Les Oiseaux de neige
by Louis-Honoré Fréchette (1839-1908)

Quand le rude Équinoxe, avec son froid cortège,
Quitte nos horizons moins inhospitaliers,
Sur nos champs de frimas s’abattent par milliers
Ces visiteurs ailés qu’on nomme oiseaux de neige.

De graines nulle part, nul feuillage aux halliers.
Contre la giboulée et nos vents de Norvège,
Seul le regard d’en haut les abrite, et protège
Ces courriers du soleil en butte aux oiseliers.

Chers petits voyageurs, sous le givre et la grêle,
Vous voltigez gaîment, et l’on voit sur votre aile
Luire un premier rayon du printemps attardé.

Allez, tourbillonnez autour des avalanches ;
Sans peur, aux flocons blancs mêlez vos plumes blanches :
Le faible que Dieu garde est toujours bien gardé.

Views: 14

Silence
by Marianne Moore (1887-1972)

My father used to say,
“Superior people never make long visits,
have to be shown Longfellow’s grave
or the glass flowers at Harvard.
Self-reliant like the cat—
that takes its prey to privacy,
the mouse’s limp tail hanging like a shoelace from its mouth—
they sometimes enjoy solitude,
and can be robbed of speech
by speech which has delighted them.
The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence;
not in silence, but restraint.”
Nor was he insincere in saying, “Make my house your inn.”
Inns are not residences.

Views: 11

Not I
by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

Some like drink
      In a pint pot,
Some like to think;
      Some not.

Strong Dutch cheese,
      Old Kentucky Rye,
Some like these;
      Not I.

Some like Poe,
      And others like Scott,
Some like Mrs. Stowe;
      Some not.

Some like to laugh,
      Some like to cry,
Some like chaff;
      Not I.

Views: 13

Detente sombra
by Juaa Inés de la Cruz (1651-1695)

Detente, sombra de mi bien esquivo,
imagen del hechizo que más quiero,
bella ilusión por quien alegre muero,
dulce ficción por quien penosa vivo.

Si al imán de tus gracias, atractivo,
sirve mi pecho de obediente acero,
¿para qué me enamoras lisonjero
si has de burlarme luego fugitivo?

Mas blasonar no puedes, satisfecho,
de que triunfa de mí tu tiranía:
que aunque dejas burlado el lazo estrecho

que tu forma fantástica ceñía,
poco importa burlar brazos y pecho
si te labra prisión mi fantasía.

Views: 13

Channel Fiting
by Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

That night your great guns, unawares,
Shook all our coffins as we lay,
And broke the chancel window-squares,
We thought it was the Judgment-day

And sat upright. While drearisome
Arose the howl of wakened hounds:
The mouse let fall the altar-crumb,
The worms drew back into the mounds,

The glebe cow drooled. Till God called, “No;
It’s gunnery practice out at sea
Just as before you went below;
The world is as it used to be:

“All nations striving strong to make
Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters
They do no more for Christés sake
Than you who are helpless in such matters.

“That this is not the judgment-hour
For some of them’s a blessed thing,
For if it were they’d have to scour
Hell’s floor for so much threatening….

“Ha, ha. It will be warmer when
I blow the trumpet (if indeed
I ever do; for you are men,
And rest eternal sorely need).”

So down we lay again. “I wonder,
Will the world ever saner be,”
Said one, “than when He sent us under
In our indifferent century!”

And many a skeleton shook his head.
“Instead of preaching forty year,”
My neighbour Parson Thirdly said,
“I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer.”

Again the guns disturbed the hour,
Roaring their readiness to avenge,
As far inland as Stourton Tower,
And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge.

Views: 10

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

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

In Isling town 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 wondering 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 dy’d.

Views: 9

When a Man Hath No Freedom
by George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824)
because today is World Freedom Day

When a man hath no freedom to fight for at home,
Let him combat for that of his neighbours;
Let him think of the glories of Greece and of Rome,
And get knock’d on the head for his labours.

To do good to mankind is the chivalrous plan,
And is always as nobly requited;
Then battle for freedom whenever you can,
And, if not shot or hang’d, you’ll be knighted.

Views: 9

The Oath
by Allen Tate (1899-1979)

It was near evening, the room was cold
Half dark; Uncle Ben’s brass bullet-mould
And powder-horn and Major Bogan’s face
Above the fire in the half-light plainly said:
There’s naught to kill but the animated dead.
Horn nor mould nor major follows the chase.
Being cold I urged Lytle to the fire
In the blank twilight with not much left untold
By two old friends when neither’s a great liar.
We sat down evenly in the smoky chill.
There’s precious little to say between day and dark,
Perhaps a few words on the implacable will
Of time sailing like a magic barque
Or something as fine for the amenities,
Till dusk seals the window, the fire grows bright,
And the wind saws the hill with a swarm of bees.
Now meditating a little on the firelight
We heard the darkness grapple with the night
And give an old man’s valedictory wheeze
From his westward breast between his polar jaws;
Then Lytle asked: Who are the dead?
Who are the living and the dead?
And nothing more was said.
So I, leaving Lytle to that dream,
Decided what it is in time that gnaws
The ageing fury of a mountain stream
When suddenly as an ignorant mind will do
I thought I heard the dark pounding its head
On a rock, crying: Who are the dead?
Then Lytle turned with an oath—By God it’s true!

Views: 8

November
by William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)

Yet one smile more, departing, distant sun!
One mellow smile through the soft vapoury air,
Ere, o’er the frozen earth, the loud winds run,
Or snows are sifted o’er the meadows bare.
One smile on the brown hills and naked trees,
And the dark rocks whose summer wreaths are cast,
And the blue Gentian flower, that, in the breeze,
Nods lonely, of her beauteous race the last.
Yet a few sunny days, in which the bee
Shall murmur by the hedge that skim the way,
The cricket chirp upon the russet lea,
And man delight to linger in thy ray.
Yet one rich smile, and we will try to bear
The piercing winter frost, and winds, and darkened air.

Views: 28

Harlem
by Langston Hughes (1901-1967)

What happens to a dream deferred?

      Does it dry up
      like a raisin in the sun?
      Or fester like a sore—
      And then run?
      Does it stink like rotten meat?
      Or crust and sugar over—
      like a syrupy sweet?

      Maybe it just sags
      like a heavy load.

      Or does it explode?

Views: 10