December Poems 2

Christopher Pearse Cranch 
March 8, 1813 -- January 20, 1892


December

No more the scarlet maples flash and burn
Their beacon-fires from hilltop and from plain;
The meadow-grasses and the woodland fern
In the bleak woods lie withered once again.

The trees stand bare, and bare each stony scar
Upon the cliffs; half frozen glide the rills;
The steel-blue river like a scimitar
Lies cold and curved between the dusky hills.

Over the upland farm I take my walk,
And miss the flaunting flocks of golden-rod;
Each autumn flower a dry and leafless stalk,
Each Mossy field a track of frozen sod.

I hear no more the robin's summer song
Through the gray network of the wintry woods;
Only the cawing crows that all day long
Clamor about the windy solitudes.

Like agate stones upon earth's frozen breast,
The little pools of ice lie round and still;
While sullen clouds shut downward east and west
In marble ridges stretched from hill to hill.

Come once again, O southern wind,-once more
Come with they wet wings flapping at my pane;
Ere snow-drifts pile their mounds about my door,
One parting dream of summer bring again.

Ah, no! I hear the windows rattle fast;
I see the first flakes of the gathering snow,
That dance and whirl before the northern blast.
No countermand the march of days can know.

December drops no weak, relenting tear,
By our fond summer sympathies ensnared;
Nor from the perfect circle of the year
Can even winter's crystal gems be spared.




Helen Hunt Jackson  
October 18, 1830 –  August 12, 1885


A Calendar of Sonnets: December

The lakes of ice gleam bluer than the lakes
Of water 'neath the summer sunshine gleamed:
Far fairer than when placidly it streamed,
The brook its frozen architecture makes,
And under bridges white its swift way takes.
Snow comes and goes as messenger who dreamed
Might linger on the road; or one who deemed
His message hostile gently for their sakes
Who listened might reveal it by degrees.
We gird against the cold of winter wind
Our loins now with mighty bands of sleep,
In longest, darkest nights take rest and ease,
And every shortening day, as shadows creep
O'er the brief noontide, fresh surprises find.




Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell  
September 7, 1887 -  December 9, 1964


When Cold December

When cold December
Froze to grisamber
The jangling bells on the sweet rose-trees--
Then fading slow
And furred is the snow
As the almond's sweet husk--
And smelling like musk.
The snow amygdaline
Under the eglantine
Where the bristling stars shine
Like a gilt porcupine--
The snow confesses
The little Princesses
On their small chioppines
Dance under the orpines.
See the casuistries
Of their slant fluttering eyes--
Gilt as the zodiac
(Dancing Herodiac).
Only the snow slides
Like gilded myrrh--
From the rose-branches--hides
Rose-roots that stir.



William Cullen Bryant  
November 3, 1794 – June 12, 1878 


The Twenty-Second Of December

Wild was the day; the wintry sea
Moaned sadly on New-England's strand,
When first the thoughtful and the free,
Our fathers, trod the desert land.

They little thought how pure a light,
With years, should gather round that day;
How love should keep their memories bright,
How wide a realm their sons should sway.

Green are their bays; but greener still
Shall round their spreading fame be wreathed,
And regions, now untrod, shall thrill
With reverence when their names are breathed.

Till where the sun, with softer fires,
Looks on the vast Pacific's sleep,
The children of the pilgrim sires
This hallowed day like us shall keep.




Anna Seward  
December 12, 1747 – March 25, 1809


December Morning

I love to rise ere gleams the tardy light,
Winter's pale dawn; and as warm fires illume,
And cheerful tapers shine around the room,
Through misty windows bend the musing sight
Where, round the dusky lawn, the mansions white,
With shutters closed, peer faintly through the gloom,
That slow recedes; while yon gray spires assume,
Rising from their dark pile, an added height
By indistinctness given. Then to decree
The grateful thoughts to God, ere they unfold
To friendship or the Muse, or seek with glee
Wisdom's rich page. Oh, hours more worth than gold
By whose blest use we lengthen life, and, free
From drear decays of age, outlive the old.




Robert Fuller Murray  
December 26,1863 - 1894
 

A December Day

Blue, blue is the sea to-day,
Warmly the light
Sleeps on St. Andrews Bay --
Blue, fringed with white.

That's no December sky!
Surely 'tis June
Holds now her state on high,
Queen of the noon.

Only the tree-tops bare
Crowning the hill,
Clear-cut in perfect air,
Warn us that still

Winter, the aged chief,
Mighty in power,
Exiles the tender leaf,
Exiles the flower.

Is there a heart to-day,
A heart that grieves
For flowers that fade away,
For fallen leaves?

Oh, not in leaves or flowers
Endures the charm
That clothes those naked towers
With love-light warm.

O dear St. Andrews Bay,
Winter or Spring
Gives not nor takes away
Memories that cling

All round thy girdling reefs,
That walk thy shore,
Memories of joys and griefs
Ours evermore.


    
Ina D. Coolbrith
March 10, 1841 – February 29, 1928


December

Now the Summer all is over!
We have wandered through the clover,
We Have plucked in wood and lea
Blue-bell and anemone.

We were children of the Sun,
Very brown to look upon;
We were stained, hands and lips,
With the berries’ juicy tips.

And I think that we may know
Where the rankest nettles grow,
And where oak and ivy weave
Crimson glories to deceive.

Now the merry days are over!
Woodland-tenants seek their cover,
And the swallow leaves again
For his castle-nests in Spain.

Shut the door, and close the blind:
We shall have the bitter wind,
We shall have the dreary rain
Striving, driving at the pane.

Send the ruddy fire-light higher;
Draw your easy chair up nigher;
Through the winter, bleak and chill,
We may have our summer still.

Here are poems we may read—
Pleasant fancies to our need.
Ah, eternal Summer-time,
Dwells within the Poet’s rhyme!

All the birds’ sweet melodies
Linger in these songs of his;
And the blossoms of all ages
Waft their fragrance from his pages.




--Cat

December Poems

Samuel Taylor Coleridge
October 21, 1772 -- July 25, 1834


Come, come thou bleak December wind (fragment)

Come, come thou bleak December wind,
And blow the dry leaves from the tree!
Flash, like a Love-thought, thro' me, Death
And take a Life that wearies me.




     
Percy Bysshe Shelley

August 4, 1792 -- July 8, 1822


Song. Cold, Cold Is The Blast When December Is Howling

Cold, cold is the blast when December is howling,
Cold are the damps on a dying man's brow,--
Stern are the seas when the wild waves are rolling,
And sad is the grave where a loved one lies low;
But colder is scorn from the being who loved thee,
More stern is the sneer from the friend who has proved thee,
More sad are the tears when their sorrows have moved thee,
Which mixed with groans anguish and wild madness flow--

And ah! poor — has felt all this horror,
Full long the fallen victim contended with fate:
‘Till a destitute outcast abandoned to sorrow,
She sought her babe's food at her ruiner's gate--
Another had charmed the remorseless betrayer,
He turned laughing aside from her moans and her prayer,
She said nothing, but wringing the wet from her hair,
Crossed the dark mountain side, though the hour it was late.
'Twas on the wild height of the dark Penmanmawr,
That the form of the wasted -- reclined;
She shrieked to the ravens that croaked from afar,
And she sighed to the gusts of the wild sweeping wind.--
I call not yon rocks where the thunder peals rattle,
I call not yon clouds where the elements battle,
But thee, cruel -- I call thee unkind!'--

Then she wreathed in her hair the wild flowers of the mountain,
And deliriously laughing, a garland entwined,
She bedewed it with tears, then she hung o'er the fountain,
And leaving it, cast it a prey to the wind.
'Ah! go,' she exclaimed, 'when the tempest is yelling,
'Tis unkind to be cast on the sea that is swelling,
But I left, a pitiless outcast, my dwelling,
My garments are torn, so they say is my mind--'

Not long lived --, but over her grave
Waved the desolate form of a storm-blasted yew,
Around it no demons or ghosts dare to rave,
But spirits of peace steep her slumbers in dew.
Then stay thy swift steps mid the dark mountain heather,
Though chill blow the wind and severe is the weather,
For perfidy, traveller! cannot bereave her,
Of the tears, to the tombs of the innocent due.--

JULY, 1810.





John Keats
October 31, 1795 – February 23, 1821


In Drear-Nighted December

In drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy tree,
Thy branches ne'er remember
Their green felicity:
The north cannot undo them
With a sleety whistle through them;
Nor frozen thawings glue them
From budding at the prime.

In drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy brook,
Thy bubblings ne'er remember
Apollo's summer look;
But with a sweet forgetting,
They stay their crystal fretting,
Never, never petting
About the frozen time.

Ah! would 'twere so with many
A gentle girl and boy!
But were there ever any
Writhed not at passed joy?
The feel of not to feel it,
When there is none to heal it
Nor numbed sense to steel it,
Was never said in rhyme.





Robert Southey
August 12, 1774 -- March 21, 1843


Ode Written On The First Of December

Tho' now no more the musing ear
Delights to listen to the breeze
That lingers o'er the green wood shade,
 I love thee Winter! well.

Sweet are the harmonies of Spring,
Sweet is the summer's evening gale,
Pleasant the autumnal winds that shake
 The many-colour'd grove.

And pleasant to the sober'd soul
The silence of the wintry scene,
When Nature shrouds her in her trance

Not undelightful now to roam
The wild heath sparkling on the sight;
Not undelightful now to pace
 The forest's ample rounds;

And see the spangled branches shine,
And mark the moss of many a hue
That varies the old tree's brown bark,
 Or o'er the grey stone spreads.

The cluster'd berries claim the eye
O'er the bright hollies gay green leaves,
The ivy round the leafless oak
 Clasps its full foliage close.

So VIRTUE diffident of strength
Clings to RELIGION'S firmer aid,
And by RELIGION'S aid upheld
 Endures calamity.

Nor void of beauties now the spring,
Whose waters hid from summer sun
Have sooth'd the thirsty pilgrim's ear
 With more than melody.

The green moss shines with icey glare,
The long grass bends its spear-like form,
And lovely is the silvery scene
 When faint the sunbeams smile.

Reflection too may love the hour
When Nature, hid in Winter's grave,
No more expands the bursting bud
 Or bids the flowret bloom.

For Nature soon in Spring's best charms
Shall rise reviv'd from Winter's grave.
Again expand the bursting bud,
 And bid the flowret bloom.


     



Hilaire Belloc  
July 27, 1870 –  July 16, 1953


[Month of] December

Hoar Time about the house betakes him slow,
Seeking an entry for his weariness.
And in that dreadful company distress
And the sad night with silent footsteps go.
On my poor fire the brands are scarce aglow,
And in the woods without what memories press
Where, waning in the trees from less to less,
Mysterious bangs the hom6d moon and low.

For now December, full of aged care,
Comes in upon the yea and weakly grieves;
Mumbling his lost desires and his despair; .
And with mad trembling hand still interweaves,
The dank sear flower-stalks tangled in his hair,
While round about him whirl the rotten leaves.






William Stanley Merwin 
September 30, 1927


December Night

The cold slope is standing in darkness
But the south of the trees is dry to the touch

The heavy limbs climb into the moonlight bearing feathers
I came to watch these
White plants older at night
The oldest
Come first to the ruins

And I hear magpies kept awake by the moon
The water flows through its
Own fingers without end

Tonight once more
I find a single prayer and it is not for men



    


John Clare  
July 13, 1793 – May 20, 1864


December

While snow the window-panes bedim,
The fire curls up a sunny charm,
Where, creaming o'er the pitcher's rim,
The flowering ale is set to warm;
Mirth, full of joy as summer bees,
Sits there, its pleasures to impart,
And children, 'tween their parent's knees,
Sing scraps of carols o'er by heart.

And some, to view the winter weathers,
Climb up the window-seat with glee,
Likening the snow to falling feathers,
In fancy infant ecstasy;
Laughing, with superstitious love,
O'er visions wild that youth supplies,
Of people pulling geese above,
And keeping Christmas in the skies.

As tho' the homestead trees were drest,
In lieu of snow, with dancing leaves,
As tho' the sun-dried martin's nest,
Instead of ickles, hung the eaves,
The children hail the happy day -
As if the snow were April's grass,
And pleas'd, as 'neath the warmth of May,
Sport o'er the water froze as glass.



--Cat

Isaac Rosenberg - November 25

Isaac Rosenberg  November 25, 1890 – April 1, 1918

Considered to be one of the greatest of all English war poets




August 1914
                                                         
What in our lives is burnt
In the fire of this?
The heart's dear granary?
The much we shall miss?
Three lives hath one life -
Iron, honey, gold.
The gold, the honey gone -
Left is the hard and cold.
Iron are our lives
Molten right through our youth.
A burnt space through ripe fields
A fair mouth's broken tooth




Break of Day in the Trenches
                              
The darkness crumbles away
It is the same old druid Time as ever,
Only a live thing leaps my hand,
A queer sardonic rat,
As I pull the parapet's poppy
To stick behind my ear.
Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew
Your cosmopolitan sympathies,
Now you have touched this English hand
You will do the same to a German
Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure
To cross the sleeping green between.
It seems you inwardly grin as you pass
Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes,
Less chanced than you for life,
Bonds to the whims of murder,
Sprawled in the bowels of the earth,
The torn fields of France.
What do you see in our eyes
At the shrieking iron and flame
Hurled through still heavens?
What quaver -what heart aghast?
Poppies whose roots are in men's veins
Drop, and are ever dropping;
But mine in my ear is safe,
Just a little white with the dust.

                   


Soldier: Twentieth Century by Isaac Rosenberg
                              
I love you, great new Titan!
Am I not you?
Napoleon or Caesar
Out of you grew.
Out of the unthinkable torture,
Eyes kissed by death,
Won back to the world again,
Lost and won in a breath,
Cruel men are made immortal,
Out of your pain born.
They have stolen the sun's power
With their feet on your shoulders worn.
Let them shrink from your girth,
That has outgrown the pallid days,
When you slept like Circe's swine,
Or a word in the brain's way.



On Receiving News of the War

Snow is a strange white word.
No ice or frost
Has asked of bud or bird
For Winter's cost.
Yet ice and frost and snow
From earth to sky
This Summer land doth know.
No man knows why.
In all men's hearts it is.
Some spirit old
Hath turned with malign kiss
Our lives to mould.
Red fangs have torn His face.
God's blood is shed.
He mourns from His lone place
His children dead.
O! ancient crimson curse!
Corrode, consume.
Give back this universe
Its pristine bloom.




The Immortals
                              
I killed them, but they would not die.
Yea! all the day and all the night
For them I could not rest or sleep,
Nor guard from them nor hide in flight.
Then in my agony I turned
And made my hands red in their gore.
In vain - for faster than I slew
They rose more cruel than before.
I killed and killed with slaughter mad;
I killed till all my strength was gone.
And still they rose to torture me,
For Devils only die in fun.
I used to think the Devil hid
In women's smiles and wine's carouse.
I called him Satan, Balzebub.
But now I call him, dirty louse.


                                
-- Cat

Alfred Noyes -- September 16

 

Alfred Noyes September 16, 1880 –  June 25, 1958

 

 

 

Peace by Alfred Noyes

 

Give me the pulse of the tide again
And the slow lapse of the leaves,
The rustling gold of a field of grain
And a bird in the nested eaves;

 

And a fishing-smack in the old harbour
Where all was happy and young;
And an echo or two of the songs I knew
When songs could still be sung.

 

For I would empty my heart of all
This world's implacable roar,
And I would turn to my home, and fall
Asleep in my home once more;

 

And I would forget what the cities say,
And the folly of all the wise,
And turn to my own true folk this day,
And the love in their constant eyes.

 

There is peace, peace, where the sea-birds wheel,
And peace in the breaking wave;
And I have a broken heart to heal,
And a broken soul to save.

                             

 

The Humming Birds by Alfred Noyes
                          

Green wing and ruby throat,
What shining spell, what exquisite sorcery,
Lured you to float
And fight with bees round this one flowering tree?

 

Petulant imps of light,
What whisper or gleam or elfin-wild perfumes
Thrilled through the night
And drew you to this hive of rosy bloom?

 

One tree, and one alone,
Of all that load this magic air with spice,
Claims for its own
Your brave migration out of Paradise;

 

Claims you, and guides you, too,
Three thousand miles across the summer's waste
Of blooms ye knew
Less finely fit for your ethereal taste.

 

To poets' youthful hearts,
Even so the quivering April thoughts will fly,--
Those irised darts,
Those winged and tiny denizens of the sky.

 

Through beaks as needle-fine,
They suck a redder honey than bees know.
Unearthly wine
Sleeps in this bloom; and, when it falls, they go.

 

 

 

The Loom of Years by Alfred Noyes
                              

In the light of the silent stars that shine on the struggling sea,
In the weary cry of the wind and the whisper of flower and tree,
Under the breath of laughter, deep in the tide of tears,
I hear the Loom of the Weaver that weaves the Web of Years.

 

The leaves of the winter wither and sink in the forest mould
To colour the flowers of April with purple and white and gold:
Light and scent and music die and are born again

In the heart of a grey-haired woman who wakes in a world of pain.

 

The hound, the fawn, and the hawk, and the doves that croon and coo,
We are all one woof of the weaving and the one warp threads us through,
One flying cloud on the shuttle that carries our hopes and fears
As it goes thro’ the Loom of the Weaver that weaves the Web of Years.

 

The green uncrumpling fern and the rustling dewdrenched rose
Pass with our hearts to the Silence where the wings of music close,
Pass and pass to the Timeless that never a moment mars,
Pass and pass to the Darkness that made the suns and stars.

 

Has the soul gone out in the Darkness? Is the dust sealed from sight?
Ah hush, for the woof of the ages returns thro’ the warp of the night!
Never that shuttle loses one thread of our hopes and fears,
As it comes thro’ the Loom of the Weaver that weaves the Web of Years.

 

O, woven in one wide Loom thro’ the throbbing weft of the whole,
One in spirit and flesh, one in body and soul,
Tho’ the leaf were alone in its falling, the bird in its hour to die,
The heart in its muffled anguish, the sea in its mournful cry,

 

One with the flower of a day, one with the withered moon
One with the granite mountains that melt into the noon
One with the dream that triumphs beyond the light of the spheres,
We come from the Loom of the Weaver that weaves the Web of Years.

        

        

 

The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes

 

                               PART ONE

     

                             I

 

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding—
          Riding—riding—
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.

 

                              II

 

He'd a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin,
A coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin;
They fitted with never a wrinkle: his boots were up to the thigh!
And he rode with a jewelled twinkle,
          His pistol butts a-twinkle,
His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky.

           

                               III

 

Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn-yard,
And he tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and barred; 

He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord's black-eyed daughter,
          Bess, the landlord's daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

 

                              IV

 

And dark in the dark old inn-yard a stable-wicket creaked
Where Tim the ostler listened; his face was white and peaked;
His eyes were hollows of madness, his hair like mouldy hay,
But he loved the landlord's daughter,
          The landlord's red-lipped daughter,
Dumb as a dog he listened, and he heard the robber say—

 

                              V

 

"One kiss, my bonny sweetheart, I'm after a prize to-night,
But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light;
Yet, if they press me sharply, and harry me through the day,
Then look for me by moonlight,
          Watch for me by moonlight,
I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way."

 

                              VI

 

He rose upright in the stirrups; he scarce could reach her hand,
But she loosened her hair i' the casement! His face burnt like a brand
As the black cascade of perfume came tumbling over his breast;
And he kissed its waves in the moonlight,
          (Oh, sweet, black waves in the moonlight!)
Then he tugged at his rein in the moonliglt, and galloped away to the West.

 

 

                              PART TWO

 

                              I

 

He did not come in the dawning; he did not come at noon;
And out o' the tawny sunset, before the rise o' the moon,
When the road was a gypsy's ribbon, looping the purple moor,
A red-coat troop came marching—
          Marching—marching—
King George's men came matching, up to the old inn-door.

 

                              II

 

They said no word to the landlord, they drank his ale instead,
But they gagged his daughter and bound her to the foot of her narrow bed;
Two of them knelt at her casement, with muskets at their side!
There was death at every window;
          And hell at one dark window;
For Bess could see, through her casement, the road that he would ride.

 

                              III

 

They had tied her up to attention, with many a sniggering jest;
They had bound a musket beside her, with the barrel beneath her breast!
"Now, keep good watch!" and they kissed her. She heard the dead man say—

Look for me by moonlight;
          Watch for me by moonlight;
I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way!

 

                              IV

 

She twisted her hands behind her; but all the knots held good!
She writhed her hands till her fingers were wet with sweat or blood!
They stretched and strained in the darkness, and the hours crawled by like years,
Till now, on the stroke of midnight,
          Cold, on the stroke of midnight,
The tip of one finger touched it! The trigger at least was hers!

 

                              V

 

The tip of one finger touched it; she strove no more for the rest!
Up, she stood up to attention, with the barrel beneath her breast,
She would not risk their hearing; she would not strive again;
For the road lay bare in the moonlight;
          Blank and bare in the moonlight;
And the blood of her veins in the moonlight throbbed to her love's refrain.

 

                              VI

 

Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot! Had they heard it? The horse-hoofs ringing clear;
Tlot-tlot, tlot-tlot, in the distance? Were they deaf that they did not hear?
Down the ribbon of moonlight, over the brow of the hill,
The highwayman came riding,
          Riding, riding!
The red-coats looked to their priming! She stood up, straight and still!

 

                              VII

 

Tlot-tlot, in the frosty silence! Tlot-tlot, in the echoing night!
Nearer he came and nearer! Her face was like a light!
Her eyes grew wide for a moment; she drew one last deep breath,
Then her finger moved in the moonlight,
          Her musket shattered the moonlight,
Shattered her breast in the moonlight and warned him—with her death.

 

                              VIII

 

He turned; he spurred to the West; he did not know she stood
Bowed, with her head o'er the musket, drenched with her own red blood!
Not till the dawn he heard it, his face grew grey to hear
How Bess, the landlord's daughter,
          The landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Had watched for her love in the moonlight, and died in the darkness there.

 

                              IX

 

Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky,
With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high!
Blood-red were his spurs i' the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat,
When they shot him down on the highway,
          Down like a dog on the highway,
And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat.

 

 

*          *           *

 

                              X

 

And still of a winter's night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,
When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
A highwayman comes riding—
          Riding—riding—
A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.

 

                              XI

 

Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard;
He taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred;
He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord's black-eyed daughter,
          Bess, the landlord's daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

    

 

 

 

The beautiful words of The Highwayman have been set to music and recorded by Loreena McKennitt:

 

 

 

 

 

 

–Cat

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Raymond Carver – May 25

Raymond Clevie Carver, Jr. May 25, 1938 – August 2, 1988 

                       This Morning by Raymond Carver
                              

                       This morning was something. A little snow
                       lay on the ground. The sun floated in a clear
                       blue sky. The sea was blue, and blue-green,
                       as far as the eye could see.
                       Scarcely a ripple. Calm. I dressed and went
                       for a walk -- determined not to return
                       until I took in what Nature had to offer.
                       I passed close to some old, bent-over trees.
                       Crossed a field strewn with rocks
                       where snow had drifted. Kept going
                       until I reached the bluff.
                       Where I gazed at the sea, and the sky, and
                       the gulls wheeling over the white beach
                       far below. All lovely. All bathed in a pure
                       cold light. But, as usual, my thoughts
                       began to wander. I had to will
                       myself to see what I was seeing
                       and nothing else. I had to tell myself this is
                       what mattered, not the other. (And I did see it,
                       for a minute or two!) For a minute or two
                       it crowded out the usual musings on
                       what was right, and what was wrong -- duty,
                       tender memories, thoughts of death, how I should
                       treat with my former wife. All the things
                       I hoped would go away this morning.
                       The stuff I live with every day. What
                       I've trampled on in order to stay alive.
                       But for a minute or two I did forget
                       myself and everything else. I know I did.
                       For when I turned back I didn't know
                       where I was. Until some birds rose up
                       from the gnarled trees. And flew
                       in the direction I needed to be going.


                       


                      The Best Time Of The Day by Raymond Carver
                              

                       Cool summer nights.
                       Windows open.
                       Lamps burning.
                       Fruit in the bowl.
                       And your head on my shoulder.
                       These the happiest moments in the day.

                       Next to the early morning hours,
                       of course. And the time
                       just before lunch.
                       And the afternoon, and
                       early evening hours.
                       But I do love

                       these summer nights.
                       Even more, I think,
                       than those other times.
                       The work finished for the day.
                       And no one who can reach us now.
                       Or ever.





                       Late Fragment by Raymond Carver
                       

                       And did you get what
                       you wanted from this life, even so?
                       I did.
                       And what did you want?
                       To call myself beloved, to feel myself
                       beloved on the earth.


  --Cat

April 15 -- Bliss Carman

[William] Bliss Carman   

April 15, 1861 - June 8, 1929

                                       A Song Before Sailing

                              Wind of the dead men's feet,
                              Blow down the empty street
                              Of this old city by the sea
                              With news for me!
                              Blow me beyond the grime
                              And pestilence of time!
                              I am too sick at heart to war
                              With failure any more.
                              Thy chill is in my bones;
                              The moonlight on the stones
                              Is pale, and palpable, and cold;
                              I am as one grown old.

                              I call from room to room
                              Through the deserted gloom;
                              The echoes are all words I know,
                              Lost in some long ago.

                              I prowl from door to door,
                              And find no comrade more.
                              The wolfish fear that children feel
                              Is snuffing at my heel.

                              I hear the hollow sound
                              Of a great ship coming round,
                              The thunder of tackle and the tread
                              Of sailors overhead.

                              That stormy-blown hulloo
                              Has orders for me, too.
                              I see thee, hand at mouth, and hark,
                              My captain of the dark.

                              O wind of the great East,
                              By whom we are released
                              From this strange dusty port to sail
                              Beyond our fellows' hail,

                              Under the stars that keep
                              The entry of the deep,
                              Thy somber voice brings up the sea's
                              Forgotten melodies;

                              And I have no more need
                              Of bread, or wine, or creed,
                              Bound for the colonies of time
                              Beyond the farthest prime.

                              Wind of the dead men's feet,
                              Blow through the empty street;
                              The last adventurer am I,
                              Then, world, goodby!



                                     Under the April Moon

                              
                              Oh, well the world is dreaming
                              Under the April moon,
                              Her soul in love with beauty,
                              Her senses all a-swoon!
                              Pure hangs the silver crescent
                              Above the twilight wood,
                              And pure the silver music
                              Wakes from the marshy flood.
                              O Earth, with all thy transport,
                              How comes it life should seem
                              A shadow in the moonlight,
                              A murmur in a dream?



                                 A More Ancient Mariner

                              The swarthy bee is a buccaneer,
                              A burly velveted rover,
                              Who loves the booming wind in his ear
                              As he sails the seas of clover.

                              A waif of the goblin pirate crew,
                              With not a soul to deplore him,
                              He steers for the open verge of blue
                              With the filmy world before him.

                              His flimsy sails abroad on the wind
                              Are shivered with fairy thunder;
                              On a line that sings to the light of his wings
                              He makes for the lands of wonder.

                              He harries the ports of Hollyhocks,
                              And levies on poor Sweetbriar;
                              He drinks the whitest wine of Phlox,
                              And the Rose is his desire.

                              He hangs in the Willows a night and a day;
                              He rifles the Buckwheat patches;
                              Then battens his store of pelf galore
                              Under the taughtest hatches.

                              He woos the Poppy and weds the Peach,
                              Inveigles Daffodilly,
                              And then like a tramp abandons each
                              For the gorgeous Canada Lily.

                              There's not a soul in the garden world
                              But wishes the day were shorter,
                              When Mariner B. puts out to sea
                              With the wind in the proper quarter.

                              Or, so they say! But I have my doubts;
                              For the flowers are only human,
                              And the valor and gold of a vagrant bold
                              Were always dear to woman.

                              He dares to boast, along the coast,
                              The beauty of Highland Heather,-
                              How he and she, with night on the sea,
                              Lay out on the hills together.

                              He pilfers every port of the wind,
                              From April to golden autumn;
                              But the theiving ways of his mortal days
                              Are those his mother taught him.

                              His morals are mixed, but his will is fixed;
                              He prospers after his kind,
                              And follows an instinct compass-sure,
                              The philosophers call blind.

                              And that is why, when he comes to die,
                              He'll have an earlier sentence
                              Than someone I know who thinks just so,
                              And then leaves room for repentance.

                              He never could box the compass round;
                              He doesn't know port from starboard;
                              But he knows the gates of the Sundown Straits,
                              Where the choicest goods are harbored.

                              He never could see the Rule of Three,
                              But he knows the rule of thumb
                              Better than Euclid's, better than yours,
                              Or the teachers' yet to come.

                              He knows the smell of the hydromel
                              As if two and two were five;
                              And hides it away for a year and a day
                              In his own hexagonal hive.

                              Out in the day, hap-hazard, alone,
                              Booms the old vagrant hummer,
                              With only his whim to pilot him
                              Throught the splendid vast of summer.

                              He steers and steers on the slant of the gale,
                              Like the fiend or Vanderdecken;
                              And there's never an unknown course to sail
                              But his crazy log can reckon.

                              He drones along with his rough sea-song
                              And the throat of a salty tar,
                              This devil-may-care, till he makes his lair
                              By the light of a yellow star.

                              He looks like a gentleman, lives like a lord,
                              And makes like a Trojan hero;
                              Then loafs all winter upon his hoard,
                              With the mercury at zero.


                                
--Cat