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Metamorphoses: Book The Fourth
© Ovid
The End of the Fourth Book.
Translated into English verse under the direction of
Sir Samuel Garth by John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Joseph Addison,
William Congreve and other eminent hands
Lichtenberg
© Rudyard Kipling
Smells are surer than sounds or sights
To make your heart-strings crack--
They start those awful voices o' nights
That whisper, " Old man, come back! "
L'Envoi
© Rudyard Kipling
There's a whisper down the field where the year has shot her yield,
And the ricks stand gray to the sun,
Singing: -- "Over then, come over, for the bee has quit the clover,
And your English summer's done."
Songs of the Night Watches (complete)
© Jean Ingelow
Come out and hear the waters shoot, the owlet hoot, the owlet hoot;
Yon crescent moon, a golden boat, hangs dim behind the tree, O!
The dropping thorn makes white the grass, O sweetest lass, and sweetest
lass;
Come out and smell the ricks of hay adown the croft with me, O!”
The Surrender
© Henry King
My once dear Love; hapless that I no more
Must call thee so: the rich affections store
That fed our hopes, lies now exhaust and spent,
Like summes of treasure unto Bankrupts lent.
An Imperial Rescript
© Rudyard Kipling
Now this is the tale of the Council the German Kaiser decreed,
To ease the strong of their burden, to help the weak in their need,
He sent a word to the peoples, who struggle, and pant, and sweat,
That the straw might be counted fairly and the tally of bricks be set.
Introduction To A Pilgrim's Progress
© John Bunyan
As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place where was a den (the gaol), and I laid me down in that place to sleep: and as I slept, I dreamed a dream. I dreamed; and behold, I saw a man clothed with rags standing in a certain place, with his face from his own house, a book in his hand, and a great burden upon his back. I looked, and saw him open the book, and read therein; and as he read, he wept and trembled;
"For mine iniquities are gone over mine head: as an heavy burden they are too heavy for me."
Harp Song of the Dane Women
© Rudyard Kipling
What is a woman that you forsake her,
And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,
To go with the old grey Widow-maker?
Great-Heart
© Rudyard Kipling
Theodore Roosevelt"The interpreter then called for a man-servant of his, one Great-Heart."--Bunyan's' Pilgrim's Process Concerning brave Captains
Our age hath made known
For all men to honour,
One standeth alone,
Giffen's Debt
© Rudyard Kipling
Imprimis he was "broke." Thereafter left
His Regiment and, later, took to drink;
Then, having lost the balance of his friends,
"Went Fantee" -- joined the people of the land,
Distant Voices
© Dora Sigerson Shorter
And dusky faces passed and woke
The echoes with the words they spoke
The same old tales as other folk.
A truce to roaming! Never more
I'll leave the home I loved of yore.
But strangers meet me at the door.
Gentlmen-Rankers
© Rudyard Kipling
To the legion of the lost ones, to the cohort of the damned,
To my brethren in their sorrow overseas,
Sings a gentleman of England cleanly bred, machinely crammed,
And a trooper of the Empress, if you please.
Snow Maiden
© Alexander Blok
She hailed from a very distant country,
Nocturnal child of ancient times;
She had no kin to greet her entry
Not even skies with a welcome shine.
Juana
© Alfred de Musset
Again I see you, ah my queen,
Of all my old loves that have been,
The first love, and the tenderest;
Do you remember or forget -
Ah me, for I remember yet -
How the last summer days were blest?
The Flight
© Rudyard Kipling
When the grey geese heard the Fool's tread
Too near to where they lay,
They lifted neither voice nor head,
But took themselves away.
And Yet :
© Arthur Henry Adams
THEY drew him from the darkened room,
Where, swooning in a peace profound,
Beneath a heavy fragrance drowned
Her grey form glimmered in the gloom.
The Fires
© Rudyard Kipling
Men make them fires on the hearth
Each under his roof-tree,
And the Four Winds that rule the earth
They blow the smoke to me.
Aerialist
© Sylvia Plath
Each night, this adroit young lady
Lies among sheets
Shredded fine as snowflakes
Until dream takes her body
From bed to strict tryouts
In tightrope acrobatics.
Aeneas At Washington
© Allen Tate
(To the reduction of uncitied littorals
We brought chiefly the vigor of prophecy,
Our hunger breeding calculation
And fixed triumphs)
