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Thread: A poem a day

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    Three Years She Grew
    ------ By William Wordsworth
    Three years she grew in sun and shower,
    Then Nature said, "A lovelier flower
    On earth was never sown;
    This Child I to myself will take;
    She shall be mine, and I will make
    A Lady of my own.

    "Myself will to my darling be
    Both law and impulse: and with me
    The Girl, in rock and plain,
    In earth and heaven, in glade and bower,
    Shall feel an overseeing power
    To kindle or restrain.

    "She shall be sportive as the fawn
    That wild with glee across the lawn
    Or up the mountain springs;
    And hers shall be the breathing balm,
    And hers the silence and the calm
    Of mute insensate things.

    "The floating clouds their state shall lend
    To her; for her the willow bend;
    Nor shall she fail to see
    Even in the motions of the Storm
    Grace that shall mould the Maiden's form
    By silent sympathy.

    "The stars of midnight shall be dear
    To her; and she shall lean her ear
    In many a secret place
    Where rivulets dance their wayward round,
    And beauty born of murmuring sound
    Shall pass into her face.

    "And vital feelings of delight
    Shall rear her form to stately height,
    Her virgin bosom swell;
    Such thoughts to Lucy I will give
    While she and I together live
    Here in this happy dell."

    Thus Nature spake—The work was done—
    How soon my Lucy's race was run!
    She died, and left to me
    This heath, this calm and quiet scene;
    The memory of what has been,
    And never more will be.

    ************************************************** **************


    Three years she grew in sun and shower
    From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    "Three years she grew in sun and shower" is a poem composed in 1798 by the English poet William Wordsworth, and first published in the Lyrical Ballads anthology which was co-written with his friend and fellow poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. As one of the five poems that make up the "Lucy series", the work describes the relationship between Lucy and nature using words and sentiments. The author creates an indifference of nature as the poem progresses. The care in which Nature had sculpted Lucy, and then casually let her "race end," depicts Wordworths' view upon the harsh reality of life. Although Nature is indifferent, it also cares for Lucy enough to both sculpt and mould her into its own. Wordsworth valued connections to nature above all else. The poem thus contains both epithalamic and elegiac characteristics; the marriage described is between Lucy and nature, while her human lover is left to mourn in the knowledge that death has separated her from mankind, and she will forever now be with nature.[1]
    Notes

    Grob 1973, 202–203

    Bibliography

    Eilenberg, Susan. Strange Power of Speech: Wordsworth, Coleridge and Literary Possession. Oxford University Press USA, 1992. ISBN 0-19-506856-4
    Grob, Alan. The Philosophic Mind: A Study of Wordsworth's Poetry and Thought 1797–1805. Columbus: Ohio State University, 1973. ISBN 0-8142-0178-4
    Jones, Mark. The 'Lucy Poems': A Case Study in Literary Knowledge. Toronto:The University of Toronto Press, 1995. ISBN 0-8020-0434-2

    External links
    Wikisource has original text related to this article:
    Three Years She Grew in Sun and Shower

    Biography and Works of William Wordsworth
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    Excerpted from Terence, This Is Stupid Stuff, poem LXII in
    A Shropshire Lad (1896), by A.E. Housman (1859-1936
    )

    Why, if ’tis dancing you would be,
    There’s brisker pipes than poetry.
    Say, for what were hop-yards meant,
    Or why was Burton built on Trent?
    Oh many a peer of England brews
    Livelier liquor than the Muse,
    And malt does more than Milton can
    To justify God’s ways to man.
    Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drink
    For fellows whom it hurts to think:
    Look into the pewter pot
    To see the world as the world’s not.
    And faith, ’tis pleasant till ’tis past:
    The mischief is that ’twill not last.
    Oh I have been to Ludlow fair
    And left my necktie God knows where,
    And carried half way home, or near,
    Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:
    Then the world seemed none so bad,
    And I myself a sterling lad;
    And down in lovely muck I’ve lain,
    Happy till I woke again.
    Then I saw the morning sky:
    Heigho, the tale was all a lie;
    The world, it was the old world yet,
    I was I, my things were wet,
    And nothing now remained to do
    But begin the game anew.

    *******************************

    Lines on Ale (1848), by Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849)

    Fill with mingled cream and amber,
    I will drain that glass again.
    Such hilarious visions clamber
    Through the chamber of my brain.
    Quaintest thoughts, queerest fancies
    Come to life and fade away.
    What care I how time advances;
    I am drinking ale today.

    ************************************

    A Glass of Beer, by David O’Bruadair (1625-1698)

    The lanky hank of a she in the inn over there
    Nearly killed me for asking the loan of a glass of beer;
    May the devil grip the whey-faced slut by the hair,
    And beat bad manners out of her skin for a year.

    That parboiled ape, with the toughest jaw you will see
    On virtue’s path, and a voice that would rasp the dead,
    Came roaring and raging the minute she looked at me,
    And threw me out of the house on the back of my head!

    If I asked her master he’d give me a cask a day;
    But she, with the beer at hand, not a gill would arrange!
    May she marry a ghost and bear him a kitten, and may
    The High King of Glory permit her to get the mange.

    *************************************************


    Beer, by Charles Bukowski,
    from Love is A Mad Dog From Hell (1920-1994)


    I don’t know how many bottles of beer
    I have consumed while waiting for things
    to get better
    I don’t know how much wine and whisky
    and beer
    mostly beer
    I have consumed after
    splits with women—
    waiting for the phone to ring
    waiting for the sound of footsteps,
    and the phone to ring
    waiting for the sounds of footsteps,
    and the phone never rings
    until much later
    and the footsteps never arrive
    until much later
    when my stomach is coming up
    out of my mouth
    they arrive as fresh as spring flowers:
    “what the hell have you done to yourself?
    it will be 3 days before you can fuck me!”

    the female is durable
    she lives seven and one half years longer
    than the male, and she drinks very little beer
    because she knows it’s bad for the figure.

    while we are going mad
    they are out
    dancing and laughing
    with horny cowboys.

    well, there’s beer
    sacks and sacks of empty beer bottles
    and when you pick one up
    the bottle fall through the wet bottom
    of the paper sack
    rolling
    clanking
    spilling gray wet ash
    and stale beer,
    or the sacks fall over at 4 a.m.
    in the morning
    making the only sound in your life.

    beer
    rivers and seas of beer
    the radio singing love songs
    as the phone remains silent
    and the walls stand
    straight up and down
    and beer is all there is.
    ------------------------------------------------------------------

    I HESITATED ON POSTING THE ONE BY BUKOWSKI BECAUSE OF THE VULGARITY IN IT, BUT--
    THAT WAS HE AS A POET, SO OFT POSTING THE THE RAW, THE RUDE, THE NAKED, THE BRUTAL REALITY OF LIFE AND FOIBLES OF MEN.
    Once long ago, I despised him as a poet but now I realize he was true to himself as his poems on drinking, whoring, fighting , etc were the life he too lived!!
    And many of his poems are true and deep gems.. Thus I decided to post this in respect for his honesty and his not bending to the will/demands of others in regards to his poetic writings. I admire those than would rather die than bend to the demands of others, as that rests within me as well. Always has.. Which is why this world has punished me me so oft as it always does those that tell it to ffkk off and truly do not give a damn how it reacts to that.--Tyr
    Last edited by Tyr-Ziu Saxnot; 12-10-2017 at 09:46 AM.
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    This is why I like Bukowski more and more as years pass, the cold, hard and brutal(or should that be- brutish?) truth he slung with utter contempt of those that always try to suppress it!--Tyr

    man in the sun
    by Charles Bukowski

    she reads to me from the New Yorker
    which I don’t buy, don’t know
    how they get in here, but it’s
    something about the Mafia
    one of the heads of the Mafia
    who ate too much and had it too easy
    too many fine women patting his
    walnuts, and he got fat sucking at good
    cigars and young breasts and he
    has these heart attacks – and so
    one day somebody is driving him
    in his big car along the road
    and he doesn’t feel so good
    and he asks the boy to stop and let
    him out and the boy lays him out
    along the road in the fine sunshine
    and before he dies he says:
    how beautiful life can be, and
    then he’s gone.

    sometimes you’ve got to kill 4 or 5
    thousand men before you somehow
    get to believe that the sparrow
    is immortal, money is piss and
    that you have been wasting
    your time.

    —————————————————————

    From Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame
    Selected poems 1955 – 1973
    Black Sparrow Press, 1986.
    First published in:
    Crucifix in a Deathhand, 1965.
    ***********************************************

    Will add more later, forgot where I put that damn book and its interesting poetry concepts...-Tyr
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    ONE FOOT IN EDEN
    by Edwin Muir

    One foot in Eden still, I stand

    And look across the other land.

    The world’s great day is growing late,

    Yet strange these fields that we have planted

    So long with crops of love and hate.

    Time’s handiworks by time are haunted,

    And nothing now can separate

    The corn and tares compactly grown.

    The armorial weed in stillness bound

    Above the stalk; these are our own.

    Evil and good stand thick around

    In the fields of charity and sin

    Where we shall lead our harvest in.

    Yet still from Eden springs the root

    As clean as on the starting day.

    Times takes the foliage and the fruit

    And burns the archetypal leaf

    To shapes of terror and of grief

    Scattered along the winter way.

    But famished field and blackened tree

    Bear flowers in Eden never known.

    Blossoms of grief and charity

    Bloom in these darkened fields alone.

    What had Eden ever to say

    Of hope and faith and pity and love

    Until was buried all its day

    And memory found its treasure trove?

    Strange blessings never in Paradise

    Fall from these beclouded skies.
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    Richard Burton reads Dylan Thomas's poem, 'The force that through the green fuse drives the flower'.




    Last edited by Tyr-Ziu Saxnot; 12-22-2017 at 04:44 PM.
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    Death The Leveller
    - Poem by James Shirley



    The glories of our blood and state
    Are shadows, not substantial things;
    There is no armour against Fate;
    Death lays his icy hand on kings:
    Sceptre and Crown
    Must tumble down,
    And in the dust be equal made
    With the poor crookčd scythe and spade.

    Some men with swords may reap the field,
    And plant fresh laurels where they kill:
    But their strong nerves at last must yield;
    They tame but one another still:
    Early or late
    They stoop to fate,
    And must give up their murmuring breath
    When they, pale captives, creep to death.

    The garlands wither on your brow,
    Then boast no more your mighty deeds!
    Upon Death's purple altar now
    See where the victor-victim bleeds.
    Your heads must come
    To the cold tomb:
    Only the actions of the just
    Smell sweet and blossom in their dust.
    Death The Leveller
    James Shirley

    *************************

    https://www.poemhunter.com/poems/death/page-2/36340/
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    The City of Sleep
    By Rudyard Kipling
    Over the edge of the purple down,
    Where the single lamplight gleams,
    Know ye the road to the Merciful Town
    That is hard by the Sea of Dreams –
    Where the poor may lay their wrongs away,
    And the sick may forget to weep?
    But we – pity us! Oh, pity us!
    We wakeful; ah, pity us! –
    We must go back with Policeman Day –
    Back from the City of Sleep!

    Weary they turn from the scroll and crown,
    Fetter and prayer and plough –
    They that go up to the Merciful Town,
    For her gates are closing now.
    It is their right in the Baths of Night
    Body and soul to steep,
    But we – pity us! ah, pity us!
    We wakeful; oh, pity us! –
    We must go back with Policeman Day –
    Back from the City of Sleep!

    Over the edge of the purple down,
    Ere the tender dreams begin,
    Look – we may look – at the Merciful Town,
    But we may not enter in!
    Outcasts all, from her guarded wall
    Back to our watch we creep:
    We – pity us! ah, pity us!
    We wakeful; ah, pity us! –
    We that go back with Policeman Day –
    Back from the City of Sleep!
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    The Village: Book I
    By George Crabbe
    The village life, and every care that reigns
    O'er youthful peasants and declining swains;
    What labour yields, and what, that labour past,
    Age, in its hour of languor, finds at last;
    What forms the real picture of the poor,
    Demands a song—the Muse can give no more.
    Fled are those times, if e'er such times were seen,
    When rustic poets praised their native green;
    No shepherds now, in smooth alternate verse,
    Their country's beauty or their nymphs' rehearse;
    Yet still for these we frame the tender strain,
    Still in our lays fond Corydons complain,
    And shepherds' boys their amorous pains reveal,
    The only pains, alas! they never feel.
    On Mincio's banks, in Caesar's bounteous reign,
    If Tityrus found the Golden Age again,
    Must sleepy bards the flattering dream prolong,
    Mechanic echoes of the Mantuan song?
    From truth and nature shall we widely stray,
    Where Virgil, not where Fancy, leads the way?
    Yes, thus the Muses sing of happy swains,
    Because the Muses never knew their pains.
    They boast their peasants' pipes, but peasants now
    Resign their pipes and plod behind the plough;
    And few amid the rural tribe have time
    To number syllables and play with rhyme;
    Save honest Duck, what son of verse could share
    The poet's rapture and the peasant's care?
    Or the great labours of the field degrade
    With the new peril of a poorer trade?
    From one chief cause these idle praises spring,
    That themes so easy few forbear to sing;
    They ask no thought, require no deep design,
    But swell the song and liquefy the line;
    The gentle lover takes the rural strain,
    A nymph his mistress and himself a swain;
    With no sad scenes he clouds his tuneful prayer,
    But all, to look like her, is painted fair.
    I grant indeed that fields and flocks have charms
    For him that gazes or for him that farms;
    But when amid such pleasing scenes I trace
    The poor laborious natives of the place,
    And see the mid-day sun, with fervid ray,
    On their bare heads and dewy temples play;
    While some, with feebler heads and fainter hearts,
    Deplore their fortune, yet sustain their parts:
    Then shall I dare these real ills to hide
    In tinsel trappings of poetic pride?
    No, cast by Fortune on a frowning coast,
    Which can no groves nor happy valleys boast;
    Where other cares than those the Muse relates,
    And other shepherds dwell with other mates;
    By such examples taught, I paint the cot,
    As truth will paint it, and as bards will not:
    Nor you, ye poor, of lettered scorn complain,
    To you the smoothest song is smooth in vain;
    O'ercome by labour and bowed down by time,
    Feel you the barren flattery of a rhyme?
    Can poets soothe you, when you pine for bread,
    By winding myrtles round your ruined shed?
    Can their light tales your weighty griefs o'erpower,
    Or glad with airy mirth the toilsome hour?
    Lo! where the heath, with withering brake grown o'er,
    Lends the light turf that warms the neighboring poor;
    From thence a length of burning sand appears,
    Where the thin harvest waves its withered ears;
    Rank weeds, that every art and care defy,
    Reign o'er the land and rob the blighted rye:
    There thistles stretch their prickly arms afar,
    And to the ragged infant threaten war;
    There poppies, nodding, mock the hope of toil,
    There the blue bugloss paints the sterile soil;
    Hardy and high, above the slender sheaf,
    The slimy mallow waves her silky leaf;
    O'er the young shoot the charlock throws a shade,
    And the wild tare clings round the sickly blade;
    With mingled tints the rocky coasts abound,
    And a sad splendor vainly shines around.
    So looks the nymph whom wretched arts adorn,
    Betrayed by man, then left for man to scorn;
    Whose cheek in vain assumes the mimic rose
    While her sad eyes the troubled breast disclose;
    Whose outward splendour is but folly's dress,
    Exposing most, when most it gilds distress.
    Here joyless roam a wild amphibious race,
    With sullen woe displayed in every face;
    Who far from civil arts and social fly,
    And scowl at strangers with suspicious eye.
    Here too the lawless merchant of the main
    Draws from his plough th' intoxicated swain;
    Want only claimed the labor of the day,
    But vice now steals his nightly rest away.
    Where are the swains, who, daily labor done,
    With rural games played down the setting sun;
    Who struck with matchless force the bounding ball,
    Or made the pond'rous quoit obliquely fall;
    While some huge Ajax, terrible and strong,
    Engaged some artful stripling of the throng,
    And, foiled, beneath the young Ulysses fell,
    When peals of praise the merry mischief tell?
    Where now are these?—Beneath yon cliff they stand,
    To show the freighted pinnace where to land;
    To load the ready steed with guilty haste;
    To fly in terror o'er the pathless waste,
    Or, when detected in their straggling course,
    To foil their foes by cunning or by force;
    Or, yielding part (when equal knaves contest),
    To gain a lawless passport for the rest.
    Here, wand'ring long amid these frowning fields,
    I sought the simple life that Nature yields;
    Rapine and Wrong and Fear usurped her place,
    And a bold, artful, surly, savage race;
    Who, only skilled to take the finny tribe,
    The yearly dinner, or septennial bribe
    Wait on the shore and, as the waves run high,
    On the tossed vessel bend their eager eye,
    Which to their coast directs its vent'rous way,
    Theirs, or the ocean's, miserable prey.
    As on their neighbouring beach yon swallows stand,
    And wait for favoring winds to leave the land;
    While still for flight the ready wing is spread:
    So waited I the favouring hour, and fled;
    Fled from these shores where guilt and famine reign,
    And cried, Ah! hapless they who still remain;
    Who still remain to hear the ocean roar,
    Whose greedy waves devour the lessening shore;
    Till some fierce tide, with more imperious sway,
    Sweeps the low hut and all it holds away;
    When the sad tenant weeps from door to door,
    And begs a poor protection from the poor!
    But these are scenes where Nature's niggard hand
    Gave a spare portion to the famished land;
    Hers is the fault, if here mankind complain
    Of fruitless toil and labor spent in vain;
    But yet in other scenes, more fair in view,
    Where Plenty smiles—alas! she smiles for few
    And those who taste not, yet behold her store,
    Are as the slaves that dig the golden ore,
    The wealth around them makes them doubly poor.
    Or will you deem them amply paid in health,
    Labor's fair child, that languishes with wealth?
    Go then! and see them rising with the sun,
    Through a long course of daily toil to run;
    Like him to make the plenteous harvest grow,
    And yet not shard the plenty they bestow;
    See them beneath the dog-star's raging heat,
    When the knees tremble and the temples beat;
    Behold them, leaning on their scythes, look o'er
    The labour past, and toils to come explore;
    See them alternate suns and showers engage,
    And hoard up aches and anguish for their age;
    Through fens and marshy moors their steps pursue,
    When their warm pores imbibe the evening dew;
    Then own that labour may as fatal be
    To these thy slaves, as luxury to thee.
    Amid this tribe too oft a manly pride
    Strives in strong toil the fainting heart to hide;
    There may you see the youth of slender frame
    Contend with weakness, weariness, and shame:
    Yet urged along, and proudly loth to yield,
    He strives to join his fellows of the field;
    Till long-contending nature droops at last,
    Declining health rejects his poor repast,
    His cheerless spouse the coming danger sees,
    And mutual murmurs urge the slow disease.
    Yet grant them health, 'tis not for us to tell,
    Though the head droops not, that the heart is well;
    Or will you urge their homely, plenteous fare,
    Healthy and plain and still the poor man's share!
    Oh! trifle not with wants you cannot feel,
    Nor mock the misery of a stinted meal;
    Homely not wholesome, plain not plenteous, such
    As you who envy would disdain to touch.
    Ye gentle souls, who dream of rural ease,
    Whom the smooth stream and smoother sonnet please;
    Go! if the peaceful cot your praises share,
    Go, look within, and ask if peace be there:
    If peace be his—that drooping weary sire,
    Or theirs, that offspring round their feeble fire,
    Or hers, that matron pale, whose trembling hand
    Turns on the wretched hearth th' expiring brand.
    Nor yet can time itself obtain for these
    Life's latest comforts, due respect and ease;
    For yonder see that hoary swain, whose age
    Can with no cares except his own engage;
    Who, propped on that rude staff, looks up to see
    The bare arms broken from the withering tree,
    On which, a boy, he climbed the loftiest bough,
    Then his first joy, but his sad emblem now.
    He once was chief in all the rustic trade,
    His steady hand the straightest furrow made;
    Full many a prize he won, and still is proud
    To find the triumphs of his youth allowed.
    A transient pleasure sparkles in his eyes,
    He hears and smiles, then thinks again and sighs:
    For now he journeys to his grave in pain;
    The rich disdain him, nay, the poor disdain;
    Alternate masters now their slave command,
    And urge the efforts of his feeble hand;
    Who, when his age attempts its task in vain,
    With ruthless taunts of lazy poor complain.
    Oft may you see him, when he tends the sheep,
    His winter-charge, beneath the hillock weep;
    Oft hear him murmur to the winds that blow
    O'er his white locks and bury them in snow;
    When, roused by rage and muttering in the morn,
    He mends the broken hedge with icy thorn:
    "Why do I live, when I desire to be
    At once from life and life's long labour free?
    Like leaves in spring, the young are blown away,
    Without the sorrows of a slow decay;
    I, like yon withered leaf, remain behind,
    Nipped by the frost, and shivering in the wind;
    There it abides till younger buds come on,
    As I, now all my fellow-swains are gone;
    Then, from the rising generation thrust,
    It falls, like me, unnoticed to the dust.
    "These fruitful fields, these numerous flocks I see,
    Are others' gain, but killing cares to me;
    To me the children of my youth are lords,
    Slow in their gifts but hasty in their words:
    Wants of their own demand their care, and who
    Feels his own want and succors others too?
    A lonely, wretched man, in pain I go,
    None need my help and none relieve my woe;
    Then let my bones beneath the turf be laid,
    And men forget the wretch they would not aid."
    Thus groan the old, till, by disease oppressed,
    They taste a final woe, and then they rest.
    Theirs is yon house that holds the parish poor,
    Whose walls of mud scarce bear the broken door;
    There, where the putrid vapours, flagging, play,
    And the dull wheel hums doleful through the day;
    There children dwell, who know no parents' care,
    Parents, who know no children's love, dwell there;
    Heart-broken matrons on their joyless bed,
    Forsaken wives, and mothers never wed;
    Dejected widows with unheeded tears,
    And crippled age with more than childhood-fears;
    The lame, the blind, and, far the happiest they!
    The moping idiot and the madman gay.
    Here too the sick their final doom receive,
    Here brought, amid the scenes of grief, to grieve,
    Where the loud groans from some sad chamber flow,
    Mixed with the clamors of the crowd below;
    Here, sorrowing, they each kindred sorrow scan,
    And the cold charities of man to man:
    Whose laws indeed for ruined age provide,
    And strong compulsion plucks the scrap from pride;
    But still that scrap is bought with many a sigh,
    And pride embitters what it can't deny.
    Say ye, oppressed by some fantastic woes,
    Some jarring nerve that baffles your repose;
    Who press the downy couch, while slaves advance
    With timid eye to read the distant glance;
    Who with sad prayers the weary doctor tease
    To name the nameless ever-new disease;
    Who with mock patience dire complaints endure,
    Which real pain, and that alone, can cure;
    How would ye bear in real pain to lie,
    Despised, neglected, left alone to die?
    How would ye bear to draw your latest breath,
    Where all that's wretched paves the way for death?
    Such is that room which one rude beam divides,
    And naked rafters form the sloping sides;
    Where the vile bands that bind the thatch are seen,
    And lath and mud is all that lie between;
    Save one dull pane, that, coarsely patched, gives way
    To the rude tempest, yet excludes the day.
    Here, on a matted flock, with dust o'erspread,
    The drooping wretch reclines his languid head;
    For him no hand the cordial cup applies,
    Nor wipes the tear that stagnates in his eyes;
    No friends with soft discourse his pain beguile,
    Nor promise hope till sickness wears a smile.
    But soon a loud and hasty summons calls,
    Shakes the thin roof, and echoes round the walls.
    Anon, a figure enters, quaintly neat,
    All pride and business, bustle and conceit;
    With looks unaltered by these scenes of woe,
    With speed that, entering, speaks his haste to go,
    He bids the gazing throng around him fly,
    And carries fate and physic in his eye;
    A potent quack, long versed in human ills,
    Who first insults the victim whom he kills;
    Whose murd'rous hand a drowsy bench protect,
    And whose most tender mercy is neglect.
    Paid by the parish for attendance here,
    He wears contempt upon his sapient sneer;
    In haste he seeks the bed where misery lies,
    Impatience marked in his averted eyes;
    And, some habitual queries hurried o'er,
    Without reply, he rushes on the door:
    His drooping patient, long inured to pain,
    And long unheeded, knows remonstrance vain;
    He ceases now the feeble help to crave
    Of man, and mutely hastens to the grave.
    But ere his death some pious doubts arise,
    Some simple fears, which "bold bad" men despise;
    Fain would he ask the parish priest to prove
    His title certain to the joys above;
    For this he sends the murmuring nurse, who calls
    The holy stranger to these dismal walls;
    And doth not he, the pious man, appear,
    He, "passing rich with forty pounds a year"?
    Ah! no; a shepherd of a different stock,
    And far unlike him, feeds this little flock:
    A jovial youth, who thinks his Sunday's task
    As much as God or man can fairly ask;
    The rest he gives to loves and labors light,
    To fields the morning and to feasts the night;
    None better skilled the noisy pack to guide,
    To urge their chase, to cheer them or to chide;
    Sure in his shot, his game he seldom missed,
    And seldom failed to win his game at whist;
    Then, while such honors bloom around his head,
    Shall he sit sadly by the sick man's bed
    To raise the hope he feels not, or with zeal
    To combat fears that ev'n the pious feel
    Now once again the gloomy scene explore,
    Less gloomy now; the bitter hour is o'er,
    The man of many sorrows sighs no more.
    Up yonder hill, behold how sadly slow
    The bier moves winding from the vale below;
    There lie the happy dead, from trouble free,
    And the glad parish pays the frugal fee.
    No more, oh Death! thy victim starts to hear
    Churchwarden stern, or kingly overseer;
    No more the farmer gets his humble bow,
    Thou art his lord, the best of tyrants thou!
    Now to the church behold the mourners come,
    Sedately torpid and devoutly dumb;
    The village children now their games suspend,
    To see the bier that bears their ancient friend:
    For he was one in all their idle sport,
    And like a monarch ruled their little court;
    The pliant bow he formed, the flying ball,
    The bat, the wicket, were his labours all;
    Him now they follow to his grave, and stand
    Silent and sad, and gazing, hand in hand;
    While bending low, their eager eyes explore
    The mingled relics of the parish poor.
    The bell tolls late, the moping owl flies round,
    Fear marks the flight and magnifies the sound;
    The busy priest, detained by weightier care,
    Defers his duty till the day of prayer;
    And, waiting long, the crowd retire distressed,
    To think a poor man's bones should lie unblessed.


    Source: The Longman Anthology of Poetry (2006)
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    I love all of Alvin’s poems, but this one in particular, the first poem of his I ever read, is one of my favorites.

    November Sunday Morning

    And the light, a wakened heyday of air
    Tuned low and clear and wide,
    A radiance now that would emblaze
    And veil the most golden horn
    Or any entering of a sudden clearing
    To a standing, astonished, revealed…
    That the actual streets I loitered in
    Lay lit like fields, or narrow channels
    About to open to a burning river;
    All brick and window vivid and calm
    As though composed in a rigid water
    No random traffic would dispel…
    As now through the park, and across
    The chill nailed colors of the roofs,
    And on near trees stripped bare,
    Corrected in the scant remaining leaf
    To their severe essential elegance,
    Light is the all-exacting good,
    That dry, forever virile stream
    That wipes each thing to what it is,
    The whole, collage and stone, cleansed
    To its proper pastoral…
    I sit
    And smoke, and linger out desire.

    ALVIN FEINMAN
    Originally Published: July 14th, 2008
    A TRULY MAGNIFICENT POET, ONE DEDICATED TO HIS CRAFT.--Tyr
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    His Last Sonnet
    - Poem by John Keats

    Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art! -
    Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
    And watching, with eternal lids apart,
    Like Nature's patient sleepless Eremite,
    The moving waters at their priestlike task
    Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
    Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask
    Of snow upon the mountains and the moors -
    No -yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
    Pillowed upon my fair love's ripening breast,
    To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
    Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
    Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
    And so live ever -or else swoon to death.
    John Keats
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    A Lecture Upon The Shadow
    - Poem by John Donne


    Stand still, and I will read to thee
    A lecture, love, in love's philosophy.
    These three hours that we have spent,
    Walking here, two shadows went
    Along with us, which we ourselves produc'd.
    But, now the sun is just above our head,
    We do those shadows tread,
    And to brave clearness all things are reduc'd.
    So whilst our infant loves did grow,
    Disguises did, and shadows, flow
    From us, and our cares; but now 'tis not so.
    That love has not attain'd the high'st degree,
    Which is still diligent lest others see.

    Except our loves at this noon stay,
    We shall new shadows make the other way.
    As the first were made to blind
    Others, these which come behind
    Will work upon ourselves, and blind our eyes.
    If our loves faint, and westwardly decline,
    To me thou, falsely, thine,
    And I to thee mine actions shall disguise.
    The morning shadows wear away,
    But these grow longer all the day;
    But oh, love's day is short, if love decay.
    Love is a growing, or full constant light,
    And his first minute, after noon, is night.
    John Donne
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    Monimia. An Ode


    In weeds of sorrow wildly 'dight,
    Alone beneath the gloom of night,
    Monimia went to mourn;
    She left a mother's fond alarms;
    Ah! never to return!

    The bell had struck the midnight hour,
    Disastrous planets now had power,
    And evil spirits resign'd;
    The lone owl, from the cloister'd isle,
    O'er falling fragments of the pile,
    Ill-boding prophet, plain'd

    While down her devious footsteps stray,
    She tore the willows by the way,
    And gazed upon the wave;
    Then raising wild to Heaven her eyes,
    With sobs and broken accent, cries,
    'I'll meet thee in the grave.'

    Bright o'er the border of the stream,
    Illumined by a transient beam,
    She knew the wonted grove;
    Her lover's hand had deck'd it fine,
    And roses mix'd with myrtles twine
    To form the bower of love.

    The tuneful Philomela rose,
    And, sweetly mournful, sung her woes,
    Enamour'd of the tree;
    Touch'd with the melody of wo,
    More tender tears began to flow:
    'She mourns her mate like me.

    'I loved my lover from a child,
    And sweet the youthful cherub smiles,
    And wanton'd o'er the green;
    He train'd my nightingale to sing,
    He spoil'd the gardens of the spring
    To crown me rural queen.

    'My brother died before his day;
    Sad, through the church-yard's dreary way,
    We wont to walk at eve:
    And bending o'er th' untimely urn,
    Long at the monument to mourn,
    And look upon his grave.

    'Like forms funereal while we stand,
    In tender mood he held my hand,
    And laid his cheek to mine;
    My bosom beat unknown alarms,
    We wept in one another's arms,
    And mingled tears divine.

    'From sweet compassion love arose,
    Our hearts were wedded by our woes,
    And pair'd upon the tomb;
    Attesting all the Powers above,
    A fond romance of fancied love
    We vowed our days to come.

    'A wealthy lord from Indian skies,
    Illustrious in my parent's eyes,
    Implored a mutual mind;
    Sad to my chamber I withdrew,
    But Harry's footsteps never flew
    The wonted scene to find.

    'Three nights in dire suspense I sat
    Alone; the fourth convey'd my fate,
    Sent from a foreign shore;—
    "Go, where thy wandering wishes tend
    Go, and embrace thy father's friend,
    You never see me more!"—

    'Despair! distraction! I obey'd,
    And one disordered moment made
    An ever-wretched wife:
    Ah! in the circuit of one Sun,
    Heaven! I was wedded and undone,
    And desolate for life!

    'A part my wedding robes I tore,
    And guarded tears now gushing o'er
    Distain'd the bridal bed:
    Wild I invoked the funeral yell,
    And sought devoted now to dwell
    For ever with the dead.

    'My lord to India climates went,
    A letter from my lover sent
    Renew'd eternal woes;—
    Before my love my last words greet,
    Wrapp'd in the weary winding sheet,
    I in the dust repose!

    'Perhaps your parents have deceived,
    Perhaps too rashly I believed
    A tale of treacherous art;
    Monimia! could you now behold
    The youth you loved in sorrows old,
    Oh! it would break my heart!

    'Now in the grave for ever laid,
    A constant solitary shade,
    The Harry hangs o'er thee!
    For you I fled my native sky:
    Loaded with life, for you I die;
    My love, remember me!

    'Of all the promises of youth,
    The tears of tenderness and truth,
    The throbs that lovers send;
    The vows in one another's arms,
    The secret sympathy of charms;
    My God! is this the end!

    She said, and rushing from the bower,
    Devoted sought in evil hour
    The promontory steep;
    Hung o'er the margin of the main,
    Her fix'd and earnest eyeballs strain
    The dashing of the deep.

    'Waves that resound from shore to shore!
    Rocks loud rebellowing to the roar
    Of ocean, storm, and wing!
    Your elemental war is tame,
    To that which rages in my frame,
    The battle of the mind!'

    With downcast eye and musing mood,
    A lurid interval she stood,
    The victim of despair;
    Her arms then tossing to the skies,
    She pour'd in nature's ear her cries,
    'My God! my father! where!'—

    Wild on the summit of the steep
    She ruminated long the deep,
    And felt her freezing blood;
    Approaching feet she heard behind,
    Then swifter than the winged wind
    She plunged into the flood.

    Her form emerging from the wave,
    Both parents saw, but could not save;
    The shriek of death arose!
    At once she sunk to rise no more;
    And sadly sounding to the shore,
    The parted billows close!

    *******************
    John Logan
    1748-1788
    John Logan (1748 - 1788), author of "Runnamede," was born in Midlothian, Scotland. Logan's character as a poet is easily conceived. Simplicity, elegance, and taste, are the genuine features of his compsition. His style, peculiarly chaste and delicate, is finely suited to natural, tender, or pathetic description, in which principally he excels.
    Read More
    John Logan, like many others of the same rank, was probably intended by his parents for the ministry, before he discovered either capacity for learning, or inclination for that sacred employment. Whether he received the first rudiments of his education at home, or in the parochial school, hast not hitherto been ascertained; but it is certain that some time before 1762, his father had removed from Soutra to Gosford Mains in East Lothian, and that the son was sent to Musselburgh school, then under the care of Mr. Jeffray. While there, instead of being boarded with the master, he was placed with an old woman of the same religious persuasion with his parents. By her he was made to read the scriptures every evening with a whining tone, which seldom failed to lull her into a profound sleep. Upon his removal to the University of Edinburgh in November 1762, where he attended the first Greek and second Latin classes, he discovered an uncommon proficiency in the learned languages,and was one of the few whom Mr. Hunter, then Professor of Greek, examined before Principal Robertson upon his first visitation after being installed.

    As a student of philosophy his appearances were less brilliant than they had been with language. The abstract demonstrations of Euclid, the confused jargon of scholastic logic, and the abstruse doctrines of metaphysics, wanted charms to arrest and captivate his glowing and vigorous imagination.

    The end of Logan was truly Christian. When he became too weak to hold a book, he employed his time hearing such young persons as visited him read the Scriptures. His conversation turned chiefly on serious subjects, and was most affecting and instructive. He foresaw, and prepared for the approach of death, gave directions about his funeral with the utmost composure, and dictated a distinct and judicious will, appointing Dr. Donald Grant, and his ancient steady friend Dr. Robertson, his executors; and bequething to them his property, books, and MSS. to be converted into money, for the payment of legacies, to those relations and friends, who had the strongest claims upon his affectionate remembrance in his dying moments. He died upon the 28th day of December, 1788.
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    Returning, We Hear the Larks

    BY Isaac Rosenberg


    Sombre the night is.
    And though we have our lives, we know
    What sinister threat lies there.

    Dragging these anguished limbs, we only know
    This poison-blasted track opens on our camp -
    On a little safe sleep.

    But hark! joy - joy - strange joy.
    Lo! heights of night ringing with unseen larks.
    Music showering our upturned list’ning faces.

    Death could drop from the dark
    As easily as song -
    But song only dropped,
    Like a blind man’s dreams on the sand
    By dangerous tides,
    Like a girl’s dark hair for she dreams no ruin lies there,
    Or her kisses where a serpent hides.
    ***************************

    BRIEF BIO-
    Isaac Rosenberg

    Born in Bristol, England on 25th November 1890 to Russian-Jewish parents, Isaac Rosenberg grew up in the East End of London and became an apprentice engraver until he went to the Slade School to study. He was in South Africa when the First World War broke out recuperating from illness, but despite poor health, in 1915 he enlisted as a private in the Army and served in the ranks on the Western Front from 1916 until he was killed in action on April 1st 1918. He was 27 years old. Isaac Rosenberg, Charles Sorley and Wilfred Owen, were considered to be the three greatest Great War poets, and Rosenberg's poem, "Break of Day in The Trenches" is generally considered to be t ..........

    ************************************************** ************************************************** ***********


    Isaac Rosenberg
    1890–1918


    Isaac Rosenberg may be remembered as a Jewish-English poet, or a poet of war, but his poetry stretches beyond those narrow categories. Since Rosenberg was only twenty-eight when he died, most critics have tended to treat his corpus as a promising but flawed start, and they wonder if he would have become a great poet had he lived. Rosenberg's status as an English poet is thus still debated: he was a Jewish poet, he was an English poet; he was a war poet, he was a painter-poet; he was a young poet; he was a great poet and a minor poet. In his brief career, Rosenberg created a small selection of poems and a great many questions.

    Rosenberg was born on November 25, 1890 in Bristol. His parents, Dovber "Barnett" Rosenberg and Hacha "Hannah" Davidov Rosenberg, were Jewish immigrants from Russia. During Rosenberg's childhood, they moved into the squalid streets of London's Jewish ghetto, and there set up a butcher's shop. The shop was soon confiscated, however, and Rosenberg's parents were forced to work as itinerants during the rest of his life. Rosenberg himself was only able to attend school briefly; at age fourteen, he began to work as an engraver's apprentice, spending his spare time practicing painting. He eventually showed so much promise in the visual arts that he was granted funds to attend the Slade Art School, a significant center of aesthetic theory. The school—which trained artists of various stripes, including Rosenberg's friend Mark Gertler—prized originality above all, and rewarded students with vision above those with labored skill.

    Rosenberg ultimately developed "infinity of suggestion," particularly in his poetry. But his early works seem too deeply influenced by the romantics to reveal much of Rosenberg's own voice. In Night and Day (1912), for example, Rosenberg's poems tend to ring with "poetical" sounding words, lending the verse a self-conscious, antique air. As Thomas Staley remarked in Dictionary of Literary Biography: "The poems in this thin volume are much like his early paintings in that they lacked originality, a distinctive voice. The influence of Shelley and Keats, especially Keats's 'Endymion,' is clear, and even the imagery is suffused with Keatsian diction. But the subject matter seems to probe beyond this influence to go backward in search of a more comprehensive vision of the world." Rosenberg produced one more volume of poetry, Youth (1915), before enlisting in a battalion to fight in World War I. Francine Ringold, writing for the Encyclopedia of World Literature, noted that Youth follows the general pattern of Night and Day: "all of these self-published works [Rosenberg's first volumes of poetry] demonstrate the moral earnestness and predilection for sonorous language that give R[osenberg]'s work its richness yet, when in excess, detract from its effectiveness." Irving Howe comments, similarly: "The early Rosenberg is always driving himself to say more than he has to say, because he thinks poets must speak to large matters. Later he learns that in a poppy in the trenches or a louse in a soldier's shirt, there is enough matter for poetry."

    Rosenberg fought in World War I between 1915 and 1918, dying in the battle of Arras on April 1. During this period, his work reached a kind of early maturity; in this period he found a truly distinctive voice, one particularly indebted to the Old Testament and his sidelined Jewish identity. Many critics see Rosenberg strictly through his war poems. Others, however, insist that the war was only a subject for Rosenberg, or perhaps a challenge for which he was eminently suited. In many ways, Rosenberg's vision of the human relationship with God depends on his Jewish heritage—it depends on the metaphors of the Old Testament, at least. Rosenberg's Judaism is perhaps most apparent in his dramatic fragments, Moses and The Unicorn. "Had Rosenberg lived to develop further along the lines on which he had already moved," wrote David Daiches in Commentary, "he might have changed the course of modern English poetry, producing side by side with the poetry of Eliot and his school a richer and more monumental kind of verse, opposing a new romantic poetry to the new metaphysical brand."

    Ultimately, critics tend to dismiss Rosenberg based on his brief career and his thin contribution to English letters. But in his final poems, Rosenberg offers something more than war poetry or Jewish English poetry. "The tragedy of war gave [his] affinities full expression in his later poems," Staley concluded, "and as war became the universe of his poetry, the power of his Jewish roots and the classical themes became the sources of his moral vision as well as his poetic achievement."
    Last edited by Tyr-Ziu Saxnot; 03-05-2018 at 10:02 AM.
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    Far Above The Shaken Tree
    - Poem by Digby Mackworth Dolben

    Far above the shaken trees,
    In the pale blue palaces,
    Laugh the high gods at their ease:
    We with tossčd incense woo them,
    We with all abasement sue them,
    But shall never climb unto them,
    Nor see their faces.


    Sweet my sister, Queen of Hades,
    Where the quiet and the shade is,
    Of the cruel deathless ladies
    Thou art pitiful alone.
    Unto thee I make my moan,
    Who the ways of earth hast known
    And her green places.


    Feed me with thy lotus-flowers,
    Lay me in thy sunless bowers,
    Whither shall the heavy hours
    Never trail their hated feet,
    Making bitter all things sweet;
    Nevermore shall creep to meet
    The perished dead.


    There 'mid shades innumerable,
    There in meads of asphodel,
    Sleeping ever, sleeping well,
    They who toiled and who aspired,
    They, the lovely and desired,
    With the nations of the tired
    Have made their bed.


    There is neither fast nor feast,
    None is greatest, none is least;
    Times and orders all have ceased.
    There the bay-leaf is not seen;
    Clean is foul and foul is clean;
    Shame and glory, these have been
    But shall not be.


    When we pass away in fire,
    What is found beyond the pyre?
    Sleep, the end of all desire.
    Lo, for this the heroes fought;
    This the gem the merchant bought,
    This the seal of laboured thought
    And subtilty.
    Digby Mackworth Dolben

    ***************************************

    From Sappho
    - Poem by Digby Mackworth Dolben

    Thou liest dead,-lie on: of thee
    No sweet remembrances shall be,
    Who never plucked Pierian rose,
    Who never chanced on Anterôs.
    Unknown, unnoticed, there below
    Through Aides' houses shalt thou go
    Alone,-for never a flitting ghost
    Shall find in thee a lover lost.
    Digby Mackworth Dolben
    ************************************************** ***************

    The HyperTexts

    The Best Poems of Digby Mackworth Dolben

    On a warm summer afternoon in 1867, Digby Mackworth Dolben drowned at age nineteen. The poems he left behind were said by future English poet laureate Robert Bridges to equal "anything that was ever written by any English poet at his age." According to Simon Edge, author of The Hopkins Conundrum, Gerard Manley Hopkins was "so captivated by a brief meeting [with Dolben] that he spent the rest of his life mourning him." In a letter to Bridges after Dolben’s death, Hopkins said "there can very seldom have happened the loss of so much beauty (in body and mind and life) and of the promise of still more as there has been in his case." Hopkins also asked Bridges whether Dolben's family had considered publishing his poems. Fortunately, the independently wealthy Bridges later published books of poems by both Dolben and Hopkins, or their poetry might have been lost to the world forever.

    Is Dolben merely a literary curiosity today because he attracted the attention of two famous poets―with possible homoerotic undertones on Hopkins' part―then died so young and so tragically? Or does he merit consideration as a poet in his own right? After his discovery of the prodigy's work thanks to Simon's novel, THT advisory editor Tom Merrill emailed Simon that "Dolben's precocity surprised me―how beyond his years he was. I hope people know about him. He was a deeply sensitive person, maybe comparable to Shelley." Another poet to whom Dolben may be compared is Thomas Chatterton, the "marvellous boy" who died at age seventeen and yet was so highly esteemed by Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats and Shelley.

    Dolben's poems were published in a single volume by Bridges in 1911; the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography says that his work stands "among the best of the poetry of the Oxford Movement." Dolben's death, it adds, "was the end of a life of exceptional poetic promise." I agree and see no reason that such exceptional poetry―all the more tantalizing because it was written at such a young age―should not be read today. Toward that end, here are the poems of Digby Dolben that strike me as his best, followed by three more that, according to Bridges, exhibit "complete mastery." The fourth such poem, in Bridges' opinion, is the first poem below.
    ―Michael R. Burch, editor, The HyperTexts
    Last edited by Tyr-Ziu Saxnot; 03-08-2018 at 08:14 AM.
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    The Sun Rising
    ------ by John Donne

    Busy old fool, unruly sun,
    Why dost thou thus,
    Through windows, and through curtains call on us?
    Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run?
    Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
    Late school boys and sour prentices,
    Go tell court huntsmen that the king will ride,
    Call country ants to harvest offices,
    Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,
    Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

    Thy beams, so reverend and strong
    Why shouldst thou think?
    I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
    But that I would not lose her sight so long;
    If her eyes have not blinded thine,
    Look, and tomorrow late, tell me,
    Whether both th’ Indias of spice and mine
    Be where thou leftst them, or lie here with me.
    Ask for those kings whom thou saw’st yesterday,
    And thou shalt hear, All here in one bed lay.

    She’s all states, and all princes, I,
    Nothing else is.
    Princes do but play us; compared to this,
    All honor’s mimic, all wealth alchemy.
    Thou, sun, art half as happy as we,
    In that the world’s contracted thus.
    Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
    To warm the world, that’s done in warming us.
    Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;
    This bed thy center is, these walls, thy sphere.

    *****************************************

    The Good-Morrow

    ----by John Donne

    I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
    Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?
    But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?
    Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?
    ’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.
    If ever any beauty I did see,
    Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.

    And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
    Which watch not one another out of fear;
    For love, all love of other sights controls,
    And makes one little room an everywhere.
    Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
    Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,
    Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.

    My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
    And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
    Where can we find two better hemispheres,
    Without sharp north, without declining west?
    Whatever dies, was not mixed equally;
    If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
    Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.
    Last edited by Tyr-Ziu Saxnot; 04-17-2018 at 09:02 AM.
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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