Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He who can call today his own
He who, secure within, can say,
Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today!
Come fair or foul, or rain or shine
The joys I have possessed, in spite of Fate, are mine.
Not Heaven itself upon the past has power,
But what has been has been, and I have had my hour!
John Dryden, from Twenty-Ninth Ode of the Third Book of Horace
“Happy, he who had the skill to understand
Nature’s hidden causes, and beneath his feet
All terrors cast, and death’s relentless doom,
And the loud roar of greedy Acheron.
Blest too is he who knows the rural gods,
Pan, old Silvanus, and the sister-nymphs!
Him nor the rods of public power can bend,
Nor kingly purple, nor fierce feud that drives
Brother to turn on brother, nor descent
Of Dacian from the Danube’s leagued flood,
Nor Rome’s great State, nor kingdoms like to die”
-Vergil, “The Georgics”
Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation’s final law–
Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek’d against his creed
In Memoriam - Tennyson
And, btw, I apologize to Lissa for repeating the Marvell lines. Mea culpa for not reading more closely.
The World is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
-God’s Grandeur, Hopkins
(Public Domain)
Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening
*Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
[…]
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
*
Robert Frost (fair use)
“To sleep, perchance to dream –
ay, there’s the rub.”
Hamlet (III, i, 65-68)
Deep in the arms of winter
The snow falls like a blessing.
The wild things sleep below the ground.
They are not cold, they are not lonely
Deep in the arms of winter.
Can’t resist another dose of Ezra:
Winter is icummen in,
Lhude sing Goddamm,
Raineth drop and staineth slop
And how the wind doth ramm!
Sing: Goddamm.
Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us,
An ague hath my ham.
Freezeth river, turneth liver
Damn you, sing: Goddamm.
Goddamm, Goddamm, tis why I am,
Goddamm.
So 'gainst the winter’s balm
Sing Goddamm, damm, sing Goddamm
Sing Goddamm, sing Goddamm,
DAMM.
What is this that roareth thus?
Can it be a Motor Bus?
Yes, the smell and hideous hum
Indicat Motorem Bum!
Implet in the Corn and High
Terror me Motoris Bi:
Bo Motori clamitabo
Ne Motore caedar a Bo —
Dative be or Ablative
So thou only let us live:
Wither shall thy victims flee?
Spare us, spare us, Motor Be!
Thus I sang; and still anigh
Came in hordes Motores Bi,
Et complebat omne forum
Copia Motorum Borum.
How shall wretches live like us
Cincti Bis Motoribus?
Domine, defende nos
Contra hos Motores Bos!
A.D. Godley
Time, time, time, see whats become of me
While I looked around
For my possibilities
I was so hard to please
But look around, leaves are brown
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter
Hear the salvation army band
Down by the riverside, its bound to be a better ride
Than what youve got planned
Carry your cup in your hand
And look around, leaves are brown now
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter
– Simon & Garfunkel
Booth led boldly with his big bass drum—
(Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?)
The Saints smiled gravely and they said: “He’s come.”
(Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?)
Walking lepers followed, rank on rank,
Lurching bravoes from the ditches dank,
Drabs from the alleyways and drug fiends pale—
Minds still passion-ridden, soul-powers frail:—
Vermin-eaten saints with mouldy breath,
Unwashed legions with the ways of Death—
(Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?)
from General William Booth Enters into Heaven, by Vachel Lindsay (1879–1931)
We are coming down the pike,
All of us, in no particular order,
Not grouped by age, Wanda and Val, her fourth husband,
Sallie Swift, the fellows who play bridge
Every Thursday, at Mason’s Grill, in the back,
Two of them named George,
We are all coming down the pike.
Carolyn Kizer, “Exodus” (fair use)
(Newbie delurks to chime in)
New love, new love, where are you to lead me?
All along a narrow way that marks a crooked line.
How are you to slake me, and how are you to feed me?
With bitter yellow berries, and a sharp new wine.
New love, new love, shall I be forsaken?
One shall go a-wandering, and one of us must sigh.
Sweet it is to slumber, but how shall we awaken —
Whose will be the broken heart, when dawn comes by?
The Last Question, Dorothy Parker
Be not troubled by your pain now,
it has nothing to teach you,
do you remember every bump in the road?
Think of the road, and your journey,
and with all of joy, may this
bump pass quickly
and be forgotten faster,
as you progress to joy
A little Sufi prayer of healing.
Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren’t lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.
-Dorothy Parker.
I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it----
A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot
A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.
Peel off the napkin
0 my enemy.
Do I terrify?----
The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.
Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me
And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.
This is how it happened.
Spring wore on my nerves–
all that wheezing and dripping
while others in galoshes
reaped compost and seemed
enamored most of the time.
Why should I be select?
I got tired of tearing myself down.
Let someone else have
the throne of blues for a while,
let someone else suffer mosquitoes.
As my mama always said:
half a happiness is better
than none at all.
Rusks, Rita Dove
I am a mostly one trick pony.
The ant's a centaur in his dragon world.
Pull down thy vanity, it is not man
Made courage, or made order, or made grace,
Pull down thy vanity, I say pull down.
Learn of the green world what can be thy place
In scaled invention or true artistry,
Pull down thy vanity,
Paquin pull down!
The green casque has outdone your elegance.
"Master thyself, then others shall thee beare"
Pull down thy vanity
Thou art a beaten dog beneath the hail,
A swollen magpie in a fitful sun,
Half black half white
Nor knowst'ou wing from tail
Pull down thy vanity
How mean thy hates
Fostered in falsity,
Pull down thy vanity,
Rathe to destroy, niggard in charity,
Pull down thy vanity,
I say pull down.
Ezra Pound, Cantos, LXXXI
She slips ouside, her shawl floating in the dark,
And meets him in a bower overgrown
With vines. They sit close on a bench of stone
And watch the lanterns glowing in the jasmine.
Or here, this stanza: you hear a goose pen
Creak, the butterfly of an oil lamp
Flutters slowly over scrolls and parchment,
A crucifix, bronze busts. The lines complain,
In plangent rhythms, that desire is vain.
–Czeslaw Milos, A Book in the Ruins
Hey, I like the Latin bus poem–never saw that one before!
Also, my two cents is that all is fair in allusional responses–thus, Emily after Emily scores, and so does quoting a poem that’s already been used as a response–double bonus points for heightened interconnectedness. And if you can relate everything in the thread to Ezra Pound, you get a cookie.