A poem a day

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

TO THE DIVINE SPIRIT

by: John Stuart Blackie (1809-1895)




SPIRIT that shaped the formless chaos,
Breath that stirred the sluggish deep,
When the primal crude creation
Started from its dateless sleep;
Spirit that heaved the granite mountains
From the central fiery wells,
Breath that drew the rolling rivers
From the welkin's dewy cells,
Spirit of motion,
Earth and ocean
Moulding into various life,
Within, without us,
And round about us
Weaving all in friendly strife:
Come, O come, thou heavenly guest,
Shape a new world within my breast!

Spirit that taught the holy fathers
Wandering through the desert drear,
To know and feel, through myriad marchings,
One eternal presence near.
Breath that touched the Hebrew prophets'
Lips with words of wingèd fire,
Through the dubious gloom of ages,
Kindling hope and high desire;
Spirit revealing
To pure feeling,
In the inward parts of man,
Fitful-shining
Dim-divining
Vast foreshadowings of Thy plan;
Come, O come, thou prophet guest,
Watch and wait within my breast!

Spirit that o'er Thine own Messiah
Hovered like a brooding dove,
When Earth's haughty lords he conquered,
By the peaceful march of love.
Breath that hushed loud-vaunting Caesars,
And in triumph yoked to Thee
Iron Rome, and savage Scythia,
Bonded brethren and the free.
Spirit of union,
And communion
Of devoted heart with heart,
Pure and holy,
Sure and slowly
Working out thy boastless part:
Come, thou calmly-conquering guest,
Rule and reign within my breast!

Spirit that, when free-thoughted Europe
With the triple-crowned despot strove,
In the gusty Saxon's spirit
Thy soul-stirring music wove;
Then when pride's piled architecture
At a poor monk's truthful word
Crashing fell, and thrones were shaken
At the whisper of the Lord.
Spirit deep-lurking,
Secret-working
Weaver of strange circumstance,
All whose doing
Is rise or ruin
Named by shallow mortals chance;
Come, let fruitful deeds attest
Thy plastic virtue, in my breast!

Spirit, that sway'st the will of mortals,
Every wish, and every hope,
Shaping to Thy forethought purpose
All their striving, all their scope.
Central tide that heavest onward
Wave and wavelet, surge and spray,
Making wrath of man to praise Thee,
And his pride to pave Thy way:
Spirit that workest,
Where thou lurkest,
Death from life, and day from night,
Peace from warring,
And from jarring,
Songs of triumph and delight;
Come, O come, Thou heavenly guest,
Work all Thy will within my breast!



"To the Divine Spirit" is reprinted from The Selected Poems of John Stuart Blackie.
Ed. Archibald Stodart Walker. London: John Macqueen, 1896

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

A deep one and a dark one that impressed me greatly.--Tyr
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De Profundis

--------------------------------- by Georg Trakl


There is a stubble field on which a black rain falls.
There is a tree which, brown, stands lonely here.
There is a hissing wind which haunts deserted huts---
How sad this evening.

Past the village pond
The gentle orphan still gathers scanty ears of corn.
Golden and round her eyes are gazing in the dusk
And her lap awaits the heavenly bridegroom.

Returning home
Shepherds found the sweet body
Decayed in the bramble bush.

A shade I am remote from sombre hamlets.
The silence of God
I drank from the woodland well.

On my forehead cold metal forms.
Spiders look for my heart.
There is a light that fails in my mouth.

At night I found myself upon a heath,
Thick with garbage and the dust of stars.
In the hazel copse
Crystal angels have sounded once more.

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

Prayer at Sunrise


James Weldon Johnson, 1871 - 1928
.



Now thou art risen, and thy day begun.
How shrink the shrouding mists before thy face,
As up thou spring’st to thy diurnal race!
How darkness chases darkness to the west,
As shades of light on light rise radiant from thy crest!
For thee, great source of strength, emblem of might,
In hours of darkest gloom there is no night.
Thou shinest on though clouds hide thee from sight,
And through each break thou sendest down thy light.

O greater Maker of this Thy great sun,
Give me the strength this one day’s race to run,
Fill me with light, fill me with sun-like strength,
Fill me with joy to rob the day its length.
Light from within, light that will outward shine,
Strength to make strong some weaker heart than mine,
Joy to make glad each soul that feels its touch;
Great Father of the sun, I ask this much.

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

To the Reader of These Sonnets
---------------------------------------- by Michael Drayton


Into these Loves who but for Passion looks,
At this first sight here let him lay them by
And seek elsewhere, in turning other books,
Which better may his labor satisfy.
No far-fetch'd sigh shall ever wound my breast,
Love from mine eye a tear shall never wring,
Nor in Ah me's my whining sonnets drest;
A libertine, fantasticly I sing.
My verse is the true image of my mind,
Ever in motion, still desiring change,
And as thus to variety inclin'd,
So in all humours sportively I range.
My Muse is rightly of the English strain,
That cannot long one fashion entertain.

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

A Lost Angel
-------------------------------------------- by Ellis Parker Butler


When first we met she seemed so white
I feared her;
As one might near a spirit bright
I neared her;
An angel pure from heaven above
I dreamed her,
And far too good for human love
I deemed her.
A spirit free from mortal taint
I thought her,
And incense as unto a saint
I brought her.

Well, incense burning did not seem
To please her,
And insolence I feared she’d deem
To squeeze her;
Nor did I dare for that same why
To kiss her,
Lest, shocked, she’d cause my eager eye
To miss her.
I sickened thinking of some way
To win her,
When lo! she asked me, one fine day,
To dinner!

Twas thus that made of common flesh
I found her,
And in a mortal lover’s mesh
I wound her.
Embraces, kisses, loving looks
I gave her,
And buying bon-bons, flowers and books,
I save her;
For her few honest, human taints
I love her,
Nor would I change for all the saints
Above her
Those eyes, that little face, that so
Endear her,
And all the human joy I know
When near her;
And I am glad, when to my breast
I press her,
She’s just a woman, like the rest,
God bless her!
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"And I am glad, when to my breast
I press her,
She’s just a woman, like the rest,
God bless her!"

When you so dearly love your wife the--"like all the rest"-- never applies.
To find that treasure, that person is a wonderful blessing. I now know...---Tyr

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

Loss And Gain
-------------------------------by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Virtue runs before the muse
And defies her skill,
She is rapt, and doth refuse
To wait a painter's will.

Star-adoring, occupied,
Virtue cannot bend her,
Just to please a poet's pride,
To parade her splendor.

The bard must be with good intent
No more his, but hers,
Throw away his pen and paint,
Kneel with worshippers.

Then, perchance, a sunny ray
From the heaven of fire,
His lost tools may over-pay,
And better his desire.

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

The Palace of Humbug by Lewis Carroll
Lays of Mystery,
Imagination, and Humor
--------------------------------------------------------by Lewis Carroll

Number 1

I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls,
And each damp thing that creeps and crawls
Went wobble-wobble on the walls.

Faint odours of departed cheese,
Blown on the dank, unwholesome breeze,
Awoke the never ending sneeze.

Strange pictures decked the arras drear,
Strange characters of woe and fear,
The humbugs of the social sphere.

One showed a vain and noisy prig,
That shouted empty words and big
At him that nodded in a wig.

And one, a dotard grim and gray,
Who wasteth childhood's happy day
In work more profitless than play.

Whose icy breast no pity warms,
Whose little victims sit in swarms,
And slowly sob on lower forms.

And one, a green thyme-honoured Bank,
Where flowers are growing wild and rank,
Like weeds that fringe a poisoned tank.

All birds of evil omen there
Flood with rich Notes the tainted air,
The witless wanderer to snare.

The fatal Notes neglected fall,
No creature heeds the treacherous call,
For all those goodly Strawn Baits Pall.

The wandering phantom broke and fled,
Straightway I saw within my head
A vision of a ghostly bed,

Where lay two worn decrepit men,
The fictions of a lawyer's pen,
Who never more might breathe again.

The serving-man of Richard Roe
Wept, inarticulate with woe:
She wept, that waiting on John Doe.

"Oh rouse", I urged, "the waning sense
With tales of tangled evidence,
Of suit, demurrer, and defence."

"Vain", she replied, "such mockeries:
For morbid fancies, such as these,
No suits can suit, no plea can please."

And bending o'er that man of straw,
She cried in grief and sudden awe,
Not inappropriately, "Law!"

The well-remembered voice he knew,
He smiled, he faintly muttered "Sue!"
(Her very name was legal too.)

The night was fled, the dawn was nigh:
A hurricane went raving by,
And swept the Vision from mine eye.

Vanished that dim and ghostly bed,
(The hangings, tape; the tape was red happy
'Tis o'er, and Doe and Roe are dead!

Oh, yet my spirit inly crawls,
What time it shudderingly recalls
That horrid dream of marble halls!
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We today are not use to humor having such great depth and even darkness IMHO .
Whereas those educated long ago had a greater foundation to judge and to create from IMHO. -Tyr