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Politics

Gold and iron are good
To buy iron and gold;
All earth's fleece and food
For their like are sold.
Hinted Merlin wise,
Proved Napoleon great,
Nor kind nor coinage buys
Aught above its rate.
Fear, Craft, and Avarice
Cannot rear a State.
Out of dust to build
What is more than dust,--
Walls Amphion piled
Phoebus stablish must.
When the Muses nine
When the Virtues meet,
Find to their design
An Atlantic seat,
By green orchard boughs
Fended from the heat,

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poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The Relic Taken, What Avails The Shrine?

THE relic taken, what avails the shrine?
The locket, pictureless? O heart of mine,
Art thou not worse than that,
Still warm, a vacant nest where love once sat?

Her image nestled closer at my heart
Than cherished memories, healed every smart
And warmed it more than wine
Or the full summer sun in noon-day shine.

This was the little weather gleam that lit
The cloudy promontories - the real charm was
That gilded hills and woods
And walked beside me thro' the solitudes.

The sun is set. My heart is widowed now
Of that companion-thought. Alone I plough
The seas of life, and trace
A separate furrow far from her and grace.

poem by Robert Louis Stevenson
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The Sunset of Romanticism

How beautiful a new sun is when it rises,
flashing out its greeting, like an explosion!
- Happy, whoever hails with sweet emotion
its descent, nobler than a dream, to our eyes!
I remember! I’ve seen all, flower, furrow, fountain,
swoon beneath its look, like a throbbing heart…
- Let’s run quickly, it’s late, towards the horizon,
to catch at least one slanting ray as it departs!
But I pursue the vanishing God in vain:
irresistible Night establishes its sway,
full of shudders, black, dismal, cold:
an odour of the tomb floats in the shadow,
at the swamp’s edge, feet faltering I go,
bruising damp slugs, and unexpected toads.

poem by Charles Baudelaire
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Wherefore and Whither - 0102 - For Annie Boudet

Now you'd know where fate's flowing if you abide with me,
and wonder where we're going, what could provide the key?

The future you'd be knowing, how will life fare for thee?
but all's in vain, this trowing, when we lack liberty.
Ringed golden debt is owing, yet you remain too free.

The fused frustrations growing attack you, fair chérie,
for Time's swift furrow's showing no longer twenty three.

Though sun each morrow's flowing, it sets too speedily.
There'll be no plights bestowing, lest spite spite enmity,
though sorrow may be sowing, we haste to heresy.

Away you should be stowing all memory of me.

(3 October 1975)

poem by Jonathan Robin
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Spring

There dwells a spirit in the budding year-
As motherhood doth beautify the face-
That even lends these barren glebes a grace,
And fills grey hours with beauty that were drear
And bleak when the loud, storming March was here:
A glamour that the thrilled heart dimly traces
In swelling boughs and soft, wet, windy spaces,
And sunlands where the chattering birds make cheer.
I thread the uplands where the wind's footfalls
Stir leaves in gusty hollows, autumn's urns.
Seaward the river's shining breast expands,
High in the windy pines a lone crow calls,
And far below some patient ploughman turns
His great black furrow over steaming lands.

poem by William Wilfred Campbell
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New Things Are Best

What shall I tell you, child, in this new Sonnet?
Life's art is to forget, and last year's sowing
Cast in Time's furrow with the storm winds blowing
Bears me a wild crop with strange fancies on it.
Last year I wore your sole rose in my bonnet.
This year--who knows--who, even the All--knowing,
What to my vagrant heart, for its undoing,
Of weeds shall blossom ere my tears atone it?
--New Spring is in the air with new desirings;
New wonders fructify Earth, Sea, and Heaven,
And happy birds sing loud from a new nest.
Ah, why then grieve Love's recreant aspirings,
His last year's hopes, his vows forgot, forgiven?
Child, be we comforted! New things are best.

poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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Peace

And sometimes I am sorry when the grass
Is growing over the stones in quiet hollows
And the cocksfoot leans across the rutted cart-pass
That I am not the voice of country fellows
Who now are standing by some headland talking
Of turnips and potatoes or young corn
Of turf banks stripped for victory.
Here Peace is still hawking
His coloured combs and scarves and beads of horn.

Upon a headland by a whinny hedge
A hare sits looking down a leaf-lapped furrow
There's an old plough upside-down on a weedy ridge
And someone is shouldering home a saddle-harrow.
Out of that childhood country what fools climb
To fight with tyrants Love and Life and Time?

Submitted by Andrew Mayers

poem by Patrick Kavanagh
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Don't put up my Thread and Needle

617

Don't put up my Thread and Needle—
I'll begin to Sew
When the Birds begin to whistle—
Better Stitches—so—

These were bent—my sight got crooked—
When my mind—is plain
I'll do seams—a Queen's endeavor
Would not blush to own—

Hems—too fine for Lady's tracing
To the sightless Knot—
Tucks—of dainty interspersion—
Like a dotted Dot—

Leave my Needle in the furrow—
Where I put it down—
I can make the zigzag stitches

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poem by Emily Dickinson
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Versus

Wood, leather, metal
clank together in irregular rhythm:
behind the Roman ploughman
crows and sparrows compete
to see what the blade throws up
from this red soil like ancient pots;
the horse, its patience godlike,
knows when to turn without
that hoarse, brief, ancient shout.

The old typewriter rattles on so fast
you cannot tell whether she is happy in her work;
again, again, the bell rings, telling her
it’s time for carriage to reverse.

The poet’s eyes are unfocussed,
lost to thought; the words come slow;
more certain, where the line may end -
the mind to take the mind’s own breath.

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poem by Michael Shepherd
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The Height Of Honesty

'Three friends once, in the course of conversation,
Touch'd upon honesty: 'No virtue better,'
Says Dick, quite lost in sweet self-admiration,
'I'm sure I'm honest;--ay--beyond the letter:
You know the field I rent; beneath the ground
My plough stuck in the middle of a furrow
And there a pot of golden coins I found!
My landlord has it, without fail, to-morrow.'
Thus modestly his good intents he told:
'But stay,' says Bob,' we soon shall see who's best,
A _stranger_ left with me uncounted gold!
But I'll not touch it; which is honestest?'
'Your honest acts I've heard,' says Jack, 'but I
Have done much better, would that all folks learn'd it,
Mine is the highest pitch of honesty--
I borrow'd an umbrella and--_return'd it!!

poem by Martin Farquhar Tupper
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