La Jeune Captive
by André Chénier (1762-1794)

“L’épi naissant mûrit de la faux respecté;
Sans crainte du pressoir, le pampre tout l’été
         Boit les doux présents de l’aurore;
Et moi, comme lui belle, et jeune comme lui,
Quoi que l’heure présente ait de trouble et d’ennui,
         Je ne veux point mourir encore.

“Qu’un stoïque aux yeux secs vole embrasser la mort,
Moi je pleure et j’espère; au noir souffle du nord
         Je plie et relève ma tête.
S’il est des jours amers, il en est de si doux!
Hélas! quel miel jamais n’a laissé de dégoûts?
         Quelle mer n’a point de tempête?

“L’illusion féconde habite dans mon sein.
D’une prison sur moi les murs pèsent en vain,
         J’ai les ailes de l’espérance;
Échappée aux réseaux de l’oiseleur cruel,
Plus vive, plus heureuse, aux campagnes du ciel
         Philomèle chante et s’élance.

“Est-ce à moi de mourir? Tranquille je m’endors,
Et tranquille je veille, et ma veille aux remords
         Ni mon sommeil ne sont en proie.
Ma bienvenue au jour me rit dans tous les yeux;
Sur des fronts abattus mon aspect dans ces lieux
         Ranime presque de la joie.

“Mon beau voyage encore est si loin de sa fin!
Je pars, et des ormeaux qui bordent le chemin
         J’ai passé les premiers à peine.
Au banquet de la vie à peine commencé,
Un instant seulement mes lèvres ont pressé
         La coupe en mes mains encor pleine.

“Je ne suis qu’au printemps, je veux voir la moisson;
Et comme le soleil, de saison en saison,
         Je veux achever mon année.
Brillante sur ma tige et l’honneur du jardin,
Je n’ai vu luire encor que les feux du matin:
         Je veux achever ma journée.

“Ô mort! tu peux attendre; éloigne, éloigne-toi;
Va consoler les cœurs que la honte, l’effroi,
         Le pâle désespoir dévore.
Pour moi Palès encore a des asiles verts,
Les Amours des baisers, les Muses des concerts;
         Je ne veux point mourir encore.”

Ainsi, triste et captif, ma lyre toutefois
S’éveillait, écoutant ces plaintes, cette voix,
         Ces vœux d’une jeune captive;
Et secouant le faix de mes jours languissants,
Aux douces lois des vers je pliai les accents
         De sa bouche aimable et naïve.

Ces chants, de ma prison témoins harmonieux,
Feront à quelque amant des loisirs studieux
         Chercher quelle fut cette belle:
La grâce décorait son front et ses discours,
Et, comme elle, craindront de voir finir leurs jours
         Ceux qui les passeront près d’elle.

Views: 23

Poets Love Nature
by John Clare (1793-1864)

Poets love Nature, and themselves are love.
Though scorn of fools, and mock of idle pride.
The vile in nature worthless deeds approve,
They court the vile and spurn all good beside.
Poets love Nature; like the calm of Heaven,
Like Heaven’s own love, her gifts spread far and wide:
In all her works there are no signs of leaven,
Her flowers, like pleasures, have their season’s birth,
They are her very Scriptures upon earth,
And teach us simple mirth where’er we go.
Even in prison they can solace me,
For where they bloom God is, and I am free.

Views: 37

Love Equals Swift and Slow
by Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

Love equals swift and slow,
⁠      And high and low,
Racer and lame,
⁠      The hunter and his game.

Views: 41

To Sally
by John Quincy Adams (1767-1848)

The man in righteousness arrayed,
A pure and blameless liver,
Needs not the keen Toledo blade,
Nor venom-freighted quiver.
What though he wind his toilsome way
O’er regions wild and weary—
Through Zara’s burning desert stray,
Or Asia’s jungles dreary:

What though he plough the billowy deep
By lunar light, or solar,
Meet the resistless Simoon’s sweep,
Or iceberg circumpolar!
In bog or quagmire deep and dank
His foot shall never settle;
He mounts the summit of Mont Blanc,
Or Popocatapetl.

On Chimborazo’s breathless height
He treads o’er burning lava;
Or snuffs the Bohan Upas blight,
The deathful plant of Java.
Through every peril he shall pass,
By Virtue’s shield protected;
And still by Truth’s unerring glass
His path shall be directed.

Else wherefore was it, Thursday last,
While strolling down the valley,
Defenceless, musing as I passed
A canzonet to Sally,
A wolf, with mouth-protruding snout,
Forth from the thicket bounded—
I clapped my hands and raised a shout—
He heard—and fled—confounded.

Tangier nor Tunis never bred
An animal more crabbed;
Nor Fez, dry-nurse of lions, fed
A monster half so rabid;
Nor Ararat so fierce a beast
Has seen since days of Noah;
Nor stronger, eager for a feast,
The fell constrictor boa.

Oh! place me where the solar beam
Has scorched all verdure vernal;
Or on the polar verge extreme,
Blocked up with ice eternal—
Still shall my voice’s tender lays
Of love remain unbroken;
And still my charming Sally praise,
Sweet smiling and sweet spoken.

Views: 27

A Summer Night
by Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)

In the deserted, moon-blanched street,
How lonely rings the echo of my feet!
Those windows, which I gaze at, frown,
Silent and white, unopening down,
Repellent as the world; but see,
A break between the housetops shows
The moon! and lost behind her, fading dim
Into the dewy dark obscurity
Down at the far horizon’s rim,
Doth a whole tract of heaven disclose!

And to my mind the thought
Is on a sudden brought
Of a past night, and a far different scene.
Headlands stood out into the moonlit deep
As clearly as at noon;
The spring-tide’s brimming flow
Heaved dazzlingly between;
Houses, with long white sweep,
Girdled the glistening bay;
Behind, through the soft air,
The blue haze-cradled mountains spread away.
That night was far more fair—
But the same restless pacings to and fro,
And the same vainly throbbing heart was there,
And the same bright, calm moon.

And the calm moonlight seems to say,—
Hast thou, then, still the old unquiet breast,
Which neither deadens into rest,
Nor ever feels the fiery glow
That whirls the spirit from itself away,
But fluctuates to and fro,
Nether by passion quite possessed,
And never quite benumbed by the world’s sway?
And I, I know not if to pray
Still to be what I am, or yield, and be
Like all the other men I see.

For most men in a brazen prison live,
Where, in the sun’s hot eye,
With heads bent o’er their toil, they languidly
Their lives to some unmeaning task-work give,
Dreaming of naught beyond their prison-wall.
And as, year after year,
Fresh products of their barren labor fall
From their tired hands, and rest
Never yet comes more near.
Gloom settles slowly down over their breast.
And while they try to stem
The waves of mournful thought by which they are prest,
Death in their prison reaches them,
Unfreed, having seen nothing, still unblest.

And the rest, a few,
Escape their prison, and depart
On the wide ocean of life anew.
There the freed prisoner, where’er his heart
Listeth, will sail;
Nor doth he know how there prevail,
Despotic on that sea,
Trade-winds which cross it from eternity.
Awhile he holds some false way, undebarred
By thwarting signs, and braves
The freshening wind and blackening waves.
And then the tempest strikes him; and between
The lightning-bursts is seen
Only a driving wreck,
And the pale master on his spar-strewn deck
With anguished face and flying hair,
Grasping the rudder hard,
Still bent to make some port, he knows not where,
Still standing for some false, impossible shore.
And sterner comes the roar
Of sea and wind; and through the deepening gloom
Fainter and fainter wreck and helmsman loom,
And he too disappears, and comes no more.

Is there no life, but these alone?
Madman or slave, must man be one?

Plainness and clearness without shadow of stain!
Clearness divine!
Ye heavens, whose pure dark regions have no sign
Of languor, though so calm, and though so great
Are yet untroubled and unpassionate;
Who, though so noble, share in the world’s toil,
And, though so tasked, keep free from dust and soil!
I will not say that your mild deeps retain
A tinge, it may be, of their silent pain
Who have longed deeply once, and longed in vain;
But I will rather say that you remain
A world above man’s head, to let him see
How boundless might his soul’s horizons be,
How vast, yet of what clear transparency!
How it were good to live there, and breathe free;
How fair a lot to fill
Is left to each man still!

Views: 28

Song
by Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)

When I am dead, my dearest,
      Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou 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 nor set,
Haply I may remember,
      And haply may forget.

Views: 29

The Poplar
by Richard Aldington (1892-1962)

Why do you always stand there shivering
Between the white stream and the road?

The people pass through the dust
On bicycles, in carts, in motor-cars;
The waggoners go by at dawn;
The lovers walk on the grass path at night.

Stir from your roots, walk, poplar!
You are more beautiful than they are.

I know that the white wind loves you,
Is always kissing you and turning up
The white lining of your green petticoat.
The sky darts through you like blue rain,
And the grey rain drips on your flanks
And loves you.
And I have seen the moon
Slip his silver penny into your pocket
As you straightened your hair;
And the white mist curling and hesitating
Like a bashful lover about your knees.

I know you, poplar;
I have watched you since I was ten.
But if you had a little real love,
A little strength,
You would leave your nonchalant idle lovers
And go walking down the white road
Behind the waggoners.

There are beautiful beeches
Down beyond the hill.
Will you always stand there shivering?

Views: 32

Fare Thee Well
by Lord Byron (1788-1824)

Fare thee well! and if for ever—
⁠      Still for ever, fare thee well—
Even though unforgiving, never
⁠      ’Gainst thee shall my heart rebel.—
Would that breast were bared before thee
⁠      Where thy head so oft hath lain,
While that placid sleep came o’er thee
⁠      Which thou ne’er canst know again:
Would that breast, by thee glanced over,
⁠      Every inmost thought could show!⁠
Then thou would’st at last discover
⁠      ’Twas not well to spurn it so.
Though the world for this commend thee—
⁠      Though it smile upon the blow,
Even its praises must offend thee,
⁠      Founded on another’s woe—
Though my many faults defaced me,
⁠      Could no other arm be found,
Than the one which once embraced me,
⁠      To inflict a cureless wound!⁠
Yet—oh yet—thyself deceive not—
⁠      Love may sink by slow decay,
But by sudden wrench, believe not
⁠      Hearts can thus be torn away:
Still thine own its life retaineth—
⁠      Still must mine—though bleeding—beat,
And the undying thought which paineth
⁠      Is—that we no more may meet—
These are words of deeper sorrow
⁠      Than the wail above the dead;⁠
Both shall live—but every morrow
⁠      Wake us from a widowed bed.
And when thou would’st solace gather—
⁠      When our child’s first accents flow—
Wilt thou teach her to say ‛Father!’
⁠      Though his care she must forego?
When her little hands shall press thee—
⁠      When her lip to thine is pressed—
Think of him whose prayer shall bless thee—
⁠      Think of him thy love had blessed.⁠
Should her lineaments resemble
⁠      Those thou never more may’st see—
Then thy heart will softly tremble
⁠      With a pulse yet true to me.—
All my faults perchance thou knowest—
⁠      All my madness—none can know;
All my hopes—where’er thou goest—
⁠      Wither—yet with thee they go.—
Every feeling hath been shaken;
⁠      Pride—which not a world could bow—
Bows to thee—by thee forsaken,
⁠      Even my soul forsakes me now.—
But ’tis done—all words are idle—
⁠      Words from me are vainer still;
But the thoughts we cannot bridle
⁠      Force their way without the will.—
Fare thee well!—thus disunited—
⁠      Torn from every nearer tie—
Seared in heart—and lone—and blighted—
⁠      More than this I scarce can die.

Views: 27

Jenny Kiss’d Me
by Leigh Hunt (1784-1859)
because today is International Kissing Day

Jenny kiss’d me when we met,
      Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
      Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I’m weary, say I’m sad,
      Say that health and wealth have miss’d me,
Say I’m growing old, but add
            Jenny kiss’d me.

Views: 26

“ I walk of grey noons by the old canal”
by Thomas Caulfield Irwin (1823-1892)

I walk of grey noons by the old canal
      Where rain-drops patter on the autumn leaves,
Now watching from some ivied orchard wall
      In slopes of stubble figures pile the sheaves;
Or under banks in shadow of their grass,
Blue water-flies by starts jettingly pass
’Mid large leaves level on the glassy cool;
      Or noiseless dizzy midges winking round
The yellow sallows of the meadow pool;
      While into cloudy silence ebbs each sound,
And sifts the moulting sunlight warm and mellow
O’er sandy beach remote, or slumberous flood,
Or rooky, red brick mansion by the wood,
      Mossed gate, or farmyard hay-stacks tanned and yellow.

Views: 28