Power poems
/ page 85 of 324 /
From: Dedicatory Ode
© Hilaire Belloc
I mean to write with all my strength
(It lately has been sadly waning)
A ballad of enormous length -
Some parts of which will need explaining. 1
Because (unlike the bulk of men
Who write for fame or public ends)
I turn a lax and fluent pen
To talking of my private friends. 2
For no one, in our long decline,
So dusty, spiteful and divided,
Had quite such pleasant friends as mine,
Or loved them half as much as I did.
[1 But do not think I shall explain
To any great extent. Believe me,
I partly write to give you pain,
And if you do not like me, leave me.]
[2 And least of all can you complain,
Reviewers, whose unholy trade is,
To puff with all your might and main
Biographers of single ladies.]
. . .
The Freshman ambles down the High,
In love with everything he sees,
He notes the very Midland sky,
He sniffs a more than Midland breeze.
"Can this be Oxford? This the place
(He cries) "of which my father said
The tutoring was a damned disgrace,
The creed a mummery, stuffed and dead?
"Can it be here that Uncle Paul
Was driven by excessive gloom,
To drink and debt, and, last of all,
To smoking opium in his room?
"Is it from here the people come,
Who talk so loud, and roll their eyes,
And stammer? How extremely rum!
How curious! What a great surprise!
"Some influence of a nobler day
Than theirs (I mean than Uncle Paul's)
Has roused the sleep of their decay,
And flecked with light their ancient walls.
"O! dear undaunted boys of old,
Would that your names were carven here,
For all the world in stamps of gold,
That I might read them and revere.
"Who wrought and handed down for me
This Oxford of the larger air,
Laughing, and full of faith, and free,
With youth resplendent everywhere?"
Then learn: thou ill-instructed, blind,
Young, callow, and untutored man,
Their private names were . . .3
Their club was called REPUBLICAN.
[3 Never mind.]
. . .
Where on their banks of light they lie,
The happy hills of Heaven between,
The Gods that rule the morning sky
Are not more young, nor more serene
Than were the intrepid Four that stand,
The first who dared to live their dream.
And on this uncongenial land
To found the Abbey of Theleme.
We kept the Rabelaisian plan: 4
We dignified the dainty cloisters
With Natural Law, the Rights of Man,
Song, Stoicism, Wine and Oysters.
The library was most inviting:
The books upon the crowded shelves
Were mainly of our private writing:
We kept a school and taught ourselves.
We taught the art of writing things
On men we still should like to throttle:
And where to get the Blood of Kings
At only half a crown a bottle.
[4 The plan forgot (I know not how,
Perhaps the Refectory filled it),
To put a chapel in; and now
We're mortgaging the rest to build it.]
. . .
Eheu Fugaces! Postume!
(An old quotation out of mode);
My coat of dreams is stolen away
My youth is passing down the road.
The wealth of youth, we spent it well
And decently, as very few can.
And is it lost? I cannot tell:
And what is more, I doubt if you can.
The question's very much too wide,
And much too deep, and much too hollow,
And learned men on either side
Use arguments I cannot follow.
They say that in the unchanging place,
Where all we loved is always dear,
We meet our morning face to face
And find at last our twentieth year...
They say (and I am glad they say)
It is so ; and it may be so:
It may be just the other way,
I cannot tell. But this I know:
From quiet homes and first beginning,
Out to the undiscovered ends,
There's nothing worth the wear of winning,
But laughter and the love of friends.
. . .
But something dwindles, oh! my peers,
And something cheats the heart and passes,
And Tom that meant to shake the years
Has come to merely rattling glasses.
And He, the Father of the Flock,
Is keeping Burmesans in order,
An exile on a lonely rock
That overlooks the Chinese border.
And One (Myself I mean no less),
Ah! will Posterity believe it
Not only don't deserve success,
But hasn't managed to achieve it.
Not even this peculiar town
Has ever fixed a friendship firmer,
But - one is married, one's gone down,
And one's a Don, and one's in Burmah.
. . .
And oh ! the days, the days, the days,
When all the four were off together:
The infinite deep of summer haze,
The roaring charge of autumn weather!
. . .
I will not try the reach again,
I will not set my sail alone,
To moor a boat bereft of men
At Yarnton's tiny docks of stone.
Shepherd Divine, Our Wants Relieve
© Augustus Montague Toplady
Shepherd divine, our wants relieve,
In this our evil day;
To all Thy tempted followers give
The power to trust and pray.
Paracelsus: Part I: Paracelsus Aspires
© Robert Browning
Scene.- Würzburg; a garden in the environs. 1512.
Festus, Paracelsus, Michal.
The Village (book 2)
© George Crabbe
NO longer truth, though shown in verse, disdain,
But own the village life a life of pain;
I too must yield, that oft amid these woes
Are gleams of transient mirth and hours of sweet repose.
The Cock and The Fox
© Robert Henryson
Thogh brutal beestes be irrational,
That is to say, wantand, discretioun,
Confessio Amantis. Explicit Liber Septimus
© John Gower
Que favet ad vicium vetus hec modo regula confert,
Nec novus e contra qui docet ordo placet.
Cecus amor dudum nondum sua lumina cepit,
Quo Venus impositum devia fallit iter.
Carmen Seculare. For the Year 1700. To The King
© Matthew Prior
Thy elder Look, Great Janus, cast
Into the long Records of Ages past:
More Lifewent outwhen He went
© Emily Dickinson
More Lifewent outwhen He went
Than Ordinary Breath
Lit with a finer Phosphor
Requiring in the Quench
Parted Presence
© Dante Gabriel Rossetti
LOVE, I speak to your heart,
Your heart that is always here.
The Two Souls
© Edgar Lee Masters
If the final good
Of ages and their anguished sacrifice
May be destroyed by villany and gold
Procured by villany. Enough of grief!
Turn loose life's carnival, for those who miss
The flesh's lust, have lost the all in all!
Two Songs
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
Let me die by the sea!
When the great deeps are sundered and stirred,
And the night cometh fast,
Let my spirit mount up like a bird,
On the wings of the blast.
Frank Little At Calvary
© Lola Ridge
Life thunders on…
Over the black bridge
The line of lighted cars
Creeps like a monstrous serpent
Spooring gold…
The Mediterranean
© Allen Tate
Where we went in the boat was a long bay
A slingshot wide, walled in by towering stone
Peaked margin of antiquity's delay,
And we went there out of time's monotone:
The Brus Book XIX
© John Barbour
[The conspiracy against King Robert; its discovery]
Than wes the land a quhile in pes,
Holy Communion
© John Keble
O God of Mercy, God of Might,
How should pale sinners bear the sight,
If, as Thy power in surely here,
Thine open glory should appear?
A Friend
© Lionel Pigot Johnson
All, that he came to give,
He gave, and went again:
I have seen one man live,
I have seen one man reign,
With all the graces in his train.
Joy
© Emile Verhaeren
O splendid, spacious day, irradiate
With flaming dawns, when earth shows yet more fair
Her ardent beauty, proud, without alloy;
And wakening life breathes out her perfume rare
So potently, that, all intoxicate,
Our ravished being rushes upon joy!
The Nightingale and Glow-worm
© William Cowper
Those Christians best deserve the name,
Who studiously make peace their aim;
Peace, both the duty and the prize
Of him that creeps and him that flies.
