I'm ill just now ...

A poem of mine today ...

Media-Circus Malevolence

A wheel caves in without a spoke --
the part essential to the whole.
While rain forests go up in smoke,
man's folly dissipates his soul.

The pollution in our oceans
wipes out the plants and fish.
Our most foul and base emotions
just limn a dark death-wish.

Our differences divide us --
man's inhumanity to man 
(like a chancre filled with pus)
excoriates all hope or plan.

The outcome is uncertain,
hard to tell what lies in store.
We may find that it's just curtains,
and unleash nuclear war.

Each day more species vanish
as we pillage and despoil.
It's common sense we banish
in our desperate search for oil.

A Malthusian catastrophe
lies waiting round the bend --
and our much vaunted fecundity
indicates a ghastly end.

Barefoot Boy by John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892)

The Barefoot Boy

by John Greenleaf Whittier (1855)

Blessings on thee, little man,

Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan!

With thy turned-up pantaloons,

And thy merry whistled tunes;

With thy red lip, redder still

Kissed by strawberries on the hill;

With the sunshine on thy face,

Through thy torn brim’s jaunty grace;

From my heart I give thee joy,—

I was once a barefoot boy!

Prince thou art,—the grown-up man

Only is republican.

Let the million-dollared ride!

Barefoot, trudging at his side,

Thou hast more than he can buy

In the reach of ear and eye,—

Outward sunshine, inward joy:

Blessings on thee, barefoot boy!

Oh for boyhood’s painless play,

Sleep that wakes in laughing day,

Health that mocks the doctor’s rules,

Knowledge never learned of schools,

Of the wild bee’s morning chase,

Of the wild-flower’s time and place,

Flight of fowl and habitude

Of the tenants of the wood;

How the tortoise bears his shell,

How the woodchuck digs his cell,

And the ground-mole sinks his well;

How the robin feeds her young,

How the oriole’s nest is hung;

Where the whitest lilies blow,

Where the freshest berries grow,

Where the ground-nut trails its vine,

Where the wood-grape’s clusters shine;

Of the black wasp’s cunning way,

Mason of his walls of clay,

And the architectural plans

Of gray hornet artisans!

For, eschewing books and tasks,

Nature answers all he asks;

Hand in hand with her he walks,

Face to face with her he talks,

Part and parcel of her joy,—

Blessings on the barefoot boy!

Oh for boyhood’s time of June,

Crowding years in one brief moon,

When all things I heard or saw,

Me, their master, waited for.

I was rich in flowers and trees,

Humming-birds and honey-bees;

For my sport the squirrel played,

Plied the snouted mole his spade;

For my taste the blackberry cone

Purpled over hedge and stone;

Laughed the brook for my delight

Through the day and through the night,

Whispering at the garden wall,

Talked with me from fall to fall;

Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond,

Mine the walnut slopes beyond,

Mine, on bending orchard trees,

Apples of Hesperides!

Still as my horizon grew,

Larger grew my riches too;

All the world I saw or knew

Seemed a complex Chinese toy,

Fashioned for a barefoot boy!

Oh for festal dainties spread,

Like my bowl of milk and bread;

Pewter spoon and bowl of wood,

On the door-stone, gray and rude!

O’er me, like a regal tent,

Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent,

Purple-curtained, fringed with gold,

Looped in many a wind-swung fold;

While for music came the play

Of the pied frogs’ orchestra;

And, to light the noisy choir,

Lit the fly his lamp of fire.

I was monarch: pomp and joy

Waited on the barefoot boy!

Cheerily, then, my little man,

Live and laugh, as boyhood can!

Though the flinty slopes be hard,

Stubble-speared the new-mown sward,

Every morn shall lead thee through

Fresh baptisms of the dew;

Every evening from thy feet

Shall the cool wind kiss the heat:

All too soon these feet must hide

In the prison cells of pride,

Lose the freedom of the sod,

Like a colt’s for work be shod,

Made to tread the mills of toil,

Up and down in ceaseless moil:

Happy if their track be found

Never on forbidden ground;

Happy if they sink not in

Quick and treacherous sands of sin.

Ah! that thou couldst know thy joy,

Ere it passes, barefoot boy!

Emily Dickinson, Time and Eternity

Emily Dickinson (1830–86).  Complete Poems.  1924.

Part Four: Time and Eternity

VIII

LOOK back on time with kindly eyes,

He doubtless did his best;

How softly sinks his trembling sun

In human nature’s west!

Drummer Hodge ~Thomas Hardy

Drummer Hodge 

They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest
  Uncoffined – just as found:
His landmark is a kopje-crest
  That breaks the veldt around;
And foreign constellations west
  Each night above his mound.

Young Hodge the Drummer never knew –
  Fresh from his Wessex home –
The meaning of the broad Karoo,
  The Bush, the dusty loam,
And why uprose to nightly view
  Strange stars amid the gloam.

Yet portion of that unknown plain
  Will Hodge forever be;
His homely Northern breast and brain
  Grow to some Southern tree,
And strange-eyed constellation reign
  His stars eternally.

Walt Whitman ..

The Village Blacksmith

Under a spreading chestnut-tree
The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
With large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are strong as iron bands.

His hair is crisp, and black, and long,
His face is like the tan;
His brow is wet with honest sweat,
He earns whate'er he can,
And looks the whole world in the face,
For he owes not any man.

Week in, week out, from morn till night,
You can hear his bellows blow;
You can hear him swing his heavy sledge,
With measured beat and slow,
Like a sexton ringing the village bell,
When the evening sun is low.

And children coming home from school
Look in at the open door;
They love to see the flaming forge,
And hear the bellows roar,
And catch the burning sparks that fly
Like chaff from a threshing-floor.

He goes on Sunday to the church,
And sits among his boys;
He hears the parson pray and preach,
He hears his daughter's voice,
Singing in the village choir,
And it makes his heart rejoice.

It sounds to him like her mother's voice,
Singing in Paradise!
He needs must think of her once more,
How in the grave she lies;
And with his hard, rough hand he wipes
A tear out of his eyes.

Toiling,--rejoicing,--sorrowing,
Onward through life he goes;
Each morning sees some task begin,
Each evening sees it close;
Something attempted, something done,
Has earned a night's repose.

Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,
For the lesson thou hast taught!
Thus at the flaming forge of life
Our fortunes must be wrought;
Thus on its sounding anvil shaped
Each burning deed and thought.

Bastille Day ...

La Marseillaise

Entendez vous dans les campagnes, 
Mugir ces féroces soldats? 
Ils viennent jusque dans nos bras 
Egorger nos fils, nos compagnes! 


Refrain 

Aux armes, citoyens! 
Formez vos bataillons! 
Marchons! Marchons! 
Qu'un sang impur 
Abreuve nos sillons! 

Amour sacré de la patrie, 
Conduis, soutiens nos bras vengeurs! 
Liberté, Liberté cherie, 
Combats avec tes defenseurs! 
Sous nos drapeaux, que la victoire 
Accoure à tes males accents! 
Que tes ennemis expirants 
Voient ton triomphe et notre gloire! 


Refrain 

Nous entrerons dans la carrière 
Quand nos ainés n'y seront plus; 
Nous y trouverons leur poussière 
Et la trace de leurs vertus. 
Bien moins jaloux de leur survivre 
Que de partager leur cercueil, 
Nous aurons le sublime orgueil 
De les venger ou de les suivre! 

Refrain 

En anglais:

La Marseillaise - lyrics in English

Arise children of the fatherland
The day of glory has arrived
Against us tyranny's
Bloody standard is raised
Listen to the sound in the fields
The howling of these fearsome soldiers
They are coming into our midst
To cut the throats of your sons and consorts

To arms citizens
Form your battalions
March, march
Let impure blood
Water our furrows

What do they want this horde of slaves
Of traitors and conspiratorial kings?
For whom these vile chains
These long-prepared irons?
Frenchmen, for us, ah! What outrage
What methods must be taken?
It is us they dare plan
To return to the old slavery!

What! These foreign cohorts!
They would make laws in our courts!
What! These mercenary phalanxes
Would cut down our warrior sons
Good Lord! By chained hands
Our brow would yield under the yoke
The vile despots would have themselves be
The masters of destiny

Tremble, tyrants and traitors
The shame of all good men
Tremble! Your parricidal schemes
Will receive their just reward
Against you we are all soldiers
If they fall, our young heros
France will bear new ones
Ready to join the fight against you

Frenchmen, as magnanimous warriors
Bear or hold back your blows
Spare these sad victims
That they regret taking up arms against us
But not these bloody despots
These accomplices of Bouillé
All these tigers who pitilessly
Ripped out their mothers' wombs

We shall enter into the pit
When our elders will no longer be there
There we shall find their ashes
And the mark of their virtues
We are much less jealous of surviving them
Than of sharing their coffins
We shall have the sublime pride
Of avenging or joining them

Drive on sacred patriotism
Support our avenging arms
Liberty, cherished liberty
Join the struggle with your defenders
Under our flags, let victory
Hurry to your manly tone
So that in death your enemies
See your triumph and our glory!

Happy Birthday to France!

Walt Whitman ..

ON THE BEACH AT NIGHT

by: Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

N the beach at night,

Stands a child with her father,

Watching the east, the autumn sky.

 

Up through the darkness,

While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading,

Lower sullen and fast athwart and down the sky,

Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east,

Ascends large and calm the lord-star Jupiter,

And nigh at hand, only a very little above,

Swim the delicate sisters the Pleiades.

 

From the beach the child holding the hand of her father,

Those burial-clouds that lower victorious soon to devour all,

Watching, silently weeps.

 

Weep not, child,
Weep not, my darling,

With these kisses let me remove your tears,

The ravening clouds shall not long be victorious,

They shall not long possess the sky, they devour the stars only in apparition,

Jupiter shall emerge, be patient, watch again another night, the Pleiades shall emerge,

They are immortal, all those stars both silvery and golden shall shine out again,

The great stars and the little ones shall shine out again, they endure,

The vast immortal suns and the long-enduring pensive moons shall again shine.

 

Then dearest child mournest thou only for Jupiter?

Considerest thou alone the burial of the stars?

 

Something there is,

(With my lips soothing thee, adding I whisper,

I give thee the first suggestion, the problem and indirection,)

Something there is more immortal even than the stars,

(Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,)

Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter

Longer than sun or any revolving satellite,

Or the radiant sisters the Pleiades.

Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach ...

Dover Beach

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the A gaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.


Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

In case you are interested, here's a critique of the poem:

http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/arnold/touche4.html

One of my own poems ...

Un baiser sous le pont des soupirs

From 1600 till now,
the Ponte dei Sospiri
has inspired marvelous legends --
the one most people find inspirational
was used in a fine film of romance.
It's inspired many a sweet rendezvous
in a gondola at dying of day.

The bridge's white limestone walls
and pouting, dark barred windows
overshadow Venice’s Grand Canal.
The legend states that lovers
will be blessed with a love as strong
as the arching massif itself.
It’s said that one simple kiss
at twilight, when the bells toll,
will bind two lovers forever
in eternal, undying bliss.

The tale has burgeoned and spread
across the wide breadth of our world,
and many’s the happy couple
who’ve kissed with that bridge overhead.

If love is your ultimate goal,
perhaps you might want to explore
the gorgeous Old World charm of Venice,
with someone you’ve come to adore.

Now, Rupert Brooke ...

Rupert Brooke's sonnet 'The Treasure' was the first in a sonnet sequence entitled '1914'. The five numbered sonnets, preceded by this unnumbered sonnet were first published in the periodical New Numbers (number 4) in January of 1915:

The Treasure

When colour goes home into the eyes,
And lights that shine are shut again,
With dancing girls and sweet bird's cries
Behind the gateways of the brain;
And that no-place which gave them birth, shall close
The rainbow and the rose:—

Still may Time hold some golden space
Where I'll unpack that scented store
Of song and flower and sky and face,
And count, and touch, and turn them o'er,
Musing upon them: as a mother, who
Has watched her children all the rich day through,
Sits, quiet-handed, in the fading light,
When children sleep, ere night.

August 1914.

Emily Bronte:

The Night 

The night is darkening round me,
The wild winds coldly blow;
But a tyrant spell has bound me,
And I cannot, cannot go.
The giant trees are bending
Their bare boughs weighed with snow;
The storm is fast descending,
And yet I cannot go.
Clouds beyond clouds above me,
Wastes beyond wastes below;
But nothing drear can move me:
I will not, cannot go.

Today we have Zayra Yves coming to us from San Francisco, CA, USA.

Life Titles

Those other titles for my life are not right.
This is how I know they are not.

 

I arrived late to San Luis Obispo where my family sleeps
surrounded in the cove of Seven Sisters.

The coyotes were on the hill
digging up our dead dog buried next to the cats.
I did not stop them.  I did not cry.
I got out of my car to look up at the Milky Way,
the great belt of light, because here
like Maui, one can actually see these things.

I thought about what is true; what is real.

 

In the morning scraps of fur were stuck to the bushes
bits of cloth were rolling around in the wind.
And, I asked myself what of my life would be translated
by the wind after the coyotes came for me?

Now I am ready to write the truth

She Who Remembers is someone else's story.

I have told it well because I could.
It is time to write about my life.  The title will change
as I unravel it from words that belong to anyone
they just happen to be mine in this moment.

When I am finished the wind will tell you what I lived.
Stay with me for the journey.

 

 

Zayra Yves

Zayra can be found here:

http://allpoetry.com/Zayra%20Yves

Check her out.

Today, we have a poem from John Greenleaf Whittier.

A Word for the Hour

The firmament breaks up. In black eclipse Light after light goes out. One evil star, Luridly glaring through the smoke of war, As in the dream of the Apocalypse, Drags others down. Let us not weakly weep Nor rashly threaten. Give us grace to keep Our faith and patience; wherefore should we leap On one hand into fratricidal fight, Or, on the other, yield eternal right, Frame lies of laws, and good and ill confound? What fear we? Safe on freedom's vantage ground Our feet are planted; let us there remain In unrevengeful calm, no means untried Which truth can sanction, no just claim denied, The sad spectators of a suicide! They break the lines of Union: shall we light The fires of hell to weld anew the chain On that red anvil where each blow is pain? Draw we not even now a freer breath, As from our shoulders falls a load of death Loathsome as that the Tuscan's victim bore When keen with life to a dead horror bound? Why take we up the accursed thing again? Pity, forgive, but urge them back no more Who, drunk with passion, flaunt disunion's rag With its vile reptile blazon. Let us press The golden cluster on our brave old flag In closer union, and, if numbering less, Brighter shall shine the stars which still remain.  John Greenleaf Whittier

Born: 17-Dec-1807
Birthplace: Haverhill, MA
Died: 7-Sep-1892
Location of death: Hampton Falls, NH
Cause of death: unspecified
Remains: Buried, Amesbury, MA

Gender: Male
Religion: Quaker
Race or Ethnicity: White
Occupation: Poet, Activist

Nationality: United States
Executive summary: American abolitionist poet

John Greenleaf Whittier, America's "Quaker poet" of freedom, faith and the sentiment of the common people, was born in a Merrimack Valley farmhouse, Haverhill, Massachusetts, on the 17th of December 1807. The dwelling was built in the 17th century by his ancestor, the sturdy immigrant, Thomas Whittier, notable through his efforts to secure toleration for the disciples of George Fox in New England. Thomas's son Joseph joined the Society of Friends and bore his share of obloquy. Successive generations obeyed the monitions of the Inner Light. The poet was born in the faith, and adhered to its liberalized tenets, its garb and speech, throughout his lifetime. His father, John, was a farmer of limited means but independent spirit. His mother, Abigail Hussey, whom the poet strongly resembled, was of good stock. The Rev. Stephen Bachiler, an Oxford man and a Churchman, who became a Nonconformist and emigrated to Boston in 1632, was one of her forebears and also an ancestor of Daniel Webster. The poet and the statesman showed their kinship by the "dark, deep-set and lustrous eyes" that impressed one who met either of these uncommon men. The former's name of Greenleaf is thought to be derived from the French Feuillevert, and to be of Huguenot origin; and there was Huguenot blood as well in Thomas Whittier, the settler. The poet thus fairly inherited his conscience, religious exaltation and spirit of protest. All the Whittiers were men of stature and bodily strength, John Greenleaf being almost the first exception, a lad of delicate mould, scarcely adapted for the labor required of a Yankee farmer and his household. He bore a fair proportion of it, but throughout his life was frequently brought to a halt by pain and physical debility. In youth he was described as "a handsome young man, tall, slight, and very erect, bashful, but never awkward." His shyness was extreme, though covered by a grave and quiet exterior, which could not hide his love of fun and sense of the ludicrous. In age he retained most of these characteristics, refined by a serene expression of peace after contest. His eyes never lost their glow, and were said by a woman to be those of one "who had kept innocency all his days."

Whittier's early education was restricted to what he could gain from the primitive "district school" of the neighborhood. His call as a poet came when a teacher lent to him the poems of Robert Burns. He was then about fifteen, and his taste for writing, bred thus far upon the quaint Journals of Friends, the Bible and The Pilgrim's Progress, was at once stimulated. There was little art or inspiration in his boyish verse, but in his nineteenth year an older sister thought a specimen of it good enough for submission to the Free Press, a weekly paper which William Lloyd Garrison, the future emancipationist, had started in the town of Newburyport. This initiated Whittier's literary career. The poem was printed with a eulogy, and the editor sought out his young contributor: their alliance began, and continued until the triumph of the anti-slavery cause thirty-seven years later. Garrison overcame the elder Whittier's desire for the full services of his son, and gained permission for the latter to attend the Haverhill academy. To meet expenses the youth worked in various ways, even making slippers by hand in after-hours; but when he came of age his textbook days were ended. Meanwhile he had written creditable student verse, and contributed both prose and rhyme to newspapers, thus gaining friends and obtaining a decided if provincial reputation. He soon essayed journalism, first spending a year and a half in the service of a publisher of two Boston newspapers, theManufacturer, an organ of the Clay protectionists, and the Philanthropist, devoted to humane reform. Whittier edited the former, having a bent for politics, but wrote for the latter also. His father's last illness recalled him to the homestead, where both farm and family became his pious charge. Money had to be earned, and he now secured an editorial post at Hartford, Connecticut, which he sustained until forced by ill-health, early in his twenty-fifth year, to re-seek the Haverhill farm. There he remained from 1832 to 1836, when the property was sold, and the Whittiers removed to Amesbury in order to be near their meeting-house and to enable the poet to be in touch with affairs. The new home became, as it proved, that of his whole later life; a dwelling then bought and in time remodelled was the poet's residence for fifty-six years, and from it, after his death on the 7th of September 1892, his remains were borne to the Amesbury graveyard.