Penguin's Poems for Life

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;