Mira's Song: Mary Leapor

“SEE those cheeks of beauteous dye,
Lovely as the dawning sky,
Innocence that ne’er beguiles,
Lips that wear eternal smiles:
Beauties to the rest unknown,
Shine in her and her alone.

Now the rivers smoother flow,
Now the op’ning roses glow,
The woodbine twines her odorous charms
Round the oak’s supporting arms:
Lilies paint the dewy ground
And ambrosia breathes around.

Come, ye gales that fan the spring,
Zephyr, with thy downy wing,
Gently waft to Mira’s breast
Health, Content, and balmy Rest.
Far, O far from hence remain
Sorrow, Care, and sickly Pain.

Thus sung Mira to her lyre,
Till the idle numbers tire:
‘Ah! Sappho sweeter sings,’ I cry,
And the spiteful rocks reply,
(Responsive to the jarring strings)
‘Sweeter—Sappho sweeter sings.’”

The Snowflakes: Priscilla Jane Thompson

“DOWN, DOWN, in millions, blending,
The snow-flakes gambol fast;
With eddies gay, descending, Hurled by the winter’s blast. Down, down, in millions, blending,
The shower seems never ending,
While a white spread is extending,
From the countless flakes, amassed.

2
Down, down, in millions blending,
The snow flakes gambol fast; Each little drop is wending, To a resting place at last. Down, down, in millions, blending,
Our God the flakes are sending,
And a lesson is impending, Which blind man fails to grasp.

3
Down, down, in millions, blending,
The snow-flakes gambol fast; In mystic shapes, portending, God’s wisdom great and vast. Down, down, in millions, blending,
While scholars are contending,
And the sage his wits is bending
Unexplained, they drift and pass.
”

Invocation to Rain: Sarah Anne Curzon

“O blessed angel of the All-bounteous King,
Where dost thou stay so long? Our sad hearts pine,
Our spirits faint, for thee. Our weary eyes
Scan all the blue expanse, where not a cloud
Floats low to rest our vision. In vain we turn
Or East or West, no vap’rous haze, nor view
Of distant panorama, wins our souls
To other worlds. All, all is hard and scant.
Thy brother Spring is come.
His favourite haunts the sheltering woods betray—
The woods that, dark and cheerless yet, call thee.
Tender hepaticas peep forth, and mottled leaves
Of yellow dog’s tooth vie with curly fronds
Of feathery fern, in strewing o’er his path;
The dielytra puts her necklace on,
Of pearly pendants, topaz-tipped or rose.
Gray buds are on the orchard trees, and grass
Grows up in single blades and braves the sun.
But thou!—O, where art thou, sweet early Rain,
That with thy free libations fill’st our cup?
The contemplative blue-bird pipes his note
From off the ridge cap, but can find no spot
Fit for his nest. The red-breast on the fence
Explores the pasture with his piercing eye,
And visits oft the bushes by the stream,
But takes no mate. For why? No leaves or tuft
Are there to hide a home. Oh what is earth
Without a home? On the dry garden bed,
The sparrow—the little immigrant bird—
Hops quick, and looks askance,
And pecks, and chirps, asking for kindly crumbs—
Just two or three to feed his little mate:
Then, on return from some small cunning nook
Where he has hidden her, he mounts the wires,
Or garden fence, and sings a happy song
Of home, and other days. A-missing thee
The husbandman goes forth with faltering step
And dull sad eye; his sweltering team pulls hard
The lab’ring plough, but the dry earth falls back
As dead, and gives nor fragrant fume, nor clogs
The plough-boy’s feet with rich encumb’ring mould.
The willows have a little tender green.
And swallows cross the creek—the gurgling creek
Now fallen to pools—but, disappointed,
Dart away so swift, and fly so high
We scarce can follow them. Thus all the land
Doth mourn for thee.
Ah! here thou comest—sweet Rain.
Soft, tender Rain! benison of the skies!
See now, what transformation in thy touch!
Straight all the land is green. The blossoming trees
Put on their bridal wreaths, and veil their charms
From the too ardent sun, beneath thy gift
Of soft diaphanous tissue, pure and white
As angel’s raiment. Little wood children
Deck all the path with flowers. The teeming earth
Offers rich gifts. The little choristers
Sing ceaseless hymns, and the glad husbandman
Adds his diapason. Bright fountains wake
And mingle with the swift roulade of streams.
The earth is full of music! Thou dost swing
Thy fragrant censer high, and dwellers in
The dusty city raise their toil-worn heads
From desk and bench, and cry “Summer is here!”
And straight they smell new hay and clover blooms;
And see the trout swift-darting in the brooks:
And hear the plover whistling in the fields.
And little children dream of daisy chains;
And pent-up youth thinks of a holiday;
A holiday with romps, and cream, and flowers.
O, Rain! O, soft, sweet Rain! O liberal Rain!
Touch our hard hearts, that we may more become
Like that Great Heart, whose almoner art thou.”

Susie Asado: Gertrude Stein

“Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea.
Susie Asado.
Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea.
Susie Asado.
Susie Asado which is a told tray sure.
A lean on the shoe this means slips slips hers.
When the ancient light grey is clean it is yellow, it is a silver seller.
This is a please this is a please there are the saids to jelly. These are the wets these say the sets to leave a crown to Incy.
Incy is short for incubus.
A pot. A pot is a beginning of a rare bit of trees. Trees tremble, the old vats are in bobbles, bobbles which shade and shove and render clean, render clean must.
Drink pups.
Drink pups drink pups lease a sash hold, see it shine and a bobolink has pins. It shows a nail.
What is a nail. A nail is unison.
Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea.”

To A Mountain Pine: Anna Twitchell

“O LONELY pine
Upon your granite cliff,
I know your pain—
Tossing your weird arms
To the mighty winds,
Beating your ragged breast
With shrunken hands.
I know your pain,
For I have stood
On such high, dawn-kissed peaks,
And flung my arms
And beat with futile hands,
Because I still was held
To stone and clod
By sullen roots
Of unremembered lives.
”

January: Effie Waller

“Beneath the leaden skies
Old Mother Earth now lies
Wrapped in a cloud of white;
Trees once clothed in hosts
Of leaves, now stand like ghosts:
Each one in snow bedight.

On the ice, smooth and glassy,
The merry lad and lassie
Are skating to and fro;
Or down the steep hillside
With sleds they gaily glide
Over the smooth white snow.

The little snow-birds brown—
Feathered warblers of renown—
So blithe and bright and gay;
Flit about merrily,
Twittering loud and cheerily
All the livelong day. ”

Passion: Charlotte Brontë

“Some have won a wild delight,
By daring wilder sorrow;
Could I gain thy love to-night,
I’d hazard death to-morrow.

Could the battle-struggle earn
One kind glance from thine eye,
How this withering heart would burn,
The heady fight to try!

Welcome nights of broken sleep,
And days of carnage cold,
Could I deem that thou wouldst weep
To hear my perils told.

Tell me, if with wandering bands
I roam full far away,
Wilt thou to those distant lands
In spirit ever stray?

Wild, long, a trumpet sounds afar;
Bid me—bid me go
Where Seik and Briton meet in war,
On Indian Sutlej’s flow.

Blood has dyed the Sutlej’s waves
With scarlet stain, I know;
Indus’ borders yawn with graves,
Yet, command me go!

Though rank and high the holocaust
Of nations steams to heaven,
Glad I’d join the death-doomed host,
Were but the mandate given.

Passion’s strength should nerve my arm,
Its ardour stir my life,
Till human force to that dread charm
Should yield and sink in wild alarm,
Like trees to tempest-strife.

If, hot from war, I seek thy love,
Darest thou turn aside?
Darest thou then my fire reprove,
By scorn, and maddening pride?

No—my will shall yet control
Thy will, so high and free,
And love shall tame that haughty soul—
Yes—tenderest love for me.

I’ll read my triumph in thine eyes,
Behold, and prove the change;
Then leave, perchance, my noble prize,
Once more in arms to range.

I’d die when all the foam is up,
The bright wine sparkling high;
Nor wait till in the exhausted cup
Life’s dull dregs only lie.

Then Love thus crowned with sweet reward,
Hope blest with fulness large,
I’d mount the saddle, draw the sword,
And perish in the charge!”

Drifting: Olivia Ward Bush-Banks

“And now the sun in tinted splendor sank,
The west was all aglow with crimson light;
The bay seemed like a sheet of burnished gold,
Its waters glistened with such radiance bright.

At anchor lay the yachts with snow-white sails,
Outlined against the glowing, rose-hued sky;
No ripple stirred the waters’ calm repose
Save when a tiny craft sped lightly by.

Our boat was drifting slowly, gently round,
To rest secure till evening shadows fell;
No sound disturbed the stillness of the air,
Save the soft chiming of the vesper bell.

Yes, drifting, drifting; and I thought that life,
When nearing death, is like the sunset sky:
And death is but the slow, sure drifting in,
To rest far more securely, by and by.

Then let me drift along the Bay of time,
Till my last sun shall set in glowing light;
Let me cast anchor where no shadows fall,
Full safely moored within Heaven’s harbor bright.”

In The Desert: Alice Corbin Henderson

“I HAVE seen you, O king of the dead,
More beautiful than sunlight.

Your kiss is like quicksilver;
But I turned my face aside
Lest you should touch my lips.

In the field with the flowers
You stood darkly.

My knees trembled, and I knew
That no other joy would be like this.

But the warm field, and the sunlight,
And the few years of my girlhood
Came before me, and I cried,
Not yet!
Not yet, O dark lover!

You were patient.
—I know you will come again.

I have seen you, O king of the dead,
More beautiful than sunlight.

II
Here in the desert, under the cottonwoods
That keep up a monotonous wind-murmur of leaves,
I can hear the water dripping
Through the canals in Venice
From the oar of the gondola
Hugging the old palaces,
Beautiful old houses
Sinking quietly into decay…..

O sunlight—how many things you gild
With your eternal gold!
Sunlight—and night—are everlasting.

III
Once every twenty-four hours
Earth has a moment of indecision:
Shall I go on?—
Shall I keep turning?—
Is it worth while?
Everything holds its breath.
The trees huddle anxiously
On the edge of the arroyo,
And then, with a tremendous heave,
Earth shoves the hours on towards dawn.

IV
Four o’clock in the afternoon.
A stream of money is flowing down Fifth Avenue.

They speak of the fascination of New York
Climbing aboard motor-busses to look down on the endless play
From the Bay to the Bronx.
But it is forever the same:
There is no life there.

Watching a cloud on the desert,
Endlessly watching small insects crawling in and out of the shadow of a cactus,
A herd-boy on the horizon driving goats,
Uninterrupted sky and blown sand:
Space—volume—silence—
Nothing but life on the desert,
Intense life.

V
The hill cedars and piñons
Point upward like flames,
Like smoke they are drawn upward
From the face of the mountains.
Over the sunbaked slopes,
Patches of sun-dried adobes straggle;
Willows along the acequias in the valley
Give cool streams of green;
Beyond, on the bare hillsides,
Yellow and red gashes and bleached white paths
Give foothold to the burros,
To the black-shawled Mexican girls
Who go for water.”

One Perfect Rose: Dorothy Parker

“A single flow’r he sent me, since we met.
All tenderly his messenger he chose;
Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet—
One perfect rose.
I knew the language of the floweret;
”My fragile leaves,” it said, “his heart enclose.”
Love long has taken for his amulet
One perfect rose.

Why is it no one ever sent me yet
One perfect limousine, do you suppose?
Ah no, it’s always just my luck to get
One perfect rose.”

EPITAPH ON MR W-, A Famous Mineralogist: Felicia Hemans

“Stop, passenger! a wondrous tale to list—
Here lies a famous Mineralogist.
Famous indeed! such traces of his power,
He’s left from Penmaenbach to Penmaenmawr,
Such caves, and chasms, and fissures in the rocks,
His works resemble those of earthquake shocks;
And future ages very much may wonder
What mighty giant rent the hills asunder,
Or whether Lucifer himself had ne’er
Gone with his crew to play at foot-ball there.
His fossils, flints, and spars, of every hue,
With him, good reader, here lie buried too—
Sweet specimens! which, toiling to obtain,
He split huge cliffs, like so much wood, in twain.
We knew, so great the fuss he made about them,
Alive or dead, he ne’er would rest without them;
So, to secure soft slumber to his bones,
We paved his grave with all his favourite stones.
His much-loved hammer’s resting by his side;
Each hand contains a shell-fish petrified:
His mouth a piece of pudding-stone incloses,
And at his feet a lump of coal reposes:
Sure he was born beneath some lucky planet!—
His very coffin-plate is made of granite.
Weep not, good reader! he is truly blest
Amidst chalcedony and quartz to rest:
Weep not for him! but envied be his doom,
Whose tomb, though small, for all he loved had room:
And, O ye rocks!—schist, gneiss, whate’er ye be,
Ye varied strata!—names too hard for me—
Sing, “Oh, be joyful!” for your direst foe
By death’s fell hammer is at length laid low.
Ne’er on your spoils again shall W—— riot.
Clear up your cloudy brows, and rest in quiet—
He sleeps—no longer planning hostile actions,
As cold as any of his petrifactions;
Enshrined in specimens of every hue,
Too tranquil e’en to dream, ye rocks, of you.”

I'm "wife" - I've finished that: Emily Dickinson

“I’m “wife”—I’ve finished that—
That other state—
I’m Czar—I’m “Woman” now—
It’s safer so—

How odd the Girl’s life looks
Behind this soft Eclipse—
I think that Earth feels so
To folks in Heaven—now—

This being comfort—then
That other kind—was pain—
But why compare?
I’m “Wife”! Stop there!”

Aphrodite's Doves: Sappho

“When the drifting gray of the vesper shadow
Dimmed their upward path through the midmost azure,
And the length of night overtook them distant
Far from Olympus;

Far away from splendor and joy of Paphos,
From the voice and smile of their peerless Mistress,
Back to whom their truant wings were in rapture
Speeding belated;

Chilled at heart and grieving they drooped their pinions,
Circled slowly, dipping in flight toward Lesbos,
Down through dusk that darkened on Mitylene’s
Columns of marble;

Down through glory wan of the fading sunset,
Veering ever toward the abode of Sappho,
Toward my home, the fane of the glad devoted
Slave of the Goddess;

Soon they gained the tile of my roof and rested,
Slipped their heads beneath their wings while I watched them
Sink to sleep and dreams, in the warm and drowsy
Night of midsummer.”

Rain: Jean Starr Untermeyer

“I have always hated the rain,
And the gloom of grayed skies.
But now I think I must always cherish
Rain-hung leaf and the misty river;
And the friendly screen of dripping green
Where eager kisses were shyly given
And your pipe-smoke made clouds in our damp, close heaven.

The curious laggard passed us by,
His wet shoes soughed on the shining walk.
And that afternoon was filled with a blurred glory—
That afternoon, when we first talked as lovers.”

From Sunset To Star Rise: Christina Rossetti

“Go from me, summer friends, and tarry not:
I am no summer friend, but wintry cold,
A silly sheep benighted from the fold,
A sluggard with a thorn-choked garden plot.
Take counsel, sever from my lot your lot,
Dwell in your pleasant places, hoard your gold;
Lest you with me should shiver on the wold,
Athirst and hungering on a barren spot.
For I have hedged me with a thorny hedge,
I live alone, I look to die alone:
Yet sometimes, when a wind sighs through the sedge,
Ghosts of my buried years, and friends come back,
My heart goes sighing after swallows flown
On sometime summer’s unreturning track.”

Ghosts of Past Time: Martha Foote Crow

“AN INTERMINABLE procession of ghosts of past time
Floats continually by me in my dreams.

And they all reach out their hands to me,
Warning, appealing, commanding.
A few seem benign;
But though their touch is soft as snow,
They have a grip like iron.

Some were builders, and they cry, “Build like me!”
And some were wiseacres, and they demand, “Think like me!”
And some were poets, and they whisper, “Sing like me!”

I throw you off, O you ghosts of past time!
As for me,
I will work along your tiresome squares and cubes,
But I will not build like you, O builders!
I will eat your nauseous wisdoms, O wiseacres,
But I will not think like you!
I will move in your deepest rhythms,
But I will not sing like you, O poets!
Like myself only will I think and build and sing—
And not like any of you!
Even you, my veritable brothers
Who died but yesterday,
I am not thinking of you—
But of some one to be born tomorrow.”

The Year: Ella Wheeler Wilcox

“What can be said in New Year rhymes,
That’s not been said a thousand times?

The new years come, the old years go,
We know we dream, we dream we know.

We rise up laughing with the light,
We lie down weeping with the night.

We hug the world until it stings,
We curse it then and sigh for wings.

We live, we love, we woo, we wed,
We wreathe our prides, we sheet our dead.

We laugh, we weep, we hope, we fear,
And that’s the burden of a year.”

New Year's Poem: Margaret Avison

“The Christmas twigs crispen and needles rattle
Along the window-ledge.
A solitary pearl
Shed from the necklace spilled at last week’s party
Lies in the suety, snow-luminous plainness
Of morning, on the window-ledge beside them.
And all the furniture that circled stately
And hospitable when these rooms were brimmed
With perfumes, furs, and black-and-silver
Crisscross of seasonal conversation, lapses
Into its previous largeness.
I remember
Anne’s rose-sweet gravity, and the stiff grave
Where cold so little can contain;
I mark the queer delightful skull and crossbones
Starlings and sparrows left, taking the crust,
And the long loop of winter wind
Smoothing its arc from dark Arcturus down
To the bricked corner of the drifted courtyard,
And the still window-ledge.
Gentle and just pleasure
It is, being human, to have won from space
This unchill, habitable interior
Which mirrors quietly the light
Of the snow, and the new year.”

A Fisherman's Song: Joanna Baillie

“No fish stir in our heaving net,
And the sky is dark and the night is wet;
And we must ply the lusty oar,
For the tide is ebbing from the shore;
And sad are they whose faggots burn,
So kindly stored for our return.

Our boat is small, and the tempest raves,
And nought is heard but the lashing waves
And the sullen roar of the angry sea
And the wild winds piping drearily;
Yet sea and tempest rise in vain,
We ’ll bless our blazing hearths again.

Push bravely, mates! Our guiding star
Now from its towerlet streameth far,
And now along the nearing strand,
See, swiftly moves yon flaming brand:
Before the midnight watch be past
We ’ll quaff our bowl and mock the blast.”

A Nocturnal Reverie

“IN such a night, when every louder wind
Is to its distant cavern safe confined,
And only gentle Zephyr fans his wings,
And lonely Philomel, still waking, sings,
Or from some tree, framed for the owl’s delight,
She, hollowing clear, directs the wanderer right,—
In such a night, when passing clouds give place,
Or thinly veil the heaven’s mysterious face,
When in some river, overhung with green,
The waving moon and trembling leaves are seen,
When freshened grass now bears itself upright,
And makes cool banks to pleasing rest invite,
Whence spring the woodbind and the bramble-rose,
And where the sleepy cowslip sheltered grows,
Whilst now a paler hue the foxglove takes,
Yet chequers still with red the dusky brakes,
Where scattered glowworms,—but in twilight fine,—
Shew trivial beauties, watch their hour to shine,
While Salisbury stands the test of every light,
In perfect charms and perfect beauty bright;
When odours, which declined repelling day,
Through temperate air uninterrupted stray;
When darkened groves their softest shadows wear,
And falling waters we distinctly hear;
When through the gloom more venerable shows
Some ancient fabric awful in repose;
While sunburned hills their swarthy looks conceal,
And swelling haycocks thicken up the vale;
When the loosed horse now, as his pasture leads,
Comes slowly grazing thro’ the adjoining meads,
Whose stealing pace and lengthened shade we fear,
Till torn-up forage in his teeth we hear;
When nibbling sheep at large pursue their food,
And unmolested kine rechew the cud;
When curlews cry beneath the village-walls,
And to her straggling brood the partridge calls;
Their short-lived jubilee the creatures keep,
Which but endures, whilst tyrant Man doth sleep;
When a sedate content the spirit feels,
And no fierce light disturbs, whilst it reveals;
But silent musings urge the mind to seek
Something too high for syllables to speak;
Till the free soul to a composedness charmed,
Finding the elements of rage disarmed,
O’er all below a solemn quiet grown,
Joys in the inferior world, and thinks it like her own:
In such a night let me abroad remain,
Till morning breaks and all ’s confused again;
Our cares, our toils, our clamours are renewed,
Our pleasures, seldom reached, again pursued.”