The Swaling Sunset

I look at the swaling sunset

And wish I could go also

Through the red doors beyond the black-purple bar.

I wish that I could go

Through the red doors where I could put off

My shame like shoes in the porch,

My pain like garments,

And leave my flesh discarded lying

Like luggage of some departed traveller

Gone one knows not where.

Then I would turn round,

And seeing my cast-off body lying like lumber,

I would laugh with joy.

In Shame and Trouble

D.H. Lawrence

On the Longest Day of the Year---Summer ebbs...

Let us quit the leafy arbour,

And the torrent murmuring by;

For the sun is in his harbour,

Weary of the open sky.

Evening now unbinds the fetters

Fashioned by the glowing light;

All that breathe are thankful debtors

To the harbinger of night.

Yet by some grave thoughts attended

Eve renews her calm career:

For the day that now is ended,

Is the longest of the year.

Dora! sport, as now thou sportest,

On this platform, light and free;

Take thy bliss, while longest, shortest,

Are indifferent to thee!

Who would check the happy feeling

That inspires the linnet's song?

Who would stop the swallow, wheeling

On her pinions swift and strong?

Yet at this impressive season,

Words which tenderness can speak

From the truths of homely reason,

Might exalt the loveliest cheek;

And, while shades to shades succeeding

Steal the landscape from the sight,

I would urge this moral pleading,

Last forerunner of "Good night!"

SUMMER ebbs;--each day that follows

Is a reflux from on high,

Tending to the darksome hollows

Where the frosts of winter lie.

He who governs the creation,

In his providence, assigned

Such a gradual declination

To the life of human kind.

Yet we mark it not;--fruits redden,

Fresh flowers blow, as flowers have blown,

And the heart is loth to deaden

Hopes that she so long hath known.

Be thou wiser, youthful Maiden!

And when thy decline shall come,

Let not flowers, or boughs fruit-laden,

Hide the knowledge of thy doom.

Now, even now, ere wrapped in slumber,

Fix thine eyes upon the sea

That absorbs time, space, and number;

Look thou to Eternity!

Follow thou the flowing river

On whose breast are thither borne

All deceived, and each deceiver,

Through the gates of night and morn;

Through the year's successive portals;

Through the bounds which many a star 

Marks, not mindless of frail mortals

When his light returns from far.

Thus when thou with Time hast travelled

Toward the mighty gulf of things,

And the mazy stream unravelled

With thy best imaginings;

Think, if thou on beauty leanest,

Think how pitiful that stay,

Did not virtue give the meanest

Charms superior to decay.

Duty, like a strict preceptor,

Sometimes frowns, or seems to frown;

Choose her thistle for thy sceptre,

While youth's roses are thy crown.

Grasp it,--if thou shrink and tremble,

Fairest damsel of the green,

Thou wilt lack the only symbol

That proclaims a genuine queen;

And ensures those palms of honour

Which selected spirits wear,

Bending low before the Donor,

Lord of heaven's unchanging year!

William Wordsworth--- The Longest Day

 Addressed to my daughter 

She Soon Will Forget

So shuts the marigold her leaves

At the departure of the sun;

So from the honeysuckle sheaves

The bee goes when the day is done;

So sits the turtle when she is but one,

And so all woe, as I since she is gone.

To some few birds kind Nature hath

Made all the summer as one day:

Which once enjoy'd, cold winter's wrath

As night they sleeping pass away.

Those happy creatures are, that know not yet

The pain to be deprived or to forget.

I oft have heard men say there be

Some that with confidence profess

The helpful Art of Memory:

But could they teach Forgetfulness,

I'd learn; and try what further art could do

To make me love her and forget her too.

Memory by William Browne

Spiderwort--expected everywhere

An altered look about the hills;

A Tyrian light the village fills;

A wider sunrise in the dawn;

A deeper twilight on the lawn;

A print of a vermilion foot;

A purple finger on the slope;

A flippant fly upon the pane;

A spider at his trade again;

An added strut in chanticleer;

A flower expected everywhere;

An axe shrill singing in the woods;

Fern-odors on untravelled roads,

All this, and more I cannot tell,

A furtive look you know as well,

And Nicodemus’ mystery

Receives its annual reply.

Emily Dickinson --- Nature

Life's Summer Mood

In summer, when the days were long,

We walk’d, two friends, in field and wood;

Our heart was light, our step was strong,

And life lay round us, fair as good,

In summer, when the days were long.

We stray’d from morn till evening came,

We gather’d flowers, and wove us crowns;

We walk’d mid poppies red as flame,

Or sat upon the yellow downs,

And always wish’d our life the same.

In summer, when the days were long,

We leap’d the hedgerow, cross’d the brook;

And still her voice flow’d forth in song,

Or else she read some graceful book,

In summer, when the days were long.

And then we sat beneath the trees,

With shadows lessening in the noon;

And in the sunlight and the breeze

We revell’d, many a glorious June,

While larks were singing o’er the leas.

In summer, when the days were long,

We pluck’d wild strawberries, ripe and red,

Or feasted, with no grace but song,

On golden nectar, snow-white bread,

In summer, when the days were long.

We lov’d, and yet we knew it not,

For loving seem’d like breathing then;

We found a heaven in every spot;

Saw angels, too, in all good men,

And dream’d of gods in grove and grot.

In summer, when the days are long,

Alone I wander, muse alone;

I see her not, but that old song

Under the fragrant wind is blown,

In summer, when the days are long.

Alone I wander in the wood,

But one fair spirit hears my sighs;

And half I see the crimson hood,

The radiant hair, the calm glad eyes,

That charm’d me in life’s summer mood. 

In summer, when the days are long,

I love her as I lov’d of old;

My heart is light, my step is strong,

For love brings back those hours of gold,

In summer, when the days are long.

Summer Days by Wathen Marks Wilks Call 

"Lazily She Lingered Cradling a Dream"

In the sleepy forest where the bluebells

Smouldered dimly through the night,

Dermuid saw the leaves like glad green waters

At daybreak flowing into light,

And exultant from his love upspringing

Strode with the sun upon the height.

Glittering on the hilltops

He saw the sunlit rain

Drift as around the spindle

A silver-threaded skein,

And the brown mist whitely breaking

Where arrowy torrents reached the plain.

A maddened moon

Leapt in his heart and whirled the crimson tide

Of his blood until it sang aloud of battle

Where the querns of dark death grind,

Till it sang and scorned in pride

Love—the froth-pale blossom of the boglands

That flutters on the waves of the wandering wind.

Flower-quiet in the rush-strewn sheiling

At the dawntime Grainne lay,

While beneath the birch-topped roof the sunlight

Groped upon its way

And stooped above her sleeping white body

With a wasp-yellow ray.

The hot breath of the day awoke her,

And wearied of its heat

She wandered out by the noisy elms

On the cool mossy peat,

Where the shadowed leaves like pecking linnets

Nodded around her feet.

She leaned and saw in the pale-grey waters,

By twisted hazel boughs,

Her lips like heavy drooping poppies

In a rich redness drowse,

Then swallow—lightly touched the ripples

Until her wet lips were

Burning as ripened rowan berries

Through the white winter air.

Lazily she lingered

Gazing so,

As the slender osiers

Where the waters flow,

As green twings of sally

Swaying to and fro.

Sleepy moths fluttered

In her dark eyes,

And her lips grew quieter

Than lullabies.

Swaying with the reedgrass

Over the stream

Lazily she lingered

Cradling a dream.

The Awakening of Dermuid by  Austin Clarke

In a Mushroom Gown

Its friendship and its carelessness

Did lead me many a mile,

Through goat’s-rue, with its dim caress,

And pink and pearl-white smile;

Through crowfoot, with its golden lure,

And promise of far things,

And sorrel with its glance demure

And wide-eyed wonderings.

It led me with its innocence,

As childhood leads the wise,

With elbows here of tattered fence,

And blue of wildflower eyes;

With whispers low of leafy speech,

And brook-sweet utterance;

With bird-like words of oak and beech,

And whisperings clear as Pan’s.

It led me with its childlike charm,

As candor leads desire,

Now with a clasp of blossomy arm,

A butterfly kiss of fire;

Now with a toss of tousled gold,

A barefoot sound of green,

A breath of musk, of mossy mold,

With vague allurements keen.

It led me with remembered things

Into an old-time vale,

Peopled with faëry glimmerings,

And flower-like fancies pale;

Where fungous forms stood, gold and gray,

Each in its mushroom gown,

And, roofed with red, glimpsed far away,

A little toadstool town.

It led me with an idle ease,

A vagabond look and air,

A sense of ragged arms and knees

In weeds grown everywhere;

It led me, as a gypsy leads,

To dingles no one knows,

With beauty burred with thorny seeds,

And tangled wild with rose.

It led me as simplicity

Leads age and its demands,

With bee-beat of its ecstasy,

And berry-stained touch of hands;

With round revealments, puff-ball white,

Through rents of weedy brown,

And petaled movements of delight

In roseleaf limb and gown.

It led me on and on and on,

Beyond the Far Away,

Into a world long dead and gone,

The world of Yesterday:

A faëry world of memory,

Old with its hills and streams,

Wherein the child I used to be

Still wanders with his dreams

The Path to the Woods by Madison Cawein.

Trillium

I walked down alone Sunday after church

To the place where John has been cutting trees

To see for myself about the birch

He said I could have to bush my peas.

The sun in the new-cut narrow gap

Was hot enough for the first of May,

And stifling hot with the odor of sap

From stumps still bleeding their life away.

The frogs that were peeping a thousand shrill

Wherever the ground was low and wet,

The minute they heard my step went still

To watch me and see what I came to get.

Birch boughs enough piled everywhere!—

All fresh and sound from the recent axe.

Time someone came with cart and pair

And got them off the wild flower’s backs.

They might be good for garden things

To curl a little finger round,

The same as you seize cat’s-cradle strings,

And lift themselves up off the ground.

Small good to anything growing wild,

They were crooking many a trillium

That had budded before the boughs were piled

And since it was coming up had to come.

Robert Frost--- Pea Brush 

From the Tears of April Rains

When April rains make flowers bloom

And Johnny-jump-ups come to light,

And clouds of color and perfume

Float from the orchards pink and white,

I see my shamrock in the rain,

An emerald spray with raindrops set,

Like jewels on Spring’s coronet,

So fair, and yet it breathes of pain.

The shamrock on an older shore

Sprang from a rich and sacred soil

Where saint and hero lived of yore,

And where their sons in sorrow toil;

And here, transplanted, it to me

Seems weeping for the soil it left:

The diamonds that all others see

Are tears drawn from its heart bereft.

When April rain makes flowers grow,

And sparkles on their tiny buds

That in June nights will over-blow

And fill the world with scented floods,

The lonely shamrock in our land—

So fine among the clover leaves—

For the old springtimes often grieves,—

I feel its tears upon my hand.

The Shamrock by  Maurice Francis Egan

The Spring Comes

The soote season, that bud and bloom forth brings,

With green hath clad the hill and eke the vale:

The nightingale with feathers new she sings;

The turtle to her make hath told her tale.

Summer is come, for every spray now springs:

The hart hath hung his old head on the pale;

The buck in brake his winter coat he flings;

The fishes flete with new repairèd scale.

The adder all her slough away she slings;

The swift swallow pursueth the flies smale;

The busy bee her honey now she mings;

Winter is worn that was the flowers' bale.

And thus I see among these pleasant things

Each care decays, and yet my sorrow springs.

Description of Spring by Henry Howard Earl of Surrey

The Blue Sea, Sun, Grass

Have me in the blue and the sun.

Have me on the open sea and the mountains.

When I go into the grass of the sea floor, I will go alone.

This is where I came from—the chlorine and the salt are blood and bones.

It is here the nostrils rush the air to the lungs. It is here oxygen clamors to be let in.

And here in the root grass of the sea floor I will go alone.

Love goes far. Here love ends.

Have me in the blue and the sun.

Have Me by Carl Sandburg

Jealous Skies

Fields Of Gold 

You'll remember me when the west wind moves

Upon the fields of barley

You'll forget the sun in his jealous sky

As we walk in fields of gold

So she took her love

For to gaze awhile

Upon the fields of barley

In his arms she fell as her hair came down

Among the fields of gold

Will you stay with me, will you be my love

Among the fields of barley

We'll forget the sun in his jealous sky

As we lie in fields of gold

See the west wind move like a lover so

Upon the fields of barley

Feel her body rise when you kiss her mouth

Among the fields of gold

I never made promises lightly

And there have been some that I've broken

But I swear in the days still left

We'll walk in fields of gold

We'll walk in fields of gold

Many years have passed since those summer days

Among the fields of barley

See the children run as the sun goes down

Among the fields of gold

You'll remember me when the west wind moves

Upon the fields of barley

You can tell the sun in his jealous sky

When we walked in fields of gold

When we walked in fields of gold

When we walked in fields of gold

Lyrics to Fields of Gold by Sting

It's Not the Destination...

There’s a path that leads to nowhere

In a meadow that I know,

Where an inland island rises 

And the stream is still and slow;

There it wanders under willows

And beneath the silver green

Of the birches’ silent shadows

Where the early violets lean.

Other pathways lead to Somewhere,

But the one I love so well

Had no end and no beginning

Just the beauty of the dell,

Just the windflowers and the lilies

Yellow striped as adder’s tongue,

Seem to satisfy my pathway

As it winds their sweets among.

There I go to meet the Springtime,

When the meadow is aglow,

Marigolds amid the marshes,

And the stream is still and slow.

There I find my fair oasis,

And with care-free feet I tread

For the pathway leads to Nowhere,

And the blue is overhead!

All the ways that lead to Somewhere

Echo with the hurrying feet 

Of the Struggling and the Striving,

But the way I find so sweet

Bids me dream and bids me linger,

Joy and Beauty are its goal,

On the path that leads to Nowhere

I have sometimes found my soul!

The Path that Leads to Nowhere by 

Corrine Roosevelt Robinson

Lonely Wandering

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed--and gazed--but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

William Woodsworth

Footprints Across the Bridge

Proud and lowly, beggar and lord,

Over the bridge they go;

Rags and velvet, fetter and sword,

Poverty, pomp, and woe.

Laughing, weeping, hurrying ever,

Hour by hour they crowd along,

While, below, the mighty river

Sings them all a mocking song.

Hurry along, sorrow and song,

All is vanity ’neath the sun;

Velvet and rags, so the world wags,

Until the river no more shall run.

Dainty, painted, powdered and gay,

Rolleth my lady by;

Rags-and-tatters, over the way,

Carries a heart as high.

Flowers and dreams from country meadows,

Dust and din through city skies,

Old men creeping with their shadows,

Children with their sunny eyes,

Hurry along, sorrow and song,

All is vanity ’neath the sun;

Velvet and rags, so the world wags,

Until the river no more shall run.

Storm and sunshine, peace and strife,

Over the bridge they go;

Floating on in the tide of life,

Whither no man shall know.

Who will miss them there to-morrow,

Waifs that drift to the shade or sun?

Gone away with their songs and sorrow;

Only the river still flows on.

Hurry along, sorrow and song,

All is vanity ’neath the sun;

Velvet and rags, so the world wags,

Until the river no more shall run.

Frederic Edward Weatherly---London Bridge

Cheery Chickadee

The Speckled sky is dim with snow,

The light flakes falter and fall slow;

Athwart the hill-top, rapt and pale,

Silently drops a silvery veil;

And all the valley is shut in

By flickering curtains gray and thin.

But cheerily the chickadee

Singeth to me on fence and tree;

The snow sails round him as he sings,

White as the down of angels’ wings.

I watch the slow flakes as they fall

On bank and brier and broken wall;

Over the orchard, waste and brown,

All noiselessly they settle down,

Tipping the apple-boughs, and each

Light quivering twig of plum and peach.

On turf and curb and bower-roof

The snow-storm spreads its ivory woof;

It paves with pearl the garden-walk;

And lovingly round tattered stalk

And shivering stem its magic weaves

A mantle fair as lily-leaves.

The hooded beehive, small and low,

Stands like a maiden in the snow;

And the old door-slab is half hid

Under an alabaster lid.

All day it snows: the sheeted post

Gleams in the dimness like a ghost;

All day the blasted oak has stood

A muffled wizard of the wood;

Garland and airy cap adorn

The sumach and the wayside thorn,

And clustering spangles lodge and shine

In the dark tresses of the pine.

The ragged bramble, dwarfed and old,

Shrinks like a beggar in the cold;

In surplice white the cedar stands,

And blesses him with priestly hands.

Still cheerily the chickadee

Singeth to me on fence and tree:

But in my inmost ear is heard

The music of a holier bird;

And heavenly thoughts as soft and white

As snow-flakes, on my soul alight,

Clothing with love my lonely heart,

Healing with peace each bruised part,

Till all my being seems to be

Transfigured by their purity.

Midwinter by John Townsend Trowbridge

March in Cold Injustice

Suddenly I saw the cold 

and rook-delighting Heaven

That seemed as though ice burned 

and was but the more ice,

And thereupon imagination 

and heart were driven

So wild that every casual thought of that and this

Vanished, and left but memories, 

that should be out of season

With the hot blood of youth, 

of love crossed long ago;

And I took all the blame out of all sense

 and reason,

Until I cried and trembled and rocked to and fro,

Riddled with light.

Ah! when the ghost begins to quicken,

Confusion of the death-bed over, is it sent

Out naked on the roads, as the books say, and stricken

By the injustice of the skies for punishment?  

W.B. Yeats Cold Heaven

Icy Paradise

Suddenly I saw the cold and rook-delighting Heaven

That seemed as though ice burned and was but the more ice,

And thereupon imagination and heart were driven

So wild that every casual thought of that and this

Vanished, and left but memories, that should be out of season

With the hot blood of youth, of love crossed long ago;

And I took all the blame out of all sense and reason,

Until I cried and trembled and rocked to and fro,

Riddled with light. Ah! when the ghost begins to quicken,

Confusion of the death-bed over, is it sent

Out naked on the roads, as the books say, and stricken

By the injustice of the skies for punishment?

Yeats---The Cold Heaven

Lonely Longing

The Lover of my youth called the other day,

We talked of a young boy, a young girl, 

Of dreams, of places, of two cats in the yard,

The longing was in his voice.

There were our failures laid out in front of us,

Things we could have done---should have done,

But didn't. 

There were successes and goals reached;

happiness and the color of the skies

And the longing was in his voice. 

And as I hung up the phone, 

I found that the longing that I had heard,

was not for that young girl

 or for the old woman that she had become.

No---the longing that I heard was for that young boy.   

Lonely Shores

A LONELY lake, a lonely shore,

A lone pine leaning on the moon;

All night the water-beating wings

Of a solitary loon.

With mournful wail from dusk to dawn

He gibbered at the taunting stars,

A hermit-soul gone raving mad,

And beating at his bars.

Lew Sarett--- The Loon