"Luke Havergal" by E. A. Robinson

Luke Havergal

Go to the western gate, Luke Havergal,

There where the vines cling crimson on the wall,

And in the twilight wait for what will come.

The leaves will whisper there of her, and some,

Like flying words, will strike you as they fall;

But go, and if you listen she will call.

Go to the western gate, Luke Havergal—

Luke Havergal.

No, there is not a dawn in eastern skies

To rift the fiery night that’s in your eyes;

But there, where western glooms are gathering,

The dark will end the dark, if anything:

God slays Himself with every leaf that flies,

And hell is more than half of paradise.

No, there is not a dawn in eastern skies—

In eastern skies.

Out of a grave I come to tell you this,

Out of a grave I come to quench the kiss

That flames upon your forehead with a glow

That blinds you to the way that you must go.

Yes, there is yet one way to where she is,

Bitter, but one that faith may never miss.

Out of a grave I come to tell you this—

To tell you this.

There is the western gate, Luke Havergal,

There are the crimson leaves upon the wall.

Go, for the winds are tearing them away,—

Nor think to riddle the dead words they say,

Nor any more to feel them as they fall;

But go, and if you trust her she will call.

There is the western gate, Luke Havergal—

Luke Havergal.

Source of the text - The Poetry of E. A. Robinson, Edited by Robert Mezey.  New York: The Modern Library, 1999, pages 3-4.

TJB: Canon for self-slaughter? Tight-knit, concatenated, hypotactic, & iambic, a voice encourages Luke to choose death perhaps to find his beloved.

 

 

 

 

 

Poem 31 from "Astrophil and Stella" by Sir Philip Sidney

31

With how sad steps, ô Moone, thou climb’st the skies,
   How silently, and with how wanne a face,
   What, may it be that even in heav’nly place
That busie archer his sharpe arrowes tries?
Sure, if that long with Love acquainted eyes
   Can judge of Love, thou feel’st a Lover’s case;
   I reade it in thy lookes, thy languisht grace,
To me that feele the like, thy state descries.
   Then ev’n of fellowship, ô Moone, tell me
Is constant Love deem’d there but want of wit?
Are Beauties there as proud as here they be?
Do they above love to be lov’d, and yet
   Those Lovers scorne whom that Love doth possesse?
   Do they call Vertue there ungratefulnesse?

Source of the text - The Poems of Sir Philip Sidney, Edited by William A. Ringler, Jr.  Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962, page 180.

TJB: Hanging out the passenger side, the poet moans a sonnet with 5 questions of the moon, with 8 uses of "love," a classic octave & a manic sestet.
 
 
 
 

"The Oven Bird" by Robert Frost

THE OVEN BIRD

There is a singer everyone has heard,

Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,

Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.

He says that leaves are old and that for flowers

Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.

He says the early petal-fall is past

When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers

On sunny days a moment overcast;

And comes that other fall we name the fall.

He says the highway dust is over all.

The bird would cease and be as other birds

But that he knows in singing not to sing.

The question that he frames in all but words

Is what to make of a diminished thing.

Source of the text - Robert Frost, Mountain Interval.  New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1916, page 35.

TJB: Tea-cher, tea-cher. This sonnet, strongly misreading the birdsong as ode & elegy, has an offbeat rhyme scheme with couplets and tercets, & a lovely volta.

 

 

 

 

"The Unquiet Grave," anonymous ballad

 

THE UNQUIET GRAVE

A

1  ‘THE wind doth blow today, my love
       And a few small drops of rain;
    I never had but one true-love,
       In cold grave she was lain.

2  ‘I’ll do as much for my true-love
       As any young man may;
    I’ll sit and mourn all at her grave
       For a twelvemonth and a day.’

3  The twelvemonth and a day being up,
       The dead began to speak:
    ‘Oh, who sits weeping on my grave,
       And will not let me sleep?’

4  ‘’Tis I, my love, sits on your grave,
       And will not let you sleep;
    For I crave one kiss of your clay-cold lips,
       And that is all I seek.’

5  ‘You crave one kiss of my clad-cold lips;
       But my breath smells earthy strong;
    If you have one kiss of my clay-cold lips,
       Your time will not be long.

6  ‘’Tis down in yonder garden green,
       Love, where we used to walk,
    The finest flower that ere was seen
       Is withered to a stalk.

7  ‘The stalk is withered dry, my love,
       So will our hearts decay;
    So make yourself content, my love,
       Till God calls you away.’

Source of the text - The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, edited by Francis James Child, Volume II, Part I.  Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1886, page 236.

TJB: Tear-animated. Just two lost souls swimming in a fishbowl, we hear pure ballad tropes: pining for dead love, voices from beyond, a decaying rose.

 

 

 

 

 

"Casabianca" by Elizabeth Bishop

Casabianca

Love’s the boy stood on the burning deck

trying to recite “The boy stood on

the burning deck.”  Love’s the son

stood stammering elocution

while the poor ship in flames went down.

Love’s the obstinate boy, the ship,

even the swimming sailors, who

would like a schoolroom platform, too,

or an excuse to stay

on deck.  And love’s the burning boy.

Source of the text - Elizabeth Bishop, Poems: North & South—A Cold Spring. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1955, page 6.

TJB: Corinthians column. Honoring and/or lampooning a shipwreck of a poem stuffed with religious metaphor, the poet here ramrods love metaphors.

 

 

 

 

"A Carafe, that is a Blind Glass." by Gertrude Stein

A CARAFE, THAT IS A BLIND GLASS.

A kind in glass and a cousin, a spectacle and nothing

strange  a single  hurt  color and an arrangement in a

system  to  pointing.  All  this  and  not  ordinary, not

unordered   in   not   resembling.   The  difference  is
spreading.

Source of the text - Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons.  New York: Claire Marie, 1914, page 9.

TJB: Spectacular-mundane. Inspired by still-life, this semi-cubist sketch teases at and denies a similarity between form and content. Or so it seems.

 

 

 

 

"To my Dear and loving Husband" by Anne Bradstreet

[Poem as first published in 1678]

Source of the text - Several Poems Compiled with great variety of Wit and Learning, full of Delight, Second Edition.  Boston: John Foster, 1678, page 240.

[Poem from a 20th Century edition]

To my Dear and loving Husband

If ever two were one, then surely we.

If ever man were lov'd by wife, then thee;

If ever wife was happy in a man,

Compare with me ye women if you can.

I prize thy love more than whole Mines of gold,

Or all the riches that the East doth hold.

My love is such that Rivers cannot quench,

Nor ought but love from thee, give recompence.

Thy love is such I can no way repay,

The heavens reward thee manifold I pray.

Then while we live, in love lets so persever,

That when we live no more, we may live ever.

Source of the text - Poems of Anne Bradstreet, Edited by Robert Hutchinson.  New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1969, page 41.

TJB: Sincere-cavalier.  This straight up spousal-love poem—love as greater than gold mines, too hot to quench—hopes for, is uncertain of, heavenly bliss.

"Kubla Khan" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

 
Kubla Khan

Or, a vision in a dream

A Fragment

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
    Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:
And ’mid these dancing rocks at once and ever

It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
    The shadow of the dome of pleasure
    Floated midway on the waves;
    Where was heard the mingled measure
    From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
    A damsel with a dulcimer
    In a vision once I saw:
    It was an Abyssinian maid,
    And on her dulcimer she played,
    Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ’twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honeydew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Source of the text - Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Selected Poems.  New York: Gramercy Books, 1996, p. 57-58.

TJB: Unforgettable improvised mess. The poem starts with Kubla’s dome, then an NSFW romp of river entering cave, then a vision of poetry’s origin.

"Hey Nonny No!" anonymous rhyme

[Text of the rhyme from a 17th Century music manuscript, in which the rhyme was set to music by composer Nathaniel Giles]

Source of the manuscript image - Oxford, Christ Church Mus. 439: https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/363ae4db-1b86-456a-a6bc-49523103e1e1/ (Christ Church Mus. 439, Item # 48 (page 51 on electronic viewer))

[Text of the rhyme from an early 20th Century anthology]

Hey nonny no!


Hey nonny no!
Men are fools that wish to die!
Is’t not fine to dance and sing
When the bells of death do ring?
Is’t not fine to swim in wine,
And turn upon the toe,
And sing hey nonny no!
When the winds blow and the seas flow?
Hey nonny no!



Source of the text - The Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900, Ed. Arthur Quiller-Couch. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927, poem #59, page 90.

TJB: Pub doggerel; carpe diem but with whimsy. Questions or exclamations—the poem has no truck with mere periods, & celebrates all the nonny.

"The Black Unicorn" by Audre Lorde

THE BLACK UNICORN

The black unicorn is greedy.

The black unicorn is impatient.

The black unicorn was mistaken

for a shadow

or symbol

and taken

through a cold country

where mist painted mockeries

of my fury.

It is not on her lap where the horn rests

but deep in her moonpit

growing.

The black unicorn is restless

the black unicorn is unrelenting

the black unicorn is not

free.

 

Source of the text - Audre Lorde, The Black Unicorn.  New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc., 1978, p.3.

TJB: Symbolless symbol; haecceity with a horn. Here, the black unicorn is pure uniqueness—within the moonpit—& also the rage of an entire people.