Poem of the Day

We haven’t heard from Miss Emily in a while.

A poor—torn heart—a tattered heart—
By Emily Dickinson

A poor—torn heart—a tattered heart—
That sat it down to rest—
Nor noticed that the Ebbing Day
Flowed silver to the West—
Nor noticed Night did soft descend—
Nor Constellation burn—
Intent upon the vision
Of latitudes unknown.

The angels—happening that way
This dusty heart espied—
Tenderly took it up from toil
And carried it to God—
There—sandals for the Barefoot—
There—gathered from the gales—
Do the blue havens by the hand
Lead the wandering Sails.

Here’s another I snagged from Sonnet Central.

Slow Fades the Sunlight
By Ralph Renaude

Slow fades the sunlight from each lonely hill,
And the pale half-moon paints with shadowy hue
The sleeping earth; how soon doth night renew
Watch o’er a world–so passionless, so still!
So free from all the turbulent thoughts that fill
And thrill the human soul, deep hid from view!
Oh! would that we poor, tiréd mortals, too,
Might seek and find repose. Ah! Not until
We learn, through life, to know and understand
The million chords–struck by some unseen hand
On the responsive, yearning soul of man–
Strange and conflicting since the world began;
Then all of beauty, truth, and love will find
Abiding echo in our heart and mind.

Mary Oliver is so adept at taking a small occurence and making a wonderful poem out of it!

I’m back from hiatus. Last week was just a bit much for me and even a small thing like the PotD was more than I could handle. I’m working on replenishing my file, though, so hopefully there won’t be any more imminent lapses. I got this one from Ted Kooser’s website.

No Children, No Pets
By Sue Ellen Thompson

I bring the cat’s body home from the vet’s
in a running-shoe box held shut
with elastic bands. Then I clean
the corners where she has eaten and
slept, scrubbing the hard bits of food
from the baseboard, dumping the litter
and blasting the pan with a hose. The plastic
dishes I hide in the basement, the pee-
soaked towel I put in the trash. I put
the catnip mouse in the box and I put
the box away, too, in a deep
dirt drawer in the earth.

When the death-energy leaves me,
I go to the room where my daughter slept
in nursery school, grammar school, high school,
I lie on her milky bedspread and think
of the day I left her at college, how nothing
could keep me from gouging the melted candle-wax
out from between her floorboards,
or taking a razor blade to the decal
that said to the firemen, “Break
this window first.” I close my eyes now
and enter a place that’s clearly
expecting me, swaddled in loss
and then losing that, too, as I move
from room to bone-white room
in the house of the rest of my life.

Continuing on my sleep theme…

To Sleep
By Charlotte Smith

Come balmy Sleep! tired Nature’s soft resort!
On these sad temples all thy poppies shed;
And bid gay dreams from Morpheus’ airy court,
Float in light vision round my aching head!
Secure of all thy blessings, partial Power!
On his hard bed the peasant throws him down;
And the poor sea boy, in the rudest hour,
Enjoys thee more than he who wears a crown.
Clasped in her faithful shepherd’s guardian arms,
Well may the village girl sweet slumbers prove,
And they, O gentle Sleep! still taste thy charms,
Who wake to labor, liberty and love.
But still thy opiate aid dost thou deny
To calm the anxious breast; to close the streaming eye.

I’ve had a terrible time sleeping this week. I haven’t gone outside to cry, though… yet.

Abandonment
By Amélie Rives

Sometimes when walls seem enemies, and sleep
Given to others like a cruel jest
Sent for my mocking, I, being mad for rest,
Creep out all lonely past the huddled sheep,—
Stirring with drowsy tang of bells that keep
Soft iterance through the whispery night, where nest
And nestling sway, by winnowing wind caressed,—
There fling myself along the grass to weep,
Sobs gathering, hands gripped hard into the earth,—
The blesséd earth that takes us back at last!—
And think, “Ah, could this knowledge now befall
Some woman who for long hath thought me worth
Only her hatred, she would hold me fast
And strive to comfort me, forgetting all.”

I do really think Yeats is amazing!

O Do Not Love Too Long
By William Butler Yeats

Sweetheart, do not love too long:
I loved long and long,
And grew to be out of fashion
Like an old song.

All through the years of our youth
Neither could have known
Their own thought from the other’s,
We were so much at one.

But O, in a minute she changed–
O do not love too long,
Or you will grow out of fashion
Like an old song.

Yesterday I started reading The Fourth Bear by Jasper Fforde. If you’re not familiar with his work, you’re missing out! I knew the book would be chock full of literary references and 50 pages in, I’m not disappointed. There is a hilarious scene with Dorian Gray as a used car salesman. He offers a “unique guarantee” with certain cars that they will never age. The secret is a painting in the trunk. I nearly howled with laughter! Anyway, this poem is certainly not funny, but it is by Oscar Wilde…

The Grave of Shelley
By Oscar Wilde

Like burnt-out torches by a sick man’s bed
Gaunt cypress-trees stand round the sun-bleached stone;
Here doth the little night-owl make her throne,
And the slight lizard show his jewelled head.
And, where the chaliced poppies flame to red,
In the still chamber of yon pyramid
Surely some Old-World Sphinx lurks darkly hid,
Grim warder of this pleasaunce of the dead.

Ah! sweet indeed to rest within the womb
Of Earth, great mother of eternal sleep,
But sweeter far for thee a restless tomb
In the blue cavern of an echoing deep,
Or where the tall ships founder in the gloom
Against the rocks of some wave-shattered steep.

My thought process for today:

1) I’d like to post a sonnet.
2) I’ll head over to Sonnet Central.
3) Let’s check out the Canadian sonnets since I’ve been reading Canadian author Margaret Atwood recently.
4) Oh, I like the name Helena.
5) Bingo!

Does that qualify as a method to the madness?

Vanished Years
By Helena Coleman

She sitteth in the sunshine, old and grey,
Her faded kerchief crossed upon her breast,
Her withered form in sober colors dressed,
Her thoughts fixed ever on the Far-away;
She scarcely sees the children at their play,
But looks beyond them to the crimsoning West
And still beyond, where everlasting rest
Remains to close and crown her little day.
But on her tranquil and unconscious face,
In lines engraved by joy no less than tears,
The story of her pilgrimage we trace,
For Youth, quick-flying, left his dearer part,
And all the fragrance of the vanished years,
Imperishable, lies within her heart.

I wrote a paper on Shelley my sophomore year in HS (on which I got a C because my teacher was a bit unreasonable). I’m pretty sure this was one of the poems I “analyzed” for the paper.

Hymn of Pan
By Percy Bysshe Shelley

From the forests and highlands
   We come, we come;
From the river-girt islands,
   Where loud waves are dumb
Listening to my sweet pipings.
      The wind in the reeds and the rushes,
      The bees on the bells of thyme,
      The birds on the myrtle-bushes,
      The cicale above in the lime,
         And the lizards below in the grass,
Were as silent as ever old Tmolus was,
         Listening to my sweet pipings.

Liquid Peneus was flowing—
   And all dark Tempe lay
In Pelion’s shadow, outgrowing
   The light of the dying day,
   Speeded by my sweet pipings.
      The Sileni and Sylvans and fauns,
      And the Nymphs of the woods and wave
      To the edge of the moist river-lawns,
      And the brink of the dewy caves,
         And all that did then attend and follow,
Were silent with love,—as you now, Apollo,
         With envy of my sweet pipings.

I sang of the dancing stars,
   I sang of the dedal earth,
And of heaven, and the Giant wars,
   And Love, and Death, and Birth.
      And then I changed my pipings,—
      Singing how down the vale of Mænalus
      I pursued a maiden, and clasped a reed.
      Gods and men, we are all deluded thus;
      It breaks in our bosom, and then we bleed.
         All wept—as I think both ye now would,
If envy or age had not frozen your blood—
         At the sorrow of my sweet pipings.

We read this one over Thanksgiving, from my aunt’s copy of Red Suitcase. I really love the lines:
poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes,
they are sleeping. They are the shadows
drifting across our ceilings the moment
before we wake up. What we have to do
is live in a way that lets us find them.

Valentine For Ernest Mann
By Naomi Shihab Nye

You can’t order a poem like you order a taco.
Walk up to the counter, say, “I’ll take two”
and expect it to be handed back to you
on a shiny plate.

Still, I like your spirit.
Anyone who says, “Here’s my address,
write me a poem,” deserves something in reply.
So I’ll tell you a secret instead:
poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes,
they are sleeping. They are the shadows
drifting across our ceilings the moment
before we wake up. What we have to do
is live in a way that lets us find them.

Once I knew a man who gave his wife
two skunks for a valentine.
He couldn’t understand why she was crying.
“I thought they had such beautiful eyes.”
And he was serious. He was a serious man
who lived in a serious way. Nothing was ugly
just because the world said so. He really
liked those skunks. So, he re-invented them
as valentines and they became beautiful.
At least, to him. And the poems that had been hiding
in the eyes of skunks for centuries
crawled out and curled up at his feet.

Maybe if we re-invent whatever our lives give us
we find poems. Check your garage, the odd sock
in your drawer, the person you almost like, but not quite.
And let me know.

One of the clues in the crossword puzzle yesterday was word repeated in “The Whiffenpoof Song”. Adam and I had no idea what on earth The Whiffenpoof Song was and were highly amused by the word Whiffenpoof. We finished the (New York Times Friday) puzzle without looking anything up (go us!) and the word turned out to be BAA. Adam had already made up a Whiffenpoof Song of his own, but we were intrigued so we had to look it up. Imagine our shock that The Whiffenpoofs are the oldest collegiate a cappella group in the US. It turns out that part of their song was based on a poem by Rudyard Kipling. As I’m still greatly entertained by the word Whiffenpoof, I’m sharing the poem just so I can tell you this story!

Gentlemen-Rankers
By Rudyard Kipling

To the legion of the lost ones, to the cohort of the damned,
   To my brethren in their sorrow overseas,
Sings a gentleman of England cleanly bred, machinely crammed,
   And a trooper of the Empress, if you please.
Yea, a trooper of the forces who has run his own six horses,
   And faith he went the pace and went it blind,
And the world was more than kin while he held the ready tin,
   But to-day the Sergeant’s something less than kind.
   We’re poor little lambs who’ve lost our way,
   Baa! Baa! Baa!
   We’re little black sheep who’ve gone astray,
   Baa—aa—aa!
   Gentlemen-rankers out on the spree,
   Damned from here to Eternity,
   God ha’ mercy on such as we,
   Baa! Yah! Bah!

Oh, it’s sweet to sweat through stables, sweet to empty kitchen slops,
   And it’s sweet to hear the tales the troopers tell,
To dance with blowzy housemaids at the regimental hops
   And thrash the cad who says you waltz too well.
Yes, it makes you cock-a-hoop to be “Rider” to your troop,
   And branded with a blasted worsted spur,
When you envy, O how keenly, one poor Tommy being cleanly
   Who blacks your boots and sometimes calls you “Sir”.

If the home we never write to, and the oaths we never keep,
   And all we know most distant and most dear,
Across the snoring barrack-room return to break our sleep,
   Can you blame us if we soak ourselves in beer?
When the drunken comrade mutters and the great guard-lantern gutters
   And the horror of our fall is written plain,
Every secret, self-revealing on the aching white-washed ceiling,
   Do you wonder that we drug ourselves from pain?

We have done with Hope and Honour, we are lost to Love and Truth,
   We are dropping down the ladder rung by rung,
And the measure of our torment is the measure of our youth.
   God help us, for we knew the worst too young!
Our shame is clean repentance for the crime that brought the sentence,
   Our pride it is to know no spur of pride,
And the Curse of Reuben holds us till an alien turf enfolds us
   And we die, and none can tell Them where we died.
   We’re poor little lambs who’ve lost our way,
   Baa! Baa! Baa!
   We’re little black sheep who’ve gone astray,
   Baa—aa—aa!
   Gentlemen-rankers out on the spree,
   Damned from here to Eternity,
   God ha’ mercy on such as we,
   Baa! Yah! Bah!

P.S. Bing Crosby apparently made The Whiffenpoof Song into a big hit! Check it out!

This one was quoted in Main Street.

St. Agnes’ Eve
By Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Deep on the convent-roof the snows
   Are sparkling to the moon:
My breath to heaven like vapour goes:
   May my soul follow soon!
The shadows of the convent-towers
   Slant down the snowy sward,
Still creeping with the creeping hours
   That lead me to my Lord:
Make Thou my spirit pure and clear
   As are the frosty skies,
Or this first snowdrop of the year
   That in my bosom lies.

As these white robes are soil’d and dark,
   To yonder shining ground;
As this pale taper’s earthly spark,
   To yonder argent round;
So shows my soul before the Lamb,
   My spirit before Thee;
So in mine earthly house I am,
   To that I hope to be.
Break up the heavens, O Lord! and far,
   Thro’ all yon starlight keen,
Draw me, thy bride, a glittering star,
   In raiment white and clean.

He lifts me to the golden doors;
   The flashes come and go;
All heaven bursts her starry floors,
   And strows her lights below,
And deepens on and up! the gates
   Roll back, and far within
For me the Heavenly Bridegroom waits,
   To make me pure of sin.
The sabbaths of Eternity,
   One sabbath deep and wide—
A light upon the shining sea—
   The Bridegroom with his bride!