ANTHEA'S RETRACTATION

Related poetry:

1. The Owners Of The Little Box Line the inside of the little box With your precious skin And make yourself cozy Just as you would in your own home Make space voyages inside her Gather stars make time squirt its milk And sleep in the clouds Just don’t go around pretending You’re more important than her length And wiser than her […]...
2. TO ANTHEA Anthea, I am going hence With some small stock of innocence; But yet those blessed gates I see Withstanding entrance unto me; To pray for me do thou begin; The porter then will let me in....
3. UPON THE LOSS OF HIS MISTRESSES I have lost, and lately, these Many dainty mistresses: Stately Julia, prime of all; Sapho next, a principal: Smooth Anthea, for a skin White, and heaven-like crystalline: Sweet Electra, and the choice Myrha, for the lute and voice. Next, Corinna, for her wit, And the graceful use of it; With Perilla: All are gone; Only […]...
4. Lines Draw a line. Write a line. There. Stay in line, hold the line, a glance Between the lines is fine but don’t Turn corners, cross, cut in, go over Or out, between two points of no Return’s a line of flight, between Two points of view’s a line of vision. But a line of thought […]...
5. TO THE HANDSOME MISTRESS GRACE POTTER As is your name, so is your comely face Touch’d every where with such diffused grace, As that in all that admirable round, There is not one least solecism found; And as that part, so every portion else Keeps line for line with beauty’s parallels....
6. Rule Britannia When Britain first, at Heaven’s command, Arose from out the azure main; This was the charter of the land, And guardian angels sung this strain: “Rule, Britannia, rule the waves; Britons never will be slaves.” The nations, not so blest as thee, Must, in their turns, to tyrants fall: While thou shalt flourish great and […]...
7. The Sky is an Immortal Tent Built by the Sons of Los (from The sky is an immortal tent built by the Sons of Los: And every space that a man views around his dwelling-place Standing on his own roof or in his garden on a mount Of twenty-five cubits in height, such space is his universe: And on its verge the sun rises and sets, the clouds […]...
8. THE WAKE Come, Anthea, let us two Go to feast, as others do: Tarts and custards, creams and cakes, Are the junkets still at wakes; Unto which the tribes resort, Where the business is the sport: Morris-dancers thou shalt see, Marian, too, in pageantry; And a mimic to devise Many grinning properties. Players there will be, and […]...
9. The Rule of the A. J. C Come all ye bold trainers attend to my song, It’s a rule of the A. J. C. You mustn’t train ponies, for that’s very wrong By the rules of the A. J. C. You have to wear winkers when crossing the street, For fear that a pony you’d happen to meet If you hear one […]...
10. It's Ours there is always that space there Just before they get to us That space That fine relaxer The breather While say Flopping on a bed Thinking of nothing Or say Pouring a glass of water from the Spigot While entranced by Nothing That Gentle pure Space It’s worth Centuries of Existence Say Just to scratch […]...
11. Unlyric Love Song It is time to give that-of-myself which I could not at first: To offer you now at last my least and my worst: Minor, absurd preserves, The shell’s end-curves, A document kept at the back of a drawer, A tin hidden under the floor, Recalcitrant prides and hesitations: To pile them carefully in a desparate […]...
12. 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 […]...
13. Good neighbours To my shame I’ve been mending fences again… A quaint habit I inherited from my father; He would rather fix a fence than parley Repair, and that it is where our views diverged. He said fences were meant to make good Neighbours. In the intervening years I had it Wrong, believing a fence was a […]...
14. What Birds Plunge Through Is Not The Intimate Space What birds plunge through is not the intimate space, In which you see all Forms intensified. (In the Open, denied, you would lose yourself, Would disappear into that vastness.) Space reaches from us and translates Things: To become the very essence of a tree, Throw inner space around it, from that space That lives in […]...
15. 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 […]...
16. 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...
17. The Secret Two girls discover The secret of life In a sudden line of Poetry. I who don’t know the Secret wrote The line. They Told me (through a third person) They had found it But not what it was Not even What line it was. No doubt By now, more than a week Later, they have […]...
18. At leisure is the Soul At leisure is the Soul That gets a Staggering Blow The Width of Life before it spreads Without a thing to do It begs you give it Work But just the placing Pins Or humblest Patchwork Children do To Help its Vacant Hands...
19. From Victor Hugo Child, were I king, I’d yield my royal rule, My chariot, sceptre, vassal-service due, My crown, my porphyry-basined waters cool, My fleets, whereto the sea is but a pool, For a glance from you! Love, were I God, the earth and its heaving airs, Angels, the demons abject under me, Vast chaos with its teeming […]...
20. The Peaceful Shepherd If heaven were to do again, And on the pasture bars, I leaned to line the figures in Between the dotted starts, I should be tempted to forget, I fear, the Crown of Rule, The Scales of Trade, the Cross of Faith, As hardly worth renewal. For these have governed in our lives, And see […]...
21. How many schemes may die How many schemes may die In one short Afternoon Entirely unknown To those they most concern The man that was not lost Because by accident He varied by a Ribbon’s width From his accustomed route The Love that would not try Because beside the Door It must be competitions Some unsuspecting Horse was tied Surveying […]...
22. Somewhere upon the general Earth Somewhere upon the general Earth Itself exist Today The Magic passive but extant That consecrated me Indifferent Seasons doubtless play Where I for right to be Would pay each Atom that I am But Immortality Reserving that but just to prove Another Date of Thee Oh God of Width, do not for us Curtail Eternity!...
23. Pleasure XXIV Then a hermit, who visited the city once a year, came forth and said, “Speak to us of Pleasure.” And he answered, saying: Pleasure is a freedom song, But it is not freedom. It is the blossoming of your desires, But it is not their fruit. It is a depth calling unto a height, But […]...
24. Civilization spurns the Leopard! Civilization spurns the Leopard! Was the Leopard bold? Deserts never rebuked her Satin Ethiop her Gold Tawny her Customs She was Conscious Spotted her Dun Gown This was the Leopard’s nature Signor Need a keeper frown? Pity the Pard that left her Asia Memories of Palm Cannot be stifled with Narcotic Nor suppressed with Balm...
25. May 24, 1980 I have braved, for want of wild beasts, steel cages, Carved my term and nickname on bunks and rafters, Lived by the sea, flashed aces in an oasis, Dined with the-devil-knows-whom, in tails, on truffles. From the height of a glacier I beheld half a world, the earthly width. Twice have drowned, thrice let knives […]...
26. At Broad Ripple Oh luxury! Beyond the heat And dust of town, with dangling feet Astride the rock below the dam, In the cool shadows where the calm Rests on the stream again, and all Is silent save the waterfall, I bait my hook and cast my line, And feel the best of life is mine. No high […]...
27. No Man can compass a Despair No Man can compass a Despair As round a Goalless Road No faster than a Mile at once The Traveller proceed Unconscious of the Width Unconscious that the Sun Be setting on His progress So accurate the One At estimating Pain Whose own has just begun His ignorance the Angel That pilot Him along...
28. John Cabanis Neither spite, fellow citizens, Nor forgetfulness of the shiftlessness, And the lawlessness and waste Under democracy’s rule in Spoon River Made me desert the party of law and order And lead the liberal party. Fellow citizens! I saw as one with second sight That every man of the millions of men Who give themselves to […]...
29. The Reverend Mullineux I’d reckon his weight as eight-stun-eight, And his height as five-foot-two, With a face as plain as an eight-day clock And a walk as brisk as a bantam-cock Game as a bantam, too, Hard and wiry and full of steam, That’s the boss of the English Team, Reverend Mullineux! Makes no row when the game […]...
30. 'Tis One by One the Father counts ‘Tis One by One the Father counts And then a Tract between Set Cypherless to teach the Eye The Value of its Ten Until the peevish Student Acquire the Quick of Skill Then Numerals are dowered back Adorning all the Rule ‘Tis mostly Slate and Pencil And Darkness on the School Distracts the Children’s fingers […]...
31. The Sonnets To Orpheus: Book 2: I Breathing: you invisible poem! Complete Interchange of our own Essence with world-space. You counterweight In which I rythmically happen. Single wave-motion whose Gradual sea I am: You, most inclusive of all our possible seas- Space has grown warm. How many regions in space have already been Inside me. There are winds that seem like My […]...
32. More and More More and more frequently the edges Of me dissolve and I become A wish to assimilate the world, including You, if possible through the skin Like a cool plant’s tricks with oxygen And live by a harmless green burning. I would not consume You or ever Finish, you would still be there Surrounding me, complete […]...
33. These are the Signs to Nature's Inns These are the Signs to Nature’s Inns Her invitation broad To Whosoever famishing To taste her mystic Bread These are the rites of Nature’s House The Hospitality That opens with an equal width To Beggar and to Bee For Sureties of her staunch Estate Her undecaying Cheer The Purple in the East is set And […]...
34. Ad Quintilianum O CHIEF director of the growing race, Of Rome the glory and of Rome the grace, Me, O Quintilian, may you not forgive Before from labour I make haste to live? Some burn to gather wealth, lay hands on rule, Or with white statues fill the atrium full. The talking hearth, the rafters sweet with […]...
35. The Power Of Woman Mighty art thou, because of the peaceful charms of thy presence; That which the silent does not, never the boastful can do. Vigor in man I expect, the law in its honors maintaining, But, through the graces alone, woman e’er rules or should rule. Many, indeed, have ruled through the might of the spirit and […]...
36. Try To Remember Some Details Try to remember some details. Remember the clothing Of the one you love So that on the day of loss you’ll be able to say: last seen Wearing such-and-such, brown jacket, white hat. Try to remember some details. For they have no face And their soul is hidden and their crying Is the same as […]...
37. Psalm 30 part 2 v.6 L. M. Health, sickness, and recovery. Firm was my health, my day was bright, And I presumed ‘twould ne’er be night; Fondly I said within my heart, “Pleasure and peace shall ne’er depart.” But I forgot thine arm was strong Which made my mountain stand so long: Soon as thy face began to hide, […]...
38. Room 4: The Painter Chap He gives me such a bold and curious look, That young American across the way, As if he’d like to put me in a book (Fancies himself a poet, so they say.) Ah well! He’ll make no “document” of me. I lock my door. Ha! ha! Now none shall see. . . . Pictures, just […]...
39. From Citron-Bower From citron-bower be her bed, Cut from branch of tree a-flower, Fashioned for her maidenhead. From Lydian apples, sweet of hue, Cut the width of board and lathe, Carve the feet from myrtle-wood. Let the palings of her bed Be quince and box-wood overlaid With the scented bark of yew. That all the wood in […]...
40. To Astronomers Prate not to me so much of suns and of nebulous bodies; Think ye Nature but great, in that she gives thee to count? Though your object may be the sublimest that space holds within it, Yet, my good friends, the sublime dwells not in the regions of space....