Penguin's Poems for Life

by Laura Barber

  And shaped it forth before the multitude

  Divinely human, raising worship so

  To higher reverence more mixed with love –

  That better self shall live till human Time

  Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky

  Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb

  Unread for ever.

  This is life to come,

  Which martyred men have made more glorious

  For us who strive to follow. May I reach

  That purest heaven, be to other souls

  The cup of strength in some great agony,

  Enkindle generous ardour, feed pure love,

  Beget the smiles that have no cruelty –

  Be the sweet presence of a good diffused,

  And in diffusion ever more intense.

  So shall I join the choir invisible

  Whose music is the gladness of the world.

  RUPERT BROOKE

  The Soldier

  If I should die, think only this of me:

  That there’s some corner of a foreign field

  That is for ever England. There shall be

  In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;

  A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,

  Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,

  A body of England’s, breathing English air,

  Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

  And think, this heart, all evil shed away,

  A pulse in the eternal mind, no less

  Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England

  given;

  Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;

  And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,

  In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

  JULIA ALVAREZ

  Last Trees

  When I think of my death, I think of trees

  in the full of summer, a row of them

  describing a border, too distant yet

  for me to name them, posted with rusting boards

  everyone but the faint of heart ignores.

  (By then, I hope not to be one of them.)

  I want to go boldly to the extreme

  verge of a life I’ve lived to the fullest

  and climb over the tumbled rocks or crawl

  under the wire, never looking back –

  for if I were to turn and see the house

  perched on its hillside, windows flashing light,

  the wash plaintive with tearful handkerchiefs,

  or hear a dear voice calling from the deck,

  supper’s on the table – I might lose heart,

  and turn back from those trees, telling myself,

  tomorrow is a better day to die…

  Behind me, the wind blowing in the leaves

  in my distracted state will seem to say

  something about true love and letting go –

  some poster homily which I mistrust,

  and which is why I break into a run,

  calling out that I’m coming, wait for me,

  thrashing and stumbling through the underbrush,

  flushing out redwing blackbirds, shaking loose

  seeds for next summer’s weeds from their packed pods –

  only to look up, breathless, and realize

  I’m heading straight for those trees with no time

  left to name my favorites, arborvitae,

  maple, oak, locust, samán, willow, elm.

  LOUIS MACNEICE

  The Sunlight on the Garden

  The sunlight on the garden

  Hardens and grows cold,

  We cannot cage the minute

  Within its nets of gold,

  When all is told

  We cannot beg for pardon.

  Our freedom as free lances

  Advances towards its end;

  The earth compels, upon it

  Sonnets and birds descend;

  And soon, my friend,

  We shall have no time for dances.

  The sky was good for flying

  Defying the church bells

  And every evil iron

  Siren and what it tells:

  The earth compels,

  We are dying, Egypt, dying

  And not expecting pardon,

  Hardened in heart anew,

  But glad to have sat under

  Thunder and rain with you,

  And grateful too

  For sunlight on the garden.

  THOMAS HARDY

  Afterwards

  When the Present has latched its postern behind my

  tremulous stay,

  And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings,

  Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the neighbours say,

  ‘He was a man who used to notice such things’?

  If it be in the dusk when, like an eyelid’s soundless blink,

  The dewfall-hawk comes crossing the shades to alight

  Upon the wind-warped upland thorn, a gazer may think,

  ‘To him this must have been a familiar sight.’

  If I pass during some nocturnal blackness, mothy and warm,

  When the hedgehog travels furtively over the lawn,

  One may say, ‘He strove that such innocent creatures should

  come to no harm,

  But he could do little for them; and now he is gone.’

  If, when hearing that I have been stilled at last, they stand

  at the door,

  Watching the full-starred heavens that winter sees,

  Will this thought rise on those who will meet my face no

  more,

  ‘He was one who had an eye for such mysteries’?

  And will any say when my bell of quittance is heard in the

  gloom,

  And a crossing breeze cuts a pause in its outrollings,

  Till they rise again, as they were a new bell’s boom,

  ‘He hears it not now, but used to notice such things’?

  CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI

  Remember

  Remember me when I am gone away,

  Gone far away into the silent land;

  When you can no more hold me by the hand,

  Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.

  Remember me when no more day by day

  You tell me of our future that you planned:

  Only remember me; you understand

  It will be late to counsel then or pray.

  Yet if you should forget me for a while

  And afterwards remember, do not grieve:

  For if the darkness and corruption leave

  A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,

  Better by far you should forget and smile

  Than that you should remember and be sad.

  D. H. LAWRENCE

  Bavarian Gentians

  Not every man has gentians in his house

  in Soft September, at slow, Sad Michaelmas.

  Bavarian gentians, big and dark, only dark

  darkening the day-time torch-like with the smoking

  blueness of Pluto’s gloom,

  ribbed and torch-like, with their blaze of darkness

  spread blue

  down flattening into points, flattened under the sweep

  of white day

  torch-flower of the blue-smoking darkness, Pluto’s

  dark-blue daze,

  black lamps from the halls of Dio, burning dark blue,

  giving off darkness, blue darkness, as Demeter’s pale

  lamps give off light,

  lead me then, lead me the way.

  Reach me a gentian, give me a torch

  let me guide myself with the blue, forked torch of this

  flower

  down the darker and darker stairs, where blue is

  darkened on blueness

  even where Persephone goes, just now, from the frosted

  September

  to the s
ightless realm where darkness is awake upon the

  dark

  and Persephone herself is but a voice

  or a darkness invisible enfolded in the deeper dark

  of the arms of Plutonic, and pierced with the passion of

  dense gloom,

  among the splendour of torches of darkness, shedding

  darkness on the lost bride and her groom.

  CAROLINE OLIPHANT, BARONESS NAIRNE

  The Land o’ the Leal

  I’m wearin’ awa’, John,

  Like snaw-wreaths in thaw, John,

  I’m wearin’ awa’

  To the land o’ the leal.

  There’s nae sorrow there, John,

  There’s neither cauld nor care, John,

  The day’s aye fair

  In the land o’ the leal.

  Our bonnie bairn’s there, John,

  She was baith gude and fair, John,

  And oh! we grudged her sair

  To the land o’ the leal.

  But sorrow’s sel’ wears past, John,

  And joy’s a-comin’ fast, John,

  The joy that’s aye to last,

  In the land o’ the leal.

  Sae dear’s that joy was bought, John,

  Sae free the battle fought, John,

  That sinfu’ man e’er brought

  To the land o’ the leal.

  Oh! dry your glist’ning e’e, John,

  My saul langs to be free, John,

  And angels beckon me

  To the land o’ the leal.

  Leal loyal; sair sore

  Oh! haud ye leal and true, John,

  Your day it’s wearin’ through, John,

  And I’ll welcome you

  To the land o’ the leal.

  Now fare-ye-weel, my ain John,

  This warld’s cares are vain, John,

  We’ll meet, and we’ll be fain,

  In the land o’ the leal.

  KATHERINE, LADY DYER

  [Epitaph on Sir William Dyer]

  My dearest dust could not thy hasty day

  Afford thy drowsy patience leave to stay

  One hour longer: so that we might either

  Sit up or go to bed together?

  But since thy finished labour hath possessed

  Thy weary limbs with early rest,

  Enjoy it sweetly; and thy widow bride

  Shall soon repose her by thy slumbering side;

  Whose business, now, is only to prepare

  My nightly dress and call to prayer:

  Mine eyes wax heavy and the day grows old.

  The dew falls thick, my blood grows cold;

  Draw, draw the closed curtains: and make room;

  My dear, my dearest dust; I come, I come.

  fain affectionate

  CHARLES CAUSLEY

  Eden Rock

  They are waiting for me somewhere beyond Eden Rock:

  My father, twenty-five, in the same suit

  Of Genuine Irish Tweed, his terrier Jack

  Still two years old and trembling at his feet.

  My mother, twenty-three, in a sprigged dress

  Drawn at the waist, ribbon in her straw hat,

  Has spread the stiff white cloth over the grass.

  Her hair, the colour of wheat, takes on the light.

  She pours tea from a Thermos, the milk straight

  From an old H.P. sauce bottle, a screw

  Of paper for a cork; slowly sets out

  The same three plates, the tin cups painted blue.

  The sky whitens as if lit by three suns.

  My mother shades her eyes and looks my way

  Over the drifted stream. My father spins

  A stone along the water. Leisurely,

  They beckon to me from the other bank.

  I hear them call, ‘See where the stream-path is!

  Crossing is not as hard as you might think.’

  I had not thought that it would be like this.

  EDMUND WALLER

  Of the Last Verses in the Book

  When we for Age could neither read nor write,

  The Subject made us able to indite.

  The Soul with Nobler Resolutions deckt,

  The Body stooping, does Herself erect:

  No Mortal Parts are requisite to raise

  Her, that Unbody’d can her Maker praise.

  The Seas are quiet, when the Winds give o’re;

  So calm are we, when Passions are no more:

  For then we know how vain it was to boast

  Of fleeting Things, so certain to be lost.

  Clouds of Affection from our younger Eyes

  Conceal that emptiness, which Age descries.

  The Soul’s dark Cottage, batter’d and decay’d,

  Lets in new Light thró chinks that time has made;

  Stronger by weakness, wiser Men become

  As they draw near to their Eternal home:

  Leaving the Old, both Worlds at once they view,

  That stand upon the Threshold of the New.

  ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

  Crossing the Bar

  Sunset and evening star,

  And one clear call for me!

  And may there be no moaning of the bar,

  When I put out to sea,

  But such a tide as moving seems asleep,

  Too full for sound and foam,

  When that which drew from out the boundless deep

  Turns again home.

  Twilight and evening bell,

  And after that the dark!

  And may there be no sadness of farewell,

  When I embark;

  For though from out our bourne of Time and Place

  The flood may bear me far,

  I hope to see my Pilot face to face

  When I have crost the bar.

  ALDEN NOWLAN

  This is What I Wanted to Sign Off With

  You know what I’m

  like when I’m sick: I’d sooner

  curse than cry. And people don’t often

  know what they’re saying in the end.

  Or I could die in my sleep.

  So I’ll say it now. Here it is.

  Don’t pay any attention

  if I don’t get it right

  when it’s for real. Blame that

  on terror and pain

  or the stuff they’re shooting

  into my veins. This is what I wanted to

  sign off with. Bend

  closer, listen, I love you.

  WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR

  Death stands above me, whispering low

  I know not what into my ear:

  Of his strange language all I know

  Is, there is not a word of fear.

  RAYMOND CARVER

  Late Fragment

  And did you get what

  you wanted from this life, even so?

  I did.

  And what did you want?

  To call myself beloved, to feel myself

  beloved on the earth.

  W. H. AUDEN

  Funeral Blues

  Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

  Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

  Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

  Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

  Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead

  Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,

  Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public

  doves,

  Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

  He was my North, my South, my East and West,

  My working week and my Sunday rest,

  My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

  I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

  The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,

  Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,

  Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;

  For nothing now ca
n ever come to any good.

  WILFRED OWEN

  Anthem for Doomed Youth

  What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

  – Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

  Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle

  Can patter out their hasty orisons.

  No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;

  Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, –

  The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;

  And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

  What candles may be held to speed them all?

  Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes

  Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.

  The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall;

  Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,

  And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

  ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

  from In Memoriam A. H. H.

  VII

  Dark house, by which once more I stand

  Here in the long unlovely street,

  Doors, where my heart was used to beat

  So quickly, waiting for a hand,

  A hand that can be clasped no more –

  Behold me, for I cannot sleep,

  And like a guilty thing I creep

  At earliest morning to the door.

  He is not here; but far away

  The noise of life begins again,

  And ghastly through the drizzling rain

  On the bald street breaks the blank day.

  GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

  No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,