Sarabande On Attaining The Age Of Seventy-Seven

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1. Forgetfulness Forgetfulness is like a song That, freed from beat and measure, wanders. Forgetfulness is like a bird whose wings are reconciled, Outspread and motionless, A bird that coasts the wind unwearyingly. Forgetfulness is rain at night, Or an old house in a forest, or a child. Forgetfulness is white, white as a blasted tree, And […]...
2. On His Seventy-fifth Birthday I strove with none, for none was worth my strife; Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art; I warmed both hands before the fire of Life; It sinks, and I am ready to depart....
3. THANKS HER griefs were the hours When my struggle was sore, Her joys were the powers That the climber upbore. Her home is the boundless Free ocean that seems To rock, calm and soundless, My galleon of dreams. Half hers are the glancing Creations that throng With pageant and dancing The ways of my song. My […]...
4. John Horace Burleson I won the prize essay at school Here in the village, And published a novel before I was twenty-five. I went to the city for themes and to enrich my art; There married the banker’s daughter, And later became president of the bank- Always looking forward to some leisure To write an epic novel of […]...
5. The Admirers Of The Little Box Sing little box Don’t let sleep overtake you The world’s awake within you In your four-sided emptiness We turn distance into nearness Forgetfulness into memory Don’t let your nails come loose For the very first time We watch sights beyond this world Through your keyhole Turn your key in our mouths Swallow words and numbers […]...
6. The Night-Fire No engines shrieking rescue storm the night, And hose and hydrant cannot here avail; The flames laugh high and fling their challenging light, And clouds turn gray and black from silver-pale. The fire leaps out and licks the ancient walls, And the big building bends and twists and groans. A bar drops from its place; […]...
7. Desire WITH Thee a moment! Then what dreams have play! Traditions of eternal toil arise, Search for the high, austere and lonely way The Spirit moves in through eternities. Ah, in the soul what memories arise! And with what yearning inexpressible, Rising from long forgetfulness I turn To Thee, invisible, unrumoured, still: White for Thy whiteness […]...
8. Calverly's We go no more to Calverly’s, For there the lights are few and low; And who are there to see by them, Or what they see, we do not know. Poor strangers of another tongue May now creep in from anywhere, And we, forgotten, be no more Than twilight on a ruin there. We two, […]...
9. Genius A hundred generations have gone into its making, With all their love and tenderness, with all their dreams and tears; Their vanished joy and pleasure, their pain and their heart-breaking, Have colored this rare blossom of the long-unfruitful years. Their victory and their laughter for this have strong men given, For this have sweet, dead […]...
10. The Forerunners The harbingers are come. See, see their mark; White is their colour, and behold my head. But must they have my brain? must they dispark Those sparkling notions, which therein were bred? Must dulnesse turn me to a clod? Yet have they left me, Thou art still my God. Good men ye be, to leave […]...
11. Still I Rise You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I’ll rise. Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? ‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells Pumping in my living room. Just like moons and like […]...
12. A Singer of the Bush There is waving of grass in the breeze And a song in the air, And a murmur of myriad bees That toil everywhere. There is scent in the blossom and bough, And the breath of the Spring Is as soft as a kiss on a brow And Spring-time I sing. There is drought on the […]...
13. Nature's Way To tribulations of mankind Dame Nature is indifferent; To human sorrow she is blind, And deaf to human discontent. Mid fear and fratricidal fray, Mid woe and tyranny of toil, She goes her unregarding way Of sky and sun and soil. In leaf and blade, in bud and bloom Exultantly her gladness glows, And careless […]...
14. Alone I’ve listened: and all the sounds I heard Were music,-wind, and stream, and bird. With youth who sang from hill to hill I’ve listened: my heart is hungry still. I’ve looked: the morning world was green; Bright roofs and towers of town I’ve seen; And stars, wheeling through wingless night. I’ve looked: and my soul […]...
15. The Sense Of The Sleight-Of-Hand Man One’s grand flights, one’s Sunday baths, One’s tootings at the weddings of the soul Occur as they occur. So bluish clouds Occurred above the empty house and the leaves Of the rhododendrons rattled their gold, As if someone lived there. Such floods of white Came bursting from the clouds. So the wind Threw its contorted […]...
16. Theophilus By what serene malevolence of names Had you the gift of yours, Theophilus? Not even a smeared young Cyclops at his games Would have you long,-and you are one of us. Told of your deeds I shudder for your dream And they, no doubt, are few and innocent. Meanwhile, I marvel; for in you, it […]...
17. An Address to the Rev. George Gilfillan All hail to the Rev. George Gilfillan of Dundee, He is the greatest preacher I did ever hear or see. He is a man of genius bright, And in him his congregation does delight, Because they find him to be honest and plain, Affable in temper, and seldom known to complain. He preaches in a […]...
18. The Spoilsport My familiar ghost again Comes to see what he can see, Critic, son of Conscious Brain, Spying on our privacy. Slam the window, bolt the door, Yet he’ll enter in and stay; In tomorrow’s book he’ll score Indiscretions of today. Whispered love and muttered fears, How their echoes fly about! None escape his watchful ears, […]...
19. His Bargain Who talks of Plato’s spindle; What set it whirling round? Eternity may dwindle, Time is unwound, Dan and Jerry Lout Change their loves about. However they may take it, Before the thread began I made, and may not break it When the last thread has run, A bargain with that hair And all the windings […]...
20. Stony Grey Soil O stony grey soil of Monaghan The laugh from my love you thieved; You took the gay child of my passion And gave me your clod-conceived. You clogged the feet of my boyhood And I believed that my stumble Had the poise and stride of Apollo And his voice my thick tongued mumble. You told […]...
21. Style Flaubert wanted to write a novel About nothing. It was to have no subject And be sustained upon the style alone, Like the Holy Ghost cruising above The abyss, or like the little animals In Disney cartoons who stand upon a branch That breaks, but do not fall Till they look down. He never wrote […]...
22. She laid her docile Crescent down She laid her docile Crescent down And this confiding Stone Still states to Dates that have forgot The News that she is gone So constant to its stolid trust, The Shaft that never knew It shames the Constancy that fled Before its emblem flew...
23. Golden Days Another day of toil and strife, Another page so white, Within that fateful Log of Life That I and all must write; Another page without a stain To make of as I may, That done, I shall not see again Until the Judgment Day. Ah, could I, could I backward turn The pages of that […]...
24. The Strength of the Lonely (What the Mendicant Said ) The moon’s a monk, unmated, Who walks his cell, the sky. His strength is that of heaven-vowed men Who all life’s flames defy. They turn to stars or shadows, They go like snow or dew- Leaving behind no sorrow- Only the arching blue....
25. Modern Love XXVII: Distraction is the Panacea Distraction is the panacea, Sir! I hear my oracle of Medicine say. Doctor! that same specific yesterday I tried, and the result will not deter A second trial. Is the devil’s line Of golden hair, or raven black, composed? And does a cheek, like any sea-shell rosed, Or clear as widowed sky, seem most divine? […]...
26. Sunrise You can Die for it- An idea, Or the world. People Have done so, Brilliantly, Letting Their small bodies be bound To the stake, Creating An unforgettable Fury of light. But This morning, Climbing the familiar hills In the familiar Fabric of dawn, I thought Of China, And India And Europe, and I thought How […]...
27. Sonnet 86: Was it the proud full sail of his great verse Was it the proud full sail of his great verse, Bound for the prize of all-too-precious you, That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse, Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew? Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead? No, neither he, nor […]...
28. Anna Who Was Mad Anna who was mad, I have a knife in my armpit. When I stand on tiptoe I tap out messages. Am I some sort of infection? Did I make you go insane? Did I make the sounds go sour? Did I tell you to climb out the window? Forgive. Forgive. Say not I did. Say […]...
29. Sonnet LXXXVI Was it the proud full sail of his great verse, Bound for the prize of all too precious you, That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse, Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew? Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead? No, neither […]...
30. The Argument Of His Book I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers, Of April, May, of June, and July-flowers. I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes, Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal-cakes. I write of youth, of love, and have access By these to sing of cleanly wantonness. I sing of dews, of rains, and piece by […]...
31. To Sleep O soft embalmer of the still midnight, Shutting, with careful fingers and benign, Our gloom-pleas’d eyes, embower’d from the light, Enshaded in forgetfulness divine: O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close In midst of this thine hymn my willing eyes, Or wait the “Amen,” ere thy poppy throws Around my bed its lulling […]...
32. Poetry it Takes A lot of Desperation Dissatisfaction And Disillusion To Write A Few Good Poems. It’s not For Everybody Either to Write It Or even to Read It....
33. Cacoethes Scribendi If all the trees in all the woods were men; And each and every blade of grass a pen; If every leaf on every shrub and tree Turned to a sheet of foolscap; every sea Were changed to ink, and all earth’s living tribes Had nothing else to do but act as scribes, And for […]...
34. ON HIMSELF A wearied pilgrim I have wander’d here, Twice five-and-twenty, bate me but one year; Long I have lasted in this world; ’tis true But yet those years that I have lived, but few. Who by his gray hairs doth his lustres tell, Lives not those years, but he that lives them well: One man has […]...
35. I Shall Not Burn I have done with love and lust, I reck not for gold or fame; I await familiar dust These frail fingers to reclaim: Not for me the tiger flame. Not for me the furnace glow, Rage of fire and ashen doom; To sweet earth my bones bestow Where above a lowly tomb January roses bloom. […]...
36. An Old Man's Thought of School AN old man’s thought of School; An old man, gathering youthful memories and blooms, that youth itself cannot. Now only do I know you! O fair auroral skies! O morning dew upon the grass! And these I see-these sparkling eyes, These stores of mystic meaning-these young lives, Building, equipping, like a fleet of ships-immortal ships! […]...
37. Poem (The lump of coal my parents teased) The lump of coal my parents teased I’d find in my Christmas stocking Turned out each year to be an orange, For I was their sunshine. Now I have one C. gave me, A dense node of sleeping fire. I keep it where I read and write. “You’re on chummy terms with dread,” It reminds […]...
38. Doctor of Billiards Of all among the fallen from on high, We count you last and leave you to regain Your born dominion of a life made vain By three spheres of insidious ivory. You dwindle to the lesser tragedy- Content, you say. We call, but you remain. Nothing alive gone wrong could be so plain, Or quite […]...
39. The Light Wraps You The light wraps you in its mortal flame. Abstracted pale mourner, standing that way Against the old propellers of the twighlight That revolves around you. Speechless, my friend, Alone in the loneliness of this hour of the dead And filled with the lives of fire, Pure heir of the ruined day. A bough of fruit […]...
40. On Music When through life unblest we rove, Losing all that made life dear, Should some notes we used to love, In days of boyhood, meet our ear, Oh! how welcome breathes the strain! Wakening thoughts that long have slept, Kindling former smiles again In faded eyes that long have wept. Like the gale, that sighs along […]...