Glances
We bite our pain
Our hearts desire
Takes wings of thought
To lakes of fire
The spirit searches
'long the darkened rafter
The clenched teeth strip
The joy from laughter
Our lust throws caution
To the nether depths
Your smile stops my heart
For tears unwept
Passions drained
Loves unspoken
Rage apart
Hearts broken
William Blake
Ah! Sun-flower
Ah, Sun-flower, weary of time,
Who countest the steps of the Sun,
Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the traveller's journey is done:
Where the Youth pined away with desire,
And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow
Arise from their graves, and aspire
Where my
Sun-flower
wishes to go.
Was William Blake mad?
Of course he was -
He talked to angels.
And anyone who talks
To the angels that
Stream between heaven
And
the stone in
Bunhill Fields
Remembering
Catherine and William
Is mad
Emily Jane Bronte
The Prisoner
A Fragment
In the dungeon-crypts, idly did I stray,
Reckless of the lives wasting there away;
"Draw the ponderous bars! open, Warder stern!"
He dared not say me nay - the hinges harshly turn.
"Our guests are darkly lodged," I whisper'd, gazing
through
The vault, whose grated eye showed heaven more grey than
blue;
(This was when glad spring laughed in awaking pride;)
"Aye, darkly lodged enough!" returned my sullen guide.
Then, God forgive my youth; forgive my careless
tongue;
I scoffed, as the chill chains on the damp flag-stones rung:
"Confined in triple walls, art thou so much to fear,
That we must bind thee down and clench thy fetters here? "
The captive raised her face, it was as soft and mild
As sculpted marble saint, or slumbering unwean'd child;
It was so soft and mild, it was so sweet and fair,
Pain could not trace a line, nor grief a shadow there!
The captive raised her hand and pressed it to her brow;
"I have been struck," she said, "and I am suffering now;
Yet these are little worth, your bolts and irons strong,
And, were they forged in steel, they could not hold me long."
Hoarse laughed the jailor grim: "Shall I be won to
hear;
Dost think, fond, dreaming wretch, that I shall grant
thy prayer?
Or, better still, wilt melt my master's heart with groans?
Ah! sooner might the sun thaw down these granite stones.
"My master's voice is low, his aspect bland and kind,
But hard as hardest flint, the soul that lurks behind;
And I am rough and rude, yet not more rough to see
Than is the hidden ghost that has its home in me."
About her lips there played a smile of almost scorn,
"My friend," she gently said, "you have not heard me mourn;
When you my kindred's lives, my lost life, can
restore,
Then I may weep and sue, -- ;but never, friend, before!
Still, let my tyrants know, I am not doom'd to wear
Year after year in gloom, and desolate despair;
A messenger of Hope, comes every night to me,
And offers for short life, eternal liberty.
He comes with western winds, with evening's wandering
airs,
With that clear dusk of heaven that brings the thickest
stars.
Winds take a pensive tone, and stars a tender fire,
And visions rise, and change, that kill me with desire.
Desire for nothing known in my maturer years,
When Joy grew mad with awe, at counting future tears.
When, if my spirit's sky was full of flashes warm,
I knew not whence they came, from sun, or thunder storm.
But, first, a hush of peace --;a soundless calm
descends;
The struggle of distress, and fierce impatience ends.
Mute music soothes my breast, unuttered harmony,
That I could never dream, till Earth was lost to me.
Then dawns the Invisible; the Unseen its truth
reveals;
My outward sense is gone, my inward essence feels:
Its wings are almost free --;its home, its harbour
found,
Measuring the gulph, it stoops, and dares the final bound.
Oh, dreadful is the check -- ;intense the agony
--;
When the ear begins to hear, and the eye begins to
see;
When the pulse begins to throb, the brain to think again,
The soul to feel the flesh, and the flesh to feel the chain.
Yet I would lose no sting, would wish no torture less;
The more that anguish racks, the earlier it will bless;
And robed in fires of hell, or bright with heavenly shine,
If it but herald death, the vision is divine.!"
She ceased to speak, and we, unanswering, turned to go
--;
We had no further power to work the captive woe:
Her cheek, her gleaming eye, declared that man had given
A sentence, unapproved, and overruled by Heaven.
Anonymous
Pease pudding hot, Pease pudding cold,
Pease pudding in the pot, nine days old.
Some like it hot, Some like it cold,
Some like it in the pot, nine days old.
Buddha
Now may every living thing, young or old, weak or strong,
living near or far, known or unknown,
living or departed, or yet
unborn,
may every living thing be full of bliss.
Caedmon
Singing of the creation
Nu scylum hergen hefaenricaes uard,
metudaes maecti end his modgidanc,
uerc uuldurfadur, sue he uundra gihuaes,
eci dryctin, or astelidae;
he aerist scop aelda barnum
heben til hrofe, haleg scepen.
Tha middungeard moncynnaes uard,
eci dryctin, aefter tiadae
firum foldu, frea allmectig.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
The Rolling English Road
Before the Roman came to Rye or out of Severn strode,
The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English
road.
A reeling road, a rolling road, that
rambles
round the
shire,
And after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire;
A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread
The night we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head.
I know no harm of Bonaparte and plenty of the
Squire,
And for to fight the Frenchman I did not much desire;
But I did bash their baggonets because they came array'd
To straighten out the crooked road an English drunkard
made,
Where you and I went down the lane with ale-mugs in our
hands,
The night we went to Glastonbury by way of Goodwin Sands.
His sins they were forgiven him; or why do flowers run
Behind him; and the hedges all strengthening in the sun?
The wild thing went from
left
to
right
and knew not which was which,
But the wild rose was above him when they
found him in
the
ditch.
God pardon us, nor harden us; we did not see so clear
The night we went to Bannochburn by way of Brighton Pier.
My friends, we will not go again or ape an ancient rage,
Or stretch the folly of our youth to be the shame of age,
But walk with clearer eyes and ears this path that
wandereth,
And see
undrugg'd
in evening light the decent inn of
death;
For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be
seen,
Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.
John Clare
Bird's Nests
'Tis spring, warm glows the south,
Chaffinch carries the moss in his mouth
To filbert hedges all day long,
And charms the poet with his beautiful song;
The wind blows bleak o'er the sedgy fen,
But warm the sun shines by the little wood,
Where the old cow at her leisure chews her cud.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Kubla Khan
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the
sacred river
, ran
Through caverns measureless to man