True, the time, to one who does not love farce, And if misery must be prefers it nobler, shows apparent vices; At least it provides the cure for ambition. One does not crave power in ant-hills, nor praise in a paper forest; One must not even indulge the severe Romance of separateness, as of Milton grown blind and old In his broken temple against the drunkards: The ants are good creatures, there is nothing to be heroic about. But the time is not a strong prison either. A little scraping the walls of dishonest contractor’s concrete Through a shower of chips and sand makes freedom. Shake the dust from your hair. This mountain sea-coast is real, For it reaches out far into past and future; It is part of the great and timeless excellence of things. A few Lean cows drift high up the bronze hill; The heavy-necked plow-team furrows the foreland, gulls tread the furrow; Time ebbs and flows but the rock remains. Two riders of tired horses canter on the cloudy ridge; Topaz-eyed hawks have the white air; Or a woman with jade-pale eyes, hiding a knife in her hand, Goes through cold rain over gray grass. God is here, too, secretly smiling, the beautiful power That piles up cities for the poem of their fall And gathers multitude like game to be hunted when the season comes.
IF love were what the rose is, And I were like the leaf, Our lives would grow together In sad or singing weather, Blown fields or flowerful closes Green pleasure or grey grief ; If love were what the rose is, And I were like the leaf.
If I were what the words are, And love were like the tune, With double sound and single Delight our lips would mingle, With kisses glad as birds are That get sweet rain at noon ; If I were what the words are, And love were like the tune.
If you were life, my darling, And I your love were death, We ‘d shine and snow together Ere March made sweet the weather With daffodil and starling And hours of fruitful breath ; If you were life, my darling, And I your love were death.
If you were thrall to sorrow, And I were page to joy, We ‘d play for lives and seasons With loving looks and treasons And tears of night and morrow And laughs of maid and boy ; If you were thrall to sorrow, And I were page to joy.
If you were April’s lady, And I were lord in May, We ‘d throw with leaves for hours And draw for days with flowers, Till day like night were shady And night were bright like day ; If you were April’s lady, And I were lord in May.
If you were queen of pleasure, And I were king of pain, We ‘d hunt down love together, Pluck out his flying-feather, And teach his feet a measure, And find his mouth a rein ; If you were queen of pleasure, And I were king of pain.
A poet is dreamfooted and walks a curious tightrope his song rises strangely through the apricot air love is his joy his tool his wisdom his folly he circles mothlike the candle light truth of things.
He strikes from nothing the sparks of what ought to exist the knowledge aches out his eyes creation’s his purpose he scrawls on the sky inhabits the lunatic corners in the web of delusion he crouches, alert as a spider.
A poet is a decoder of arcane messages received on the crystal set of his eavesdropping heart from the scrabble-bag of letters he plucks the singing images threads them like beads on the lines of his secret longing.
He is a cardsharp of words that sting and praise and wonder his mind swings erratically between micro and macrocosm he studies the eccentric comings and going of house finches and the ghostly pillars that whelp stars at the edge of the universe.
A poet is a brief made seer in a sea of bottomless mysteries he is driven more by curiosity than wisdom he lives his life by luck, intuition and chance and leaves as his legacy only a random scattering of delirious verse.
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind? _____________________
In 1819, Shelley, alarmed by his fading youth and the raging tempest of imperialism and materialism tainting his beloved natural world, penned “Ode to the West Wind,” now regarded as one of the greatest poems of the Romantic era. There is in the poem a hint of a premonition of his untimely death – at the tender age of 30 – just three years later. He also seems to be forewarning us of the mutilation of the planet by the “dark Satanic Mills” of the burgeoning industrial revolution. In his book, A Defense of Poetry, he wrote that poets are “hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration, the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present.”
Guard yourself from the terrible empty light of space, the bottomless Pool of the stars. (Expose yourself to it: you might learn something.)
Guard yourself from perceiving the inherent nastiness of man and woman. (Expose yourself to it: you might learn something.)
Faith, as they now confess, is preposterous, an act of will. Choose the Christian sheep-cote Or the Communist rat-fight: faith will cover your head from the man-devouring stars.
English poet and artist William Blake painted Pity in 1795. This color print was finished in watercolor and ink on paper and is part of a group referred to as the Large Colour Prints.
MACBETH [Act 1, scene 7]:
If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well It were done quickly: if the assassination Could trammel up the consequence, and catch With his surcease success; that but this blow Might be the be-all and the end-all here, But here, upon this bank and shoal of time, We’ld jump the life to come. But in these cases We still have judgment here; that we but teach Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return To plague the inventor: this even-handed justice Commends the ingredients of our poison’d chalice To our own lips. He’s here in double trust; First, as I am his kinsman and his subject, Strong both against the deed; then, as his host, Who should against his murderer shut the door, Not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been So clear in his great office, that his virtues Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against The deep damnation of his taking-off; And pity, like a naked new-born babe, Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubim, horsed Upon the sightless couriers of the air, Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye, That tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur To prick the sides of my intent, but only Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself And falls on the other. ________________
In his exceptional book, William Blake vs The World, John Higgs writes, “The strange title of [Blake’s print] Pity is a reference to Macbeth. In Act 1, scene 7, Macbeth is considering how people would react to the murder of Duncan, his well-respected king.
Blake had not produced an illustration of the play Macbeth. His Pity is not a visual interpretation of a general considering regicide. He was instead drawn to a metaphor used in the play, in which the emotions caused by a too-early death are personified as a babe taken away into the air by a horsed cherub, and he chose to illustrate that metaphor instead. With Blake, it is always the emotions behind things that interest him, rather than the earthly consequences.
In Shakespeare’s metaphor, the babe represents the emotion of pity. Blake departs from the Macbeth quote to show it being taken away from its mother, the ultimate source of this pity-babe. Perhaps Catherine’s [Blake’s wife] first words to William were a declaration of how he triggered the emotion of pity to emerge from her heart, it is tempting to see Catherine here, enduring the loss of a child. If this was the case then the picture is another reminder that the word “pity”, in eighteenth-century usage, was an expression of empathy and compassion.”
I came too late to the hills: they were swept bare Winters before I was born of song and story, Of spell or speech with power of oracle or invocation,
The great ash long dead by a roofless house, its branches rotten, The voice of the crows an inarticulate cry, And from the wells and springs the holy water ebbed away.
A child I ran in the wind on a withered moor Crying out after those great presences who were not there, Long lost in the forgetfulness of the forgotten.
Only the archaic forms themselves could tell! In sacred speech of hoodie on gray stone, or hawk in air, Of Eden where the lonely rowan bends over the dark pool.
Yet I have glimpsed the bright mountain behind the mountain, Knowledge under the leaves, tasted the bitter berries red, Drunk water cold and clear from an inexhaustible hidden fountain. _____________________________________
In drear-nighted December, Too happy, happy tree, Thy branches ne’er remember Their green felicity: The north cannot undo them With a sleety whistle through them; Nor frozen thawings glue them From budding at the prime.
In drear-nighted December, Too happy, happy brook, Thy bubblings ne’er remember Apollo’s summer look; But with a sweet forgetting, They stay their crystal fretting, Never, never petting About the frozen time.
Ah! would ’twere so with many A gentle girl and boy! But were there ever any Writhed not at passed joy? The feel of not to feel it, When there is none to heal it Nor numbed sense to steel it, Was never said in rhyme.
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