A - M

A

William Allingham

The Fairies

Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren't go a-hunting
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,
An white owl's feather!

Down along the rocky shore
Some make their home,
They live on crispy panckes
Of yellow tide-foam;
Some in the reeds
Of the black mountain lake,
With frogs for their watch-dogs
All night awake.

High on the hill-top
The old king sits;
He is now old and gray
He's nigh lost his wits.
With a bridge of white mist
Columbkill he crosses,
On his stately journeys
From Slieveleague to Rosses;
Or going up with music
On cold starry nights,
To sup with the Queen
Of the gay Northern Lights.

They stole little Bridget
For seven years long;
When she came down again
Her friends were all gone.
They took her lightly back,
Between the night and morrow,
They thought that she was fast asleep,
But she was dead with sorrow.
They have kept her ever since
Deep within the lake,
On a bed of flag-leaves,
Watching till she wake.

By the craggy hill-side,
Through the mosses bare,
They have planted thorn-trees
For pleasure here and there.
Is any man so daring
As dig them up in spite,
He shall find their sharpest thorns
In his bed at night.

Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren't go a-hunting
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Gren jacket, red cap,
An white owl's feather!

B

C

Stephen Crane

The wayfarer

Perceiving the pathway to truth,
Was struck with astonishment.
It was thickly grown with weeds.
"Ha!" he said,
"I see that no one has passed here
In a long time."
Late he saw that each weed
Was a singular knife.
"Well." he mumbled at last,
"Doubtless there are other roads."

e.e. cummings

pity this busy monster, manunkind

pity this busy monster, manunkind,

not. Progress is a comfortable disease:
your victim (death and life safely beyond)

plays with the bigness of his littleness
- electrons deify one razorblade
into a mountainrange; lenses extend

unwish through curving where when till unwish
returns on its unself.

A world of made
is not a world of born - pity poor flesh

and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this
fine specimen of hypermagical

ultraomnipotence. We doctors know

a hopeless case if - listen: there's a hell
of a good universe next door; let's go

since feeling is first

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
- the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis


*...spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful...


I thank You God for most this amazing day
for the leaping greenly spirits of trrees and a blue true dream of sky
and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes.

D

Emily Dickinson

If you were coming in the fall
I'd brush the summer by
With half a smile and half a spurn
As housewives do a fly.

If I could see you in a year,
I'd wind the months in balls
And put them each in separate drawers
For fear the numbers fuse.

If only centuries delayed,
I'd count them on my hand
Subtracting till my fingers dropped
Into Van Diemen's land.

If certain when this life was out
That yours and mine should be
I'd toss it yonder like a rind,
And take eternity.

But now, uncertain of the length
Of this that is between,
It goads me like a Goblin bee
That will not state its sting.


Forbidden fruit a flavor has
That lawful orchard mocks -
How luscious lies within the pod
The pea that duty locks -


*Hope is a thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all.

And sweetest in the gale is heard -
And sure must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land
And on the strangest sea -
Yet, never in extremity -
It asked a crumb of me.

*Pain has an element of blank -
It cannot recollect
When it began or if there were
A day when it was not.

It has no future but itself -
Its infinite realms contain
Its past, enlightened to perceive
New Periods of Pain.

E

F

Sir Samuel Ferguson

The Fairy Thorn

"Get up, our Anna, dear, from the weary spinning-wheel;
For your father's on the hill, and your mother is asleep;
Come up above the crags, and we'll dance a highland reel
Around the fairy thorn on the steep."

At Anna Grace's door 'twas thus the maidens cried,
Three merry maidens fair in kirtles of the green;
And Anna laid the rock and the weary wheel aside,
The fairest of the four, I ween.

There glancing through the glimmer of the quiet eve,
Away in milky waving s of neck and ankle bare;
The heavy-sliding stream in its sleepy song they leave,
And the crags in the ghostly air:

And linking hand in hand, and singing as they go,
The maids along the hill-side have ta'en their fearless way,
Till they come to where the rowan trees in lonely beauty grow
Beside the Fairy Hawthorn gray.

The Hawthorn stands between the ashes tall and slim,
Like matron with her twin grand-daughters at her knee;
The rowan berries cluster o'er her head gray and dim
In ruddy kisses sweet to see.

The merry maidens four have ranged them in a row,
Between each lovely couple a stately rowan stem,
And away in mazes wavy, like skimming birds they go,
Oh never caroll'd bird like them!

But solemn is the silence of the silvery haze
That drinks away their voices in echoless repose,
And dreamily the evening has still'd the haunted braes
And dreamier the gloaming grows.

And sinking one by one, like lark-notes from the sky
When the falcon's shadow saileth across the open shaw,
Are hush'd the maiden's voices as cowering down they lie
In the flutter of their sudden awe.

For, from the air above, and the grassy ground beneath,
And from the mountain ashes and the old White thorn between,
A power of faint enchantment doth through their beings breathe,
And they sink down together on the green.

They sink together silent, and stealing side by side,
They fling their lovely arm o'er their drooping necks so fair,
Then vainly strive against their naked arms to hide,
For their shrinking necks again are bare.

Thus clasp'd and prostrate all, with their heads together bow'd,
Soft o'er their bosoms' beating - the only human sound -
They hear the silky footstep of the silent fairy crowd,
Like a river in the air, gliding round.

No scream can any raise, no prayer can any say,
But wild, wild the terror of the speechless three -
For they feel fair Anna Grace drawn silently away,
By whom they dare not look to see.

They feel their tresses twine with the parting locks of gold,
And the curl elastic falling as her head withdraws;
They feel her sliding arms from their tranced arms unfold,
But they may not look to see the cause;

For heavy on their senses the faint enchantment lies
Through all that night of anguish and perilous amaze;
And neither fear nor wonder can ope their quivering eyes,
Or their limbs from cold ground raise.

Till out of night the earth has roll'd her dewy side,
With every haunted mountain and steamy vale below;
When, as the mist dissolves in the yellow morning tide,
The maiden's trance dissolveth so.

Then fly the ghastly three as swiftly as they may,
And tell their tale of sorrow to anxious friends in vain -
They pined away and died within the year and day,
And ne'er was Anna Grace seen again.

Melissa French

A Cat's Prayer

based upon A Dog's Prayer, author unknown
Give me attention, my beloved friend, for no heart in the world likes sitting on your book and sleeping on your face more than this purring heart of mine.
Do not break my spirit with a bath, for though I should lick myself clean between blows, I dislike bathing and will scratch with all my might.
Speak to me often, for your voice is the precursor to food, as you must know by the insistent meowing when the sound of your footsteps falls upon my ears.
Please take me inside when it is cold and wet for I am a domesticated animal no longer accustomed to bitter elements, and I ask no glory than the privilege of stealing warmth from your lap.
Keep my dish filled with fresh milk, for I will definitely let you know when you are neglecting me.
Feed me clean food, that I may stay well to chase moths and bring you presents such as bats, birds, mice, moles, squirrels, and the occasional rabbit.
And, my friend, when I am old and deprived of my health and sight, do not turn me away from you; rather see that my trusted life is taken gently, and I shall leave knowing with that last breath I draw that you would hold the door for me no matter how long I took to decide whether I wanted in or not.

Robert Frost

Lodged

The rain to the wind said,
"You push and I'll pelt."
They so smote the garden bed
That the flowers knelt
And lay lodged, though not dead.
I know how the flowers felt.

G

H

I

J

K

L

Amy Lowell

A Decade

When you came, you were like red wine and honey,
And the taste of you burnt my mouth with its sweetness.
Now you are like morning bread,
Smooth and pleasant.
I hardly taste you at all for I know your savor,
But I am completely nourished.
Anticipation
I have been temperate always,
But I am like to be very drunk
With your coming.
There have been times
I feared to walk down the street
Lest I should reel with the wine of you,
And jerk against my neighbors
As they go by.

I am parched now, and my tongue is horrible in my mouth,
But my brain is noisy
With the clash and gurgle of filling wine-cups.
Irony
An arid daylight shines along the beach
Dried to a grey monotony of tone,
And stranded jelly-fish melt soft upon
The sun-baked pebbles, far beyond their reach
Sparkles a wet, reviving sea. Here bleach
The skeletons of fishes, every bone
polished and stark, like traceries of stone,
The joints and knuckles hardened each to each.
And they are dead white waiting for the sea,
The moon-pursuing sea, to come again.
Their hearts are blown away on the hot breeze.
Only the shells and stones can wait to be
Washed bright. For living things, who suffer pain,
May not endure till time can bring them ease.

M

Don Marquis

the lesson of the moth

i was talking to a moth
the other evening
he was trying to break into
an electric light bulb and fry himself on the wires
why do you fellows
pull this stunt i asked him
because it is the conventional
thing for moths or why
if that had been an uncovered
candle instead of an electric
light bulb you would
now be a small unsightly cinder
have you no sense
plenty of it he answers but at times we get tires of using it
we get bored with the routine
and crave beauty
and excitement
fire is beautiful
and we know that if we get too close it will kill us
but what does that matter
it is better to be happy for a moment
and be burned up with beauty
than to live a long time
and be bored all the while
so we wad all our life up
into tone little roll
and then we shoot the roll
that is what life is for
it is better to be a part of beauty
for one instant and then cease to be forever
and never be a part of beauty
our attitude toward life is come easy go east
we a re like human beings
used to be before they became
too civilized to enjoy themselves
and before i could argue him
out if his philosophy he went and immolated himself on a patent cigar lighter
i do not agree with him myself i would rather have
half the happiness and twice the longevity
but at the same time i wish there was something i wanted
as badly as he wanted to fry himself
- archy

Edna St. Vincent Millay

When I too long have looked upon your face,
Wherein for me a brightness unobscured
Save by the mists of brightness has its place,
And terrible beauty not to be endured,
I turn away reluctant form your light,
And stand irresolute, a mind undone,
A silly dazzled thing deprived of sight
From having looked too long upon the sun.
Then is my daily life a narrow room
In which a little while, uncertainly,
Surrounded by impenetrable gloom,
Among familiar things grown strange to me
Making my way, I pause, and feel, and hark,
Til I become accustomed to the dark.

Samuel French Morse

Micmac

The morning burns away like smoke.
The sunlight thickens. The salt pond
Glares through a haze of your scrub oak.
Caught in an alien dream beyond
His will to keep at bay, he leans
Against the battered yellow truck
He squandered more than money on
Before his hopes ran out like luck.

Then folds his arms like Samoset,
And squats beside the running board.
Fumbling for a cigarette,
He hears a car. The tourist's Ford
Blurs past. The locust's music whines,
The dry leaves of the alder spin,
He watches for a vagrant deer
To cross the blacktop. Sallow thin,

He stares at nothing. Blue exhaust
And drying sweetgrass eddy, mix
Until, as in that future lost,
They fade and drift. How should he fix
On nay meaning but the change
He cannot even understand?
Wrecked in a blind and rocky ditch,
He is a native of this land.

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