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Epipsychidion (excerpt)

Emily,
A ship is floating in the harbour now,
A wind is hovering o'er the mountain's brow;
There is a path on the sea's azure floor,
No keel has ever plough'd that path before;
The halcyons brood around the foamless isles;
The treacherous Ocean has forsworn its wiles;
The merry mariners are bold and free:
Say, my heart's sister, wilt thou sail with me?
Our bark is as an albatross, whose nest
Is a far Eden of the purple East;
And we between her wings will sit, while Night,
And Day, and Storm, and Calm, pursue their flight,
Our ministers, along the boundless Sea,
Treading each other's heels, unheededly.
It is an isle under Ionian skies,
Beautiful as a wreck of Paradise,
And, for the harbours are not safe and good,
This land would have remain'd a solitude
But for some pastoral people native there,

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poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley
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America

NOR War nor Peace, forever, old and young,
But Strength my theme, whose song is yet unsung,
The People's Strength, the deep alluring dream
Of truths that seethe below the truths that seem.

The buried ruins of dead empires seek,
Of Indian, Syrian, Persian, Roman, Greek:
From shattered capital and frieze upraise
The stately structures of their golden days:
Their laws occult, their priests and prophets ask.,
Their altars search, their oracles unmask,
Their parable from birth to burial see,
The acorn germ, the growth, the dense-leafed tree,
A world of riant life; the sudden day
When like a new strange glory, shone decay,
A golden glow amid the green; the change
From branch to branch at life's receding range,
Till nothing stands of towering strength and pride
Save naked trunk and arms whose veins are dried;
And these, too, crumble till no signs remain

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poem by John Boyle O'Reilly
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The Thorn

I

'There is a Thorn--it looks so old,
In truth, you'd find it hard to say
How it could ever have been young,
It looks so old and grey.
Not higher than a two years' child
It stands erect, this aged Thorn;
No leaves it has, no prickly points;
It is a mass of knotted joints,
A wretched thing forlorn.
It stands erect, and like a stone
With lichens is it overgrown.

II

'Like rock or stone, it is o'ergrown,
With lichens to the very top,
And hung with heavy tufts of moss,
A melancholy crop:

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poem by William Wordsworth
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Belda-beast

Size is decreasing
Under transparent purple skies;
The life youve chased seen thru my eyes
Was distorted, filled with lies.
Your hopes are bouncing in front of your eyes
As you jump to catch them floating so high,
Bye, bye,
A top comes a-spinning into your life
And youve reached a height
Threatening destruction in a way that we know too well
Sitting on the limb of love with my friends
Sitting here all alone.
Life without malice can you call this bluff
And say without knowing its hard enough,
Bye, bye,
A top comes a-spinning into your life
And youve reached a height
Life without malice can you call this bluff
And say without knowing its hard enough,
Bye, bye,

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song performed by Iron Butterfly
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Metamorphosis VIII, 611-724

Baucis and Philemon

THUS Achelous ends: his audience hear
With admiration, and admiring, fear
The pow'rs of heav'n; except Ixion's son,
Who laugh'd at all the gods, believ'd in none:
He shook his impious head, and thus replies,
"These legends are no more than pious lies:
You attribute too much to heavenly sway,
To think they give us forms, and take away."
The rest, of better minds, their sense declar'd
Against this doctrine, and with horrour heard.
Then Lelex rose, an old experienc'd man,
And thus with sober gravity began:
"Heav'n's pow'r is infinite: earth, air, and sea,
The manufacture mass, the making pow'r obey:
By proof to clear your doubt; in Phrygian ground
Two neighb'ring trees, with walls encompass'd round,
Stand on a mod'rate rise, with wonder shown,
One a hard oak, a softer linden one:

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poem by Ovid
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The Princes' Ques -Part the Eighth

Now as it chanced, the day was almost spent
When down the lonely mountain-side he went,
The whitehaired man, the Prince that was; and ere
He won the silence of the valley where
The city's many towers uprose, the gate
Was closed against him, for the hour was late.
So even as they that have not wherewithal
To roof them from the rain if it should fall,
Upon the grassy ground this king's son lay,
And slept till nigh the coming of the day.

But while as any vagabond he slept
Or outcast from the homes of men, there crept
Unto him lying in such sorry sort
A something fairer than the kingliest court
In all the peopled world had witness of-
Even the shadow of the throne of Love,
That from a height beyond all height did creep
Along the pavement of the halls of sleep.
O fair and wonderful! that shadow was

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poem by William Watson
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Youth In Memory

Days, when the ball of our vision
Had eagles that flew unabashed to sun;
When the grasp on the bow was decision,
And arrow and hand and eye were one;
When the Pleasures, like waves to a swimmer,
Came heaving for rapture ahead! -
Invoke them, they dwindle, they glimmer
As lights over mounds of the dead.

Behold the winged Olympus, off the mead,
With thunder of wide pinions, lightning speed,
Wafting the shepherd-boy through ether clear,
To bear the golden nectar-cup.
So flies desire at view of its delight,
When the young heart is tiptoe perched on sight.
We meanwhile who in hues of the sick year
The Spring-time paint to prick us for our lost,
Mount but the fatal half way up -
Whereon shut eyes! This is decreed,
For Age that would to youthful heavens ascend,

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poem by George Meredith
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Thebais - Book One - part IV

For by the black infernal Styx I swear,
(That dreadful oath which binds the thunderer)
‘Tis fixed; th’ irrevocable doom of Jove;
No force can bend me, no persuasion move.
haste then, Cyllenius, through the liquid air;
Go, mount the winds, and to the shades repair;
Bid hell’s black monarch my commands obey,
And give up Laius to the realms of day,
Whose ghost yet shiv’ring on Cocytus’ sand,
Expects its passage to thc further strand:
Let the pale sire revisit Thebes, and bear
These pleasing orders to the tyrant’s ear;
That from his exiled brother, swelled with pride
Of foreign forces, and his Argive bride,
Almighty Jove commands him to detain
The promised empire, and alternate reign:
Be this the cause of more than mortal hate:
The rest, succeeding times shall ripen into fate.”
The god obeys, and to his feet applies
Those golden wings that cut the yielding skies.

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poem by Pablius Papinius Statius
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A Shower In War-Time

Rain, rain, sweet warm rain,
On the wood and on the plain!
Rain, rain, warm and sweet,
Summer wood lush leafy and loud,
With note of a throat that ripples and rings,
Sad sole sweet from her central seat,
Bubbling and trilling,
Filling, filling, filling
The shady space of the green dim place
With an odour of melody,
Till all the noon is thrilling,
And the great wood hangs in the balmy day
Like a cloud with an angel in the cloud,
And singing because she sings!

In the sheltering wood,
At that hour I stood;
I saw that in that hour
Great round drops, clear round drops,

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poem by Sydney Thompson Dobell
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The Tale of the Tiger-Tree

A Fantasy, dedicated to the little poet Alice Oliver Henderson, ten years old.

The Fantasy shows how tiger-hearts are the cause of war in all ages. It shows how the mammoth forces may be either friends or enemies of the struggle for peace. It shows how the dream of peace is unconquerable and eternal.

I

Peace-of-the-Hea rt, my own for long,
Whose shining hair the May-winds fan,
Making it tangled as they can,
A mystery still, star-shining yet,
Through ancient ages known to me
And now once more reborn with me: —

This is the tale of the Tiger Tree
A hundred times the height of a man,
Lord of the race since the world began.

This is my city Springfield,
My home on the breast of the plain.

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poem by Vachel Lindsay
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