An Early Audience at the Palace of Light. (Harmonizing a poem for Secretary Jia Zhi.)

Related poetry:

1. Harmonizing a Poem, (beside Palace Attendant Guo.) High beyond the thick wall a tower shines with sunset Where peach and plum are blooming and the willowcotton flies. You have heard in your office the court-bell of twilight; Birds find perches, officials head for home. Your morning-jade will tinkle as you thread the golden palace; You will bring the word of Heaven from […]...
2. Stopping at Incense Storing Temple Not know incense store temple Few enter cloud peaks Ancient trees no person path Deep hills what place bell Spring sound choke sheer rock Sun colour cold green pines Dusk empty pool bend Peace meditation control fierce dragon I did not know the incense storing temple, I walked a few miles into the clouded peaks. […]...
3. The Palace of Art I built my soul a lordly pleasure-house, Wherein at ease for aye to dwell. I said, “O Soul, make merry and carouse, Dear soul, for all is well.” A huge crag-platform, smooth as burnish’d brass I chose. The ranged ramparts bright From level meadow-bases of deep grass Suddenly scaled the light. Thereon I built it […]...
4. Sonnet XVI: Mongst All the Creatures An Allusion to the Phoenix ‘Mongst all the creatures in this spacious round Of the birds’ kind, the Phoenix is alone, Which best by you of living things is known; None like to that, none like to you is found. Your beauty is the hot and splend’rous sun, The precious spices be your chaste desire, […]...
5. Secretary My Master is a man of might With manners like a hog; He makes me slave from morn to night And treats me like a dog. He thinks there’s nothing on this earth His money cannot buy, And claims to get full wages worth From hirelings such as I. But does he? Though a Man […]...
6. The Sultan's Palace My spirit only lived to look on Beauty’s face, As only when they clasp the arms seem served aright; As in their flesh inheres the impulse to embrace, To gaze on Loveliness was my soul’s appetite. I have roamed far in search; white road and plunging bow Were keys in the blue doors where my […]...
7. To God the Father To the little, pitiful God I make my prayer, The God with the long grey beard And flowing robe fastened with a hempen girdle Who sits nodding and muttering on the all-too-big throne Of Heaven. What a long, long time, dear God, since you set the Stars in their places, Girded the earth with the […]...
8. Silvered In The Dying Light Silvered in the dying light she lies A silent sleeping twinkle coloured Eve Who heaves and breathes a sinuous sigh Beneath her oiled and shimmering skin. Upon my sandy feet she laps a gentle tongue That licks the grains of sand and smoothes My footprints to a varnished depth unbroken. Through her sane indifference I […]...
9. Advice to a young sylv-i-an dragon on going to school when you step out of the wood and go first time to school You have to be so specially careful if you’re really a dragon To put the most innocent expression on your face you can find And not flip your flappers (unless the others don’t mind) You must be very strict with yourself – […]...
10. Farewell to Secretary Shu-yun at the Hsieh Tiao Villa in Hsuan-Chou Since yesterday had throw me and bolt, Today has hurt my heart even more. The autumn wildgeese have a long wing for escort As I face them from this villa, drinking my wine. The bones of great writers are your brushes, in the school of heaven, And I am Lesser Hsieh growing up by your […]...
11. Witch-Wife She is neither pink nor pale, And she never will be all mine; She learned her hands in a fairy-tale, And her mouth on a valentine. She has more hair than she needs; In the sun ’tis a woe to me! And her voice is a string of coloured beads, Or steps leading into the […]...
12. More Light! More Light! For Heinrich Blucher and Hannah Arendt Composed in the Tower before his execution These moving verses, and being brought at that time Painfully to the stake, submitted, declaring thus: “I implore my God to witness that I have made no crime.” Nor was he forsaken of courage, but the death was horrible, The sack of […]...
13. To The Right Honourable William, Earl Of Dartmouth, His Majesty's Principal Secretary Of The State For North-America HAIL, happy day, when, smiling like the morn, Fair Freedom rose New-England to adorn: The northern clime beneath her genial ray, Dartmouth, congratulates thy blissful sway: Elate with hope her race no longer mourns, Each soul expands, each grateful bosom burns, While in thine hand with pleasure we behold The silken reins, and Freedom’s charms […]...
14. Foster The Light Foster the light nor veil the manshaped moon, Nor weather winds that blow not down the bone, But strip the twelve-winded marrow from his circle; Master the night nor serve the snowman’s brain That shapes each bushy item of the air Into a polestar pointed on an icicle. Murmur of spring nor crush the cockerel’s […]...
15. He Hears The Cry Of The Sedge I wander by the edge Of this desolate lake Where wind cries in the sedge: Until the axle break That keeps the stars in their round, And hands hurl in the deep The banners of East and West, And the girdle of light is unhound, Your breast will not lie by the breast Of your […]...
16. The Palace When I was a King and a Mason a Master proven and skilled I cleared me ground for a Palace such as a King should build. I decreed and dug down to my levels. Presently, under the silt, I came on the wreck of a Palace such as a King had built. There was no […]...
17. The Palace Grimy men with picks and shovels Who in darkness sweat unseen, Climb from out your lousy hovels, Build a palace for the Queen; Praise the powers that be for giving You a chance to make a living. Yet it would be better far Could you build with cosy lure Skyey tenements where are Rabbit-warrens of […]...
18. The Palace of Humbug Lays of Mystery, Imagination, and Humor Number 1 I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls, And each damp thing that creeps and crawls Went wobble-wobble on the walls. Faint odours of departed cheese, Blown on the dank, unwholesome breeze, Awoke the never ending sneeze. Strange pictures decked the arras drear, Strange characters of woe and […]...
19. In the Shadow of the Palace LET us go out of the fog, John, out of the filmy persistent drizzle on the streets of Stockholm, let us put down the collars of our raincoats, take off our hats and sit in the newspapers office. Let us sit among the telegrams-clickety-click-the kaiser’s crown goes into the gutter and the Hohenzollern throne of […]...
20. Poem 4 YE Nymphes of Mulla which with carefull heed, The siluer scaly trouts doe tend full well, And greedy pikes which vse therein to feed, (Those trouts and pikes all others doo excell) And ye likewise which keepe the rushy lake, Where none doo fishes take. Bynd vp the locks the which hang scatterd light, And […]...
21. Buckingham Palace They’re changing guard at Buckingham Palace – Christopher Robin went down with Alice. Alice is marrying one of the guard. “A soldier’s life is terrible hard,” Says Alice. They’re changing guard at Buckingham Palace – Christopher Robin went down with Alice. We saw a guard in a sentry-box. “One of the sergeants looks after their […]...
22. The Haunted Palace In the greenest of our valleys By good angels tenanted, Once a fair and stately palace- Radiant palace – reared its head. In the monarch Thought’s dominion- It stood there! Never seraph spread a pinion Over fabric half so fair! Banners yellow, glorious, golden, On its roof did float and flow, (This – all this […]...
23. The Palace and the Hut XXIX Part One As night fell and the light glittered in the great house, the servants stood at the massive door awaiting the coming of the guests; and upon their velvet garments shown golden buttons. The magnificent carriages drew into the palace park and the nobles entered, dressed in gorgeous raiment and decorated with jewels. The […]...
24. PRAY AND PROSPER First offer incense; then, thy field and meads Shall smile and smell the better by thy beads. The spangling dew dredged o’er the grass shall be Turn’d all to mell and manna there for thee. Butter of amber, cream, and wine, and oil, Shall run as rivers all throughout thy soil. Would’st thou to sincere […]...
25. Night Poem There is nothing to be afraid of, It is only the wind Changing to the east, it is only Your father the thunder Your mother the rain In this country of water With its beige moon damp as a mushroom, Its drowned stumps and long birds That swim, where the moss grows On all sides […]...
26. The Phoenix A Female Friend advis’d a Swain (Whose Heart she wish’d at ease) Make Love thy Pleasure, not thy Pain, Nor let it deeply seize. Beauty, where Vanities abound, No serious Passion claims; Then, ’till a Phoenix can be found, Do not admit the Flames. But griev’d She finds, that his Replies (Since prepossess’d when Young) […]...
27. Sonnet 04 – Thou hast thy calling to some palace-floor Thou hast thy calling to some palace-floor, Most gracious singer of high poems! where The dancers will break footing, from the care Of watching up thy pregnant lips for more. And dost thou lift this house’s latch too poor For hand of thine? and canst thou think and bear To let thy music drop here […]...
28. The Dying Of Pere Pierre “. . . with two other priests; the same night he died, And was buried by the shores of the lake that bears his name.” Chronicle. “Nay, grieve not that ye can no honour give To these poor bones that presently must be But carrion; since I have sought to live Upon God’s earth, as […]...
29. Improvisations: Light And Snow I The girl in the room beneath Before going to bed Strums on a mandolin The three simple tunes she knows. How inadequate they are to tell how her heart feels! When she has finished them several times She thrums the strings aimlessly with her finger-nails And smiles, and thinks happily of many things. II […]...
30. The Mother Poem (two) I always wanted to give birth Do that incredible natural thing That women do-I nearly broke down When I heard we couldn’t And then my man said to me Well there’s always adoption (we didn’t have test tubes and the rest Then) and well even in the early sixties there was something Scandalous about adopting […]...
31. The Light o' the Moon [How different people and different animals look upon the moon: showing that each creature finds in it his own mood and disposition] The Old Horse in the City The moon’s a peck of corn. It lies Heaped up for me to eat. I wish that I might climb the path And taste that supper sweet. […]...
32. Tartary If I were Lord of Tartary, Myself, and me alone, My bed should be of ivory, Of beaten gold my throne; And in my court should peacocks flaunt, And in my forests tigers haunt, And in my pools great fishes slant Their fins athwart the sun. If I were Lord of Tartary, Trumpeters every day […]...
33. A Song of Departure Warm rain and soft breeze by turns Have just broken And driven away the chill. Moist as the pussy willows, Light as the plum blossoms, Already I feel the heart of Spring vibrating. But now who will share with me The joys of wine and poetry? Tears streak my rouge. My hairpins are too heavy. […]...
34. The Book of Urizen: Chapter VII 1. They named the child Orc, he grew Fed with milk of Enitharmon 2. Los awoke her; O sorrow & pain! A tight’ning girdle grew, Around his bosom. In sobbings He burst the girdle in twain, But still another girdle Opressd his bosom, In sobbings Again he burst it. Again Another girdle succeeds The girdle […]...
35. A Girdle Whene’er the wast makes too much hast, That hast againe makes too much wast. I here stand keeper while ’tis light, ‘Tis theft to enter when ’tis night. This girdle doth the wast embrace To keepe all others from that place. This circle here is drawne about To keepe all tempting spiritts out. Whoe’er the […]...
36. The Beautiful Xi Shi Since beauty is honoured all over the Empire, How could Xi Shi remain humbly at home? Washing clothes at dawn by a southern lake And that evening a great lady in a palace of the north: Lowly one day, no different from the others, The next day exalted, everyone praising her. No more would her […]...
37. Why I Wake Early Hello, sun in my face. Hello, you who made the morning And spread it over the fields And into the faces of the tulips And the nodding morning glories, And into the windows of, even, the Miserable and the crotchety – Best preacher that ever was, Dear star, that just happens To be where you […]...
38. Early Moon THE BABY moon, a canoe, a silver papoose canoe, sails and sails in the Indian west. A ring of silver foxes, a mist of silver foxes, sit and sit around the Indian moon. One yellow star for a runner, and rows of blue stars for more runners, keep a line of watchers. O foxes, baby […]...
39. Early Spring Harshness vanished. A sudden softness Has replaced the meadows’ wintry grey. Little rivulets of water changed Their singing accents. Tendernesses, Hesitantly, reach toward the earth From space, and country lanes are showing These unexpected subtle risings That find expression in the empty trees....
40. The Early Morning The moon on the one hand, the dawn on the other: The moon is my sister, the dawn is my brother. The moon on my left and the dawn on my right. My brother, good morning: my sister, good night....