Sunday Poetry [30] -- TEXTBOOK POETRY 3.2

I have to remind myself, especially as I’m going through a textbook with which I am surprisingly (so, at least, to me) sympathetic, that the point of this little endeavor (the textbook poetry entries) is to show poems with which I am not familiar, poems that indicate the type of the textbook containing them, and, of course, the first and last poems of the lot.  This is difficult here with this text, because I know and enjoy so much of the poetry; I want to include so much more than I should, and not because it’s new, but because I know it and love it.  Maybe that in and of itself is some indication of the type of the textbook I’m holding right now, or maybe it just bears witness against my overall well-roundedness.  There is, after all, so much out there to read that I haven’t even touched.

An Approach to Literature

Brooks, Purser, Warren

1952

The Eagle (included in section introduction as example)

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;

Close to the sun in lonely lands,

Ringed with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;

He watches from his mountain wall,

And like a thunderbolt he falls.

Silver (first of section collection)

Walter De La Mare

Slowly, silently, now the moon

Walks the night in her silver shoon;

Silver fruit upon silver trees;

One by one the casements catch

Her beams beneath the silvery thatch;

Couched in his kennel, like a log,

With paws of silver sleeps the dog;

From their shadowy cote the white breasts peep

Of doves in a silver-feathered sleep’

A harvest mouse goes scampering by,

With silver claws and a silver eye;

And moveless fish in the water gleam,

By silver reeds in a silver stream.

To Daffadills

Robert Herrick

Faire Daffadills, we weep to see

      You haste away so soone:

As yet the early-rising Sun

      Has not attain’d his Noone.

            Stay, stay,

         Until the hasting day

            Has run

         But to the Even-song;

And, having pray’d together, wee

         Will goe with you along.

We have short time to stay, as you,

      We have as short a Spring;

As quick a growth to meet Decay,

      As you, or any thing.

            We die,

      As your hours doe, and drie

            Away,

      Like to the Summers raine;

Or as the pearles of Mornings dew

         Ne’er to be found againe.

Nulla Fides

Patrick Carey

For God’s sake mark that fly:

See what a poor, weak, little thing it is.

When thou has marked and scorned it, know that this,

This little, poor, weak fly

Has killed a pope; can make an emp’ror die.

Behold you spark of fire;

How little hot!  how near to nothing ‘tis!

When thou hast done despising, know that this,

This contemned spark of fire,

Has burnt whole towns; can burn a world entire.

That crawling worm there see:

Ponder how ugly, filthy, vile it is.

When thou hast seen and loathed it, know that this,

This base worm thou dost see,

Has quite devoured thy parents; shall eat thee.

Honour, the world, and man,

What trifles are they; since most true it is

That this poor fly, this little spark, this

So much abhorred worm, can

Honour destroy; burn worlds; devour up man.

The Mower to the Glow-Worms

Andrew Marvell

Ye living lamps, by whose dear light

The Nightingale does sit so late,

And studying all the Summer-night,

Her matchless Songs does meditate;

Ye Country Comets, that portend

No War, nor Princes funeral,

Shining unto no higher end

Than to presage the Grasses fall;

Ye Glow-worms, whose officious Flame

To wandering Mowers shows the way,

That in the Night have lost their aim,

And after foolish Fires do stray;

Your courteous Lights in vain you waste,

Since Juliana here is come,

For She my Mind hath so displaced

That I shall never find my home.

Ode to the West Wind

Percy Bysshe Shelley

I.

O WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,

      Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead

Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

      Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,

Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,

      Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low,

      Each like a corpse within its grave, until

Thine azure sister of the spring shall blow

      Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill

(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)

      With living hues and odors plain and hill:

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;

Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!

II.

Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion,

      Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,

Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,

      Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread

On the blue surface of thine airy surge,

      Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

Of some fierce Mænad, even from the dim verge

      Of the horizon to the zenith's height,

The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge

      Of the dying year, to which this closing night

Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,

      Vaulted with all thy congregated might

Of vapors, from whose solid atmosphere

Black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst: oh hear!

III.

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams

      The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,

Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,

      Beside a pumice isle in Baiæ's bay,

And saw in sleep old palaces and towers

      Quivering within the wave's intenser day,

All overgrown with azure moss and flowers

      So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou

For whose path the Atlantic's level powers

      Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below

The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear

      The sapless foliage of the ocean, know

Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,

And tremble and despoil themselves: oh, hear!

IV.

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;

      If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;

A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share

      The impulse of thy strength, only less free

Than thou, O uncontrollable! if even

      I were as in my boyhood, and could be

The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven,

      As then, when to outstrip thy skyey speed

Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne'er have striven

      As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.

Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!

      I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed

One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

V.

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is;

      What if my leaves are falling like its own!

The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

      Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,

Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,

      My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe

      Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!

And, by the incantation of this verse,

      Scatter, as from an extinguished hearth

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

      Be through my lips to unwakened earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

*

Other poems in this section:

·         “The Man with the Hoe, Written After Seeing Millet’s World-Famous Painting,” by Edwin Markham

·         “The Woodpile,” by Robert Frost

·         “The Lotos Eaters,” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

·         “Mariana,” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

·         Sonnets 18, 73, and 97, by William Shakespeare

·         “Song,” by Edmund Waller

·         “The Bugle Song,” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

·         “The Tree of Man,” by A.E. Housman

·         “A Passer-By,” by Robert Bridges

·         “The Wild Swans at Coole,” by William Butler Yeats

·         “Hymn to Diana,” by Ben Johnson

·         “The Night-Piece to Julia,” by Robert Herrick

·         “God’s Grandeur,” by Gerard Manley Hopkins

·         “The Lamb” and “The Tiger,” by William Blake (two of my all-time favorite poems—seriously)

Sunday Poetry XXVIII -- TEXTBOOK POETRY 2

Like last week (not to mention the next few weeks to come), I'm going through an old secondary English lit textbook.  The two for-sures will be the first and last poems the book has to offer, and I hope to be caught by--caught because maybe I've never read it before, particularly like it or hate it, or am flabbergasted that it's found its way into the textbook at all--a few others in between.

(I suppose it's some sort of commentary on the recent economic condition of public schools--because I really haven't been out of the secondary English classroom for long--that all the textbooks I've got in my personal collection are from the late eighties and early nineties.)

Prentice Hall Literature, Bronze

1991, 1989

The Village Blacksmith

Henry Wordsworth Longfellow

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 haul, 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.

Upon Mistress Susanna Southwell,

Her Feet

Robert Herrick

            Her pretty feet

            Like snails did creep

      A little out, and then,

As if they started at Bo-peep,

Did soon draw in again.

Three Haiku

Basho, translated by Daniel C. Buchanan

On sweet plum blossoms

The sun rises suddenly.

Look, a mountain path!

Has spring come indeed?

On that nameless mountain lie

Thin layers of mist.

Temple bells die out.

The fragrant blossoms remain.

A perfect evening!

The Flower-Fed Buffaloes

Vachel Lindsay

The flower-fed buffaloes of the spring
In the days of long ago,
Ranged where the locomotives sing
And the prarie flowers lie low:
The tossing, blooming, perfumed grass
Is swept away by wheat,
Wheels and wheels and wheels spin by
In the spring that still is sweet.
But the flower-fed buffaloes of the spring
Left us long ago,
They gore no more, they bellow no more:--
With the Blackfeet lying low,
With the Pawnee lying low,

Lying low.

Winter

Nikki Giovanni

Frogs burrow the mud

snails bury themselves

and I air my quilts

preparing for the cold

Dogs grow more hair

mothers make oatmeal

and little boys and girls

take Gather John’s Medicine

Bears store fat

chipmunks gather nuts

and I collect books

For the coming winter

A Song of Greatness

Chippewa Traditional

Mary Austin

When I hear the old men

Telling of heroes,

Telling of great deeds

Of ancient days—

When I hear that telling,
Then I think within me

I, too, am one of these.

When I hear the people

Praising great ones,

Then I know that I too—

Shall be esteemed:

I, too, when my time comes

Shall do mightily.

Miracles

Walt Whitman

Why, who makes much of a miracle?

As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,

Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,

Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky, 

Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water, 

Or stand under trees in the woods, 

Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night 

with any one I love, 

Or sit at table at dinner with the rest, 

Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car, 

Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon, 

Or animals feeding in the fields, 

Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air, 

Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so quiet 

and bright, 

Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring; 

These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles, 

The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place. 

To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle, 

Every cubic inch of space is a miracle, 

Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same, 

Every foot of the interior swarms with the same. 

To me the sea is a continual miracle, 

The fishes that swim—the rocks—the motion of the waves—the 

ships with men in them, 

What stranger miracles are there?