Mercian Hymns XXV

Related poetry:

1. Mercian Hymns I King of the perennial holly-groves, the riven sandstone: overlord of the M5: architect of the historic rampart and ditch, the citadel at Tamworth, the summer hermitage in Holy Cross: guardian of the Welsh Bridge and the Iron Bridge: contractor to the desirable new estates: Saltmaster: money-changer: commissioner for oaths: martyrologist: the Friend of Charlemagne. ‘I […]...
2. Mercian Hymns VII Gasholders, russet among fields. Milldams, marlpools that lay Unstirring. Eel-swarms. Coagulations of frogs: once, with branches and Half-bricks, he battered a ditchful; then sidled away from the stillness And silence. Ceolred was his friend and remained so, even after the day of the lost Fighter: a biplane, already obsolete and irreplaceable, two inches of Heavy […]...
3. Mercian Hymns XVII He drove at evening through the hushed Vosges. The car radio, Glimmering, received broken utterance from the horizon of storms… ‘God’s honours – our bikes touched: he skidded and came off.’ ‘Liar.’ A Timid father’s protective bellow. Disfigurement of a village king. ‘Just Look at the bugger…’ His maroon GT chanted then overtook. He lavished […]...
4. Hymns Of The Marshes I. Sunrise. In my sleep I was fain of their fellowship, fain Of the live-oak, the marsh, and the main. The little green leaves would not let me alone in my sleep; Up-breathed from the marshes, a message of range and of sweep, Interwoven with waftures of wild sea-liberties, drifting, Came through the lapped leaves […]...
5. Saints In our family, there were two saints, My aunt and my grandmother. But their lives were different. My grandmother’s was tranquil, even at the end. She was like a person walking in calm water; For some reason The sea couldn’t bring itself to hurt her. When my aunt took the same path, The waves broke […]...
6. Rita Matlock Gruenberg Grandmother! You who sang to green valleys, And passed to a sweet repose at ninety-six, Here is your little Rita at last Grown old, grown forty-nine; Here stretched on your grave under the winter stars, With the rustle of oak leaves over my head; Piecing together strength for the act, Last thoughts, memories, asking how […]...
7. Marsh Hymns Between Dawn and Sunrise. Were silver pink, and had a soul, Which soul were shy, which shyness might A visible influence be, and roll Through heaven and earth ’twere thou, O light! O rhapsody of the wraith of red, O blush but yet in prophecy, O sun-hint that hath overspread Sky, marsh, my soul, and […]...
8. Sestina September rain falls on the house. In the failing light, the old grandmother Sits in the kitchen with the child Beside the Little Marvel Stove, Reading the jokes from the almanac, Laughing and talking to hide her tears. She thinks that her equinoctial tears And the rain that beats on the roof of the house […]...
9. In Childhood things don’t die or remain damaged But return: stumps grow back hands, A head reconnects to a neck, A whole corpse rises blushing and newly elastic. Later this vision is not True: The grandmother remains dead Not hibernating in a wolf’s belly. Or the blue parakeet does not return From the little grave in the […]...
10. Night Hymns on Lake Nipigon Here in the midnight, where the dark mainland and island Shadows mingle in shadow deeper, profounder, Sing we the hymns of the churches, while the dead water Whispers before us. Thunder is travelling slow on the path of the lightning; One after one the stars and the beaming planets Look serene in the lake from […]...
11. The Little Box The little box gets her first teeth And her little length Little width little emptiness And all the rest she has The little box continues growing The cupboard that she was inside Is now inside her And she grows bigger bigger bigger Now the room is inside her And the house and the city and […]...
12. 'Tis my first night beneath the Sun ‘Tis my first night beneath the Sun If I should spend it here Above him is too low a height For his Barometer Who Airs of expectation breathes And takes the Wind at prime But Distance his Delights confides To those who visit him...
13. Think of the Soul THINK of the Soul; I swear to you that body of yours gives proportions to your Soul somehow to live in other spheres; I do not know how, but I know it is so. Think of loving and being loved; I swear to you, whoever you are, you can interfuse yourself with such things that […]...
14. Immortal love, forever full Immortal love, forever full, Forever flowing free, Forever shared, forever whole, A never ebbing sea! Our outward lips confess the name All other names above; Love only knoweth whence it came, And comprehendeth love. Blow, winds of God, awake and blow The mists of earth away: Shine out, O Light divine, and show How wide […]...
15. Butterfly Laughter In the middle of our porridge plates There was a blue butterfly painted And each morning we tried who should reach the Butterfly first. Then the Grandmother said: “Do not eat the poor Butterfly.” That made us laugh. Always she said it and always it started us laughing. It seemed such a sweet little joke. […]...
16. To Olivia I fear to love thee, Sweet, because Love’s the ambassador of loss; White flake of childhood, clinging so To my soiled raiment, thy shy snow At tenderest touch will shrink and go. Love me not, delightful child. My heart, by many snares beguiled, Has grown timorous and wild. It would fear thee not at all, […]...
17. 372. Song-Kellyburn Braes THERE lived a carl in Kellyburn Braes, Hey, and the rue grows bonie wi’ thyme; And he had a wife was the plague of his days, And the thyme it is wither’d, and rue is in prime. Ae day as the carl gaed up the lang glen, Hey, and the rue grows bonie wi’ thyme; […]...
18. Absences It’s snowing this afternoon and there are no flowers. There is only this sound of falling, quiet and remote, Like the memory of scales descending the white keys Of a childhood piano outside the window, palms! And the heavy head of the cereus, inclining, Soon to let down its white or yellow-white. Now, only these […]...
19. A Pastoral Just as the sun was setting Back of the Western hills Grandfather stood by the window Eating the last of his pills. And Grandmother, by the cupboard, Knitting, heard him say: “I ought to have went to the village To fetch some more pills today.” Then Grandmother snuffled a teardrop And said. “It is jest […]...
20. Affinity YOU and I have found the secret way, None can bar our love or say us nay: All the world may stare and never know You and I are twined together so. You and I for all his vaunted width Know the giant Space is but a myth; Over miles and miles of pure deceit […]...
21. The Meeting After so long an absence At last we meet agin: Does the meeting give us pleasure, Or does it give us pain? The tree of life has been shaken, And but few of us linger now, Like the prophets two or three berries In the top of the uppermost bough. We cordially greet each other […]...
22. Rosemary Beauty and Beauty’s son and rosemary – Venus and Love, her son, to speak plainly – Born of the sea supposedly, At Christmas each, in company, Braids a garland of festivity. Not always rosemary – Since the flight to Egypt, blooming indifferently. With lancelike leaf, green but silver underneath, Its flowers – white originally – […]...
23. Sonnet 06 (to a brook near the village of Corston.) As thus I bend me o’er thy babbling stream And watch thy current, Memory’s hand pourtrays The faint form’d scenes of the departed days, Like the far forest by the moon’s pale beam Dimly descried yet lovely. I have worn Upon thy banks the live-long hour away, […]...
24. TO THE VIRGINS, TO MAKE MUCH OF TIME Gather ye rose-buds while ye may: Old Time is still a-flying; And this same flower that smiles to-day, To-morrow will be dying. The glorious lamp of heaven, the Sun, The higher he’s a-getting, The sooner will his race be run, And nearer he’s to setting. That age is best, which is the first, When youth […]...
25. Confetti In The Wind He wrote a letter in his mind To answer one a maid had sent; He sought the fitting word to find, As on by hill and rill he went. By bluebell wood and hawthorn lane, The cadence sweet and silken phrase He incubated in his brain For days and days. He wrote his letter on […]...
26. Request to a Year If the year is meditating a suitable gift, I should like it to be the attitude Of my great – great – grandmother, Legendary devotee of the arts, Who having eight children And little opportunity for painting pictures, Sat one day on a high rock Beside a river in Switzerland And from a difficult distance […]...
27. Nothing Stays Put In memory of Father Flye, 1884-1985 The strange and wonderful are too much with us. The protea of the antipodes-a great, Globed, blazing honeybee of a bloom- For sale in the supermarket! We are in Our decadence, we are not entitled. What have we done to deserve All the produce of the tropics- This fiery […]...
28. Softened by Time's consummate plush Softened by Time’s consummate plush, How sleek the woe appears That threatened childhood’s citadel And undermined the years. Bisected now, by bleaker griefs, We envy the despair That devastated childhood’s realm, So easy to repair....
29. Memorabilia I Ah, did you once see Shelley plain, And did he stop and speak to you? And did you speak to him again? How strange it seems, and new? II But you were living before that, And you are living after, And the memory I started at – My starting moves your laughter. III I […]...
30. Sonnet CXVI: Let me not to the marriage of true minds Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O no! it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark, Whose worth’s unknown, although […]...
31. Sonnets CXVI: Let me not to the marriage of true minds Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove. O no! it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wand’ring bark, Whose worth’s unknown, although […]...
32. An Invitation Holding with shaking hands a letter from some Official – high up he says in the Ministry, I note that I am invited to Birmingham, There pedagogues to address for a decent fee. ‘We like to meet,’ he goes on, ‘men eminent In the field of letters each year,’ and that’s well put, Though I […]...
33. Memory Brightly the sun of summer shone, Green fields and waving woods upon, And soft winds wandered by; Above, a sky of purest blue, Around, bright flowers of loveliest hue, Allured the gazer’s eye. But what were all these charms to me, When one sweet breath of memory Came gently wafting by? I closed my eyes […]...
34. Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove. O no, it is an ever-fixèd mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wand’ring bark, Whose worth’s unknown, although […]...
35. Sonnets xviii LET me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark, That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wand’ring bark, Whose worth ‘s unknown, […]...
36. On The Death Of Mr. Robert Levet, A Practiser In Physic CONDEMN’D to Hope’s delusive mine, As on we toil from day to day, By sudden blasts or slow decline Our social comforts drop away. Well tried through many a varying year, See Levet to the grave descend, Officious, innocent, sincere, Of every friendless name the friend. Yet still he fills affection’s eye, Obscurely wise and […]...
37. Sonnets 10: Oh, My Beloved, Have You Thought Of This Oh, my beloved, have you thought of this: How in the years to come unscrupulous Time, More cruel than Death, will tear you from my kiss, And make you old, and leave me in my prime? How you and I, who scale together yet A little while the sweet, immortal height No pilgrim may remember […]...
38. In the Days of the Golden Rod Across the meadow in brooding shadow I walk to drink of the autumn’s wine­ The charm of story, the artist’s glory, To-day on these silvering hills is mine; On height, in hollow, where’er I follow, By mellow hillside and searing sod, Its plumes uplifting, in light winds drifting, I see the glimmer of golden-rod. In […]...
39. The Red Blaze is the Morning The Red Blaze is the Morning The Violet is Noon The Yellow Day is falling And after that is none But Miles of Sparks at Evening Reveal the Width that burned The Territory Argent that Never yet consumed...
40. XI. Written at Ostend HOW sweet the tuneful bells’ responsive peal! As when, at opening morn, the fragrant breeze Breathes on the trembling sense of wan disease, So piercing to my heart their force I feel! And hark! with lessening cadence now they fall, And now, along the white and level tide, They fling their melancholy music wide, Bidding […]...