ladylinda
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July
Jul 27, 2014 16:46:59 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Jul 27, 2014 16:46:59 GMT -5
The Ragged Wood
W B Yeats
O hurry where by water among the trees The delicate-stepping stag and his lady sigh, When they have but looked upon their images - Would none had ever loved but you and I!
Or have you heard that sliding silver-shoed Pale silver-proud queen-woman of the sky, When the sun looked out of his golden hood? - O that none ever loved but you and I!
O hurty to the ragged wood, for there I will drive all those lovers out and cry - O my share of the world, O yellow hair! No one has ever loved but you and I.
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ladylinda
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July
Jul 27, 2014 16:47:54 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Jul 27, 2014 16:47:54 GMT -5
On The Murder Of Lieutenant Jose Del Castillo By The Falangist Bravo Martinez July 12 1936
Philip Levine When the Lieutenant of the Guardia de Asalto heard the automatic go off, he turned and took the second shot just above the sternum, the third tore away the right shoulder of his uniform, the fourth perforated his cheek. As he slid out of his comrade's hold toward the gray cement of the Ramblas he lost count and knew only that he would not die and that the blue sky smudged with clouds was not heaven for heaven was nowhere and in his eyes slowly filling with their own light. The pigeons that spotted the cold floor of Barcelona rose as he sank below the waves of silence crashing on the far shores of his legs, growing faint and watery. His hands opened a last time to receive the benedictions of automobile exhaust and rain and the rain of soot. His mouth, that would never again say "I am afraid," closed on nothing. The old grandfather hawking daisies at his stand pressed a handkerchief against his lips and turned his eyes away before they held the eyes of a gunman. The shepherd dogs on sale howled in their cages and turned in circles. There is more to be said, but by someone who has suffered and died for his sister the earth and his brothers the beasts and the trees. The Lieutenant can hear it, the prayer that comes on the voices of water, today or yesterday, form Chicago or Valladolid, and hands like smoke above this street he won't walk as a man ever again.
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ladylinda
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July
Jul 27, 2014 16:48:37 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Jul 27, 2014 16:48:37 GMT -5
In Summer
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
How plain and height With dewdrops are bright! How pearls have crown'd The plants all around! How sighs the breeze Thro' thicket and trees! How loudly in the sun's clear rays The sweet birds carol forth their lays!
But, ah! above, Where saw I my love, Within her room, Small, mantled in gloom, Enclosed around, Where sunlight was drown'd, How little there was earth to me, With all its beauteous majesty!
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ladylinda
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July
Jul 28, 2014 10:59:24 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Jul 28, 2014 10:59:24 GMT -5
A Summer Day
Lucy Maud Montgomery
I
The dawn laughs out on orient hills And dances with the diamond rills; The ambrosial wind but faintly stirs The silken, beaded gossamers; In the wide valleys, lone and fair, Lyrics are piped from limpid air, And, far above, the pine trees free Voice ancient lore of sky and sea. Come, let us fill our hearts straightway With hope and courage of the day.
II
Noon, hiving sweets of sun and flower, Has fallen on dreams in wayside bower, Where bees hold honeyed fellowship With the ripe blossom of her lip; All silent are her poppied vales And all her long Arcadian dales, Where idleness is gathered up A magic draught in summer's cup. Come, let us give ourselves to dreams By lisping margins of her streams.
III
Adown the golden sunset way The evening comes in wimple gray; By burnished shore and silver lake Cool winds of ministration wake; O'er occidental meadows far There shines the light of moon and star, And sweet, low-tinkling music rings About the lips of haunted springs. In quietude of earth and air 'Tis meet we yield our souls to prayer.
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ladylinda
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July
Jul 28, 2014 11:00:05 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Jul 28, 2014 11:00:05 GMT -5
Poppies in July
Sylvia Plath
Little poppies, little hell flames, Do you do no harm?
You flicker. I cannot touch you. I put my hands among the flames. Nothing burns
And it exhausts me to watch you Flickering like that, wrinkly and clear red, like the skin of a mouth.
A mouth just bloodied. Little bloody skirts!
There are fumes I cannot touch. Where are your opiates, your nauseous capsules?
If I could bleed, or sleep! - If my mouth could marry a hurt like that!
Or your liquors seep to me, in this glass capsule, Dulling and stilling.
But colorless. Colorless.
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ladylinda
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July
Jul 28, 2014 11:01:26 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Jul 28, 2014 11:01:26 GMT -5
To Earthward
Robert Frost
Love at the lips was touch As sweet as I could bear; And once that seemed too much; I lived on air That crossed me from sweet things, The scent of -- was it musk From hidden grapevine springs Down hill at dusk? I had the swirl and ache From sprays of honeysuckle That when they're gathered shake Dew on the knuckle. I craved sweet things, but those Seemed strong when I was young; The petal of the rose It was that stung. Now no joy but lacks salt That is not dashed with pain And weariness and fault; I crave the stain Of tears, the aftermark Of almost too much love, The sweet of bitter bark And burning clove. When stiff and sore and scarred I take away my hand From leaning on it hard In grass and sand, The hurt is not enough: I long for weight and strength To feel the earth as rough To all my length.
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ladylinda
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July
Jul 29, 2014 15:20:53 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Jul 29, 2014 15:20:53 GMT -5
From my diary, July 1914
Wilfred Owen
Leaves Murmuring by myriads in the shimmering trees, Lives Wakening with wonder in the Pyrenees. Birds Cheerily chirping in the early day. Bards Singing of summer scything thro’ the hay. Bees Shaking the heavy dews from bloom and frond. Boys Bursting the surface of the ebony pond. Flashes Of swimmers carving thro’ the sparkling cold. Fleshes Gleaming with wetness to the morning gold. A mead Bordered about with warbling water brooks. A maid Laughing the love-song with me: proud of looks. The heat Throbbing between the upland and the peak. Her heart Quivering with passion to my pressed cheek. Braiding Of floating flames across the mountain brow. Brooding Of stillness; and a sighing of the bough. Of leaflets in the gloom; soft petal-showers; Stars Expanding with the starr’d nocturnal flowers.
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ladylinda
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July
Jul 29, 2014 15:26:54 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Jul 29, 2014 15:26:54 GMT -5
'Leaves of the Summer'
William Barnes
Leaves of the summer, lovely summer's pride, Sweet is the shade below your silent tree, Whether in waving copses, or in fields That let me see the open sky
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ladylinda
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July
Jul 29, 2014 15:28:45 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Jul 29, 2014 15:28:45 GMT -5
To My Dear and Loving Husband
Anne Bradstreet
If ever two were one, then surely we. If ever man were loved by wife, then thee. If ever wife was happy in a man, Compare with me, ye women, if you can. I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold, Or all the riches that the East doth hold. My love is such that rivers cannot quench, Nor ought but love from thee give recompense. Thy love is such I can no way repay; The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray. Then while we live, in love let’s so persever, That when we live no more, we may live ever.
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ladylinda
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July
Jul 30, 2014 14:57:19 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Jul 30, 2014 14:57:19 GMT -5
You’re
Sylvia Plath
Clownlike, happiest on your hands, Feet to the stars, and moon-skulled, Gilled like a fish. A common-sense Thumbs-down on the dodo's mode. Wrapped up in yourself like a spool, Trawling your dark, as owls do. Mute as a turnip from the Fourth Of July to All Fools' Day, O high-riser, my little loaf.
Vague as fog and looked for like mail. Farther off than Australia. Bent-backed Atlas, our traveled prawn. Snug as a bud and at home Like a sprat in a pickle jug. A creel of eels, all ripples. Jumpy as a Mexican bean. Right, like a well-done sum. A clean slate, with your own face on.
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ladylinda
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July
Jul 30, 2014 14:58:06 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Jul 30, 2014 14:58:06 GMT -5
Praise in Summer
Richard Wilbur
Obscurely yet most surely called to praise, As sometimes summer calls us all, I said The hills are heavens full of branching way Where star-nosed moles fill overhead the dead; I said the trees are mines in air. I said See how the sparrows burrow in the sky; And then I wondered why this mad instead Perverts ur praise to uncreation; why Does sense so stale that it must needs derange The world to know it? To a praiseful eye Should it not be enough of fresh and strange That trees grow green, and moles can course in clay, And sparrows sweep the ceiling of our day?
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ladylinda
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July
Jul 30, 2014 14:58:31 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Jul 30, 2014 14:58:31 GMT -5
Modern Love
Douglas Dunn
It is summer, and we are in a house That is not ours, sitting at a table Enjoying minutes of a rented silence, The upstairs-people gone. The pigeons will To sleep the under-tens and invalids, The tree shakes out its shadow to the grass, The roses rove through the wilds of my neglect. Our lives flop, and we have no hope of better Happiness than this, not much to show for love Than how we are, or how this evening is, Unpeopled, silent, and where we are alive All other lives worn down to trees and sunlight, Looking forward to a visit from the cat
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ladylinda
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July
Jul 31, 2014 16:13:16 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Jul 31, 2014 16:13:16 GMT -5
July Flowers
Edward Shanks
They come in clearings where the bluebells were, Tall, coarser-petalled weeds and florid bells: Rank, out of rank soil, their abundance wells, Flowers that our summer spouts and has no care, Nor do we care for them. No lovers wear Posies of willow-herb or meadow-sweet: Their scent and colour by unheeding feet Trampled go down and are no longer there
Yet, though their earth be rank, they still are hers, And we who loved the year in her first youth May wear the emblems of her blowzier prime, Not judge among her children better or worse, But take them, different signs of the same truth, Which, like our own, is governed still by time
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ladylinda
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July
Jul 31, 2014 16:13:40 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Jul 31, 2014 16:13:40 GMT -5
Summer Idyll
George Barker
Sometimes in summer months, the gestate earth Loaded to gold, the boughs arching downward Burdened, the shallow and glucose streams Teeming, flowers out, all gold camouflage Of the collusive summer; but under the streams Winter lies colding, and coldly embedded in The corn hunger lies germinally, want under The abundance; poverty pulling down The tautened boughs, and need is the seed
Rode them in superb summer, at angles Their bones penetrate, or with a principality Of Spring possess them, under the breast Spaces up a vacancy spread: like a pale Ghost flower, want; and the pressure upon The eyeballs of their spirits, upon the organs Of their spare bodies, the pressure upon Their movements and their merriment, loving and Living, the pressure upon their lives like deep Seas, becomes insufferable, to be suffered
Sometimes the summer lessens a moment the pressure. Large as the summer rose some rise Bathing in rivers or at evening harrying rabbits, Indulging in games in meadows – and some are idle, strewn Over the parks like soiled paper like summer Insects, bathed in sweat or at evening harried By watchmen, park-keepers, policemen – indulge in games Dreaming as I dream of rest and cleanliness and cash
And the gardens exhibit the regalia of the season Like debutante queans, between which they wander Blown with vague odours, seduced by the fire Beauty, like drowned men floating in bright coral. Summer, denuding young women, also denudes Them, removes jackets, exposing backs – Summer moves many of the river in boats
Trailing their fingers in the shadowed waters they Too move by the river, and in the water shadows Trail a hand, which need not find a bank, Face downward like bad fruit, cathedrals and Building Societies, as they appear, disappear; and Beethoven Is played more loudly to deafen the Welsh echoes And summer, blowing over the Mediterranean, Like swans, like perfect swans
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ladylinda
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July
Jul 31, 2014 16:14:00 GMT -5
Post by ladylinda on Jul 31, 2014 16:14:00 GMT -5
‘Love lights his fire’
W H Davies
Love lights his fire to burn my past – There goes the house where I was born! And even friendship – love declares – Must feed his precious flames and burn.
I stuffed my life with odds and ends, But how much joy can knowledge give? The world my guide, I lived to learn – From love, alone, I learn to live
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