ladylinda
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July
Jul 22, 2014 16:03:34 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Jul 22, 2014 16:03:34 GMT -5
Damon The Mower
Andrew Marvell
Heark how the Mower Damon Sung, With love of Juliana stung! While ev'ry thing did seem to paint The Scene more fit for his complaint. Like her fair Eyes the day was fair; But scorching like his am'rous Care. Sharp like his Sythe his Sorrow was, And wither'd like his Hopes the Grass.
Oh what unusual Heats are here, Which thus our Sun-burn'd Meadows sear! The Grass-hopper its pipe gives ore; And hamstring'd Frogs can dance no more. But in the brook the green Frog wades; And Grass-hoppers seek out the shades. Only the Snake, that kept within, Now glitters in its second skin.
This heat the Sun could never raise, Nor Dog-star so inflame's the dayes. It from an higher Beauty grow'th, Which burns the Fields and Mower both: Which made the Dog, and makes the Sun Hotter then his own Phaeton. Not July causeth these Extremes, But Juliana's scorching beams.
Tell me where I may pass the Fires Of the hot day, or hot desires. To what cool Cave shall I descend, Or to what gelid Fountain bend? Alas! I look for Ease in vain, When Remedies themselves complain. No moisture but my Tears do rest, Nor Cold but in her Icy Breast.
How long wilt Thou, fair Shepheardess, Esteem me, and my Presents less? To Thee the harmless Snake I bring, Disarmed of its teeth and sting. To Thee Chameleons changing-hue, And Oak leaves tipt with hony due. Yet Thou ungrateful hast not sought Nor what they are, nor who them brought.
I am the Mower Damon, known Through all the Meadows I have mown. On me the Morn her dew distills Before her darling Daffadils. And, if at Noon my toil me heat, The Sun himself licks off my Sweat. While, going home, the Ev'ning sweet In cowslip-water bathes my feet.
What, though the piping Shepherd stock The plains with an unnum'red Flock, This Sithe of mine discovers wide More ground then all his Sheep do hide. With this the golden fleece I shear Of all these Closes ev'ry Year. And though in Wooll more poor then they, Yet am I richer far in Hay.
Nor am I so deform'd to sight, If in my Sithe I looked right; In which I see my Picture done, As in a crescent Moon the Sun. The deathless Fairyes take me oft To lead them in their Danses soft: And, when I tune my self to sing, About me they contract their Ring.
How happy might I still have mow'd, Had not Love here his Thistles sow'd! But now I all the day complain, Joyning my Labour to my Pain; And with my Sythe cut down the Grass, Yet still my Grief is where it was: But, when the Iron blunter grows, Sighing I whet my Sythe and Woes.
While thus he threw his Elbow round, Depopulating all the Ground, And, with his whistling Sythe, does cut Each stroke between the Earth and Root, The edged Stele by careless chance Did into his own Ankle glance; And there among the Grass fell down, By his own Sythe, the Mower mown.
Alas! said He, these hurts are slight To those that dye by Loves despight. With Shepherds-purse, and Clowns-all-heal, The Blood I stanch, and Wound I seal. Only for him no Cure is found, Whom Julianas Eyes do wound. 'Tis death alone that this must do: For Death thou art a Mower too.
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ladylinda
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July
Jul 23, 2014 15:17:04 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Jul 23, 2014 15:17:04 GMT -5
A Celebration
William Carlos Williams
A middle-northern March, now as always— gusts from the South broken against cold winds— but from under, as if a slow hand lifted a tide, it moves—not into April—into a second March,
the old skin of wind-clear scales dropping upon the mold: this is the shadow projects the tree upward causing the sun to shine in his sphere.
So we will put on our pink felt hat—new last year! —newer this by virtue of brown eyes turning back the seasons—and let us walk to the orchid-house, see the flowers will take the prize tomorrow at the Palace. Stop here, these are our oleanders. When they are in bloom— You would waste words It is clearer to me than if the pink were on the branch. It would be a searching in a colored cloud to reveal that which now, huskless, shows the very reason for their being.
And these the orange-trees, in blossom—no need to tell with this weight of perfume in the air. If it were not so dark in this shed one could better see the white. It is that very perfume has drawn the darkness down among the leaves. Do I speak clearly enough? It is this darkness reveals that which darkness alone loosens and sets spinning on waxen wings— not the touch of a finger-tip, not the motion of a sigh. A too heavy sweetness proves its own caretaker. And here are the orchids! Never having seen such gaiety I will read these flowers for you: This is an odd January, died—in Villon's time. Snow, this is and this the stain of a violet grew in that place the spring that foresaw its own doom.
And this, a certain July from Iceland: a young woman of that place breathed it toward the South. It took root there. The color ran true but the plant is small.
This falling spray of snow-flakes is a handful of dead Februaries prayed into flower by Rafael Arevalo Martinez of Guatemala. Here's that old friend who went by my side so many years: this full, fragile head of veined lavender. Oh that April that we first went with our stiff lusts leaving the city behind, out to the green hill— May, they said she was. A hand for all of us: this branch of blue butterflies tied to this stem.
June is a yellow cup I'll not name; August the over-heavy one. And here are— russet and shiny, all but March. And March? Ah, March— Flowers are a tiresome pastime. One has a wish to shake them from their pots root and stem, for the sun to gnaw.
Walk out again into the cold and saunter home to the fire. This day has blossomed long enough. I have wiped out the red night and lit a blaze instead which will at least warm our hands and stir up the talk. I think we have kept fair time. Time is a green orchard.
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ladylinda
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July
Jul 23, 2014 15:17:45 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Jul 23, 2014 15:17:45 GMT -5
Tis the Last Rose of Summer
Thomas Moore
Tis the last rose of summer Left blooming alone; All her lovely companions Are faded and gone: No flower of her kindred, No rose-bud is nigh, To reflect back her blushes, Or give sigh for sigh.
I'll not leave thee, thou lone one! To pine on the stem; Since the lovely are sleeping, Go, sleep thou with them. Thus kindly I scatter Thy leaves o'er the bed, Where thy mates of the garden Lie scentless and dead.
So soon may I follow, When friendships decay, And from Love's shining circle The gems drop away. When true hearts lie wither'd, And fond ones are flown, Oh! who would inhabit This bleak world alone?
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ladylinda
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July
Jul 23, 2014 15:18:22 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Jul 23, 2014 15:18:22 GMT -5
Clenched Soul
Pablo Neruda
We have lost even this twilight. No one saw us this evening hand in hand while the blue night dropped on the world.
I have seen from my window the fiesta of sunset in the distant mountain tops.
Sometimes a piece of sun burned like a coin in my hand.
I remembered you with my soul clenched in that sadness of mine that you know.
Where were you then? Who else was there? Saying what? Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly when I am sad and feel you are far away?
The book fell that always closed at twilight and my blue sweater rolled like a hurt dog at my feet.
Always, always you recede through the evenings toward the twilight erasing statues.
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ladylinda
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July
Jul 24, 2014 15:59:56 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Jul 24, 2014 15:59:56 GMT -5
Some Foreign Letters
Anne Sexton
I knew you forever and you were always old, soft white lady of my heart. Surely you would scold me for sitting up late, reading your letters, as if these foreign postmarks were meant for me. You posted them first in London, wearing furs and a new dress in the winter of eighteen-ninety. I read how London is dull on Lord Mayor's Day, where you guided past groups of robbers, the sad holes of Whitechapel, clutching your pocketbook, on the way to Jack the Ripper dissecting his famous bones. This Wednesday in Berlin, you say, you will go to a bazaar at Bismarck's house. And I see you as a young girl in a good world still, writing three generations before mine. I try to reach into your page and breathe it back... but life is a trick, life is a kitten in a sack. This is the sack of time your death vacates. How distant your are on your nickel-plated skates in the skating park in Berlin, gliding past me with your Count, while a military band plays a Strauss waltz. I loved you last, a pleated old lady with a crooked hand. Once you read Lohengrin and every goose hung high while you practiced castle life in Hanover. Tonight your letters reduce history to a guess. The count had a wife. You were the old maid aunt who lived with us. Tonight I read how the winter howled around the towers of Schloss Schwobber, how the tedious language grew in your jaw, how you loved the sound of the music of the rats tapping on the stone floors. When you were mine you wore an earphone. This is Wednesday, May 9th, near Lucerne, Switzerland, sixty-nine years ago. I learn your first climb up Mount San Salvatore; this is the rocky path, the hole in your shoes, the yankee girl, the iron interior of her sweet body. You let the Count choose your next climb. You went together, armed with alpine stocks, with ham sandwiches and seltzer wasser. You were not alarmed by the thick woods of briars and bushes, nor the rugged cliff, nor the first vertigo up over Lake Lucerne. The Count sweated with his coat off as you waded through top snow. He held your hand and kissed you. You rattled down on the train to catch a steam boat for home; or other postmarks: Paris, verona, Rome. This is Italy. You learn its mother tongue. I read how you walked on the Palatine among the ruins of the palace of the Caesars; alone in the Roman autumn, alone since July. When you were mine they wrapped you out of here with your best hat over your face. I cried because I was seventeen. I am older now. I read how your student ticket admitted you into the private chapel of the Vatican and how you cheered with the others, as we used to do on the fourth of July. One Wednesday in November you watched a balloon, painted like a silver abll, float up over the Forum, up over the lost emperors, to shiver its little modern cage in an occasional breeze. You worked your New England conscience out beside artisans, chestnut vendors and the devout. Tonight I will learn to love you twice; learn your first days, your mid-Victorian face. Tonight I will speak up and interrupt your letters, warning you that wars are coming, that the Count will die, that you will accept your America back to live like a prim thing on the farm in Maine. I tell you, you will come here, to the suburbs of Boston, to see the blue-nose world go drunk each night, to see the handsome children jitterbug, to feel your left ear close one Friday at Symphony. And I tell you, you will tip your boot feet out of that hall, rocking from its sour sound, out onto the crowded street, letting your spectacles fall and your hair net tangle as you stop passers-by to mumble your guilty love while your ears die.
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ladylinda
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July
Jul 24, 2014 16:00:33 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Jul 24, 2014 16:00:33 GMT -5
Moonlight, summer moonlight
Emily Bronte
'Tis moonlight, summer moonlight, All soft and still and fair; The solemn hour of midnight Breathes sweet thoughts everywhere,
But most where trees are sending Their breezy boughs on high, Or stooping low are lending A shelter from the sky.
And there in those wild bowers A lovely form is laid; Green grass and dew-steeped flowers Wave gently round her head.
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ladylinda
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July
Jul 24, 2014 16:01:44 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Jul 24, 2014 16:01:44 GMT -5
I Knew A Woman
Theodore Roethke
I knew a woman, lovely in her bones, When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them; Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one: The shapes a bright container can contain! Of her choice virtues only gods should speak, Or English poets who grew up on Greek (I'd have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek.)
How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin, She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and stand; She taught me Touch, that undulant white skin: I nibbled meekly from her proffered hand; She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake, Coming behind her for her pretty sake (But what prodigious mowing did we make.)
Love likes a gander, and adores a goose: Her full lips pursed, the errant note to seize; She played it quick, she played it light and loose; My eyes, they dazzled at her flowing knees; Her several parts could keep a pure repose, Or one hip quiver with a mobile nose (She moved in circles, and those circles moved.)
Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay: I'm martyr to a motion not my own; What's freedom for? To know eternity. I swear she cast a shadow white as stone. But who would count eternity in days? These old bones live to learn her wanton ways: (I measure time by how a body sways.)
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ladylinda
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July
Jul 25, 2014 16:10:09 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Jul 25, 2014 16:10:09 GMT -5
To A Lady With A Guitar
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Ariel to Miranda: -- Take This slave of music, for the sake Of him who is the slave of thee; And teach it all the harmony In which thou canst, and only thou, Make the delighted spirit glow, Till joy denies itself again And, too intense, is turned to pain. For by permission and command Of thine own Prince Ferdinand, Poor Ariel sends this silent token Of more than ever can be spoken; Your guardian spirit, Ariel, who From life to life must still pursue Your happiness, for thus alone Can Ariel ever find his own. From Prospero's enchanted cell, As the mighty verses tell, To the throne of Naples he Lit you o'er the trackless sea, Flitting on, your prow before, Like a living meteor. When you die, the silent Moon In her interlunar swoon Is not sadder in her cell Than deserted Ariel. When you live again on earth, Like an unseen Star of birth Ariel guides you o'er the sea Of life from your nativity. Many changes have been run Since Ferdinand and you begun Your course of love, and Ariel still Has tracked your steps and served your will. Now in humbler, happier lot, This is all remembered not; And now, alas! the poor sprite is Imprisoned for some fault of his In a body like a grave -- From you he only dares to crave, For his service and his sorrow, A smile today, a song tomorrow.
The artist who this idol wrought To echo all harmonious thought, Felled a tree, while on the steep The woods were in their winter sleep, Rocked in that repose divine On the wind-swept Apennine; And dreaming, some of Autumn past, And some of Spring approaching fast, And some of April buds and showers, And some of songs in July bowers, And all of love; and so this tree, -- O that such our death may be! -- Died in sleep, and felt no pain, To live in happier form again: From which, beneath Heaven's fairest star, The artist wrought this loved Guitar; And taught it justly to reply To all who question skilfully In language gentle as thine own; Whispering in enamoured tone Sweet oracles of woods and dells, And summer winds in sylvan cells; -- For it had learnt all harmonies Of the plains and of the skies, Of the forests and the mountains, And the many-voiced fountains; The clearest echoes of the hills, The softest notes of falling rills, The melodies of birds and bees, The murmuring of summer seas, And pattering rain, and breathing dew, And airs of evening; and it knew That seldom-heard mysterious sound Which, driven on its diurnal round, As it floats through boundless day, Our world enkindles on its way: -- All this it knows, but will not tell To those who cannot question well The Spirit that inhabits it; It talks according to the wit Of its companions; and no more Is heard than has been felt before By those who tempt it to betray These secrets of an elder day. But, sweetly as its answers will Flatter hands of perfect skill, It keeps its highest holiest tone For one beloved Friend alone.
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ladylinda
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July
Jul 25, 2014 16:11:35 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Jul 25, 2014 16:11:35 GMT -5
Carolina Summer
Raymond A. Foss
A cord of ten brown pelicans snaked through the hot air cutting the shimmering heat almost kissing the skin of the ocean just off my stretch of sand my piece of solitude off the barrier island that Carolina summer almost twenty years ago
2/13/06 16:15 August 1988, Hilton Head Island
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ladylinda
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July
Jul 25, 2014 16:12:51 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Jul 25, 2014 16:12:51 GMT -5
"I loved you..."
Alexander Pushkin
I loved you, and I probably still do, And for a while the feeling may remain... But let my love no longer trouble you, I do not wish to cause you any pain. I loved you; and the hopelessness I knew, The jealousy, the shyness - though in vain - Made up a love so tender and so true As may God grant you to be loved again.
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July
Jul 25, 2014 16:19:52 GMT -5
Post by beth on Jul 25, 2014 16:19:52 GMT -5
Carolina Summer Raymond A. Foss A cord of ten brown pelicans snaked through the hot air cutting the shimmering heat almost kissing the skin of the ocean just off my stretch of sand my piece of solitude off the barrier island that Carolina summer almost twenty years ago 2/13/06 16:15 August 1988, Hilton Head Island It's too commercial now, but Hilton Head used to be a wonderful place. I have a cousin who lives there year round. Pat Conroy wrote a good novel located partly in and around the barrier islands of the Carolina's and Georgia - Beach Music. Thanks for this one, Lin.
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ladylinda
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July
Jul 26, 2014 18:09:12 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Jul 26, 2014 18:09:12 GMT -5
Glad you like it, Beth.
It's not a part of the US I've visited.
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ladylinda
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July
Jul 26, 2014 18:09:37 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Jul 26, 2014 18:09:37 GMT -5
Apples
Laurie Lee
Behold the apples’ rounded worlds: juice-green of July rain, the black polestar of flowers, the rind mapped with its crimson stain.
The russet, crab and cottage red burn to the sun’s hot brass, then drop like sweat from every branch and bubble in the grass.
They lie as wanton as they fall, and where they fall and break, the stallion clamps his crunching jaws, the starling stabs his beak.
In each plump gourd the cidery bite of boys’ teeth tears the skin; the waltzing wasp consumes his share, the bent worm enters in.
I, with as easy hunger, take entire my season’s dole; welcome the ripe, the sweet, the sour, the hollow and the whole.
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ladylinda
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July
Jul 26, 2014 18:10:14 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Jul 26, 2014 18:10:14 GMT -5
Portrait Number Five: Against A New York Summer
Jack Gilbert
I'd walk her home after work buying roses and talking of Bechsteins. She was full of soul. Her small room was gorged with heat and there were no windows. She'd take off everything but her pants and take the pins from her hair throwing them on the floor with a great noise. Like Crete. We wouldn't make love. She'd get on the bed with those nipples and we'd lie sweating and talking of my best friend. They were in love. When I got quiet she'd put on usually Debussy and leaning down to the small ribs bite me. Hard.
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ladylinda
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July
Jul 26, 2014 18:10:52 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Jul 26, 2014 18:10:52 GMT -5
Next, Please
Philip Larkin
Always too eager for the future, we Pick up bad habits of expectancy. Something is always approaching; every day Till then we say,
Watching from a bluff the tiny, clear Sparkling armada of promises draw near. How slow they are! And how much time they waste, Refusing to make haste!
Yet still they leave us holding wretched stalks Of disappointment, for, though nothing balks Each big approach, leaning with brasswork prinked, Each rope distinct,
Flagged, and the figurehead wit golden tits Arching our way, it never anchors; it's No sooner present than it turns to past. Right to the last
We think each one will heave to and unload All good into our lives, all we are owed For waiting so devoutly and so long. But we are wrong:
Only one ship is seeking us, a black- Sailed unfamiliar, towing at her back A huge and birdless silence. In her wake No waters breed or break.
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