THE VICTIM
~~ Robert Hillyer


The hummingbird that darts and hovers
Made one fatal dart—alas !—
Against a counterfeit of flowers
Reflected in the window glass.
When four-o'-clocks had sunk in shadow,
The window caught an extra glint
Of color, like the sudden rainbow
Arching the purple firmament.
Transcendent are the traceries
Illusion weaves to set a snare;
The quick competitor of bees,
Trusting his universe of air
For flight and honey dazzled so
In quest of sweetness, was waylaid
By something hard that had a glow
Brighter that that the garden made.
Illusion shatters; the ideal
Is much more ruthless than the real.
The visionary hummingbird
Hit nothingness, and hit it hard.

 

Keats

TO AUTUMN.

1.
S[SIZE=-2]EASON[/SIZE] of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
2.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
3.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

 

Ode on Melancholy

No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist
Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss'd
By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow's mysteries;
For shade to shade will come too drowsily,
And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.
But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth of globed peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes. She dwells with Beauty--Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;
His soul shalt taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.

 

Robert Frost [SIZE=-1](1874–1963).[/SIZE] Mountain Interval. [SIZE=-1]1920.[/SIZE] [SIZE=+1]9. The Oven Bird[/SIZE] T[SIZE=-1]HERE[/SIZE] is a singer everyone has heard,Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.He says that leaves are old and that for flowersMid-summer is to spring as one to ten.[SIZE=-2] 5[/SIZE]He says the early petal-fall is pastWhen pear and cherry bloom went down in showersOn sunny days a moment overcast;And comes that other fall we name the fall.He says the highway dust is over all.[SIZE=-2] 10[/SIZE]The bird would cease and be as other birdsBut that he knows in singing not to sing.The question that he frames in all but wordsIs what to make of a diminished thing.

 

By Binky ( <-- that's me)
for My Fluffy.

*teary eyed* My Love, this poem means more to me than I could tell you... and I thank you for your loving words...and your even more loving actions.

*soft soggy laugh* I don't know what else to say just now except.... I Love You Fluffy ....and Happy Valentine's Day to you... *soft Loving kiss*....

*wrapping myself around you in the softest most loving wonderful full body snuggle, naked, of course*...

 

Hart Crane

North Labrador
A land of leaning ice
Hugged by plaster-grey arches of sky,
Flings itself silently
Into eternity.
"Has no one come here to win you,
Or left you with the faintest blush
Upon your glittering breasts?
Have you no memories, O Darkly Bright?"
Cold-hushed, there is only the shifting moments
That journey toward no Spring —
No birth, no death, no time nor sun
In answer. by Hart Crane


Repose of Rivers

by Hart Crane


The willows carried a slow sound,
A sarabande the wind mowed on the mead.
I could never remember
That seething, steady leveling of the marshes
Till age had brought me to the sea.


Flags, weeds. And remembrance of steep alcoves
Where cypresses shared the noon’s
Tyranny; they drew me into hades almost.
And mammoth turtles climbing sulphur dreams
Yielded, while sun-silt rippled them
Asunder ...


How much I would have bartered! the black gorge
And all the singular nestings in the hills
Where beavers learn stitch and tooth.
The pond I entered once and quickly fled—
I remember now its singing willow rim.


And finally, in that memory all things nurse;
After the city that I finally passed
With scalding unguents spread and smoking darts
The monsoon cut across the delta
At gulf gates ... There, beyond the dykes


I heard wind flaking sapphire, like this summer,
And willows could not hold more steady sound.

 

Hart Crane.....very nice.

 

He is pretty amazing, isn't he? I also especially love this stanza from his "For The Marriage of Faustus and Helen"

The earth may glide diaphanous to death;
But if I lift my arms it is to bend
To you who turned away once, Helen, knowing
The press of troubled hands, too alternate
With steel and soil to hold you endlessly.
I meet you, therefore, in that eventual flame
You found in final chains, no captive then--
Beyond their million brittle, bloodshot eyes;
White, through white cities passed on to assume
That world which comes to each of us alone.

 

Ample Make This Bed
-Emily Dickenson

Ample make this bed.
Make this bed with awe;
In it wait till judgment break
Excellent and fair.

Be its mattress straight,
Be its pillow round;
Let no sunrise' yellow noise
Interrupt this ground.

 

Alright Kimiko if you insist on dragging our doe-eyed little Miss Innocent Emily Dickenson into this discussion I must retaliate with this one to illustrate that the bed she is talking about may not be just symbolic. You women would know better than I but this always sounded like looking up and watching a man cum to me.

I like a look of Agony
Because I know it's true--
Men do not sham Convulsion,
Nor simulate, a Throe--

The Eyes glaze once--and that is Death
Impossible to feign
The Beads upon the Forehead
By homely Anguish strung.

 

she being Brand - e e cummings
she being Brand

-new;and you
know consequently a
little stiff i was
careful of her and(having
thoroughly oiled the universal
joint tested my gas felt of
her radiator made sure her springs were O.
K.)i went right to it flooded-the-carburetor cranked her
up,slipped the
clutch(and then somehow got into reverse she
kicked what
the hell)next
minute i was back in neutral tried and
again slo-wly;bare,ly nudg. ing(my
lev-er Right-
oh and her gears being in
A 1 shape passed
from low through
second-in-to-high like
greasedlightning)just as we turned the corner of Divinity
avenue i touched the accelerator and gave
her the juice,good
(it
was the first ride and believe i we was
happy to see how nice she acted right up to
the last minute coming back down by the Public
Gardens i slammed on
the
internalexpanding
&
externalcontracting
brakes Bothatonce and
brought allofher tremB
-ling
to a:dead. stand-
;Still)

 

Well, now that you mention it, I would tend to interpret it the same way.

 

Ummm yeah, that sounds like watching a man orgasm above you. Even my brother would attest to that. He has always poetically called it Death.

 

In French, it's called la petite mort....the little death.

 

I guess that would be when a man gives his whole life to a woman.......

and...your French is crap...... (giggles)

It's actually a masculine term.....as in 'le petit mort.'

 

It can be masculine OR feminine...but I suppose if it were feminine it would be "la petite morte".

Picky, picky, picky. If I say it fast, nobody will notice.

 

I'm sure they won't.....

and I can keep a secret too.

 

Smiling is infectious,
You catch it like the flu,
When someone smiled at me today,
I started smiling too.
I passed around the corner,
and someone saw my grin,
When he smiled I realized,
I'd passed it on to him .

I thought about that smile,
Then I realized its worth,
A single smile just like mine,
Could travel round the earth.
So if you feel a smile begin,
Don't leave it undetected -
​

Let's start an epidemic quick
And get the world infected!


​

 

I can't believe I almost left out the magnificent John Donne. This particular poem always seems to put a huge smile on my face:
THE GOOD-MORROW.
by John Donne


I [SIZE=-1]WONDER[/SIZE] by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved ? were we not wean'd till then ?
But suck'd on country pleasures, childishly ?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers' den ?
'Twas so ; but this, all pleasures fancies be ;
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee.

And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear ;
For love all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone ;
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown ;
Let us possess one world ; each hath one, and is one.

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest ;
Where can we find two better hemispheres
Without sharp north, without declining west ?
Whatever dies, was not mix'd equally ;
If our two loves be one, or thou and I
Love so alike that none can slacken, none can die.

 

Sanskrit Salutation To The Dawn​

Listen to the salutation to the dawn,

Look to this day for it is life, the very life of life,

In its brief course lie all the verities
and realities of our existence.​

The bliss of growth, the splendour of beauty,
For yesterday is but a dream and
tomorrow is only a vision, ​

But today well spent makes every
yesterday a dream of happiness
and every tomorrow a vision of hope. ​

Look well therefore to this day.
Such is the salutation to the dawn.​

​