A Mountain Revelry

To wash and rinse our souls of their age-old sorrows,
We drained a hundred jugs of wine.
A splendid night it was . . . .
In the clear moonlight we were loath to go to bed,
But at last drunkenness overtook us;
And we laid ourselves down on the empty mountain,
The earth for pillow, and the great heaven for coverlet

By Li Po

Warning

Warning

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandles, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people's gardens
And learn to spit.
You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.
But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.
But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

By Jenny Joseph

Early Morning Fox

Early Morning Fox

He saw him---he always looked ahead
while I was looking at my feet .
He saw him cross the pathway
in the early morning dew, stop
and look up and vanish.
" a fox," he whispered, and I saw
the back legs vanish in the wood.
The soft pads made no sound
in the damp leaves, and if he watched
us with bright eyes under the dripping
ivy we never saw him move.
Only the river in the misty air
flowed silently and the high branches
stirred in the dawn wind.

By Margaret Caunt.

The Rose Family

The Rose Family,

The rose is a rose,
And was always a rose.
But now the theory goes
That the apple's a rose,
And the pear is, and so's
The plum, I suppose.
The dear only knows
What will next prove a rose.
You, of course, are a rose--
But were always a rose.

By Robert Lee Frost

Pussy- Willow

Pussy-Willow

By the road in the field,
Greeting each new-comer,---
Pussy-willows wave their plumes,
Heralding the summer.

The Garden

The Garden

The ordered curly and plain cabbages
Are all set out like school-children in rows;
In six short weeks shall these no longer please,
For with that ink- proud lady the rose, pleasure goes.

I cannot think what moved the poet men
So to write panegyrics of that foolish
Simpleton - while wild rose as fresh again
Lives, and the drowsed cabbages keep soil coolish.

By Ivor Gurney

Leisure

Leisure

What is this life, if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?

No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

William H. Davies (1870-1940)

The Cliff -Top

The Cliff -Top has a carpet
Of lilac, gold and green:
The blue sky bounds the ocean,
The white clouds scud between.

A flock of gulls are wheeling
And wailing round my seat;
Above my head is heaven,
The sea beneath my feet.

By Robert Bridges

To a Prize Bird

To a Prize Bird

You suit me well, for you can make me laugh,
nor are you blinded by the caff
that every wind sends spinning from the ick.

You know to think, and what you think you speak
with much of Samson's pride and bleak
finality, and none dare bid you stop.

Pride sits you well, so strut, colossal bird.
No barnyard makes you look absurd;
Your brazen claws are staunch against defeat.

By Marianne Moore (1887-1972)

The Daisy

The Daisy

The daisy is a happy flower,
And comes at early spring,
And brings with it the sunny hour
When bees are on the wing.

It brings with it the butterfly,
And early humble-bee;
With the polyanthus' golden eye,
And blooming apple-tree;

Hedge-sparrows from the mossy nest
In the old garden hedge,
Where schoolboys, in their idle glee,
Seek pooties as their pledge.


The cow stands browsing all the day
Over the orchard gate,
And eats her bit of sweet old hay;
And Goody stands to wait,


Lest what's not eaten the rude wind
May raise and snatch away
Over the neighbour's hedge behind,
Where hungry cattle lay.

By John Clare (1793-1864)

Evening on the Beach

Evening on the Beach.

It is a beauteous evening, calm and free;
The holy time is quiet as a num
Breathless with adorayion; the broad sun
Is sinking down in its tranquility;
The gentleness of heaven is on the sea:
Listen! the mighty Being is awake,
And doth with his eternal motion make
A sound like thunder - everlastingly.
Dear child! dear girl! that walkest with me here,
If thou appear untouched by solemn thought
Thy nature is not therefore less divine:
Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year.
And worshipp'st at the Temple's inner shrine,
God being with thee when we know it not.

By William Wordsworth.

Dirge in the Woods

Dirge in the Woods

A wind sways the pines,
And below
Not a breath of wild air;
Still as the mosses that glow
On the flooring and over the lines
Of the roots here and there.
The pine tree- top drops its dead;
They are quiet, as under the dea.

Overhead, overhead
Rushes life in a race,
And we go,
And we drop like fruits of the tree,
Even we,
Even so.

By George Meredith (1828-1909)

Sea-Fever

Sea-Fever

I must go down to the seas again, to the
lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to seer
her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song
and the white sails shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face and a grey
dawn breaking.

I must go down to the seas again, for the call
of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call rhat may not be
denied;
And all I ask is a wi dy day with the white
clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume,
and the sea-gulls crying. I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way where
the wind's like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing
fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the
long trick's over.

By John Masefield

Spirit of Freedom Thou Dost Love The Sea

Spirit of freedom, thou dost love the sea,
Trackless and storm-tost ocean wild and free,
Faint symbol of thine own eternity.
The seagulls wheel and and soar and fearless roam;
The storm petrel dashes through the foam;
The mighty billows heave, the tempests roar,
The diapason thunders shake the shore
And chant the song of freedom evermore.

By Henry Nehemiah Dodge.

Crossing The Bar

Crossing the Bar.

Sunset and evening star,
and one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the
boundless deep
Turns again home.

Twlight and evenig bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;

For tho' from out bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.

By Alfred Lord Tennyson.

Fresh From The Void

Fresh From The Void

Fresh from the void
The moon
On the waves of the sea.

By Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902)

The Die Hards

The Die Hards

We go, in winter's biting wind,
On many a short-lived winter day,
With aching back but willing mind
To dig and double-dig the clay.

All in November's soaking mist
We stand and prune the naked tree
While all our love and interest
Seem quenched in blue-nosed misery.

We go in withering July
To ply the hard incessent hoe;
Panting beneath the brazen sky
We sweat and grumble, but we go.

We go to plead with grudging men,
And think it is a bit of luck
When we can wangle now and then
A load or two of farmyard muck.

What do we look as reward?
Some little sounds, and scents, and scenes:
A small hand darting strawberry-ward,
A woman's apron full of greens.

A busy neighbour, forced to stay
By sight and smell of wallflower-bed;
The plum -trees on an autumn day,
Yellow, and violet, and red.

Tired people sitting on the grass,
Lulled by the bee, drugged by the rose,
while all the little winds that pass
Tell them the honysuckle blows.

The sense that we have brought to birth
Out of the cold and heavy soil,
These blessed fruits and flowers of earth
Is large reward for all our toil.

By Ruth Pitter.

Ariel's Song

Ariel's Song

Where the bee sucks, there suck I,
In a cowslip's bell I lie;
There I crouch when owls do cry.
On the bat's back I do fly
After summer merrily:
Merrily, merrily shall I live now
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.

By William Shakespeare.
from the Tempest

The World Below the Brine

The World Below the Brine

The World Below the Brine,
Forests at the bottom of the sea, the branches
and the leaves,
Sea-lettuce, vast lichens, strange flowers and
seeds, the tick tangle, openings, and pink
turf.
Different colors, pale gray and green, purple,
white, and gold, the play of light through the
water,
Dumb swimmers there among the rocks, coral,
gluten, grass, rushes, and the aliment of the
swimmers,
Sluggish existences grazing there suspended, or
slowly crawling close to the bottom,
The sperm-whale at the surface blowing air and
spray, or disporting with his flukes,
The leaden-eyed shark, and the walrus, the turtle,
the hairy sea-leopard, and the sting-ray,
Passions there, wars, pursuits, tribes, sight in
those ocean-depths, breathing that thick-
breathing air, as so many do,
The change thence to the sight here, and to the
subtle air breathed by beings like us who walk
this sphere,
The change onward from ours to that of beings
who walk other spheres.

By Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

And the Days are not Full Enough

And the Days are not Full Enough

And the days are not full enough.
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
Not shaking the grass.

By Ezra Pound (1885-1972)

Lakeland Skating

Lakeland Skating


and in the frosty season, when the sun
Was set, and visible for many a mile
The cottage windows blazed through a twilight gloom,
I heeded not their summons: happy time
It was indeed for all of us---for me
It was a time of rapture! Clear and loud
The village clock tolled six,---I wheeled about,
Proud and exulting like a untired horse
That cares not for his home.
all shod with steel,
We hissed along the polished ice in games
Confederate, imitative of the chase
And woodland pleasures,---the resounding horn,
the pack loud chiming, and the hunted hare,
So through the darkness and the cold we flew,
And not a voice was idle; with the din
Smitten, the precipices rang aloud;
The leafless trees and every icy crag
Tinkled like iron; while far distant hills
Into the tumult sent an alien sound
Of melancholy not unnoticed, while the stars
Eastward were sparkling clear, and in the west
The orange sky of evening died away.
Not seldom from the uproar I retired
Into a silent bay, or sportively
Glanced sideway, leaving the tumultuous throng,
To cut across the reflex of a star
That fled, and, flying still before me, gleamed
Upon the glassy plain; and oftentimes,
When we had given our bodies to the wind,
And all the shadowy banks on either side
Came sweeping through the darkness, spinning still
The rapid line of motion, then at once
Have I, reclined back upon my heels,
Stopped short; yet still the solitary cliffs
Wheeled by me--- even as if the earth had rolled
With visible motion her diurnal round !
Behind me did they strech in solemn train,
Feebler and feebler, and I stoodand watched
Till all was tranquil as a dreamless sleep.

By William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

To Everything there is a Season

To Everything there is a Season

and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant,
and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down,
and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn,
and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather
stones together; and a time to embrace,
and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to get, and a time to loose; a time to keep,
and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence,
and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war,
and a time of peace

Ecclesiates, chapter 3

Spring Goeth all in White

Spring Goeth all in White

Spring goeth all in white,
Crowned with milk-white may:
In fleecy flocks of light
O'er heaven the white clouds stray:

White butterflies in the air;
White daisies prank the ground:
The cherry and hoary pear
Scatter their snow around

Robert Bridges (1844-1930)

To Daffodils

To Daffodils

Fair daffodils, we weep to see
You haste away to soon;
As yet the early-rising sun
Has not attained his noon.
Stay, stay
Until the hasting day
Has run
But to the evensong;
And, having prayed together, we
Will go with you along.

We have short time to stay as you,
We have as short a spring:
As quick a growth to meet decay,
As you, or anything,
We die
As your hour's do. and dry
Away
Like to the summer's rain;
Or as the pearls of morning's dew,
Ne'er to be found again.

By Robert Herrick(1591-1674)