Jamais
by Alfred de Musset (1810-1857)

Jamais, ayez-vous dit, tandis qu’autour de nous
Résonnait de Schubert la plaintive musique;
Jamais, avez-vous dit, tandis que, malgré vous,
Brillait de vos grands yeux l’azur mélancolique.

Jamais, répétiez-vous, pâle et d’un air si doux,
Qu’on eût cru voir sourire une médaille antique.
Mais des trésors secrets l’instinct fier et pudique
Vous couvrit de rougeur, comme un voile jaloux.

Quel mot vous prononcez, marquise, et quel dommage!
Hélas! je ne voyais ni ce charmant visage,
Ni ce divin sourire, en vous parlant d’aimer.

Vos yeux bleus sont moins doux que votre âme n’est belle.
Même en les regardant, je ne regrettais qu’elle,
Et de voir dans sa fleur un tel cœur se fermer.

Views: 38

Escape
by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

I never hear the word “escape”
Without a quicker blood,
A sudden expectation,
A flying attitude.

I never hear of prisons broad
By soldiers battered down,
But I tug childish at my bars,—
Only to fail again!

Views: 40

Lycidas
by John Milton (1608-1674)

In this Monody the Author bewails a learned Friend, unfortunately drown’d in his Passage from Chester on the Irish Seas, 1637. And by occasion fortells the ruin of our corrupted Clergy then in their height.

Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more
Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,
I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude,
And with forc’d fingers rude
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.
Bitter constraint and sad occasion dear
Compels me to disturb your season due;
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer.
Who would not sing for Lycidas? he knew
Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme.
He must not float upon his wat’ry bier
Unwept, and welter to the parching wind,
Without the meed of some melodious tear.

Continue reading …

Views: 41

To a Coquette
by Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace) (65 B.C.E.-8 C.E.)

Quis multa gracilis te puer in rosa
Perfusus liquidis urget odoribus
   Grato, Pyrrha, sub antro?
      Cui flavam religas comam,

Simplex munditiis? Heu quotiens fidem
Mutatosque deos flebit et aspera
   Nigris aequora ventis
      Emirabitur insolens,

Qui nunc te fruitur credulus aurea,
Qui semper vacuam, semper amabilem
   Sperat, nescius aurae
      Fallacis. Miseri, quibus

Intentata nites. Me tabula sacer
Votiva paries indicat uvida
   Suspendisse potenti
      Vestimenta maris deo.

Views: 30

Lament for Marsyas
by Willa Cather (1873-1947)

Marsyas sleeps. Oh, never wait,
Maidens, by the city gate,
Till he come to plunder gold
Of the daffodils you hold,
Or your branches white with May;
He is whiter gone than they.
He will startle you no more
When along the river shore
Damsels beat the linen clean.
Nor when maidens play at ball
Will he catch it where it fall:
Though ye wait for him and call
He will answer not, I ween.

Happy Earth to hold him so,
Still and satisfied and low,
Giving him his will—ah more
Than a woman could before!
Still forever holding up
To his parted lips the cup
Which hath eased him, when to bless
All who loved where powerless.
Ah! for that too-lovely head,
Low among the laureled dead,
Many a rose earth oweth yet;
Many a yellow jonquil brim,
Many a hyacinth dewey-dim,
For the singing breath of him—
Sweeter than the violet.

Marsyas sleeps: Ah! Well-a-day,
He was wise who did not stay
Until hands unworthy bore
Prizes that were his before,
Him the god hath put for long
With the elder choir of song—
They who turned them from the sun
Ere their singing days were done,
Or the lips of praise were chill.
Whether summer come or go,
April bud or winter blow,
He will never heed or know
Underneath the daffodil.

Views: 38

Babel
by Osbert Sitwell (1892-1969)

Therefore is the name of it called Babel
And still we stood and stared far down
Into that ember-glowing town
Which every shaft and shock of fate
Had shorn into its base. Too late
   Came carelessly Serenity.

Now torn and broken houses gaze
On the rat-infested maze
That once sent up rose-silver haze
To mingle through eternity.

The outlines, once so strongly wrought,
Of city walls, are now a thought
Or jest unto the dead who fought…
   Foundation for futurity.

The shimmering sands where once there played
Children with painted pail and spade
Are drearly desolate, — afraid
   To meet Night’s dark humanity,

Whose silver cool remakes the dead,
And lays no blame on any head
For all the havoc, fire, and lead,
   That fell upon us suddenly,

When all we came to know as good
Gave ways to Evil’s fiery flood,
And monstrous myths of iron and blood
   Seem to obscure God’s clarity.

Deep sunk in sin, this tragic star
Sinks deeper still, and wages war
Against itself; strewn all the seas
With victims of a world disease.
— And we are left to drink the lees
Of Babel’s direful prophecy.

Views: 29

Song
by Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)

When I am dead, my dearest,
⁠   Sing no sad song for me;
Plant no roses at my head,
⁠   Nor shady cypress-tree;
Be the green grass above me
⁠   With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
⁠   And if thou wilt, forget.

I shall not see the shadows,
⁠   I shall not feel the rain,
I shall not hear the nightingale
⁠   Sing on, as if in pain;
And dreaming through the twilight
⁠   That doth not rise or set,
Haply I may remember,
⁠   And haply I may forget.

Views: 34

Mondnacht
by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)

Weg in den Garten, tief wie ein langes Getränke,
leise im weichen Gezweig ein entgehender Schwung.
Oh und der Mond, der Mond, fast blühen die Bänke
von seiner zögernden Näherung.

Stille, wie drängt sie. Bist du jetzt oben erwacht?
Sternig und fühlend steht dir das Fenster entgegen.
Hände der Winde verlegen
an dein nahes Gesicht die entlegenste Nacht.

Views: 35

Stella Maris
by Arthur Symons (1865-1945)

Why is it I remember yet
You, of all women one has met
In random wayfare, as one meets
The chance romances of the streets,
The Juliet of a night? I know
Your heart holds many a Romeo.
And I, who call to mind your face
In so serene a pausing-place,
Where the bright pure expanse of sea,
The shadowy shore’s austerity,
Seems a reproach to you and me,
I too have sought on many a breast
The ecstasy of love’s unrest,
I too have had my dreams, and met
(Ah me!) how many a Juliet.
Why is it, then, that I recall
You, neither first nor last of all?
For, surely as I see to-night
The glancing of the lighthouse light,
Against the sky, across the bay,
As turn by turn it falls my way,
So surely do I see your eyes
Out of the empty night arise,
Child, you arise and smile to me
Out of the night, out of the sea,
The Nereid of a moment there,
And is it seaweed in your hair?

O lost and wrecked, how long ago,
Out of the drowned past, I know,
You come to call me, come to claim
My share of your delicious shame.
Child, I remember, and can tell
One night we loved each other well;
And one night’s love, at least or most,
Is not so small a thing to boast.
You were adorable, and I
Adored you to infinity,
That nuptial night too briefly borne
To the oblivion of morn.
Oh, no oblivion! for I feel
Your lips deliriously steal
Along my neck, and fasten there;
feel the perfume of your hair,
And your soft breast that heaves and dips,
Desiring my desirous lips,
And that ineffable delight
When souls turn bodies, and unite
In the intolerable, the whole
Rapture of the embodied soul.

That joy was ours, we passed it by;
You have forgotten me, and I
Remember you thus strangely, won
An instant from oblivion.
And I, remembering, would declare
That joy, not shame, is ours to share,
Joy that we had the will and power,
In spite of fate, to snatch one hour,
Out of vague nights, and days at strife,
So infinitely full of life.
And ’tis for this I see you rise,
A wraith, with starlight in your eyes,
Here, where the drowsy-minded mood
Is one with Nature’s solitude;
For this, for this, you come to me
Out of the night, out of the sea.

Views: 36

Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae
by Ernest Dowson (1867-1900)

Last night, ah, yesternight, betwixt her lips and mine,
There fell thy shadow, Cynara! thy breath was shed
Upon my soul between the kisses and the wine;
And I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
      Yea, I was desolate and bowed my head:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

All night upon my heart I felt her warm heart beat,
Night-long within my arms in love and sleep she lay;
Surely the kisses of her bought red mouth were sweet;
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
      When I awoke and found the dawn was grey:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind,
Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng,
Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind;
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
      Yea, all the time, because the dance was long:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

I cried for madder music and for stronger wine,
But when the feast is finished and the lamps expire,
Then falls thy shadow, Cynara! the night is thine;
And I am desolate and sick of an old passion,
      Yea, hungry for the lips of my desire:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

Views: 29