Fireflies in the Garden
Robert Frost
Here come real stars to fill the upper skies,
And here on earth come emulating flies,
That though they never equal stars in size,
(And they were never really stars at heart)
Achieve at times a very star-like start.
Only, of course, they can’t sustain the part.
Dust of Snow
Robert Frost
The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.
And the traveller hopes: “Let me be far from any
Physician”; and the ports have names for the sea;
The citiless, the corroding, the sorrow;
And North means to all: “Reject”.
And the great plains are for ever where cold creatures are hunted,
And everywhere; the light birds flicker and flaunt;
Under a scolding flag the lover
Of islands may see at last,
Faintly, his limited hope; as he nears the glitter
Of glaciers; the sterile immature mountains intense
In the abnormal day of this world, and a river’s
Fan-like polyp of sand.
Then let the good citizen here find natural marvels:
The horse-shoe ravine, the issue of steam from a cleft
In the rock, and rocks, and waterfalls brushing the
Rocks, and among the rock birds.
And the student of prose and conduct, places to visit;
The site of a church where a bishop was put in a bag,
The bath of a great historian, the rock where
An outlaw dreaded the dark.
Remember the doomed man thrown by his horse and crying:
“Beautiful is the hillside, I will not go”;
The old woman “He that I loved the
Best, to him I was worst,”
For Europe is absent. This is an island and therefore
Unreal. And the steadfast affections of its dead may be bought
By those whose dreams accuse them of being
Spitefully alive, and the pale
From too much passion of kissing feel pure in its deserts.
Can they? For the world is, and the present, and the lie.
And the narrow bridge over a torrent,
And the small farm under a crag
Are natural settings for the jealousies of a province;
And the weak vow of fidelity is formed by the cairn;
And within the indigenous figure on horseback
On the bridle-path down by the lake
The blood moves also by crooked and furtive inches,
Asks all our questions: “Where is the homage? When
Shall justice be done? Who is against me?
Why am I always alone?”
Present then the world to the world with its mendicant shadow;
Let the suits be flash, the Minister of Commerce insane;
Let jazz be bestowed on the huts, and the beauty’s
Set cosmopolitan smile.
For our time has no favourite suburb; no local features
Are those of the young for whom all wish to care;
The promise is only a promise, the fabulous
Country impartially far.
Tears fall in all the rivers. Again some driver
Pulls on his gloves and in a blinding snowstorm starts
Upon his deadly journey; and again some writer
Runs howling to his art.
Giacometti’s Dog
Robert Wallace
Lopes in bronze:
scruffy,
thin. In
the Museum of Modern Art
head
down, neck long as sadness
lowering to hanging ears
– he’s eyeless-
that hear
nothing, and the sausage
muzzle
that leads him as
surely as eyes:
he might
be
dead, dried webs or clots of flesh
and fur
on the thin, long bones- but
isn’t, obviously
is obviously
traveling intent on his
own aims: legs
lofting
with a gayety the dead aren’t known
for, Going
onward in one place,
he doesn’t so much ignore
as not recognize
the well-
dressed Sunday hun-
dreds who passing, pausing make
his bronze
road
move. Why
do they come to admire
him?
They wouldn’t care for real dogs
less raggy
than he
is? It’s his tragic
insouciance
bugs them? or is
it that art can make us
cherish
anything- this command
of shaping and abutting space-
that makes us love
even mutts,
even the world, accep
even
the starry wheels by which we’re hurled
toward death, having
the rocks and
wind for comrades?
It’s not this starved hound,
but Giacometti seeing
him we see.
We’ll stand in line all day
to see one man
love anything enough.
The Tyger
William Blake
Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp,
Dare its deadly terrors clasp!
When the stars threw down their spears
And water’d heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
The Ecchoing Green
William Blake
The sun does arise,
And make happy the skies.
The merry bells ring
To welcome the Spring.
The sky-lark and thrush,
The birds of the bush,
Sing louder around,
To the bells’ cheerful sound.
While our sports shall be seen
On the Ecchoing Green.
Old John, with white hair
Does laugh away care,
Sitting under the oak,
Among the old folk,
They laugh at our play,
And soon they all say.
‘Such, such were the joys.
When we all girls & boys,
In our youth-time were seen,
On the Ecchoing Green.’
Till the little ones weary
No more can be merry
The sun does descend,
And our sports have an end:
Round the laps of their mothers,
Many sisters and brothers,
Like birds in their nest,
Are ready for rest;
And sport no more seen,
On the darkening Green.
We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;
How restlessly they speed and gleam and quiver,
Streaking the darkness radiantly! yet soon
Night closes round, and they are lost for ever:—
We rest—a dream has power to poison sleep;
We rise—one wandering thought pollutes the day;
We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep,
Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:—
It is the same!—For, be it joy or sorrow,
The path of its departure still is free;
Man’s yesterday may ne’er be like his morrow;
Nought may endure but Mutability.
Hawk’s Way
Theodore Olson
This was the hawk’s way. This way the hawk
Nested a moment on the incredible
Crag of the wind, sitting the air like rock.
This was the perilous, lovely way the hawk fell
Down the long hill of the wind, the anarch air
Shaped by his going: air become visible, bent
To a blade of beauty, cruel and taut and bare,
A bow of ecstasy, singing and insolent.
Then air deployed again, and was only air
On the empty way the hawk in his beauty went.
September Song
Geoffrey Hill
Undesirable you may have been, untouchable
you were not. Not forgotten
or passed over at the proper time.
As estimated, you died. Things marched,
sufficient, to that end.
Just so much Zyklon and leather, patented
terror, so many routine cries.
(I have made
an elegy for myself it
is true)
September fattens on vines. Roses
flake from the wall. The smoke
of harmless fires drifts to my eyes.
This is plenty. This is more than enough.
Fine Poems, Fine Art 