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The Tiger
Tiger! Tiger! Burning bright
In the forest's of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, and what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? and what dread feet?
What the hammer? What the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp?
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven wih their tears,
Did He smile His work to see?
Did He who made the Lamb, make thee?
Tiger! Tiger! Burning bright
In the forest's of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
- William Blake
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Alone
From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were--- I have not seen
As others saw--- I could not bring
My passions from a common spring---
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow--- I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone---
And all I lov'd--- I lov'd alone---
Then--- in my childhood--- in the dawn
Of a most stormy life--- was drawn
From ev'ry depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still---
From the torrent, or the fountain---
From the red cliff of the mountain---
From the sun that round me roll'd
In it's autumn tint of gold---
From the lightning of the sky
As it pass'd me flying by---
From the thunder, and the storm---
Ant the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my veiw---
- Edgar Allan Poe
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The Two Trees
Beloved, gaze in thine own heart.
Gaze no more in the bitter glass
The demons, with their subtle guile.
Lift up before us when they pass,
Or only gaze a little while;
For there a fatal image grows
That the stormy night recieves,
Roots half hidden under snows,
Broken boughs and blackened leaves.
For ill things turn to barreness
In the dim glass the demons hold,
The glass of outer weariness,
Made when God slept in times of old.
There, through The broken branchs, go
The ravens of unresting thought;
Flying, crying, to and fro,
Cruel claw and hungry throat,
Or else they stand and sniff the wind,
And shake their ragged wings; alas!
Thy tender eyes grow all unkind:
Gaze no more in the bitter glass.
- W.B. Yeats
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Blue like sapphire beneath a morning sun,
Burning with fire of crystalline soul.
A laughter that never quite reaches inside,
Where secrets weather like untouched gold.
-Amelia Atwater - Rhodes
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Skin like ivory, perfect; A goddess, she must be.
Slender fingers, unadorned; beautiful
Simplicity.
A single teardrop; when did it fall?
Could this goddess be mortal, after all?
-Amelia Atwater - Rhodes.
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Fantacy, a shining goddess,
She controls the tides.
Fantasy, a brilliant goddess.
She controls our lives.
Fantacy, a golden goddess---
In her hands is the light.
Fantacy, a silver goddess---
In her, hands is the night.
- Amelia Atwater - Rhodes
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Cold as winter, strong as stone;
She faced the darkness all alone.
A silver goddess, a reflecton.
A mirage; a recollection.
No return; no turning back.
The past is gone, the future, black.
Serpents gather in their nest, And she stands above the rest.
Shadows hunt; she hunts the shadow.
The moon is risen; she stands below.
She veiws her world through the eyes of others.
Black and white; there are no colors,
As she looks down upon a shattered youth.
A shattered mirror shows the shattered truth.
- Amelia Atwater - Rhodes.
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The Crystal Gazer
I shall gather myself into my self again,
I shall take my scattered selves and make them one.
I shall fuse them into a polished crystal ball
Where I can see the moon and the flashing sun.
I Shall sit like a sibyl, hour after hour intent.
Watching the future come and the present go -
And the little shifting pictures of people rushing
In tiny self-importance to and fro.
- Sara Teasdale
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Time and Again
TIme and again, however well we know the landscape of love,
and the little church-yard with lamenting names,
and the frightfully silent ravine wherein all the others
end: time and again we go out two together,
under the old trees, lie down again and again
between the flowers, face to face with the sky.
Rainer Maria Rilke
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Lies About Love
We are a liars, because
the truth of yesterday becomes a lie tomorrow,
whereas letters are fixed,
and we live by the letter of truth.
The love I feel for my friend, this year,
is different from the love I felt last year.
If it were not so, it would be a lie.
Yet we reiterate love! love! love!
as if it were a coin with a fixed value
instead of a flower that dies, and opens a different bud.
D H Lawrence
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I'm Alive, I Believe In Everything
Self. Brotherhood. God. Zeus. Communism.
Capitalism. Buddha. Vinyl records.
Baseball. Ink. Trees. Cures for disease.
Saltwater. Literature. Walking. Waking.
Arguments. Decisions. Ambiguity. Absolutes.
Presence. Absence. Positive and Negative.
Empathy. Apathy. Sympathy and entropy.
Verbs are necessary. So are nouns.
Empty skies. Dark vacuums of night.
Visions. Revisions. Innocence.
I've seen All the empty spaces yet to be filled.
I've heard All of the sounds that will collect
at the end of the world.
And the silence that follows.
I'm alive, I believe in everything
I'm alive, I believe in it all.
Waves lapping on the shore.
Skies on fire at sunset.
Old men dancing on the streets.
Paradox and possibility.
Sense and sensibility.
Cold logic and half truth.
Final steps and first impressions.
Fools and fine intelligence.
Chaos and clean horizons.
Vague notions and concrete certainty.
Optimism in the face of adversity.
I'm alive, I believe in everything
I'm alive, I believe in it all.
Lesley Choyce
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BLANK BEAUTY
Beautiful blank pages
kiss our
imaginations
with backgrounds
that demand precision.
Our black letters cross
on tightrope lines,
curving
without wavering
across deep, invisible currents.
These beautiful blank pages
are promises of our
reflections.
Our gentlest strokes
of darkness upon light.
-Unknown
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TO THE LAKE
In Spring of youth it was my lot
To haunt of the wide world a spot
The which I could not love the less -
So lovely was the loneliness
Of a wild lake, with black rock bound,
And the tall pines that towered around.
But when the night had thrown her pall
Upon that spot, as upon all,
And the mystic wind went by
Murmuring in melody -
Then - ah, then, I would awake
To the terror of the lone lake.
Yet that terror was not fright,
But a tremulous delight -
A feeling not the jewelled mine
Could teach or bribe me to define -
Nor Love - although the love were thine.
Death was in that poisonous wave,
And in its gulf a fitting grave
For him who thence could solace bring
To his lone imagining -
Whose solitary soul could make
An Eden of that dim lake.
Edgar Allan Poe
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"Rowses, rowses! Penny a bunch!" they tell you—
Slattern girls in Trafalgar, eager to sell you.
Roses, roses, red in the Kensington sun,
Holland Road, High Street, Bayswater, see you and smell you—
Roses of London town, red till the summer is done.
Roses, roses, locust and lilac, perfuming
West End, East End, wondrously budding and blooming
Out of the black earth, rubbed in a million hands,
Foot-trod, sweat-sour over and under, entombing
Highways of darkness, deep gutted with iron bands.
"Rowses, rowses! Penny a bunch!" they tell you,
Ruddy blooms of corruption, see you and smell you,
Born of stale earth, fallowed with squalor and tears—
North shire, south shire, none are like these, I tell you,
Roses of London perfumed with a thousand years.
Willa Cather (U.S., 1873 - 1947)
 smiles are prettyy · Wed Nov 25, 2009 @ 02:40pm · 1 Comments |
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