William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
'To morrow, and to morrow, and to morrow'
To morrow, and to morrow, and to morrow,
Creepes in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last Syllable of Recorded time:
And all our yesterdayes haue lighted Fooles
The way to dusty death. Out, out, breefe Candle,
Life's but a walking Shadow, a poore Player,
That struts and frets his houre vpon the Stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a Tale
Told by an Ideot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.
Francis Quarles (1592-1644)
Hos Ego Versiculos
Like to the Damask Rose you see,
Or like the blossome on the tree,
Or like the dainty flower of May,
Or like the morning to the day,
Or like the Sunne, or like the shade,
Or like the Gourd whick Ionas had;
Even such is man, whose thred is spunn,
Drawne out and cut, and so is done,
The Rose withers, the blossome blasteth,
The flower fades, the morning hasteth:
The Sunne sets, the shadow flies,
The Gourd consumes, and man he dies.
Like to the blaze of fond delight;
Or like a morning cleare and bright;
Or like a frost; or like a showre;
Or like the pride of Babel's Tower;
Or like the hower that guides the Time;
Or like to beauty in her prime;
Even such is man, whose glory lends
His life a blaze or two, and ends.
Delights vanish; the morne o're casteth,
The frost breaks, the shower hasteth;
The towre falls, the hower spends;
The beauty fades, and man's life ends.
Henry King (1592-1669)
Sic Vita
Like to the Falling of a Starr;
Or as the Flightes of Eagles are;
Or like the fresh Spring's gawdy hew;
Or Silver Dropps of Morning Dew;
Or like a Wind that chafes the flood;
Or Bubbles which on Water stood;
Even such is Man, whose borrow'd Light
Is streight Call'd in, and Pay'd to Night.
The Wind blowes out, The Bubble Dyes;
The Spring entomb'd in Autumne lyes:
The Dew dryes up: The Starr is shott:
The Flight is past: And Man Forgott.
Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864)
'Why, why repine, my pensive friend'
Why, why repine, my pensive friend,
At pleasures slipt away?
Some the stern Fates will never lend,
And all refuse to stay.
I see the rainbow in the sky,
The dew upon the grass,
I see them, and I ask not why
They glimmer or they pass.
With folded arms I linger not
To call them back; 'twere vain;
In this, or in some other spot,
I know they'll shine again.
Isaac Rosenberg (1890-1918)
August 1914
What in our lives is burnt
In the fire of this?
The heart's dear granary?
The much we shall miss?
Three lives hath one life —
Iron, honey, gold.
The gold, the honey gone —
Left is the hard and cold.
Iron are our lives
Molten right through our youth.
A burnt space through ripe fields,
A fair mouth's broken tooth.
Sir Walter Ralegh (1552-1618)
'What is our life?'
What is our life? a play of passion,
Our mirth the musicke of diuision,
Our mothers wombes the tyring houses be,
Where we are drest for this short Comedy,
Heauen the Iudicious sharpe spectator is,
That sits and markes still who doth act amisse,
Our graues that hide vs from the searching Sun,
Are like drawne curtaynes when the play is done,
Thus march we playing to our latest rest,
Onely we dye in earnest, that's no Iest.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
'All the world's a stage'
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women, meerely Players;
They haue their Exits and their Entrances,
And one man in his time playes many parts,
His Acts being seuen ages. At first the Infant,
Mewling, and puking in the Nurses armes:
Then, the whining Schoole-boy with his Satchell
And shining morning face, creeping like snaile
Vnwillingly to schoole. And then the Louer,
Sighing like Furnace, with a woefull ballad
Made to his Mistresse eye-brow. Then, a Soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the Pard,
Ielous in honor, sodaine, and quicke in quarrell,
Seeking the bubble Reputation
Euen in the Canons mouth: And then, the Iustice,
In faire round belly, with good Capon lin'd,
With eyes seuere, and beard of formall cut,
Full of wise sawes, and moderne instances,
And so he playes his part. The sixt age shifts
Into the leane and slipper'd Pantaloone,
With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side,
His youthfull hose well sau'd, a world too wide
For his shrunke shanke, and his bigge manly voice,
Turning againe toward childish trebble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last Scene of all,
That ends this strange euentfull historie,
Is second childishnesse, and meere obliuion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans euery thing.
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
The Conqueror Worm
Lo! 'tis a gala night
Within the lonesome latter years!
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre, to see
A play of hopes and fears,
While the orchestra breathes fitfully
The music of the spheres.
Mimes, in form of God on high,
Mutter and mumble low,
And hither and thither fly —
Mere puppets they, who come and go
At bidding of vast formless things
That shift the scenery to and fro,
Flapping from out their Condor wings
Invisible Wo!
That motley drama — oh, be sure
It shall not be forgot!
With its Phantom chased for evermore,
By a crowd that seize it not,
Through a circle that ever returneth in
To the self-same spot,
And much of Madness, and more of Sin,
And Horror the soul of the plot.
But see, amid the mimic rout
A crawling shape intrude!
A blood-red thing that writhes from out
The scenic solitude!
It writhes! — it writhes! — with mortal pangs
The mimes become its food,
And seraphs sob at vermin fangs
In human gore imbued.
Out — out are the lights — out all!
And, over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm,
While the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, "Man,"
And its hero the Conqueror Worm.
Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)
Dover Beach
The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Ægæan, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
A.E. Housman (1859-1936)
'Now hollow fires burn out to black'
Now hollow fires burn out to black,
And lights are guttering low:
Square your shoulders, lift your pack,
And leave your friends and go.
Oh never fear, man, nought's to dread,
Look not left nor right:
In all the endless road you tread
There's nothing but the night.
W.H. Davies (1871-1940)
Leisure
What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
Katherine Philips (1632-1664)
To my Lord Biron's Tune of — Adieu Phillis
'Tis true, our life is but a long disease,
Made up of reall pain and seeming ease;
You stars, who these entangled fortunes give,
O tell me why
It is so hard to dy,
Yet such a task to live?
If with some pleasure we our griefs betray,
It costs us dearer then it can repay:
For time or fortune all things so devours;
Our hopes are cross'd,
Or els the object lost,
Ere we can call it ours.
Henry King (1592-1669)
The Dirge
What is th'Existence of Man's Life?
But open Warr, or Slumber'd Strife.
Where Sicknes to his Sense presents
The Combat of the Elements:
And never feeles a perfect Peace
Till Death's cold hand signes his release.
It is a Storme, where the hott Bloud
Out-vyes in Rage the boyling Floud:
And each loud Passion of the Mind
Is like a furious gust of Wind,
Which beates his Bark with many a Wave
Till Hee casts Anchor in the Grave.
It is a Flow'r, which budds and growes,
And withers as the Leaves disclose:
Whose Spring and Fall faint Seasons keep,
Like fitts of Waking before Sleep,
Then shrinkes into that fatall Mold
Where Its first Being was enrolld.
It is a Dreame, whose seeming Truth
Is moraliz'd in Age and Youth:
Where all the Comforts he can share
As wandring as his Phant'syes are.
Till in a mist of dark decay
The Dreamer vanish quite away.
It is a Dyall, which pointes out
The Sunsett, as it moves about,
And shadowes out in lines of night
The subtile stages of time's flight:
Till all obscuring Earth hath lay'd
The Body in perpetuall Shade.
It is a weary Enterlude,
Which doth short joyes, long Woes include.
The World the Stage, the Prologue Teares,
The Actes vaine Hope and vary'd Feares:
The Scæne shutts up with Losse of breath,
And leaves no Epilogue but Death.
William Cowper (1731-1800)
The Poplar-Field
The Poplars are fell'd, farewell to the shade
And the whispering sound of the cool colonnade,
The winds play no longer and sing in the leaves,
Nor Ouse on his bosom their image receives.
Twelve years have elapsed since I last took a view
Of my favourite field and the bank where they grew,
And now in the grass behold they are laid,
And the tree is my seat that once lent me a shade.
The black-bird has fled to another retreat
Where the hazels afford him a screen from the heat,
And the scene where his melody charm'd me before,
Resounds with his sweet-flowing ditty no more.
My fugitive years are all hasting away,
And I must e'er long lie as lowly as they,
With a turf on my breast and a stone at my head
E'er another such grove shall arise in its stead.
'Tis a sight to engage me if any thing can
To muse on the perishing pleasures of Man;
Though his life be a dream, his enjoyments, I see,
Have a Being less durable even than he.
Robert Herrick (1591-1674)
To Daffadills
1
Faire Daffadills, we weep to see
You haste away so soone:
As yet the early-rising Sun
Has not attain'd his Noone.
Stay, stay,
Untill the hasting day
Has run
But to the Even-song;
And, having pray'd together, we
Will goe with you along.
2
We have short time to stay, as you,
We have as short a Spring;
As quick a growth to meet Decay,
As you, or any thing.
We die,
As your hours doe, and drie
Away,
Like to the Summers raine;
Or as the pearles of Mornings dew
Ne'r to be found againe.
Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)
Destiny
Why each is striving, from of old,
To love more deeply than he can?
Still would be true, yet still grows cold?
— Ask of the Powers that sport with man!
They yoked in him, for endless strife,
A heart of ice, a soul of fire;
And hurled him on the Field of Life,
An aimless unallayed Desire.
Anonymous
'Our hasty life away doth post'
Our hasty life away doth post
Before we know what we have lost.
Hours into days, days into years are gone,
Years make a life, which straight is none.
Thus soon is Man's short story told,
We scarce are young, when we are waxed old.
John Gay (1685-1732)
My Own EPITAPH
Life is a jest; and all things show it,
I thought so once; but now I know it.
Ernest Dowson (1867-1900)
Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam
They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
Love and desire and hate:
I think they have no portion in us after
We pass the gate.
They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)
'There rolls the deep where grew the tree'
There rolls the deep where grew the tree.
O earth, what changes hast thou seen!
There where the long street roars, hath been
The stillness of the central sea.
The hills are shadows, and they flow
From form to form, and nothing stands;
They melt like mist, the solid lands,
Like clouds they shape themselves and go.
But in my spirit will I dwell,
And dream my dream, and hold it true;
For though my lips may breathe adieu,
I cannot think the thing farewell.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
'Our Reuels now are ended'
Our Reuels now are ended: These our actors,
(As I foretold you) were all Spirits, and
Are melted into Ayre, into thin Ayre,
And, like the baseless fabricke of this vision,
The Clowd-capt Towres, the gorgeous Pallaces,
The solemne Temples, the great Globe it selfe,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolue,
And like this insubstantiall Pageant faded,
Leaue not a racke behinde: we are such stuffe
As dreames are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleepe.
Robert Frost (1874-1963)
The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Edward Thomas (1887-1917)
'I built myself a house of glass'
I built myself a house of glass:
It took me years to make it:
And I was proud. But now, alas,
Would God someone would break it.
But it looks too magnificent.
No neighbour casts a stone
From where he dwells, in tenement
Or palace of glass, alone.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
'My life has been the poem I would have writ'
My life has been the poem I would have writ,
But I could not both live and utter it.
Robert Frost (1874-1963)
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
'Conscience is instinct bred in the house'
Conscience is instinct bred in the house,
Feeling and Thinking propagate the sin
By an unnatural breeding in and in.
I say, Turn it out doors,
Into the moors.
I love a life whose plot is simple,
And does not thicken with every pimple,
A soul so sound no sickly conscience binds it,
That makes the universe no worse than 't finds it.
I love an earnest soul,
Whose mighty joy and sorrow
Are not drowned in a bowl,
And brought to life to-morrow;
That lives one tragedy,
And not seventy;
A conscience worth keeping,
Laughing not weeping;
A conscience wise and steady,
And forever ready;
Not changing with events,
Dealing in compliments;
A conscience exercised about
Large things, where one may doubt.
I love a soul not all of wood,
Predestinated to be good,
But true to the backbone
Unto itself alone,
And false to none;
Born to its own affairs,
Its own joys and own cares;
By whom the work which God begun
Is finished, and not undone;
Taken up where he left off,
Whether to worship or to scoff;
If not good, why then evil,
If not good god, good devil.
Goodness! — you hypocrite, come out of that,
Live your life, do your work, then take your hat.
I have no patience towards
Such conscientious cowards.
Give me simple laboring folk,
Who love their work,
Whose virtue is a song
To cheer God along.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)
'Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean'
Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.
Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.
Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.
Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more!
Henry Vaughan (1621-1695)
The Retreate
Happy those early dayes! when I
Shin'd in my Angell-infancy.
Before I understood this place
Appointed for my second race,
Or taught my soul to fancy ought
But a white, Celestiall thought,
When yet I had not walkt above
A mile, or two, from my first love,
And looking back (at that short space,)
Could see a glimpse of his bright-face;
When on some gilded Cloud, or flowre
My gazing soul would dwell an houre,
And in those weaker glories spy
Some shadows of eternity;
Before I taught my tongue to wound
My Conscience with a sinfull sound,
Or had the black art to dispence
A sev'rall sinne to ev'ry sence,
But felt through all this fleshly dresse
Bright shootes of everlastingnesse.
O how I long to travell back
And tread again that ancient track!
That I might once more reach that plaine,
Where first I left my glorious traine,
From whence th' Inlightned spirit sees
That shady City of Palme trees;
But (ah!) my soul with too much stay
Is drunk, and staggers in the way.
Some men a forward motion love,
But I by backward steps would move,
And when this dust falls to the urn
In that state I came return.
D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930)
Piano
Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.
In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song
Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong
To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside
And hymns in the cozy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide.
So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour
With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour
Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.
Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864)
Memory
The mother of the Muses, we are taught,
Is Memory: she has left me; they remain,
And shake my shoulder, urging me to sing
About the summer days, my loves of old.
Alas! alas! is all I can reply.
Memory has left with me that name alone,
Harmonious name, which other bards may sing,
But her bright image in my darkest hour
Comes back, in vain comes back, call'd or uncall'd.
Forgotten are the names of visitors
Ready to press my hand but yesterday;
Forgotten are the names of earlier friends
Whose genial converse and glad countenance
Are fresh as ever to mine ear and eye:
To these, when I have written, and besought
Remembrance of me, the word Dear alone
Hangs on the upper verge, and waits in vain.
A blessing wert thou, O oblivion,
If thy stream carried only weeds away,
But vernal and autumnal flowers alike
It hurries down to wither on the strand.
W.B. Yeats (1865-1939)
The Wild Swans at Coole
The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty swans.
The nineteenth autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.
I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.
Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.
But now they drift on the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake's edge or pool
Delight men's eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?
Thomas Moore (1779-1852)
'Oft, in the stilly night'
Oft, in the stilly night,
Ere Slumber's chain has bound me,
Fond Memory brings the light
Of other days around me;
The smiles, the tears,
Of boyhood's years,
The words of love then spoken;
The eyes that shone,
Now dimm'd and gone,
The cheerful hearts now broken!
Thus, in the stilly night,
Ere Slumber's chain hath bound me,
Sad Memory brings the light
Of other days around me.
When I remember all
The friends, so link'd together,
I've seen around me fall,
Like leaves in wintry weather;
I feel like one,
Who treads alone
Some banquet-hall deserted,
Whose lights are fled,
Whose garlands dead,
And all but he departed!
Thus, in the stilly night,
Ere Slumber's chain has bound me,
Sad Memory brings the light
Of other days around me.
A.E. Housman (1859-1936)
'Into my heart an air that kills'
Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?
That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.
George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824)
Stanzas for Music
"O Lachrymarum fons, tenero sacros
Ducentium ortus ex animo: quater
Felix! in imo qui scatentem
Pectore te, pia Nympha, sensit."
Gray's Poemata.
1
There's not a joy the world can give like that it takes away,
When the glow of early thought declines in feeling's dull decay;
'Tis not on youth's smooth cheek the blush alone, which fades so fast,
But the tender bloom of heart is gone, ere youth itself be past.
2
Then the few whose spirits float above the wreck of happiness,
Are driven o'er the shoals of guilt or ocean of excess:
The magnet of their course is gone, or only points in vain
The shore to which their shiver'd sail shall never stretch again.
3
Then the mortal coldness of the soul like death itself comes down;
It cannot feel for others' woes, it dare not dream its own;
That heavy chill has frozen o’er the fountain of our tears,
And tho' the eye may sparkle still, 'tis where the ice appears.
4
Tho' wit may flash from fluent lips, and mirth distract the breast,
Through midnight hours that yield no more their former hope of rest;
'Tis but as ivy-leaves around the ruin'd turret wreath,
All green and wildly fresh without but worn and grey beneath.
5
Oh could I feel as I have felt, — or be what I have been,
Or weep as I could once have wept, o'er many a vanished scene:
As springs in deserts found seem sweet, all brackish though they be,
So midst the wither'd waste of life, those tears would flow to me.
John Clare (1793-1864)
'O could I be as I have been'
1
O could I be as I have been
And ne'er can be no more
A harmless thing in meadows green
Or on the wild sea shore
2
O could I be what once I was
In heaths and valleys green
A dweller in the summer grass
Green fields and places green
3
A tennant of the happy fields
By grounds of wheat and beans
By gipsey's camps and milking bield
Where lussious woodbine leans
4
To sit on the deserted plough
Left when the corn was sown
In corn and wild weeds buried now
In quiet peace unknown
5
The barrows resting by the hedge
The roll within the Dyke
Hid in the Ariff and the sedge
Are things I used to like
6
I used to tread through fallow lands
And wade through paths of grain
When wheat ears pattered on the hands
And head-aches left a stain
7
I wish I was what I have been
And what I was could be
As when I roved in shadows green
And loved my willow tree
8
To gaze upon the starry sky
And higher fancies build
And make in solitary joy
Loves temple in the field
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)
'Break, break, break'
Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.
O, well for the fisherman's boy,
That he shouts with his sister at play!
O well for the sailor lad,
That he sings in his boat on the bay!
And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanished hand,
And for the sound of a voice that is still!
Break, break, break,
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
'Tell all the Truth but tell it slant'
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —
W.B. Yeats (1865-1939)
The Coming of Wisdom with Time
Though leaves are many, the root is one;
Through all the lying days of my youth
I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun;
Now I may wither into the truth.
Robert Frost (1874-1963)
Fire and Ice
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)
'Below the surface-stream'
Below the surface-stream, shallow and light,
Of what we say we feel — below the stream,
As light, of what we think we feel — there flows
With noiseless current strong, obscure and deep,
The central stream of what we feel indeed.
Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)
'What are heavy?'
What are heavy? sea-sand and sorrow:
What are brief? today and tomorrow:
What are frail? Spring blossoms and youth:
What are deep? the ocean and truth.
W.B. Yeats (1865-1939)
After Long Silence
Speech after long silence; it is right,
All other lovers being estranged or dead,
Unfriendly lamplight hid under its shade,
The curtains drawn upon unfriendly night,
That we descant and yet again descant
Upon the supreme theme of Art and Song:
Bodily decrepitude is wisdom; young
We loved each other and were ignorant.
W.B. Yeats (1865-1939)
The Nineteenth Century and After
Though the great song returns no more
There's keen delight in what we have:
The rattle of pebbles on the shore
Under the receding wave.
W.B. Yeats (1865-1939)
Three Movements
Shakespearean fish swam the sea, far away from land;
Romantic fish swam in nets coming to the hand;
What are all those fish that lie gasping on the strand?
Robert Frost (1874-1963)
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
'Much Madness is divinest Sense'
Much Madness is divinest Sense —
To a discerning Eye —
Much Sense — the starkest Madness —
'Tis the Majority
In this, as All, prevail —
Assent — and you are sane —
Demur — you're straightway dangerous —
And handled with a Chain —
Lewis Carroll (1832-1898)
Jabberwocky
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"
He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought —
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
Edward Lear (1812-1888)
'There was an Old Man who supposed'
There was an Old Man who supposed,
That the street door was partially closed;
But some very large rats, ate his coats and his hats,
While that futile old gentleman dozed.
Edward Lear (1812-1888)
'There was an Old Lady whose folly'
There was an Old Lady whose folly,
Induced her to sit in a holly;
Whereon by a thorn, her dress being torn,
She quickly became melancholy.
Edward Lear (1812-1888)
'There was an Old Man of Jamaica'
There was an Old Man of Jamaica,
Who suddenly married a Quaker!
But she cried out — "O lack! I have married a black!"
Which distressed that Old Man of Jamaica.
Edward Lear (1812-1888)
'There was an Old Man on some rocks'
There was an Old Man on some rocks,
Who shut his wife up in a box,
When she said, "Let me out," he exclaimed, "Without doubt,
You will pass all your life in that box."
Edward Lear (1812-1888)
'There was an old man who screamed out'
There was an old man who screamed out
Whenever they knocked him about;
So they took off his boots, And fed him with fruits,
And continued to knock him about.
Edward Lear (1812-1888)
'There was an old man whose despair'
There was an old man whose despair
Induced him to purchase a hare:
Whereon one fine day, he rode wholly away,
Which partly assuaged his despair.
Edward Lear (1812-1888)
'There was an old person of Sestri'
There was an old person of Sestri,
Who sate himself down in a vestry,
When they said "You are wrong!" — he merely said "Bong!"
That repulsive old person of Sestri.
Edward Thomas (1887-1917)
In Memoriam [Easter 1915]
The flowers left thick at nightfall in the wood
This Eastertide call into mind the men,
Now far from home, who, with their sweethearts, should
Have gathered them and will do never again.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
'Feare no more the heate o' th' Sun'
Feare no more the heate o' th' Sun,
Nor the furious Winters rages,
Thou thy worldly task hast don,
Home art gon, and tane thy wages.
Golden Lads, and Girles all must,
As Chimney-Sweepers come to dust.
Feare no more the frowne o' th' Great,
Thou art past the Tirants stroake,
Care no more to cloath and eate,
To thee the Reede is as the Oake:
The Scepter, Learning, Physicke must,
All follow this and come to dust.
Feare no more the Lightning flash,
Nor th' all dreaded Thunderstone.
Feare not Slander, Censure rash.
Thou hast finish'd Ioy and mone.
All Louers young, all Louers must,
Consigne to thee and come to dust.
No Exorcisor harme thee,
Nor no witch-craft charme thee,
Ghost vnlaid forbeare thee.
Nothing ill come neere thee.
Quiet consumation haue,
And renowned be thy graue.
John Donne (1572-1631)
'Death be not proud'
Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not soe,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill mee;
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou'art slave to Fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie,'or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more, Death thou shalt die.
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
'It was not Death, for I stood up'
It was not Death, for I stood up,
And all the Dead, lie down —
It was not Night, for all the Bells
Put out their Tongues, for Noon.
It was not Frost, for on my Flesh
I felt Siroccos — crawl —
Nor Fire — for just my Marble feet
Could keep a Chancel, cool —
And yet, it tasted, like them all,
The Figures I have seen
Set orderly, for Burial,
Reminded me, of mine —
As if my life were shaven,
And fitted to a frame,
And could not breathe without a key,
And 'twas like Midnight, some —
When everything that ticked — has stopped —
And Space stares all around —
Or Grisly frosts — first Autumn morns,
Repeal the Beating Ground —
But, most, like Chaos — Stopless — cool —
Without a Change, or Spar —
Or even a Report of Land —
To justify — Despair.
Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)
'Do not go gentle into that good night'
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864)
'Death stands above me, whispering low'
Death stands above me, whispering low
I know not what into my ear:
Of his strange language all I know
Is, there is not a word of fear.
D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930)
The Ship of Death
1
Now it is autumn and the falling fruit
and the long journey towards oblivion.
The apples falling like great drops of dew
to bruise themselves an exit from themselves.
And it is time to go, to bid farewell
to one's own self, and find an exit
from the fallen self.
2
Have you built your ship of death, O have you?
O build your ship of death, for you will need it.
The grim frost is at hand, when the apples will fall
thick, almost thundrous, on the hardened earth.
And death is on the air like a smell of ashes!
Ah! can't you smell it?
And in the bruised body, the frightened soul
finds itself shrinking, wincing from the cold
that blows upon it through the orifices.
3
And can a man his own quietus make
with a bare bodkin?
With daggers, bodkins, bullets, man can make
a bruise or break of exit for his life;
but is that a quietus, O tell me, is it quietus?
Surely not so! for how could murder, even self-murder
ever a quietus make?
4
O let us talk of quiet that we know,
that we can know, the deep and lovely quiet
of a strong heart at peace!
How can we this, our own quietus, make?
5
Build then the ship of death, for you must take
the longest journey, to oblivion.
And die the death, the long and painful death
that lies between the old self and the new.
Already our bodies are fallen, bruised, badly bruised,
already our souls are oozing through the exit
of the cruel bruise.
Already the dark and endless ocean of the end
is washing in through the breaches of our wounds,
already the flood is upon us.
Oh build your ship of death, your little ark
and furnish it with food, with little cakes, and wine
for the dark flight down oblivion.
6
Piecemeal the body dies, and the timid soul
has her footing washed away, as the dark flood rises.
We are dying, we are dying, we are all of us dying
and nothing will stay the death-flood rising within us
and soon it will rise on the world, on the outside world.
We are dying, we are dying, piecemeal our bodies are dying
and our strength leaves us,
and our soul cowers naked in the dark rain over the flood,
cowering in the last branches of the tree of our life.
7
We are dying, we are dying, so all we can do
is now to be willing to die, and to build the ship
of death to carry the soul on the longest journey.
A little ship, with oars and food
and little dishes, and all accoutrements
fitting and ready for the departing soul.
Now launch the small ship, now as the body dies
and life departs, launch out, the fragile soul
in the fragile ship of courage, the ark of faith
with its store of food and little cooking pans
and change of clothes,
upon the flood's black waste
upon the waters of the end
upon the sea of death, where still we sail
darkly, for we cannot steer, and have no port.
There is no port, there is nowhere to go
only the deepening black darkening still
blacker upon the soundless, ungurgling flood
darkness at one with darkness, up and down
and sideways utterly dark, so there is no direction any more.
And the little ship is there; yet she is gone.
She is not seen, for there is nothing to see her by.
She is gone! gone! and yet
somewhere she is there.
Nowhere!
8
And everything is gone, the body is gone
completely under, gone, entirely gone.
The upper darkness is heavy as the lower,
between them the little ship
is gone
she is gone.
It is the end, it is oblivion.
9
And yet out of eternity a thread
separates itself on the blackness,
a horizontal thread
that fumes a little with pallor upon the dark.
Is it illusion? or does the pallor fume
A little higher?
Ah wait, wait, for there's the dawn,
the cruel dawn of coming back to life
out of oblivion.
Wait, wait, the little ship
drifting, beneath the deathly ashy grey
of a flood-dawn.
Wait, wait! even so, a flush of yellow
and strangely, O chilled wan soul, a flush of rose.
A flush of rose, and the whole thing starts again.
10
The flood subsides, and the body, like a worn sea-shell
emerges strange and lovely.
And the little ship wings home, faltering and lapsing
on the pink flood,
and the frail soul steps out, into the house again
filling the heart with peace.
Swings the heart renewed with peace
even of oblivion.
Oh build your ship of death, oh build it!
for you will need it.
For the voyage of oblivion awaits you.
Robert Herrick (1591-1674)
Upon his departure hence
Thus I
Passe by,
And die:
As One,
Unknown,
And gon:
I'm made
A shade,
And laid
I'th grave,
There have
My Cave.
Where tell
I dwell,
Farewell.
Philip Pain (c. 1647-1667)
'Scarce do I pass a day'
Scarce do I pass a day, but that I hear
Someone or other's dead; and to my ear
Methinks it is no news; but oh, did I
Think deeply on it, what it is to die,
My pulses all would beat, I should not be
Drowned in this deluge of security.
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
'I never hear that one is dead'
I never hear that one is dead
Without the chance of Life
Afresh annihilating me
That mightiest Belief,
Too mighty for the Daily mind
That tilling its abyss,
Had Madness, had it once or twice
The yawning Consciousness,
Beliefs are Bandaged, like the Tongue
When Terror were it told
In any Tone commensurate
Would strike us instant Dead
I do not know the man so bold
He dare in lonely Place
That awful stranger Consciousness
Deliberately face —
Edward Thomas (1887-1917)
Lights Out
I have come to the borders of sleep,
The unfathomable deep
Forest, where all must lose
Their way, however straight
Or winding, soon or late;
They can not choose.
Many a road and track
That since the dawn's first crack
Up to the forest brink
Deceived the travellers,
Suddenly now blurs,
And in they sink.
Here love ends —
Despair, ambition ends;
All pleasure and all trouble,
Although most sweet or bitter,
Here ends, in sleep that is sweeter
Than tasks most noble.
There is not any book
Or face of dearest look
That I would not turn from now
To go into the unknown
I must enter, and leave, alone,
I know not how.
The tall forest towers:
Its cloudy foliage lowers
Ahead, shelf above shelf:
Its silence I hear and obey
That I may lose my way
And myself.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)
Requiem
Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.
George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824)
'Could I remount the river of my years'
Could I remount the river of my years
To the first fountain of our smiles and tears
I would not trace again the stream of hours
Between their outworn banks of withered flowers,
But bid it flow as now — until it glides
Into the number of the nameless tides.
What is this death — a quiet of the heart —
The whole of that of which we are a part —
For life is but a vision — what I see
Of all which lives alone is life to me
And being so — the Absent are the dead,
Who haunt us from tranquillity, — and spread
A dreary shroud around us — and invest
With sad remembrancers our hours of rest.
The absent are the dead, — for they are cold,
And ne'er can be what once we did behold —
And they are changed — and cheerless — or if yet
The unforgotten do not all forget —
Since thus divided — equal must it be
If the deep barrier be of earth or sea —
It may be both, — but one day end it must
In the dark union of insensate dust.
The underearth inhabitants — are they
But mingled millions decomposed to clay —
The ashes of a thousand Ages spread
Wherever Man has trodden or shall tread —
Or do they in their silent cities dwell
Each in his incommunicative cell —
Or have they their own language — and a sense
Of breathless being — darkened and intense —
As midnight in her solitude — Oh Earth!
Where are the past — and wherefore had they birth?
The dead are thy inheritors — and we
But bubbles on thy surface; — and the key
Of thy profundity is in the grave,
The portal of thy universal cave —
Where I would walk in Spirit — and behold
Our elements resolved to things untold,
And fathom hidden wonders — and explore
The essence of great bosoms new no more.
Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864)
Dying Speech of an old Philosopher
I strove with none, for none was worth my strife:
Nature I loved, and, next to Nature, Art:
I warm'd both hands before the fire of Life;
It sinks; and I am ready to depart.
Edmund Waller (1606-1687)
Of the last verses in the book
When we for age could neither read nor write,
The subject made us able to indite;
The soul, with nobler resolutions decked,
The body stooping, does herself erect.
No mortal parts are requisite to raise
Her that, unbodied, can her Maker praise.
The seas are quiet when the winds give o'er;
So, calm are we when passions are no more!
For then we know how vain it was to boast
Of fleeting things, so certain to be lost.
Clouds of affection from our younger eyes
Conceal that emptiness which age descries.
The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed,
Lets in new light through chinks that time has made;
Stronger by weakness, wiser men become,
As they draw near to their eternal home.
Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view,
That stand upon the threshold of the new.
.... Miratur limen Olympi.—VIRG.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)
Crossing the Bar
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,
But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.
Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;
For though from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
'Because I could not stop for Death'
Because I could not stop for Death —
He kindly stopped for me —
The Carriage held but just Ourselves —
And Immortality.
We slowly drove — He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility —
We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess — in the Ring —
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain —
We passed the Setting Sun —
Or rather — He passed Us —
The Dews drew quivering and chill —
For only Gossamer, my Gown —
My Tippet — only Tulle —
We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground —
The Roof was scarcely visible —
The Cornice — in the Ground —
Since then — 'tis Centuries — and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses' Heads
Were toward Eternity —
Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593)
'Ah Faustus'
The clocke strikes eleauen.
Ah Faustus,
Now hast thou but one bare hower to liue,
And then thou must be damnd perpetually:
Stand stil you euer moouing spheres of heauen,
That time may cease, and midnight neuer come:
Faire Natures eie, rise, rise againe, and make
Perpetuall day, or let this houre be but a yeere,
A moneth, a weeke, a naturall day,
That Faustus may repent, and saue his soule,
O lente lente curite noctis equi:
The starres mooue stil, time runs, the clocke wil strike,
The diuel wil come, and Faustus must be damnd.
O Ile leape vp to my God: who pulles me downe?
See see where Christs blood streames in the firmament,
One drop would saue my soule, halfe a drop, ah my Christ,
Ah rend not my heart for naming of my Christ,
Yet wil I call on him, oh spare me Lucifer!
Where is it now? tis gone:
And see where God stretcheth out his arme,
And bends his irefull browes:
Mountaines and hilles, come come, and fall on me,
And hide me from the heauy wrath of God.
No no, then wil I headlong runne into the earth:
Earth gape, O no, it wil not harbour me:
You starres that raignd at my natiuitie,
Whose influence hath alotted death and hel,
Now draw vp Faustus like a foggy mist,
Into the intrailes of yon labring cloude,
That when you vomite foorth into the ayre,
My limbes may issue from your smoaky mouthes,
So that my soule may but ascend to heauen:
Ah, halfe the houre is past:
The watch strikes.
Twil all be past anone:
Oh God, if thou wilt not haue mercy on my soule,
Yet for Christs sake, whose bloud hath ransomd me,
Impose some end to my incessant paine,
Let Faustus liue in hel a thousand yeeres,
A hundred thousand, and at last be sau'd.
O no end is limited to damned soules,
Why wert thou not a creature wanting soule?
Or, why is this immortall that thou hast?
Ah Pythagoras metem su cossis were that true,
This soule should flie from me, and I be changde
Vnto some brutish beast: al beasts are happy, for when they die,
Their soules are soone dissolud in elements,
But mine must liue still to be plagde in hel:
Curst be the parents that ingendred me:
No Faustus, curse thy selfe, curse Lucifer,
That hath depriude thee of the ioyes of heauen:
The clocke striketh twelue.
O it strikes, it strikes, now body turne to ayre,
Or Lucifer wil beare thee quicke to hel:
Thunder and lightning.
Oh soule, be changde into little water drops,
And fal into the Ocean, nere be found:
My God, my God, looke not so fierce on me:
Enter diuels.
Adders, and Serpents, let me breathe a while:
Vgly hell gape not, come not Lucifer,
Ile burne my bookes, ah Mephastophilis.
Exeunt with him
Sir Walter Ralegh (1552-1618)
'Euen such is tyme'
Euen such is tyme which takes in trust
Our yowth, our Ioyes, and all we haue,
And payes vs butt with age and dust:
Who in the darke and silent graue
When we haue wandred all our wayes
Shutts up the storye of our dayes.
And from which earth and graue and dust
The Lord shall rayse me up I trust.
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