To My Dear and Loving Husband

by 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.

Like great men before me (Lars, for one), I am taking leave of the blog for a few days. In the words of Longfellow:

The Landlord ended thus his tale,

Then rising took down from its nail

The sword that hung there, dim with dust

And cleaving to its sheath with rust,

And said, “This sword was in the fight.”

The Poet seized it, and exclaimed,

“It is the sword of a good knight,

Though homespun was his coat-of-mail;

What matter if it be not named

Joyeuse, Colada, Durindale,

Excalibar, or Aroundight,

Or other name the books record?

Your ancestor, who bore this sword

As Colonel of the Volunteers,

Mounted upon his old gray mare,

Seen here and there and everywhere,

To me a grander shape appears

Than old Sir William, or what not,

Clinking about in foreign lands

With iron gauntlets on his hands,

And on his head an iron pot!”

All laughed; the Landlord’s face grew red

As his escutcheon on the wall;

He could not comprehend at all

The drift of what the Poet said;

For those who had been longest dead

Were always greatest in his eyes;

And be was speechless with surprise

To see Sir William’s pluméd head

Brought to a level with the rest,

And made the subject of a jest.

“Poetry should be rather like a coranto, short and nimbly-lofty, than a dull lesson of a day long.” Patrick Kurp talks about poetry a bit.

Bill Murray read poems to the construction workers building Poetry House in Manhattan.

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