INTERLUDE

Amy Lowell  1874-1925

When I have baked white cakes

And grated green almonds to spread upon them;

When I have picked the green crowns from the strawberries

And piled them, cone-pointed, in a blue and yellow platter;

When I have smoothed the seam of the linen I have been working;

What then?

To-morrow it will be the same:

Cakes and strawberries,

And needles in and out of cloth.

If the sun is beautiful on bricks and pewter,

How much more beautiful is the moon,

Slanting down the gauffered branches of a plum-tree;

The moon,

Wavering across a bed of tulips;

The moon,

Still,

Upon your face.

You shine, Beloved,

You and the moon.

But which is the reflection?

The clock is striking eleven.

I think, when we have shut and barred the door,

The night will be dark

Outside.

A PERSONAL SCRAPBOOK No.5 WILL BE POSTED TO THE BLOG TOMORROW

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SILENCE

Thomas Hood  1789-1845

There is a silence where hath been no sound,

There is a silence where no sound may be,

In the cold grave - under the deep, deep sea,

Or in wide desert where no life is found,

Which hath been mute, and still must sleep profound;

No voice is hush’d - no life treads silently,

But clouds and cloudy shadows wander free,

That never spoke, over the idle ground:

But in green ruins, in the desolate walls

Of antique palaces, where Man hath been,

Though the dun fox or wild hyæna calls,

And owls, that flit continually between,

Shriek to the echo, and the low winds moan -

There the true Silence is, self-conscious and alone.

-o0o-

SONG

John  Clare  1793-1864

Soft falls the sweet evening

Bright shines the one star

The night clouds they're leaning

On mountains afar

The moon in dim brightness

The fern in its lightness

Tinge the valley with whiteness

Both near and afar

O soft falls the evening

Around those sweet glens

The hill's shadows leaning

Half over the glen

There meet me my deary

I'm lonely and weary

And nothing can cheer me

So meet me again

The gate it clap'd slightly

The noise it was small

The footstep fell lightly

And she pass'd the stone wall

And is it my deary

I'm no longer weary

But happy and cheery

For in thee I meet all

-o0o-

ZUMMER AN' WINTER

William Barnes  1801-86

When I led by zummer streams

The pride o' Lea, as naighbours thought her,

While the zun, wi' evenen beams,

Did cast our sheades athirt the water;

Winds a-blowen,

Streams a-flowen,

Skies a-glowen,

Tokens ov my jay zoo fleeten,

Heightened it, that happy meeten.

Then, when maid an' man took pleaces,

Gay in winter's Chris'mas dances,

Showen in their merry feaces

Kindly smiles an' glisnen glances;

Stars a-winken,

Day a-shrinken,

Sheades a-zinken,

Brought anew the happy meeten,

That did meake the night too fleeten. 

-o0o-

I KNOW A BANK

from "A Midsummer Night's Dream" spoken by Oberon

William Shakespeare  1564-1616

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,

Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,

Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,

With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:

There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,

Lull’d in these flowers with dances and delight;

And there the snake throws her enamell’d skin,

Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in.

-o0o-

I’M NOBODY! WHO ARE YOU?

Emily Dickinson 1830-86

I'm nobody! Who are you?

Are you nobody, too?

Then there's a pair of us - don't tell!

They'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!

How public, like a frog

To tell your name the livelong day

To an admiring bog!

-o0o-

Two short poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley 1792-1822

TO THE MOON.

Art thou pale for weariness

Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,

Wandering companionless

Among the stars that have a different birth,

And ever changing, like a Joyless eye

That finds no object worth its constancy?

-o0o-

THE WANING MOON

And like a dying lady, lean and pale,
Who totters forth, wrapp'd in a gauzy veil,
Out of her chamber, led by the insane
And feeble wanderings of her fading brain,
The moon arose up in the murky East,
A white and shapeless mass.

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