Hot Sun, Cool Fire
by George Peele (1556-1596)
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 wandereth lightly.
Views: 50
Rocky Acres
by Robert Graves (1895-1985)
This is a wild land, country of my choice,
With harsh craggy mountain, moor ample and bare.
Seldom in these acres is heard any voice
But voice of cold water that runs here and there
Through rocks and lank heather growing without care.
No mice in the heath run nor no birds cry
For fear of the dark speck that floats in the sky.
He soars and he hovers rocking on his wings,
He scans his wide parish with a sharp eye,
He catches the trembling of small hidden things,
He tears them in pieces, dropping from the sky:
Tenderness and pity the land will deny,
Where life is but nourished from water and rock
A hardy adventure, full of fear and shock.
Time has never journeyed to this lost land,
Crakeberries and heather bloom out of date,
The rocks jut, the streams flow singing on either hand,
Careless if the season be early or late.
The skies wander overhead, now blue, now slate:
Winter would be known by his cold cutting snow
If June did not borrow his armour also.
Yet this is my country be loved by me best,
The first land that rose from Chaos and the Flood,
Nursing no fat valleys for comfort and rest,
Trampled by no hard hooves, stained with no blood.
Bold immortal country whose hill tops have stood
Strongholds for the proud gods when on earth they go,
Terror for fat burghers in far plains below.
Views: 47
De Catullo et Martiale
by Thomas Campion (1567-1620)
Cantabat Veneres meras Catullus;
quasvis sed quasi silva Martialis
miscet materias suis libellis,
laudes, stigmata, gratulationes,
contemptus, ioca, seria, ima, summa;
multis magnus hic est, bene ille cultis.
Views: 50
Ultimately
by Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
He tried to spit out the truth;
Dry mouthed at first,
He drooled and slobbed in the end;
Truth dribbling his chin.
Views: 30
Bonnie Dundee
by Walter Scott (1771-1832)
This poem, about a seventeenth-century Scottish nobleman, was set to an old traditional tune and has been recorded many times, for example by the Irish Rovers and Richard Dyer-Bennet.
Tae the lairds i’ convention ’twas Claverhouse spoke
E’er the Kings crown go down, there’ll be crowns to be broke;
Then let each cavalier who loves honour and me
Come follow the bonnet o’ bonnie Dundee.
Come fill up my cup, come fill up my can
Come saddle my horses and call out my men
Unhook the west port and let us gae free,
For it’s up wi’ the bonnets o’ bonnie Dundee!
Dundee he is mounted, he rides doon the street,
The bells they ring backwards, the drums they are beat,
But the Provost, douce man, says “Just e’en let him be
For the toon is well rid of that de’il o’ Dundee.”
Come fill up my cup, come fill up my can
Come saddle my horses and call out my men
Unhook the west port and let us gae free,
For it’s up wi’ the bonnets o’ bonnie Dundee!
There are hills beyond Pentland and lands beyond Forth,
Be there lairds i’ the south, there are chiefs i’ the north!
There are brave duniewassals, three thousand times three
Will cry “Hoy!” for the bonnets o’ bonnie Dundee.
Come fill up my cup, come fill up my can
Come saddle my horses and call out my men
Unhook the west port and let us gae free,
For it’s up wi’ the bonnets o’ bonnie Dundee!
Then awa’ to the hills, to the lea, to the rocks
E’er I own a usurper, I’ll couch wi’ the fox!
Then tremble, false Whigs, in the midst o’ your glee
Ye ha’ no seen the last o’ my bonnets and me.
Come fill up my cup, come fill up my can
Come saddle my horses and call out my men
Unhook the west port and let us gae free,
For it’s up wi’ the bonnets o’ bonnie Dundee!
Views: 42
I Sit and Sew
by Alice Dunbar-Nelson (1875-1935)
I sit and sew—a useless task it seems,
My hands grown tired, my head weighed down with dreams—
The panoply of war, the martial tred of men,
Grim-faced, stern-eyed, gazing beyond the ken
Of lesser souls, whose eyes have not seen Death,
Nor learned to hold their lives but as a breath—
But—I must sit and sew.
I sit and sew—my heart aches with desire—
That pageant terrible, that fiercely pouring fire
On wasted fields, and writhing grotesque things
Once men. My soul in pity flings
Appealing cries, yearning only to go
There in that holocaust of hell, those fields of woe—
But—I must sit and sew.
The little useless seam, the idle patch;
Why dream I here beneath my homely thatch,
When there they lie in sodden mud and rain,
Pitifully calling me, the quick ones and the slain?
You need me, Christ! It is no roseate dream
That beckons me—this pretty futile seam,
It stifles me—God, must I sit and sew?
Views: 60
The Sorrows of Werther
by William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863)
Werther had a love for Charlotte
Such as words could never utter;
Would you know how first he met her?
She was cutting bread and butter.
Charlotte was a married lady,
And a moral man was Werther,
And, for all the wealth of Indies,
Would do nothing for to hurt her.
So he sighed and pined and ogled,
And his passion boiled and bubbled,
Till he blew his silly brains out,
And no more was by it troubled.
Charlotte, having seen his body
Borne before her on a shutter,
Like a well-conducted person,
Went on cutting bread and butter.
Views: 72
Man Frail, and God Eternal
by Isaace Watts (1674-1748)
O God, our Help in ages past,
Our Hope for Years to come,
Our Shelter from the Stormy Blast,
And our eternal Home.
Under the Shadow of thy Throne
Thy Saints have dwelt secure;
Sufficient is thine Arm alone,
And our Defence is sure.
Before the Hills in order stood,
Or Earth receiv’d her Frame,
From everlasting Thou art God,
To endless Years the same.
Thy Word commands our Flesh to Dust,
Return, ye Sons of Men:
All Nations rose from Earth at first,
And turn to Earth again.
A thousand Ages in thy Sight
Are like an Evening gone;
Short as the Watch that ends the Night
Before the rising Sun.
The busy Tribes of Flesh and Blood
With all their Lives and Cares
Are carried downwards by thy Flood,
And lost in following Years.
Time, like an ever-rolling Stream,
Bears all its Sons away;
They fly forgotten as a Dream
Dies at the opening Day.
Like flow’ry Fields the Nations stand
Pleas’d with the Morning-light;
The Flowers beneath the Mower’s Hand
Ly withering e’er ’tis Night.
O God, our Help in Ages past,
Our Hope for Years to come,
Be thou our Guard while Troubles last,
And our eternal Home.
Views: 105
Träne in schwerer Krankheit
by Andreas Gryphius (1616-1664)
Mir ist, ich weiß nicht wie, ich seufftze für und für.
Ich weine Tag und Nacht; ich sitz in tausend Schmertzen;
Und tausend fürcht ich noch; die Kraft in meinem Herzen
Verschwindt, der Geist verschmacht’, die Hände sinken mir.
Die Wangen werden bleich, der munten Augen Zier
Vergeht gleich als der Schein der schon verbrannten Kerzen
Die Seele wird bestürmmt gleich wie die See im Märzen.
Was ist dies Leben doch, was sind wir, ich und ihr?
Was bilden wir uns ein, was wünschen wir zu haben?
Itzt sind wir hoch und groß, und morgen schon vergraben;
Itzt Blumen, morgen Kot. Wir sind ein Wind, ein Schaum.
Ein Nebel und ein Bach, ein Reif, ein Tau, ein Schatten;
Itzt was und morgen nichts. Und was sind unsre Taten
Als ein mit herber Angst durchaus vermischter Traum.
Views: 59
Fairy Song
by Winthrop Mackworth Praed (1802-1839)
He has conn’d the lesson now;
He has read the book of pain:
There are furrows on his brow;
I must make it smooth again.
Lo! I knock the spurs away;
Lo! I loosen belt and brand;
Hark! I hear the courser neigh
For his stall in Fairy-land.
Bring the cap, and bring the vest;
Buckle on his sandal shoon;
Fetch his memory from the chest
In the treasury of the moon.
I have taught him to be wise
For a little maiden’s sake;—
Lo! he opens his glad eyes,
Softly, slowly: Minstrel, wake!
Views: 40