Our Hope and Expectation,

O Jesus, now appear;

Arise, thou Sun so longed for,

O’er this benighted sphere.

With hearts and hands uplifted,

We plead, O Lord to see

The day of earth’s redemption

That brings us unto thee. Continue reading A Song for Earth Day →

He would drink by himself

And raise a weathered thumb

Towards the high shelf,

Calling another rum

And blackcurrant, without

Having to raise his voice,

Or order a quick stout

By a lifting of the eyes

And a discreet dumb-show

Of pulling off the top;

At closing time would go

In waders and peaked cap

Into the showery dark,

A dole-kept breadwinner

But a natural for work.

I loved his whole manner,

Sure-footed but too sly,

His deadpan sidling tact,

His fisherman’s quick eye

And turned observant back.

Incomprehensible

To him, my other life.

Sometimes, on the high stool,

Too busy with his knife

At a tobacco plug

And not meeting my eye,

In the pause after a slug

He mentioned poetry.

We would be on our own

And, always politic

And shy of condescension,

I would manage by some trick

To switch the talk to eels

Or lore of the horse and cart

Or the Provisionals.

Continue reading “Casualty” by Seamus Heaney

When the warm sun, that brings

Seed-time and harvest, has returned again,

‘T is sweet to visit the still wood, where springs

The first flower of the plain.

I love the season well,

When forest glades are teeming with bright forms,

Nor dark and many-folded clouds foretell

The coming-on of storms.

From the earth’s loosened mould

The sapling draws its sustenance, and thrives;

Though stricken to the heart with winter’s cold,

The drooping tree revives.

The softly-warbled song

Comes from the pleasant woods, and colored wings

Glance quick in the bright sun, that moves along

The forest openings.

When the bright sunset fills

The silver woods with light, the green slope throws

Its shadows in the hollows of the hills,

And wide the upland glows.

And when the eve is born,

In the blue lake the sky, o’er-reaching far,

Is hollowed out, and the moon dips her horn,

And twinkles many a star.

Inverted in the tide

Stand the gray rocks, and trembling shadows throw,

And the fair trees look over, side by side,

And see themselves below.

Sweet April! many a thought

Is wedded unto thee, as hearts are wed;

Nor shall they fail, till, to its autumn brought,

Life’s golden fruit is shed.

“An April Day” by H.W. Longfellow

Photo of sapling by nathansnostalgia/Flickr

Here’s an Emerson poem for April in America and National Blame Someone Else Day.

What makes a nation’s pillars high

And it’s foundations strong?

What makes it mighty to defy

The foes that round it throng?

It is not gold. Its kingdoms grand

Go down in battle shock;

Its shafts are laid on sinking sand,

Not on abiding rock.

Is it the sword? Ask the red dust

Of empires passed away;

The blood has turned their stones to rust,

Their glory to decay.

And is it pride? Ah, that bright crown

Has seemed to nations sweet;

But God has struck its luster down

In ashes at his feet.

Not gold but only men can make

A people great and strong;

Men who for truth and honor’s sake

Stand fast and suffer long.

Brave men who work while others sleep,

Who dare while others fly…

They build a nation’s pillars deep

And lift them to the sky.

“A Nation’s Strength” by Ralph Waldo Emerson

April is National Poetry Month, and I’m told that today, somewhere, it’s Look Up At the Sky Day. So today, I’d like to give you one of my favorite poems. I first read this in The Oxford Book of Light Verse back in college while looking for a bit of sunshine in the midst of deary study. Here’s an old sea shanty, meant for singin’.

Old Joe is dead and gone to hell,

Oh, we say so, and we hope so;

Old Joe is dead and gone to hell.

Oh, poor old Joe!

He’s as dead as a nail in the lamp-room door,

Oh, we say so, and we hope so;

He’s as dead as a nail in the lamp-room door.

Oh, poor old Joe!

He won’t come hazing us no more,

Oh, we say so, and we hope so;

He won’t come hazing us no more,

Oh, poor old Joe!

(Speaking of dragons, I looked up a old poem telling the story of St. George and the Dragon. I’m a little nervous about the authenticity of my source, but it appears legit. The story is preserved in The Golden Legend, and I assume it was first recorded there in print. I don’t think this is what was written in that book, but a derivative from it or from oral history.)

Of Hector’s deeds did Homer sing,

And of the sack of stately Troy,

What griefs fair Helena did bring,

Which was Sir Paris’ only joy:

And by my pen I will recite

St. George’s deeds, and English knight.

Against the Sarazens so rude

Fought he full long and many a day,

Where many gyants he subdu’d,

In honour of the Christian way;

And after many adventures past,

To Egypt land he came at last.

Now, as the story plain doth tell,

Within that countrey there did rest

A dreadful dragon fierce and fell,

Whereby they were full sore opprest:

Who by his poisonous breath each day

Did many of the city slay.

The grief whereof did grow so great

Throughout the limits of the land,

That they their wise-men did intreat

To shew their cunning out of hand;

What way they might this fiend destroy,

That did the countrey thus annoy.

Continue reading A Dreadful Dragon Fierce and Fell! →

This year’s National Poetry Month promotional art quotes from this poem.

“Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour”

by Wallace Stevens

Light the first light of evening

In which we rest and, for small reason, think

The world imagined is the ultimate good.

This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous.

It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,

Out of all the indifferences, into one thing:

Within a single thing, a single shawl

Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth,

A light, a power, the miraculous influence.

Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.

We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,

A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.

Within its vital boundary, in the mind.

We say God and the imagination are one.

How high that highest candle lights the dark.

Out of this same light, out of the central mind,

We make a dwelling in the evening air,

In which being there together is enough.

April is National Poetry Month, and I’m told today is No Housework Day. The day may be a Web Rumor from those crazy guys who writing everything on the Interweb. Regardless, this is poetry month, so here’s a bit of Keats.

“On leaving some Friends at an Early Hour”

Give me a golden pen, and let me lean

On heap’d up flowers, in regions clear, and far;

Bring me a tablet whiter than a star,

Or hand of hymning angel, when ’tis seen

The silver strings of heavenly harp atween:

And let there glide by many a pearly car,

Pink robes, and wavy hair, and diamond jar,

And half discovered wings, and glances keen.

The while let music wander round my ears,

And as it reaches each delicious ending,

Let me write down a line of glorious tone,

And full of many wonders of the spheres:

For what a height my spirit is contending!

’Tis not content so soon to be alone.

Let mans Soule be a Spheare, and then, in this,

The intelligence that moves, devotion is,

And as the other Spheares, by being growne

Subject to forraigne motion, lose their owne,

And being by others hurried every day,

Scarce in a yeare their naturall forme obey:

Pleasure or businesse, so, our Soules admit

For their first mover, and are whirld by it.

Hence is’t, that I am carryed towards the West

This day, when my Soules forme bends toward the East.

There I should see a Sunne, by rising set,

And by that setting endlesse day beget;

But that Christ on this Crosse, did rise and fall,

Sinne had eternally benighted all.

Yet dare I’almost be glad, I do not see

That spectacle of too much weight for mee.

Who sees Gods face, that is selfe life, must dye;

What a death were it then to see God dye?

It made his owne Lieutenant Nature shrinke,

It made his footstoole crack, and the Sunne winke.

Could I behold those hands which span the Poles,

And tune all spheares at once peirc’d with those holes?

Could I behold that endlesse height which is

Zenith to us, and our Antipodes,

Humbled below us? or that blood which is

The seat of all our Soules, if not of his,

Made durt of dust, or that flesh which was worne

By God, for his apparell, rag’d, and torne?

If on these things I durst not looke, durst I

Upon his miserable mother cast mine eye,

Who was Gods partner here, and furnish’d thus

Halfe of that Sacrifice, which ransom’d us?

Though these things, as I ride, be from mine eye,

They’are present yet unto my memory,

For that looks towards them; and thou look’st towards mee,

O Saviour, as thou hang’st upon the tree;

I turne my backe to thee, but to receive

Corrections, till thy mercies bid thee leave.

O thinke mee worth thine anger, punish mee,

Burne off my rusts, and my deformity,

Restore thine Image, so much, by thy grace,

That thou may’st know mee, and I’ll turne my face.

John Donne, “Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward”