Piazza Piece
by John Crowe Ransom (1888-1974)

—I am a gentleman in a dustcoat trying
To make you hear. Your ears are soft and small   
And listen to an old man not at all,
They want the young men’s whispering and sighing.   
But see the roses on your trellis dying
And hear the spectral singing of the moon;
For I must have my lovely lady soon,
I am a gentleman in a dustcoat trying.

—I am a lady young in beauty waiting   
Until my truelove comes, and then we kiss.   
But what grey man among the vines is this   
Whose words are dry and faint as in a dream?   
Back from my trellis, Sir, before I scream!   
I am a lady young in beauty waiting.

Views: 37

Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot
by Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

Shut, shut the door, good John! fatigu’d, I said,
Tie up the knocker, say I’m sick, I’m dead.
The dog-star rages! nay ’tis past a doubt,
All Bedlam, or Parnassus, is let out:
Fire in each eye, and papers in each hand,
They rave, recite, and madden round the land.

What walls can guard me, or what shades can hide?
They pierce my thickets, through my grot they glide;
By land, by water, they renew the charge;
They stop the chariot, and they board the barge.
No place is sacred, not the church is free;
Ev’n Sunday shines no Sabbath-day to me:
Then from the Mint walks forth the Man of Ryme,
Happy! to catch me just at Dinner-time.

Continue reading …

Views: 48

A Lament for Flodden
by Jane Elliot (1727-1805)

I’ve heard them lilting at our ewe-milking,
      Lasses a’ lilting before dawn o’ day;
But now they are moaning on ilka green loaning-
      The Flowers of the Forest are a’ wede away.

At bughts, in the morning, nae blythe lads are scorning,
      Lasses are lonely and dowie and wae;
Nae daffing, nae gabbing, but sighing and sabbing,
      Ilk ane lifts her leglin and hies her away.

In hairst, at the shearing, nae youths now are jeering,
      Bandsters are lyart, and runkled, and gray:
At fair or at preaching, nae wooing, nae fleeching-
      The Flowers of the Forest are a’ wede away.

At e’en, in the gloaming, nae swankies are roaming
      ’Bout stacks wi’ the lasses at bogle to play;
But ilk ane sits eerie, lamenting her dearie-
      The Flowers of the Forest are a’ wede away.

Dool and wae for the order sent our lads to the Border!
      The English, for ance, by guile wan the day;
The Flowers of the Forest, that fought aye the foremost,
      The prime of our land, lie cauld in the clay.

We’ll hear nae mair lilting at our ewe-milking;
      Women and bairns are heartless and wae;
Sighing and moaning on ilka green loaning-
      The Flowers of the Forest are a’ wede away.

Views: 41

“Sometimes I walk where the deep water dips”
by Frederick Goddard Tuckerman (1821-1873)

Sometimes I walk where the deep water dips
Against the land. Or on where fancy drives
I walk and muse aloud, like one who strives
To tell his half-shaped thought with stumbling lips,
And view the ocean sea, the ocean ships,
With joyless heart: still but myself I find
And restless phantoms of my restless mind:
Only the moaning of my wandering words,
Only the wailing of the wheeling plover,
And this high rock beneath whose base the sea
Has wormed long caverns, like my tears in me:
And hard like this I stand, and beaten and blind,
This desolate rock with lichens rusted over,
Hoar with salt-sleet and chalkings of the birds.

Views: 39

When ’Omer Smote ’Is Bloomin’ Lyre
by Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
I always seem to post this poem on World Intellectual Property Day

When ’Omer smote ’is bloomin’ lyre
   He’d ’eard men sing by land an’ sea;
An’ what he thought ’e might require,
   ’E went an’ took—the same as me!

The market-girls an’ fishermen,
   The shepherds an’ the sailors, too,
They ’eard old songs turn up again,
   But kep’ it quiet—same as you!

They knew ’e stole; ’e knew they knowed.
   They didn’t tell, nor make a fuss,
But winked at ’Omer down the road,
   An’ ’e winked back—the same as us!

Views: 41

The Listeners
by Walter de la Mare (1873-1956)

“Is there anybody there?” said the Traveller,
      Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
      Of the forest’s ferny floor:
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
      Above the Traveller’s head
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
      “Is there anybody there?” he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;
      No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
      Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
      That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
      To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
      That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
      By the lonely Traveller’s call.
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
      Their stillness answering his cry,
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
      ’Neath the starred and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even
      Louder, and lifted his head:-
“Tell them I came, and no one answered,
      That I kept my word,” he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
      Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
      From the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
      And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
      When the plunging hoofs were gone.

Views: 43