S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table - The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T.S. Eliot
Listen my children and you shall hear ...
- Paul Revere's Ride, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea ...
- Crossing the Bar, Alfred Lord Tennyson
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 ...
- Kubla Khan, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
― I'm Passing Open Windows (Ms Laura), Friday, 14 May 2004 19:40 (twenty-one years ago)
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.-The Lake Isle Of Innisfree, William Butler Yeats
They are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens,
And along the trampled edges of the street
I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids
Sprouting despondently at area gates.
-Morning at the Window, T. S. Eliot
I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
-Saddest Poem , Pablo Neruda
Strings in the earth and air
Make music sweet;
Strings by the river where
The willows meet.
There's music along the river
For Love wanders there,
Pale flowers on his mantle,
Dark leaves on his hair.
All softly playing,
With head to the music bent,
And fingers straying
Upon an instrument.
-Chamber Music, James Joyce
Much to his Mum and Dad's dismay
Horace ate himself one day.
He didn't stop to say his grace,
He just sat down and ate his face.
-Horace Poem, Monty Python
Coming thro' the rye, poor body,
Coming thro' the rye,
She draiglet a' her petticoatie
Coming thro' the rye.
-Coming Through The Rye, Robert Burns
When we two parted
In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted
To sever the years,
Pale grew thy cheek and cold,
Colder, thy kiss;
Truly that hour foretold
Sorrow to this.
-When We Two Parted, Lord Byron
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
-He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven, William Butler Yeats
in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little lame baloonman
whistles far and wee
-In Just, ee cummings
but the other
day i was passing a certain
gate rain
fell as it will
-But The Other, ee cummings
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
This Is Just to Say, William Carlos Williams
I do love I know not what,
Sometimes this and sometimes that;
-No Luck In Love, Robert Herrick
Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn,
Grew lean while he assailed the seasons;
He wept that he was ever born,
And he had reasons.
-Miniver Cheevy, E.A. Robinson
It’s all I have to bring to-day,
This, and my heart beside,
This, and my heart, and all the fields,
And all the meadows wide.
Be sure you count, should I forget,—
Some one the sun could tell,—
This, and my heart, and all the bees
Which in the clover dwell.
-Epigram, Emily Dickinson
I asked no other thing,
No other was denied.
-Emily Dickinson
If ever two were one, then surely we.
-To My Dear and Loving Husband, Anne Bradstreet
― Fred (Fred), Saturday, 15 May 2004 14:57 (twenty-one years ago)