Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and every-where
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
The Lamb
Little Lamb, who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee?
Gave thee life, and bid thee feed
By the stream and o'er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight;
Softest clothing, wooly, bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice? Little Lamb, who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee? Little Lamb, I'll tell thee, Little Lamb, I'll tell thee:
He is called by thy name,
For He calls Himself a Lamb.
He is meek, and He is mild;
He became a little child.
I a child, and thou a lamb,
We are called by His name. Little Lamb, God bless thee! Little Lamb, God bless thee!
Boadicea: An Ode
Then the progeny that springs From the forests of our land,
Armed with thunder, clad with wings, Shall a wider world command.
Regions Caesar never knew Thy posterity shall sway,
Where his eagles never flew, None invincible as they.
A Walking Song
Still round the corner there may wait
A new road or a secret gate,
And though I oft have passed them by,
A day will come at last when I
Shall take the hidden paths that run
West of the Moon, East of the Sun.
On His Blindness
When I consider how my light is spent Ere half my days in this dark world and wide, And that one talent which is death to hide Lodg'd with me useless, though my soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present My true account, lest he returning chide, "Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?" I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent That murmur, soon replies: "God doth not need Either man's work or his own gifts: who best Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed And post o'er land and ocean without rest: They also serve who only stand and wait."
The Oracles
"The King with half the East at heel is marched from lands of morning;
His fighters drink the rivers up, their shafts benight the air,
And he that stays will die for naught, and home there's no returning.
The Spartans on the sea-wet rock sat down and combed their hair."
Upon This Age
Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour,
Rains from the sky a meteoric shower
Of facts . . . they lie unquestioned, uncombined.
Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill
Is daily spun; but there exists no loom
To weave it into fabric.
The Red Wheel Barrow
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
[Unknown title]
He drifts in from my memories,
To come and comfort me,
I can sense his presence here,
The boy I used to be.
He looks at me so wistfully,
As if something had been lost,
I know that he just longs to be
The man I almost was.
When We Two Parted
When we two parted In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted To sever for years,
Pale grew thy cheek and cold, Colder thy kiss;
Truly that hour foretold Sorrow to this.
The dew of the morning Sunk chill on my brow--
It felt like the warning Of what I feel now.
Thy vows are all broken, And light is thy fame;
I hear thy name spoken, And share in its shame.
They name thee before me, A knell to mine ear;
A shudder comes o'er me-- Why wert thou so dear?
They know not I knew thee, Who knew thee so well--
Long, long I shall rue thee, Too deeply to tell.
In secret we met-- In silence I grieve,
That thy heart could forget, Thy spirit deceive
If I should meet thee After long years,
How should I greet thee?-- With silence and tears.
Is It True?
Is it true O Christ in Heaven, That the highest suffer most;
That the strongest wander furthest And more helplessly are lost;
That the mark of rank in nature Is capacity of pain;
And the anguish of the singer Makes the sweetness of the strain?"
Is it true O Christ in Heaven, That whichever way we go
Walls of darkness must surround us, Things we would but cannot know?
That the infinite must bound us Like a temple veil untent,
Whilst the finite ever wearies, So that none's therein content?
Is it true, O Christ in Heaven, That the fullness yet to come
Is so glorious and so perfect That to know would strike us dumb?
That if ever for a moment We could pierce beyond the sky
With these poor dim eyes of mortals We should just see God and die?"
To the Stonecutters
Stone cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly,
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems.
One Ring
One Ring to rule them all,
one Ring to find them,
one Ring to bring them all
and in the darkness bind them."
Bedtime
"Come, hearken then, ere voice of dread with bitter tidings laden,
Shall summon to unwelcome bed A melancholy maiden!
We are but older children, dear, Who fret to find our bedtime near."
Chambers of the Sea
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea, with sea-girls wreathed in seaweed, red and brown
till human voices wake us, and we drown."
Ozymandias
I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Flesh and Stone
We are creatures of flesh in a world of stone;
We have the souls of children in times of holocaust.
Haiku #322
Ceaselessly we code but requirements still fall,
like a gentle rain
And Did Those Feet in Ancient Time
And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic mills?
Bring me my bow of burning gold:
Bring me my arrows of desire:
Bring me my spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire.
I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.
Gap
This is the gap for one butterfly to pass through
a lucky break in the senseless green
Its here my the grace of God who is,
I think, the absence of a spider
at this particular time and place
You may think He's the absence only of leaves now dead,
or more incredible yet,
the absence of the one butterfly
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage Canto IV
There is the moral of all human tales;
'Tis but the same rehearsal of the past.
First freedom and then Glory – when that fails,
Wealth, vice, corruption – barbarism at last.
And History, with all her volumes vast,
Hath but one page...
The Ruin
These wall-stones are wondrous —
calamities crumpled them, these city-sites crashed,
the work of giants crumbled.
The roofs have rushed to earth, towers in ruins.
Ice at the joints has unroofed the barred-gates,
sheared the scarred storm-walls have disappeared—
the years have gnawed them from beneath.
A grave-grip holds the master-crafters, decrepit and departed, in the ground’s harsh grasp,
until one hundred generations of human-nations have trod past.
Subsequently this wall, lichen-grey and rust-stained,
often experiencing one kingdom after another,
standing still under storms, high and wide—
it failed—
...
I shall conclude with a fun poem from my elementary school days.
TWO FROGS IN CREAM
Two frogs fell into a can of cream,
Or so I’ve heard it told;
The sides of the can were shiny & steep,
The cream was deep & cold.
"O, what’s the use?" croaked Number One,
"’Tis fate; no help’s around.
Goodbye, my friends! Goodbye, sad world!"
And weeping still, he drowned.
But Number Two, of sterner stuff,
Dog-paddled in surprise.
The while he wiped his creamy face
And dried his creamy eyes.
"I’ll swim awhile, at least," he said-
Or so I’ve heard he said;
"It really wouldn’t help the world
If one more frog were dead."
An hour or two he kicked & swam,
Not once he stopped to mutter,
But kicked & kicked & swam & kicked,
then hopped out...
via butter!