Her tears fell with the dews at even;
Her tears fell ere the dews were dried;
She could not look on the sweet heaven,
Either at morn or eventide.
After the flitting of the bats,
When thickest dark did trance the sky,
She drew her casement-curtain by,
And glanced athwart the glooming flats.
She only said, “The night is dreary,
He cometh not,” she said;
She said, “I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!”

Upon the middle of the night,
Waking she heard the night-fowl crow:
The cock sung out an hour ere light:
From the dark fen the oxen’s low
Came to her: without hope of change,
In sleep she seem’d to walk forlorn,
Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn
About the lonely moated grange.
She only said, “The day is dreary,
He cometh not,” she said;
She said, “I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!”

About a stone-cast from the wall
A sluice with blacken’d waters slept,
And o’er it many, round and small,
The cluster’d marish-mosses crept.
Hard by a poplar shook alway,
All silver-green with gnarled bark:
For leagues no other tree did mark
The level waste, the rounding gray.
She only said, “My life is dreary,
He cometh not,” she said;
She said “I am aweary, aweary
I would that I were dead!”

And ever when the moon was low,
And the shrill winds were up and away,
In the white curtain, to and fro,
She saw the gusty shadow sway.
But when the moon was very low
And wild winds bound within their cell,
The shadow of the poplar fell
Upon her bed, across her brow.
She only said, “The night is dreary,
He cometh not,” she said;
She said “I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!”

All day within the dreamy house,
The doors upon their hinges creak’d;
The blue fly sung in the pane; the mouse
Behind the mouldering wainscot shriek’d,
Or from the crevice peer’d about.
Old faces glimmer’d thro’ the doors
Old footsteps trod the upper floors,
Old voices called her from without.
She only said, “My life is dreary,
He cometh not,” she said;
She said, “I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!”

The sparrow’s chirrup on the roof,
The slow clock ticking, and the sound
Which to the wooing wind aloof
The poplar made, did all confound
Her sense; but most she loathed the hour
When the thick-moted sunbeam lay
Athwart the chambers, and the day
Was sloping toward his western bower.
Then said she, “I am very dreary,
He will not come,” she said;
She wept, “I am aweary, aweary,
Oh God, that I were dead!”

–Alfred Lord Tennyson

1

Opusculum paedagogum.

The pears are not viols,

Nudes or bottles.

They resemble nothing else.

2

They are yellow forms

Composed of curves

Bulging toward the base.

They are touched red.

3

They are not flat surfaces

Having curved outlines.

They are round

Tapering toward the top.

4

In a way they are modelled

There are bits of blue.

A hard dry leaf hangs

From the stem.

5

The yellow glistens.

It glistens with various yellows,

Citrons, oranges and greens

Flowering over the skin.

6

The shadows of the pears

Are blobs on the green cloth.

The pears are not seen

As the observer wills.

Walking down Bristol Street

The crowds upon the pavement

Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river

I heard a lover sing

Under an arch of of the railway:

‘Love has no ending.

‘I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you

Till China and Africa meet,

And the river jumps over the mountain

And the salmon sing in the street,

‘I’ll love you till the ocean

Is folded and hung up to dry

And the seven stars go squawking

Like geese about the sky.

‘The years shall run like rabbits,

For in my arms I hold

The Flower of the Ages,

And the first love of the world.’

But all the clocks in the city

Began to whirr and chime:

‘O let not Time deceive you,

You cannot conquer Time.

‘In the burrows of the Nightmare

Where Justice naked is,

Time watches from the shadow

And coughs when you would kiss.

‘In headaches and in worry

Vaguely life leaks away,

And Time will have his fancy

Tomorrow or today.

‘Into many a green valley

Drifts the appalling snow;

Time breaks the threaded dances

And the diver’s brilliant bow.

‘O plunge your hands in water,

Plunge them in up to the wrist;

Stare, stare in the basin

And wonder what you’ve missed.

‘The glacier knocks in the cupboard,

The desert sighs in the bed,

And the crack in the tea-cup opens

A lane to the land of the dead.

‘Where the beggars raffle the banknotes

And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,

And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,

And Jill goes down on her back.

‘O look, look in the mirror,

O look in your distress;

Life remains a blessing

Although you cannot bless.

‘O stand, stand at the window

As the tears scald and start;

You shall love your crooked neighbour

With your crooked heart.’

It was late, late in the evening,

The lovers they were gone;

The clocks had ceased their chiming

And the deep river ran on.

–W. H. Auden – The Rattle Bag (Edited by Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes)

(O that southern Russia where all the women

With white-shawled heads look so like Madonnas!)

I saw a young woman returning from the fountain,

Bearing, RUssian-style, as Roman women did in the time of Ovid,

Two pails suspended from the ends of a wooden

Yoke balanced on neck and shoulders.

And I saw a child in rags approach and speak to her.

Then, bending her body lovingly to the right,

She moved so the pail of pure water touched the cobblestone

Level with the lips of the child who had kneeled to drink.

2

One morning, in Rotterdam, on Boompjes quai

(It was September 18, 1900, around eight o-clock),

I observed two young ladies on their way to work;

Opposite one of the great iron bridges, they said farewell,

Their paths diverging.

Tenderly they embraced; their trembling hands

Wanted, but did not want, to part; their mouths

Withdrew sadly and came together again soon again

While they gazed fixedly into each other’s eyes…

They stood thus for a long moment side by side,

Straight and still amid the busy throng,

While the tugboats rumbled by on the river,

And the whistling trains maneuvered on the iron bridges.

3

Between Cordova and Seville

Is a little station where the South Express,

For no apparent reason, always stops.

In vain the traveler looks for a village

Beyond the station asleep under the eucalyptus:

He sees but the Andalusian countryside: green and golden.

But across the way, on the other side of the track,

Is a hut made of black boughs and clay,

From which, at the sound of the rain, ragged children swarm forth,

The eldest sister, leading them, comes forward on the platform

And, smiling, without uttering a word,

Dances for pennies.

Her feet in the heavy dust look black;

Her dark, filthy face is devoid of beauty;

She dances, and through the large holes of her ash-gray skirt,

One can see the agitation of her thin, naked thighs,

And the roll of her little yellow belly:

At the sight of which a few gentlemen,

Amid an aroma of cigars, chuckle obscenely in the dining car.

Post-Scriptum

O Lord, will it never be possible for me

To know the sweet woman, there in Southern Russia,

And those two young friends in Rotterdam,

And the young Andalusian beggar

And join with them

In an indissoluble friendship?

(Alas, they will not read these poems,

They will know neither my name, nor the feeling in my heart;

And yet they exist; they live now).

Will it never be possible for me to experience the great joy

Of knowing them?

For some strange reason, Lord, I feel that with those four

I should conquer a whole world!

–Valery Larbaud, 1881-1957 (Translated from the French by William Jay Smith) – A Book of Luminous Things (Edited and with an Introduction by Czeslaw Milosz)

–Czeslaw Milosz – A Book of Luminous Things

–Czeslaw Milosz – A Book of Luminous Things

–Soren Kierkegaard (Edited and Translated by Edward V. Hong and Edna H. Hong) – Works of Love

–Soren Kierkegaard (Edited and Translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong) – Works of Love

again. Obvious remedies slick

my tongue with saliva; solemn vows

forsaken, but not the celibacy sort,

which often shatter like clay pottery

upon roman stone: vacant vows. No,

these securities of faith crumple,

like porous leaves under foot-fall.

The dark deprives them of light,

the heat denies them water,

and sprites spit on their shriveled skin:

slippery lies.

Yahweh often walks the grove,

and presses the skins

to soil, and nurtures the naked

(crippled) on those clouded days,

the desiccated nights,

so they subsist

in Him.

–C. S. Lewis (taken from www.brainyquote.com)

“If such a one were to say, ‘Well, what good is it to order one’s life according to such a criterion?’ I would answer, ‘What good do you think that excuse will be in eternity?’ Eternity’s commandment is infinitely higher than any ever-so-sagacious excuse.”

–Soren Kierkegaard (Edited and Translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong) – Works of Love