”", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1866 + } + } }, "after-sunset": { "title": "“After Sunset”", "body": "_“Si quis piorum Manibus locus.”_\n\n# I.\n\nStraight from the sun’s grave in the deep clear west\nA sweet strong wind blows, glad of life: and I,\nUnder the soft keen stardawn whence the sky\nTakes life renewed, and all night’s godlike breast\nPalpitates, gradually revealed at rest\nBy growth and change of ardours felt on high,\nMake onward, till the last flame fall and die\nAnd all the world by night’s broad hand lie blest.\nHaply, meseems, as from that edge of death,\nWhereon the day lies dark, a brightening breath\nBlows more of benediction than the morn,\nSo from the graves whereon grief gazing saith\nThat half our heart of life there lies forlorn\nMay light or breath at least of hope be born.\n\n\n# II.\n\nThe wind was soft before the sunset fled:\nNow, while the cloud-enshrouded corpse of day\nIs lowered along a red funereal way\nDown to the dark that knows not white from red,\nA clear sheer breeze against the night makes head,\nSerene, but sure of life as ere a ray\nSprings, or the dusk of dawn knows red from grey,\nBeing as a soul that knows not quick from dead.\nFrom far beyond the sunset, far above,\nFull toward the starry soundless east it blows\nBright as a child’s breath breathing on a rose,\nSmooth to the sense as plume of any dove;\nTill more and more as darkness grows and glows\nSilence and night seem likest life and love.\n\n\n# III.\n\nIf light of life outlive the set of sun\nThat men call death and end of all things, then\nHow should not that which life held best for men\nAnd proved most precious, though it seem undone\nBy force of death and woful victory won,\nBe first and surest of revival, when\nDeath shall bow down to life arisen again?\nSo shall the soul seen be the self-same one\nThat looked and spake with even such lips and eyes\nAs love shall doubt not then to recognise,\nAnd all bright thoughts and smiles of all time past\nRevive, transfigured, but in spirit and sense\nNone other than we knew, for evidence\nThat love’s last mortal word was not his last.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1866 + } + } }, "from-anactoria": { "title": "From “Anactoria”", "body": "Yea, thou shalt be forgotten like spilt wine,\nExcept these kisses of my lips on thine\nBrand them with immortality; but me--\nMen shall not see bright fire nor hear the sea,\nNor mix their hearts with music, nor behold\nCast forth of heaven, with feet of awful gold\nAnd plumeless wings that make the bright air blind,\nLightning, with thunder for a hound behind\nHunting through fields unfurrowed and unsown,\nBut in the light and laughter, in the moan\nAnd music, and in grasp of lip and hand\nAnd shudder of water that makes felt on land\nThe immeasurable tremor of all the sea,\nMemories shall mix and metaphors of me.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1866 + } + } }, "at-eleusis": { "title": "“At Eleusis”", "body": "Men of Eleusis, ye that with long staves\nSit in the market-houses, and speak words\nMade sweet with wisdom as the rare wine is\nThickened with honey; and ye sons of these\nWho in the glad thick streets go up and down\nFor pastime or grave traffic or mere chance;\nAnd all fair women having rings of gold\nOn hands or hair; and chiefest over these\nI name you, daughters of this man the king,\nWho dipping deep smooth pitchers of pure brass\nUnder the bubbled wells, till each round lip\nStooped with loose gurgle of waters incoming,\nFound me an old sick woman, lamed and lean,\nBeside a growth of builded olive-boughs\nWhence multiplied thick song of thick-plumed throats--\nAlso wet tears filled up my hollow hands\nBy reason of my crying into them--\nAnd pitied me; for as cold water ran\nAnd washed the pitchers full from lip to lip,\nSo washed both eyes full the strong salt of tears.\nAnd ye put water to my mouth, made sweet\nWith brown hill-berries; so in time I spoke\nAnd gathered my loose knees from under me.\nMoreover in the broad fair halls this month\nHave I found space and bountiful abode\nTo please me. I Demeter speak of this,\nWho am the mother and the mate of things:\nFor as ill men by drugs or singing words\nShut the doors inward of the narrowed womb\nLike a lock bolted with round iron through,\nThus I shut up the body and sweet mouth\nOf all soft pasture and the tender land,\nSo that no seed can enter in by it\nThough one sow thickly, nor some grain get out\nPast the hard clods men cleave and bite with steel\nTo widen the sealed lips of them for use.\nNone of you is there in the peopled street\nBut knows how all the dry-drawn furrows ache\nWith no green spot made count of in the black:\nHow the wind finds no comfortable grass\nNor is assuaged with bud nor breath of herbs;\nAnd in hot autumn when ye house the stacks,\nAll fields are helpless in the sun, all trees\nStand as a man stripped out of all but skin.\nNevertheless ye sick have help to get\nBy means and stablished ordinance of God;\nFor God is wiser than a good man is.\nBut never shall new grass be sweet in earth\nTill I get righted of my wound and wrong\nBy changing counsel of ill-minded Zeus.\nFor of all other gods is none save me\nClothed with like power to build and break the year.\nI make the lesser green begin, when spring\nTouches not earth but with one fearful foot;\nAnd as a careful gilder with grave art\nSoberly colours and completes the face,\nMouth, chin and all, of some sweet work in stone,\nI carve the shapes of grass and tender corn\nAnd colour the ripe edges and long spikes\nWith the red increase and the grace of gold,\nNo tradesman in soft wools is cunninger\nTo kill the secret of the fat white fleece\nWith stains of blue and purple wrought in it.\nThree moons were made and three moons burnt away\nWhile I held journey hither out of Crete\nComfortless, tended by grave Hecate\nWhom my wound stung with double iron point;\nFor all my face was like a cloth wrung out\nWith close and weeping wrinkles, and both lids\nSodden with salt continuance of tears.\nFor Hades and the sidelong will of Zeus\nAnd that lame wisdom that has writhen feet,\nCunning, begotten in the bed of Shame,\nThese three took evil will at me, and made\nSuch counsel that when time got wing to fly\nThis Hades out of summer and low fields\nForced the bright body of Persephone:\nOut of pure grass, where she lying down, red flowers\nMade their sharp little shadows on her sides,\nPale heat, pale colour on pale maiden flesh--\nAnd chill water slid over her reddening feet,\nKilling the throbs in their soft blood; and birds,\nPerched next her elbow and pecking at her hair,\nStretched their necks more to see her than even to sing.\nA sharp thing is it I have need to say;\nFor Hades holding both white wrists of hers\nUnloosed the girdle and with knot by knot\nBound her between his wheels upon the seat,\nBound her pure body, holiest yet and dear\nTo me and God as always, clothed about\nWith blossoms loosened as her knees went down.\nLet fall as she let go of this and this\nBy tens and twenties, tumbled to her feet,\nWhite waifs or purple of the pasturage.\nTherefore with only going up and down\nMy feet were wasted, and the gracious air,\nTo me discomfortable and dun, became\nAs weak smoke blowing in the under world.\nAnd finding in the process of ill days\nWhat part had Zeus herein, and how as mate\nHe coped with Hades, yokefellow in sin,\nI set my lips against the meat of gods\nAnd drank not neither ate or slept in heaven.\nNor in the golden greeting of their mouths\nDid ear take note of me, nor eye at all\nTrack my feet going in the ways of them.\nLike a great fire on some strait slip of land\nBetween two washing inlets of wet sea\nThat burns the grass up to each lip of beach\nAnd strengthens, waxing in the growth of wind,\nSo burnt my soul in me at heaven and earth,\nEach way a ruin and a hungry plague,\nVisible evil; nor could any night\nPut cool between mine eyelids, nor the sun\nWith competence of gold fill out my want.\nYea so my flame burnt up the grass and stones,\nShone to the salt-white edges of thin sea,\nDistempered all the gracious work, and made\nSick change, unseasonable increase of days\nAnd scant avail of seasons; for by this\nThe fair gods faint in hollow heaven: there comes\nNo taste of burnings of the twofold fat\nTo leave their palates smooth, nor in their lips\nSoft rings of smoke and weak scent wandering;\nAll cattle waste and rot, and their ill smell\nGrows alway from the lank unsavoury flesh\nThat no man slays for offering; the sea\nAnd waters moved beneath the heath and corn\nPreserve the people of fin-twinkling fish,\nAnd river-flies feed thick upon the smooth;\nBut all earth over is no man or bird\n(Except the sweet race of the kingfisher)\nThat lacks not and is wearied with much loss.\nMeantime the purple inward of the house\nWas softened with all grace of scent and sound\nIn ear and nostril perfecting my praise;\nFaint grape-flowers and cloven honey-cake\nAnd the just grain with dues of the shed salt\nMade me content: yet my hand loosened not\nIts gripe upon your harvest all year long.\nWhile I, thus woman-muffled in wan flesh\nAnd waste externals of a perished face,\nPreserved the levels of my wrath and love\nPatiently ruled; and with soft offices\nCooled the sharp noons and busied the warm nights\nIn care of this my choice, this child my choice,\nTriptolemus, the king’s selected son:\nThat this fair yearlong body, which hath grown\nStrong with strange milk upon the mortal lip\nAnd nerved with half a god, might so increase\nOutside the bulk and the bare scope of man:\nAnd waxen over large to hold within\nBase breath of yours and this impoverished air,\nI might exalt him past the flame of stars,\nThe limit and walled reach of the great world.\nTherefore my breast made common to his mouth\nImmortal savours, and the taste whereat\nTwice their hard life strains out the coloured veins\nAnd twice its brain confirms the narrow shell.\nAlso at night, unwinding cloth from cloth\nAs who unhusks an almond to the white\nAnd pastures curiously the purer taste,\nI bared the gracious limbs and the soft feet,\nUnswaddled the weak hands, and in mid ash\nLaid the sweet flesh of either feeble side,\nMore tender for impressure of some touch\nThan wax to any pen; and lit around\nFire, and made crawl the white worm-shapen flame,\nAnd leap in little angers spark by spark\nAt head at once and feet; and the faint hair\nHissed with rare sprinkles in the closer curl,\nAnd like scaled oarage of a keen thin fish\nIn sea-water, so in pure fire his feet\nStruck out, and the flame bit not in his flesh,\nBut like a kiss it curled his lip, and heat\nFluttered his eyelids; so each night I blew\nThe hot ash red to purge him to full god.\nIll is it when fear hungers in the soul\nFor painful food, and chokes thereon, being fed;\nAnd ill slant eyes interpret the straight sun,\nBut in their scope its white is wried to black:\nBy the queen Metaneira mean I this;\nFor with sick wrath upon her lips, and heart\nNarrowing with fear the spleenful passages,\nShe thought to thread this web’s fine ravel out,\nNor leave her shuttle split in combing it;\nTherefore she stole on us, and with hard sight\nPeered, and stooped close; then with pale open mouth\nAs the fire smote her in the eyes between\nCried, and the child’s laugh, sharply shortening\nAs fire doth under rain, fell off; the flame\nWrithed once all through and died, and in thick dark\nTears fell from mine on the child’s weeping eyes,\nEyes dispossessed of strong inheritance\nAnd mortal fallen anew. Who not the less\nFrom bud of beard to pale-grey flower of hair\nShall wax vinewise to a lordly vine, whose grapes\nBleed the red heavy blood of swoln soft wine,\nSubtle with sharp leaves’ intricacy, until\nFull of white years and blossom of hoary days\nI take him perfected; for whose one sake\nI am thus gracious to the least who stands\nFilleted with white wool and girt upon\nAs he whose prayer endures upon the lip\nAnd falls not waste: wherefore let sacrifice\nBurn and run red in all the wider ways;\nSeeing I have sworn by the pale temples’ band\nAnd poppied hair of gold Persephone\nSad-tressed and pleached low down about her brows,\nAnd by the sorrow in her lips, and death\nHer dumb and mournful-mouthèd minister,\nMy word for you is eased of its harsh weight\nAnd doubled with soft promise; and your king\nTriptolemus, this Celeus dead and swathed\nPurple and pale for golden burial,\nShall be your helper in my services,\nDividing earth and reaping fruits thereof\nIn fields where wait, well-girt, well-wreathen, all\nThe heavy-handed seasons all year through;\nSaving the choice of warm spear-headed grain,\nAnd stooping sharp to the slant-sided share\nAll beasts that furrow the remeasured land\nWith their bowed necks of burden equable.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1866 + }, "context": { "season": "summer" } @@ -57677,6 +58397,9 @@ "title": "“August”", "body": "There were four apples on the bough,\nHalf gold half red, that one might know\nThe blood was ripe inside the core;\nThe colour of the leaves was more\nLike stems of yellow corn that grow\nThrough all the gold June meadow’s floor.\n\nThe warm smell of the fruit was good\nTo feed on, and the split green wood,\nWith all its bearded lips and stains\nOf mosses in the cloven veins,\nMost pleasant, if one lay or stood\nIn sunshine or in happy rains.\n\nThere were four apples on the tree,\nRed stained through gold, that all might see\nThe sun went warm from core to rind;\nThe green leaves made the summer blind\nIn that soft place they kept for me\nWith golden apples shut behind.\n\nThe leaves caught gold across the sun,\nAnd where the bluest air begun\nThirsted for song to help the heat;\nAs I to feel my lady’s feet\nDraw close before the day were done;\nBoth lips grew dry with dreams of it.\n\nIn the mute August afternoon\nThey trembled to some undertune\nOf music in the silver air;\nGreat pleasure was it to be there\nTill green turned duskier and the moon\nColoured the corn-sheaves like gold hair.\n\nThat August time it was delight\nTo watch the red moons wane to white\n’Twixt grey seamed stems of apple-trees;\nA sense of heavy harmonies\nGrew on the growth of patient night,\nMore sweet than shapen music is.\n\nBut some three hours before the moon\nThe air, still eager from the noon,\nFlagged after heat, not wholly dead;\nAgainst the stem I leant my head;\nThe colour soothed me like a tune,\nGreen leaves all round the gold and red.\n\nI lay there till the warm smell grew\nMore sharp, when flecks of yellow dew\nBetween the round ripe leaves had blurred\nThe rind with stain and wet; I heard\nA wind that blew and breathed and blew,\nToo weak to alter its one word.\n\nThe wet leaves next the gentle fruit\nFelt smoother, and the brown tree-root\nFelt the mould warmer: I too felt\n(As water feels the slow gold melt\nRight through it when the day burns mute)\nThe peace of time wherein love dwelt.\n\nThere were four apples on the tree,\nGold stained on red that all might see\nThe sweet blood filled them to the core:\nThe colour of her hair is more\nLike stems of fair faint gold, that be\nMown from the harvest’s middle floor.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1866 + }, "context": { "month": "august" } @@ -57684,8 +58407,11 @@ }, "autumn-and-winter": { "title": "“Autumn and Winter”", - "body": "Three months bade wane and wax the wintering moon\nBetween two dates of death, while men were fain\nYet of the living light that all too soon\n Three months bade wane.\n\nCold autumn, wan with wrath of wind and rain,\nSaw pass a soul sweet as the sovereign tune\nThat death smote silent when he smote again.\n\nFirst went my friend, in life’s mid light of noon,\nWho loved the lord of music: then the strain\nWhence earth was kindled like as heaven in June\n Three months bade wane.\n\n\n\nA herald soul before its master’s flying\nTouched by some few moons first the darkling goal\nWhere shades rose up to greet the shade, espying\n A herald soul;\n\nShades of dead lords of music, who control\nMen living by the might of men undying,\nWith strength of strains that make delight of dole.\n\nThe deep dense dust on death’s dim threshold lying\nTrembled with sense of kindling sound that stole\nThrough darkness, and the night gave ear, descrying\n A herald soul.\n\n\n\nOne went before, one after, but so fast\nThey seem gone hence together, from the shore\nWhence we now gaze: yet ere the mightier passed\n One went before;\n\nOne whose whole heart of love, being set of yore\nOn that high joy which music lends us, cast\nLight round him forth of music’s radiant store.\n\nThen went, while earth on winter glared aghast,\nThe mortal god he worshipped, through the door\nWherethrough so late, his lover to the last,\n One went before.\n\n\n\nA star had set an hour before the sun\nSank from the skies wherethrough his heart’s pulse yet\nThrills audibly: but few took heed, or none,\n A star had set.\n\nAll heaven rings back, sonorous with regret,\nThe deep dirge of the sunset: how should one\nSoft star be missed in all the concourse met?\n\nBut, O sweet single heart whose work is done,\nWhose songs are silent, how should I forget\nThat ere the sunset’s fiery goal was won\n A star had set?", + "body": "Three months bade wane and wax the wintering moon\nBetween two dates of death, while men were fain\nYet of the living light that all too soon\n Three months bade wane.\n\nCold autumn, wan with wrath of wind and rain,\nSaw pass a soul sweet as the sovereign tune\nThat death smote silent when he smote again.\n\nFirst went my friend, in life’s mid light of noon,\nWho loved the lord of music: then the strain\nWhence earth was kindled like as heaven in June\n Three months bade wane.\n\nA herald soul before its master’s flying\nTouched by some few moons first the darkling goal\nWhere shades rose up to greet the shade, espying\n A herald soul;\n\nShades of dead lords of music, who control\nMen living by the might of men undying,\nWith strength of strains that make delight of dole.\n\nThe deep dense dust on death’s dim threshold lying\nTrembled with sense of kindling sound that stole\nThrough darkness, and the night gave ear, descrying\n A herald soul.\n\nOne went before, one after, but so fast\nThey seem gone hence together, from the shore\nWhence we now gaze: yet ere the mightier passed\n One went before;\n\nOne whose whole heart of love, being set of yore\nOn that high joy which music lends us, cast\nLight round him forth of music’s radiant store.\n\nThen went, while earth on winter glared aghast,\nThe mortal god he worshipped, through the door\nWherethrough so late, his lover to the last,\n One went before.\n\nA star had set an hour before the sun\nSank from the skies wherethrough his heart’s pulse yet\nThrills audibly: but few took heed, or none,\n A star had set.\n\nAll heaven rings back, sonorous with regret,\nThe deep dirge of the sunset: how should one\nSoft star be missed in all the concourse met?\n\nBut, O sweet single heart whose work is done,\nWhose songs are silent, how should I forget\nThat ere the sunset’s fiery goal was won\n A star had set?", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1883 + }, "context": { "liturgy": "advent" } @@ -57695,6 +58421,9 @@ "title": "“Ave Atque Vale”", "body": "Shall I strew on thee rose or rue or laurel,\n Brother, on this that was the veil of thee?\n Or quiet sea-flower moulded by the sea,\nOr simplest growth of meadow-sweet or sorrel,\n Such as the summer-sleepy Dryads weave,\n Waked up by snow-soft sudden rains at eve?\nOr wilt thou rather, as on earth before,\n Half-faded fiery blossoms, pale with heat\n And full of bitter summer, but more sweet\nTo thee than gleanings of a northern shore\n Trod by no tropic feet?\n\nFor always thee the fervid languid glories\n Allured of heavier suns in mightier skies;\n Thine ears knew all the wandering watery sighs\nWhere the sea sobs round Lesbian promontories,\n The barren kiss of piteous wave to wave\n That knows not where is that Leucadian grave\nWhich hides too deep the supreme head of song.\n Ah, salt and sterile as her kisses were,\n The wild sea winds her and the green gulfs bear\nHither and thither, and vex and work her wrong,\n Blind gods that cannot spare.\n\nThou sawest, in thine old singing season, brother,\n Secrets and sorrows unbeheld of us:\n Fierce loves, and lovely leaf-buds poisonous,\nBare to thy subtler eye, but for none other\n Blowing by night in some unbreathed-in clime;\n The hidden harvest of luxurious time,\nSin without shape, and pleasure without speech;\n And where strange dreams in a tumultuous sleep\n Make the shut eyes of stricken spirits weep;\nAnd with each face thou sawest the shadow on each,\n Seeing as men sow men reap.\n\nO sleepless heart and sombre soul unsleeping,\n That were athirst for sleep and no more life\n And no more love, for peace and no more strife!\nNow the dim gods of death have in their keeping\n Spirit and body and all the springs of song,\n Is it well now where love can do no wrong,\nWhere stingless pleasure has no foam or fang\n Behind the unopening closure of her lips?\n Is it not well where soul from body slips\nAnd flesh from bone divides without a pang\n As dew from flower-bell drips?\n\nIt is enough; the end and the beginning\n Are one thing to thee, who art past the end.\n O hand unclasped of unbeholden friend,\nFor thee no fruits to pluck, no palms for winning,\n No triumph and no labour and no lust,\n Only dead yew-leaves and a little dust.\nO quiet eyes wherein the light saith nought,\n Whereto the day is dumb, nor any night\n With obscure finger silences your sight,\nNor in your speech the sudden soul speaks thought,\n Sleep, and have sleep for light.\n\nNow all strange hours and all strange loves are over,\n Dreams and desires and sombre songs and sweet,\n Hast thou found place at the great knees and feet\nOf some pale Titan-woman like a lover,\n Such as thy vision here solicited,\n Under the shadow of her fair vast head,\nThe deep division of prodigious breasts,\n The solemn slope of mighty limbs asleep,\n The weight of awful tresses that still keep\nThe savour and shade of old-world pine-forests\n Where the wet hill-winds weep?\n\nHast thou found any likeness for thy vision?\n O gardener of strange flowers, what bud, what bloom,\n Hast thou found sown, what gathered in the gloom?\nWhat of despair, of rapture, of derision,\n What of life is there, what of ill or good?\n Are the fruits grey like dust or bright like blood?\nDoes the dim ground grow any seed of ours,\n The faint fields quicken any terrene root,\n In low lands where the sun and moon are mute\nAnd all the stars keep silence? Are there flowers\n At all, or any fruit?\n\nAlas, but though my flying song flies after,\n O sweet strange elder singer, thy more fleet\n Singing, and footprints of thy fleeter feet,\nSome dim derision of mysterious laughter\n From the blind tongueless warders of the dead,\n Some gainless glimpse of Proserpine’s veiled head,\nSome little sound of unregarded tears\n Wept by effaced unprofitable eyes,\n And from pale mouths some cadence of dead sighs--\nThese only, these the hearkening spirit hears,\n Sees only such things rise.\n\nThou art far too far for wings of words to follow,\n Far too far off for thought or any prayer.\n What ails us with thee, who art wind and air?\nWhat ails us gazing where all seen is hollow?\n Yet with some fancy, yet with some desire,\n Dreams pursue death as winds a flying fire,\nOur dreams pursue our dead and do not find.\n Still, and more swift than they, the thin flame flies,\n The low light fails us in elusive skies,\nStill the foiled earnest ear is deaf, and blind\n Are still the eluded eyes.\n\nNot thee, O never thee, in all time’s changes,\n Not thee, but this the sound of thy sad soul,\n The shadow of thy swift spirit, this shut scroll\nI lay my hand on, and not death estranges\n My spirit from communion of thy song--\n These memories and these melodies that throng\nVeiled porches of a Muse funereal--\n These I salute, these touch, these clasp and fold\n As though a hand were in my hand to hold,\nOr through mine ears a mourning musical\n Of many mourners rolled.\n\nI among these, I also, in such station\n As when the pyre was charred, and piled the sods,\n And offering to the dead made, and their gods,\nThe old mourners had, standing to make libation,\n I stand, and to the gods and to the dead\n Do reverence without prayer or praise, and shed\nOffering to these unknown, the gods of gloom,\n And what of honey and spice my seedlands bear,\n And what I may of fruits in this chilled air,\nAnd lay, Orestes-like, across the tomb\n A curl of severed hair.\n\nBut by no hand nor any treason stricken,\n Not like the low-lying head of Him, the King,\n The flame that made of Troy a ruinous thing,\nThou liest, and on this dust no tears could quicken\n There fall no tears like theirs that all men hear\n Fall tear by sweet imperishable tear\nDown the opening leaves of holy poets’ pages.\n Thee not Orestes, not Electra mourns;\n But bending us-ward with memorial urns\nThe most high Muses that fulfil all ages\n Weep, and our God’s heart yearns.\n\nFor, sparing of his sacred strength, not often\n Among us darkling here the lord of light\n Makes manifest his music and his might\nIn hearts that open and in lips that soften\n With the soft flame and heat of songs that shine.\n Thy lips indeed he touched with bitter wine,\nAnd nourished them indeed with bitter bread;\n Yet surely from his hand thy soul’s food came,\n The fire that scarred thy spirit at his flame\nWas lighted, and thine hungering heart he fed\n Who feeds our hearts with fame.\n\nTherefore he too now at thy soul’s sunsetting,\n God of all suns and songs, he too bends down\n To mix his laurel with thy cypress crown,\nAnd save thy dust from blame and from forgetting.\n Therefore he too, seeing all thou wert and art,\n Compassionate, with sad and sacred heart,\nMourns thee of many his children the last dead,\n And hallows with strange tears and alien sighs\n Thine unmelodious mouth and sunless eyes,\nAnd over thine irrevocable head\n Sheds light from the under skies.\n\nAnd one weeps with him in the ways Lethean,\n And stains with tears her changing bosom chill:\n That obscure Venus of the hollow hill,\nThat thing transformed which was the Cytherean,\n With lips that lost their Grecian laugh divine\n Long since, and face no more called Erycine;\nA ghost, a bitter and luxurious god.\n Thee also with fair flesh and singing spell\n Did she, a sad and second prey, compel\nInto the footless places once more trod,\n And shadows hot from hell.\n\nAnd now no sacred staff shall break in blossom,\n No choral salutation lure to light\n A spirit sick with perfume and sweet night\nAnd love’s tired eyes and hands and barren bosom.\n There is no help for these things; none to mend\n And none to mar; not all our songs, O friend,\nWill make death clear or make life durable.\n Howbeit with rose and ivy and wild vine\n And with wild notes about this dust of thine\nAt least I fill the place where white dreams dwell\n And wreathe an unseen shrine.\n\nSleep; and if life was bitter to thee, pardon,\n If sweet, give thanks; thou hast no more to live;\n And to give thanks is good, and to forgive.\nOut of the mystic and the mournful garden\n Where all day through thine hands in barren braid\n Wove the sick flowers of secrecy and shade,\nGreen buds of sorrow and sin, and remnants grey,\n Sweet-smelling, pale with poison, sanguine-hearted,\n Passions that sprang from sleep and thoughts that started,\nShall death not bring us all as thee one day\n Among the days departed?\n\nFor thee, O now a silent soul, my brother,\n Take at my hands this garland, and farewell.\n Thin is the leaf, and chill the wintry smell,\nAnd chill the solemn earth, a fatal mother,\n With sadder than the Niobean womb,\n And in the hollow of her breasts a tomb.\nContent thee, howsoe’er, whose days are done;\n There lies not any troublous thing before,\n Nor sight nor sound to war against thee more,\nFor whom all winds are quiet as the sun,\n All waters as the shore.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1866 + }, "context": { "season": "summer" } @@ -57704,6 +58433,9 @@ "title": "“A Baby’s Death”", "body": "A little soul scarce fledged for earth\nTakes wing with heaven again for goal\nEven while we hailed as fresh from birth\n A little soul.\n\nOur thoughts ring sad as bells that toll,\nNot knowing beyond this blind world’s girth\nWhat things are writ in heaven’s full scroll.\n\nOur fruitfulness is there but dearth,\nAnd all things held in time’s control\nSeem there, perchance, ill dreams, not worth\n A little soul.\n\nThe little feet that never trod\nEarth, never strayed in field or street,\nWhat hand leads upward back to God\n The little feet?\n\nA rose in June’s most honied heat,\nWhen life makes keen the kindling sod,\nWas not so soft and warm and sweet.\n\nTheir pilgrimage’s period\nA few swift moons have seen complete\nSince mother’s hands first clasped and shod\n The little feet.\n\nThe little hands that never sought\nEarth’s prizes, worthless all as sands,\nWhat gift has death, God’s servant, brought\n The little hands?\n\nWe ask: but love’s self silent stands,\nLove, that lends eyes and wings to thought\nTo search where death’s dim heaven expands.\n\nEre this, perchance, though love know nought,\nFlowers fill them, grown in lovelier lands,\nWhere hands of guiding angels caught\n The little hands.\n\nThe little eyes that never knew\nLight other than of dawning skies,\nWhat new life now lights up anew\n The little eyes?\n\nWho knows but on their sleep may rise\nSuch light as never heaven let through\nTo lighten earth from Paradise?\n\nNo storm, we know, may change the blue\nSoft heaven that haply death descries\nNo tears, like these in ours, bedew\n The little eyes.\n\nWas life so strange, so sad the sky,\n So strait the wide world’s range,\nHe would not stay to wonder why\n Was life so strange?\n\nWas earth’s fair house a joyless grange\n Beside that house on high\nWhence Time that bore him failed to estrange?\n\nThat here at once his soul put by\n All gifts of time and change,\nAnd left us heavier hearts to sigh\n “Was life so strange?”\n\nAngel by name love called him, seeing so fair\n The sweet small frame;\nMeet to be called, if ever man’s child were,\n Angel by name.\n\nRose-bright and warm from heaven’s own heart he came,\n And might not bear\nThe cloud that covers earth’s wan face with shame.\n\nHis little light of life was all too rare\n And soft a flame:\nHeaven yearned for him till angels hailed him there\n Angel by name.\n\nThe song that smiled upon his birthday here\nWeeps on the grave that holds him undefiled\nWhose loss makes bitterer than a soundless tear\n The song that smiled.\n\nHis name crowned once the mightiest ever styled\nSovereign of arts, and angel: fate and fear\nKnew then their master, and were reconciled.\n\nBut we saw born beneath some tenderer sphere\nMichael, an angel and a little child,\nWhose loss bows down to weep upon his bier\n The song that smiled.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1866 + }, "context": { "month": "june" } @@ -57713,6 +58445,9 @@ "title": "“A Ballad of Burdens”", "body": "The burden of fair women. Vain delight,\nAnd love self-slain in some sweet shameful way,\nAnd sorrowful old age that comes by night\nAs a thief comes that has no heart by day,\nAnd change that finds fair cheeks and leaves them grey,\nAnd weariness that keeps awake for hire,\nAnd grief that says what pleasure used to say;\nThis is the end of every man’s desire.\n\nThe burden of bought kisses. This is sore,\nA burden without fruit in childbearing;\nBetween the nightfall and the dawn threescore,\nThreescore between the dawn and evening.\nThe shuddering in thy lips, the shuddering\nIn thy sad eyelids tremulous like fire,\nMakes love seem shameful and a wretched thing,\nThis is the end of every man’s desire.\n\nThe burden of sweet speeches. Nay, kneel down,\nCover thy head, and weep; for verily\nThese market-men that buy thy white and brown\nIn the last days shall take no thought for thee.\nIn the last days like earth thy face shall be,\nYea, like sea-marsh made thick with brine and mire,\nSad with sick leavings of the sterile sea.\nThis is the end of every man’s desire.\n\nThe burden of long living. Thou shalt fear\nWaking, and sleeping mourn upon thy bed;\nAnd say at night “Would God the day were here,”\nAnd say at dawn “Would God the day were dead.”\nWith weary days thou shalt be clothed and fed,\nAnd wear remorse of heart for thine attire,\nPain for thy girdle and sorrow upon thine head;\nThis is the end of every man’s desire.\n\nThe burden of bright colours. Thou shalt see\nGold tarnished, and the grey above the green;\nAnd as the thing thou seest thy face shall be,\nAnd no more as the thing beforetime seen.\nAnd thou shalt say of mercy “It hath been,”\nAnd living, watch the old lips and loves expire,\nAnd talking, tears shall take thy breath between;\nThis is the end of every man’s desire.\n\nThe burden of sad sayings. In that day\nThou shalt tell all thy days and hours, and tell\nThy times and ways and words of love, and say\nHow one was dear and one desirable,\nAnd sweet was life to hear and sweet to smell,\nBut now with lights reverse the old hours retire\nAnd the last hour is shod with fire from hell;\nThis is the end of every man’s desire.\n\nThe burden of four seasons. Rain in spring,\nWhite rain and wind among the tender trees;\nA summer of green sorrows gathering,\nRank autumn in a mist of miseries,\nWith sad face set towards the year, that sees\nThe charred ash drop out of the dropping pyre,\nAnd winter wan with many maladies;\nThis is the end of every man’s desire.\n\nThe burden of dead faces. Out of sight\nAnd out of love, beyond the reach of hands,\nChanged in the changing of the dark and light,\nThey walk and weep about the barren lands\nWhere no seed is nor any garner stands,\nWhere in short breaths the doubtful days respire,\nAnd time’s turned glass lets through the sighing sands;\nThis is the end of every man’s desire.\n\nThe burden of much gladness. Life and lust\nForsake thee, and the face of thy delight;\nAnd underfoot the heavy hour strews dust,\nAnd overhead strange weathers burn and bite;\nAnd where the red was, lo the bloodless white,\nAnd where truth was, the likeness of a liar,\nAnd where day was, the likeness of the night;\nThis is the end of every man’s desire.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1866 + }, "context": { "liturgy": "lent" } @@ -57722,15 +58457,30 @@ "title": "“A Ballad of Death”", "body": "Kneel down, fair Love, and fill thyself with tears,\nGirdle thyself with sighing for a girth\nUpon the sides of mirth,\nCover thy lips and eyelids, let thine ears\nBe filled with rumour of people sorrowing;\nMake thee soft raiment out of woven sighs\nUpon the flesh to cleave,\nSet pains therein and many a grievous thing,\nAnd many sorrows after each his wise\nFor armlet and for gorget and for sleeve.\n\nO Love’s lute heard about the lands of death,\nLeft hanged upon the trees that were therein;\nO Love and Time and Sin,\nThree singing mouths that mourn now underbreath,\nThree lovers, each one evil spoken of;\nO smitten lips wherethrough this voice of mine\nCame softer with her praise;\nAbide a little for our lady’s love.\nThe kisses of her mouth were more than wine,\nAnd more than peace the passage of her days.\n\nO Love, thou knowest if she were good to see.\nO Time, thou shalt not find in any land\nTill, cast out of thine hand,\nThe sunlight and the moonlight fail from thee,\nAnother woman fashioned like as this.\nO Sin, thou knowest that all thy shame in her\nWas made a goodly thing;\nYea, she caught Shame and shamed him with her kiss,\nWith her fair kiss, and lips much lovelier\nThan lips of amorous roses in late spring.\n\nBy night there stood over against my bed\nQueen Venus with a hood striped gold and black,\nBoth sides drawn fully back\nFrom brows wherein the sad blood failed of red,\nAnd temples drained of purple and full of death.\nHer curled hair had the wave of sea-water\nAnd the sea’s gold in it.\nHer eyes were as a dove’s that sickeneth.\nStrewn dust of gold she had shed over her,\nAnd pearl and purple and amber on her feet.\n\nUpon her raiment of dyed sendaline\nWere painted all the secret ways of love\nAnd covered things thereof,\nThat hold delight as grape-flowers hold their wine;\nRed mouths of maidens and red feet of doves,\nAnd brides that kept within the bride-chamber\nTheir garment of soft shame,\nAnd weeping faces of the wearied loves\nThat swoon in sleep and awake wearier,\nWith heat of lips and hair shed out like flame.\n\nThe tears that through her eyelids fell on me\nMade mine own bitter where they ran between\nAs blood had fallen therein,\nShe saying; Arise, lift up thine eyes and see\nIf any glad thing be or any good\nNow the best thing is taken forth of us;\nEven she to whom all praise\nWas as one flower in a great multitude,\nOne glorious flower of many and glorious,\nOne day found gracious among many days:\n\nEven she whose handmaiden was Love--to whom\nAt kissing times across her stateliest bed\nKings bowed themselves and shed\nPale wine, and honey with the honeycomb,\nAnd spikenard bruised for a burnt-offering;\nEven she between whose lips the kiss became\nAs fire and frankincense;\nWhose hair was as gold raiment on a king,\nWhose eyes were as the morning purged with flame,\nWhose eyelids as sweet savour issuing thence.\n\nThen I beheld, and lo on the other side\nMy lady’s likeness crowned and robed and dead.\nSweet still, but now not red,\nWas the shut mouth whereby men lived and died.\nAnd sweet, but emptied of the blood’s blue shade,\nThe great curled eyelids that withheld her eyes.\nAnd sweet, but like spoilt gold,\nThe weight of colour in her tresses weighed.\nAnd sweet, but as a vesture with new dyes,\nThe body that was clothed with love of old.\n\nAh! that my tears filled all her woven hair\nAnd all the hollow bosom of her gown--\nAh! that my tears ran down\nEven to the place where many kisses were,\nEven where her parted breast-flowers have place,\nEven where they are cloven apart--who knows not this?\nAh! the flowers cleave apart\nAnd their sweet fills the tender interspace;\nAh! the leaves grown thereof were things to kiss\nEre their fine gold was tarnished at the heart.\n\nAh! in the days when God did good to me,\nEach part about her was a righteous thing;\nHer mouth an almsgiving,\nThe glory of her garments charity,\nThe beauty of her bosom a good deed,\nIn the good days when God kept sight of us;\nLove lay upon her eyes,\nAnd on that hair whereof the world takes heed;\nAnd all her body was more virtuous\nThan souls of women fashioned otherwise.\n\nNow, ballad, gather poppies in thine hands\nAnd sheaves of brier and many rusted sheaves\nRain-rotten in rank lands,\nWaste marigold and late unhappy leaves\nAnd grass that fades ere any of it be mown;\nAnd when thy bosom is filled full thereof\nSeek out Death’s face ere the light altereth,\nAnd say “My master that was thrall to Love\nIs become thrall to Death.”\nBow down before him, ballad, sigh and groan,\nBut make no sojourn in thy outgoing;\nFor haply it may be\nThat when thy feet return at evening\nDeath shall come in with thee.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1866 + }, "context": { "season": "winter" } } }, + "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. ", + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1878 + } + } + }, "a-ballad-of-life": { "title": "“A Ballad of Life”", "body": "I found in dreams a place of wind and flowers,\nFull of sweet trees and colour of glad grass,\nIn midst whereof there was\nA lady clothed like summer with sweet hours.\nHer beauty, fervent as a fiery moon,\nMade my blood burn and swoon\n Like a flame rained upon.\nSorrow had filled her shaken eyelids’ blue,\nAnd her mouth’s sad red heavy rose all through\n Seemed sad with glad things gone.\n\nShe held a little cithern by the strings,\nShaped heartwise, strung with subtle-coloured hair\nOf some dead lute-player\nThat in dead years had done delicious things.\nThe seven strings were named accordingly;\nThe first string charity,\n The second tenderness,\nThe rest were pleasure, sorrow, sleep, and sin,\nAnd loving-kindness, that is pity’s kin\n And is most pitiless.\n\nThere were three men with her, each garmented\nWith gold and shod with gold upon the feet;\nAnd with plucked ears of wheat\nThe first man’s hair was wound upon his head:\nHis face was red, and his mouth curled and sad;\nAll his gold garment had\n Pale stains of dust and rust.\nA riven hood was pulled across his eyes;\nThe token of him being upon this wise\n Made for a sign of Lust.\n\nThe next was Shame, with hollow heavy face\nColoured like green wood when flame kindles it.\nHe hath such feeble feet\nThey may not well endure in any place.\nHis face was full of grey old miseries,\nAnd all his blood’s increase\n Was even increase of pain.\nThe last was Fear, that is akin to Death;\nHe is Shame’s friend, and always as Shame saith\n Fear answers him again.\n\nMy soul said in me; This is marvellous,\nSeeing the air’s face is not so delicate\nNor the sun’s grace so great,\nIf sin and she be kin or amorous.\nAnd seeing where maidens served her on their knees,\nI bade one crave of these\n To know the cause thereof.\nThen Fear said: I am Pity that was dead.\nAnd Shame said: I am Sorrow comforted.\n And Lust said: I am Love.\n\nThereat her hands began a lute-playing\nAnd her sweet mouth a song in a strange tongue;\nAnd all the while she sung\nThere was no sound but long tears following\nLong tears upon men’s faces, waxen white\nWith extreme sad delight.\n But those three following men\nBecame as men raised up among the dead;\nGreat glad mouths open and fair cheeks made red\n With child’s blood come again.\n\nThen I said: Now assuredly I see\nMy lady is perfect, and transfigureth\nAll sin and sorrow and death,\nMaking them fair as her own eyelids be,\nOr lips wherein my whole soul’s life abides;\nOr as her sweet white sides\n And bosom carved to kiss.\nNow therefore, if her pity further me,\nDoubtless for her sake all my days shall be\n As righteous as she is.\n\nForth, ballad, and take roses in both arms,\nEven till the top rose touch thee in the throat\nWhere the least thornprick harms;\nAnd girdled in thy golden singing-coat,\nCome thou before my lady and say this;\nBorgia, thy gold hair’s colour burns in me,\n Thy mouth makes beat my blood in feverish rhymes;\nTherefore so many as these roses be,\n Kiss me so many times.\nThen it may be, seeing how sweet she is,\nThat she will stoop herself none otherwise\n Than a blown vine-branch doth,\nAnd kiss thee with soft laughter on thine eyes,\n Ballad, and on thy mouth.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1866 + }, "context": { "season": "summer" } @@ -57739,12 +58489,19 @@ "before-dawn": { "title": "“Before Dawn”", "body": "Sweet life, if life were stronger,\nEarth clear of years that wrong her,\nThen two things might live longer,\nTwo sweeter things than they;\nDelight, the rootless flower,\nAnd love, the bloomless bower;\nDelight that lives an hour,\nAnd love that lives a day.\n\nFrom evensong to daytime,\nWhen April melts in Maytime,\nLove lengthens out his playtime,\nLove lessens breath by breath,\nAnd kiss by kiss grows older\nOn listless throat or shoulder\nTurned sideways now, turned colder\nThan life that dreams of death.\n\nThis one thing once worth giving\nLife gave, and seemed worth living;\nSin sweet beyond forgiving\nAnd brief beyond regret:\nTo laugh and love together\nAnd weave with foam and feather\nAnd wind and words the tether\nOur memories play with yet.\n\nAh, one thing worth beginning,\nOne thread in life worth spinning,\nAh sweet, one sin worth sinning\nWith all the whole soul’s will;\nTo lull you till one stilled you,\nTo kiss you till one killed you,\nTo feed you till one filled you,\nSweet lips, if love could fill;\n\nTo hunt sweet Love and lose him\nBetween white arms and bosom,\nBetween the bud and blossom,\nBetween your throat and chin;\nTo say of shame--what is it?\nOf virtue--we can miss it,\nOf sin--we can but kiss it,\nAnd it’s no longer sin:\n\nTo feel the strong soul, stricken\nThrough fleshly pulses, quicken\nBeneath swift sighs that thicken,\nSoft hands and lips that smite;\nLips that no love can tire,\nWith hands that sting like fire,\nWeaving the web Desire\nTo snare the bird Delight.\n\nBut love so lightly plighted,\nOur love with torch unlighted,\nPaused near us unaffrighted,\nWho found and left him free;\nNone, seeing us cloven in sunder,\nWill weep or laugh or wonder;\nLight love stands clear of thunder,\nAnd safe from winds at sea.\n\nAs, when late larks give warning\nOf dying lights and dawning,\nNight murmurs to the morning,\n“Lie still, O love, lie still;”\nAnd half her dark limbs cover\nThe white limbs of her lover,\nWith amorous plumes that hover\nAnd fervent lips that chill;\n\nAs scornful day represses\nNight’s void and vain caresses,\nAnd from her cloudier tresses\nUnwinds the gold of his,\nWith limbs from limbs dividing\nAnd breath by breath subsiding;\nFor love has no abiding,\nBut dies before the kiss;\n\nSo hath it been, so be it;\nFor who shall live and flee it?\nBut look that no man see it\nOr hear it unaware;\nLest all who love and choose him\nSee Love, and so refuse him;\nFor all who find him lose him,\nBut all have found him fair.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1866 + } + } }, "before-parting": { "title": "“Before Parting”", "body": "A month or twain to live on honeycomb\n Is pleasant; but one tires of scented time,\n Cold sweet recurrence of accepted rhyme,\nAnd that strong purple under juice and foam\nWhere the wine’s heart has burst;\nNor feel the latter kisses like the first.\n\nOnce yet, this poor one time; I will not pray\n Even to change the bitterness of it,\n The bitter taste ensuing on the sweet,\nTo make your tears fall where your soft hair lay\nAll blurred and heavy in some perfumed wise\nOver my face and eyes.\n\nAnd yet who knows what end the scythèd wheat\n Makes of its foolish poppies’ mouths of red?\n These were not sown, these are not harvested,\nThey grow a month and are cast under feet\nAnd none has care thereof,\nAs none has care of divided love.\n\nI know each shadow of your lips by rote,\n Each change of love in eyelids and eyebrows;\n The fashion of fair temples tremulous\nWith tender blood, and colour of your throat;\nI know not how love is gone out of this,\nSeeing that all was his.\n\nLove’s likeness there endures upon all these:\n But out of these one shall not gather love.\n Day hath not strength nor the night shade enough\nTo make love whole and fill his lips with ease,\nAs some bee-builded cell\nFeels at filled lips the heavy honey swell.\n\nI know not how this last month leaves your hair\n Less full of purple colour and hid spice,\n And that luxurious trouble of closed eyes\nIs mixed with meaner shadows and waste care;\nAnd love, kissed out by pleasure, seems not yet\nWorth patience to regret.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1866 + }, "context": { "month": "october" } @@ -57753,12 +58510,19 @@ "a-cameo": { "title": "“A Cameo”", "body": "There was a graven image of Desire\n Painted with red blood on a ground of gold\n Passing between the young men and the old,\nAnd by him Pain, whose body shone like fire,\nAnd Pleasure with gaunt hands that grasped their hire.\n Of his left wrist, with fingers clenched and cold,\n The insatiable Satiety kept hold,\nWalking with feet unshod that pashed the mire.\nThe senses and the sorrows and the sins,\n And the strange loves that suck the breasts of Hate\nTill lips and teeth bite in their sharp indenture,\nFollowed like beasts with flap of wings and fins.\n Death stood aloof behind a gaping grate,\nUpon whose lock was written _Peradventure_.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1866 + } + } }, "a-channel-crossing": { "title": "“A Channel Crossing”", "body": "Forth from Calais, at dawn of night, when sunset summer on autumn shone,\nFared the steamer alert and loud through seas whence only the sun was gone:\nSoft and sweet as the sky they smiled, and bade man welcome: a dim sweet hour\nGleamed and whispered in wind and sea, and heaven was fair as a field in flower,\nStars fulfilled the desire of the darkling world as with music: the star-bright air\nMade the face of the sea, if aught may make the face of the sea, more fair.\nWhence came change? Was the sweet night weary of rest? What anguish awoke in the dark?\nSudden, sublime, the strong storm spake: we heard the thunders as hounds that bark.\nLovelier if aught may be lovelier than stars, we saw the lightnings exalt the sky,\nLiving and lustrous and rapturous as love that is born but to quicken and lighten and die.\nHeaven’s own heart at its highest of delight found utterance in music and semblance in fire:\nThunder on thunder exulted, rejoicing to live and to satiate the night’s desire.\n\nAnd the night was alive and anhungered of life as a tiger from toils cast free:\nAnd a rapture of rage made joyous the spirit and strength of the soul of the sea.\nAll the weight of the wind bore down on it, freighted with death for fraught:\nAnd the keen waves kindled and quickened as things transfigured or things distraught.\nAnd madness fell on them laughing and leaping; and madness came on the wind:\nAnd the might and the light and the darkness of storm were as storm in the heart of Ind.\nSuch glory, such terror, such passion, as lighten and harrow the far fierce East,\nRang, shone, spake, shuddered around us: the night was an altar with death for priest.\nThe channel that sunders England from shores where never was man born free\nWas clothed with the likeness and thrilled with the strength and the wrath of a tropic sea.\nAs a wild steed ramps in rebellion, and rears till it swerves from a backward fall,\nThe strong ship struggled and reared, and her deck was upright as a sheer cliff’s wall.\nStern and prow plunged under, alternate: a glimpse, a recoil, a breath,\nAnd she sprang as the life in a god made man would spring at the throat of death.\nThree glad hours, and it seemed not an hour of supreme and supernal joy,\nFilled full with delight that revives in remembrance a sea-bird’s heart in a boy.\nFor the central crest of the night was cloud that thundered and flamed, sublime\nAs the splendour and song of the soul everlasting that quickens the pulse of time.\nThe glory beholden of man in a vision, the music of light overheard,\nThe rapture and radiance of battle, the life that abides in the fire of a word,\nIn the midmost heaven enkindled, was manifest far on the face of the sea,\nAnd the rage in the roar of the voice of the waters was heard but when heaven breathed free.\nFar eastward, clear of the covering of cloud, the sky laughed out into light\nFrom the rims of the storm to the sea’s dark edge with flames that were flowerlike and white.\nThe leaping and luminous blossoms of live sheet lightning that laugh as they fade\nFrom the cloud’s black base to the black wave’s brim rejoiced in the light they made.\nFar westward, throned in a silent sky, where life was in lustrous tune,\nShone, sweeter and surer than morning or evening, the steadfast smile of the moon.\nThe limitless heaven that enshrined them was lovelier than dreams may behold, and deep\nAs life or as death, revealed and transfigured, may shine on the soul through sleep.\nAll glories of toil and of triumph and passion and pride that it yearns to know\nBore witness there to the soul of its likeness and kinship, above and below.\nThe joys of the lightnings, the songs of the thunders, the strong sea’s labour and rage,\nWere tokens and signs of the war that is life and is joy for the soul to wage.\nNo thought strikes deeper or higher than the heights and the depths that the night made bare,\nIllimitable, infinite, awful and joyful, alive in the summit of air--\nAir stilled and thrilled by the tempest that thundered between its reign and the sea’s,\nRebellious, rapturous, and transient as faith or as terror that bows men’s knees.\nNo love sees loftier and fairer the form of its godlike vision in dreams\nThan the world shone then, when the sky and the sea were as love for a breath’s length seems--\nOne utterly, mingled and mastering and mastered and laughing with love that subsides\nAs the glad mad night sank panting and satiate with storm, and released the tides.\nIn the dense mid channel the steam-souled ship hung hovering, assailed and withheld\nAs a soul born royal, if life or if death be against it, is thwarted and quelled.\nAs the glories of myriads of glowworms in lustrous grass on a boundless lawn\nWere the glories of flames phosphoric that made of the water a light like dawn.\nA thousand Phosphors, a thousand Hespers, awoke in the churning sea,\nAnd the swift soft hiss of them living and dying was clear as a tune could be;\nAs a tune that is played by the fingers of death on the keys of life or of sleep,\nAudible alway alive in the storm, too fleet for a dream to keep:\nToo fleet, too sweet for a dream to recover and thought to remember awake:\nLight subtler and swifter than lightning, that whispers and laughs in the live storm’s wake,\nIn the wild bright wake of the storm, in the dense loud heart of the labouring hour,\nA harvest of stars by the storm’s hand reaped, each fair as a star-shaped flower.\nAnd sudden and soft as the passing of sleep is the passing of tempest seemed\nWhen the light and the sound of it sank, and the glory was gone as a dream half dreamed.\nThe glory, the terror, the passion that made of the midnight a miracle, died,\nNot slain at a stroke, nor in gradual reluctance abated of power and of pride;\nWith strong swift subsidence, awful as power that is wearied of power upon earth,\nAs a God that were wearied of power upon heaven, and were fain of a new God’s birth,\nThe might of the night subsided: the tyranny kindled in darkness fell:\nAnd the sea and the sky put off them the rapture and radiance of heaven and of hell.\nThe waters, heaving and hungering at heart, made way, and were wellnigh fain,\nFor the ship that had fought them, and wrestled, and revelled in labour, to cease from her pain.\nAnd an end was made of it: only remembrance endures of the glad loud strife;\nAnd the sense that a rapture so royal may come not again in the passage of life.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1866 + }, "context": { "month": "september" } @@ -57768,6 +58532,9 @@ "title": "“A Christmas Carol”", "body": "Three damsels in the queen’s chamber,\n The queen’s mouth was most fair;\nShe spake a word of God’s mother\n As the combs went in her hair.\n Mary that is of might,\n Bring us to thy Son’s sight.\n\nThey held the gold combs out from her,\n A span’s length off her head;\nShe sang this song of God’s mother\n And of her bearing-bed.\n Mary most full of grace,\n Bring us to thy Son’s face.\n\nWhen she sat at Joseph’s hand,\n She looked against her side;\nAnd either way from the short silk band\n Her girdle was all wried.\n Mary that all good may,\n Bring us to thy Son’s way.\n\nMary had three women for her bed,\n The twain were maidens clean;\nThe first of them had white and red,\n The third had riven green.\n Mary that is so sweet,\n Bring us to thy Son’s feet.\n\nShe had three women for her hair,\n Two were gloved soft and shod;\nThe third had feet and fingers bare,\n She was the likest God.\n Mary that wieldeth land,\n Bring us to thy Son’s hand.\n\nShe had three women for her ease,\n The twain were good women:\nThe first two were the two Maries,\n The third was Magdalen.\n Mary that perfect is,\n Bring us to thy Son’s kiss.\n\nJoseph had three workmen in his stall,\n To serve him well upon;\nThe first of them were Peter and Paul,\n The third of them was John.\n Mary, God’s handmaiden,\n Bring us to thy Son’s ken.\n\n“If your child be none other man’s,\n But if it be very mine,\nThe bedstead shall be gold two spans,\n The bedfoot silver fine.”\n Mary that made God mirth,\n Bring us to thy Son’s birth.\n\n“If the child be some other man’s,\n And if it be none of mine,\nThe manger shall be straw two spans,\n Betwixen kine and kine.”\n Mary that made sin cease,\n Bring us to thy Son’s peace.\n\nChrist was born upon this wise,\n It fell on such a night,\nNeither with sounds of psalteries,\n Nor with fire for light.\n Mary that is God’s spouse,\n Bring us to thy Son’s house.\n\nThe star came out upon the east\n With a great sound and sweet:\nKings gave gold to make him feast\n And myrrh for him to eat.\n Mary, of thy sweet mood,\n Bring us to thy Son’s good.\n\nHe had two handmaids at his head,\n One handmaid at his feet;\nThe twain of them were fair and red,\n The third one was right sweet.\n Mary that is most wise,\n Bring us to thy Son’s eyes. Amen.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1866 + }, "context": { "liturgy": "christmastide" } @@ -57777,6 +58544,9 @@ "title": "“The Complaint of Lisa”", "body": "There is no woman living that draws breath\nSo sad as I, though all things sadden her.\nThere is not one upon life’s weariest way\nWho is weary as I am weary of all but death.\nToward whom I look as looks the sunflower\nAll day with all his whole soul toward the sun;\nWhile in the sun’s sight I make moan all day,\nAnd all night on my sleepless maiden bed\nWeep and call out on death, O Love, and thee,\nThat thou or he would take me to the dead,\nAnd know not what thing evil I have done\nThat life should lay such heavy hand on me.\n\nAlas, Love, what is this thou wouldst with me?\nWhat honour shalt thou have to quench my breath,\nOr what shall my heart broken profit thee?\nO Love, O great god Love, what have I done,\nThat thou shouldst hunger so after my death?\nMy heart is harmless as my life’s first day:\nSeek out some false fair woman, and plague her\nTill her tears even as my tears fill her bed:\nI am the least flower in thy flowery way,\nBut till my time be come that I be dead\nLet me live out my flower-time in the sun\nThough my leaves shut before the sunflower.\n\nO Love, Love, Love, the kingly sunflower!\nShall he the sun hath looked on look on me,\nThat live down here in shade, out of the sun,\nHere living in the sorrow and shadow of death?\nShall he that feeds his heart full of the day\nCare to give mine eyes light, or my lips breath?\nBecause she loves him shall my lord love her\nWho is as a worm in my lord’s kingly way?\nI shall not see him or know him alive or dead;\nBut thou, I know thee, O Love, and pray to thee\nThat in brief while my brief life-days be done,\nAnd the worm quickly make my marriage-bed.\n\nFor underground there is no sleepless bed:\nBut here since I beheld my sunflower\nThese eyes have slept not, seeing all night and day\nHis sunlike eyes, and face fronting the sun.\nWherefore if anywhere be any death,\nI would fain find and fold him fast to me,\nThat I may sleep with the world’s eldest dead,\nWith her that died seven centuries since, and her\nThat went last night down the night-wandering way.\nFor this is sleep indeed, when labour is done,\nWithout love, without dreams, and without breath,\nAnd without thought, O name unnamed! of thee.\n\nAh, but, forgetting all things, shall I thee?\nWilt thou not be as now about my bed\nThere underground as here before the sun?\nShall not thy vision vex me alive and dead,\nThy moving vision without form or breath?\nI read long since the bitter tale of her\nWho read the tale of Launcelot on a day,\nAnd died, and had no quiet after death,\nBut was moved ever along a weary way,\nLost with her love in the underworld; ah me,\nO my king, O my lordly sunflower,\nWould God to me too such a thing were done!\n\nBut if such sweet and bitter things be done,\nThen, flying from life, I shall not fly from thee.\nFor in that living world without a sun\nThy vision will lay hold upon me dead,\nAnd meet and mock me, and mar my peace in death.\nYet if being wroth God had such pity on her,\nWho was a sinner and foolish in her day,\nThat even in hell they twain should breathe one breath,\nWhy should he not in some wise pity me?\nSo if I sleep not in my soft strait bed\nI may look up and see my sunflower\nAs he the sun, in some divine strange way.\n\nO poor my heart, well knowest thou in what way\nThis sore sweet evil unto us was done.\nFor on a holy and a heavy day\nI was arisen out of my still small bed\nTo see the knights tilt, and one said to me\n“The king,” and seeing him, somewhat stopped my breath,\nAnd if the girl spake more, I heard not her,\nFor only I saw what I shall see when dead,\nA kingly flower of knights, a sunflower,\nThat shone against the sunlight like the sun,\nAnd like a fire, O heart, consuming thee,\nThe fire of love that lights the pyre of death.\n\nHowbeit I shall not die an evil death\nWho have loved in such a sad and sinless way,\nThat this my love, lord, was no shame to thee.\nSo when mine eyes are shut against the sun,\nO my soul’s sun, O the world’s sunflower,\nThou nor no man will quite despise me dead.\nAnd dying I pray with all my low last breath\nThat thy whole life may be as was that day,\nThat feast-day that made trothplight death and me,\nGiving the world light of thy great deeds done;\nAnd that fair face brightening thy bridal bed,\nThat God be good as God hath been to her.\n\nThat all things goodly and glad remain with her,\nAll things that make glad life and goodly death;\nThat as a bee sucks from a sunflower\nHoney, when summer draws delighted breath,\nHer soul may drink of thy soul in like way,\nAnd love make life a fruitful marriage-bed\nWhere day may bring forth fruits of joy to day\nAnd night to night till days and nights be dead.\nAnd as she gives light of her love to thee,\nGive thou to her the old glory of days long done;\nAnd either give some heat of light to me,\nTo warm me where I sleep without the sun.\n\nO sunflower made drunken with the sun,\nO knight whose lady’s heart draws thine to her,\nGreat king, glad lover, I have a word to thee.\nThere is a weed lives out of the sun’s way,\nHid from the heat deep in the meadow’s bed,\nThat swoons and whitens at the wind’s least breath,\nA flower star-shaped, that all a summer day\nWill gaze her soul out on the sunflower\nFor very love till twilight finds her dead.\nBut the great sunflower heeds not her poor death,\nKnows not when all her loving life is done;\nAnd so much knows my lord the king of me.\n\nAye, all day long he has no eye for me;\nWith golden eye following the golden sun\nFrom rose-coloured to purple-pillowed bed,\nFrom birthplace to the flame-lit place of death,\nFrom eastern end to western of his way.\nSo mine eye follows thee, my sunflower,\nSo the white star-flower turns and yearns to thee,\nThe sick weak weed, not well alive or dead,\nTrod underfoot if any pass by her,\nPale, without colour of summer or summer breath\nIn the shrunk shuddering petals, that have done\nNo work but love, and die before the day.\n\nBut thou, to-day, to-morrow, and every day,\nBe glad and great, O love whose love slays me.\nThy fervent flower made fruitful from the sun\nShall drop its golden seed in the world’s way,\nThat all men thereof nourished shall praise thee\nFor grain and flower and fruit of works well done;\nTill thy shed seed, O shining sunflower,\nBring forth such growth of the world’s garden-bed\nAs like the sun shall outlive age and death.\nAnd yet I would thine heart had heed of her\nWho loves thee alive; but not till she be dead.\nCome, Love, then, quickly, and take her utmost breath.\n\nSong, speak for me who am dumb as are the dead;\nFrom my sad bed of tears I send forth thee,\nTo fly all day from sun’s birth to sun’s death\nDown the sun’s way after the flying sun,\nFor love of her that gave thee wings and breath,\nEre day be done, to seek the sunflower.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1866 + }, "context": { "season": "summer" } @@ -57785,12 +58555,19 @@ "dead-love": { "title": "“Dead Love”", "body": "Dead love, by treason slain, lies stark,\nWhite as a dead stark-stricken dove:\nNone that pass by him pause to mark\n Dead love.\n\nHis heart, that strained and yearned and strove\nAs toward the sundawn strives the lark,\nIs cold as all the old joy thereof.\n\nDead men, re-arisen from dust, may hark\nWhen rings the trumpet blown above:\nIt will not raise from out the dark\n Dead love.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1866 + } + } }, "a-death-on-easter-day": { "title": "“A Death on Easter Day”", "body": "The strong spring sun rejoicingly may rise,\nRise and make revel, as of old men said,\nLike dancing hearts of lovers newly wed:\nA light more bright than ever bathed the skies\nDeparts for all time out of all men’s eyes.\nThe crowns that girt last night a living head\nShine only now, though deathless, on the dead:\nArt that mocks death, and Song that never dies.\nAlbeit the bright sweet mothlike wings be furled,\nHope sees, past all division and defection,\nAnd higher than swims the mist of human breath,\nThe soul most radiant once in all the world\nRequickened to regenerate resurrection\nOut of the likeness of the shadow of death.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1866 + }, "context": { "holiday": "easter_sunday" } @@ -57800,6 +58577,9 @@ "title": "“Dolores”", "body": "Cold eyelids that hide like a jewel\nHard eyes that grow soft for an hour;\nThe heavy white limbs, and the cruel\nRed mouth like a venomous flower;\nWhen these are gone by with their glories,\nWhat shall rest of thee then, what remain,\nO mystic and sombre Dolores,\nOur Lady of Pain?\n\nSeven sorrows the priests give their Virgin;\nBut thy sins, which are seventy times seven,\nSeven ages would fail thee to purge in,\nAnd then they would haunt thee in heaven:\nFierce midnights and famishing morrows,\nAnd the loves that complete and control\nAll the joys of the flesh, all the sorrows\nThat wear out the soul.\n\nO garment not golden but gilded,\nO garden where all men may dwell,\nO tower not of ivory, but builded\nBy hands that reach heaven from hell;\nO mystical rose of the mire,\nO house not of gold but of gain,\nO house of unquenchable fire,\nOur Lady of Pain!\n\nO lips full of lust and of laughter,\nCurled snakes that are fed from my breast,\nBite hard, lest remembrance come after\nAnd press with new lips where you pressed.\nFor my heart too springs up at the pressure,\nMine eyelids too moisten and burn;\nAh, feed me and fill me with pleasure,\nEre pain come in turn.\n\nIn yesterday’s reach and to-morrow’s,\nOut of sight though they lie of to-day,\nThere have been and there yet shall be sorrows\nThat smite not and bite not in play.\nThe life and the love thou despisest,\nThese hurt us indeed, and in vain,\nO wise among women, and wisest,\nOur Lady of Pain.\n\nWho gave thee thy wisdom? what stories\nThat stung thee, what visions that smote?\nWert thou pure and a maiden, Dolores,\nWhen desire took thee first by the throat?\nWhat bud was the shell of a blossom\nThat all men may smell to and pluck?\nWhat milk fed thee first at what bosom?\nWhat sins gave thee suck?\n\nWe shift and bedeck and bedrape us,\nThou art noble and nude and antique;\nLibitina thy mother, Priapus\nThy father, a Tuscan and Greek.\nWe play with light loves in the portal,\nAnd wince and relent and refrain;\nLoves die, and we know thee immortal,\nOur Lady of Pain.\n\nFruits fail and love dies and time ranges;\nThou art fed with perpetual breath,\nAnd alive after infinite changes,\nAnd fresh from the kisses of death;\nOf languors rekindled and rallied,\nOf barren delights and unclean,\nThings monstrous and fruitless, a pallid\nAnd poisonous queen.\n\nCould you hurt me, sweet lips, though I hurt you?\nMen touch them, and change in a trice\nThe lilies and languors of virtue\nFor the raptures and roses of vice;\nThose lie where thy foot on the floor is,\nThese crown and caress thee and chain,\nO splendid and sterile Dolores,\nOur Lady of Pain.\n\nThere are sins it may be to discover,\nThere are deeds it may be to delight.\nWhat new work wilt thou find for thy lover,\nWhat new passions for daytime or night?\nWhat spells that they know not a word of\nWhose lives are as leaves overblown?\nWhat tortures undreamt of, unheard of,\nUnwritten, unknown?\n\nAh beautiful passionate body\nThat never has ached with a heart!\nOn thy mouth though the kisses are bloody,\nThough they sting till it shudder and smart,\nMore kind than the love we adore is,\nThey hurt not the heart or the brain,\nO bitter and tender Dolores,\nOur Lady of Pain.\n\nAs our kisses relax and redouble,\nFrom the lips and the foam and the fangs\nShall no new sin be born for men’s trouble,\nNo dream of impossible pangs?\nWith the sweet of the sins of old ages\nWilt thou satiate thy soul as of yore?\nToo sweet is the rind, say the sages,\nToo bitter the core.\n\nHast thou told all thy secrets the last time,\nAnd bared all thy beauties to one?\nAh, where shall we go then for pastime,\nIf the worst that can be has been done?\nBut sweet as the rind was the core is;\nWe are fain of thee still, we are fain,\nO sanguine and subtle Dolores,\nOur Lady of Pain.\n\nBy the hunger of change and emotion,\nBy the thirst of unbearable things,\nBy despair, the twin-born of devotion,\nBy the pleasure that winces and stings,\nThe delight that consumes the desire,\nThe desire that outruns the delight,\nBy the cruelty deaf as a fire\nAnd blind as the night,\n\nBy the ravenous teeth that have smitten\nThrough the kisses that blossom and bud,\nBy the lips intertwisted and bitten\nTill the foam has a savour of blood,\nBy the pulse as it rises and falters,\nBy the hands as they slacken and strain,\nI adjure thee, respond from thine altars,\nOur Lady of Pain.\n\nWilt thou smile as a woman disdaining\nThe light fire in the veins of a boy?\nBut he comes to thee sad, without feigning,\nWho has wearied of sorrow and joy;\nLess careful of labour and glory\nThan the elders whose hair has uncurled;\nAnd young, but with fancies as hoary\nAnd grey as the world.\n\nI have passed from the outermost portal\nTo the shrine where a sin is a prayer;\nWhat care though the service be mortal?\nO our Lady of Torture, what care?\nAll thine the last wine that I pour is,\nThe last in the chalice we drain,\nO fierce and luxurious Dolores,\nOur Lady of Pain.\n\nAll thine the new wine of desire,\nThe fruit of four lips as they clung\nTill the hair and the eyelids took fire,\nThe foam of a serpentine tongue,\nThe froth of the serpents of pleasure,\nMore salt than the foam of the sea,\nNow felt as a flame, now at leisure\nAs wine shed for me.\n\nAh thy people, thy children, thy chosen,\nMarked cross from the womb and perverse!\nThey have found out the secret to cozen\nThe gods that constrain us and curse;\nThey alone, they are wise, and none other;\nGive me place, even me, in their train,\nO my sister, my spouse, and my mother,\nOur Lady of Pain.\n\nFor the crown of our life as it closes\nIs darkness, the fruit thereof dust;\nNo thorns go as deep as a rose’s,\nAnd love is more cruel than lust.\nTime turns the old days to derision,\nOur loves into corpses or wives;\nAnd marriage and death and division\nMake barren our lives.\n\nAnd pale from the past we draw nigh thee,\nAnd satiate with comfortless hours;\nAnd we know thee, how all men belie thee,\nAnd we gather the fruit of thy flowers;\nThe passion that slays and recovers,\nThe pangs and the kisses that rain\nOn the lips and the limbs of thy lovers,\nOur Lady of Pain.\n\nThe desire of thy furious embraces\nIs more than the wisdom of years,\nOn the blossom though blood lie in traces,\nThough the foliage be sodden with tears.\nFor the lords in whose keeping the door is\nThat opens on all who draw breath\nGave the cypress to love, my Dolores,\nThe myrtle to death.\n\nAnd they laughed, changing hands in the measure,\nAnd they mixed and made peace after strife;\nPain melted in tears, and was pleasure;\nDeath tingled with blood, and was life.\nLike lovers they melted and tingled,\nIn the dusk of thine innermost fane;\nIn the darkness they murmured and mingled,\nOur Lady of Pain.\n\nIn a twilight where virtues are vices,\nIn thy chapels, unknown of the sun,\nTo a tune that enthralls and entices,\nThey were wed, and the twain were as one.\nFor the tune from thine altar hath sounded\nSince God bade the world’s work begin,\nAnd the fume of thine incense abounded,\nTo sweeten the sin.\n\nLove listens, and paler than ashes,\nThrough his curls as the crown on them slips,\nLifts languid wet eyelids and lashes,\nAnd laughs with insatiable lips.\nThou shalt hush him with heavy caresses,\nWith music that scares the profane;\nThou shalt darken his eyes with thy tresses,\nOur Lady of Pain.\n\nThou shalt blind his bright eyes though he wrestle,\nThou shalt chain his light limbs though he strive;\nIn his lips all thy serpents shall nestle,\nIn his hands all thy cruelties thrive.\nIn the daytime thy voice shall go through him,\nIn his dreams he shall feel thee and ache;\nThou shalt kindle by night and subdue him\nAsleep and awake.\n\nThou shalt touch and make redder his roses\nWith juice not of fruit nor of bud;\nWhen the sense in the spirit reposes,\nThou shalt quicken the soul through the blood.\nThine, thine the one grace we implore is,\nWho would live and not languish or feign,\nO sleepless and deadly Dolores,\nOur Lady of Pain.\n\nDost thou dream, in a respite of slumber,\nIn a lull of the fires of thy life,\nOf the days without name, without number,\nWhen thy will stung the world into strife;\nWhen, a goddess, the pulse of thy passion\nSmote kings as they revelled in Rome;\nAnd they hailed thee re-risen, O Thalassian,\nFoam-white, from the foam?\n\nWhen thy lips had such lovers to flatter;\nWhen the city lay red from thy rods,\nAnd thine hands were as arrows to scatter\nThe children of change and their gods;\nWhen the blood of thy foemen made fervent\nA sand never moist from the main,\nAs one smote them, their lord and thy servant,\nOur Lady of Pain.\n\nOn sands by the storm never shaken,\nNor wet from the washing of tides;\nNor by foam of the waves overtaken,\nNor winds that the thunder bestrides;\nBut red from the print of thy paces,\nMade smooth for the world and its lords,\nRinged round with a flame of fair faces,\nAnd splendid with swords.\n\nThere the gladiator, pale for thy pleasure,\nDrew bitter and perilous breath;\nThere torments laid hold on the treasure\nOf limbs too delicious for death;\nWhen thy gardens were lit with live torches;\nWhen the world was a steed for thy rein;\nWhen the nations lay prone in thy porches,\nOur Lady of Pain.\n\nWhen, with flame all around him aspirant,\nStood flushed, as a harp-player stands,\nThe implacable beautiful tyrant,\nRose-crowned, having death in his hands;\nAnd a sound as the sound of loud water\nSmote far through the flight of the fires,\nAnd mixed with the lightning of slaughter\nA thunder of lyres.\n\nDost thou dream of what was and no more is,\nThe old kingdoms of earth and the kings?\nDost thou hunger for these things, Dolores,\nFor these, in a world of new things?\nBut thy bosom no fasts could emaciate,\nNo hunger compel to complain\nThose lips that no bloodshed could satiate,\nOur Lady of Pain.\n\nAs of old when the world’s heart was lighter,\nThrough thy garments the grace of thee glows,\nThe white wealth of thy body made whiter\nBy the blushes of amorous blows,\nAnd seamed with sharp lips and fierce fingers,\nAnd branded by kisses that bruise;\nWhen all shall be gone that now lingers,\nAh, what shall we lose?\n\nThou wert fair in the fearless old fashion,\nAnd thy limbs are as melodies yet,\nAnd move to the music of passion\nWith lithe and lascivious regret.\nWhat ailed us, O gods, to desert you\nFor creeds that refuse and restrain?\nCome down and redeem us from virtue,\nOur Lady of Pain.\n\nAll shrines that were Vestal are flameless,\nBut the flame has not fallen from this;\nThough obscure be the god, and though nameless\nThe eyes and the hair that we kiss;\nLow fires that love sits by and forges\nFresh heads for his arrows and thine;\nHair loosened and soiled in mid orgies\nWith kisses and wine.\n\nThy skin changes country and colour,\nAnd shrivels or swells to a snake’s.\nLet it brighten and bloat and grow duller,\nWe know it, the flames and the flakes,\nRed brands on it smitten and bitten,\nRound skies where a star is a stain,\nAnd the leaves with thy litanies written,\nOur Lady of Pain.\n\nOn thy bosom though many a kiss be,\nThere are none such as knew it of old.\nWas it Alciphron once or Arisbe,\nMale ringlets or feminine gold,\nThat thy lips met with under the statue,\nWhence a look shot out sharp after thieves\nFrom the eyes of the garden-god at you\nAcross the fig-leaves?\n\nThen still, through dry seasons and moister,\nOne god had a wreath to his shrine;\nThen love was the pearl of his oyster,\nAnd Venus rose red out of wine.\nWe have all done amiss, choosing rather\nSuch loves as the wise gods disdain;\nIntercede for us thou with thy father,\nOur Lady of Pain.\n\nIn spring he had crowns of his garden,\nRed corn in the heat of the year,\nThen hoary green olives that harden\nWhen the grape-blossom freezes with fear;\nAnd milk-budded myrtles with Venus\nAnd vine-leaves with Bacchus he trod;\nAnd ye said, “We have seen, he hath seen us,\nA visible God.”\n\nWhat broke off the garlands that girt you?\nWhat sundered you spirit and clay?\nWeak sins yet alive are as virtue\nTo the strength of the sins of that day.\nFor dried is the blood of thy lover,\nIpsithilla, contracted the vein;\nCry aloud, “Will he rise and recover,\nOur Lady of Pain?”\n\nCry aloud; for the old world is broken:\nCry out; for the Phrygian is priest,\nAnd rears not the bountiful token\nAnd spreads not the fatherly feast.\nFrom the midmost of Ida, from shady\nRecesses that murmur at morn,\nThey have brought and baptized her, Our Lady,\nA goddess new-born.\n\nAnd the chaplets of old are above us,\nAnd the oyster-bed teems out of reach;\nOld poets outsing and outlove us,\nAnd Catullus makes mouths at our speech.\nWho shall kiss, in thy father’s own city,\nWith such lips as he sang with, again?\nIntercede for us all of thy pity,\nOur Lady of Pain.\n\nOut of Dindymus heavily laden\nHer lions draw bound and unfed\nA mother, a mortal, a maiden,\nA queen over death and the dead.\nShe is cold, and her habit is lowly,\nHer temple of branches and sods;\nMost fruitful and virginal, holy,\nA mother of gods.\n\nShe hath wasted with fire thine high places,\nShe hath hidden and marred and made sad\nThe fair limbs of the Loves, the fair faces\nOf gods that were goodly and glad.\nShe slays, and her hands are not bloody;\nShe moves as a moon in the wane,\nWhite-robed, and thy raiment is ruddy,\nOur Lady of Pain.\n\nThey shall pass and their places be taken,\nThe gods and the priests that are pure.\nThey shall pass, and shalt thou not be shaken?\nThey shall perish, and shalt thou endure?\nDeath laughs, breathing close and relentless\nIn the nostrils and eyelids of lust,\nWith a pinch in his fingers of scentless\nAnd delicate dust.\n\nBut the worm shall revive thee with kisses;\nThou shalt change and transmute as a god,\nAs the rod to a serpent that hisses,\nAs the serpent again to a rod.\nThy life shall not cease though thou doff it;\nThou shalt live until evil be slain,\nAnd good shall die first, said thy prophet,\nOur Lady of Pain.\n\nDid he lie? did he laugh? does he know it,\nNow he lies out of reach, out of breath,\nThy prophet, thy preacher, thy poet,\nSin’s child by incestuous Death?\nDid he find out in fire at his waking,\nOr discern as his eyelids lost light,\nWhen the bands of the body were breaking\nAnd all came in sight?\n\nWho has known all the evil before us,\nOr the tyrannous secrets of time?\nThough we match not the dead men that bore us\nAt a song, at a kiss, at a crime--\nThough the heathen outface and outlive us,\nAnd our lives and our longings are twain--\nAh, forgive us our virtues, forgive us,\nOur Lady of Pain.\n\nWho are we that embalm and embrace thee\nWith spices and savours of song?\nWhat is time, that his children should face thee?\nWhat am I, that my lips do thee wrong?\nI could hurt thee--but pain would delight thee;\nOr caress thee--but love would repel;\nAnd the lovers whose lips would excite thee\nAre serpents in hell.\n\nWho now shall content thee as they did,\nThy lovers, when temples were built\nAnd the hair of the sacrifice braided\nAnd the blood of the sacrifice spilt,\nIn Lampsacus fervent with faces,\nIn Aphaca red from thy reign,\nWho embraced thee with awful embraces,\nOur Lady of Pain?\n\nWhere are they, Cotytto or Venus,\nAstarte or Ashtaroth, where?\nDo their hands as we touch come between us?\nIs the breath of them hot in thy hair?\nFrom their lips have thy lips taken fever,\nWith the blood of their bodies grown red?\nHast thou left upon earth a believer\nIf these men are dead?\n\nThey were purple of raiment and golden,\nFilled full of thee, fiery with wine,\nThy lovers, in haunts unbeholden,\nIn marvellous chambers of thine.\nThey are fled, and their footprints escape us,\nWho appraise thee, adore, and abstain,\nO daughter of Death and Priapus,\nOur Lady of Pain.\n\nWhat ails us to fear overmeasure,\nTo praise thee with timorous breath,\nO mistress and mother of pleasure,\nThe one thing as certain as death?\nWe shall change as the things that we cherish,\nShall fade as they faded before,\nAs foam upon water shall perish,\nAs sand upon shore.\n\nWe shall know what the darkness discovers,\nIf the grave-pit be shallow or deep;\nAnd our fathers of old, and our lovers,\nWe shall know if they sleep not or sleep.\nWe shall see whether hell be not heaven,\nFind out whether tares be not grain,\nAnd the joys of thee seventy times seven,\nOur Lady of Pain.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1866 + }, "context": { "holiday": "our_lady_of_sorrows" } @@ -57808,17 +58588,28 @@ "dysthanatos": { "title": "“Dysthanatos”", "body": "_“Ad generem Cereris sine caede et vulnere pauci\nDescendunt reges, aut siccâ morte tyranni.”_\n\nBy no dry death another king goes down\nThe way of kings. Yet may no free man’s voice,\nFor stern compassion and deep awe, rejoice\nThat one sign more is given against the crown,\nThat one more head those dark red waters drown\nWhich rise round thrones whose trembling equipoise\nIs propped on sand and bloodshed and such toys\nAs human hearts that shrink at human frown.\nThe name writ red on Polish earth, the star\nThat was to outshine our England’s in the far\nEast heaven of empire--where is one that saith\nProud words now, prophesying of this White Czar?\n“In bloodless pangs few kings yield up their breath,\nFew tyrants perish by no violent death.”", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1866 + } + } }, "erotion": { "title": "“Erotion”", "body": "Sweet for a little even to fear, and sweet,\nO love, to lay down fear at love’s fair feet;\nShall not some fiery memory of his breath\nLie sweet on lips that touch the lips of death?\nYet leave me not; yet, if thou wilt, be free;\nLove me no more, but love my love of thee.\nLove where thou wilt, and live thy life; and I,\nOne thing I can, and one love cannot--die.\nPass from me; yet thine arms, thine eyes, thine hair,\nFeed my desire and deaden my despair.\nYet once more ere time change us, ere my cheek\nWhiten, ere hope be dumb or sorrow speak,\nYet once more ere thou hate me, one full kiss;\nKeep other hours for others, save me this.\nYea, and I will not (if it please thee) weep,\nLest thou be sad; I will but sigh, and sleep.\nSweet, does death hurt? thou canst not do me wrong:\nI shall not lack thee, as I loved thee, long.\nHast thou not given me above all that live\nJoy, and a little sorrow shalt not give?\nWhat even though fairer fingers of strange girls\nPass nestling through thy beautiful boy’s curls\nAs mine did, or those curled lithe lips of thine\nMeet theirs as these, all theirs come after mine;\nAnd though I were not, though I be not, best,\nI have loved and love thee more than all the rest.\nO love, O lover, loose or hold me fast,\nI had thee first, whoever have thee last;\nFairer or not, what need I know, what care?\nTo thy fair bud my blossom once seemed fair.\nWhy am I fair at all before thee, why\nAt all desired? seeing thou art fair, not I.\nI shall be glad of thee, O fairest head,\nAlive, alone, without thee, with thee, dead;\nI shall remember while the light lives yet,\nAnd in the night-time I shall not forget.\nThough (as thou wilt) thou leave me ere life leave,\nI will not, for thy love I will not, grieve;\nNot as they use who love not more than I,\nWho love not as I love thee though I die;\nAnd though thy lips, once mine, be oftener prest\nTo many another brow and balmier breast,\nAnd sweeter arms, or sweeter to thy mind,\nLull thee or lure, more fond thou wilt not find.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1866 + } + } }, "a-forsaken-garden": { "title": "“A Forsaken Garden”", "body": "In a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland,\nAt the sea-down’s edge between windward and lee,\nWalled round with rocks as an inland island,\nThe ghost of a garden fronts the sea.\nA girdle of brushwood and thorn encloses\nThe steep square slope of the blossomless bed\nWhere the weeds that grew green from the graves of its roses\nNow lie dead.\n\nThe fields fall southward, abrupt and broken,\nTo the low last edge of the long lone land.\nIf a step should sound or a word be spoken,\nWould a ghost not rise at the strange guest’s hand?\nSo long have the grey bare walks lain guestless,\nThrough branches and briars if a man make way,\nHe shall find no life but the sea-wind’s, restless\nNight and day.\n\nThe dense hard passage is blind and stifled\nThat crawls by a track none turn to climb\nTo the strait waste place that the years have rifled\nOf all but the thorns that are touched not of time.\nThe thorns he spares when the rose is taken;\nThe rocks are left when he wastes the plain.\nThe wind that wanders, the weeds wind-shaken,\nThese remain.\n\nNot a flower to be pressed of the foot that falls not;\nAs the heart of a dead man the seed-plots are dry;\nFrom the thicket of thorns whence the nightingale calls not,\nCould she call, there were never a rose to reply.\nOver the meadows that blossom and wither\nRings but the note of a sea-bird’s song;\nOnly the sun and the rain come hither\nAll year long.\n\nThe sun burns sere and the rain dishevels\nOne gaunt bleak blossom of scentless breath.\nOnly the wind here hovers and revels\nIn a round where life seems barren as death.\nHere there was laughing of old, there was weeping,\nHaply, of lovers none ever will know,\nWhose eyes went seaward a hundred sleeping\nYears ago.\n\nHeart handfast in heart as they stood, “Look thither,”\nDid he whisper? “look forth from the flowers to the sea;\nFor the foam-flowers endure when the rose-blossoms wither,\nAnd men that love lightly may die--but we?”\nAnd the same wind sang and the same waves whitened,\nAnd or ever the garden’s last petals were shed,\nIn the lips that had whispered, the eyes that had lightened,\nLove was dead.\n\nOr they loved their life through, and then went whither?\nAnd were one to the end--but what end who knows?\nLove deep as the sea as a rose must wither,\nAs the rose-red seaweed that mocks the rose.\nShall the dead take thought for the dead to love them?\nWhat love was ever as deep as a grave?\nThey are loveless now as the grass above them\nOr the wave.\n\nAll are at one now, roses and lovers,\nNot known of the cliffs and the fields and the sea.\nNot a breath of the time that has been hovers\nIn the air now soft with a summer to be.\nNot a breath shall there sweeten the seasons hereafter\nOf the flowers or the lovers that laugh now or weep,\nWhen as they that are free now of weeping and laughter\nWe shall sleep.\n\nHere death may deal not again for ever;\nHere change may come not till all change end.\nFrom the graves they have made they shall rise up never,\nWho have left nought living to ravage and rend.\nEarth, stones, and thorns of the wild ground growing,\nWhile the sun and the rain live, these shall be;\nTill a last wind’s breath upon all these blowing\nRoll the sea.\n\nTill the slow sea rise and the sheer cliff crumble,\nTill terrace and meadow the deep gulfs drink,\nTill the strength of the waves of the high tides humble\nThe fields that lessen, the rocks that shrink,\nHere now in his triumph where all things falter,\nStretched out on the spoils that his own hand spread,\nAs a god self-slain on his own strange altar,\nDeath lies dead.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1878 + }, "context": { "season": "summer" } @@ -57828,6 +58619,9 @@ "title": "“The Garden of Proserpine”", "body": "Here, where the world is quiet;\nHere, where all trouble seems\nDead winds’ and spent waves’ riot\nIn doubtful dreams of dreams;\nI watch the green field growing\nFor reaping folk and sowing,\nFor harvest-time and mowing,\nA sleepy world of streams.\n\nI am tired of tears and laughter,\nAnd men that laugh and weep;\nOf what may come hereafter\nFor men that sow to reap:\nI am weary of days and hours,\nBlown buds of barren flowers,\nDesires and dreams and powers\nAnd everything but sleep.\n\nHere life has death for neighbour,\nAnd far from eye or ear\nWan waves and wet winds labour,\nWeak ships and spirits steer;\nThey drive adrift, and whither\nThey wot not who make thither;\nBut no such winds blow hither,\nAnd no such things grow here.\n\nNo growth of moor or coppice,\nNo heather-flower or vine,\nBut bloomless buds of poppies,\nGreen grapes of Proserpine,\nPale beds of blowing rushes\nWhere no leaf blooms or blushes\nSave this whereout she crushes\nFor dead men deadly wine.\n\nPale, without name or number,\nIn fruitless fields of corn,\nThey bow themselves and slumber\nAll night till light is born;\nAnd like a soul belated,\nIn hell and heaven unmated,\nBy cloud and mist abated\nComes out of darkness morn.\n\nThough one were strong as seven,\nHe too with death shall dwell,\nNor wake with wings in heaven,\nNor weep for pains in hell;\nThough one were fair as roses,\nHis beauty clouds and closes;\nAnd well though love reposes,\nIn the end it is not well.\n\nPale, beyond porch and portal,\nCrowned with calm leaves, she stands\nWho gathers all things mortal\nWith cold immortal hands;\nHer languid lips are sweeter\nThan love’s who fears to greet her\nTo men that mix and meet her\nFrom many times and lands.\n\nShe waits for each and other,\nShe waits for all men born;\nForgets the earth her mother,\nThe life of fruits and corn;\nAnd spring and seed and swallow\nTake wing for her and follow\nWhere summer song rings hollow\nAnd flowers are put to scorn.\n\nThere go the loves that wither,\nThe old loves with wearier wings;\nAnd all dead years draw thither,\nAnd all disastrous things;\nDead dreams of days forsaken,\nBlind buds that snows have shaken,\nWild leaves that winds have taken,\nRed strays of ruined springs.\n\nWe are not sure of sorrow,\nAnd joy was never sure;\nTo-day will die to-morrow;\nTime stoops to no man’s lure;\nAnd love, grown faint and fretful,\nWith lips but half regretful\nSighs, and with eyes forgetful\nWeeps that no loves endure.\n\nFrom too much love of living,\nFrom hope and fear set free,\nWe thank with brief thanksgiving\nWhatever gods may be\nThat no life lives for ever;\nThat dead men rise up never;\nThat even the weariest river\nWinds somewhere safe to sea.\n\nThen star nor sun shall waken,\nNor any change of light:\nNor sound of waters shaken,\nNor any sound or sight:\nNor wintry leaves nor vernal,\nNor days nor things diurnal;\nOnly the sleep eternal\nIn an eternal night.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1866 + }, "context": { "season": "winter" } @@ -57837,6 +58631,9 @@ "title": "“Hesparia”", "body": "Out of the golden remote wild west where the sea without shore is,\nFull of the sunset, and sad, if at all, with the fulness of joy,\nAs a wind sets in with the autumn that blows from the region of stories,\nBlows with a perfume of songs and of memories beloved from a boy,\nBlows from the capes of the past oversea to the bays of the present,\nFilled as with shadow of sound with the pulse of invisible feet,\nFar out to the shallows and straits of the future, by rough ways or pleasant,\nIs it thither the wind’s wings beat? is it hither to me, O my sweet?\nFor thee, in the stream of the deep tide-wind blowing in with the water,\nThee I behold as a bird borne in with the wind from the west,\nStraight from the sunset, across white waves whence rose as a daughter\nVenus thy mother, in years when the world was a water at rest.\nOut of the distance of dreams, as a dream that abides after slumber,\nStrayed from the fugitive flock of the night, when the moon overhead\nWanes in the wan waste heights of the heaven, and stars without number\nDie without sound, and are spent like lamps that are burnt by the dead,\nComes back to me, stays by me, lulls me with touch of forgotten caresses,\nOne warm dream clad about with a fire as of life that endures;\nThe delight of thy face, and the sound of thy feet, and the wind of thy tresses,\nAnd all of a man that regrets, and all of a maid that allures.\nBut thy bosom is warm for my face and profound as a manifold flower,\nThy silence as music, thy voice as an odour that fades in a flame;\nNot a dream, not a dream is the kiss of thy mouth, and the bountiful hour\nThat makes me forget what was sin, and would make me forget were it shame.\nThine eyes that are quiet, thine hands that are tender, thy lips that are loving,\nComfort and cool me as dew in the dawn of a moon like a dream;\nAnd my heart yearns baffled and blind, moved vainly toward thee, and moving\nAs the refluent seaweed moves in the languid exuberant stream,\nFair as a rose is on earth, as a rose under water in prison,\nThat stretches and swings to the slow passionate pulse of the sea,\nClosed up from the air and the sun, but alive, as a ghost rearisen,\nPale as the love that revives as a ghost rearisen in me.\nFrom the bountiful infinite west, from the happy memorial places\nFull of the stately repose and the lordly delight of the dead,\nWhere the fortunate islands are lit with the light of ineffable faces,\nAnd the sound of a sea without wind is about them, and sunset is red,\nCome back to redeem and release me from love that recalls and represses,\nThat cleaves to my flesh as a flame, till the serpent has eaten his fill;\nFrom the bitter delights of the dark, and the feverish, the furtive caresses\nThat murder the youth in a man or ever his heart have its will.\nThy lips cannot laugh and thine eyes cannot weep; thou art pale as a rose is,\nPaler and sweeter than leaves that cover the blush of the bud;\nAnd the heart of the flower is compassion, and pity the core it encloses,\nPity, not love, that is born of the breath and decays with the blood.\nAs the cross that a wild nun clasps till the edge of it bruises her bosom,\nSo love wounds as we grasp it, and blackens and burns as a flame;\nI have loved overmuch in my life; when the live bud bursts with the blossom,\nBitter as ashes or tears is the fruit, and the wine thereof shame.\nAs a heart that its anguish divides is the green bud cloven asunder;\nAs the blood of a man self-slain is the flush of the leaves that allure;\nAnd the perfume as poison and wine to the brain, a delight and a wonder;\nAnd the thorns are too sharp for a boy, too slight for a man, to endure.\nToo soon did I love it, and lost love’s rose; and I cared not for glory’s:\nOnly the blossoms of sleep and of pleasure were mixed in my hair.\nWas it myrtle or poppy thy garland was woven with, O my Dolores?\nWas it pallor of slumber, or blush as of blood, that I found in thee fair?\nFor desire is a respite from love, and the flesh not the heart is her fuel;\nShe was sweet to me once, who am fled and escaped from the rage of her reign;\nWho behold as of old time at hand as I turn, with her mouth growing cruel,\nAnd flushed as with wine with the blood of her lovers, Our Lady of Pain.\nLow down where the thicket is thicker with thorns than with leaves in the summer,\nIn the brake is a gleaming of eyes and a hissing of tongues that I knew;\nAnd the lithe long throats of her snakes reach round her, their mouths overcome her,\nAnd her lips grow cool with their foam, made moist as a desert with dew.\nWith the thirst and the hunger of lust though her beautiful lips be so bitter,\nWith the cold foul foam of the snakes they soften and redden and smile;\nAnd her fierce mouth sweetens, her eyes wax wide and her eyelashes glitter,\nAnd she laughs with a savour of blood in her face, and a savour of guile.\nShe laughs, and her hands reach hither, her hair blows hither and hisses,\nAs a low-lit flame in a wind, back-blown till it shudder and leap;\nLet her lips not again lay hold on my soul, nor her poisonous kisses,\nTo consume it alive and divide from thy bosom, Our Lady of Sleep.\nAh daughter of sunset and slumber, if now it return into prison,\nWho shall redeem it anew? but we, if thou wilt, let us fly;\nLet us take to us, now that the white skies thrill with a moon unarisen,\nSwift horses of fear or of love, take flight and depart and not die.\nThey are swifter than dreams, they are stronger than death; there is none that hath ridden,\nNone that shall ride in the dim strange ways of his life as we ride;\nBy the meadows of memory, the highlands of hope, and the shore that is hidden,\nWhere life breaks loud and unseen, a sonorous invisible tide;\nBy the sands where sorrow has trodden, the salt pools bitter and sterile,\nBy the thundering reef and the low sea-wall and the channel of years,\nOur wild steeds press on the night, strain hard through pleasure and peril,\nLabour and listen and pant not or pause for the peril that nears;\nAnd the sound of them trampling the way cleaves night as an arrow asunder,\nAnd slow by the sand-hill and swift by the down with its glimpses of grass,\nSudden and steady the music, as eight hoofs trample and thunder,\nRings in the ear of the low blind wind of the night as we pass;\nShrill shrieks in our faces the blind bland air that was mute as a maiden,\nStung into storm by the speed of our passage, and deaf where we past;\nAnd our spirits too burn as we bound, thine holy but mine heavy-laden,\nAs we burn with the fire of our flight; ah love, shall we win at the last?", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1866 + }, "context": { "holiday": "our_lady_of_sorrows" } @@ -57845,12 +58642,19 @@ "hope-and-fear": { "title": "“Hope and Fear”", "body": "Beneath the shadow of dawn’s aerial cope,\nWith eyes enkindled as the sun’s own sphere,\nHope from the front of youth in godlike cheer\nLooks Godward, past the shades where blind men grope\nRound the dark door that prayers nor dreams can ope,\nAnd makes for joy the very darkness dear\nThat gives her wide wings play; nor dreams that fear\nAt noon may rise and pierce the heart of hope.\nThen, when the soul leaves off to dream and yearn,\nMay truth first purge her eyesight to discern\nWhat once being known leaves time no power to appal;\nTill youth at last, ere yet youth be not, learn\nThe kind wise word that falls from years that fall--\n“Hope thou not much, and fear thou not at all.”", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1866 + } + } }, "ilicet": { "title": "“Ilicet”", "body": "There is an end of joy and sorrow;\nPeace all day long, all night, all morrow,\nBut never a time to laugh or weep.\nThe end is come of pleasant places,\nThe end of tender words and faces,\nThe end of all, the poppied sleep.\n\nNo place for sound within their hearing,\nNo room to hope, no time for fearing,\nNo lips to laugh, no lids for tears.\nThe old years have run out all their measure;\nNo chance of pain, no chance of pleasure,\nNo fragment of the broken years.\n\nOutside of all the worlds and ages,\nThere where the fool is as the sage is,\nThere where the slayer is clean of blood,\nNo end, no passage, no beginning,\nThere where the sinner leaves off sinning,\nThere where the good man is not good.\n\nThere is not one thing with another,\nBut Evil saith to Good: My brother,\nMy brother, I am one with thee:\nThey shall not strive nor cry for ever:\nNo man shall choose between them: never\nShall this thing end and that thing be.\n\nWind wherein seas and stars are shaken\nShall shake them, and they shall not waken;\nNone that has lain down shall arise;\nThe stones are sealed across their places;\nOne shadow is shed on all their faces,\nOne blindness cast on all their eyes.\n\nSleep, is it sleep perchance that covers\nEach face, as each face were his lover’s?\nFarewell; as men that sleep fare well.\nThe grave’s mouth laughs unto derision\nDesire and dread and dream and vision,\nDelight of heaven and sorrow of hell.\n\nNo soul shall tell nor lip shall number\nThe names and tribes of you that slumber;\nNo memory, no memorial.\n“Thou knowest”--who shall say thou knowest?\nThere is none highest and none lowest:\nAn end, an end, an end of all.\n\nGood night, good sleep, good rest from sorrow\nTo these that shall not have good morrow;\nThe gods be gentle to all these.\nNay, if death be not, how shall they be?\nNay, is there help in heaven? it may be\nAll things and lords of things shall cease.\n\nThe stooped urn, filling, dips and flashes;\nThe bronzèd brims are deep in ashes;\nThe pale old lips of death are fed.\nShall this dust gather flesh hereafter?\nShall one shed tears or fall to laughter,\nAt sight of all these poor old dead?\n\nNay, as thou wilt; these know not of it;\nThine eyes’ strong weeping shall not profit,\nThy laughter shall not give thee ease;\nCry aloud, spare not, cease not crying,\nSigh, till thou cleave thy sides with sighing,\nThou shalt not raise up one of these.\n\nBurnt spices flash, and burnt wine hisses,\nThe breathing flame’s mouth curls and kisses\nThe small dried rows of frankincense;\nAll round the sad red blossoms smoulder,\nFlowers coloured like the fire, but colder,\nIn sign of sweet things taken hence;\n\nYea, for their sake and in death’s favour\nThings of sweet shape and of sweet savour\nWe yield them, spice and flower and wine;\nYea, costlier things than wine or spices,\nWhereof none knoweth how great the price is,\nAnd fruit that comes not of the vine.\n\nFrom boy’s pierced throat and girl’s pierced bosom\nDrips, reddening round the blood-red blossom,\nThe slow delicious bright soft blood,\nBathing the spices and the pyre,\nBathing the flowers and fallen fire,\nBathing the blossom by the bud.\n\nRoses whose lips the flame has deadened\nDrink till the lapping leaves are reddened\nAnd warm wet inner petals weep;\nThe flower whereof sick sleep gets leisure,\nBarren of balm and purple pleasure,\nFumes with no native steam of sleep.\n\nWhy will ye weep? what do ye weeping?\nFor waking folk and people sleeping,\nAnd sands that fill and sands that fall,\nThe days rose-red, the poppied hours,\nBlood, wine, and spice and fire and flowers,\nThere is one end of one and all.\n\nShall such an one lend love or borrow?\nShall these be sorry for thy sorrow?\nShall these give thanks for words or breath?\nTheir hate is as their loving-kindness;\nThe frontlet of their brows is blindness,\nThe armlet of their arms is death.\n\nLo, for no noise or light of thunder\nShall these grave-clothes be rent in sunder;\nHe that hath taken, shall he give?\nHe hath rent them: shall he bind together?\nHe hath bound them: shall he break the tether?\nHe hath slain them: shall he bid them live?\n\nA little sorrow, a little pleasure,\nFate metes us from the dusty measure\nThat holds the date of all of us;\nWe are born with travail and strong crying,\nAnd from the birth-day to the dying\nThe likeness of our life is thus.\n\nOne girds himself to serve another,\nWhose father was the dust, whose mother\nThe little dead red worm therein;\nThey find no fruit of things they cherish;\nThe goodness of a man shall perish,\nIt shall be one thing with his sin.\n\nIn deep wet ways by grey old gardens\nFed with sharp spring the sweet fruit hardens;\nThey know not what fruits wane or grow;\nRed summer burns to the utmost ember;\nThey know not, neither can remember,\nThe old years and flowers they used to know.\n\nAh, for their sakes, so trapped and taken,\nFor theirs, forgotten and forsaken,\nWatch, sleep not, gird thyself with prayer.\nNay, where the heart of wrath is broken,\nWhere long love ends as a thing spoken,\nHow shall thy crying enter there?\n\nThough the iron sides of the old world falter,\nThe likeness of them shall not alter\nFor all the rumour of periods,\nThe stars and seasons that come after,\nThe tears of latter men, the laughter\nOf the old unalterable gods.\n\nFar up above the years and nations,\nThe high gods, clothed and crowned with patience,\nEndure through days of deathlike date;\nThey bear the witness of things hidden;\nBefore their eyes all life stands chidden,\nAs they before the eyes of Fate.\n\nNot for their love shall Fate retire,\nNor they relent for our desire,\nNor the graves open for their call.\nThe end is more than joy and anguish,\nThan lives that laugh and lives that languish,\nThe poppied sleep, the end of all.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1866 + }, "context": { "season": "autumn" } @@ -57860,15 +58664,35 @@ "title": "“In the Orchard”", "body": "Leave go my hands, let me catch breath and see;\nLet the dew-fall drench either side of me;\n Clear apple-leaves are soft upon that moon\nSeen sidelong like a blossom in the tree;\n And God, ah God, that day should be so soon.\n\nThe grass is thick and cool, it lets us lie.\nKissed upon either cheek and either eye,\n I turn to thee as some green afternoon\nTurns toward sunset, and is loth to die;\n Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.\n\nLie closer, lean your face upon my side,\nFeel where the dew fell that has hardly dried,\n Hear how the blood beats that went nigh to swoon;\nThe pleasure lives there when the sense has died,\n Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.\n\nO my fair lord, I charge you leave me this:\nIt is not sweeter than a foolish kiss?\n Nay take it then, my flower, my first in June,\nMy rose, so like a tender mouth it is:\n Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.\n\nLove, till dawn sunder night from day with fire\nDividing my delight and my desire,\n The crescent life and love the plenilune,\nLove me though dusk begin and dark retire;\n Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.\n\nAh, my heart fails, my blood draws back; I know,\nWhen life runs over, life is near to go;\n And with the slain of love love’s ways are strewn,\nAnd with their blood, if love will have it so;\n Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.\n\nAh, do thy will now; slay me if thou wilt;\nThere is no building now the walls are built,\n No quarrying now the corner-stone is hewn,\nNo drinking now the vine’s whole blood is spilt;\n Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.\n\nNay, slay me now; nay, for I will be slain;\nPluck thy red pleasure from the teeth of pain,\n Break down thy vine ere yet grape-gatherers prune,\nSlay me ere day can slay desire again;\n Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.\n\nYea, with thy sweet lips, with thy sweet sword; yea\nTake life and all, for I will die, I say;\n Love, I gave love, is life a better boon?\nFor sweet night’s sake I will not live till day;\n Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.\n\nNay, I will sleep then only; nay, but go.\nAh sweet, too sweet to me, my sweet, I know\n Love, sleep, and death go to the sweet same tune;\nHold my hair fast, and kiss me through it soon.\n Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1866 + }, "context": { "season": "summer" } } }, + "inferiae": { + "title": "“Inferiae”", + "body": "Spring, and the light and sound of things on earth\nRequickening, all within our green sea’s girth;\nA time of passage or a time of birth\n Fourscore years since as this year, first and last.\n\nThe sun is all about the world we see,\nThe breath and strength of very spring; and we\nLive, love, and feed on our own hearts; but he\n Whose heart fed mine has passed into the past.\n\nPast, all things born with sense and blood and breath;\nThe flesh hears nought that now the spirit saith.\nIf death be like as birth and birth as death,\n The first was fair--more fair should be the last.\n\nFourscore years since, and come but one month more\nThe count were perfect of his mortal score\nWhose sail went seaward yesterday from shore\n To cross the last of many an unsailed sea.\n\nLight, love and labour up to life’s last height,\nThese three were stars unsetting in his sight;\nEven as the sun is life and heat and light\n And sets not nor is dark when dark are we.\n\nThe life, the spirit, and the work were one\nThat here--ah, who shall say, that here are done?\nNot I, that know not; father, not thy son,\n For all the darkness of the night and sea.", + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1877, + "month": 3, + "day": 5 + }, + "context": { + "liturgy": "eastertide" + } + } + }, "an-interlude": { "title": "“An Interlude”", "body": "In the greenest growth of the Maytime,\nI rode where the woods were wet,\nBetween the dawn and the daytime;\nThe spring was glad that we met.\n\nThere was something the season wanted,\nThough the ways and the woods smelt sweet;\nThe breath at your lips that panted,\nThe pulse of the grass at your feet.\n\nYou came, and the sun came after,\nAnd the green grew golden above;\nAnd the flag-flowers lightened with laughter,\nAnd the meadow-sweet shook with love.\n\nYour feet in the full-grown grasses\nMoved soft as a weak wind blows;\nYou passed me as April passes,\nWith face made out of a rose.\n\nBy the stream where the stems were slender,\nYour bright foot paused at the sedge;\nIt might be to watch the tender\nLight leaves in the springtime hedge,\n\nOn boughs that the sweet month blanches\nWith flowery frost of May:\nIt might be a bird in the branches,\nIt might be a thorn in the way.\n\nI waited to watch you linger\nWith foot drawn back from the dew,\nTill a sunbeam straight like a finger\nStruck sharp through the leaves at you.\n\nAnd a bird overhead sang _Follow_,\nAnd a bird to the right sang _Here_;\nAnd the arch of the leaves was hollow,\nAnd the meaning of May was clear.\n\nI saw where the sun’s hand pointed,\nI knew what the bird’s note said;\nBy the dawn and the dewfall anointed,\nYou were queen by the gold on your head.\n\nAs the glimpse of a burnt-out ember\nRecalls a regret of the sun,\nI remember, forget, and remember\nWhat Love saw done and undone.\n\nI remember the way we parted,\nThe day and the way we met;\nYou hoped we were both broken-hearted,\nAnd knew we should both forget.\n\nAnd May with her world in flower\nSeemed still to murmur and smile\nAs you murmured and smiled for an hour;\nI saw you turn at the stile.\n\nA hand like a white wood-blossom\nYou lifted, and waved, and passed,\nWith head hung down to the bosom,\nAnd pale, as it seemed, at last.\n\nAnd the best and the worst of this is\nThat neither is most to blame\nIf you’ve forgotten my kisses\nAnd I’ve forgotten your name.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1866 + }, "context": { "month": "may" } @@ -57877,17 +58701,28 @@ "kissing-her-hair": { "title": "“Kissing Her Hair”", "body": "Kissing her hair I sat against her feet,\nWove and unwove it, wound and found it sweet;\nMade fast therewith her hands, drew down her eyes,\nDeep as deep flowers and dreamy like dim skies;\nWith her own tresses bound and found her fair,\n Kissing her hair.\n\nSleep were no sweeter than her face to me,\nSleep of cold sea-bloom under the cold sea;\nWhat pain could get between my face and hers?\nWhat new sweet thing would love not relish worse?\nUnless, perhaps, white death had kissed me there,\n Kissing her hair?", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1866 + } + } }, "a-lamentation": { "title": "“A Lamentation”", "body": "# I.\n\nWho hath known the ways of time\nOr trodden behind his feet?\n There is no such man among men.\nFor chance overcomes him, or crime\nChanges; for all things sweet\n In time wax bitter again.\nWho shall give sorrow enough,\nOr who the abundance of tears?\nMine eyes are heavy with love\nAnd a sword gone thorough mine ears,\n A sound like a sword and fire,\n For pity, for great desire;\nWho shall ensure me thereof,\nLest I die, being full of my fears?\n\nWho hath known the ways and the wrath,\nThe sleepless spirit, the root\n And blossom of evil will,\n The divine device of a god?\nWho shall behold it or hath?\nThe twice-tongued prophets are mute,\n The many speakers are still;\n No foot has travelled or trod,\nNo hand has meted, his path.\nMan’s fate is a blood-red fruit,\n And the mighty gods have their fill\n And relax not the rein, or the rod.\n\nYe were mighty in heart from of old,\nYe slew with the spear, and are slain.\nKeen after heat is the cold,\nSore after summer is rain,\nAnd melteth man to the bone.\nAs water he weareth away,\nAs a flower, as an hour in a day,\nFallen from laughter to moan.\nBut my spirit is shaken with fear\nLest an evil thing begin,\nNew-born, a spear for a spear,\nAnd one for another sin.\nOr ever our tears began,\nIt was known from of old and said;\nOne law for a living man,\nAnd another law for the dead.\nFor these are fearful and sad,\nVain, and things without breath;\n While he lives let a man be glad,\n For none hath joy of his death.\n\n\n# II.\n\nWho hath known the pain, the old pain of earth,\nOr all the travail of the sea,\nThe many ways and waves, the birth\nFruitless, the labour nothing worth?\nWho hath known, who knoweth, O gods? not we.\nThere is none shall say he hath seen,\nThere is none he hath known.\nThough he saith, Lo, a lord have I been,\nI have reaped and sown;\nI have seen the desire of mine eyes,\nThe beginning of love,\nThe season of kisses and sighs\nAnd the end thereof.\nI have known the ways of the sea,\nAll the perilous ways,\nStrange winds have spoken with me,\nAnd the tongues of strange days.\nI have hewn the pine for ships;\nWhere steeds run arow,\nI have seen from their bridled lips\nFoam blown as the snow.\nWith snapping of chariot-poles\nAnd with straining of oars\nI have grazed in the race the goals,\nIn the storm the shores;\nAs a greave is cleft with an arrow\nAt the joint of the knee,\nI have cleft through the sea-straits narrow\nTo the heart of the sea.\nWhen air was smitten in sunder\nI have watched on high\nThe ways of the stars and the thunder\nIn the night of the sky;\nWhere the dark brings forth light as a flower,\nAs from lips that dissever;\nOne abideth the space of an hour,\nOne endureth for ever.\nLo, what hath he seen or known,\nOf the way and the wave\nUnbeholden, unsailed on, unsown,\nFrom the breast to the grave?\n\nOr ever the stars were made, or skies,\nGrief was born, and the kinless night,\n Mother of gods without form or name.\nAnd light is born out of heaven and dies,\nAnd one day knows not another’s light,\n But night is one, and her shape the same.\n\nBut dumb the goddesses underground\nWait, and we hear not on earth if their feet\n Rise, and the night wax loud with their wings;\nDumb, without word or shadow of sound;\nAnd sift in scales and winnow as wheat\n Men’s souls, and sorrow of manifold things.\n\n\n# III.\n\nNor less of grief than ours\nThe gods wrought long ago\n To bruise men one by one;\nBut with the incessant hours\nFresh grief and greener woe\n Spring, as the sudden sun\nYear after year makes flowers;\nAnd these die down and grow,\n And the next year lacks none.\n\nAs these men sleep, have slept\nThe old heroes in time fled,\n No dream-divided sleep;\nAnd holier eyes have wept\nThan ours, when on her dead\n Gods have seen Thetis weep,\nWith heavenly hair far-swept\nBack, heavenly hands outspread\n Round what she could not keep,\n\nCould not one day withhold,\nOne night; and like as these\n White ashes of no weight,\nHeld not his urn the cold\nAshes of Heracles?\n For all things born one gate\nOpens, no gate of gold;\nOpens; and no man sees\n Beyond the gods and fate.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1866 + } + } }, "laus-veneris": { "title": "“Laus Veneris”", "body": "Asleep or waking is it? for her neck,\nKissed over close, wears yet a purple speck\nWherein the pained blood falters and goes out;\nSoft, and stung softly--fairer for a fleck.\n\nBut though my lips shut sucking on the place,\nThere is no vein at work upon her face;\nHer eyelids are so peaceable, no doubt\nDeep sleep has warmed her blood through all its ways.\n\nLo, this is she that was the world’s delight;\nThe old grey years were parcels of her might;\nThe strewings of the ways wherein she trod\nWere the twain seasons of the day and night.\n\nLo, she was thus when her clear limbs enticed\nAll lips that now grow sad with kissing Christ,\nStained with blood fallen from the feet of God,\nThe feet and hands whereat our souls were priced.\n\nAlas, Lord, surely thou art great and fair.\nBut lo her wonderfully woven hair!\nAnd thou didst heal us with thy piteous kiss;\nBut see now, Lord; her mouth is lovelier.\n\nShe is right fair; what hath she done to thee?\nNay, fair Lord Christ, lift up thine eyes and see;\nHad now thy mother such a lip--like this?\nThou knowest how sweet a thing it is to me.\n\nInside the Horsel here the air is hot;\nRight little peace one hath for it, God wot;\nThe scented dusty daylight burns the air,\nAnd my heart chokes me till I hear it not.\n\nBehold, my Venus, my soul’s body, lies\nWith my love laid upon her garment-wise,\nFeeling my love in all her limbs and hair\nAnd shed between her eyelids through her eyes.\n\nShe holds my heart in her sweet open hands\nHanging asleep; hard by her head there stands,\nCrowned with gilt thorns and clothed with flesh like fire,\nLove, wan as foam blown up the salt burnt sands--\n\nHot as the brackish waifs of yellow spume\nThat shift and steam--loose clots of arid fume\nFrom the sea’s panting mouth of dry desire;\nThere stands he, like one labouring at a loom.\n\nThe warp holds fast across; and every thread\nThat makes the woof up has dry specks of red;\nAlways the shuttle cleaves clean through, and he\nWeaves with the hair of many a ruined head.\n\nLove is not glad nor sorry, as I deem;\nLabouring he dreams, and labours in the dream,\nTill when the spool is finished, lo I see\nHis web, reeled off, curls and goes out like steam.\n\nNight falls like fire; the heavy lights run low,\nAnd as they drop, my blood and body so\nShake as the flame shakes, full of days and hours\nThat sleep not neither weep they as they go.\n\nAh yet would God this flesh of mine might be\nWhere air might wash and long leaves cover me,\nWhere tides of grass break into foam of flowers,\nOr where the wind’s feet shine along the sea.\n\nAh yet would God that stems and roots were bred\nOut of my weary body and my head,\nThat sleep were sealed upon me with a seal,\nAnd I were as the least of all his dead.\n\nWould God my blood were dew to feed the grass,\nMine ears made deaf and mine eyes blind as glass,\nMy body broken as a turning wheel,\nAnd my mouth stricken ere it saith Alas!\n\nAh God, that love were as a flower or flame,\nThat life were as the naming of a name,\nThat death were not more pitiful than desire,\nThat these things were not one thing and the same!\n\nBehold now, surely somewhere there is death:\nFor each man hath some space of years, he saith,\nA little space of time ere time expire,\nA little day, a little way of breath.\n\nAnd lo, between the sundawn and the sun,\nHis day’s work and his night’s work are undone;\nAnd lo, between the nightfall and the light,\nHe is not, and none knoweth of such an one.\n\nAh God, that I were as all souls that be,\nAs any herb or leaf of any tree,\nAs men that toil through hours of labouring night,\nAs bones of men under the deep sharp sea.\n\nOutside it must be winter among men;\nFor at the gold bars of the gates again\nI heard all night and all the hours of it\nThe wind’s wet wings and fingers drip with rain.\n\nKnights gather, riding sharp for cold; I know\nThe ways and woods are strangled with the snow;\nAnd with short song the maidens spin and sit\nUntil Christ’s birthnight, lily-like, arow.\n\nThe scent and shadow shed about me make\nThe very soul in all my senses ache;\nThe hot hard night is fed upon my breath,\nAnd sleep beholds me from afar awake.\n\nAlas, but surely where the hills grow deep,\nOr where the wild ways of the sea are steep,\nOr in strange places somewhere there is death,\nAnd on death’s face the scattered hair of sleep.\n\nThere lover-like with lips and limbs that meet\nThey lie, they pluck sweet fruit of life and eat;\nBut me the hot and hungry days devour,\nAnd in my mouth no fruit of theirs is sweet.\n\nNo fruit of theirs, but fruit of my desire,\nFor her love’s sake whose lips through mine respire;\nHer eyelids on her eyes like flower on flower,\nMine eyelids on mine eyes like fire on fire.\n\nSo lie we, not as sleep that lies by death,\nWith heavy kisses and with happy breath;\nNot as man lies by woman, when the bride\nLaughs low for love’s sake and the words he saith.\n\nFor she lies, laughing low with love; she lies\nAnd turns his kisses on her lips to sighs,\nTo sighing sound of lips unsatisfied,\nAnd the sweet tears are tender with her eyes.\n\nAh, not as they, but as the souls that were\nSlain in the old time, having found her fair;\nWho, sleeping with her lips upon their eyes,\nHeard sudden serpents hiss across her hair.\n\nTheir blood runs round the roots of time like rain:\nShe casts them forth and gathers them again;\nWith nerve and bone she weaves and multiplies\nExceeding pleasure out of extreme pain.\n\nHer little chambers drip with flower-like red,\nHer girdles, and the chaplets of her head,\nHer armlets and her anklets; with her feet\nShe tramples all that winepress of the dead.\n\nHer gateways smoke with fume of flowers and fires,\nWith loves burnt out and unassuaged desires;\nBetween her lips the steam of them is sweet,\nThe languor in her ears of many lyres.\n\nHer beds are full of perfume and sad sound,\nHer doors are made with music, and barred round\nWith sighing and with laughter and with tears,\nWith tears whereby strong souls of men are bound.\n\nThere is the knight Adonis that was slain;\nWith flesh and blood she chains him for a chain;\nThe body and the spirit in her ears\nCry, for her lips divide him vein by vein.\n\nYea, all she slayeth; yea, every man save me;\nMe, love, thy lover that must cleave to thee\nTill the ending of the days and ways of earth,\nThe shaking of the sources of the sea.\n\nMe, most forsaken of all souls that fell;\nMe, satiated with things insatiable;\nMe, for whose sake the extreme hell makes mirth,\nYea, laughter kindles at the heart of hell.\n\nAlas thy beauty! for thy mouth’s sweet sake\nMy soul is bitter to me, my limbs quake\nAs water, as the flesh of men that weep,\nAs their heart’s vein whose heart goes nigh to break.\n\nAh God, that sleep with flower-sweet finger-tips\nWould crush the fruit of death upon my lips;\nAh God, that death would tread the grapes of sleep\nAnd wring their juice upon me as it drips.\n\nThere is no change of cheer for many days,\nBut change of chimes high up in the air, that sways\nRung by the running fingers of the wind;\nAnd singing sorrows heard on hidden ways.\n\nDay smiteth day in twain, night sundereth night,\nAnd on mine eyes the dark sits as the light;\nYea, Lord, thou knowest I know not, having sinned,\nIf heaven be clean or unclean in thy sight.\n\nYea, as if earth were sprinkled over me,\nSuch chafed harsh earth as chokes a sandy sea,\nEach pore doth yearn, and the dried blood thereof\nGasps by sick fits, my heart swims heavily,\n\nThere is a feverish famine in my veins;\nBelow her bosom, where a crushed grape stains\nThe white and blue, there my lips caught and clove\nAn hour since, and what mark of me remains?\n\nI dare not always touch her, lest the kiss\nLeave my lips charred. Yea, Lord, a little bliss,\nBrief bitter bliss, one hath for a great sin;\nNathless thou knowest how sweet a thing it is.\n\nSin, is it sin whereby men’s souls are thrust\nInto the pit? yet had I a good trust\nTo save my soul before it slipped therein,\nTrod under by the fire-shod feet of lust.\n\nFor if mine eyes fail and my soul takes breath,\nI look between the iron sides of death\nInto sad hell where all sweet love hath end,\nAll but the pain that never finisheth.\n\nThere are the naked faces of great kings,\nThe singing folk with all their lute-playings;\nThere when one cometh he shall have to friend\nThe grave that covets and the worm that clings.\n\nThere sit the knights that were so great of hand,\nThe ladies that were queens of fair green land,\nGrown grey and black now, brought unto the dust,\nSoiled, without raiment, clad about with sand.\n\nThere is one end for all of them; they sit\nNaked and sad, they drink the dregs of it,\nTrodden as grapes in the wine-press of lust.\nTrampled and trodden by the fiery feet.\n\nI see the marvellous mouth whereby there fell\nCities and people whom the gods loved well,\nYet for her sake on them the fire gat hold,\nAnd for their sakes on her the fire of hell.\n\nAnd softer than the Egyptian lote-leaf is,\nThe queen whose face was worth the world to kiss,\nWearing at breast a suckling snake of gold;\nAnd large pale lips of strong Semiramis,\n\nCurled like a tiger’s that curl back to feed;\nRed only where the last kiss made them bleed;\nHer hair most thick with many a carven gem,\nDeep in the mane, great-chested, like a steed.\n\nYea, with red sin the faces of them shine;\nBut in all these there was no sin like mine;\nNo, not in all the strange great sins of them\nThat made the wine-press froth and foam with wine.\n\nFor I was of Christ’s choosing, I God’s knight,\nNo blinkard heathen stumbling for scant light;\nI can well see, for all the dusty days\nGone past, the clean great time of goodly fight.\n\nI smell the breathing battle sharp with blows,\nWith shriek of shafts and snapping short of bows;\nThe fair pure sword smites out in subtle ways,\nSounds and long lights are shed between the rows\n\nOf beautiful mailed men; the edged light slips,\nMost like a snake that takes short breath and dips\nSharp from the beautifully bending head,\nWith all its gracious body lithe as lips\n\nThat curl in touching you; right in this wise\nMy sword doth, seeming fire in mine own eyes,\nLeaving all colours in them brown and red\nAnd flecked with death; then the keen breaths like sighs,\n\nThe caught-up choked dry laughters following them,\nWhen all the fighting face is grown a flame\nFor pleasure, and the pulse that stuns the ears,\nAnd the heart’s gladness of the goodly game.\n\nLet me think yet a little; I do know\nThese things were sweet, but sweet such years ago,\nTheir savour is all turned now into tears;\nYea, ten years since, where the blue ripples blow,\n\nThe blue curled eddies of the blowing Rhine,\nI felt the sharp wind shaking grass and vine\nTouch my blood too, and sting me with delight\nThrough all this waste and weary body of mine\n\nThat never feels clear air; right gladly then\nI rode alone, a great way off my men,\nAnd heard the chiming bridle smite and smite,\nAnd gave each rhyme thereof some rhyme again,\n\nTill my song shifted to that iron one;\nSeeing there rode up between me and the sun\nSome certain of my foe’s men, for his three\nWhite wolves across their painted coats did run.\n\nThe first red-bearded, with square cheeks--alack,\nI made my knave’s blood turn his beard to black;\nThe slaying of him was a joy to see:\nPerchance too, when at night he came not back,\n\nSome woman fell a-weeping, whom this thief\nWould beat when he had drunken; yet small grief\nHath any for the ridding of such knaves;\nYea, if one wept, I doubt her teen was brief.\n\nThis bitter love is sorrow in all lands,\nDraining of eyelids, wringing of drenched hands,\nSighing of hearts and filling up of graves;\nA sign across the head of the world he stands,\n\nAn one that hath a plague-mark on his brows;\nDust and spilt blood do track him to his house\nDown under earth; sweet smells of lip and cheek,\nLike a sweet snake’s breath made more poisonous\n\nWith chewing of some perfumed deadly grass,\nAre shed all round his passage if he pass,\nAnd their quenched savour leaves the whole soul weak,\nSick with keen guessing whence the perfume was.\n\nAs one who hidden in deep sedge and reeds\nSmells the rare scent made where a panther feeds,\nAnd tracking ever slotwise the warm smell\nIs snapped upon by the sweet mouth and bleeds,\n\nHis head far down the hot sweet throat of her--\nSo one tracks love, whose breath is deadlier,\nAnd lo, one springe and you are fast in hell,\nFast as the gin’s grip of a wayfarer.\n\nI think now, as the heavy hours decease\nOne after one, and bitter thoughts increase\nOne upon one, of all sweet finished things;\nThe breaking of the battle; the long peace\n\nWherein we sat clothed softly, each man’s hair\nCrowned with green leaves beneath white hoods of vair;\nThe sounds of sharp spears at great tourneyings,\nAnd noise of singing in the late sweet air.\n\nI sang of love too, knowing nought thereof;\n“Sweeter,” I said, “the little laugh of love\nThan tears out of the eyes of Magdalen,\nOr any fallen feather of the Dove.”\n\n“The broken little laugh that spoils a kiss,\nThe ache of purple pulses, and the bliss\nOf blinded eyelids that expand again--\nLove draws them open with those lips of his,”\n\n“Lips that cling hard till the kissed face has grown\nOf one same fire and colour with their own;\nThen ere one sleep, appeased with sacrifice,\nWhere his lips wounded, there his lips atone.”\n\nI sang these things long since and knew them not;\n“Lo, here is love, or there is love, God wot,\nThis man and that finds favour in his eyes,”\nI said, “but I, what guerdon have I got?”\n\n“The dust of praise that is blown everywhere\nIn all men’s faces with the common air;\nThe bay-leaf that wants chafing to be sweet\nBefore they wind it in a singer’s hair.”\n\nSo that one dawn I rode forth sorrowing;\nI had no hope but of some evil thing,\nAnd so rode slowly past the windy wheat\nAnd past the vineyard and the water-spring,\n\nUp to the Horsel. A great elder-tree\nHeld back its heaps of flowers to let me see\nThe ripe tall grass, and one that walked therein,\nNaked, with hair shed over to the knee.\n\nShe walked between the blossom and the grass;\nI knew the beauty of her, what she was,\nThe beauty of her body and her sin,\nAnd in my flesh the sin of hers, alas!\n\nAlas! for sorrow is all the end of this.\nO sad kissed mouth, how sorrowful it is!\nO breast whereat some suckling sorrow clings,\nRed with the bitter blossom of a kiss!\n\nAh, with blind lips I felt for you, and found\nAbout my neck your hands and hair enwound,\nThe hands that stifle and the hair that stings,\nI felt them fasten sharply without sound.\n\nYea, for my sin I had great store of bliss:\nRise up, make answer for me, let thy kiss\nSeal my lips hard from speaking of my sin,\nLest one go mad to hear how sweet it is.\n\nYet I waxed faint with fume of barren bowers,\nAnd murmuring of the heavy-headed hours;\nAnd let the dove’s beak fret and peck within\nMy lips in vain, and Love shed fruitless flowers.\n\nSo that God looked upon me when your hands\nWere hot about me; yea, God brake my bands\nTo save my soul alive, and I came forth\nLike a man blind and naked in strange lands\n\nThat hears men laugh and weep, and knows not whence\nNor wherefore, but is broken in his sense;\nHowbeit I met folk riding from the north\nTowards Rome, to purge them of their souls’ offence,\n\nAnd rode with them, and spake to none; the day\nStunned me like lights upon some wizard way,\nAnd ate like fire mine eyes and mine eyesight;\nSo rode I, hearing all these chant and pray,\n\nAnd marvelled; till before us rose and fell\nWhite cursed hills, like outer skirts of hell\nSeen where men’s eyes look through the day to night,\nLike a jagged shell’s lips, harsh, untunable,\n\nBlown in between by devils’ wrangling breath;\nNathless we won well past that hell and death,\nDown to the sweet land where all airs are good,\nEven unto Rome where God’s grace tarrieth.\n\nThen came each man and worshipped at his knees\nWho in the Lord God’s likeness bears the keys\nTo bind or loose, and called on Christ’s shed blood,\nAnd so the sweet-souled father gave him ease.\n\nBut when I came I fell down at his feet,\nSaying, “Father, though the Lord’s blood be right sweet,\nThe spot it takes not off the panther’s skin,\nNor shall an Ethiop’s stain be bleached with it.”\n\n“Lo, I have sinned and have spat out at God,\nWherefore his hand is heavier and his rod\nMore sharp because of mine exceeding sin,\nAnd all his raiment redder than bright blood\n\nBefore mine eyes; yea, for my sake I wot\nThe heat of hell is waxen seven times hot\nThrough my great sin.” Then spake he some sweet word,\nGiving me cheer; which thing availed me not;\n\nYea, scarce I wist if such indeed were said;\nFor when I ceased--lo, as one newly dead\nWho hears a great cry out of hell, I heard\nThe crying of his voice across my head.\n\n“Until this dry shred staff, that hath no whit\nOf leaf nor bark, bear blossom and smell sweet,\nSeek thou not any mercy in God’s sight,\nFor so long shalt thou be cast out from it.”\n\nYea, what if dried-up stems wax red and green,\nShall that thing be which is not nor has been?\nYea, what if sapless bark wax green and white,\nShall any good fruit grow upon my sin?\n\nNay, though sweet fruit were plucked of a dry tree,\nAnd though men drew sweet waters of the sea,\nThere should not grow sweet leaves on this dead stem,\nThis waste wan body and shaken soul of me.\n\nYea, though God search it warily enough,\nThere is not one sound thing in all thereof;\nThough he search all my veins through, searching them\nHe shall find nothing whole therein but love.\n\nFor I came home right heavy, with small cheer,\nAnd lo my love, mine own soul’s heart, more dear\nThan mine own soul, more beautiful than God,\nWho hath my being between the hands of her--\n\nFair still, but fair for no man saving me,\nAs when she came out of the naked sea\nMaking the foam as fire whereon she trod,\nAnd as the inner flower of fire was she.\n\nYea, she laid hold upon me, and her mouth\nClove unto mine as soul to body doth,\nAnd, laughing, made her lips luxurious;\nHer hair had smells of all the sunburnt south,\n\nStrange spice and flower, strange savour of crushed fruit,\nAnd perfume the swart kings tread underfoot\nFor pleasure when their minds wax amorous,\nCharred frankincense and grated sandal-root.\n\nAnd I forgot fear and all weary things,\nAll ended prayers and perished thanksgivings,\nFeeling her face with all her eager hair\nCleave to me, clinging as a fire that clings\n\nTo the body and to the raiment, burning them;\nAs after death I know that such-like flame\nShall cleave to me for ever; yea, what care,\nAlbeit I burn then, having felt the same?\n\nAh love, there is no better life than this;\nTo have known love, how bitter a thing it is,\nAnd afterward be cast out of God’s sight;\nYea, these that know not, shall they have such bliss\n\nHigh up in barren heaven before his face\nAs we twain in the heavy-hearted place,\nRemembering love and all the dead delight,\nAnd all that time was sweet with for a space?\n\nFor till the thunder in the trumpet be,\nSoul may divide from body, but not we\nOne from another; I hold thee with my hand,\nI let mine eyes have all their will of thee,\n\nI seal myself upon thee with my might,\nAbiding alway out of all men’s sight\nUntil God loosen over sea and land\nThe thunder of the trumpets of the night.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1866 + }, "context": { "liturgy": "advent" } @@ -57897,6 +58732,9 @@ "title": "“A Leave-Taking”", "body": "Let us go hence, my songs; she will not hear.\nLet us go hence together without fear;\nKeep silence now, for singing-time is over,\nAnd over all old things and all things dear.\nShe loves not you nor me as all we love her.\nYea, though we sang as angels in her ear,\nShe would not hear.\n\nLet us rise up and part; she will not know.\nLet us go seaward as the great winds go,\nFull of blown sand and foam; what help is here?\nThere is no help, for all these things are so,\nAnd all the world is bitter as a tear.\nAnd how these things are, though ye strove to show,\nShe would not know.\n\nLet us go home and hence; she will not weep.\nWe gave love many dreams and days to keep,\nFlowers without scent, and fruits that would not grow,\nSaying “If thou wilt, thrust in thy sickle and reap.”\nAll is reaped now; no grass is left to mow;\nAnd we that sowed, though all we fell on sleep,\nShe would not weep.\n\nLet us go hence and rest; she will not love.\nShe shall not hear us if we sing hereof,\nNor see love’s ways, how sore they are and steep.\nCome hence, let be, lie still; it is enough.\nLove is a barren sea, bitter and deep;\nAnd though she saw all heaven in flower above,\nShe would not love.\n\nLet us give up, go down; she will not care.\nThough all the stars made gold of all the air,\nAnd the sea moving saw before it move\nOne moon-flower making all the foam-flowers fair;\nThough all those waves went over us, and drove\nDeep down the stifling lips and drowning hair,\nShe would not care.\n\nLet us go hence, go hence; she will not see.\nSing all once more together; surely she,\nShe too, remembering days and words that were,\nWill turn a little toward us, sighing; but we,\nWe are hence, we are gone, as though we had not been there.\nNay, and though all men seeing had pity on me,\nShe would not see.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1866 + }, "context": { "month": "november" } @@ -57905,12 +58743,19 @@ "the-leper": { "title": "“The Leper”", "body": "Nothing is better, I well think,\nThan love; the hidden well-water\nIs not so delicate to drink:\nThis was well seen of me and her.\n\nI served her in a royal house;\nI served her wine and curious meat.\nFor will to kiss between her brows,\nI had no heart to sleep or eat.\n\nMere scorn God knows she had of me,\nA poor scribe, nowise great or fair,\nWho plucked his clerk’s hood back to see\nHer curled-up lips and amorous hair.\n\nI vex my head with thinking this.\nYea, though God always hated me,\nAnd hates me now that I can kiss\nHer eyes, plait up her hair to see\n\nHow she then wore it on the brows,\nYet am I glad to have her dead\nHere in this wretched wattled house\nWhere I can kiss her eyes and head.\n\nNothing is better, I well know,\nThan love; no amber in cold sea\nOr gathered berries under snow:\nThat is well seen of her and me.\n\nThree thoughts I make my pleasure of:\nFirst I take heart and think of this:\nThat knight’s gold hair she chose to love,\nHis mouth she had such will to kiss.\n\nThen I remember that sundawn\nI brought him by a privy way\nOut at her lattice, and thereon\nWhat gracious words she found to say.\n\n(Cold rushes for such little feet--\nBoth feet could lie into my hand.\nA marvel was it of my sweet\nHer upright body could so stand.)\n\n“Sweet friend, God give you thank and grace;\nNow am I clean and whole of shame,\nNor shall men burn me in the face\nFor my sweet fault that scandals them.”\n\nI tell you over word by word.\nShe, sitting edgewise on her bed,\nHolding her feet, said thus. The third,\nA sweeter thing than these, I said.\n\nGod, that makes time and ruins it\nAnd alters not, abiding God,\nChanged with disease her body sweet,\nThe body of love wherein she abode.\n\nLove is more sweet and comelier\nThan a dove’s throat strained out to sing.\nAll they spat out and cursed at her\nAnd cast her forth for a base thing.\n\nThey cursed her, seeing how God had wrought\nThis curse to plague her, a curse of his.\nFools were they surely, seeing not\nHow sweeter than all sweet she is.\n\nHe that had held her by the hair,\nWith kissing lips blinding her eyes,\nFelt her bright bosom, strained and bare,\nSigh under him, with short mad cries\n\nOut of her throat and sobbing mouth\nAnd body broken up with love,\nWith sweet hot tears his lips were loth\nHer own should taste the savour of,\n\nYea, he inside whose grasp all night\nHer fervent body leapt or lay,\nStained with sharp kisses red and white,\nFound her a plague to spurn away.\n\nI hid her in this wattled house,\nI served her water and poor bread.\nFor joy to kiss between her brows\nTime upon time I was nigh dead.\n\nBread failed; we got but well-water\nAnd gathered grass with dropping seed.\nI had such joy of kissing her,\nI had small care to sleep or feed.\n\nSometimes when service made me glad\nThe sharp tears leapt between my lids,\nFalling on her, such joy I had\nTo do the service God forbids.\n\n“I pray you let me be at peace,\nGet hence, make room for me to die.”\nShe said that: her poor lip would cease,\nPut up to mine, and turn to cry.\n\nI said, “Bethink yourself how love\nFared in us twain, what either did;\nShall I unclothe my soul thereof?\nThat I should do this, God forbid.”\n\nYea, though God hateth us, he knows\nThat hardly in a little thing\nLove faileth of the work it does\nTill it grow ripe for gathering.\n\nSix months, and now my sweet is dead\nA trouble takes me; I know not\nIf all were done well, all well said,\nNo word or tender deed forgot.\n\nToo sweet, for the least part in her,\nTo have shed life out by fragments; yet,\nCould the close mouth catch breath and stir,\nI might see something I forget.\n\nSix months, and I sit still and hold\nIn two cold palms her cold two feet.\nHer hair, half grey half ruined gold,\nThrills me and burns me in kissing it.\n\nLove bites and stings me through, to see\nHer keen face made of sunken bones.\nHer worn-off eyelids madden me,\nThat were shot through with purple once.\n\nShe said, “Be good with me; I grow\nSo tired for shame’s sake, I shall die\nIf you say nothing:” even so.\nAnd she is dead now, and shame put by.\n\nYea, and the scorn she had of me\nIn the old time, doubtless vexed her then.\nI never should have kissed her. See\nWhat fools God’s anger makes of men!\n\nShe might have loved me a little too,\nHad I been humbler for her sake.\nBut that new shame could make love new\nShe saw not--yet her shame did make.\n\nI took too much upon my love,\nHaving for such mean service done\nHer beauty and all the ways thereof,\nHer face and all the sweet thereon.\n\nYea, all this while I tended her,\nI know the old love held fast his part:\nI know the old scorn waxed heavier,\nMixed with sad wonder, in her heart.\n\nIt may be all my love went wrong--\nA scribe’s work writ awry and blurred,\nScrawled after the blind evensong--\nSpoilt music with no perfect word.\n\nBut surely I would fain have done\nAll things the best I could. Perchance\nBecause I failed, came short of one,\nShe kept at heart that other man’s.\n\nI am grown blind with all these things:\nIt may be now she hath in sight\nSome better knowledge; still there clings\nThe old question. Will not God do right?", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1866 + } + } }, "les-noyades": { "title": "“Les Noyades”", "body": "Whatever a man of the sons of men\nShall say to his heart of the lords above,\nThey have shown man verily, once and again,\nMarvellous mercies and infinite love.\n\nIn the wild fifth year of the change of things,\nWhen France was glorious and blood-red, fair\nWith dust of battle and deaths of kings,\nA queen of men, with helmeted hair,\n\nCarrier came down to the Loire and slew,\nTill all the ways and the waves waxed red:\nBound and drowned, slaying two by two,\nMaidens and young men, naked and wed.\n\nThey brought on a day to his judgment-place\nOne rough with labour and red with fight,\nAnd a lady noble by name and face,\nFaultless, a maiden, wonderful, white.\n\nShe knew not, being for shame’s sake blind,\nIf his eyes were hot on her face hard by.\nAnd the judge bade strip and ship them, and bind\nBosom to bosom, to drown and die.\n\nThe white girl winced and whitened; but he\nCaught fire, waxed bright as a great bright flame\nSeen with thunder far out on the sea,\nLaughed hard as the glad blood went and came.\n\nTwice his lips quailed with delight, then said,\n“I have but a word to you all, one word;\nBear with me; surely I am but dead”;\nAnd all they laughed and mocked him and heard.\n\n“Judge, when they open the judgment-roll,\nI will stand upright before God and pray:\n‘Lord God, have mercy on one man’s soul,\nFor his mercy was great upon earth, I say.’”\n\n“‘Lord, if I loved thee--Lord, if I served--\nIf these who darkened thy fair Son’s face\nI fought with, sparing not one, nor swerved\nA hand’s-breadth, Lord, in the perilous place--’”\n\n“‘I pray thee say to this man, O Lord,\n_Sit thou for him at my feet on a throne_.\nI will face thy wrath, though it bite as a sword,\nAnd my soul shall burn for his soul, and atone.’”\n\n“‘For, Lord, thou knowest, O God most wise,\nHow gracious on earth were his deeds towards me.\nShall this be a small thing in thine eyes,\nThat is greater in mine than the whole great sea?’”\n\n“I have loved this woman my whole life long,\nAnd even for love’s sake when have I said\n‘I love you’? when have I done you wrong,\nLiving? but now I shall have you dead.”\n\n“Yea, now, do I bid you love me, love?\nLove me or loathe, we are one not twain.\nBut God be praised in his heaven above\nFor this my pleasure and that my pain!”\n\n“For never a man, being mean like me,\nShall die like me till the whole world dies.\nI shall drown with her, laughing for love; and she\nMix with me, touching me, lips and eyes.”\n\n“Shall she not know me and see me all through,\nMe, on whose heart as a worm she trod?\nYou have given me, God requite it you,\nWhat man yet never was given of God.”\n\nO sweet one love, O my life’s delight,\nDear, though the days have divided us,\nLost beyond hope, taken far out of sight,\nNot twice in the world shall the gods do thus.\n\nHad it been so hard for my love? but I,\nThough the gods gave all that a god can give,\nI had chosen rather the gift to die,\nCease, and be glad above all that live.\n\nFor the Loire would have driven us down to the sea,\nAnd the sea would have pitched us from shoal to shoal;\nAnd I should have held you, and you held me,\nAs flesh holds flesh, and the soul the soul.\n\nCould I change you, help you to love me, sweet,\nCould I give you the love that would sweeten death,\nWe should yield, go down, locked hands and feet,\nDie, drown together, and breath catch breath;\n\nBut you would have felt my soul in a kiss,\nAnd known that once if I loved you well;\nAnd I would have given my soul for this\nTo burn for ever in burning hell.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1866 + }, "context": { "season": "autumn" } @@ -57919,17 +58764,28 @@ "love-lies-bleeding": { "title": "“Love Lies Bleeding”", "body": "Love lies bleeding in the bed whereover\nRoses lean with smiling mouths or pleading:\nEarth lies laughing where the sun’s dart clove her:\n Love lies bleeding.\n\nStately shine his purple plumes, exceeding\nPride of princes: nor shall maid or lover\nFind on earth a fairer sign worth heeding.\n\nYet may love, sore wounded scarce recover\nStrength and spirit again, with life receding:\nHope and joy, wind-winged, about him hover:\n Love lies bleeding.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1866 + } + } }, "love-and-sleep": { "title": "“Love and Sleep”", "body": "Lying asleep between the strokes of night\n I saw my love lean over my sad bed,\n Pale as the duskiest lily’s leaf or head,\nSmooth-skinned and dark, with bare throat made to bite,\nToo wan for blushing and too warm for white,\n But perfect-coloured without white or red.\n And her lips opened amorously, and said--\nI wist not what, saving one word--Delight.\n\nAnd all her face was honey to my mouth,\n And all her body pasture to mine eyes;\n The long lithe arms and hotter hands than fire,\nThe quivering flanks, hair smelling of the south,\n The bright light feet, the splendid supple thighs\n And glittering eyelids of my soul’s desire.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1866 + } + } }, "march": { "title": "“March”", "body": "Ere frost-flower and snow-blossom faded and fell, and the splendour of winter had passed out of sight,\nThe ways of the woodlands were fairer and stranger than dreams that fulfil us in sleep with delight;\nThe breath of the mouths of the winds had hardened on tree-tops and branches that glittered and swayed\nSuch wonders and glories of blossomlike snow or of frost that outlightens all flowers till it fade\nThat the sea was not lovelier than here was the land, nor the night than the day, nor the day than the night,\nNor the winter sublimer with storm than the spring: such mirth had the madness and might in thee made,\nMarch, master of winds, bright minstrel and marshal of storms that enkindle the season they smite.\n\nAnd now that the rage of thy rapture is satiate with revel and ravin and spoil of the snow,\nAnd the branches it brightened are broken, and shattered the tree-tops that only thy wrath could lay low,\nHow should not thy lovers rejoice in thee, leader and lord of the year that exults to be born\nSo strong in thy strength and so glad of thy gladness whose laughter puts winter and sorrow to scorn?\nThou hast shaken the snows from thy wings, and the frost on thy forehead is molten: thy lips are aglow\nAs a lover’s that kindle with kissing, and earth, with her raiment and tresses yet wasted and torn,\nTakes breath as she smiles in the grasp of thy passion to feel through her spirit the sense of thee flow.\n\nFain, fain would we see but again for an hour what the wind and the sun have dispelled and consumed,\nThose full deep swan-soft feathers of snow with whose luminous burden the branches implumed\nHung heavily, curved as a half-bent bow, and fledged not as birds are, but petalled as flowers,\nEach tree-top and branchlet a pinnacle jewelled and carved, or a fountain that shines as it showers,\nBut fixed as a fountain is fixed not, and wrought not to last till by time or by tempest entombed,\nAs a pinnacle carven and gilded of men: for the date of its doom is no more than an hour’s,\nOne hour of the sun’s when the warm wind wakes him to wither the snow-flowers that froze as they bloomed.\n\nAs the sunshine quenches the snowshine; as April subdues thee, and yields up his kingdom to May;\nSo time overcomes the regret that is born of delight as it passes in passion away,\nAnd leaves but a dream for desire to rejoice in or mourn for with tears or thanksgivings; but thou,\nBright god that art gone from us, maddest and gladdest of months, to what goal hast thou gone from us now?\nFor somewhere surely the storm of thy laughter that lightens, the beat of thy wings that play,\nMust flame as a fire through the world, and the heavens that we know not rejoice in thee: surely thy brow\nHath lost not its radiance of empire, thy spirit the joy that impelled it on quest as for prey.\n\nAre thy feet on the ways of the limitless waters, thy wings on the winds of the waste north sea?\nAre the fires of the false north dawn over heavens where summer is stormful and strong like thee\nNow bright in the sight of thine eyes? are the bastions of icebergs assailed by the blast of thy breath?\nIs it March with the wild north world when April is waning? the word that the changed year saith,\nIs it echoed to northward with rapture of passion reiterate from spirits triumphant as we\nWhose hearts were uplift at the blast of thy clarions as men’s rearisen from a sleep that was death\nAnd kindled to life that was one with the world’s and with thine? hast thou set not the whole world free?\n\nFor the breath of thy lips is freedom, and freedom’s the sense of thy spirit, the sound of thy song,\nGlad god of the north-east wind, whose heart is as high as the hands of thy kingdom are strong,\nThy kingdom whose empire is terror and joy, twin-featured and fruitful of births divine,\nDays lit with the flame of the lamps of the flowers, and nights that are drunken with dew for wine,\nAnd sleep not for joy of the stars that deepen and quicken, a denser and fierier throng,\nAnd the world that thy breath bade whiten and tremble rejoices at heart as they strengthen and shine,\nAnd earth gives thanks for the glory bequeathed her, and knows of thy reign that it wrought not wrong.\n\nThy spirit is quenched not, albeit we behold not thy face in the crown of the steep sky’s arch,\nAnd the bold first buds of the whin wax golden, and witness arise of the thorn and the larch:\nWild April, enkindled to laughter and storm by the kiss of the wildest of winds that blow,\nCalls loud on his brother for witness; his hands that were laden with blossom are sprinkled with snow,\nAnd his lips breathe winter, and laugh, and relent; and the live woods feel not the frost’s flame parch;\nFor the flame of the spring that consumes not but quickens is felt at the heart of the forest aglow,\nAnd the sparks that enkindled and fed it were strewn from the hands of the gods of the winds of March.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1866 + }, "context": { "month": "march", "month_epoch": "late" @@ -57940,6 +58796,9 @@ "title": "“A Match”", "body": "If love were what the rose is,\nAnd I were like the leaf,\nOur lives would grow together\nIn sad or singing weather,\nBlown fields or flowerful closes,\nGreen pleasure or gray grief;\nIf love were what the rose is,\nAnd I were like the leaf.\n\nIf I were what the words are,\nAnd love were like the tune,\nWith double sound and single\nDelight our lips would mingle,\nWith kisses glad as birds are\nThat get sweet rain at noon;\nIf I were what the words are,\nAnd love were like the tune.\n\nIf you were life, my darling,\nAnd I your love were death,\nWe’d shine and snow together\nEre March made sweet the weather\nWith daffodil and starling\nAnd hours of fruitful breath;\nIf you were life, my darling,\nAnd I your love were death.\n\nIf you were thrall to sorrow,\nAnd I were page to joy,\nWe’d play for lives and seasons\nWith loving looks and treasons\nAnd tears of night and morrow\nAnd laughs of maid and boy;\nIf you were thrall to sorrow,\nAnd I were page to joy.\n\nIf you were April’s lady,\nAnd I were lord in May,\nWe’d throw with leaves for hours\nAnd draw for days with flowers,\nTill day like night were shady\nAnd night were bright like day;\nIf you were April’s lady,\nAnd I were lord in May.\n\nIf you were queen of pleasure,\nAnd I were king of pain,\nWe’d hunt down love together,\nPluck out his flying-feather,\nAnd teach his feet a measure,\nAnd find his mouth a rein;\nIf you were queen of pleasure,\nAnd I were king of pain.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1866 + }, "context": { "month": "march", "month_epoch": "late" @@ -57949,32 +58808,79 @@ "the-oblation": { "title": "“The Oblation”", "body": "Ask nothing more of me, sweet;\n All I can give you I give.\n Heart of my heart, were it more,\nMore would be laid at your feet--\n Love that should help you to live,\n Song that should spur you to soar.\n\nAll things were nothing to give,\n Once to have sense of you more,\n Touch you and taste of you, sweet,\nThink you and breathe you and live,\n Swept of your wings as they soar,\n Trodden by chance of your feet.\n\nI that have love and no more\n Give you but love of you, sweet.\n He that hath more, let him give;\nHe that hath wings, let him soar;\n Mine is the heart at your feet\n Here, that must love you to live.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1866 + } + } }, "the-pilgrims": { "title": "“The Pilgrims”", "body": "Who is your lady of love, O ye that pass\nSinging? and is it for sorrow of that which was\n That ye sing sadly, or dream of what shall be?\n For gladly at once and sadly it seems ye sing.\n--Our lady of love by you is unbeholden;\nFor hands she hath none, nor eyes, nor lips, nor golden\n Treasure of hair, nor face nor form; but we\n That love, we know her more fair than anything.\n\n--Is she a queen, having great gifts to give?\n--Yea, these; that whoso hath seen her shall not live\n Except he serve her sorrowing, with strange pain,\n Travail and bloodshedding and bitterer tears;\nAnd when she bids die he shall surely die.\nAnd he shall leave all things under the sky\n And go forth naked under sun and rain\n And work and wait and watch out all his years.\n\n--Hath she on earth no place of habitation?\n--Age to age calling, nation answering nation,\n Cries out, Where is she? and there is none to say;\n For if she be not in the spirit of men,\nFor if in the inward soul she hath no place,\nIn vain they cry unto her, seeking her face,\n In vain their mouths make much of her; for they\n Cry with vain tongues, till the heart lives again.\n\n--O ye that follow, and have ye no repentance?\nFor on your brows is written a mortal sentence,\n An hieroglyph of sorrow, a fiery sign,\n That in your lives ye shall not pause or rest,\nNor have the sure sweet common love, nor keep\nFriends and safe days, nor joy of life nor sleep.\n --These have we not, who have one thing, the divine\n Face and clear eyes of faith and fruitful breast.\n\n--And ye shall die before your thrones be won.\n--Yea, and the changed world and the liberal sun\n Shall move and shine without us, and we lie\n Dead; but if she too move on earth and live,\nBut if the old world with all the old irons rent\nLaugh and give thanks, shall we be not content?\n Nay, we shall rather live, we shall not die,\n Life being so little and death so good to give.\n\n--And these men shall forget you.--Yea, but we\nShall be a part of the earth and the ancient sea,\n And heaven-high air august, and awful fire,\n And all things good; and no man’s heart shall beat\nBut somewhat in it of our blood once shed\nShall quiver and quicken, as now in us the dead\n Blood of men slain and the old same life’s desire\n Plants in their fiery footprints our fresh feet.\n\n--But ye that might be clothed with all things pleasant,\nYe are foolish that put off the fair soft present,\n That clothe yourselves with the cold future air;\n When mother and father and tender sister and brother\nAnd the old live love that was shall be as ye,\nDust, and no fruit of loving life shall be.\n --She shall be yet who is more than all these were,\n Than sister or wife or father unto us or mother.\n\n--Is this worth life, is this, to win for wages?\nLo, the dead mouths of the awful grey-grown ages,\n The venerable, in the past that is their prison,\n In the outer darkness, in the unopening grave,\nLaugh, knowing how many as ye now say have said,\nHow many, and all are fallen, are fallen and dead:\n Shall ye dead rise, and these dead have not risen?\n --Not we but she, who is tender and swift to save.\n\n--Are ye not weary and faint not by the way,\nSeeing night by night devoured of day by day,\n Seeing hour by hour consumed in sleepless fire?\n Sleepless: and ye too, when shall ye too sleep?\n--We are weary in heart and head, in hands and feet,\nAnd surely more than all things sleep were sweet,\n Than all things save the inexorable desire\n Which whoso knoweth shall neither faint nor weep.\n\n--Is this so sweet that one were fain to follow?\nIs this so sure where all men’s hopes are hollow.\n Even this your dream, that by much tribulation\n Ye shall make whole flawed hearts, and bowed necks straight?\n--Nay, though our life were blind, our death were fruitless,\nNot therefore were the whole world’s high hope rootless;\n But man to man, nation would turn to nation,\n And the old life live, and the old great world be great.\n\n--Pass on then and pass by us and let us be,\nFor what light think ye after life to see?\n And if the world fare better will ye know?\n And if man triumph who shall seek you and say?\n--Enough of light is this for one life’s span,\nThat all men born are mortal, but not man:\n And we men bring death lives by night to sow,\n That man may reap and eat and live by day.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1866 + } + } + }, + "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. ", + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1871 + }, + "context": { + "season": "summer" + } + } + }, + "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? ", + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1894 + }, + "context": { + "liturgy": "advent" + } + } }, "rondel": { "title": "“Rondel”", "body": "These many years since we began to be,\nWhat have the gods done with us? what with me,\nWhat with my love? they have shown me fates and fears,\nHarsh springs, and fountains bitterer than the sea,\nGrief a fixed star, and joy a vane that veers,\nThese many years.\n\nWith her, my love, with her have they done well?\nBut who shall answer for her? who shall tell\nSweet things or sad, such things as no man hears?\nMay no tears fall, if no tears ever fell,\nFrom eyes more dear to me than starriest spheres\nThese many years!\n\nBut if tears ever touched, for any grief,\nThose eyelids folded like a white-rose leaf,\nDeep double shells wherethrough the eye-flower peers,\nLet them weep once more only, sweet and brief,\nBrief tears and bright, for one who gave her tears\nThese many years.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1866 + } + } }, "sapphics": { "title": "“Sapphics”", "body": "All the night sleep came not upon my eyelids,\nShed not dew, nor shook nor unclosed a feather,\nYet with lips shut close and with eyes of iron\nStood and beheld me.\n\nThen to me so lying awake a vision\nCame without sleep over the seas and touched me,\nSoftly touched mine eyelids and lips; and I too,\nFull of the vision,\n\nSaw the white implacable Aphrodite,\nSaw the hair unbound and the feet unsandalled\nShine as fire of sunset on western waters;\nSaw the reluctant\n\nFeet, the straining plumes of the doves that drew her,\nLooking always, looking with necks reverted,\nBack to Lesbos, back to the hills whereunder\nShone Mitylene;\n\nHeard the flying feet of the Loves behind her\nMake a sudden thunder upon the waters,\nAs the thunder flung from the strong unclosing\nWings of a great wind.\n\nSo the goddess fled from her place, with awful\nSound of feet and thunder of wings around her;\nWhile behind a clamour of singing women\nSevered the twilight.\n\nAh the singing, ah the delight, the passion!\nAll the Loves wept, listening; sick with anguish,\nStood the crowned nine Muses about Apollo;\nFear was upon them,\n\nWhile the tenth sang wonderful things they knew not.\nAh the tenth, the Lesbian! the nine were silent,\nNone endured the sound of her song for weeping;\nLaurel by laurel,\n\nFaded all their crowns; but about her forehead,\nRound her woven tresses and ashen temples\nWhite as dead snow, paler than grass in summer,\nRavaged with kisses,\n\nShone a light of fire as a crown for ever.\nYea, almost the implacable Aphrodite\nPaused, and almost wept; such a song was that song.\nYea, by her name too\n\nCalled her, saying, “Turn to me, O my Sappho;”\nYet she turned her face from the Loves, she saw not\nTears for laughter darken immortal eyelids,\nHeard not about her\n\nFearful fitful wings of the doves departing,\nSaw not how the bosom of Aphrodite\nShook with weeping, saw not her shaken raiment,\nSaw not her hands wrung;\n\nSaw the Lesbians kissing across their smitten\nLutes with lips more sweet than the sound of lute-strings,\nMouth to mouth and hand upon hand, her chosen,\nFairer than all men;\n\nOnly saw the beautiful lips and fingers,\nFull of songs and kisses and little whispers,\nFull of music; only beheld among them\nSoar, as a bird soars\n\nNewly fledged, her visible song, a marvel,\nMade of perfect sound and exceeding passion,\nSweetly shapen, terrible, full of thunders,\nClothed with the wind’s wings.\n\nThen rejoiced she, laughing with love, and scattered\nRoses, awful roses of holy blossom;\nThen the Loves thronged sadly with hidden faces\nRound Aphrodite,\n\nThen the Muses, stricken at heart, were silent;\nYea, the gods waxed pale; such a song was that song.\nAll reluctant, all with a fresh repulsion,\nFled from before her.\n\nAll withdrew long since, and the land was barren,\nFull of fruitless women and music only.\nNow perchance, when winds are assuaged at sunset,\nLulled at the dewfall,\n\nBy the grey sea-side, unassuaged, unheard of,\nUnbeloved, unseen in the ebb of twilight,\nGhosts of outcast women return lamenting,\nPurged not in Lethe,\n\nClothed about with flame and with tears, and singing\nSongs that move the heart of the shaken heaven,\nSongs that break the heart of the earth with pity,\nHearing, to hear them.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1866 + } + } }, "sestina": { "title": "“Sestina”", "body": "I saw my soul at rest upon a day\n As a bird sleeping in the nest of night,\nAmong soft leaves that give the starlight way\n To touch its wings but not its eyes with light;\nSo that it knew as one in visions may,\n And knew not as men waking, of delight.\n\nThis was the measure of my soul’s delight;\n It had no power of joy to fly by day,\nNor part in the large lordship of the light;\n But in a secret moon-beholden way\nHad all its will of dreams and pleasant night,\n And all the love and life that sleepers may.\n\nBut such life’s triumph as men waking may\n It might not have to feed its faint delight\nBetween the stars by night and sun by day,\n Shut up with green leaves and a little light;\nBecause its way was as a lost star’s way,\n A world’s not wholly known of day or night.\n\nAll loves and dreams and sounds and gleams of night\n Made it all music that such minstrels may,\nAnd all they had they gave it of delight;\n But in the full face of the fire of day\nWhat place shall be for any starry light,\n What part of heaven in all the wide sun’s way?\n\nYet the soul woke not, sleeping by the way,\n Watched as a nursling of the large-eyed night,\nAnd sought no strength nor knowledge of the day,\n Nor closer touch conclusive of delight,\nNor mightier joy nor truer than dreamers may,\n Nor more of song than they, nor more of light.\n\nFor who sleeps once and sees the secret light\n Whereby sleep shows the soul a fairer way\nBetween the rise and rest of day and night,\n Shall care no more to fare as all men may,\nBut be his place of pain or of delight,\n There shall he dwell, beholding night as day.\n\nSong, have thy day and take thy fill of light\n Before the night be fallen across thy way;\nSing while he may, man hath no long delight.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1878 + } + } }, "songs-before-sunrise": { "title": "“Songs before Sunrise”", "body": "Between the wave-ridge and the strand\nI let you forth in sight of land,\n Songs that with storm-crossed wings and eyes\n Strain eastward till the darkness dies;\nLet signs and beacons fall or stand,\n And stars and balefires set and rise;\nYe, till some lordlier lyric hand\n Weave the beloved brows their crown,\n At the beloved feet lie down.\n\nO, whatsoever of life or light\nLove hath to give you, what of might\n Or heart or hope is yours to live,\n I charge you take in trust to give\nFor very love’s sake, in whose sight,\n Through poise of hours alternative\nAnd seasons plumed with light or night,\n Ye live and move and have your breath\n To sing with on the ridge of death.\n\nI charge you faint not all night through\nFor love’s sake that was breathed on you\n To be to you as wings and feet\n For travel, and as blood to heat\nAnd sense of spirit to renew\n And bloom of fragrance to keep sweet\nAnd fire of purpose to keep true\n The life, if life in such things be,\n That I would give you forth of me.\n\nOut where the breath of war may bear,\nOut in the rank moist reddened air\n That sounds and smells of death, and hath\n No light but death’s upon its path\nSeen through the black wind’s tangled hair,\n I send you past the wild time’s wrath\nTo find his face who bade you bear\n Fruit of his seed to faith and love,\n That he may take the heart thereof.\n\nBy day or night, by sea or street,\nFly till ye find and clasp his feet\n And kiss as worshippers who bring\n Too much love on their lips to sing,\nBut with hushed heads accept and greet\n The presence of some heavenlier thing\nIn the near air; so may ye meet\n His eyes, and droop not utterly\n For shame’s sake at the light you see.\n\nNot utterly struck spiritless\nFor shame’s sake and unworthiness\n Of these poor forceless hands that come\n Empty, these lips that should be dumb,\nThis love whose seal can but impress\n These weak word-offerings wearisome\nWhose blessings have not strength to bless\n Nor lightnings fire to burn up aught\n Nor smite with thunders of their thought.\n\nOne thought they have, even love; one light,\nTruth, that keeps clear the sun by night;\n One chord, of faith as of a lyre;\n One heat, of hope as of a fire;\nOne heart, one music, and one might,\n One flame, one altar, and one choir;\nAnd one man’s living head in sight\n Who said, when all time’s sea was foam,\n “Let there be Rome”--and there was Rome.\n\nAs a star set in space for token\nLike a live word of God’s mouth spoken,\n Visible sound, light audible,\n In the great darkness thick as hell\nA stanchless flame of love unsloken,\n A sign to conquer and compel,\nA law to stand in heaven unbroken\n Whereby the sun shines, and wherethrough\n Time’s eldest empires are made new;\n\nSo rose up on our generations\nThat light of the most ancient nations,\n Law, life, and light, on the world’s way,\n The very God of very day,\nThe sun-god; from their star-like stations\n Far down the night in disarray\nFled, crowned with fires of tribulations,\n The suns of sunless years, whose light\n And life and law were of the night.\n\nThe naked kingdoms quenched and stark\nDrave with their dead things down the dark,\n Helmless; their whole world, throne by throne,\n Fell, and its whole heart turned to stone,\nHopeless; their hands that touched our ark\n Withered; and lo, aloft, alone,\nOn time’s white waters man’s one bark,\n Where the red sundawn’s open eye\n Lit the soft gulf of low green sky.\n\nSo for a season piloted\nIt sailed the sunlight, and struck red\n With fire of dawn reverberate\n The wan face of incumbent fate\nThat paused half pitying overhead\n And almost had foregone the freight\nOf those dark hours the next day bred\n For shame, and almost had forsworn\n Service of night for love of morn.\n\nThen broke the whole night in one blow,\nThundering; then all hell with one throe\n Heaved, and brought forth beneath the stroke\n Death; and all dead things moved and woke\nThat the dawn’s arrows had brought low,\n At the great sound of night that broke\nThundering, and all the old world-wide woe;\n And under night’s loud-sounding dome\n Men sought her, and she was not Rome.\n\nStill with blind hands and robes blood-wet\nNight hangs on heaven, reluctant yet,\n With black blood dripping from her eyes\n On the soiled lintels of the skies,\nWith brows and lips that thirst and threat,\n Heart-sick with fear lest the sun rise,\nAnd aching with her fires that set,\n And shuddering ere dawn bursts her bars,\n Burns out with all her beaten stars.\n\nIn this black wind of war they fly\nNow, ere that hour be in the sky\n That brings back hope, and memory back,\n And light and law to lands that lack;\nThat spiritual sweet hour whereby\n The bloody-handed night and black\nShall be cast out of heaven to die;\n Kingdom by kingdom, crown by crown,\n The fires of darkness are blown down.\n\nYet heavy, grievous yet the weight\nSits on us of imperfect fate.\n From wounds of other days and deeds\n Still this day’s breathing body bleeds;\nStill kings for fear and slaves for hate\n Sow lives of men on earth like seeds\nIn the red soil they saturate;\n And we, with faces eastward set,\n Stand sightless of the morning yet.\n\nAnd many for pure sorrow’s sake\nLook back and stretch back hands to take\n Gifts of night’s giving, ease and sleep,\n Flowers of night’s grafting, strong to steep\nThe soul in dreams it will not break,\n Songs of soft hours that sigh and sweep\nIts lifted eyelids nigh to wake\n With subtle plumes and lulling breath\n That soothe its weariness to death.\n\nAnd many, called of hope and pride,\nFall ere the sunrise from our side.\n Fresh lights and rumours of fresh fames\n That shift and veer by night like flames,\nShouts and blown trumpets, ghosts that glide\n Calling, and hail them by dead names,\nFears, angers, memories, dreams divide\n Spirit from spirit, and wear out\n Strong hearts of men with hope and doubt.\n\nTill time beget and sorrow bear\nThe soul-sick eyeless child despair,\n That comes among us, mad and blind,\n With counsels of a broken mind,\nTales of times dead and woes that were,\n And, prophesying against mankind,\nShakes out the horror of her hair\n To take the sunlight with its coils\n And hold the living soul in toils.\n\nBy many ways of death and moods\nSouls pass into their servitudes.\n Their young wings weaken, plume by plume\n Drops, and their eyelids gather gloom\nAnd close against man’s frauds and feuds,\n And their tongues call they know not whom\nTo help in their vicissitudes;\n For many slaveries are, but one\n Liberty, single as the sun.\n\nOne light, one law, that burns up strife,\nAnd one sufficiency of life.\n Self-stablished, the sufficing soul\n Hears the loud wheels of changes roll,\nSees against man man bare the knife,\n Sees the world severed, and is whole;\nSees force take dowerless fraud to wife,\n And fear from fraud’s incestuous bed\n Crawl forth and smite his father dead:\n\nSees death made drunk with war, sees time\nWeave many-coloured crime with crime,\n State overthrown on ruining state,\n And dares not be disconsolate.\nOnly the soul hath feet to climb,\n Only the soul hath room to wait,\nHath brows and eyes to hold sublime\n Above all evil and all good,\n All strength and all decrepitude.\n\nShe only, she since earth began,\nThe many-minded soul of man,\n From one incognizable root\n That bears such divers-coloured fruit,\nHath ruled for blessing or for ban\n The flight of seasons and pursuit;\nShe regent, she republican,\n With wide and equal eyes and wings\n Broods on things born and dying things.\n\nEven now for love or doubt of us\nThe hour intense and hazardous\n Hangs high with pinions vibrating\n Whereto the light and darkness cling,\nDividing the dim season thus,\n And shakes from one ambiguous wing\nShadow, and one is luminous,\n And day falls from it; so the past\n Torments the future to the last.\n\nAnd we that cannot hear or see\nThe sounds and lights of liberty,\n The witness of the naked God\n That treads on burning hours unshod\nWith instant feet unwounded; we\n That can trace only where he trod\nBy fire in heaven or storm at sea,\n Not know the very present whole\n And naked nature of the soul;\n\nWe that see wars and woes and kings,\nAnd portents of enormous things,\n Empires, and agonies, and slaves,\n And whole flame of town-swallowing graves;\nThat hear the harsh hours clap sharp wings\n Above the roar of ranks like waves,\nFrom wreck to wreck as the world swings;\n Know but that men there are who see\n And hear things other far than we.\n\nBy the light sitting on their brows,\nThe fire wherewith their presence glows,\n The music falling with their feet,\n The sweet sense of a spirit sweet\nThat with their speech or motion grows\n And breathes and burns men’s hearts with heat;\nBy these signs there is none but knows\n Men who have life and grace to give,\n Men who have seen the soul and live.\n\nBy the strength sleeping in their eyes,\nThe lips whereon their sorrow lies\n Smiling, the lines of tears unshed,\n The large divine look of one dead\nThat speaks out of the breathless skies\n In silence, when the light is shed\nUpon man’s soul of memories;\n The supreme look that sets love free,\n The look of stars and of the sea;\n\nBy the strong patient godhead seen\nImplicit in their mortal mien,\n The conscience of a God held still\n And thunders ruled by their own will\nAnd fast-bound fires that might burn clean\n This worldly air that foul things fill,\nAnd the afterglow of what has been,\n That, passing, shows us without word\n What they have seen, what they have heard,\n\nBy all these keen and burning signs\nThe spirit knows them and divines.\n In bonds, in banishment, in grief,\n Scoffed at and scourged with unbelief,\nFoiled with false trusts and thwart designs,\n Stripped of green days and hopes in leaf,\nTheir mere bare body of glory shines\n Higher, and man gazing surelier sees\n What light, what comfort is of these.\n\nSo I now gazing; till the sense\nBeing set on fire of confidence\n Strains itself sunward, feels out far\n Beyond the bright and morning star,\nBeyond the extreme wave’s refluence,\n To where the fierce first sunbeams are\nWhose fire intolerant and intense\n As birthpangs whence day burns to be\n Parts breathless heaven from breathing sea.\n\nI see not, know not, and am blest,\nMaster, who know that thou knowest,\n Dear lord and leader, at whose hand\n The first days and the last days stand,\nWith scars and crowns on head and breast,\n That fought for love of the sweet land\nOr shall fight in her latter quest;\n All the days armed and girt and crowned\n Whose glories ring thy glory round.\n\nThou sawest, when all the world was blind,\nThe light that should be of mankind,\n The very day that was to be;\n And how shalt thou not sometime see\nThy city perfect to thy mind\n Stand face to living face with thee,\nAnd no miscrowned man’s head behind;\n The hearth of man, the human home,\n The central flame that shall be Rome?\n\nAs one that ere a June day rise\nMakes seaward for the dawn, and tries\n The water with delighted limbs\n That taste the sweet dark sea, and swims\nRight eastward under strengthening skies,\n And sees the gradual rippling rims\nOf waves whence day breaks blossom-wise\n Take fire ere light peer well above,\n And laughs from all his heart with love;\n\nAnd softlier swimming with raised head\nFeels the full flower of morning shed\n And fluent sunrise round him rolled\n That laps and laves his body bold\nWith fluctuant heaven in water’s stead,\n And urgent through the growing gold\nStrikes, and sees all the spray flash red,\n And his soul takes the sun, and yearns\n For joy wherewith the sea’s heart burns;\n\nSo the soul seeking through the dark\nHeavenward, a dove without an ark,\n Transcends the unnavigable sea\n Of years that wear out memory;\nSo calls, a sunward-singing lark,\n In the ear of souls that should be free;\nSo points them toward the sun for mark\n Who steer not for the stress of waves,\n And seek strange helmsmen, and are slaves.\n\nFor if the swimmer’s eastward eye\nMust see no sunrise--must put by\n The hope that lifted him and led\n Once, to have light about his head,\nTo see beneath the clear low sky\n The green foam-whitened wave wax red\nAnd all the morning’s banner fly--\n Then, as earth’s helpless hopes go down,\n Let earth’s self in the dark tides drown.\n\nYea, if no morning must behold\nMan, other than were they now cold,\n And other deeds than past deeds done,\n Nor any near or far-off sun\nSalute him risen and sunlike-souled,\n Free, boundless, fearless, perfect, one,\nLet man’s world die like worlds of old,\n And here in heaven’s sight only be\n The sole sun on the worldless sea.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1866 + }, "context": { "month": "june" } @@ -57984,6 +58890,9 @@ "title": "“Sundew”", "body": "A little marsh-plant, yellow green,\nAnd pricked at lip with tender red.\nTread close, and either way you tread\nSome faint black water jets between\nLest you should bruise the curious head.\n\nA live thing maybe; who shall know?\nThe summer knows and suffers it;\nFor the cool moss is thick and sweet\nEach side, and saves the blossom so\nThat it lives out the long June heat.\n\nThe deep scent of the heather burns\nAbout it; breathless though it be,\nBow down and worship; more than we\nIs the least flower whose life returns,\nLeast weed renascent in the sea.\n\nWe are vexed and cumbered in earth’s sight\nWith wants, with many memories;\nThese see their mother what she is,\nGlad-growing, till August leave more bright\nThe apple-coloured cranberries.\n\nWind blows and bleaches the strong grass,\nBlown all one way to shelter it\nFrom trample of strayed kine, with feet\nFelt heavier than the moorhen was,\nStrayed up past patches of wild wheat.\n\nYou call it sundew: how it grows,\nIf with its colour it have breath,\nIf life taste sweet to it, if death\nPain its soft petal, no man knows:\nMan has no sight or sense that saith.\n\nMy sundew, grown of gentle days,\nIn these green miles the spring begun\nThy growth ere April had half done\nWith the soft secret of her ways\nOr June made ready for the sun.\n\nO red-lipped mouth of marsh-flower,\nI have a secret halved with thee.\nThe name that is love’s name to me\nThou knowest, and the face of her\nWho is my festival to see.\n\nThe hard sun, as thy petals knew,\nColoured the heavy moss-water:\nThou wert not worth green midsummer\nNor fit to live to August blue,\nO sundew, not remembering her.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1866 + }, "context": { "month": "july" } @@ -57993,6 +58902,9 @@ "title": "“A Swimmer’s Dream”", "body": "# I.\n\nDawn is dim on the dark soft water,\n Soft and passionate, dark and sweet.\nLove’s own self was the deep sea’s daughter,\n Fair and flawless from face to feet,\nHailed of all when the world was golden,\nLoved of lovers whose names beholden\nThrill men’s eyes as with light of olden\n Days more glad than their flight was fleet.\n\nSo they sang: but for men that love her,\n Souls that hear not her word in vain,\nEarth beside her and heaven above her\n Seem but shadows that wax and wane.\nSofter than sleep’s are the sea’s caresses,\nKinder than love’s that betrays and blesses,\nBlither than spring’s when her flowerful tresses\n Shake forth sunlight and shine with rain.\n\nAll the strength of the waves that perish\n Swells beneath me and laughs and sighs,\nSighs for love of the life they cherish,\n Laughs to know that it lives and dies,\nDies for joy of its life, and lives\nThrilled with joy that its brief death gives--\nDeath whose laugh or whose breath forgives\n Change that bids it subside and rise.\n\n\n# II.\n\nHard and heavy, remote but nearing,\n Sunless hangs the severe sky’s weight,\nCloud on cloud, though the wind be veering\n Heaped on high to the sundawn’s gate.\nDawn and even and noon are one,\nVeiled with vapour and void of sun;\nNought in sight or in fancied hearing\n Now less mighty than time or fate.\n\nThe grey sky gleams and the grey seas glimmer,\n Pale and sweet as a dream’s delight,\nAs a dream’s where darkness and light seem dimmer,\n Touched by dawn or subdued by night.\nThe dark wind, stern and sublime and sad,\nSwings the rollers to westward, clad\nWith lustrous shadow that lures the swimmer,\n Lures and lulls him with dreams of light.\n\nLight, and sleep, and delight, and wonder,\n Change, and rest, and a charm of cloud,\nFill the world of the skies whereunder\n Heaves and quivers and pants aloud\nAll the world of the waters, hoary\nNow, but clothed with its own live glory,\nThat mates the lightning and mocks the thunder\n With light more living and word more proud.\n\n\n# III.\n\nFar off westward, whither sets the sounding strife,\n Strife more sweet than peace, of shoreless waves whose glee\n Scorns the shore and loves the wind that leaves them free,\nStrange as sleep and pale as death and fair as life,\n Shifts the moonlight-coloured sunshine on the sea.\n\nToward the sunset’s goal the sunless waters crowd,\n Fast as autumn days toward winter: yet it seems\n Here that autumn wanes not, here that woods and streams\nLose not heart and change not likeness, chilled and bowed,\n Warped and wrinkled: here the days are fair as dreams.\n\n\n# IV.\n\nO russet-robed November,\n What ails thee so to smile?\nChill August, pale September,\n Endured a woful while,\nAnd fell as falls an ember\n From forth a flameless pile:\nBut golden-girt November\n Bids all she looks on smile.\n\nThe lustrous foliage, waning\n As wanes the morning moon,\nHere falling, here refraining,\n Outbraves the pride of June\nWith statelier semblance, feigning\n No fear lest death be soon:\nAs though the woods thus waning\n Should wax to meet the moon.\n\nAs though, when fields lie stricken\n By grey December’s breath,\nThese lordlier growths that sicken\n And die for fear of death\nShould feel the sense requicken\n That hears what springtide saith\nAnd thrills for love, spring-stricken\n And pierced with April’s breath.\n\nThe keen white-winged north-easter\n That stings and spurs thy sea\nDoth yet but feed and feast her\n With glowing sense of glee:\nCalm chained her, storm released her,\n And storm’s glad voice was he:\nSouth-wester or north-easter,\n Thy winds rejoice the sea.\n\n\n# V.\n\nA dream, a dream is it all--the season,\n The sky, the water, the wind, the shore?\nA day-born dream of divine unreason,\n A marvel moulded of sleep--no more?\nFor the cloudlike wave that my limbs while cleaving\nFeel as in slumber beneath them heaving\nSoothes the sense as to slumber, leaving\n Sense of nought that was known of yore.\n\nA purer passion, a lordlier leisure,\n A peace more happy than lives on land,\nFulfils with pulse of diviner pleasure\n The dreaming head and the steering hand.\nI lean my cheek to the cold grey pillow,\nThe deep soft swell of the full broad billow,\nAnd close mine eyes for delight past measure,\n And wish the wheel of the world would stand.\n\nThe wild-winged hour that we fain would capture\n Falls as from heaven that its light feet clomb,\nSo brief, so soft, and so full the rapture\n Was felt that soothed me with sense of home.\nTo sleep, to swim, and to dream, for ever--\nSuch joy the vision of man saw never;\nFor here too soon will a dark day sever\n The sea-bird’s wing from the sea-wave’s foam.\n\nA dream, and more than a dream, and dimmer\n At once and brighter than dreams that flee,\nThe moment’s joy of the seaward swimmer\n Abides, remembered as truth may be.\nNot all the joy and not all the glory\nMust fade as leaves when the woods wax hoary;\nFor there the downs and the sea-banks glimmer,\n And here to south of them swells the sea.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1894 + }, "context": { "month": "november", "month_epoch": "early" @@ -58003,6 +58915,9 @@ "title": "“The Triumph of Time”", "body": "Before our lives divide for ever,\nWhile time is with us and hands are free,\n(Time, swift to fasten and swift to sever\nHand from hand, as we stand by the sea)\nI will say no word that a man might say\nWhose whole life’s love goes down in a day;\nFor this could never have been; and never,\nThough the gods and the years relent, shall be.\n\nIs it worth a tear, is it worth an hour,\nTo think of things that are well outworn?\nOf fruitless husk and fugitive flower,\nThe dream foregone and the deed forborne?\nThough joy be done with and grief be vain,\nTime shall not sever us wholly in twain;\nEarth is not spoilt for a single shower;\nBut the rain has ruined the ungrown corn.\n\nIt will grow not again, this fruit of my heart,\nSmitten with sunbeams, ruined with rain.\nThe singing seasons divide and depart,\nWinter and summer depart in twain.\nIt will grow not again, it is ruined at root,\nThe bloodlike blossom, the dull red fruit;\nThough the heart yet sickens, the lips yet smart,\nWith sullen savour of poisonous pain.\n\nI have given no man of my fruit to eat;\nI trod the grapes, I have drunken the wine.\nHad you eaten and drunken and found it sweet,\nThis wild new growth of the corn and vine,\nThis wine and bread without lees or leaven,\nWe had grown as gods, as the gods in heaven,\nSouls fair to look upon, goodly to greet,\nOne splendid spirit, your soul and mine.\n\nIn the change of years, in the coil of things,\nIn the clamour and rumour of life to be,\nWe, drinking love at the furthest springs,\nCovered with love as a covering tree,\nWe had grown as gods, as the gods above,\nFilled from the heart to the lips with love,\nHeld fast in his hands, clothed warm with his wings,\nO love, my love, had you loved but me!\n\nWe had stood as the sure stars stand, and moved\nAs the moon moves, loving the world; and seen\nGrief collapse as a thing disproved,\nDeath consume as a thing unclean.\nTwain halves of a perfect heart, made fast\nSoul to soul while the years fell past;\nHad you loved me once, as you have not loved;\nHad the chance been with us that has not been.\n\nI have put my days and dreams out of mind,\nDays that are over, dreams that are done.\nThough we seek life through, we shall surely find\nThere is none of them clear to us now, not one.\nBut clear are these things; the grass and the sand,\nWhere, sure as the eyes reach, ever at hand,\nWith lips wide open and face burnt blind,\nThe strong sea-daisies feast on the sun.\n\nThe low downs lean to the sea; the stream,\nOne loose thin pulseless tremulous vein,\nRapid and vivid and dumb as a dream,\nWorks downward, sick of the sun and the rain;\nNo wind is rough with the rank rare flowers;\nThe sweet sea, mother of loves and hours,\nShudders and shines as the grey winds gleam,\nTurning her smile to a fugitive pain.\n\nMother of loves that are swift to fade,\nMother of mutable winds and hours.\nA barren mother, a mother-maid,\nCold and clean as her faint salt flowers.\nI would we twain were even as she,\nLost in the night and the light of the sea,\nWhere faint sounds falter and wan beams wade,\nBreak, and are broken, and shed into showers.\n\nThe loves and hours of the life of a man,\nThey are swift and sad, being born of the sea.\nHours that rejoice and regret for a span,\nBorn with a man’s breath, mortal as he;\nLoves that are lost ere they come to birth,\nWeeds of the wave, without fruit upon earth.\nI lose what I long for, save what I can,\nMy love, my love, and no love for me!\n\nIt is not much that a man can save\nOn the sands of life, in the straits of time,\nWho swims in sight of the great third wave\nThat never a swimmer shall cross or climb.\nSome waif washed up with the strays and spars\nThat ebb-tide shows to the shore and the stars;\nWeed from the water, grass from a grave,\nA broken blossom, a ruined rhyme.\n\nThere will no man do for your sake, I think,\nWhat I would have done for the least word said.\nI had wrung life dry for your lips to drink,\nBroken it up for your daily bread:\nBody for body and blood for blood,\nAs the flow of the full sea risen to flood\nThat yearns and trembles before it sink,\nI had given, and lain down for you, glad and dead.\n\nYea, hope at highest and all her fruit,\nAnd time at fullest and all his dower,\nI had given you surely, and life to boot,\nWere we once made one for a single hour.\nBut now, you are twain, you are cloven apart,\nFlesh of his flesh, but heart of my heart;\nAnd deep in one is the bitter root,\nAnd sweet for one is the lifelong flower.\n\nTo have died if you cared I should die for you, clung\nTo my life if you bade me, played my part\nAs it pleased you--these were the thoughts that stung,\nThe dreams that smote with a keener dart\nThan shafts of love or arrows of death;\nThese were but as fire is, dust, or breath,\nOr poisonous foam on the tender tongue\nOf the little snakes that eat my heart.\n\nI wish we were dead together to-day,\nLost sight of, hidden away out of sight,\nClasped and clothed in the cloven clay,\nOut of the world’s way, out of the light,\nOut of the ages of worldly weather,\nForgotten of all men altogether,\nAs the world’s first dead, taken wholly away,\nMade one with death, filled full of the night.\n\nHow we should slumber, how we should sleep,\nFar in the dark with the dreams and the dews!\nAnd dreaming, grow to each other, and weep,\nLaugh low, live softly, murmur and muse;\nYea, and it may be, struck through by the dream,\nFeel the dust quicken and quiver, and seem\nAlive as of old to the lips, and leap\nSpirit to spirit as lovers use.\n\nSick dreams and sad of a dull delight;\nFor what shall it profit when men are dead\nTo have dreamed, to have loved with the whole soul’s might,\nTo have looked for day when the day was fled?\nLet come what will, there is one thing worth,\nTo have had fair love in the life upon earth:\nTo have held love safe till the day grew night,\nWhile skies had colour and lips were red.\n\nWould I lose you now? would I take you then,\nIf I lose you now that my heart has need?\nAnd come what may after death to men,\nWhat thing worth this will the dead years breed?\nLose life, lose all; but at least I know,\nO sweet life’s love, having loved you so,\nHad I reached you on earth, I should lose not again,\nIn death nor life, nor in dream or deed.\n\nYea, I know this well: were you once sealed mine,\nMine in the blood’s beat, mine in the breath,\nMixed into me as honey in wine,\nNot time, that sayeth and gainsayeth,\nNor all strong things had severed us then;\nNot wrath of gods, nor wisdom of men,\nNor all things earthly, nor all divine,\nNor joy nor sorrow, nor life nor death.\n\nI had grown pure as the dawn and the dew,\nYou had grown strong as the sun or the sea.\nBut none shall triumph a whole life through:\nFor death is one, and the fates are three.\nAt the door of life, by the gate of breath,\nThere are worse things waiting for men than death;\nDeath could not sever my soul and you,\nAs these have severed your soul from me.\n\nYou have chosen and clung to the chance they sent you,\nLife sweet as perfume and pure as prayer.\nBut will it not one day in heaven repent you?\nWill they solace you wholly, the days that were?\nWill you lift up your eyes between sadness and bliss,\nMeet mine, and see where the great love is,\nAnd tremble and turn and be changed? Content you;\nThe gate is strait; I shall not be there.\n\nBut you, had you chosen, had you stretched hand,\nHad you seen good such a thing were done,\nI too might have stood with the souls that stand\nIn the sun’s sight, clothed with the light of the sun;\nBut who now on earth need care how I live?\nHave the high gods anything left to give,\nSave dust and laurels and gold and sand?\nWhich gifts are goodly; but I will none.\n\nO all fair lovers about the world,\nThere is none of you, none, that shall comfort me.\nMy thoughts are as dead things, wrecked and whirled\nRound and round in a gulf of the sea;\nAnd still, through the sound and the straining stream,\nThrough the coil and chafe, they gleam in a dream,\nThe bright fine lips so cruelly curled,\nAnd strange swift eyes where the soul sits free.\n\nFree, without pity, withheld from woe,\nIgnorant; fair as the eyes are fair.\nWould I have you change now, change at a blow,\nStartled and stricken, awake and aware?\nYea, if I could, would I have you see\nMy very love of you filling me,\nAnd know my soul to the quick, as I know\nThe likeness and look of your throat and hair?\n\nI shall not change you. Nay, though I might,\nWould I change my sweet one love with a word?\nI had rather your hair should change in a night,\nClear now as the plume of a black bright bird;\nYour face fail suddenly, cease, turn grey,\nDie as a leaf that dies in a day.\nI will keep my soul in a place out of sight,\nFar off, where the pulse of it is not heard.\n\nFar off it walks, in a bleak blown space,\nFull of the sound of the sorrow of years.\nI have woven a veil for the weeping face,\nWhose lips have drunken the wine of tears;\nI have found a way for the failing feet,\nA place for slumber and sorrow to meet;\nThere is no rumour about the place,\nNor light, nor any that sees or hears.\n\nI have hidden my soul out of sight, and said\n“Let none take pity upon thee, none\nComfort thy crying: for lo, thou art dead,\nLie still now, safe out of sight of the sun.\nHave I not built thee a grave, and wrought\nThy grave-clothes on thee of grievous thought,\nWith soft spun verses and tears unshed,\nAnd sweet light visions of things undone?”\n\n“I have given thee garments and balm and myrrh,\nAnd gold, and beautiful burial things.\nBut thou, be at peace now, make no stir;\nIs not thy grave as a royal king’s?\nFret not thyself though the end were sore;\nSleep, be patient, vex me no more.\nSleep; what hast thou to do with her?\nThe eyes that weep, with the mouth that sings?”\n\nWhere the dead red leaves of the years lie rotten,\nThe cold old crimes and the deeds thrown by,\nThe misconceived and the misbegotten,\nI would find a sin to do ere I die,\nSure to dissolve and destroy me all through,\nThat would set you higher in heaven, serve you\nAnd leave you happy, when clean forgotten,\nAs a dead man out of mind, am I.\n\nYour lithe hands draw me, your face burns through me,\nI am swift to follow you, keen to see;\nBut love lacks might to redeem or undo me;\nAs I have been, I know I shall surely be;\n“What should such fellows as I do?” Nay,\nMy part were worse if I chose to play;\nFor the worst is this after all; if they knew me,\nNot a soul upon earth would pity me.\n\nAnd I play not for pity of these; but you,\nIf you saw with your soul what man am I,\nYou would praise me at least that my soul all through\nClove to you, loathing the lives that lie;\nThe souls and lips that are bought and sold,\nThe smiles of silver and kisses of gold,\nThe lapdog loves that whine as they chew,\nThe little lovers that curse and cry.\n\nThere are fairer women, I hear; that may be;\nBut I, that I love you and find you fair,\nWho are more than fair in my eyes if they be,\nDo the high gods know or the great gods care?\nThough the swords in my heart for one were seven,\nWould the iron hollow of doubtful heaven,\nThat knows not itself whether night-time or day be,\nReverberate words and a foolish prayer?\n\nI will go back to the great sweet mother,\nMother and lover of men, the sea.\nI will go down to her, I and none other,\nClose with her, kiss her and mix her with me;\nCling to her, strive with her, hold her fast:\nO fair white mother, in days long past\nBorn without sister, born without brother,\nSet free my soul as thy soul is free.\n\nO fair green-girdled mother of mine,\nSea, that art clothed with the sun and the rain,\nThy sweet hard kisses are strong like wine,\nThy large embraces are keen like pain.\nSave me and hide me with all thy waves,\nFind me one grave of thy thousand graves,\nThose pure cold populous graves of thine\nWrought without hand in a world without stain.\n\nI shall sleep, and move with the moving ships,\nChange as the winds change, veer in the tide;\nMy lips will feast on the foam of thy lips,\nI shall rise with thy rising, with thee subside;\nSleep, and not know if she be, if she were,\nFilled full with life to the eyes and hair,\nAs a rose is fulfilled to the roseleaf tips\nWith splendid summer and perfume and pride.\n\nThis woven raiment of nights and days,\nWere it once cast off and unwound from me,\nNaked and glad would I walk in thy ways,\nAlive and aware of thy ways and thee;\nClear of the whole world, hidden at home,\nClothed with the green and crowned with the foam,\nA pulse of the life of thy straits and bays,\nA vein in the heart of the streams of the sea.\n\nFair mother, fed with the lives of men,\nThou art subtle and cruel of heart, men say.\nThou hast taken, and shalt not render again;\nThou art full of thy dead, and cold as they.\nBut death is the worst that comes of thee;\nThou art fed with our dead, O mother, O sea,\nBut when hast thou fed on our hearts? or when,\nHaving given us love, hast thou taken away?\n\nO tender-hearted, O perfect lover,\nThy lips are bitter, and sweet thine heart.\nThe hopes that hurt and the dreams that hover,\nShall they not vanish away and apart?\nBut thou, thou art sure, thou art older than earth;\nThou art strong for death and fruitful of birth;\nThy depths conceal and thy gulfs discover;\nFrom the first thou wert; in the end thou art.\n\nAnd grief shall endure not for ever, I know.\nAs things that are not shall these things be;\nWe shall live through seasons of sun and of snow,\nAnd none be grievous as this to me.\nWe shall hear, as one in a trance that hears,\nThe sound of time, the rhyme of the years;\nWrecked hope and passionate pain will grow\nAs tender things of a spring-tide sea.\n\nSea-fruit that swings in the waves that hiss,\nDrowned gold and purple and royal rings.\nAnd all time past, was it all for this?\nTimes unforgotten, and treasures of things?\nSwift years of liking and sweet long laughter,\nThat wist not well of the years thereafter\nTill love woke, smitten at heart by a kiss,\nWith lips that trembled and trailing wings?\n\nThere lived a singer in France of old\nBy the tideless dolorous midland sea.\nIn a land of sand and ruin and gold\nThere shone one woman, and none but she.\nAnd finding life for her love’s sake fail,\nBeing fain to see her, he bade set sail,\nTouched land, and saw her as life grew cold,\nAnd praised God, seeing; and so died he.\n\nDied, praising God for his gift and grace:\nFor she bowed down to him weeping, and said\n“Live”; and her tears were shed on his face\nOr ever the life in his face was shed.\nThe sharp tears fell through her hair, and stung\nOnce, and her close lips touched him and clung\nOnce, and grew one with his lips for a space;\nAnd so drew back, and the man was dead.\n\nO brother, the gods were good to you.\nSleep, and be glad while the world endures.\nBe well content as the years wear through;\nGive thanks for life, and the loves and lures;\nGive thanks for life, O brother, and death,\nFor the sweet last sound of her feet, her breath,\nFor gifts she gave you, gracious and few,\nTears and kisses, that lady of yours.\n\nRest, and be glad of the gods; but I,\nHow shall I praise them, or how take rest?\nThere is not room under all the sky\nFor me that know not of worst or best,\nDream or desire of the days before,\nSweet things or bitterness, any more.\nLove will not come to me now though I die,\nAs love came close to you, breast to breast.\n\nI shall never be friends again with roses;\nI shall loathe sweet tunes, where a note grown strong\nRelents and recoils, and climbs and closes,\nAs a wave of the sea turned back by song.\nThere are sounds where the soul’s delight takes fire,\nFace to face with its own desire;\nA delight that rebels, a desire that reposes;\nI shall hate sweet music my whole life long.\n\nThe pulse of war and passion of wonder,\nThe heavens that murmur, the sounds that shine,\nThe stars that sing and the loves that thunder,\nThe music burning at heart like wine,\nAn armed archangel whose hands raise up\nAll senses mixed in the spirit’s cup\nTill flesh and spirit are molten in sunder--\nThese things are over, and no more mine.\n\nThese were a part of the playing I heard\nOnce, ere my love and my heart were at strife;\nLove that sings and hath wings as a bird,\nBalm of the wound and heft of the knife.\nFairer than earth is the sea, and sleep\nThan overwatching of eyes that weep,\nNow time has done with his one sweet word,\nThe wine and leaven of lovely life.\n\nI shall go my ways, tread out my measure,\nFill the days of my daily breath\nWith fugitive things not good to treasure,\nDo as the world doth, say as it saith;\nBut if we had loved each other--O sweet,\nHad you felt, lying under the palms of your feet,\nThe heart of my heart, beating harder with pleasure\nTo feel you tread it to dust and death--\n\nAh, had I not taken my life up and given\nAll that life gives and the years let go,\nThe wine and honey, the balm and leaven,\nThe dreams reared high and the hopes brought low?\nCome life, come death, not a word be said;\nShould I lose you living, and vex you dead?\nI never shall tell you on earth; and in heaven,\nIf I cry to you then, will you hear or know?", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1866 + }, "context": { "season": "autumn" } @@ -58012,6 +58927,9 @@ "title": "“The Two Dreams”", "body": "I will that if I say a heavy thing\nYour tongues forgive me; seeing ye know that spring\nHas flecks and fits of pain to keep her sweet,\nAnd walks somewhile with winter-bitten feet.\nMoreover it sounds often well to let\nOne string, when ye play music, keep at fret\nThe whole song through; one petal that is dead\nConfirms the roses, be they white or red;\nDead sorrow is not sorrowful to hear\nAs the thick noise that breaks mid weeping were;\nThe sick sound aching in a lifted throat\nTurns to sharp silver of a perfect note;\nAnd though the rain falls often, and with rain\nLate autumn falls on the old red leaves like pain,\nI deem that God is not disquieted.\nAlso while men are fed with wine and bread,\nThey shall be fed with sorrow at his hand.\nThere grew a rose-garden in Florence land\nMore fair than many; all red summers through\nThe leaves smelt sweet and sharp of rain, and blew\nSideways with tender wind; and therein fell\nSweet sound wherewith the green waxed audible,\nAs a bird’s will to sing disturbed his throat\nAnd set the sharp wings forward like a boat\nPushed through soft water, moving his brown side\nSmooth-shapen as a maid’s, and shook with pride\nHis deep warm bosom, till the heavy sun’s\nSet face of heat stopped all the songs at once.\nThe ways were clean to walk and delicate;\nAnd when the windy white of March grew late,\nBefore the trees took heart to face the sun\nWith ravelled raiment of lean winter on,\nThe roots were thick and hot with hollow grass.\nSome roods away a lordly house there was,\nCool with broad courts and latticed passage wet\nFrom rush-flowers and lilies ripe to set,\nSown close among the strewings of the floor;\nAnd either wall of the slow corridor\nWas dim with deep device of gracious things;\nSome angel’s steady mouth and weight of wings\nShut to the side; or Peter with straight stole\nAnd beard cut black against the aureole\nThat spanned his head from nape to crown; thereby\nMary’s gold hair, thick to the girdle-tie\nWherein was bound a child with tender feet;\nOr the broad cross with blood nigh brown on it.\nWithin this house a righteous lord abode,\nSer Averardo; patient of his mood,\nAnd just of judgment; and to child he had\nA maid so sweet that her mere sight made glad\nMen sorrowing, and unbound the brows of hate;\nAnd where she came, the lips that pain made strait\nWaxed warm and wide, and from untender grew\nTender as those that sleep brings patience to.\nSuch long locks had she, that with knee to chin\nShe might have wrapped and warmed her feet therein.\nRight seldom fell her face on weeping wise;\nGold hair she had, and golden-coloured eyes,\nFilled with clear light and fire and large repose\nLike a fair hound’s; no man there is but knows\nHer face was white, and thereto she was tall;\nIn no wise lacked there any praise at all\nTo her most perfect and pure maidenhood;\nNo sin I think there was in all her blood.\nShe, where a gold grate shut the roses in,\nDwelt daily through deep summer weeks, through green\nFlushed hours of rain upon the leaves; and there\nLove made him room and space to worship her\nWith tender worship of bowed knees, and wrought\nSuch pleasure as the pained sense palates not\nFor weariness, but at one taste undoes\nThe heart of its strong sweet, is ravenous\nOf all the hidden honey; words and sense\nFail through the tune’s imperious prevalence.\nIn a poor house this lover kept apart,\nLong communing with patience next his heart\nIf love of his might move that face at all,\nTuned evenwise with colours musical;\nThen after length of days he said thus: “Love,\nFor love’s own sake and for the love thereof\nLet no harsh words untune your gracious mood;\nFor good it were, if anything be good,\nTo comfort me in this pain’s plague of mine;\nSeeing thus, how neither sleep nor bread nor wine\nSeems pleasant to me, yea no thing that is\nSeems pleasant to me; only I know this,\nLove’s ways are sharp for palms of piteous feet\nTo travel, but the end of such is sweet:\nNow do with me as seemeth you the best.”\nShe mused a little, as one holds his guest\nBy the hand musing, with her face borne down:\nThen said: “Yea, though such bitter seed be sown,\nHave no more care of all that you have said;\nSince if there is no sleep will bind your head,\nLo, I am fain to help you certainly;\nChrist knoweth, sir, if I would have you die;\nThere is no pleasure when a man is dead.”\nThereat he kissed her hands and yellow head\nAnd clipped her fair long body many times;\nI have no wit to shape in written rhymes\nA scanted tithe of this great joy they had.\nThey were too near love’s secret to be glad;\nAs whoso deems the core will surely melt\nFrom the warm fruit his lips caress, hath felt\nSome bitter kernel where the teeth shut hard:\nOr as sweet music sharpens afterward,\nBeing half disrelished both for sharp and sweet;\nAs sea-water, having killed over-heat\nIn a man’s body, chills it with faint ache;\nSo their sense, burdened only for love’s sake,\nFailed for pure love; yet so time served their wit,\nThey saved each day some gold reserves of it,\nBeing wiser in love’s riddle than such be\nWhom fragments feed with his chance charity.\nAll things felt sweet were felt sweet overmuch;\nThe rose-thorn’s prickle dangerous to touch,\nAnd flecks of fire in the thin leaf-shadows;\nToo keen the breathed honey of the rose,\nIts red too harsh a weight on feasted eyes;\nThey were so far gone in love’s histories,\nBeyond all shape and colour and mere breath,\nWhere pleasure has for kinsfolk sleep and death,\nAnd strength of soul and body waxen blind\nFor weariness, and flesh entailed with mind,\nWhen the keen edge of sense foretasteth sin.\nEven this green place the summer caught them in\nSeemed half deflowered and sick with beaten leaves\nIn their strayed eyes; these gold flower-fumèd eves\nBurnt out to make the sun’s love-offering,\nThe midnoon’s prayer, the rose’s thanksgiving,\nThe trees’ weight burdening the strengthless air,\nThe shape of her stilled eyes, her coloured hair,\nHer body’s balance from the moving feet--\nAll this, found fair, lacked yet one grain of sweet\nIt had some warm weeks back: so perisheth\nOn May’s new lip the tender April breath:\nSo those same walks the wind sowed lilies in\nAll April through, and all their latter kin\nOf languid leaves whereon the Autumn blows--\nThe dead red raiment of the last year’s rose--\nThe last year’s laurel, and the last year’s love,\nFade, and grow things that death grows weary of.\nWhat man will gather in red summer-time\nThe fruit of some obscure and hoary rhyme\nHeard last midwinter, taste the heart in it,\nMould the smooth semitones afresh, refit\nThe fair limbs ruined, flush the dead blood through\nWith colour, make all broken beauties new\nFor love’s new lesson--shall not such find pain\nWhen the marred music labouring in his brain\nFrets him with sweet sharp fragments, and lets slip\nOne word that might leave satisfied his lip--\nOne touch that might put fire in all the chords?\nThis was her pain: to miss from all sweet words\nSome taste of sound, diverse and delicate--\nSome speech the old love found out to compensate\nFor seasons of shut lips and drowsiness--\nSome grace, some word the old love found out to bless\nPassionless months and undelighted weeks.\nThe flowers had lost their summer-scented cheeks,\nTheir lips were no more sweet than daily breath:\nThe year was plagued with instances of death.\nSo fell it, these were sitting in cool grass\nWith leaves about, and many a bird there was\nWhere the green shadow thickliest impleached\nSoft fruit and writhen spray and blossom bleached\nDry in the sun or washed with rains to white:\nHer girdle was pure silk, the bosom bright\nWith purple as purple water and gold wrought in.\nOne branch had touched with dusk her lips and chin,\nMade violet of the throat, abashed with shade\nThe breast’s bright plaited work: but nothing frayed\nThe sun’s large kiss on the luxurious hair.\nHer beauty was new colour to the air\nAnd music to the silent many birds.\nLove was an-hungred for some perfect words\nTo praise her with; but only her low name\n‘Andrevuola’ came thrice, and thrice put shame\nIn her clear cheek, so fruitful with new red\nThat for pure love straightway shame’s self was dead.\nThen with lids gathered as who late had wept\nShe began saying: “I have so little slept\nMy lids drowse now against the very sun;\nYea, the brain aching with a dream begun\nBeats like a fitful blood; kiss but both brows,\nAnd you shall pluck my thoughts grown dangerous\nAlmost away.” He said thus, kissing them:\n“O sole sweet thing that God is glad to name,\nMy one gold gift, if dreams be sharp and sore\nShall not the waking time increase much more\nWith taste and sound, sweet eyesight or sweet scent?\nHas any heat too hard and insolent\nBurnt bare the tender married leaves, undone\nThe maiden grass shut under from the sun?\nWhere in this world is room enough for pain?”\nThe feverish finger of love had touched again\nHer lips with happier blood; the pain lay meek\nIn her fair face, nor altered lip nor cheek\nWith pallor or with pulse; but in her mouth\nLove thirsted as a man wayfaring doth,\nMaking it humble as weak hunger is.\nShe lay close to him, bade do this and this,\nSay that, sing thus: then almost weeping-ripe\nCrouched, then laughed low. As one that fain would wipe\nThe old record out of old things done and dead,\nShe rose, she heaved her hands up, and waxed red\nFor wilful heart and blameless fear of blame;\nSaying “Though my wits be weak, this is no shame\nFor a poor maid whom love so punisheth\nWith heats of hesitation and stopped breath\nThat with my dreams I live yet heavily\nFor pure sad heart and faith’s humility.\nNow be not wroth and I will show you this.”\n“Methought our lips upon their second kiss\nMet in this place, and a fair day we had\nAnd fair soft leaves that waxed and were not sad\nWith shaken rain or bitten through with drouth;\nWhen I, beholding ever how your mouth\nWaited for mine, the throat being fallen back,\nSaw crawl thereout a live thing flaked with black\nSpecks of brute slime and leper-coloured scale,\nA devil’s hide with foul flame-writhen grail\nFashioned where hell’s heat festers loathsomest;\nAnd that brief speech may ease me of the rest,\nThus were you slain and eaten of the thing.\nMy waked eyes felt the new day shuddering\nOn their low lids, felt the whole east so beat,\nPant with close pulse of such a plague-struck heat,\nAs if the palpitating dawn drew breath\nFor horror, breathing between life and death,\nTill the sun sprang blood-bright and violent.”\nSo finishing, her soft strength wholly spent,\nShe gazed each way, lest some brute-hoovèd thing,\nThe timeless travail of hell’s childbearing,\nShould threat upon the sudden: whereat he,\nFor relish of her tasted misery\nAnd tender little thornprick of her pain,\nLaughed with mere love. What lover among men\nBut hath his sense fed sovereignly ’twixt whiles\nWith tears and covered eyelids and sick smiles\nAnd soft disaster of a painèd face?\nWhat pain, established in so sweet a place,\nBut the plucked leaf of it smells fragrantly?\nWhat colour burning man’s wide-open eye\nBut may be pleasurably seen? what sense\nKeeps in its hot sharp extreme violence\nNo savour of sweet things? The bereaved blood\nAnd emptied flesh in their most broken mood\nFail not so wholly, famish not when thus\nPast honey keeps the starved lip covetous.\nTherefore this speech from a glad mouth began,\nBreathed in her tender hair and temples wan\nLike one prolonged kiss while the lips had breath.\n“Sleep, that abides in vassalage of death\nAnd in death’s service wears out half his age,\nHath his dreams full of deadly vassalage,\nShadow and sound of things ungracious;\nFair shallow faces, hooded bloodless brows,\nAnd mouths past kissing; yea, myself have had\nAs harsh a dream as holds your eyelids sad.”\n“This dream I tell you came three nights ago;\nIn full mid sleep I took a whim to know\nHow sweet things might be; so I turned and thought;\nBut save my dream all sweet availed me not.\nFirst came a smell of pounded spice and scent\nSuch as God ripens in some continent\nOf utmost amber in the Syrian sea;\nAnd breaths as though some costly rose could be\nSpoiled slowly, wasted by some bitter fire\nTo burn the sweet out leaf by leaf, and tire\nThe flower’s poor heart with heat and waste, to make\nStrong magic for some perfumed woman’s sake.\nThen a cool naked sense beneath my feet\nOf bud and blossom; and sound of veins that beat\nAs if a lute should play of its own heart\nAnd fearfully, not smitten of either part;\nAnd all my blood it filled with sharp and sweet\nAs gold swoln grain fills out the huskèd wheat;\nSo I rose naked from the bed, and stood\nCounting the mobile measure in my blood\nSome pleasant while, and through each limb there came\nSwift little pleasures pungent as a flame,\nFelt in the thrilling flesh and veins as much\nAs the outer curls that feel the comb’s first touch\nThrill to the roots and shiver as from fire;\nAnd blind between my dream and my desire\nI seemed to stand and held my spirit still\nLest this should cease. A child whose fingers spill\nHoney from cells forgotten of the bee\nIs less afraid to stir the hive and see\nSome wasp’s bright back inside, than I to feel\nSome finger-touch disturb the flesh like steel.\nI prayed thus; Let me catch a secret here\nSo sweet, it sharpens the sweet taste of fear\nAnd takes the mouth with edge of wine; I would\nHave here some colour and smooth shape as good\nAs those in heaven whom the chief garden hides\nWith low grape-blossom veiling their white sides\nAnd lesser tendrils that so bind and blind\nTheir eyes and feet, that if one come behind\nTo touch their hair they see not, neither fly;\nThis would I see in heaven and not die.\nSo praying, I had nigh cried out and knelt,\nSo wholly my prayer filled me: till I felt\nIn the dumb night’s warm weight of glowing gloom\nSomewhat that altered all my sleeping-room,\nAnd made it like a green low place wherein\nMaids mix to bathe: one sets her small warm chin\nAgainst a ripple, that the angry pearl\nMay flow like flame about her: the next curl\nDips in some eddy coloured of the sun\nTo wash the dust well out; another one\nHolds a straight ankle in her hand and swings\nWith lavish body sidelong, so that rings\nOf sweet fierce water, swollen and splendid, fail\nAll round her fine and floated body pale,\nSwayed flower-fashion, and her balanced side\nSwerved edgeways lets the weight of water slide,\nAs taken in some underflow of sea\nSwerves the banked gold of sea-flowers; but she\nPulls down some branch to keep her perfect head\nClear of the river: even from wall to bed,\nI tell you, was my room transfigured so.\nSweet, green and warm it was, nor could one know\nIf there were walls or leaves, or if there was\nNo bed’s green curtain, but mere gentle grass.\nThere were set also hard against the feet\nGold plates with honey and green grapes to eat,\nWith the cool water’s noise to hear in rhymes:\nAnd a wind warmed me full of furze and limes\nAnd all hot sweets the heavy summer fills\nTo the round brim of smooth cup-shapen hills.\nNext the grave walking of a woman’s feet\nMade my veins hesitate, and gracious heat\nMade thick the lids and leaden on mine eyes:\nAnd I thought ever, surely it were wise\nNot yet to see her: this may last (who knows?)\nFive minutes; the poor rose is twice a rose\nBecause it turns a face to her, the wind\nSings that way; hath this woman ever sinned,\nI wonder? as a boy with apple-rind,\nI played with pleasures, made them to my mind,\nChanged each ere tasting. When she came indeed,\nFirst her hair touched me, then I grew to feed\nOn the sense of her hand; her mouth at last\nTouched me between the cheek and lip and past\nOver my face with kisses here and there\nSown in and out across the eyes and hair.\nStill I said nothing; till she set her face\nMore close and harder on the kissing-place,\nAnd her mouth caught like a snake’s mouth, and stung\nSo faint and tenderly, the fang scarce clung\nMore than a bird’s foot: yet a wound it grew,\nA great one, let this red mark witness you\nUnder the left breast; and the stroke thereof\nSo clove my sense that I woke out of love\nAnd knew not what this dream was nor had wit;\nBut now God knows if I have skill of it.”\nHereat she laid one palm against her lips\nTo stop their trembling; as when water slips\nOut of a beak-mouthed vessel with faint noise\nAnd chuckles in the narrowed throat and cloys\nThe carven rims with murmuring, so came\nWords in her lips with no word right of them,\nA beaten speech thick and disconsolate,\nTill his smile ceasing waxed compassionate\nOf her sore fear that grew from anything--\nThe sound of the strong summer thickening\nIn heated leaves of the smooth apple-trees:\nThe day’s breath felt about the ash-branches,\nAnd noises of the noon whose weight still grew\nOn the hot heavy-headed flowers, and drew\nTheir red mouths open till the rose-heart ached;\nFor eastward all the crowding rose was slaked\nAnd soothed with shade: but westward all its growth\nSeemed to breathe hard with heat as a man doth\nWho feels his temples newly feverous.\nAnd even with such motion in her brows\nAs that man hath in whom sick days begin,\nShe turned her throat and spake, her voice being thin\nAs a sick man’s, sudden and tremulous;\n“Sweet, if this end be come indeed on us,\nLet us love more;” and held his mouth with hers.\nAs the first sound of flooded hill-waters\nIs heard by people of the meadow-grass,\nOr ever a wandering waif of ruin pass\nWith whirling stones and foam of the brown stream\nFlaked with fierce yellow: so beholding him\nShe felt before tears came her eyelids wet,\nSaw the face deadly thin where life was yet,\nHeard his throat’s harsh last moan before it clomb:\nAnd he, with close mouth passionate and dumb,\nBurned at her lips: so lay they without speech,\nEach grasping other, and the eyes of each\nFed in the other’s face: till suddenly\nHe cried out with a little broken cry\nThis word, “O help me, sweet, I am but dead.”\nAnd even so saying, the colour of fair red\nWas gone out of his face, and his blood’s beat\nFell, and stark death made sharp his upward feet\nAnd pointed hands; and without moan he died.\nPain smote her sudden in the brows and side,\nStrained her lips open and made burn her eyes:\nFor the pure sharpness of her miseries\nShe had no heart’s pain, but mere body’s wrack;\nBut at the last her beaten blood drew back\nSlowly upon her face, and her stunned brows\nSuddenly grown aware and piteous\nGathered themselves, her eyes shone, her hard breath\nCame as though one nigh dead came back from death;\nHer lips throbbed, and life trembled through her hair.\nAnd in brief while she thought to bury there\nThe dead man that her love might lie with him\nIn a sweet bed under the rose-roots dim\nAnd soft earth round the branchèd apple-trees,\nFull of hushed heat and heavy with great ease,\nAnd no man entering divide him thence.\nWherefore she bade one of her handmaidens\nTo be her help to do upon this wise.\nAnd saying so the tears out of her eyes\nFell without noise and comforted her heart:\nYea, her great pain eased of the sorest part\nBegan to soften in her sense of it.\nThere under all the little branches sweet\nThe place was shapen of his burial;\nThey shed thereon no thing funereal,\nBut coloured leaves of latter rose-blossom,\nStems of soft grass, some withered red and some\nFair and fresh-blooded; and spoil splendider\nOf marigold and great spent sunflower.\nAnd afterward she came back without word\nTo her own house; two days went, and the third\nWent, and she showed her father of this thing.\nAnd for great grief of her soul’s travailing\nHe gave consent she should endure in peace\nTill her life’s end; yea, till her time should cease,\nShe should abide in fellowship of pain.\nAnd having lived a holy year or twain\nShe died of pure waste heart and weariness.\nAnd for love’s honour in her love’s distress\nThis word was written over her tomb’s head;\n“Here dead she lieth, for whose sake Love is dead.”", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1866 + }, "context": { "season": "summer" } @@ -58020,12 +58938,19 @@ "wasted-love": { "title": "“Wasted Love”", "body": "What shall be done for sorrow\n With love whose race is run?\nWhere help is none to borrow,\n What shall be done?\n\nIn vain his hands have spun\n The web, or drawn the furrow:\nNo rest their toil hath won.\n\nHis task is all gone thorough,\n And fruit thereof is none:\nAnd who dare say to-morrow\n What shall be done?", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1866 + } + } }, "the-year-of-love": { "title": "“The Year of Love”", "body": "There were four loves that one by one,\nFollowing the seasons and the sun,\nPassed over without tears, and fell\nAway without farewell.\n\nThe first was made of gold and tears,\nThe next of aspen-leaves and fears,\nThe third of rose-boughs and rose-roots,\nThe last love of strange fruits.\n\nThese were the four loves faded. Hold\nSome minutes fast the time of gold\nWhen our lips each way clung and clove\nTo a face full of love.\n\nThe tears inside our eyelids met,\nWrung forth with kissing, and wept wet\nThe faces cleaving each to each\nWhere the blood served for speech.\n\nThe second, with low patient brows\nBound under aspen-coloured boughs\nAnd eyes made strong and grave with sleep\nAnd yet too weak to weep--\n\nThe third, with eager mouth at ease\nFed from late autumn honey, lees\nOf scarce gold left in latter cells\nWith scattered flower-smells--\n\nHair sprinkled over with spoilt sweet\nOf ruined roses, wrists and feet\nSlight-swathed, as grassy-girdled sheaves\nHold in stray poppy-leaves--\n\nThe fourth, with lips whereon has bled\nSome great pale fruit’s slow colour, shed\nFrom the rank bitter husk whence drips\nFaint blood between her lips--\n\nMade of the heat of whole great Junes\nBurning the blue dark round their moons\n(Each like a mown red marigold)\nSo hard the flame keeps hold--\n\nThese are burnt thoroughly away.\nOnly the first holds out a day\nBeyond these latter loves that were\nMade of mere heat and air.\n\nAnd now the time is winterly\nThe first love fades too: none will see,\nWhen April warms the world anew,\nThe place wherein love grew.", "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1866 + }, "context": { "liturgy": "advent" } @@ -63595,6 +64520,35 @@ } } }, + "francois-villon": { + "metadata": { + "name": "François Villon", + "birth": "~1431", + "death": "1463", + "gender": "male", + "nationality": "french", + "language": "french", + "flag": "🇫🇷", + "link": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/François_Villon", + "favorite": false, + "tags": [ + "french" + ], + "n_poems": 1 + }, + "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?_", + "metadata": { + "translator": "Richard Wilbur", + "date": { + "year": 1461 + } + } + } + } + }, "andrei-voznesensky": { "metadata": { "name": "Andrei Voznesensky",