Penguin's Poems for Life

by Laura Barber

  Or blush, at least. She thanked men, – good! but

  thanked

  Somehow – I know not how – as if she ranked

  My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name

  With anybody’s gift. Who’d stoop to blame

  This sort of trifling? Even had you skill

  In speech – (which I have not) – to make your will

  Quite clear to such an one, and say, ‘Just this

  Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,

  Or there exceed the mark’– and if she let

  Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set

  Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,

  – E’en then would be some stooping; and I choose

  Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,

  Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without

  Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;

  Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands

  As if alive. Will’t please you rise? We’ll meet

  The company below, then. I repeat,

  The Count your master’s known munificence

  Is ample warrant that no just pretence

  Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;

  Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed

  At starting, is my object. Nay, we’ll go

  Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,

  Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,

  Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!

  EZRA POUND

  Epitaphs

  FU I

  Fu I loved the high cloud and the hill,

  Alas, he died of alcohol.

  LI PO

  And Li Po also died drunk.

  He tried to embrace a moon

  In the Yellow River.

  WALLACE STEVENS

  A Postcard from the Volcano

  Children picking up our bones

  Will never know that these were once

  As quick as foxes on the hill;

  And that in autumn, when the grapes

  Made sharp air sharper by their smell

  These had a being, breathing frost;

  And least will guess that with our bones

  We left much more, left what still is

  The look of things, left what we felt

  At what we saw. The spring clouds blow

  Above the shuttered mansion-house,

  Beyond our gate and the windy sky

  Cries out a literate despair.

  We knew for long the mansion’s look

  And what we said of it became

  A part of what it is… Children,

  Still weaving budded aureoles,

  Will speak our speech and never know,

  Will say of the mansion that it seems

  As if he that lived there left behind

  A spirit storming in blank walls,

  A dirty house in a gutted world,

  A tatter of shadows peaked to white,

  Smeared with the gold of the opulent sun.

  PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

  Ozymandias

  I met a traveller from an antique land

  Who said: ‘Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

  Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,

  Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

  And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

  Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

  Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

  The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;

  And on the pedestal these words appear:

  “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

  Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

  Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

  Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

  The lone and level sands stretch far away.’

  THOMAS GRAY

  Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard

  The Curfew tolls the knell of parting day,

  The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea,

  The plowman homeward plods his weary way,

  And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

  Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,

  And all the air a solemn stillness holds,

  Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,

  And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;

  Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tow’r

  The mopeing owl does to the moon complain

  Of such, as wand’ring near her secret bow’r,

  Molest her ancient solitary reign.

  Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree’s shade,

  Where heaves the turf in many a mould’ring heap,

  Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,

  The rude Forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

  The breezy call of incense-breathing Morn,

  The swallow twitt’ring from the straw-built shed,

  The cock’s shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,

  No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.

  For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,

  Or busy housewife ply her evening care:

  No children run to lisp their sire’s return,

  Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.

  Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,

  Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke;

  How jocund did they drive their team afield!

  How bow’d the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!

  Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,

  Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;

  Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile,

  The short and simple annals of the poor.

  The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow’r,

  And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,

  Awaits alike th’ inevitable hour.

  The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

  Nor you, ye Proud, impute to These the fault,

  If Mem’ry o’er their Tomb no Trophies raise,

  Where thro’ the long-drawn isle and fretted vault

  The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.

  Can storied urn or animated bust

  Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?

  Can Honour’s voice provoke the silent dust,

  Or Flatt’ry sooth the dull cold ear of Death?

  Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid

  Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire,

  Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway’d,

  Or wak’d to ecstasy the living lyre.

  But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page

  Rich with the spoils of time did ne’er unroll;

  Chill Penury repress’d their noble rage,

  And froze the genial current of the soul.

  Full many a gem of purest ray serene,

  The dark unfathom’d caves of ocean bear:

  Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,

  And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

  Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast

  The little Tyrant of his fields withstood;

  Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,

  Some Cromwell guiltless of his country’s blood.

  Th’ applause of list’ning senates to command,

  The threats of pain and ruin to despise,

  To scatter plenty o’er a smiling land,

  And read their hist’ry in a nation’s eyes

  Their lot forbad: nor circumscrib’d alone

  Their growing virtues, but their crimes confin’d;

  Forbad to wade through slaughter to a throne,

  And shut the gates of mercy on mankind,

  The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,

  To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,

  Or heap the shrine of L
uxury and Pride

  With incense kindled at the Muse’s flame.

  Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife,

  Their sober wishes never learn’d to stray;

  Along the cool sequester’d vale of life

  They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

  Yet ev’n these bones from insult to protect

  Some frail memorial still erected nigh,

  With uncouth rhimes and shapeless sculpture deck’d,

  Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.

  Their name, their years, spelt by th’ unletter’d muse,

  The place of fame and elegy supply:

  And many a holy text around she strews,

  That teach the rustic moralist to die.

  For who to dumb Forgetfulness a prey,

  This pleasing anxious being e’er resign’d,

  Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,

  Nor cast one longing ling’ring look behind?

  On some fond breast the parting soul relies,

  Some pious drops the closing eye requires;

  Ev’n from the tomb the voice of Nature cries,

  Ev’n in our Ashes live their wonted Fires.

  For thee, who mindful of th’ unhonour’d Dead

  Dost in these lines their artless tale relate;

  If chance, by lonely contemplation led,

  Some kindred Spirit shall inquire thy fate,

  Haply some hoary-headed Swain may say,

  ‘Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn

  ‘Brushing with hasty steps the dews away

  ‘To meet the sun upon the upland lawn.

  ‘There at the foot of yonder nodding beech

  ‘That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high,

  ‘His listless length at noontide wou’d he stretch,

  ‘And pore upon the brook that babbles by.

  ‘Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,

  ‘Mutt’ring his wayward fancies he wou’d rove,

  ‘Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn,

  ‘Or craz’d with care, or cross’d in hopeless love.

  ‘One morn I miss’d him on the custom’d hill,

  ‘Along the heath and near his fav’rite tree;

  ‘Another came; nor yet beside the rill,

  ‘Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he;

  ‘The next with dirges due in sad array

  ‘Slow thro’ the church-way path we saw him borne.

  ‘Approach and read (for thou can’st read) the lay,

  ‘Grav’d on the stone beneath yon aged thorn.’

  The Epitaph

  Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth

  A Youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown,

  Fair Science frown’d not on his humble birth,

  And Melancholy mark’d him for her own.

  Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,

  Heav’n did a recompence as largely send:

  He gave to Mis’ry all he had, a tear,

  He gain’d from Heav’n(’twas all he wish’d) a friend.

  No farther seek his merits to disclose,

  Or draw his frailties from their dread abode,

  (There they alike in trembling hope repose)

  The bosom of his Father and his God.

  STEPHEN SPENDER

  I think continually of those who were truly great.

  Who, from the womb, remembered the soul’s history

  Through corridors of light where the hours are suns,

  Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition

  Was that their lips, still touched with fire,

  Should tell of the Spirit, clothed from head to foot in song.

  And who hoarded from the Spring branches

  The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms.

  What is precious, is never to forget

  The essential delight of the blood drawn from ageless

  springs

  Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth.

  Never to deny its pleasure in the morning simple light

  Nor its grave evening demand for love.

  Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother

  With noise and fog, the flowering of the Spirit.

  Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields,

  See how these names are fêted by the waving grass

  And by the streamers of white cloud

  And whispers of wind in the listening sky.

  The names of those who in their lives fought for life,

  Who wore at their hearts the fire’s centre.

  Born of the sun, they travelled a short while toward the sun

  And left the vivid air signed with their honour.

  THOMAS HARDY

  Transformations

  Portion of this yew

  Is a man my grandsire knew,

  Bosomed here at its foot:

  This branch may be his wife,

  A ruddy human life

  Now turned to a green shoot.

  These grasses must be made

  Of her who often prayed,

  Last century, for repose;

  And the fair girl long ago

  Whom I often tried to know

  May be entering this rose.

  So, they are not underground,

  But as nerves and veins abound

  In the growths of upper air,

  And they feel the sun and rain,

  And the energy again

  That made them what they were!

  WALT WHITMAN

  from Song of Myself

  A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full

  hands;

  How could I answer the child?… I do not know what it is

  any more than he.

  I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful

  green stuff woven.

  Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,

  A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropped,

  Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we

  may see and remark, and say Whose?

  Or I guess the grass is itself a child… the produced babe of

  the vegetation.

  Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,

  And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow

  zones,

  Growing among black folks as among white,

  Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same,

  I receive them the same.

  And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

  Tenderly will I use you curling grass,

  It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,

  It may be if I had known them I would have loved them;

  It may be you are from old people and from women, and

  from offspring taken soon out of their mothers’ laps,

  And here you are the mothers’ laps.

  This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old

  mothers,

  Darker than the colorless beards of old men,

  Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.

  O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues!

  And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths

  for nothing.

  I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men

  and women,

  And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring

  soon out of their laps.

  What do you think has become of the young and old men?

  And what do you think has become of the women and

  children?

  They are alive and well somewhere;

  The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,

  And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait

  at the end to arrest it,

  And ceased the moment life appeared.
>
  All goes onward and outward… and nothing collapses,

  And to die is different from what any one supposed, and

  luckier.

  PHILIP LARKIN

  An Arundel Tomb

  Side by side, their faces blurred,

  The earl and countess lie in stone,

  Their proper habits vaguely shown

  As jointed armour, stiffened pleat,

  And that faint hint of the absurd –

  The little dogs under their feet.

  Such plainness of the pre-baroque

  Hardly involves the eye, until

  It meets his left-hand gauntlet, still

  Clasped empty in the other; and

  One sees, with a sharp tender shock,

  His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.

  They would not think to lie so long.

  Such faithfulness in effigy

  Was just a detail friends would see:

  A sculptor’s sweet commissioned grace

  Thrown off in helping to prolong

  The Latin names around the base.

  They would not guess how early in

  Their supine stationary voyage

  The air would change to soundless damage,

  Turn the old tenantry away;

  How soon succeeding eyes begin

  To look, not read. Rigidly they

  Persisted, linked, through lengths and breadths

  Of time. Snow fell, undated. Light

  Each summer thronged the glass. A bright

  Litter of birdcalls strewed the same

  Bone-riddled ground. And up the paths

  The endless altered people came,

  Washing at their identity.

  Now, helpless in the hollow of