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!

Ode on Melancholy - John Keats

Ode on Melancholy

No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist
   Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss'd
   By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
   Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be
      Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow's mysteries;
   For shade to shade will come too drowsily,
      And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.

But when the melancholy fit shall fall
   Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
   And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
   Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
      Or on the wealth of globed peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
   Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
      And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.

She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die;
   And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
   Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips;

Ay, in the very temple of Delight
   Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
      Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;
   His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
      And be among her cloudy trophies hung.

No Second Troy - William Butler Yeats

No Second Troy

Why should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great,
Had they but courage equal to desire?
What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?
Why, what could she have done, being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?