The Labors of Hercules
by Marianne Moore (1887-1972)

To popularize the mule, its neat exterior
expressing the principle of accommodation reduced to a minimum:
to persuade one of austere taste, proud in the possession of home, and a musician—
that the piano is a free field for etching; that his ‛charming tadpole notes’
belong to the past when one had time to play them:
to persuade those self-wrought Midases of brains
whose fourteen-carat ignorance aspires to rise in value
till the sky is the limit
that excessive conduct augurs disappointment,
that one must not borrow a long white beard and tie it on
and threaten with the scythe of time the casually curious:
to teach the bard with too elastic a selectiveness
that one detects creative power by its capacity to conquer one’s detachment,
that while it may have more elasticity than logic,
it knows where it is going;
it flies along in a straight line like electricity,
depopulating areas that boast of their remoteness,
to prove to the high priests of caste
that snobbishness is a stupidity,
the best side out, of age-old toadyism,
kissing the feet of the man above,
kicking the face of the man below;
to teach the patron-saints-to-atheists, Coliseum
meet-me-alone-by-moonlight maudlin troubador
that kickups for catstrings are not life
nor yet appropriate to death—that we are sick of the earth,
sick of the pig-sty, wild geese and wild men;
to convince snake-charming controversialists
that it is one thing to change one’s mind,
another to eradicate it—that one keeps on knowing
‛that the Negro is not brutal,
that the Jew is not greedy,
that the Oriental is not immoral,
That the German is not a Hun.’

Views: 36

“When I watch the living meet”
by A.E. Houseman (1859-1936)

When I watch the living meet,
And the moving pageant file
Warm and breathing through the street
Where I lodge a little while,

If the heats of hate and lust
In the house of flesh are strong,
Let me mind the house of dust
Where my sojourn shall be long.

In the nation that is not
Nothing stands that stood before;
There revenges are forgot,
And the hater hates no more;

Lovers lying two and two
Ask not whom they sleep beside,
And the bridegroom all night through
Never turns him to the bride.

Views: 34

Requiem
by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
      And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
      And the hunter home from the hill.

Views: 30

London
by William Blake (1757-1827)

I wander thro’ each charter’d street,
Near where the charter’d Thames does flow,
And mark in every face I meet,
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every Man,
In every Infant’s cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forg’d manacles I hear.

How the Chimney-sweeper’s cry
Every black’ning Church appalls;
And the hapless Soldier’s sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls.

But most, thro’ midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlot’s curse
Blasts the new born Infant’s tear,
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.

Views: 27

Reminiscence
by Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836-1907

Though I am native to this frozen zone
⁠   That half the twelvemonth torpid lies, or dead;
⁠   Though the cold azure arching overhead
⁠And the Atlantic’s intermittent moan
Are mine by heritage, I must have known
⁠   Life otherwhere in epochs long since fled;
⁠   For in my veins some Orient blood is red,
⁠And through my thought are lotus blossoms blown.
I do remember … it was just at dusk,
⁠   Near a walled garden at the river’s turn
⁠      (A thousand summers seem but yesterday!),
A Nubian girl, more sweet than Khoorja musk,
⁠   Came to the water-tank to fill her urn,
⁠      And, with the urn, she bore my heart away!

Views: 27

Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog
by Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774)

Good people all, of every sort,
⁠   Give ear unto my song;
And if you find it wondrous short,
⁠   It cannot hold you long.

In Islington there was a man,
⁠   Of whom the world might say,
That still a godly race he ran
⁠   Whene’er he went to pray.

A kind and gentle heart he had
⁠   To comfort friends and foes;
The naked every day he clad
⁠   When he put on his clothes.

And in that town a dog was found,
⁠   As many dogs there be,
Both mongrel, puppy, whelp, and hound,
⁠   And curs of low degree.

This dog and man at first were friends;
⁠   But when a pique began,
The dog, to gain some private ends,
⁠   Went mad and bit the man.

Around, from all the neighb’ring streets,
⁠   The wond’ring neighbours ran,
And swore the dog had lost his wits,
⁠   To bite so good a man.

The wound it seem’d both sore and sad
⁠   To every Christian eye;
And while they swore the dog was mad,
⁠   They swore the man would die.

But soon a wonder came to light,
⁠   That shew’d the rogues they lied;
The man recovered of his bite,
⁠   The dog it was that died.

Views: 20

Benevolence
by Mark Akenside (1721-1770)

Thron’d in the sun’s descending car,
What power unseen diffuseth far
      This tenderness of mind?
What genius smiles on yonder flood?
What god, in whispers from the wood.
      Bids every thought be kind?

O thou, whate’er thy awful name.
Whose wisdom our untoward frame
      With social love restrains;
Thou, who by fair affection’s ties
Giv’st us to double all our joys
      And half disarm our pains;

Let universal candor still.
Clear as yon heaven-reflecting rill.
      Preserve my open mind;
Nor this nor that man’s crooked ways
One sordid doubt within me raise
      To injure human kind.

Views: 25

Aux Italiens
by Owen Meredith (Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st earl of Lytton) (1831–91)

At Paris it was, at the Opera there;—
   And she look’d like a queen in a book, that night,
With the wreath of pearl in her raven hair,
   And the brooch on her breast, so bright.

Of all the operas that Verdi wrote,
   The best, to my taste, is the Trovatore;
And Mario can soothe with a tenor note
   The souls in Purgatory.

The moon on the tower slept soft as snow:
   And who was not thrill’d in the strangest way,
As we heard him sing, while the gas burn’d low,
   “Non ti scordar di me”?

The Emperor there, in his box of state,
   Look’d grave, as if he had just then seen
The red flag wave from the city-gate
   Where his eagles in bronze had been.

The Empress, too, had a tear in her eye.
   You ’d have said that her fancy had gone back again,
For one moment, under the old blue sky,
   To the old glad life in Spain.

Well! there in our front-row box we sat,
   Together, my bride-betroth’d and I;
My gaze was fix’d on my opera-hat,
   And hers on the stage hard by.

And both were silent, and both were sad.
   Like a queen she lean’d on her full white arm,
With that regal, indolent air she had;
   So confident of her charm!

I have not a doubt she was thinking then
   Of her former lord, good soul that he was!
Who died the richest and roundest of men,
   The Marquis of Carabas.

I hope that, to get to the kingdom of heaven,
   Through a needle’s eye he had not to pass.
I wish him well, for the jointure given
   To my lady of Carabas.

Meanwhile, I was thinking of my first love,
   As I had not been thinking of aught for years,
Till over my eyes there began to move
   Something that felt like tears.

I thought of the dress that she wore last time,
   When we stood, ’neath the cypress-trees, together,
In that lost land, in that soft clime,
   In the crimson evening weather;

Of that muslin dress (for the eve was hot),
   And her warm white neck in its golden chain,
And her full, soft hair, just tied in a knot,
   And falling loose again;

And the jasmine-flower in her fair young breast,
   (O the faint, sweet smell of that jasmine-flower!)
And the one bird singing alone to his nest,
   And the one star over the tower.

I thought of our little quarrels and strife,
   And the letter that brought me back my ring.
And it all seem’d then, in the waste of life,
   Such a very little thing!

For I thought of her grave below the hill,
   Which the sentinel cypress-tree stands over;
And I thought … “were she only living still,
   How I could forgive her, and love her!”

And I swear, as I thought of her thus, in that hour,
   And of how, after all, old things were best
That I smelt the smell of that jasmine-flower
   Which she used to wear in her breast.

It smelt so faint, and it smelt so sweet,
   It made me creep, and it made me cold!
Like the scent that steals from the crumbling sheet
   Where a mummy is half unroll’d.

And I turn’d, and look’d. She was sitting there
   In a dim box, over the stage; and dress’d
In that muslin dress with that full soft hair,
   And that jasmine in her breast!

I was here; and she was there;
   And the glittering horseshoe curv’d between:—
From my bride-betroth’d, with her raven hair,
   And her sumptuous scornful mien,

To my early love, with her eyes downcast,
   And over her primrose face the shade
(In short from the Future back to the Past),
   There was but a step to be made.

To my early love from my future bride
   One moment I look’d. Then I stole to the door,
I travers’d the passage; and down at her side
   I was sitting, a moment more.

My thinking of her, or the music’s strain,
   Or something which never will be exprest,
Had brought her back from the grave again,
   With the jasmine in her breast.

She is not dead, and she is not wed!
   But she loves me now, and she lov’d me then!
And the very first word that her sweet lips said,
   My heart grew youthful again.

The Marchioness there, of Carabas,
   She is wealthy, and young, and handsome still,
And but for her … well, we ’ll let that pass,
   She may marry whomever she will.

But I will marry my own first love,
   With her primrose face: for old things are best,
And the flower in her bosom, I prize it above
   The brooch in my lady’s breast.

The world is fill’d with folly and sin,
   And Love must cling where it can, I say:
For Beauty is easy enough to win;
   But one is n’t lov’d every day.

And I think, in the lives of most women and men,
   There ’s a moment when all would go smooth and even,
If only the dead could find out when
   To come back, and be forgiven.

But O the smell of that jasmine-flower!
   And O that music! and O the way
That voice rang out from the donjon tower,
   Non ti scordar di me,
      Non ti scordar di me!

Views: 300

The Pet
by Leonora Speyer (1872-1956)

Hope gnawed at my heart like a hungry rat,
Ran in and out of my dreams high-walled,
I heard its scampering feet:
“Pretty rat—pretty rat—!” I called,
And crumbled it songs to eat.
Hope peeped at me from behind my dreams,
Nibbled the crumbs of my melodies,
Grew tame and sleek and fat;
Oh, but my heart knew ease
To feel the teeth of my rat!

Then came a night—and then a day—
I heard soft feet that scuttled away—
Rats leave the sinking ship, they say.

Views: 31

Solitude
by Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

Happy the man, whose wish and care
 A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air
         In his own ground.

Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,
Whose flocks supply him with attire;
Whose trees in summer yield him shade,
         In winter fire.

Blest, who can unconcern’dly find
Hours, days, and years slide soft away
In health of body, peace of mind,
         Quiet by day,

Sound sleep by night; study and ease
Together mixt, sweet recreation,
And innocence, which most does please
         With meditation.

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;
Thus unlamented let me die;
Steal from the world, and not a stone
         Tell where I lie.

Views: 21