classic poetry
The Fool Rings His Bells
POSTED IN classic poetry April 25, 2013
The Fool Rings His Bells
Come, Death, I’d have a word with thee;
And thou, poor Innocency;
And Love — a lad with broken wing;
And Pity, too;
The Fool shall sing to you,
As Fools will sing.
Ay, music hath small sense,
And a tune’s soon told,
And Earth is old,
And my poor wits are dense;
Yet have I secrets, — dark, my dear,
To breathe you all: Come near.
And lest some hideous listener tells,
I’ll ring my bells.
They’re all at war!
Yes, yes, their bodies go
‘Neath burning sun and icy star
To chaunted songs of woe,
Dragging cold cannon through a mud
Of rain and blood;
The new moon glinting hard on eyes
Wide with insanities.
Hush! . . . I use words
I hardly know the meaning of;
And the mute birds
Are glancing at Love!
From out their shade of leaf and flower,
Trembling at treacheries
Which even in noonday cower.
Heed, heed not what I said
Of frenzied hosts of men,
More fools than I,
On envy, hatred fed,
Who kill, and die —
Spake I not plainly, then?
Yet Pity whispered, “Why?”
Thou silly thing, off to thy daisies go.
Mine was not news for child to know,
And Death — no ears hath. He hath supped where creep
Eyeless worms in hush of sleep;
Yet, when he smiles, the hand he draws
Athwart his grinning jaws
Faintly their thin bones rattle, and . . . There, there;
Hearken how my bells in the air
Drive away care! . . .
Nay, but a dream I had
Of a world all mad.
Not a simple happy mad like me,
Who am mad like an empty scene
Of water and willow tree,
Where the wind hath been;
But that foul Satan-mad,
Who rots in his own head,
And counts the dead,
Not honest one — and two —
But for the ghosts they were,
Brave, faithful, true,
When, heads in air,
In Earth’s clear green and blue
Heaven they did share
With Beauty who bade them there. . . .
There, now! he goes —
Old Bones; I’ve wearied him.
Ay, and the light doth dim,
And asleep’s the rose,
And tired Innocence
In dreams is hence. . .
Come, Love, my lad,
Nodding that drowsy head,
‘T is time thy prayers were said!
by Walter de la Mare
Absolutely clear
POSTED IN classic poetry April 23, 2013
Absolutely Clear
Answer To A Child’s Question
POSTED IN classic poetry April 18, 2013
Answer To A Child’s Question
Do you ask what the birds say? The sparrow, the dove,
The linnet, and thrush say, ‘I love and I love!’
In the winter they’re silent, the wind is so strong;
What it says I don’t know, but it sings a loud song.
But green leaves and blossoms, and sunny warm weather,
And singing, and loving, all come back together.
Then the lark is so brimful of gladness and love,
The green fields below him, the blue sky above,
That he sings, and he sings, and forever sings he–
‘I love my Love, and my Love loves me!’Samuel Taylor Coleridgeby Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Falkenlied / The Falcon song
POSTED IN classic poetry April 6, 2013
Ich zôch mir einen valken mêre danne ein jâr. |
I raised a falcon for more than a year |
by Der von Kürenberg
Translated version by Elwin Wirkala
The soul selects…
POSTED IN classic poetry April 6, 2013
The soul selects…The Soul selects her own Society —
Then — shuts the Door —
To her divine Majority —
Present no more —Unmoved — she notes the Chariots — pausing —
At her low Gate —
Unmoved — an Emperor be kneeling
Upon her Mat —I’ve known her — from an ample nation —
Choose One —
Then — close the Valves of her attention —
Like Stone —Emily Dickinson
Night
POSTED IN classic poetry March 22, 2013
NightFaint from the bell the ghastly echoes fall,
That grates within the grey cathedral tower;
Let me not enter through the portal tall,
Lest the strange spirit of the moonless hour
Should give a life to those pale people, who
Lie in their fretted niches, two and two,
Each with his head on pillowy stone reposed,
And his hands lifted, and his eyelids closed.From many a mouldering oriel, as to flout,
Its pale, grave brow of ivy-tressed stone,
Comes the incongruous laugh, and revel shout-
Above, some solitary casement, thrown
Wide open to the wavering night wind,
Admits its chill, so deathful, yet so kind,
Unto the fevered brow and fiery eye
Of one, whose night hour passeth sleeplessly.Ye melancholy chambers! I could shun
The darkness of your silence, with such fear,
As places where slow murder has been done,
How many noble spirits have died here
Withering away in yearnings to aspire
Gnawed by mocked hope-devoured by their own fire!
Methinks the grave must feel a colder bed
To spirits such as these, than unto common dead.John Ruskin
The Rose of Paracelsus
POSTED IN classic poetry March 16, 2013
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Down in his laboratory, to which the two rooms of the cellar had been given over, Paracelsus prayed to his God, his indeterminate God – any God – to send him a disciple. Night was coming on. The guttering fire in the hearth threw irregular shadows into the room. Getting up to light the iron lamp was too much trouble. Paracelsus, weary from the day, grew absent, and the prayer was forgotten. Night had expunged the dusty retorts and the furnace when there came a knock at his door. Sleepily he got up, climbed the short spiral staircase, and opened one side of the double door. A stranger stepped inside. He too was very tired. Paracelsus gestured toward a bench; the other man sat down and waited. For a while, neither spoke.
The master was the first to speak.
“I recall faces from the West and faces from the East,” he said, not without a certain formality, “yet yours I do not recall. Who are you, and what do you wish of me?”
“My name is of small concern,” the other man replied. “I have journeyed three days and three nights to come into your house. I wish to become your disciple. I bring you all my possessions.”
He brought forth a pouch and emptied its contents on the table. The coins were many, and they were of gold. He did this with his right hand. Paracelsus turned his back to light the lamp; when he turned around again, he saw that the man’s left hand held a rose. The rose troubled him.
He leaned back, put the tips of his fingers together, and said:
“You think that I am capable of extracting the stone that turns all elements to gold, and yet you bring me gold. But it is not gold I seek, and if it is gold that interests you, you shall never be my disciple.”
“Gold is of no interest to me,” the other man replied. “These coins merely symbolize my desire to join you in your work. I want you to teach me the Art. I want to walk beside you on that path that leads to the Stone.”
“The path is the Stone. The point of departure is the Stone. If these words are unclear to you, you have not yet begun to understand. Every step you take is the goal you seek.”
Paracelsus spoke the words slowly. The other man looked at him with misgiving.
“But,” he said, his voice changed, “is there, then, no goal?”
Paracelsus laughed.
“My detractors, who are no less numerous than imbecilic, say that there is not, and they call me an impostor. I believe they are mistaken, though it is possible that I am deluded. I know that there is a Path.”
There was silence, and then the other man spoke.
“I am ready to walk that Path with you, even if we must walk for many years. Allow me to cross the desert. Allow me to glimpse, even from afar the promised land, though the stars prevent me from setting foot upon it. All I ask is a proof before we begin the journey.”
“When?” said Paracelsus uneasily.
“Now,” said the disciple with brusque decisiveness.
They had begun their discourse in Latin; they now were speaking German.
The young man raised the rose into the air.
“You are famed,” he said, “for being able to burn a rose to ashes and make it emerge again, by the magic of your art. Let me witness that prodigy. I ask that of you, and in return I will offer up my entire life.”
“You are credulous,” the master said. “I have no need of credulity; I demand faith.”
The other man persisted.
“It is precisely because I am not credulous that I wish to see with my own eyes the annihilation and resurrection of the rose.”
“You are credulous,” he repeated. “You say that I can destroy it?”
“Any man has the power to destroy it,” said the disciple.
“You are wrong,” the master responded. “Do you truly believe that something may be turned to nothing? Do you believe that the first Adam in paradise was able to destroy a single flower, a single blade of grass?”
“We are not in paradise,” the young man stubbornly replied. “Here, in the sublunary world, all things are mortal.”
Paracelsus had risen to his feet.
“Where are we, then, if not in paradise?” he asked. “Do you believe that the deity is able to create a place that is not paradise? Do you believe that the Fall is something other than not realizing that we are in paradise?”
“A rose can be burned,” the disciple said defiantly.
“There is still some fire there”, said Paracelsus, pointing toward the hearth. “If you cast this rose into the embers, you would believe that it has been consumed, and that its ashes are real. I tell you that the rose is eternal, and that only its appearances may change. At a word from me, you would see it again.”
“A word?” the disciple asked, puzzled. “The furnace is cold, and the retorts are covered with dust. What is it you would do to bring it back again?”
Paracelsus looked at him with sadness in his eyes.
“The furnace is cold”, he nodded, “and the retorts are covered with dust. On this leg of my long journey I use other instruments.”
“I dare not ask what they are,” said the other man humbly, or astutely.
“I am speaking of that instrument used by the deity to create the heavens and the earth and the invisible paradise in which we exist, but which original sin hides from us. I am speaking of the Word, which is taught to us by the science of the Kabbalah.”
“I ask you,” the disciple coldly said, “if you might be so kind as to show me the disappearance and appearance of the rose. It matters not the slightest to me whether you work with alembics or with the Word.”
Paracelsus studied for a moment; then he spoke:
“If I did what you ask, you would say that it was an appearance cast by magic upon your eyes. The miracle would not bring you the faith you seek. Put aside, then, the rose.”
The young man looked at him, still suspicious. Then Paracelsus raised his voice.
“And besides, who are you to come into the house of a master and demand a miracle of him? What have you done to deserve such a gift?”
The other man, trembling, replied:
“I know I have done nothing. It is for the sake of the many years I will study in your shadow that I ask it of you – allow me to see the ashes and then the rose. I will ask nothing more. I will believe the witness of my eyes.”
He snatched up the red rose that Paracelsus had left lying on the table, and he threw it into the flames. Its color vanished, and all that remained was a pinch of ash. For one infinite moment, he awaited the words, and the miracle.
Paracelsus sat unmoving. He said with strange simplicity:
“All the physicians and all the pharmacists in Basel say I am a fraud. Perhaps they are right. There are the ashes that were the rose, and that shall be the rose no more.”
The young man was ashamed. Paracelsus was a charlatan, or a mere visionary, and he, an intruder, had come through his door and forced him now to confess that his famed magic arts were false.
He knelt before the master and said:
“What I have done is unpardonable. I have lacked belief, which the Lord demands of all the faithful. Let me, then, continue to see ashes. I will come back again when I am stronger, and I will be your disciple, and at the end of the Path I will see the rose.”
He spoke with genuine passion, but that passion was the pity he felt for the aged master – so venerated, so inveighed against, so renowned, and therefore so hollow. Who was he, Johannes Grisebach, to discover with sacrilegious hand that behind the mask was no one?
Leaving the gold coins would be an act of almsgiving to the poor. He picked them up again as he went out. Paracelsus accompanied him to the foot of the staircase and told him he would always be welcome in that house. Both men knew they would never see each other again.
Paracelsus was then alone. Before putting out the lamp and returning to his weary chair, he poured the delicate fistful of ashes from one hand into the concave other, and he whispered a single word. The rose appeared again.
by Jorge Luis Borges |
The Tyger
POSTED IN classic poetry March 12, 2013
The TygerTyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?And what shoulder, & what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
by William Blake
Birthday
POSTED IN classic poetry January 17, 2013
My heart is like a singing birdWhose nest is in a water’d shoot;My heart is like an apple-treeWhose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;My heart is like a rainbow shellThat paddles in a halcyon sea;My heart is gladder than all theseBecause my love is come to me.
Raise me a dais of silk and down;Hang it with vair and purple dyes;Carve it in doves and pomegranates,And peacocks with a hundred eyes;Work it in gold and silver grapes,In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;Because the birthday of my lifeIs come, my love is come to me.Christina Rossetti
Happy New Year 2013
POSTED IN classic poetry January 1, 2013
New Year’s morningOnly a night from old to new!
Only a night, and so much wrought!
The Old Year’s heart all weary grew,
But said: “The New Year rest has brought.”
The Old Year’s hopes its heart laid down,
As in a grave; but trusting, said:
“The blossoms of the New Year’s crown
Bloom from the ashes of the dead.”
The Old Year’s heart was full of greed;
With selfishness it longed and ached,
And cried: “I have not half I need.
My thirst is bitter and unslaked.
But to the New Year’s generous hand
All gifts in plenty shall return;
True love it shall understand;
By all my failures it shall learn.
I have been reckless; it shall be
Quiet and calm and pure of life.
I was a slave; it shall go free,
And find sweet peace where I leave strife.”Only a night from old to new!
Never a night such changes brought.
The Old Year had its work to do;
No New Year miracles are wrought.
Always a night from old to new!
Night and the healing balm of sleep!
Each morn is New Year’s morn come true,
Morn of a festival to keep.
All nights are sacred nights to make
Confession and resolve and prayer;
All days are sacred days to wake
New gladness in the sunny air.
Only a night from old to new;
Only a sleep from night to morn.
The new is but the old come true;
Each sunrise sees a new year born.Helen Hunt Jackson
