Kehr ein bei mir
by Friedrich Rückert (1788-1866)

Du bist die Ruh,
Der Friede mild,
Die Sehnsucht du
Und was sie stillt.

Ich weihe dir
Voll Lust und Schmerz
Zur Wohnung hier
Mein Aug und Herz.

Kehr ein bei mir,
Und schließe du
Still hinter dir
Die Pforten zu.

Treib andern Schmerz
Aus dieser Brust!
Voll sei dies Herz
Von deiner Lust.

Dies Augenzelt
Von deinem Glanz
Allein erhellt,
O füll es ganz!

Views: 45

Parting
by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

My life closed twice before its close;
   It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
   A third event to me.

So huge, so hopeless to conceive,
   As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
   And all we need of hell.

Views: 41

Epigram: Respice Finem
by Francis Quarles (1592-1644)

My soul, sit thou a patient looker-on;
Judge not the play before the play is done:
Her plot hath many changes; every day
Speaks a new scene; the last act crowns the play.

Views: 36

L’Oiseau Bleu
by Alphonse Daudet (1840-1897)

J’ai dans mon cœur un oiseau bleu,
Une charmante créature,
Si mignonne que sa ceinture
N’a pas l’épaisseur d’un cheveu

Il lui faut du sang pour pâture.
Bien longtemps, je me fis un jeu
De lui donner sa nourriture:
Les petits oiseaux mangent peu.

Mais, sans en rien laisser paraître,
Dans mon cœur il a fait, le traître,
Un trou large comme la main,

Et son bec, fin comme une lame,
En continuant son chemin,
M’est entré jusqu’au fond de l’âme ! …

Views: 60

The Blessèd Damozel
by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)

The blessèd damozel lean’d out
   From the gold bar of Heaven;
Her eyes were deeper than the depth
   Of waters still’d at even;
She had three lilies in her hand,
   And the stars in her hair were seven.

Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem,
   No wrought flowers did adorn,
But a white rose of Mary’s gift,
   For service meetly worn;
Her hair that lay along her back
   Was yellow like ripe corn.

Her seem’d she scarce had been a day
   One of God’s choristers;
The wonder was not yet quite gone
   From that still look of hers;
Albeit, to them she left, her day
   Had counted as ten years.

(To one, it is ten years of years.
   . . . Yet now, and in this place,
Surely she lean’d o’er me—her hair
   Fell all about my face. . . .
Nothing: the autumn-fall of leaves.
   The whole year sets apace.)

It was the rampart of God’s house
   That she was standing on;
By God built over the sheer depth
   The which is Space begun;
So high, that looking downward thence
   She scarce could see the sun.

It lies in Heaven, across the flood
   Of ether, as a bridge.
Beneath, the tides of day and night
   With flame and darkness ridge
The void, as low as where this earth
   Spins like a fretful midge.

Around her, lovers, newly met
   ’Mid deathless love’s acclaims,
Spoke evermore among themselves
   Their heart-remember’d names;
And the souls mounting up to God
   Went by her like thin flames.

And still she bow’d herself and stoop’d
   Out of the circling charm;
Until her bosom must have made
   The bar she lean’d on warm,
And the lilies lay as if asleep
   Along her bended arm.

From the fix’d place of Heaven she saw
   Time like a pulse shake fierce
Through all the worlds. Her gaze still strove
   Within the gulf to pierce
Its path; and now she spoke as when
   The stars sang in their spheres.

The sun was gone now; the curl’d moon
   Was like a little feather
Fluttering far down the gulf; and now
   She spoke through the still weather.
Her voice was like the voice the stars
   Had when they sang together.

(Ah sweet! Even now, in that bird’s song,
   Strove not her accents there,
Fain to be hearken’d? When those bells
   Possess’d the mid-day air,
Strove not her steps to reach my side
   Down all the echoing stair?)

“I wish that he were come to me,
   For he will come,” she said.
“Have I not pray’d in Heaven?—on earth,
   Lord, Lord, has he not pray’d?
Are not two prayers a perfect strength?
   And shall I feel afraid?

“When round his head the aureole clings,
   And he is cloth’d in white,
I’ll take his hand and go with him
   To the deep wells of light;
As unto a stream we will step down,
   And bathe there in God’s sight.

“We two will stand beside that shrine,
   Occult, withheld, untrod,
Whose lamps are stirr’d continually
   With prayer sent up to God;
And see our old prayers, granted, melt
   Each like a little cloud.

“We two will lie i’ the shadow of
   That living mystic tree
Within whose secret growth the Dove
   Is sometimes felt to be,
While every leaf that His plumes touch
   Saith His Name audibly.

“And I myself will teach to him,
   I myself, lying so,
The songs I sing here; which his voice
   Shall pause in, hush’d and slow,
And find some knowledge at each pause,
   Or some new thing to know.”

(Alas! We two, we two, thou say’st!
   Yea, one wast thou with me
That once of old. But shall God lift
   To endless unity
The soul whose likeness with thy soul
   Was but its love for thee?)

“We two,” she said, “will seek the groves
   Where the lady Mary is,
With her five handmaidens, whose names
   Are five sweet symphonies,
Cecily, Gertrude, Magdalen,
   Margaret and Rosalys.

“Circlewise sit they, with bound locks
   And foreheads garlanded;
Into the fine cloth white like flame
   Weaving the golden thread,
To fashion the birth-robes for them
   Who are just born, being dead.

“He shall fear, haply, and be dumb:
   Then will I lay my cheek
To his, and tell about our love,
   Not once abash’d or weak:
And the dear Mother will approve
   My pride, and let me speak.

“Herself shall bring us, hand in hand,
   To Him round whom all souls
Kneel, the clear-rang’d unnumber’d heads
   Bow’d with their aureoles:
And angels meeting us shall sing
   To their citherns and citoles.

“There will I ask of Christ the Lord
   Thus much for him and me:—
Only to live as once on earth
   With Love,–only to be,
As then awhile, for ever now
   Together, I and he.”

She gaz’d and listen’d and then said,
   Less sad of speech than mild,—
“All this is when he comes.” She ceas’d.
   The light thrill’d towards her, fill’d
With angels in strong level flight.
   Her eyes pray’d, and she smil’d.

(I saw her smile.) But soon their path
   Was vague in distant spheres:
And then she cast her arms along
   The golden barriers,
And laid her face between her hands,
   And wept. (I heard her tears.)

Views: 55

The Moon
by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

                        I
And like a dying lady, lean and pale,
Who totters forth, wrapp’d in a gauzy veil,
Out of her chamber, led by the insane
And feeble wanderings of her fading brain,
The moon arose up in the murky East,
A white and shapeless mass.

                        II
         Art thou pale for weariness?
Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,
         Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth,
And ever changing, like a joyless eye
That finds no object worth its constancy?

Views: 56

To the Fringed Gentian
by William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)

Thou blossom bright with autumn dew,
And colored with the heaven’s own blue,
That openest when the quiet light
Succeeds the keen and frosty night.

Thou comest not when violets lean
O’er wandering brooks and springs unseen,
Or columbines, in purple dressed,
Nod o’er the ground-bird’s hidden nest.

Thou waitest late and com’st alone,
When woods are bare and birds are flown,
And frosts and shortening days portend
The aged year is near his end.

Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye
Look through its fringes to the sky,
Blue–blue–as if that sky let fall
A flower from its cerulean wall.

I would that thus, when I shall see
The hour of death draw near to me,
Hope, blossoming within my heart,
May look to heaven as I depart.

Views: 47

Love Is Enough
by William Morris (1834-1896)

Love is enough: though the World be a-waning,
And the woods have no voice but the voice of complaining,
   Though the sky be too dark for dim eyes to discover
The gold-cups and daisies fair blooming thereunder,
Though the hills be held shadows, and the sea a dark wonder
   And this day draw a veil over all deeds pass’d over,
Yet their hands shall not tremble, their feet shall not falter;
The void shall not weary, the fear shall not alter
   These lips and these eyes of the loved and the lover.

Views: 40

The Toys
by Coventry Patmore (1823-1896)

My little Son, who look’d from thoughtful eyes
And moved and spoke in quiet grown-up wise,
Having my law the seventh time disobey’d,
I struck him, and dismiss’d
With hard words and unkiss’d,
His Mother, who was patient, being dead.
Then, fearing lest his grief should hinder sleep,
I visited his bed,
But found him slumbering deep,
With darken’d eyelids, and their lashes yet
From his late sobbing wet.
And I, with moan,
Kissing away his tears, left others of my own;
For, on a table drawn beside his head,
He had put, within his reach,
A box of counters and a red-vein’d stone,
A piece of glass abraded by the beach
And six or seven shells,
A bottle with bluebells
And two French copper coins, ranged there with careful art,
To comfort his sad heart.
So when that night I pray’d
To God, I wept, and said:
Ah, when at last we lie with tranced breath,
Not vexing Thee in death,
And Thou rememberest of what toys
We made our joys,
How weakly understood
Thy great commanded good,
Then, fatherly not less
Than I whom Thou hast moulded from the clay,
Thou’lt leave Thy wrath, and say,
“I will be sorry for their childishness.”

Views: 35

How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix
by Robert Browning (1812-1889)

I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he;
I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three;
“Good speed!” cried the watch as the gate-bolts undrew;
“Speed!” echoed the wall to us galloping through;
Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest,
And into the midnight we galloped abreast.

Not a word to each other; we kept the great pace
Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our place;
I turned in my saddle and made its girth tight,
Then shortened each stirrup, and set the pique right,
Rebuckled the cheek-strap, chained slacker the bit,
Nor galloped less steadily Roland a whit.

’Twas moonset at starting; but while we drew near
Lokeren, the cocks crew and twilight dawned clear;
At Boom, a great yellow star came out to see;
At Düffeld, ’twas morning as plain as could be;
And from Mecheln church-steeple we heard the half-chime,
So Joris broke silence with, “Yet there is time!”

At Aershot, up leaped of a sudden the sun,
And against him the cattle stood black every one,
To stare through the mist at us galloping past,
And I saw my stout galloper Roland at last,
With resolute shoulders, each butting away
The haze, as some bluff river headland its spray:

And his low head and crest, just one sharp ear bent back
For my voice, and the other pricked out on his track;
And one eye’s black intelligence,—ever that glance
O’er its white edge at me, his own master, askance!
And the thick, heavy spume-flakes which aye and anon
His fierce lips shook upward in galloping on.

By Hasselt, Dirck groaned; and cried Joris, “Stay spur!
“Your Roos galloped bravely, the fault’s not in her,
“We’ll remember at Aix”—for one heard the quick wheeze
Of her chest, saw the stretched neck and staggering knees,
And sunk tail, and horrible heave of the flank,
As down on her haunches she shuddered and sank.

So, we were left galloping, Joris and I,
Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky;
The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh,
’Neath our feet broke the brittle bright stubble like chaff;
Till over by Dalhem a dome-spire sprang white,
And “Gallop,” gasped Joris, “for Aix is in sight!”

“How they’ll greet us!”—and all in a moment his roan
Rolled neck and croup over, lay dead as a stone;
And there was my Roland to bear the whole weight
Of the news which alone could save Aix from her fate,
With his nostrils like pits full of blood to the brim,
And with circles of red for his eye-sockets’ rim.

Then I cast loose my buff-coat, each holster let fall,
Shook off both my jack-boots, let go belt and all,
Stood up in the stirrup, leaned, patted his ear,
Called my Roland his pet-name, my horse without peer;
Clapped my hands, laughed and sang, any noise, bad or good,
Till at length into Aix Roland galloped and stood.

And all I remember is—friends flocking round
As I sat with his head ’twixt my knees on the ground;
And no voice but was praising this Roland of mine,
As I poured down his throat our last measure of wine,
Which (the burgesses voted by common consent)
Was no more than his due who brought good news from Ghent.

Views: 42