Marsh Marigolds

Marsh Marigolds




Here in the water-meadows
Marsh marigolds ablaze
Brighten the elder shadows
Lost in an autumn haze.
Drunkards of sun and summer
They keep their colours clear,
Flaming among the marshes
At waning of the year.

Thicker than the bee-swung clovers
They crowd the meadow-space;
Each to the mist that hovers
Lifts an undaunted face.
Time, that has stripped the sunflower,
And driven bees away,
Hath on these golden gipsies
No power to dismay.

Marsh marigolds together
Their ragged baners lift
Against the darkening weather,
Long rains and frozen drift:
They take the lessoning sunshine
Home to their hearts to keep
Against the days of darkness,
Against the time of sleep.

By Nora Hopper.

Casuarina

Casuarina

The last, the long-haired casurina
stands upon the hillside where
against the turquoise night of those first
yellow stars, she shakes her hair.

She shakes her hair out in her singing
of cliffs and caves and waterfalls,
and tribes who left the lichened sandstone
carved in gods and animals.

This is her country: honeyeaters
cry out its Aboriginal name
where on her ridges still the spear tall
lilies burn in flame and flame.

I listen, and our legend says not
more than this dark singing tree,
although her golden flowering lover
lies slain beside the winter sea.

By Roland Robinson

The Poppies in the Garden

The Poppies in the garden

The poppies in the garden, they all wear frocks of silk,
Some are purple, some are pink, and others white as milk,
Light, light, for dancing , for dancing when the breeze
Plays a little two-step for the blossoms and the bees.
Fine, fine, for dancing in, all frilly at the hem,
Oh, when I watch the poppies dance I long to dance like them!

The poppies in the garden have let their silk frocks fall
All about the border paths, but where are they all?
Here a frill and there a flounce---a rag of silky red,
But not a poppy girl is left---I think they've gone to bed.
Gone to bed and gone to sleep; and weary they must be,
For each has left her box of dreams upon the stem for me.

By Ffrida Wolfe

Prometheus Amid Hurricane And Earthquake

Prometheus Amid Hurricane And Earthquake

Earth is rocking in space!
And the thunders crash up with a roar upon roar,
And the eddying lightnings flash fire in my face,
And the whirlwinds are whirling the dust round and round---
And the blasts of the winds universal leap free
And blow each other upon each, with a passion of sound,
And æther goes mingling in storm with the sea!
Such a curse on my head, in a manifest dread,
From the hand of your Zeus has been hurtled along!
O my mother's fair glory! O Æther, enringing
All eyes with the sweet common light of thy bringing,
Dost see how I suffer this wrong?

By Aeschylus.

Chamomile Tea

Camomile Tea.

Outside the sky is light with stars;
There's a hollow roaring from the sea.
And, alas! for the little almond flowers,
The wind is shaking the almond tree.

How little I thought, a year ago,
In the horrible cottage upon the Lee
That he and I should be sitting so
And sipping a cup of camomile tea.

Light as feathers the witches fly,
The horn of the moon is plain to see;
By a firefly under a jonquil flower
A goblin toasts a bumble-bee.

We might be fifty, we might be five,
So snug, so compact, so wise are we!
Under the kitchen-table leg
My knee is pressing against his knee.

Our shutters are shut, the fire is low,
The tap is dripping peacefully;
The saucepan shadows on the wall
Are black and round and plain to see.


by Katherine Mansfield.

The Flowers

The Flowers

All the names I know from nurse:
Gardener's garters, Sheperd's purse,
Batchelors's buttons, Lady's smock,
And the Lady Hollyhock.

Fairy places, fairy things,
Fairy woods where the wild bee wings,
Tiny tree-tops, rose or thyme,
Where the braver fairies climb!

Fair are grown-up people's trees,
But the fairest woods are these;
Where if I were not so tall,
I should live for good and all.

By Robert Louis Stevenson. (1850-1894)

Low-Anchored Cloud

Low-Anchored Cloud

Low anchored cloud,
Newfoundland air,
Fountain-head and source of rivers,
Dew-cloth, dream drapery,
And napkin spread by fays;
Drifting meadow of the air,
Where bloom the daisied banks and violets,
And in whose fenny labyrinth
The Bittern booms and heron wades;
Spirit of lakes and seas and rivers,
Bear only perfumes and the scent
Of healing herbs to just men's fields.

By Henry David Thoreau. (1817-1862)

From Blossoms

From Blossoms

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom,

By Li Young Lee

The snowstorm

The Snowstorm

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farmhouse at the garden's end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.

Come, see the north wind's masonry.
Out of an unseen quarry evermore
Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer
Curves his white bastions with projected roof
Round every windward stake or tree or door.
Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work
So fanciful, so savage, naught cares he
For number or proportion. Mockingly
On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;
A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn;
Fills up the farmers's lane from wall to wall,
Maugre the farmer's; and at the gate
A tapering turret overtops the work.
And when his hours are numbered, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not.
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work,
The frolic artitecture of the snow.

By Ralph Waldo Emerson. (1803-1882)

I Remember the Sea when I was Six...

I Remember The Sea When I was Six...

I remember the sea when I was six
and ran on wetted sands
that were speckled with shells and the blowholes
clams
bedded secretly down in black muck---

I remember the sun, fishy airs, rotting piers
that reached far out into turquoise waters,
and ladies in whitewho sprinkled light laughter
from under their parasols...

Where was it, that beach whose hot sand I
...troweled
day after day into my red tin pail?
It's only in dreams now I sense it, unreal,
at the end of an inner road no longer traveled.

By Fredrick Morgan.

My Mother's Pansies

My Mother's Pansies

And all that time, in back of the house,
there were pansies growing, some silt blue,
some silt yellow, most of the sable, heavy
red or purplish sable, heavy
as velvet curtains, so soft they seemed wet but they were
dry as powder on a luna's wing,
dust on an alluvial path. in a drought
summer. And they were open like lips,
and pouted like lips, and had tiny fur-gold
v, which made bees not to be able
to not want. And so although women, in our
lobes and sepals, our corollas and spurs, seemed
despised spathe, style-arm, standard,
crest, and fall,
stil there were those plush entries,
night mouth, pillow mouth,
anyone might want to push
their pinky, or anything, into such velveteen
chambers, such throats, each midnight-velvet
petal saying touch-touch-touch, please-touch, please-touch,
each sex like a spirit --- shy, flushed, praying.

By Sharon Olds.

The Thames from Cooper's Hill

The Thames

The stream is so transparent, pure, and clear,
That had the self-enamour'd youth gaz'd here,
So fatally deceiv'd he had not been,
While he the bottom, not his face had seen.
But his proud head the aery Mountain hides
Among the clouds; his shoulders, and his sides
Frown on the gentle stream, which calmly flows,
A shady mantle cloaths; his curled brows
Frown on the gentle stream, which calmly flows,
While winds and storms his lofty forehead beat:
The common fate of all that's high or great.
Low at his foot a spacious plain is plac't:
Between the mountains and the stream embrac't:
Which shade and shelter from the Hill derives,
While the kind river wealth and beauty gives:
And in the mixture of all these appears
Variety, which all the rest endears.

By Sir John Denham (1615--1669)

The Hollow Wood

The Hollow Wood

Out in the sun the goldfinch flits
Along the thistle-tops, flits and wits
Above the hollow wood
Where the birds swim like fish---
Fish that laugh and shriek---
To and fro, far below
In the pale hollow wood.

Lichen, ivy, and moss
Keep evergreen the trees
That stand half-flayed and dying,
And the dead trees on their knees
In dog's mercury and moss:
And the bright twit of the goldfinch drops
Down there as he flits on thistle- tops.

By Edward Thomas (1878-1917)

The Gravid Mares

The Gravid Mares

The gravid mares
graze out their months in gentle statliness,
freed from all human burdens by their own,
kept close in care, pastured in shady fields
where quiet rivers lap the quieter moss
that lines their banks.

The mares go out at dawn
and again at dusk (avoiding the gadflies' noon);
you see them taking shape in the morning mist

or burnished by the golden light of sunset...
Tricks of the light?

But we must believe our eyes
even at miracles. Huge and yet delicate,
they stalk their time, the creatures of a dream
(The gods'? Ours? Their own?).
And awake
And foal.
The marvel of it fades---all marvels do---
and feeling our way, our confidence again,
we lapse into routines, as the gods do, too,
of the business of life.

By Virgil (70-19 bc)

From The Song of Soloman

From The Song of Soloman

My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair
one, and come away.

For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing birds
is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land;

The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with her tender
grape give forth a good smell. Arise my love, my fair one, and come away.

February

February

The change has come at last, and from the west
Drives on the wind, and gives the clouds no rest.
And ruffles up the water thin that lies
Over the surface of the thawing ice;
Sunrise and sunset with no glorious show
Are seen, as late they were across the snow
The wet-lipped west wind chilleth to the bone
More than the light and flickering east hath done.
Full soberly the earth's fresh hope begins.
Nor stays to think of what each new day wins:
And still it seems to bid us turn away
From this chill thaw to dream of blossoming May....

By William Morris (1834-1896)

Magdalen Walks

Magdalen Walks

The little white clouds are racing over the sky,
And the fields are strewn with the gold of the flower
of March,
The daffodil breaks under foot, and the tasselled larch
Sways and sings as the thrush goes hurrying by:

A delicate odour is borne on the wings
of the morning breeze,
The odour of deep wet grass, and of brown
new-furrowed earth.
The birds are singing for joy of the Spring's glad birth,
Hopping from branch to branch on the rocking trees.

And all the woods are alive with the murmur
and sound of spring,
And the rose bud breaks into pink on the climbing briar,
and the crocus-bed is a quivering moon of fire
Girdled round with the belt of an amethyst ring.

And the plane to the pine-tree is whispering some tale
of love
Till it rushes with laughter and tosses its mantle of green,
And the gloom of the wych-elm's hollow is lit
with the iris sheen
Of the burnished rainbow throat and the silver breast
of a dove.

See! the lark starts up from his bed in the meadow there,
Breaking the gossamer threads and the nets of dew,
And flashing adown the river, a flame of blue!
The kingfisher flies like an arrow, and wounds the air.

And the sense of my life is sweet!
though I know that the end is nigh:
For the ruin and rain of winter will shortly come,
The lily will lose its gold, and the chestnut-bloom
In billows of red and white on the grass lie.

And even the light of the sun will fade at last,
And the leaves will fall, and the birds will hasten away,
And I will be left in the snow of a flowerless day
To think on the glories of Spring,
and the joys of a youth long past.

Yet be silent, my heart!
do not count it a profitless thing,
To have seen the splendour of the sun,
and of grass, and of flower!
To have lived and loved! for I hold
that to love for an hour
Is better for man and for woman
than cycles of blossoming Spring.

By Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

Stubby Sag Harbor Sonnet

The petty interference with light occasioned by shade.
See the shade for what it is.
Sycamore that shadows my movements.
The locals drive to work by way of the water.
To make sure it is still there,
a confirmation of their being,
.Windows down, a sandwich at noon, a newspaper.
I have nothing to add to the nature of zero and one.
The click of a tiny chisel on jade once organized centuries.
Now we lack the silence that framed true words.
There will be stories lost to a roar of falling bricks.
There will be poems that swallowed hard.
They will use scorned prepositions and adjectives.
They will say nothing more than themselves.
They will return to the fold the fold's work.


By Marvin Bell

Ragwort

Ragwort

Ragwort, thou humble flower wih tattered leaves,
I love to see thee come and litter gold,
What time the summer binds her russet sheaves;
Decking rude spots in beauties manifold,
That without thee were dreary to behold,
Sunburnt and bare -- the meadow bank, the baulk
That leads a wagon-way through mellow fields,
Rich with the tints that harvest's plenty yields,
Browns of all hues; and everywhere I walk
Thy waste of shining blossoms richly shields
The sunburnt sward, in splendid hues, that burn
So bright and glaring that the very light
Of the rich sunshine doth to paleness turn,
And seems but very shadows in thy sight.

By John Clare.

Old Man

Old man

Old Man, or Lad's love - in the name there's nothing
To one that know's not Lad's- Love or Old Man,
The hoar- green feathery herb, almost a tree,
Growing with rosemary and lavender.
Even to one that knows it well , the names
Half decorate, half perlex, the thing it is:
At least, what that is clings not to the names
In spite of time. And yet I like the names.

The herb itself I like not, but for certain
I love it, as some day the child will love it
Who plucks a feather from the door-side bush
Whenever she goes in or out of the house.
Often she waits there, snipping and shrivelling
The shreds at last on to the path, perhaps
Thinking , perhaps of nothing, till she snffs
Her fingers and runs off. The bush is still
But half as tall as she , though it is as old;
So well she clips it. Not a word she says;
And I can only wonder how much hereafter
She will remember, with that bitter sc`ent,
Of garden rows, and ancient damson trees
Topping a hedge, a bent path to a door,
A low thick bush beside the door, and me
Forbidding her to pick.
As for myself,
Where first I met the bitter scent is lost.
I, too, often shrivel the grey shreds,
Sniff them and think and sniff again and try
Once more to think what it is I am remembering,
Always in vain. I cannot like the scent,
Yet I would rather give up others more sweet,
With no meaning, than this bitter one.
I have mislaid the key. I sniff the spray
And think of nothing; I see and hear nothing;
Yet seem, too, to be listening, lying in wait
For what I should, yet never can, remember:
No garden appears no path, no hoar-green bush
Of Lad's-Love, or Old Man, no child besides,
Neither father or mother, nor any playmate;
Only an avenue dark, nameless, without end.

By Edward Thomas.

Like Queen Christina

Like Queen Christina

Orange and blue and then grey
THe frosty twilight comes down
Through the thin trees. The fresh snow
Holds the light longer than the sky.
Skaters on the pond vanish
In dusk, but their voices stay.
Calling and laughing, and birds
Twitter and cry in the reeds.
Indoors as night fills the white rooms.
You stand in the candle light
Laughing like a splendid jewel.

By Kenneth Rexroth.

The Bare Tree

The Bare Tree

My mother said to me,"When one sees
The tree in leaf one thinks the beauty of the tree
in in its leaves, and then one see the bare tree,"

By Samuel Menashe.

Postcard

Postcard


I'm thinking about you. What else can I say?
The palm trees on the reverse
are a delusion; so is the pink sand.
What we have are the usual
fractured coke bottles and the smell
of backed-up drains, too sweet,
like a mango on the verge
of rot, which we have also.
The air clear sweat, mosquitoes
& their tracks; birds & elusive


Time comes in waves here, a sickness, one
day after the other rolling on;
I move up, it's called
awake, then down into the uneasy
nights but never
forward. The roosters crow
for hours before dawn, and a prodded
child howls & howls
on the pocked road to school,
in the hold with the baggage
there are two prisoners,
their heads shaved by bayonets, & ten
crates
of queasy chicks. Each spring
there's race of cripples, from the store
to the church. This is the sort of junk
I carry with me, and a clipping
about democracy from the local paper.


Outside the window
they're building the damn hotel,
nail by nail, someone's
crumbling dream. A universe that includes
you
can't be all bad, but
does it? At this distance
you're a mirage, a glossy image
fixed in the posture
of the last time I saw you.
Turn you over, there's the place
for the address. Wish you were
here. Love comes
in waves like the ocean, a sickness which
a sickness which
goes on
& on, a hollow cave
in the head, filling & pounding, a kicked ear.


By Margaret Atwood

Meeting in the Road

Meeting in the Road

In a narrow road where there was not room to pass
My carriage met the carriage of a young man.
And while his axle was touching my axle
In the narrow road I asked him where he lived.
"The place where I live is easy enough to find,
Easy to find and difficult to forget.
The gates of my house are built of yellow gold,
The hall of my house is paved with white jade,
On the hall table flagons of wine are set,
I have summoned to serve me dancers of Han-Tan,
In the midst of the courtyard grows a cassia- tree -
And candles on its branches flaring away the nigh."

By Anon. First Century A.D.

PineTree Tops

Pine Tree Tops

In the blue night
frost haze, the sky glows
with the moon
pine tree tops
bend snow blue, fade
into sky, frost, starlight.
the creak of boots.
rabbit tracks, deer tracks,
what do we know.

By Gary Snyder

The Jackdaw

The Jackdaw

There is a bird who, by his coat,
And by the hoarseness of his note,
Might be suppos'd a crow;
A great frequenter of the church,
Where, bishop-like, he finds a perch,
And dormitory too.

Above the steeple shines a plate,
That turns and turns, to indicate
From what point blows the weather.
Look up - your brains begin to swim,
'Tis in the clouds - that pleases him,
He chooses it the rather.

Fond of the speculative height,
Thither he wings his airy flight,
And thence securely sees
The bustle and the raree - show
That occupy mankind below,
Secure and at his ease.

You think no doubt, he sits and muses
On future broken bones and bruises,
If he should chance to fall.
No; not a single thought like that
Eploys his philosophic pate,
Or troubles it at all.

He sees, that this great roundabout -
The world, with all its motley rout,
Church, army, physic, law,
Its customs, and its bus'nesses, -
Is no concern at all of his,
And says - what says he? - Caw.

Thrice happy bird! I too have seen
Much of the vanities of men;
And, sick of having seen 'em,
Would cheerfully these limbs resign
For such a pair of wings as thine,
And such a head between 'em.

By William Cowper (1731-1800}

On observing a Blossom on the first of February1796

On Observing a Blossom on the first of February 1796

Sweet flower, that peeping from thy stem
unfoldest timidly, (for in strange sort
This dark, frieze-coated, hoarse, teeth-chatting month
Hath borrowed Zephyr's voice, and gazed upon thee
With blue voluptuous eye), alas, poor Flower!
These are but flatteries of the faithless year.
Perchance, escaped its unknown polar cave,
Even now the keen North-East is on its way.
Flower that must perish! Shall I liken thee
To some sweet girl of too too rapid growth
Nipp'd by consumption mid untimely charms?
Or to Bristowa's bard, the wonderous boy!
An amaranth, which earth scarce seem'd to own,
Till disappointment came, and pelting wrong
Beat it to earth? Or indignant grief
Shall I compare thee to Poor Poland's hope,
Bright flower of hope killed in the opening bud?
Farewell, sweet blossom! Better fate be thine
And mock my boding! Dim similitudes
Weaving in moral strains, I've stolen one hour
From anxious Self, Life's cruel taskmaster!
And the warm wooings of this sunny day
Tremble along my frame and harmonise
The attempered organ, that even saddest thoughts
Mix deftly on a soft-toned instrument.

By Samuel Taylor-Coleridge