Friday 23 March 2012

Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep

Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sun on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the sweet uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight.
I am the soft star-shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there; I did not die.


Mary Elizabeth Frye 1932

Sunday 11 March 2012

To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
          Old time is still a-flying;
And the same flower that smiles today
          Tomorrow 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 and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
          Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,
          And, while ye may, go marry;
For, having lost but once your prime,
          You may forever tarry.


Robert Herrick

Leisure

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty’s glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.


by William Henry Davies

The Secret

I loved thee, though I told thee not,
Right earlily and long,
Thou wert my joy in every spot,
My theme in every song.

And when I saw a stranger face
Where beauty held the claim,
I gave it like a secret grace
The being of thy name.

And all the charms of face or voice
Which I in others see
Are but the recollected choice
Of what I felt for thee.


John Clare

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;


Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.


Robert Frost

Solitude


Solitude


LAUGH, and the world laughs with you; 
Weep, and you weep alone.
For the sad old earth must borrow it's mirth,
But has trouble enough of it's own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air.
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.

Rejoice, and men will seek you;
Grieve, and they turn and go.
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not need your woe.
Be glad, and your friends are many;
Be sad, and you lose them all.
There are none to decline your nectared wine,
But alone you must drink life's gall.

Feast, and your halls are crowded;
Fast, and the world goes by.
Succeed and give, and it helps you live,
But no man can help you die.
There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a long and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain.


Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone.
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling in the sky the message ‘He is Dead’,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever, I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun.
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.


Wystan Hugh Auden  (1907-1973)

August 1968

The Ogre does what ogres can, 
Deeds quite impossible for Man,
But one prize is beyond his reach,
The Ogre cannot master Speech:
 
About a subjugated plain,
Among its desperate and slain,
The Ogre stalks with hands on hips,
While drivel gushes from his lips.

W H AUDEN

Two English Poems

I
   
The useless dawn finds me in a deserted street-
      corner; I have outlived the night.
Nights are proud waves; darkblue topheavy waves
      laden with all the hues of deep spoil, laden with
      things unlikely and desirable.
Nights have a habit of mysterious gifts and refusals,
      of things half given away, half withheld,
      of joys with a dark hemisphere. Nights act
      that way, I tell you.
The surge, that night, left me the customary shreds
      and odd ends: some hated friends to chat
      with, music for dreams, and the smoking of
      bitter ashes.  The things my hungry heart
      has no use for.
The big wave brought you.
Words, any words, your laughter; and you so lazily
      and incessantly beautiful.  We talked and you
      have forgotten the words.
The shattering dawn finds me in a deserted street
      of my city.
Your profile turned away, the sounds that go to
      make your name, the lilt of your laughter:
      these are the illustrious toys you have left me.
I turn them over in the dawn, I lose them, I find
      them; I tell them to the few stray dogs and
      to the few stray stars of the dawn.
Your dark rich life ... 
I must get at you, somehow; I put away those 
      illustrious toys you have left me, I want your
      hidden look, your real smile -- that lonely,
      mocking smile your cool mirror knows.

II
   
What can I hold you with?
I offer you lean streets, desperate sunsets, the
      moon of the jagged suburbs.
I offer you the bitterness of a man who has looked
      long and long at the lonely moon.
I offer you my ancestors, my dead men, the ghosts
      that living men have honoured in bronze:
      my father's father killed in the frontier of
      Buenos Aires, two bullets through his lungs,
      bearded and dead, wrapped by his soldiers in
      the hide of a cow; my mother's grandfather
      --just twentyfour-- heading a charge of
      three hundred men in Peru, now ghosts on
      vanished horses.
I offer you whatever insight my books may hold, 
      whatever manliness or humour my life.
I offer you the loyalty of a man who has never
      been loyal.
I offer you that kernel of myself that I have saved,
      somehow --the central heart that deals not
      in words, traffics not with dreams, and is
      untouched by time, by joy, by adversities.
I offer you the memory of a yellow rose seen at
      sunset, years before you were born.
I offer you explanations of yourself, theories about
      yourself, authentic and surprising news of 
      yourself.
I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the
      hunger of my heart; I am trying to bribe you 
      with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat.
   
Jorge Luis Borges (1934)

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise.


If you can dream—and not make dreams your master
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:


If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’


If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Rudyard Kipling