His Defiance to Envy
by Thomas Middleton (1580-1627)

Envy, which mak’st thyself in common guise,
To haunt deservers, and to hunt desarts;
Hard-soft, cold-hot, well-evil, foolish-wise,
Miscontrarieties, agreeing parts;
Avaunt, I say! I’ll anger thee enough,
And fold thy fiery eyes in thy smazky snuff.

Defiance, resolution, and neglects,
True trine of bars against thy false assault,
Defies, resolves defiance, and rejects
Thy interest to claim the smallest fault:
Thou lawless landlady, poor prodigal,
Sour solace, credit’s crack, fear’s festival!

More angry satire-days I’ll muster up
Than thou canst challenge letters in thy name;
My nigrum true-born ink no more shall sup
Thy stained blemish, character’d in blame:
My pen’s two nebs shall turn into a fork,
Chasing old Envy from so young a work:
I, but the author’s mouth, bid thee avaunt!
He more defies thy hate, thy hunt, thy haunt.

Views: 31

Pied Beauty
by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)

Glory be to God for dappled things—
   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
      For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
   Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
      And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
   Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
      With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
                                    Praise him.

Views: 25

The Soul and the Body
by John Davies (1569-1626)

But how shall we this union well express?
      Nought ties the soul; her subtlety is such,
She moves the body, which she doth possess,
      Yet no part toucheth, but by virtue’s touch.

Then dwells she not therein as in a tent;
      Nor as a pilot in his ship doth sit;
Nor as the spider in his web is pent;
      Nor as the wax retains the print in it;

Nor as a vessel water doth contain;
      Nor as one liquor in another shed;
Nor as the heat doth in the fire remain;
      Nor as a voice throughout the air is spread.

But as the fair and cheerful morning light
      Doth here and there her silver beams impart,
And in an instant doth herself unite
      To the transparent air, in all and part;

Still resting whole, when blows the air divide,
      Abiding pure, when the air is most corrupted,
Throughout the air her beams dispersing wide,
      And when the air is tossed, not interrupted:

So doth the piercing soul the body fill,
      Being all in all, and all in part diffused,
Indivisible, incorruptible still,
      Not forced, encountered, troubled or confused.

And as the sun above the light doth bring,
      Though we behold it in the air below,
So from the eternal Light the soul doth spring,
      Though in the body she her powers do show.

Views: 32

The Convergence of the Twain
(Lines on the loss of the “Titantic”)
by Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

                  I
         In a solitude of the sea
         Deep from human vanity,
And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.

                  II
         Steel chambers, late the pyres
         Of her salamandrine fires,
Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.

                  III
         Over the mirrors meant
         To glass the opulent
The sea-worm crawls — grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.

                  IV
         Jewels in joy designed
         To ravish the sensuous mind
Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.

                  V
         Dim moon-eyed fishes near
         Gaze at the gilded gear
And query: “What does this vaingloriousness down here?” …

                  VI
         Well: while was fashioning
         This creature of cleaving wing,
The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything

                  VII
         Prepared a sinister mate
         For her — so gaily great —
A Shape of Ice, for the time far and dissociate.

                  VIII
         And as the smart ship grew
         In stature, grace, and hue,
In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.

                  IX
         Alien they seemed to be;
         No mortal eye could see
The intimate welding of their later history,

                  X
         Or sign that they were bent
         By paths coincident
On being anon twin halves of one august event,

                  XI
         Till the Spinner of the Years
         Said “Now!” And each one hears,
And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.

Views: 32