Western Wind
Anonymous (early 16th century)

Western Wind, when wilt thou blow,
      The small rain down can rain?
Christ, if my love were in my arms
      And I in my bed again!

Views: 66

Diaphenia
by Henry Chettle (c. 1560-c. 1607)

      Diaphenia, like the daffodowndilly,
      White as the sun, fair as the lily,
Heigh ho, how I do love thee!
      I do love thee as my lambs
      Are beloved of their dams;
How blest were I if thou wouldst prove me!

      Diaphenia, like the spreading roses,
      That in thy sweets all sweets encloses,
Fair sweet, how I do love thee!
      I do love thee as each flower
      Loves the sun’s live-giving power,
For, dead, thy breath to live might move me.

      Diaphenia, like to all things blessèd,
      When all thy praises are expressèd,
Dear joy, how I do love thee!
      As the birds do love the spring,
      Or the bees their careful king:
Then in requite, sweet virgin, love me!

Views: 116

Chorus Sacerdotum
by Fulke Greville (1554-1628)

O wearisome condition of humanity!
Born under one law, to another bound;
Vainly begot and yet forbidden vanity;
Created sick, commanded to be sound.
What meaneth nature by these diverse laws?
Passion and reason, self-division cause.
Is it the mark or majesty of power
To make offenses that it may forgive?
Nature herself doth her own self deflower
To hate those errors she herself doth give.
For how should man think that he may not do,
If nature did not fail and punish, too?
Tyrant to others, to herself unjust,
Only commands things difficult and hard,
Forbids us all things which it knows is lust,
Makes easy pains, impossible reward.
If nature did not take delight in blood,
She would have made more easy ways to good.
We that are bound by vows and by promotion,
With pomp of holy sacrifice and rites,
To teach belief in good and still devotion,
To preach of heaven’s wonders and delights;
Yet when each of us in his own heart looks
He finds the God there, far unlike his books.

Views: 71

King Henry’s Speech Before Agincourt
by William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

If we are mark’d to die, we are enough
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God’s will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires.
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England.
God’s peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more methinks would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmorland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse;
We would not die in that man’s company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is call’d the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam’d,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say “To-morrow is Saint Crispian.”
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say “These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.”
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words—
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester—
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb’red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be rememberèd—
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

Views: 97

The Light of Home
by Sarah Josepha Hale (1788-1879)

My son, thou wilt dream the world is fair,
   And thy spirit will sigh to roam,
And thou must go; but never, when there,
   Forget the light of Home!

Though pleasures may smile with a ray more bright,
   It dazzles to lead astray;
Like the meteor’s flash, ’twill deepen the night
   When treading thy lonely way:—

But the heart of home has a constant flame,
   And purse as vestal fire—
’Twill burn, ’twill burn for ever the same,
   For nature feeds the pyre.

The sea of ambition is tempest-tossed,
   And thy hopes may vanish like foam—
When sails are shivered and compass lost,
   Then look to the light of Home!

And there, like a star through midnight cloud,
   Thou’lt see the beacon bright;
For never, till shining on thy shroud,
   Can be quenched its holy light.

The sun of fame may gild the name,
   But the heart ne’er felt its ray;
And fasion’s smiles, that rich ones claim,
   Are beams of a wintry day:

How cold and dim those beams would be,
   Should Life’s poor wanderer come!—
My son, when the world is dark to thee,
   Then turn to the light of Home.

Views: 78

Eros
by Robert Bridges (1844-1930)

Why hast thou nothing in thy face?
Thou idol of the human race,
Thou tyrant of the human heart,
The flower of lovely youth that art;
Yea, and that standest in thy youth
An image of eternal Truth,
With thy exuberant flesh so fair,
That only Pheidias might compare,
Ere from his chaste marmoreal form
Time had decayed the colours warm;
Like to his gods in thy proud dress,
Thy starry sheen of nakedness.

   Surely thy body is thy mind,
For in thy face is nought to find,
Only thy soft unchristen’d smile,
That shadows neither love nor guile,
But shameless will and power immense,
In secret sensuous innocence.

   O king of joy, what is thy thought?
I dream thou knowest it is nought,
And wouldst in darkness come, but thou
Makest the light where’er thou go.
Ah yet no victim of thy grace,
None who e’er long’d for thy embrace,
Hath cared to look upon thy face.

Views: 51

Les Elfes
by Charles Marie René Leconte de Lisle (1818-1894)

Couronnes de thym et de marjolaine,
Les Elfes joyeux dansent sur la plaine.

Du sentier des bois aux daims familier,
Sur un noir cheval, sort un chevalier.
Son éperon d’or brille en la nuit brune;
Et, quand il traverse un rayon de lune,
On voit resplendir, d’un reflet changeant,
Sur sa chevelure un casque d’argent.

Couronnés de thym et de marjolaine,
Les Elfes joyeux dansent sur la plaine.

Ils l’entourent tous d’un essaim léger
Qui dans l’air muet semble voltiger.
— Hardi chevalier, par la nuit sereine,
Où vas-tu si tard? dit la jeune Reine.
De mauvais esprits hantent les forêts;
Viens danser plutôt sur les gazons frais. —

Couronnés de thym et de marjolaine,
Les Elfes joyeux dansent sur la plaine.

— Non! ma fiancée aux yeux clairs et doux
M’attend, et demain nous serons époux.
Laissez-moi passer, Elfes des prairies,
Qui foulez en rond les mousses fleuries;
Ne m’attardez pas loin de mon amour,
Car voici déjà les lueurs du jour. —

Couronnés de thym et de marjolaine,
Les Elfes joyeux dansent sur la plaine.

— Reste, chevalier. Je te donnerai
L’opale magique et l’anneau doré,
Et, ce qui vaut mieux que gloire et fortune,
Ma robe filée au clair de la lune.
— Non! dit-il. — Va donc! — Et de son doigt blanc
Elle touche au cœur le guerrier tremblant.

Couronnés de thym et de marjolaine,
Les Elfes joyeux dansent sur la plaine.

Et sous l’éperon le noir cheval part.
Il court, il bondit et va sans retard;
Mais le chevalier frissonne et se penche;
Il voit sur la route une forme blanche
Qui marche sans bruit et lui tend les bras:
— Elfe, esprit, démon, ne m’arrête pas! —

Couronnés de thym et de marjolaine,
Les Elfes joyeux dansent sur la plaine.

Ne m’arrête pas, fantôme odieux!
Je vais épouser ma belle aux doux yeux.
— Ô mon cher époux, la tombe éternelle
Sera notre lit de noce, dit-elle.
Je suis morte! — Et lui, la voyant ainsi,
D’angoisse et d’amour tombe mort aussi.

Couronnés de thym et de marjolaine,
Les Elfes joyeux dansent sur la plaine.

Views: 60

Frost at Midnight
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)

The Frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet’s cry
Came loud—and hark, again! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings: save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.
’Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,
This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,
With all the numberless goings-on of life,
Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame
Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;
Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,
Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.
Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature
Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,
Making it a companionable form,
Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit
By its own moods interprets, every where
Echo or mirror seeking of itself,
And makes a toy of Thought.

                           But O! how oft,
How oft, at school, with most believing mind,
Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,
To watch that fluttering stranger! and as oft
With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt
Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower,
Whose bells, the poor man’s only music, rang
From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day,
So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me
With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear
Most like articulate sounds of things to come!
So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,
Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!
And so I brooded all the following morn,
Awed by the stern preceptor’s face, mine eye
Fixed with mock study on my swimming book:
Save if the door half opened, and I snatched
A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,
For still I hoped to see the stranger’s face,
Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,
My play-mate when we both were clothed alike!

   Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,
Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,
Fill up the intersperséd vacancies
And momentary pauses of the thought!
My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart
With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,
And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,
And in far other scenes! For I was reared
In the great city, pent ’mid cloisters dim,
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.
But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language, which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself.
Great universal Teacher! he shall mould
Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.

   Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the night-thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.

Views: 42

Ma Bohème
by Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891)

Je m’en allais, les poings dans mes poches crevées;
Mon paletot aussi devenait idéal;
J’allais sous le ciel, Muse! et j’étais ton féal;
Oh! là là! que d’amours splendides j’ai rêvées!

Mon unique culotte avait un large trou.
— Petit Poucet rêveur, j’égrenais dans ma course
Des rimes. Mon auberge était à la Grande-Ourse;
— Mes étoiles au ciel avaient un doux frou-frou.

Et je les écoutais, assis au bord des routes,
Ces bons soirs de septembre où je sentais des gouttes
De rosée à mon front, comme un vin de vigueur;

Où, rimant au milieu des ombres fantastiques,
Comme des lyres, je tirais les élastiques
De mes souliers blessés, un pied près de mon cœur!

Views: 37

The Nile
by Leigh Hunt (1784-1859)

It flows through old hush’d Egypt and its sands,
      Like some grave mighty thought threading a dream;
      And times and things, as in that vision, seem
Keeping along it their eternal stands,—
Caves, pillars, pyramids, the shepherd bands
      That roam’d through the young earth, the glory extreme
      Of high Sesostris, and that southern beam.
The laughing queen that caught the world’s great hands.
Then comes a mightier silence, stern and strong,
As of a world left empty of its throng,
      And the void weighs on us; and then we wake,
And hear the fruitful stream lapsing along
      ’Twixt villages, and think how we shall take
      Our own calm journey on for human sake.

Views: 46