Who's Who - W. H. Auden

Who's Who

A shilling life will give you all the facts:

How Father beat him, how he ran away,

What were the struggles of his youth, what acts

Made him the greatest figure of his day;

Of how he fought, fished, hunted, worked all night,

Though giddy, climbed new mountains; named a sea;

Some of the last researchers even write

Love made him weep his pints like you and me.

With all his honours on, he sighed for one

Who, say astonished critics, lived at home;

Did little jobs about the house with skill

And nothing else; could whistle; would sit still

Or potter round the garden; answered some

Of his long marvellous letters but kept none.

The Dead - Rupert Brooke

In Memoriam.

The Dead

These hearts were woven of human joys and cares,
   Washed marvellously with sorrow, swift to mirth.
The years had given them kindness.  Dawn was theirs,
   And sunset, and the colours of the earth.
These had seen movement, and heard music; known
   Slumber and waking; loved; gone proudly friended;
Felt the quick stir of wonder; sat alone;
   Touched flowers and furs and cheeks.  All this is ended.

There are waters blown by changing winds to laughter
And lit by the rich skies, all day.  And after,
   Frost, with a gesture, stays the waves that dance
And wandering loveliness.  He leaves a white
   Unbroken glory, a gathered radiance,
A width, a shining peace, under the night.

The Broken Heart - John Donne

The Broken Heart

He is stark mad, whoever says,
    That he hath been in love an hour,
Yet not that love so soon decays,
    But that it can ten in less space devour;
Who will believe me, if I swear
That I have had the plague a year?
    Who would not laugh at me, if I should say
    I saw a flash of powder burn a day?

Ah, what a trifle is a heart,
    If once into love's hands it come!
All other griefs allow a part
    To other griefs, and ask themselves but some;
They come to us, but us love draws;
He swallows us and never chaws;
    By him, as by chain'd shot, whole ranks do die;
    He is the tyrant pike, our hearts the fry.

If 'twere not so, what did become
    Of my heart when I first saw thee?
I brought a heart into the room,
    But from the room I carried none with me.
If it had gone to thee, I know
Mine would have taught thine heart to show
    More pity unto me ; but Love, alas!
    At one first blow did shiver it as glass.

Yet nothing can to nothing fall,
    Nor any place be empty quite;
Therefore I think my breast hath all
    Those pieces still, though they be not unite;
And now, as broken glasses show
A hundred lesser faces, so
    My rags of heart can like, wish, and adore,
    But after one such love, can love no more.

Divina Commedia: Fourth Sonnet - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

This sonnet is the most explicitly Dantean of the set, I think!

Divina Commedia: Fourth Sonnet

With snow-white veil and garments as of flame,

  She stands before thee, who so long ago

  Filled thy young heart with passion and the woe

  From which thy song and all its splendors came;

And while with stern rebuke she speaks thy name,

  The ice about thy heart melts as the snow

  On mountain heights, and in swift overflow

  Comes gushing from thy lips in sobs of shame.

Thou makest full confession; and a gleam,

  As of the dawn on some dark forest cast,

  Seems on thy lifted forehead to increase;

Lethe and Eunoë—the remembered dream

  And the forgotten sorrow—bring at last

  That perfect pardon which is perfect peace.

Bright Star - John Keats

Bright Star

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art--
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--
No--yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever--or else swoon to death.

By the Babe Unborn - G. K. Chesterton

This one is dedicated to my little niece or nephew, who is very likely to be born within the next week.  :)

By the Babe Unborn

If trees were tall and grasses short,
As in some crazy tale,
If here and there a sea were blue
Beyond the breaking pale,

If a fixed fire hung in the air
To warm me one day through,
If deep green hair grew on great hills,
I know what I should do.

In dark I lie; dreaming that there
Are great eyes cold or kind,
And twisted streets and silent doors,
And living men behind.

Let storm clouds come: better an hour,
And leave to weep and fight,
Than all the ages I have ruled
The empires of the night.

I think that if they gave me leave
Within the world to stand,
I would be good through all the day
I spent in fairyland.

They should not hear a word from me
Of selfishness or scorn,
If only I could find the door,
If only I were born.

To Nature - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

In this sonnet, Coleridge combines his Romantic sensibilities and his Christian faith to talk about worshiping God through going out into nature.

To Nature

It may indeed be fantasy, when I
Essay to draw from all created things
Deep, heartfelt, inward joy that closely clings;
And trace in leaves and flowers that round me lie
Lessons of love and earnest piety.
So let it be; and if the whole world rings
In mock of this belief, it brings
Nor fear, nor grief, nor vain perplexity.
So will I build my altar in the fields,
And the blue sky my fretted dome shall be,
And the sweet fragrance that the wild flower yields
Shall be the incense I will yield to Thee,
Thee only God! and thou shalt not despise
Even me, the priest of this poor sacrifice.

Spring - Gerard Manley Hopkins

A lovely spring poem!

Spring

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –         

   When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;         

   Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush         

Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring         

The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;

   The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush         

   The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush         

With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.         

What is all this juice and all this joy?         

   A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning

In Eden garden. – Have, get, before it cloy,         

   Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,         

Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,         

   Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.         

To Lucasta, On Going to the Wars - Richard Lovelace

To Lucasta, On Going to the Wars

Tell me not, Sweet, I am unkind,
   That from the nunnery
Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind
   To war and arms I fly.

True, a new mistress now I chase,
   The first foe in the field;
And with a stronger faith embrace
   A sword, a horse, a shield.

Yet this inconstancy is such
   As thou too shalt adore;
I could not love thee, Dear, so much,
   Loved I not Honour more.

Divina Commedia: Third Sonnet - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Longfellow continues his sonnet cycle of poems inspired by the work of Dante, as well as by the grandeur of a beautiful cathedral.

Divina Commedia: Third Sonnet

I enter, and I see thee in the gloom

  Of the long aisles, O poet saturnine!

  And strive to make my steps keep pace with thine.

  The air is filled with some unknown perfume;

The congregation of the dead make room

  For thee to pass; the votive tapers shine;

  Like rooks that haunt Ravenna’s groves of pine

  The hovering echoes fly from tomb to tomb.

From the confessionals I hear arise

  Rehearsals of forgotten tragedies,

  And lamentations from the crypts below;

And then a voice celestial that begins

  With the pathetic words, “Although your sins

  As scarlet be,” and ends with “as the snow.”

Lament of Mary, Queen of Scots - Robert Burns

Lament of Mary, Queen of Scots

1.
Now Nature hangs her mantle green
On every blooming tree,
And spreads her sheets o' daisies white
Out o'er the grassy lea;
Now Phoebus cheers the crystal streams,
And glads the azure skies:
But nought can glad the weary wight
That fast in durance lies.
2.
Now laverocks wake the merry morn,
Aloft on dewy wing;
The merle, in his noontide bow'r,
Makes woodland echoes ring;
The mavis wild wi' monie a note
Sings drowsy days to rest:
In love and freedom they rejoice,
Wi' care nor thrall opprest.
3.
Now blooms the lily by the bank,
The primrose down the brae;
The hawthorn's budding in the glen,
And milk-white is the slae:
The meanest hind in fair Scotland
May rove their sweets amang;
But I, the Queen of a' Scotland,
Maun lie in prison strang.
4.
I was the Queen o' bonie France,
Where happy I hae been;
Fu' lightly rase I in the morn,
As blythe lay down at e'en:
And I'm the sov'reign of Scotland,
And monie a traitor there;
Yet here I lie in foreign bands
And never-ending care.
5.
But as for thee, thou false woman,
My sister and my fae,
Grim vengeance yet shall whet a sword
That thro' thy soul shall gae!
The weeping blood in woman's breast
Was never known to thee;
Nor th' balm that draps on wounds of woe
Frae woman's pitying e'e.
6.
My son! my son! may kinder stars
Upon thy fortune shine;
And may those pleasures gild thy reign,
That ne'er wad blink on mine!
God keep thee frae thy mother's faes,
Or turn their hearts to thee;
And where thou meet'st thy mother's friend,
Remember him to me!
7.
O! soon, to me, may summer suns
Nae mair light up the morn!
Nae mair to me the autumn winds
Wave o'er the yellow corn!
And, in the narrow house of death,
Let winter round me rave;
And the next flow'rs that deck the spring
Bloom on my peaceful grave.

Anthem for Doomed Youth - Wilfred Owen

I was reading World War I poetry with my literature class today.  It's tough stuff, hard to read, but I think it's important not to distance ourselves too far from it.  After all, it's real.  In particular, Wilfred Owen's work is so masterful and vivid that it's very difficult to read.  This is definitely one of the least disturbing of his well-known poems, and yet still painful enough.

Anthem for Doomed Youth

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
-- Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, --
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.