Ye Mariners of England
by Thomas Campbell (1777-1844)

Ye Mariners of England,
      That guard our native seas,
Whose flag has braved a thousand years
      The battle and the breeze,
Your glorious standard launch again
      To match another foe,
And sweep through the deep,
      While the stormy winds do blow!
While the battle rages loud and long,
      And the stormy winds do blow!

The spirits of your fathers
      Shall start from every wave,
For the deck it was their field of fame,
      And Ocean was their grave.
Where Blake and mighty Nelson fell
      Your manly hearts shall glow,
As ye sweep through the deep,
      While the stormy winds do blow!
While the battle rages loud and long,
      And the stormy winds do blow!

Britannia needs no bulwarks,
      No towers along the steep:
Her march is o’er the mountain-waves,
      Her home is on the deep.
With thunders from her native oak
      She quells the floods below
As they roar on the shore,
      When the stormy winds do blow!
When the battle rages loud and long,
      And the stormy winds do blow!

The meteor flag of England
      Shall yet terrific burn,
Till danger’s troubled night depart,
      And the star of peace return.
Then, then, ye ocean warriors,
      Our song and feast shall flow
To the fame of your name,
      When the storm has ceased to blow!
When the fiery fight is heard no more,
      And the storm has ceased to blow.

Views: 38

Hot Sun, Cool Fire
by George Peele (1557-1596)

Hot sun, cool fire, tempered with sweet air,
Black shade, fair nurse, shadow my white hair.
Shine, sun; burn, fire; breathe, air, and ease me;
Black shade, fair nurse, shroud me and please me;
Shadow, my sweet nurse, keep me from burning,
Make not my glad cause cause of mourning.
            Let not my beauty’s fire
            Inflame unstaid desire,
            Nor pierce any bright eye
            That wand’reth lightly.

Views: 32

The Cool Web
by Robert Graves (1895-1985)

Children are dumb to say how hot the day is,
How hot the scent is of the summer rose,
How dreadful the black wastes of evening sky,
How dreadful the tall soldiers drumming by.

But we have speech, to chill the angry day,
And speech, to dull the rose’s cruel scent.
We spell away the overhanging night,
We spell away the soldiers and the fright.

There’s a cool web of language winds us in,
Retreat from too much joy or too much fear:
We grow sea-green at last and coldly die
In brininess and volubility.

But if we let our tongues lose self-possession,
Throwing off language and its watery clasp
Before our death, instead of when death comes,
Facing the wide glare of the children’s day,
Facing the rose, the dark sky and the drums,
We shall go mad no doubt and die that way.

Views: 35

Low Tide on Grand Pré
by Bliss Carman (1861-1929)

The sun goes down, and over all
      These barren reaches by the tide
Such unelusive glories fall,
      I almost dream they yet will bide
      Until the coming of the tide.

And yet I know that not for us,
      By any ecstasy of dream,
He lingers to keep luminous
      A little while the grievous stream,
      Which frets, uncomforted of dream —

A grievous stream, that to and fro
      Athrough the fields of Acadie
Goes wandering, as if to know
      Why one beloved face should be
      So long from home and Acadie.

Was it a year or lives ago
      We took the grasses in our hands,
And caught the summer flying low
      Over the waving meadow lands,
      And held it there between our hands?

The while the river at our feet —
      A drowsy inland meadow stream —
At set of sun the after-heat
      Made running gold, and in the gleam
      We freed our birch upon the stream.

There down along the elms at dusk
      We lifted dripping blade to drift,
Through twilight scented fine like musk,
      Where night and gloom awhile uplift,
      Nor sunder soul and soul adrift.

And that we took into our hands
      Spirit of life or subtler thing —
Breathed on us there, and loosed the bands
      Of death, and taught us, whispering,
      The secrets of some wonder-thing.

Then all your face grew light, and seemed
      To hold the shadow of the sun;
The evening faltered, and I deemed
      That time was ripe, and years had done
      Their wheeling underneath the sun.

So all desire and all regret,
      And fear and memory, were naught;
One to remember or forget
      The keen delight our hands had caught;
      Morrow and yesterday were naught.

The night has fallen, and the tide…
      Now and again comes drifting home,
Across these aching barrens wide,
      A sigh like driven wind or foam:
      In grief the flood is bursting home.

Views: 38

The Pied Piper of Hamelin
by Robert Browning (1812-1889)
because today is Ratcatcher’s Day

                        I.

Hamelin Town’s in Brunswick,
      By famous Hanover city;
The river Weser, deep and wide,
Washes its wall on the southern side
A pleasanter spot you never spied;
      But when begins my ditty,
Almost five hundred years ago,
To see the townsfolk suffer so
      From vermin, was a pity.

                        II.

  Rats!
They fought the dogs and killed the cats,
      And bit the babies in the cradles,
And ate the cheeses out of the vats,
      And licked the soup from the cooks’ own ladles.
Split open the kegs of salted sprats,
Made nests inside men’s Sunday hats,
And even spoiled the women’s chats
      By drowning their speaking
      With shrieking and squeaking
In fifty different sharps and flats.

Continue reading …

Views: 56

An Ode
by Matthew Prior (1664-1721)

The merchant, to secure his treasure,
      Conveys it in a borrow’d name:
Euphelia serves to grace my measure;
      But Chloe is my real flame.

My softest verse, my darling lyre,
      Upon Euphelia’s toilet lay;
When Chloe noted her desire
      That I should sing, that I should play.

My lyre I tune, my voice I raise;
      But with my numbers mix my sighs:
And while I sing Euphelia’s praise,
      I fix my soul on Chloe’s eyes.

Fair Chloe blush’d: Euphelia frown’d:
      I sung, and gazed: I play’d, and trembled:
And Venus to the Loves around
      Remark’d, how ill we all dissembled.

Views: 37

Pace non trovo
by Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374)

Pace non trovo, et non ò da far guerra;
e temo, et spero; et ardo, et son un ghiaccio;
et volo sopra ’l cielo, et giaccio in terra;
et nulla stringo, et tutto ’l mondo abbraccio.

Tal m’à in pregion, che non m’apre né serra,
né per suo mi riten né scioglie il laccio;
et non m’ancide Amore, et non mi sferra,
né mi vuol vivo, né mi trae d’impaccio.

Veggio senza occhi, et non ò lingua et grido;
et bramo di perir, et cheggio aita;
et ò in odio me stesso, et amo altrui.

Pascomi di dolor, piangendo rido;
egualmente mi spiace morte et vita:
in questo stato son, donna, per voi.

Views: 27

“Aura che quelle chiome bionde et crespe” (Sonnet 127)
by Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) (1304-1374)

Aura che quelle chiome bionde et crespe
cercondi et movi, et se’ mossa da loro,
soavemente, et spargi quel dolce oro,
et poi ’l raccogli, e ’n bei nodi il rincrespe,

tu stai nelli occhi ond’amorose vespe
mi pungon sí, che ’nfin qua il sento et ploro,
et vacillando cerco il mio tesoro,
come animal che spesso adombre e ’ncespe:

ch’or me ’l par ritrovar, et or m’accorgo
ch’i’ ne son lunge, or mi sollievo or caggio,
ch’or quel ch’i’ bramo, or quel ch’è vero scorgo.

Aër felice, col bel vivo raggio
rimanti; et tu corrente et chiaro gorgo,
ché non poss’io cangiar teco vïaggio?

Views: 28

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

Midi, roi des étés, épandu sur la plaine,
Tombe en nappes d’argent des hauteurs du ciel bleu.
Tout se tait. L’air flamboie et brûle sans haleine;
La terre est assoupie en sa robe de feu.

L’étendue est immense et les champs n’ont point d’ombre,
Et la source est tarie où buvaient les troupeaux;
La lointaine forêt, dont la lisière est sombre,
Dort là-bas, immobile, en un pesant repos.

Seuls, les grands blés mûris, tels qu’une mer dorée,
Se déroulent au loin, dédaigneux du sommeil;
Pacifiques enfants de la terre sacrée,
Ils épuisent sans peur la coupe du soleil.

Parfois, comme un soupir de leur âme brûlante,
Du sein des épis lourds qui murmurent entre eux,
Une ondulation majestueuse et lente
S’éveille, et va mourir à l’horizon poudreux.

Non loin, quelques bœufs blancs, couchés parmi les herbes,
Bavent avec lenteur sur leurs fanons épais,
Et suivent de leurs yeux languissants et superbes
Le songe intérieur qu’ils n’achèvent jamais.

Homme, si, le cœur plein de joie ou d’amertume,
Tu passais vers midi dans les champs radieux,
Fuis! la nature est vide et le soleil consume:
Rien n’est vivant ici, rien n’est triste ou joyeux.

Mais si, désabusé des larmes et du rire,
Altéré de l’oubli de ce monde agité,
Tu veux, ne sachant plus pardonner ou maudire,
Goûter une suprême et morne volupté,

Viens! Le soleil te parle en paroles sublimes;
Dans sa flamme implacable absorbe-toi sans fin;
Et retourne à pas lents vers les cités infimes,
Le cœur trempé sept fois dans le néant divin.

Views: 40

The Talented Man
by Winthrop Mackworth Praed (1802-1839)

Dear Alice! you’ll laugh when you know it, —
      Last week, at the Duchess’s ball,
I danced with the clever new poet, —
      You’ve heard of him, — Tully St. Paul.
Miss Jonquil was perfectly frantic;
      I wish you had seen Lady Anne!
It really was very romantic,
      He is such a talanted man!

He came up from Brazenose College,
      Just caught, as they call it, this spring;
And his head, love, is stuffed full of knowledge
      Of every conceivable thing.
Of science and logic he chatters,
      As fine and as fast as he can;
Though I am no judge of such matters,
      I’m sure he’s a talented man.

His stories and jests are delightful; —
      Not stories or jests, dear, for you;
The jests are exceedingly spiteful,
      The stories not always quite true.
Perhaps to be kind and veracious
      May do pretty well at Lausanne;
But it never would answer, — good gracious!
      Chez nous — in a talented man.

He sneers, — how my Alice would scold him! —
      At the bliss of a sigh or a tear;
He laughed — only think! — when I told him
      How we cried o’er Trevelyan last year;
I vow I was quite in a passion;
      I broke all the sticks of my fan;
But sentiment’s quite out of fashion,
      It seems, in a talented man.

Lady Bab, who is terribly moral,
      Has told me that Tully is vain,
And apt — which is silly — to quarrel,
      And fond — which is sad — of champagne.
I listened, and doubted, dear Alice,
      For I saw, when my Lady began,
It was only the Dowager’s malice; —
      She does hate a talented man!

He’s hideous, I own it. But fame, love,
      Is all that these eyes can adore;
He’s lame, — but Lord Byron was lame, love,
      And dumpy, — but so is Tom Moore.
Then his voice, — such a voice! my sweet creature,
      It’s like your Aunt Lucy’s toucan:
But oh! what’s a tone or a feature,
      When once one’s a talented man?

My mother, you know, all the season,
      Has talked of Sir Geoffrey’s estate;
And truly, to do the fool reason,
      He has been less horrid of late.
But today, when we drive in the carriage,
      I’ll tell her to lay down her plan; —
If ever I venture on marriage,
      It must be a talented man!

P.S. — I have found, on reflection,
      One fault in my friend, — entre nous;
Without it, he’d just be perfection; —
      Poor fellow, he has not a sou!
And so, when he comes in September
      To shoot with my uncle, Sir Dan,
I’ve promised mamma to remember
      He’s only a talented man!

Views: 26