The Negro’s Complaint
by William Cowper (1731-1800)

Forced from home and all its pleasures,
      Afric’s coast I left forlorn;
To increase a stranger’s treasures,
      O’er the raging billows borne.
Men from England bought and sold me,
      Paid my price in paltry gold;
But, though slave they have enroll’d me
      Minds are never to be sold.

Still in thought as free as ever,
      What are England’s rights, I ask,
Me from my delights to sever,
      Me to torture, me to task?
Fleecy locks and black complexion
      Cannot forfeit nature’s claim;
Skins may differ, but affection
      Dwells in white and black the same.

Why did all-creating Nature
      Make the plant for which we toil?
Sighs must fan it, tears must water,
      Sweat of ours must dress the soil.
Think, ye masters iron-hearted,
      Lolling at your jovial boards,
Think how many backs have smarted
      For the sweets your cane affords.

Is there, as ye sometimes tell us,
      Is there One who reigns on high?
Has he bid you buy and sell us,
      Speaking from his throne, the sky?
Ask him, if your knotted scourges,
      Matches, blood-extorting screws,
Are the means that duty urges
      Agents of his will to use?

Hark! he answers—wild tornadoes,
      Strewing yonder sea with wrecks;
Wasting towns, plantations, meadows,
      Are the voice with which he speaks.
He, foreseeing what vexations
      Afric’s sons should undergo,
Fix’d their tyrants’ habitations
      Where his whirlwinds answer—no.

By our blood in Afric wasted,
      Ere our necks received the chain;
By the miseries that we tasted,
      Crossing in our barks the main;
By our sufferings, since ye brought us
      To the man-degrading mart,
All sustain’d by patience, taught us
      Only by a broken heart;

Deem our nation brutes no longer,
      Till some reason ye shall find
Worthier of regard, and stronger
      Than the colour of our kind.
Slaves of gold, whose sordid dealings
      Tarnish all your boasted powers,
Prove that you have human feelings,
      Ere you proudly question ours!

Views: 47

God
by Issac Rosenberg (1890-1918)

In his malodorous brain what slugs and mire,
Lanthorned in his oblique eyes, guttering burned!
His body lodged a rat where men nursed souls.
The world flashed grape-green eyes of a foiled cat
To him. On fragments of an old shrunk power,
On shy and maimed, on women wrung awry,
He lay, a bullying hulk, to crush them more.
But when one, fearless, turned and clawed like bronze,
Cringing was easy to blunt these stern paws,
And he would weigh the heavier on those after.

Who rests in God’s mean flattery now? Your wealth
Is but his cunning to make death more hard.
Your iron sinews take more pain in breaking.
And he has made the market for your beauty
Too poor to buy, although you die to sell.
Only that he has never heard of sleep;
And when the cats come out the rats are sly.
Here we are safe till he slinks in at dawn

But he has gnawed a fibre from strange roots,
And in the morning some pale wonder ceases.
Things are not strange and strange things are forgetful.
Ah! if the day were arid, somehow lost
Out of us, but it is as hair of us,
And only in the hush no wind stirs it.
And in the light vague trouble lifts and breathes,
And restlessness still shadows the lost ways.
The fingers shut on voices that pass through,
Where blind farewells are taken easily ….

Ah! this miasma of a rotting God!

Views: 49

Roses
by George Eliot (1819-1880)

You love the roses–so do I. I wish
The sky would rain down roses, as they rain
From off the shaken bush. Why will it not?
Then all the valley would be pink and white
And soft to tread on. They would fall as light
As feathers, smelling sweet; and it would be
Like sleeping and like waking, all at once!

Views: 42

I May, I Might, I Must
by Marianne Moore (1887-1972)

If you will tell me why the fen
appears impassable, I then
will tell you why I think that I
can get across it if I try.

Views: 42

Je ne suis pas Seul
by Paul Éluard (1893-152)

Chargée
De fruits légers aux lèvres
Parée
De mille fleurs variées
Glorieuse
Dans les bras du soleil
Heureuse
D’un oiseau familier
Ravie
D’une goutte de pluie
Plus belle
Que le ciel du matin
Fidèle

Je parle d’un jardin
Je rêve

Mais j’aime justement.

Views: 33

Wishes
by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

Go, little book, and wish to all
Flowers in the garden, meat in the hall,
A bin of wine, a spice of wit,
A house with lawns enclosing it,
A living river by the door,
A nightingale in the sycamore!

Views: 40

The Outlaw’s Song
by Joanna Baillie (1760-1851)

The chough and crow to roost are gone,
      The owl sits on the tree,
The hush’d wind wails with feeble moan,
      Like infant charity.
The wild-fire dances on the fen,
      The red star sheds its ray;
Uprouse ye then, my merry men!
      It is our op’ning day.

Both child and nurse are fast asleep,
      And closed is every flower,
And winking tapers faintly peep
      High from my lady’s bower;
Bewilder’d hinds with shorten’d ken
      Shrink on their murky way;
Uprouse ye then, my merry men!
      It is our op’ning day.

Nor board nor garner own we now,
      Nor roof nor latched door,
Nor kind mate, bound by holy vow
      To bless a good man’s store;
Noon lulls us in a gloomy den,
      And night is grown our day;
Uprouse ye then, my merry men!
      And use it as ye may.

Views: 44

Los heraldos negros
by César Valleyo (1892-1938)

Hay golpes en la vida, tan fuertes… ¡Yo no sé!
Golpes como del odio de Dios; como si ante ellos,
la resaca de todo lo sufrido
se empozara en el alma… ¡Yo no sé!

Son pocos; pero son… Abren zanjas oscuras
en el rostro más fiero y en el lomo más fuerte.
Serán tal vez los potros de bárbaros Atilas;
o los heraldos negros que nos manda la muerte.

Son las caídas hondas de los Cristos del alma,
de alguna fe adorable que el Destino blasfema.
Esos golpes sangrientos son las crepitaciones
de algún pan que en la puerta del horno se nos quema.

Y el hombre… ¡Pobre… pobre!. Vuelve los ojos, como
cuando por sobre el hombro nos llama una palmada;
vuelve los ojos locos, y todo lo vivido
se empoza, como charco de culpa, en la mirada.

Hay golpes en la vida, tan fuertes… ¡Yo no sé!

Views: 34

The Hair-Tonic Bottle
by Benjamin Franklin King, Jr. (1857-1894)

How dear to my heart is the old village drugstore,
      When tired and thirsty it comes to my view.
The wide-spreading sign that asks you to “Try it,”
      Vim, Vaseline, Vermifuge, Hop Bitters, too.
The old rusty stove and the cuspidor by it,
      That little back room. Oh! you’ve been there yourself,
And ofttimes have gone for the doctor’s prescription,
      But tackled the bottle that stood on the shelf.
                  The friendly old bottle,
                  The plain-labeled bottle,
The “Hair-Tonic” bottle that stood on the shelf.

How oft have I seized it with hands that were glowing,
      And guzzled awhile ere I set off for home;
I owned the whole earth all that night, but next morning
      My head felt as big as the Capitol’s dome.
And then how I hurried away to receive it,
      The druggist would smile o’er his poisonous pelf,
And laugh as he poured out his unlicensed bitters,
      And filled up the bottle that stood on the shelf.
                   The unlicensed bottle,
                   The plain-labeled bottle,
That “Hair-Tonic” bottle that stood on the shelf.

Views: 50

Wo?
by Heinrich Heine (1797-1856)

Wo wird einst des Wandermüden
Letzte Ruhestätte sein?
Unter Palmen in dem Süden?
Unter Linden an dem Rhein?

Werd’ ich wo in einer Wüste
Eingescharrt von fremder Hand?
Oder ruh’ ich an der Küste
Eines Meeres in dem Sand?

Immerhin! mich wird umgeben
Gotteshimmel dort wie hier,
Und als Totenlampen schweben
Nachts die Sterne über mir.

Views: 38