Ancient Music

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1. Song Winter is icummen in, Lhude sing Goddamm, Raineth drop and staineth slop, And how the wind doth ramm, Sing: Goddamm. Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us, An ague hath my ham. Freezeth river, turneth liver, Damn you, sing: Goddamm. Goddamm, Goddamm, ’tis why I am, Goddamm, So ‘gainst the winter’s balm. Sing goddamm, damm, sing Goddamm, […]...
2. 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 […]...
3. TO MUSIC Begin to charm, and as thou strok’st mine ears With thine enchantment, melt me into tears. Then let thy active hand scud o’er thy lyre, And make my spirits frantic with the fire; That done, sink down into a silvery strain, And make me smooth as balm and oil again....
4. Sonnet 8: Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly? Music to hear, why hear’st thou music sadly? Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy. Why lov’st thou that which thou receiv’st not gladly, Or else receiv’st with pleasure thine annoy? If the true concord of well-tunèd sounds, By unions married, do offend thine ear, They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds […]...
5. As I Step Over A Puddle At The End Of Winter, I Think Of An Ancient Chinese Governor And how can I, born in evil days And fresh from failure, ask a kindness of Fate? Written A. D. 819 Po Chu-i, balding old politician, What’s the use? I think of you, Uneasily entering the gorges of the Yang-Tze, When you were being towed up the rapids Toward some political job or other In […]...
6. 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 […]...
7. 16-bit Intel 8088 chip with an Apple Macintosh You can’t run Radio Shack programs In its disc drive. Nor can a Commodore 64 Drive read a file You have created on an IBM Personal Computer. Both Kaypro and Osborne computers use The CP/M operating system But can’t read each other’s Handwriting For they format (write On) discs in different […]...
8. Celestial Music I have a friend who still believes in heaven. Not a stupid person, yet with all she knows, she literally talks to God. She thinks someone listens in heaven. On earth she’s unusually competent. Brave too, able to face unpleasantness. We found a caterpillar dying in the dirt, greedy ants crawling over it. I’m always […]...
9. Go, Little Book – The Ancient Phrase GO, little book – the ancient phrase And still the daintiest – go your ways, My Otto, over sea and land, Till you shall come to Nelly’s hand. How shall I your Nelly know? By her blue eyes and her black brow, By her fierce and slender look, And by her goodness, little book! What […]...
10. The Ancient Town of Leith Ancient town of Leith, most wonderful to be seen, With your many handsome buildings, and lovely links so green, And the first buildings I may mention are the Courthouse and Town Hall, Also Trinity House, and the Sailors’ Home of Call. Then as for Leith Fort, it was erected in 1779, which is really grand, […]...
11. The Winter's Spring The winter comes; I walk alone, I want no bird to sing; To those who keep their hearts their own The winter is the spring. No flowers to please-no bees to hum- The coming spring’s already come. I never want the Christmas rose To come before its time; The seasons, each as God bestows, Are […]...
12. Sonnet 128: How oft, when thou, my music, music play'st How oft, when thou, my music, music play’st, Upon that blessèd wood whose motion sounds With thy sweet fingers when thou gently sway’st The wiry concord that mine ear confounds, Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap To kiss the tender inward of thy hand, Whilst my poor lips, which should that harvest reap, […]...
13. Anne Pennington Until her last breath she enlarges Her Oxford house Built in Slavonic Vowels and consonants She polishes the corner-stones Until their Anglo-Saxon shine Begins to sing Her death is like a short breath-stop Under the distant limetrees of her friends...
14. Lines Written In The Belief That The Ancient Roman Festival Of The Dead Was Called Ambarvalia Swings the way still by hollow and hill, And all the world’s a song; “She’s far,” it sings me, “but fair,” it rings me, “Quiet,” it laughs, “and strong!” Oh! spite of the miles and years between us, Spite of your chosen part, I do remember; and I go With laughter in my heart. So […]...
15. Sing Sing Music Was Given Sing sing Music was given To brighten the gay, and kindle the loving; Souls here, like planets in heaven, By harmony’s laws alone are kept moving. Beauty may boast of her eyes and her cheeks, But Love from the lips his true archery wings; And she, who but feathers the dart when she speaks, At […]...
16. The wanderer Upon a mountain height, far from the sea, I found a shell, And to my listening ear the lonely thing Ever a song of ocean seemed to sing, Ever a tale of ocean seemed to tell. How came the shell upon that mountain height? Ah, who can say Whether there dropped by some too careless […]...
17. Natural Music The old voice of the ocean, the bird-chatter of little rivers, (Winter has given them gold for silver To stain their water and bladed green for brown to line their banks) >From different throats intone one language. So I believe if we were strong enough to listen without Divisions of desire and terror To the […]...
18. The Truth of Woman Woman’s faith, and woman’s trust – Write the characters in the dust; Stamp them on the running stream, Print them on the moon’s pale beam, And each evanescent letter Shall be clearer, firmer, better, And more permanent, I ween, Than the thing those letters mean. I have strain’d the spider’s thread ‘Gainst the promise of […]...
19. Drink of This Cup Drink of this cup; you’ll find there’s a spell in Its every drop ‘gainst the ills of mortality; Talk of the cordial that sparkled for Helen; Her cup was a fiction, but this is reality. Would you forget the dark world we are in Just taste of the bubble that gleams on the top of […]...
20. Music's Empire First was the world as one great cymbal made, Where jarring winds to infant Nature played. All music was a solitary sound, To hollow rocks and murm’ring fountains bound. Jubal first made the wilder notes agree; And Jubal tuned music’s Jubilee; He call’d the echoes from their sullen cell, And built the organ’s city where […]...
21. The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner Part I It is an ancient Mariner, And he stoppeth one of three. ‘By thy long grey beard and glittering eye, Now wherefore stopp’st thou me? The bridegroom’s doors are opened wide, And I am next of kin; The guests are met, the feast is set: Mayst hear the merry din.’ He holds him with […]...
22. First Love At his incipient sun The ice of twenty winters broke, Crackling, in her eyes. Her mirroring, still mind, That held the world (made double) calm, Went fluid, and it ran. There was a stir of music, Mixed with flowers, in her blood; A swift impulsive balm From obscure roots; Gold bees of clinging light Swarmed […]...
23. The Ancient Elf I am the maker, The builder, the breaker, The eagle-winged helper, The speedy forsaker! The lance and the lyre, The water, the fire, The tooth of oppression, The lip of desire! The snare and the wing, They honey, the sting! When you seek for me look For a different thing! I, careless and gay, Never […]...
24. The Chimney-Sweeper (Experience) A little black thing among the snow: Crying weep, weep, in notes of woe! Where are thy father & mother? say? They are both gone up to the church to pray. Because I was happy upon the heath. And smil’d among the winters snow: They clothed me in the clothes of death. And taught me […]...
25. The Ancient Speech A Gaelic bard they praise who in fourteen adjectives Named the one indivisible soul of his glen; For what are the bens and the glens but manifold qualities, Immeasurable complexities of soul? What are these isles but a song sung by island voices? The herdsman sings ancestral memories And the song makes the singer wise, […]...
26. The Sonnets To Orpheus: Book 2: XIII Be ahead of all parting, as though it already were Behind you, like the winter that has just gone by. For among these winters there is one so endlessly winter That only by wintering through it all will your heart survive. Be forever dead in Eurydice-more gladly arise Into the seamless life proclaimed in your […]...
27. The Ancient World Today the Masons are auctioning Their discarded pomp: a trunk of turbans, Gemmed and ostrich-plumed, and operetta costumes Labeled inside the collar “Potentate” And “Vizier.” Here their chairs, blazoned With the Masons’ sign, huddled Like convalescents, lean against one another On the grass. In a casket are rhinestoned poles The hierophants carried in parades; Here’s […]...
28. An Ancient Gesture I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron: Penelope did this too. And more than once: you can’t keep weaving all day And undoing it all through the night; Your arms get tired, and the back of your neck gets tight; And along towards morning, when you think it will […]...
29. Ancient History Adam, a brown old vulture in the rain, Shivered below his wind-whipped olive-trees; Huddling sharp chin on scarred and scraggy knees, He moaned and mumbled to his darkening brain; ‘He was the grandest of them all was Cain! ‘A lion laired in the hills, that none could tire: ‘Swift as a stag: a stallion of […]...
30. Sing To Me Sing to me! Something of sunlight and bloom, I am so compassed with sorrow and gloom, I am so sick with the world’s noisse and strife, – Sing of the beauty and brightness of life – Sing to me, sing to me! Sing to me! Something that’s jubilant, glad! I am so weary, my soul […]...
31. An Ancient To Ancients Where once we danced, where once we sang, Gentlemen, The floors are sunken, cobwebs hang, And cracks creep; worms have fed upon The doors. Yea, sprightlier times were then Than now, with harps and tabrets gone, Gentlemen! Where once we rowed, where once we sailed, Gentlemen, And damsels took the tiller, veiled Against too strong […]...
32. The Lilac is an ancient shrub The Lilac is an ancient shrub But ancienter than that The Firmamental Lilac Upon the Hill tonight The Sun subsiding on his Course Bequeaths this final Plant To Contemplation not to Touch The Flower of Occident. Of one Corolla is the West The Calyx is the Earth The Capsules burnished Seeds the Stars The Scientist […]...
33. The Voice Of The Ancient Bard Youth of delight come hither. And see the opening morn, Image of truth new born. Doubt is fled & clouds of reason. Dark disputes & artful teazing, Folly is an endless maze, Tangled roots perplex her ways, How many have fallen there! They stumble all night over bones of the dead: And feel they know […]...
34. And Did Those Feet In Ancient Time And did those feet in ancient time Walk upon England’s mountains green? And was the holy Lamb of God On England’s pleasant pastures seen? And did the Countenance Divine Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here Among these dark satanic mills? Bring me my bow of burning gold! Bring me my […]...
35. According To The Formulas Of Ancient Grecosyrian Magi “What distillate can be discovered from herbs Of a witching brew,” said an aesthete, “what distillate prepared according To the formulas of ancient Grecosyrian magi Which for a day (if no longer Its potency can last), or even for a short time Can bring my twenty three years to me Again; can bring my friend […]...
36. A Song Of A Young Lady To Her Ancient Lover Ancient Person, for whom I All the flattering youth defy, Long be it e’er thou grow old, Aching, shaking, crazy cold; But still continue as thou art, Ancient Person of my heart. On thy withered lips and dry, Which like barren furrows lie, Brooding kisses I will pour, Shall thy youthful heart restore, Such kind […]...
37. Music In The Flat When Tom and I were married, we took a little flat; I had a taste for singing and playing and all that. And Tom, who loved to hear me, said he hoped I would not stop All practice, like so many wives who let their Music drop. So I resolved to set apart an hour […]...
38. Rome: Building a New Street in the Ancient Quarter These numbered cliffs and gnarls of masonry Outskeleton Time’s central city, Rome; Whereof each arch, entablature, and dome Lies bare in all its gaunt anatomy. And cracking frieze and rotten metope Express, as though they were an open tome Top-lined with caustic monitory gnome; “Dunces, Learn here to spell Humanity!” And yet within these ruins’ […]...
39. Music I PRELUDE Daughter of Psyche, pledge of that last night When, pierced with pain and bitter-sweet delight, She knew her Love and saw her Lord depart, Then breathed her wonder and her woe forlorn Into a single cry, and thou wast born? Thou flower of rapture and thou fruit of grief; Invisible enchantress of the […]...
40. The Winters are so short The Winters are so short I’m hardly justified In sending all the Birds away And moving into Pod Myself for scarcely settled The Phoebes have begun And then it’s time to strike my Tent And open House again It’s mostly, interruptions My Summer is despoiled Because there was a Winter once And al the Cattle […]...