When I Consider How my Light is Spent - John Milton

Milton wrote this poem after becoming totally blind in 1651.

When I Consider How my Light is Spent

When I consider how my light is spent

   Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,

   And that one talent which is death to hide

   Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent

To serve therewith my Maker, and present

   My true account, lest he returning chide;

   “Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”

   I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent

That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need

   Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best

   Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state

Is kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed

   And post o’er land and ocean without rest:

   They also serve who only stand and wait.”

A Broken Appointment - Thomas Hardy

A Broken Appointment

                      You did not come,
And marching Time drew on, and wore me numb.
Yet less for loss of your dear presence there
Than that I thus found lacking in your make
That high compassion which can overbear
Reluctance for pure lovingkindness' sake
Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroked its sum,
                      You did not come.

                      You love not me,
And love alone can lend you loyalty;
--I know and knew it.  But, unto the store
Of human deeds divine in all but name,
Was it not worth a little hour or more
To add yet this: Once you, a woman, came
To soothe a time-torn man; even though it be
                      You love not me?

I Am - John Clare

I Am

I am: yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;
And yet I am! and live with shadows tossed

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
And e'en the dearest--that I loved the best--
Are strange--nay, rather stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod;
A place where woman never smiled or wept;
There to abide with my creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;
The grass below--above the vaulted sky.

Shakespeare - Matthew Arnold

Shakespeare wrote about what it means to be human in all its dimensions, and this sonnet captures the ineffable grandeur of the Bard's amazing work.  Having watched two incredible Shakespeare productions last weekend, including an absolutely devastating King Lear, I figured now was a good time to post this one!

Shakespeare

Others abide our question. Thou art free.
We ask and ask: Thou smilest and art still,
Out-topping knowledge. For the loftiest hill,
That to the stars uncrowns his majesty,
Planting his steadfast footsteps in the sea,
Making the Heaven of Heavens his dwelling-place,
Spares but the cloudy border of his base
To the foil'd searching of mortality:
And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams know,
Self-school'd, self-scann'd, self-honour'd, self-secure,
Didst walk on earth unguess'd at. Better so!

All pains the immortal spirit must endure,
All weakness that impairs, all griefs that bow,
Find their sole voice in that victorious brow.

It Is a Beauteous Evening - William Wordsworth

The child addressed in this poem is Wordsworth's daughter, Caroline.

It Is a Beauteous Evening

It is a beauteous evening, calm and free,
The holy time is quiet as a Nun
Breathless with adoration; the broad sun
Is sinking down in its tranquility;
The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the Sea:
Listen! the mighty Being is awake,
And doth with his eternal motion make
A sound like thunder -- everlastingly.
Dear Child! dear Girl! that walkest with me here,
If thou appear untouched by solemn thought,
Thy nature is not therefore less divine:
Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year,
And worship'st at the Temple's inner shrine,
God being with thee when we know it not.

Poems of our Climate - Wallace Stevens

Missed a week while I was running around New York City!  (Which was super awesome.)  But now I'm back home and reading poetry again!

This one is also on Hans' recommendation. 

Poems of our Climate

I
Clear water in a brilliant bowl,
Pink and white carnations. The light
In the room more like a snowy air,
Reflecting snow. A newly-fallen snow
At the end of winter when afternoons return.
Pink and white carnations - one desires
So much more than that. The day itself
Is simplified: a bowl of white,
Cold, a cold porcelain, low and round,
With nothing more than the carnations there.

II
Say even that this complete simplicity
Stripped one of all one's torments, concealed
The evilly compounded, vital I
And made it fresh in a world of white,
A world of clear water, brilliant-edged,
Still one would want more, one would need more,
More than a world of white and snowy scents.

III
There would still remain the never-resting mind,
So that one would want to escape, come back
To what had been so long composed.
The imperfect is our paradise.
Note that, in this bitterness, delight,
Since the imperfect is so hot in us,
Lies in flawed words and stubborn sounds.

Revolution - A. E. Housman

Rather dark (especially for a poem about sunrise), but cool!  (This one is Hans' recommendation.  *g*)

Revolution

West and away the wheels of darkness roll,
   Day's beamy banner up the east borne,
Spectres and fears, the nightmare and her foal,
   Drown in the golden deluge of the morn.

But over sea and continent from sight
   Safe to the Indies has the earth conveyed
The vast and moon-eclipsing cone of night,
   Her towering foolscap of eternal shade.

See, in mid heaven the sun is mounted; hark,
   The belfries tingle to the noonday chime.
'Tis silent, and the subterranean dark
   Has crossed the nadir, and begins to climb.

Holy Baptism I - George Herbert

My nephew Immanuel Dominic Decker was baptized today, so here's a baptism poem!

Holy Baptism I

As he that sees a dark and shady grove,
   Stays not, but looks beyond it on the sky;
   So when I view my sins, mine eyes remove
More backward still, and to that water fly,
Which is above the heav'ns, whose spring and rent
   Is in my dear Redeemer's pierced side.
   O blessed streams! either ye do prevent
And stop our sins from growing thick and wide,
Or else give tears to drown them, as they grow.
   In you Redemption measures all my time,
   And spreads the plaster equal to the crime:
You taught the book of life my name, that so
   What ever future sins should me miscall,
   Your first acquaintance might discredit all.

Chimes - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Chimes

Sweet chimes! that in the loneliness of night
Salute the passing hour, and in the dark
And silent chambers of the household mark
The movements of the myriad orbs of light!
Through my closed eyelids, by the inner sight,
I see the constellations in the arc
Of their great circles moving on, and hark!
I almost hear them singing in their flight.
Better than sleep it is to lie awake
O'er-canopied by the vast starry dome
Of the immeasurable sky; to feel
The slumbering world sink under us, and make
Hardly an eddy -- a mere rush of foam
On the great sea beneath a sinking keel.

Pan With Us - Robert Frost

Pan With Us

Pan came out of the woods one day,--

His skin and his hair and his eyes were gray,

The gray of the moss of walls were they,--

   And stood in the sun and looked his fill

   At wooded valley and wooded hill.

He stood in the zephyr, pipes in hand,

On a height of naked pasture land;

In all the country he did command

   He saw no smoke and he saw no roof.

   That was well! and he stamped a hoof.

His heart knew peace, for none came here

To this lean feeding save once a year

Someone to salt the half-wild steer,

   Or homespun children with clicking pails

   Who see so little they tell no tales.

He tossed his pipes, too hard to teach

A new-world song, far out of reach,

For sylvan sign that the blue jay's screech

   And the whimper of hawks beside the sun

   Were music enough for him, for one.

Times were changed from what they were:

Such pipes kept less of power to stir

The fruited bough of the juniper

   And the fragile bluets clustered there

   Than the merest aimless breath of air.

They were pipes of pagan mirth,

And the world had found new terms of worth.

He laid him down on the sun-burned earth

   And raveled a flower and looked away--

   Play? Play?--What should he play?

Twicknam Garden - John Donne

Ostensibly about natural beauty as organized by man, this poem contains a rather odd conglomeration of religious imagery, unrequited love angst, and the bitter railing against female inconstancy common in Donne's early work.  Not to mention, of course, a couple of bizarre metaphors (would it be Donne without them?).  But though I find it hard to classify, I still find it fun to read!

Twicknam Garden

Blasted with sighs, and surrounded with tears,
   Hither I come to seek the spring,
   And at mine eyes, and at mine ears,
Receive such balms as else cure everything;
   But oh, self-traitor, I do bring
The spider love, which transubstantiates all,
   And can convert manna to gall,
And that this place may thoroughly be thought
   True Paradise I have the serpent brought.

'Twere wholesomer for me, that winter did
   Benight the glory of this place,
   And that a grave frost did forbid
These trees to laugh, and mock me to my face;
   But that I may not this disgrace
Endure, nor yet leave loving, Love let me
   Some senseless piece of this place be;
Make me a mandrake, so I may groan here,
   Or a stone fountain weeping out my year.

Hither with crystal vials, lovers come,
   And take my tears, which are love's wine,
   And try your mistress' tears at home,
For all are false, that taste not just like mine;
   Alas, hearts do not in eyes shine,
Nor can you more judge woman's thoughts by tears,
   Than by her shadow, what she wears.
O perverse sex, where none is true but she,
   Who's therefore true, because her truth kills me.

Ebbtide at Sundown - Michael Field

I was at the coast for the weekend, enjoying the lovely seaside towns and the Sylvia Beach Hotel.  This poem, evoking the coastal sunset, seemed a fitting one to post after my return!

NB: The name "Michael Field" was a pseudonym for Victorian-era aunt and niece writing team Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper. 

Ebbtide at Sundown

O larger is remembrance than desire!
O deeper than all longing is regret!
The tide is gone, the sands are rippled yet;
The sun is gone: the hills are lifted higher,
Crested with rose.  Ah, why should we require
Sight of the sea, the sun?  The sands are wet,
And in their glassy flaws huge record set
Of the ebbed stream, the little ball of fire.
Gone, they are gone!  But oh, so freshly gone,
So rich in vanishing we ask not where --
So close upon us is the bliss that shone,
And oh, so thickly it impregns the air!
Closer in beating heart we could not be
To the sunk sun, the far, surrendered sea.

My Picture Left in Scotland - Ben Jonson

My Picture Left in Scotland

I now think Love is rather deaf than blind,
          For else it could not be
                          That she
Whom I adore so much should so slight me
      And cast my love behind;
I'm sure my language to her was as sweet,
                    And every close did meet
             In sentence of as subtle feet,
                    As hath the youngest he
          That sits in shadow of Apollo's tree.

O, but my conscious fears
             That fly my thoughts between,
             Tell me that she hath seen
          My hundreds of gray hairs,
          Told seven and forty years,
       Read so much waist as she cannot embrace
       My mountain belly and my rocky face;
And all these through her eyes have stopped her ears.

Sonnet 34 - Edmund Spenser

Sonnet 34

Lyke as a ship that through the Ocean wyde,
By conduct of some star doth make her way,
Whenas a storme hath dimd her trusty guyde,
Out of her course doth wander far astray:
So I whose star, that wont with her bright ray
Me to direct, with cloudes is overcast,
Doe wander now in darknesse and dismay,
Through hidden perils round about me plast.
Yet hope I well, that when this storme is past
My Helice the lodestar of my lyfe
Will shine again, and looke on me at last,
With lovely light to cleare my cloudy grief.
Till then I wander carefull comfortlesse,
In secret sorow and sad pensivenesse.

The Star Spangled Banner - Francis Scott Key

The Star Spangled Banner

O! say can you see by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On that shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, now conceals, now discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
In full glory reflected, now shines in the stream.
’Tis the star-spangled banner; O long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion
A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

O thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved homes and the war’s desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the Heaven-rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust!”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!