by Laura Barber
Little hands of mighty mould
Clenched as in the fight which they had fought.
He had done battle to be born,
But some brute force of Nature had prevailed
And the little warrior failed.
Whate’er thou wert, whate’er thou art,
Whose life was ended ere thy breath begun,
Thou nine-months neighbour of my dear one’s heart,
And howsoe’er thou liest blind and mute,
Thou lookest bold and resolute,
God bless thee dearest son.
E. E. CUMMINGS
from spiralling ecstatically this
proud nowhere of earth’s most prodigious night
blossoms a newborn babe:around him, eyes
– gifted with every keener appetite
than mere unmiracle can quite appease –
humbly in their imagined bodies kneel
(over time space doom dream while floats the whole
perhapsless mystery of paradise)
mind without soul may blast some universe
to might have been, and stop ten thousand stars
but not one heartbeat of this child;nor shall
even prevail a million questionings
against the silence of his mother’s smile
- whose only secret all creation sings
ANONYMOUS
from the Chester Cycle of the
Mystery Plays
The Creation
DEUS:
I, God, most in maiestye,
In whom beginning none may be,
Endles as most of postye,
I am and have bene ever.
Now heaven and earth is made through me:
The earthe is voyde onely I see,
Therefore light for more lee,
Through my crafte I will kever.
At my bydding now made be light!
Light is good, I see in sighte;
Twynned shalbe throughe my mighte
The lighte from thesternes.
Light daye I will be called aye,
And thesternes night, as I say;
Thus morrow and even the first day
Is made full and expresse.
Now will I make the fyrmament
In myddes the waters to be lent,
For to be a divident,
To twyne the waters aye;
Above the welkin, benethe also,
And heaven yt shall be called oo;
Thus commen is even and morrow also
Of the seacond daye.
postye power; lee brightness; kever gain; Twynned divided; thesternes darkness; aye ever; expresse complete; fyrmament sky; myddes midst; lent placed; welkin sky; oo always; even evening
Now will I waters everichone,
That under heaven be great won,
That they [gather] into one,
And drynes sone him showe.
That drynes earth men shall call;
The gathering of the waters all,
Seas to name have the shall,
Thereby men shall [them] knowe.
I will on earth that hearbes springe,
Each one in kinde seede gevinge,
Trees dyvers fruytes forth bringe,
After there kinde eache one,
The seede of which for aye shall be
Within the fruyte of each tree;
Thus morrow and even of dayes three
Is bothe comen and gone.
Now will I make through my might
Lightninge in the welken brighte,
To twyn the day from the nighte,
And lighten the earthe with lee.
Greate lightes also I will make twoo,
The sonne and eke the mone also;
The sonne for daye to serve for oo,
The mone for nighte to be.
I will make on the fyrmament
Starres also, throughe myne intent;
The earth to lighten there they be sent,
And knowne may be there-bye
Cowrses of planetts nothing amisse.
Now se I this worke good, i-wisse;
Thus morrow and even both made is
The fourthe daye fully.
won existence; sone soon; hearbes plants; kinde nature; dyvers diverse; Cowrses courses; i-wisse indeed
Now will I in waters fishe forth bringe,
Fowles in the firmament flyinge,
Great whalles in the sea swymminge;
All make I with a thoughte.
Beastes, fowles, stone and tree,
These workes are good, well I see,
Therfore to blesse all lykes me
These workes that I have wroughte.
All beastes I byd yow multeply
In earth, in water, by and bye,
And fowles in ayre for to flye
The earth to fulfill.
Thus morrow and even, through my might,
Of the fifte daye and the night
Is made and ended well arighte,
All at myne owne will.
Now will I on earth forth bringe anone
All kindes of beastes, everichon,
That creepen, flye, or els gone,
Each one in his kinde.
Now is done all my biddinge,
Beastes going, flyinge and creeping,
And all my workes at my lyking
Fully now I finde.
Now heaven and earth is made expresse,
Make we man to our lyckenes;
Fishe, foule, beastes, more and lesse
To maister he shall have might.
To our shape now make I thee;
Man and woman I will ther be.
Growe and multeply shall ye
And fulfill earth in height.
lykes pleases
To helpe thee, thou shalt have here
Hearbes, trees, sede, fruite in feare;
All shalbe put in thy power,
And beastes eke also,
All that in earth be sterring,
Fowles in the ayer flying,
And all that ghoste hath and lyking,
To sustayne yow from woe.
Now this is done, I see aright,
And all thinges made through my might,
The sixte daye here in my sight
Is made all of the beste.
Heaven and earth is wrought within,
And all that needes to be therin;
To-morrow, the seventh day, I will blyn,
And of worke take my reste.
feare company; sterring stirring; ayer air; ghoste spirit; blyn stop
W. S. MERWIN
Just This
When I think of the patience I have had
back in the dark before I remember
or knew it was night until the light came
all at once at the speed it was born to
with all the time in the world to fly through
not concerned about ever arriving
and then the gathering of the first stars
unhurried in their flowering spaces
and far into the story the planets
cooling slowly and the ages of rain
then the seas starting to bear memory
the gaze of the first cell at its waking
how did this haste begin this little time
at any time this reading by lightning
scarcely a word this nothing this heaven
THOMAS DEKKER
from Pleasant Comedy of Patient Grissil,
IV, ii
Golden slumbers kiss your eyes,
Smiles awake you when you rise.
Sleep, pretty wantons, do not cry,
And I will sing a lullaby:
Rock them, rock them, lullaby.
Care is heavy, therefore sleep you,
You are care and care must keep you.
Sleep, pretty wantons, do not cry,
And I will sing a lullaby:
Rock them, rock them, lullaby.
SAMU
EL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
Frost at Midnight
The Frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet’s cry
Came loud – and hark, again! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings: save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.
’Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,
This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,
With all the numberless goings-on of life,
Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame
Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;
Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,
Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.
Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature
Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,
Making it a companionable form,
Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit
By its own moods interprets, every where
Echo or mirror seeking of itself,
And makes a toy of Thought.
But O! how oft,
How oft, at school, with most believing mind,
Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,
To watch that fluttering stranger! and as oft
With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt
Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower,
Whose bells, the poor man’s only music, rang
From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day,
So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me
With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear
Most like articulate sounds of things to come!
So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,
Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!
And so I brooded all the following morn,
Awed by the stern preceptor’s face, mine eye
Fixed with mock study on my swimming book:
Save if the door half opened, and I snatched
A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,
For still I hoped to see the stranger’s face,
Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,
My play-mate when we both were clothed alike!
Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,
Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,
Fill up the intersperséd vacancies
And momentary pauses of the thought!
My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart
With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,
And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,
And in far other scenes! For I was reared
In the great city, pent ’mid cloisters dim,
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.
But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language, which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself.
Great universal Teacher! he shall mould
Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.
Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.
WALT WHITMAN
A Noiseless Patient Spider
A noiseless patient spider,
I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking
the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile
anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.
SYLVIA PLATH
You’re
Clownlike, happiest on your hands,
Feet to the stars, and moon-skulled,
Gilled like a fish. A common-sense
Thumbs-down on the dodo’s mode.
Wrapped up in yourself like a spool,
Trawling your dark as owls do.
Mute as a turnip from the Fourth
Of July to All Fools’ Day,
O high-riser, my little loaf.
Vague as fog and looked for like mail.
Farther off than Australia.
Bent-backed Atlas, our traveled prawn.
Snug as a bud and at home
Like a sprat in a pickle jug.
A creel of eels, all ripples.
Jumpy as a Mexican bean.
Right, like a well-done sum.
A clean slate, with your own face on.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
To lanthe
I love thee, Baby! for thine own sweet sake:
Those azure eyes, that faintly dimpled cheek,
Thy tender frame so eloquently weak,
Love in the sternest heart of hate might wake;
But more, when o’er thy fitful slumber bending
Thy mother folds thee to her wakeful heart,
Whilst love and pity in her glances blending,
All that thy passive eyes can feel, impart;
More, when some feeble lineaments of her
Who bore thy weight beneath her spotless bosom,
As with deep love I read thy face, recur,
More dear art thou, O fair and fragile blossom,
Dearest, when most thy tender traits express
The image of thy Mother’s loveliness. –
THOMAS HARDY
Heredity
I am the family face;
Flesh perishes, I live on,
Projecting trait and trace
Through time to times anon,
And leaping from place to place
Over oblivion.
The years-heired feature that can
In curve and voice and eye
Despise the human span
Of durance – that is I;
The eternal thing in man,
That heeds no call to die.
AMBROSE PHILIPS
Miss Charlotte Pulteney, in her mother’s arms
Timely blossom, infant fair,
Fondling of a happy pair,
Every morn, and every night
Their solicitous delight,
Sleeping, waking, still at ease,
Pleasing, without skill to please;
Little gossip, blithe and hale,
Tattling many a broken tale,
Singing many a tuneless song,
Lavish of a heedless tongue;
Simple maiden, void of art,
Babbling out the very heart,
Yet abandon’d to thy will,
Yet imagining no ill,
Yet too innocent to blush,
Like the linnet in the bush
To the mot
her-linnet’s note
Moduling her slender throat;
Chirping forth thy pretty joys,
Wanton in the change of toys,
Like the linnet green, in May,
Flitting to each bloomy spray;
Wearied then, and glad of rest,
Like the linnet in the nest.
This thy present happy lot
This, in time, will be forgot:
Other pleasures, other cares,
Ever-busy time prepares;
And thou shalt in thy daughter see,
This picture, once, resembled thee.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Generation Gap
A son’s arrival
is the crescent moon
too new too soon to lodge
the man’s returning. His
feast of reincarnation
must await the moon’s
ripening at the naming
ceremony of his
grandson.
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
from Aurora Leigh, Sixth Book
There he lay upon his back,
The yearling creature, warm and moist with life
To the bottom of his dimples, – to the ends
Of the lovely tumbled curls about his face;
For since he had been covered over-much
To keep him from the light-glare, both his cheeks
Were hot and scarlet as the first live rose
The shepherd’s heart-blood ebbed away into,
The faster for his love. And love was here
As instant! in the pretty baby-mouth,
Shut close as if for dreaming that it sucked;
The little naked feet drawn up the way
Of nestled birdlings; everything so soft
And tender, – to the little holdfast hands,
Which, closing on a finger into sleep,
Had kept the mould of’t.
While we stood there dumb,
For oh, that it should take such innocence
To prove just guilt, I thought, and stood there dumb;