Poem of the day

Stand Whoso List
by Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542)

Stand whoso list upon the slipper top
Of court’s estates, and let me here rejoice
And use me quiet without let or stop,
Unknown in court, that hath such brackish joys.
In hidden place so let my days forth pass
That when my years be done withouten noise,
I may die aged after the common trace.
For him death grippeth right hard by the crop
That is much known of other, and of himself, alas,
Doth die unknown, dazed, with dreadful face.

Views: 30

Poem of the day

When I Have Fears
by John Keats (1795-1821)

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charactry,
Hold like rich garners the full ripen’d grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the fairy power
Of unreflecting love;—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

Views: 26

Poem of the day

Le Cap Trinité
byCharles Gill (1871-1918)

Ce rocher qui de Dieu montre la majesté,
Qui dresse sur le ciel ses trois gradins énormes,
Et verticalement divise en trois ses formes,
Il mérite trois fois son nom de Trinité.

Son flanc vertigineux, creusé de cicatrices
Et plein d’âpres reliefs qu’effleure le soleil,
Aux grimoires sacrés de l’Égypte est pareil,
Quand l’ombre et la lumière y mêlent leurs caprices.

Les bruns, les gris, les ors, les tendres violets,
À ces signes précis joignent des traits plus vagues,
Et le céleste azur y flotte au gré des vagues,
Qui dans les plis profonds dardent leurs gais reflets.

Est-ce quelque Titan, est-ce plutôt la foudre,
Qui voulut imprimer ici le mot “toujours”?
Quels sens recèlent donc ces étranges contours?
Pour la postérité quel problème à résoudre!

Ô Cap! en confiant au vertige des cieux
Notre globe éperdu dans la nuit séculaire,
Le Seigneur s’est penché sur ta page de pierre,
Digne de relater des faits prodigieux.

Il a mis sur ton front l’obscur secret des causes,
Les lois de la nature et ses frémissements,
Pendant qu’elle assignait leur forme aux éléments
Dans l’infini creuset de ses métamorphoses;

Et, scellant à jamais les arrêts du destin
Avec l’ardent burin de la foudre qui gronde,
Il a, dans ton granit, gravé le sort du monde,
En symboles trop grands pour le génie humain.

En signes trop profonds, pour que notre œil pénètre
La simple vérité des terrestres secrets,
Pendant que nous osons forger des mots abstraits
Et sonder le mystère insondable de l’être.

La Nature nous parle et nous l’interrompons!
Aveugles aux rayons de la sainte lumière,
Sourds aux enseignements antiques de la terre,
Nous ne connaissons pas le sol où nous rampons.

Nous n’avons pas assez contemplé les aurores,
Nous n’avons pas assez frémi devant la nuit,
Mornes vivants dont l’âme est en proie au vain bruit
Des savantes erreurs et des longs mots sonores!

En vain la Vérité s’offre à notre compas
Et la Création ouvre pour nous son livre:
Avides des secrets radieux qu’il nous livre,
Nous les cherchons ailleurs et ne les trouvons pas.

Nous n’avons pas appris le langage des cimes:
Nous ne comprenons pas ce que clament leur voix,
Quand les cris de l’enfer et du ciel à la fois
Semblent venir à nous dans l’écho des abîmes.

Et l’ange qui régit l’or, le rose et le bleu.
Pour nos yeux sans regard n’écarte pas ses voiles,
Quand le roi des rochers et le roi des étoiles
Nous parlent à midi dans le style de Dieu.

Views: 33

Poem of the day

Hillcrest
(To Mrs. Edward MacDowell)
by Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935)

No sound of any storm that shakes
Old island walls with older seas
Comes here where now September makes
An island in a sea of trees.

Between the sunlight and the shade
A man may learn till he forgets
The roaring of a world remade,
And all his ruins and regrets;

And if he still remembers here
Poor fights he may have won or lost,—
If he be ridden with the fear
Of what some other fight may cost,—

If, eager to confuse too soon,
What he has known with what may be,
He reads a planet out of tune
For cause of his jarred harmony,—

If here he venture to unroll
His index of adagios,
And he be given to console
Humanity with what he knows,—

He may by contemplation learn
A little more than what he knew,
And even see great oaks return
To acorns out of which they grew.

He may, if he but listen well,
Through twilight and the silence here,
Be told what there are none may tell
To vanity’s impatient ear;

And he may never dare again
Say what awaits him, or be sure
What sunlit labyrinth of pain
He may not enter and endure.

Who knows to-day from yesterday
May learn to count no thing too strange:
Love builds of what Time takes away,
Till Death itself is less than Change.

Who sees enough in his duress
May go as far as dreams have gone;
Who sees a little may do less
Than many who are blind have done;

Who sees unchastened here the soul
Triumphant has no other sight
Than has a child who sees the whole
World radiant with his own delight.

Far journeys and hard wandering
Await him in whose crude surmise
Peace, like a mask, hides everything
That is and has been from his eyes;

And all his wisdom is unfound,
Or like a web that error weaves
On airy looms that have a sound
No louder now than falling leaves.

Views: 49

Poem of the day

Les Agréables Pensées
by François Tristan l’Hermite (c. 1601-1655)

Mon plus secret conseil et mon doux entretien,
Pensez, chers confidents d’un amour si fidèle,
Tenez-moi compagnie et parlons d’Isabelle
Puisqu’aujourd’hui sa vue est mon souverain bien.

Représentez-la moi, dites-moi s’il est rien
D’aimable, de charmant et de rare comme Elle:
Et s’il peut jamais naître une fille assez belle
Pour avoir un Empire aussi grand que le sien.

Un cœur se peut-il rendre à de plus belles choses?
Ses yeux sont de Saphirs et sa bouche de Roses
De qui le vif éclat dure en toute saison.

O que ce réconfort flatte mes rêveries!
De voir comme les Cieux pour faire ma prison
Mirent des fleurs en œuvre avec des pierreries.

Views: 35

Poem of the day

At a Reading
by Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836-1907)

The spare professor, grave and bald,
Began his paper. It was called,
I think, “A Brief Historic Glance
At Russia, Germany, and France.”
A glance, but to my best belief
‘T was almost anything but brief–
A wide survey, in which the earth
Was seen before mankind had birth;
Strange monsters basked them in the sun,
Behemoth, armored glyptodon,
And in the dawn’s unpractised ray
The transient dodo winged its way;
Then, by degrees, through slit and slough,
We reached Berlin–I don’t know how.
The good Professor’s monotone
Had turned me into senseless stone
Instanter, but that near me sat
Hypatia in her new spring hat,
Blue-eyed, intent, with lips whose bloom
Lighted the heavy-curtained room.
Hypatia–ah, what lovely things
Are fashioned out of eighteen springs!
At first, in sums of this amount,
The eighteen winters do not count.
Just as my eyes were growing dim
With heaviness, I saw that slim,
Erect, elastic figure there,
Like a pond-lily taking air.
She looked so fresh, so wise, so neat,
So altogether crisp and sweet,
I quite forgot what Bismarck said,
And why the Emperor shook his head,
And how it was Von Moltke’s frown
Cost France another frontier town.
The only facts I took away
From the Professor’s theme that day
Were these: a forehead broad and low,
Such as antique sculptures show;
A chin to Greek perfection true;
Eyes of Astarte’s tender blue;
A high complection without fleck
Or flaw, and curls about her neck.

Views: 27

Poem of the day

Notte d’Inverno
by Giosuè Carducci (1835-1907)

Innanzi, innanzi. Per le foscheggianti
Coste la neve ugual luce e si stende,
E cede e stride sotto il piè: d’avanti
Vapora il sospir mio che l’aer fende.

Ogni altro tace. Corre tra le stanti
Nubi la luna sul gran bianco, e orrende
L’ombre disegna di quel pin che tende
Cruccioso al suolo informe i rami infranti,

Come pensier di morte desïosi.
Cingimi, o bruma, e gela de l’interno
Senso i frangenti che tempestan forti;

Ed emerge il pensier su quei marosi
Naufrago, ed a ’l ciel grida: O notte, o inverno,
Che fanno giú ne le lor tombe i morti?

Views: 27

Poem of the day

A Prairie Water Colour
by Duncan Campbell Scott (1862-1947)

Beside the slew the poplars play
In double lines of silver-grey: —
A trembling in the silver trees
A shadow-trembling in the slew.
Standing clear above the hill
The snow-grey clouds are still,
Floating there idle as light;
Beyond, the sky is almost white
Under the pure deep zenith-blue.
Acres of summer-fallow meet
Acres of growing gold-green wheat
That ripen in the heat.
Where a disc-harrow tears the soil,
Up the long slope six horses toil,
The driver, one with the machine; —
The group is dimly seen
For as they go a cloud of dust
Comes like a spirit out of earth
And follows where they go.
Upward they labour, drifting slow,
The disc-rims sparkle through the veil;
Now upon the topmost height
The dust grows pale,
The group springs up in vivid light
And, dipping below the line of sight,
Is lost to view.
Yet still the little cloud is there,
All dusky-luminous in air,
Then thins and settles on the land
And lets the sunlight through.
All is content. The fallow field
Is waiting there till next year’s yield
Shall top the rise with ripening grain,
When the green-gold harvest plain
Shall break beneath the harrow.
Still-purple, growing-gold they lie,
The crop and summer fallow. The vast sky
Holds all in one pure round of blue —
And nothing moves except the play
Of silver-grey in the poplar trees
Of shadow in the slew.

Views: 28

Poem of the day

Two in the Campagna
by Robert Browning (1812-1889)

                  I

I wonder do you feel to-day
      As I have felt since, hand in hand,
We sat down on the grass, to stray
      In spirit better through the land,
This morn of Rome and May?

                  II

For me, I touched a thought, I know,
      Has tantalized me many times,
(Like turns of thread the spiders throw
      Mocking across our path) for rhymes
To catch at and let go.

                  III

Help me to hold it! First it left
      The yellowing fennel, run to seed
There, branching from the brickwork’s cleft,
      Some old tomb’s ruin: yonder weed
Took up the floating weft,

                  IV

Where one small orange cup amassed
      Five beetles,—blind and green they grope
Among the honey-meal: and last,
      Everywhere on the grassy slope
I traced it. Hold it fast!

                  V

The champaign with its endless fleece
      Of feathery grasses everywhere!
Silence and passion, joy and peace,
      An everlasting wash of air—
Rome’s ghost since her decease.

                  VI

Such life here, through such lengths of hours,
      Such miracles performed in play,
Such primal naked forms of flowers,
      Such letting nature have her way
While heaven looks from its towers!

                  VII

How say you? Let us, O my dove,
      Let us be unashamed of soul,
As earth lies bare to heaven above!
      How is it under our control
To love or not to love?

                  VIII

I would that you were all to me,
      You that are just so much, no more.
Nor yours nor mine, nor slave nor free!
      Where does the fault lie? What the core
O’ the wound, since wound must be?

                  IX

I would I could adopt your will,
      See with your eyes, and set my heart
Beating by yours, and drink my fill
      At your soul’s springs,—your part my part
In life, for good and ill.

                  X

No. I yearn upward, touch you close,
      Then stand away. I kiss your cheek,
Catch your soul’s warmth,—I pluck the rose
      And love it more than tongue can speak—
Then the good minute goes.

                  XI

Already how am I so far
      Out of that minute? Must I go
Still like the thistle-ball, no bar,
      Onward, whenever light winds blow,
Fixed by no friendly star?

                  XII

Just when I seemed about to learn!
      Where is the thread now? Off again!
The old trick! Only I discern—
      Infinite passion, and the pain
Of finite hearts that yearn.

Views: 36