ENGLISH LITERATURE
ABOUT THIS PAGE
  The temporary purpose of making this page now is to introduce my favourite masterpieces of English literature (except Irish literature) which I have been studying.  Very odd to say most English departments of Japanese universities try to distinguish "British literature" from "American literature," etc. which are normally categorized as "English literature."  But Irish or Scottish people, it seems to me, like to tell their own literature from "other literatures written in English," conscious of their nationalism and Celtic roots against England.   So sometimes I'm confused a little-- Are Henry James and T. S. Eliot American writers?  Or British writers?  Any comments are always welcome!

LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS AND SOCIETIES
The following links are among those considered significant to me:
Association for Scottish Literary Studies, The
Association of Literary Scholars and Critics
Australian Literature
British Council
British Shakespeare Association, The
Canadian Literature Archive, The
Critical Inquiry
Dickens on the web
English Literary Society of Japan, The (ELSJ)
Indian Literature Web Ring
International Virginia Woolf Society, The
John Donne Society, The
Modern Fiction Studies (MFS)
Modern Humanities Research Association (MHRA)
Modern Language Association (MLA)
Modern Language Association of America (PMLA Journal)
New Zealand Litearature (Web Directory)
Shakespeare Association of America
Tolkien Society, The
T.S. Eliot Society, The

INTERESTING SITES OF GREAT BRITAIN
I have too many things to say about Great Britain.  Some pieces of information, however, are provided by the following sites:
Institute of Contemporary British History

Shakespeare's School: King Edward VI School
One of my courses deals with Shakespeare (in Love!).  Check it out!

All About Your House
"WHO LIVED IN YOUR HOUSE?  Every house has a story to tell, and every house's story is unique.   Now, with the help of ALL ABOUT YOUR HOUSE, you can learn the story of your house."  This is a very unique business, never seen in Japan!!  This kind of business exists in Britain and Europe because people live in the same stone (or brick) houses for a very long time: some houses are still lived since more than 200 years ago.  In addition, there are almost no earthquakes in Britain.

Of course all of them are not true nor adequate.  But who can say the truth of Great Britain if any?
 
 

ENGLISH POEMS
of April 2024
Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400)
Introduction to the General Prologue of The Canterbury Tales

01: Whan that aprill with his shoures soote
02: The droghte of march hath perced to the roote,
03: And bathed every veyne in swich licour
04: Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
05: Whan zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
06: Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
07: Tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
08: Hath in the ram his halve cours yronne,
09: And smale foweles maken melodye,
10: That slepen al the nyght with open ye
11: (so priketh hem nature in hir corages);
12: Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
13: And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
14: To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
 

15: And specially from every shires ende
16: Of engelond to caunterbury they wende,
17: The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
18: That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.
19: Bifil that in that seson on a day,
20: In southwerk at the tabard as I lay
21: Redy to wenden on my pilgrymage
22: To caunterbury with ful devout corage,
23: At nyght was come into that hostelrye
24: Wel nyne and twenty in a compaignye,
25: Of sondry folk, by aventure yfalle
26: In felaweshipe, and pilgrimes were they alle,
27: That toward caunterbury wolden ryde.
28: The chambres and the stables weren wyde,
29: And wel we weren esed atte beste.
 
 

30: And shortly, whan the sonne was to reste,
31: So hadde I spoken with hem everichon
32: That I was of hir felaweshipe anon,
33: And made forward erly for to ryse,
34: To take oure wey ther as I yow devyse.
35: But nathelees, whil I have tyme and space,
36: Er that I ferther in this tale pace,
37: Me thynketh it acordaunt to resoun
38: To telle yow al the condicioun
39: Of ech of hem, so as it semed me,
40: And whiche they weren, and of what degree,
41: And eek in what array that they were inne;
42: And at a knyght than wol I first bigynne.
 



 
T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)
The Waste Land

"Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla
 pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent: Sibulla ti qeleiz; respondebat illa:
                                                     apoqanein qelw."

                                                     For Ezra Pound
                                                     il miglior fabbro.

I.  The Burial of the Dead

          April is the cruelest month, breeding
        Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
        Memory and desire, stirring
        Dull roots with spring rain.
5       Winter kept us warm, covering
        Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
        A little life with dried tubers.
        Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
        With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
10      And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
        And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
        Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
        And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke's,
        My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
15      And I was frightened.  He said, Marie,
        Marie, hold on tight.  And down we went.
        In the mountains, there you feel free.
        I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

          What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
20      Out of this stony rubbish?  Son of man,
        You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
        A  heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
        And the dead tree gives no shelter,  the cricket no relief,
        And the dry stone no sound of water.  Only
25      There is shadow under this red rock,
        (Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
        And I will show you something different from either
        Your shadow at morning striding behind you
        Or you shadow at evening rising to meet you;
30      I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
                                Frisch weht der Wind
                                Der Heimat zu
                                Mein Irisch Kind
                                Wo weilest du?
35      'You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
        'They called me the hyacinth girl.'
        -Yet when we came back, late, from the hyacinth garden,
        Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
        Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
40      Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
        Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
        Oed' und leer das Meer.

          Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
        Had a bad cold, nevertheless
45      Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
        With a wicked pack of cards.  Here, said she,
        Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
        (Those are pearls that were his eyes.  Look!)
        Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
50      The lady of situations.
        Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
        And here is the one-eyed merchant, and  this card,
        Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
        Which I am forbidden to see.  I do not find
55      The Hanged Man.  Fear death by water.
        I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.
        Thank you.  If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
        Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
        One must be so careful these days.

60        Unreal City,
        Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
        A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
        I had not thought death had undone so many.
        Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
65      And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
        Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
        To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
        With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
        There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying: 'Stetson!
70      'You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
        'That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
        'Has it begun to sprout?  Will it bloom this year?
        'Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
        'O keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men,
75      'Or with his nails he'll dig it up again!
        'You! Hypocrite lecteur!-mon senblable,-mon frere!'
 




 
ENGLISH POEM
of March 2024
G.M. Hopkins (1844-1889)
Spring

 
 

      Nothing is so beautiful as Spring --
      When weeds in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
      Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
      Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
      The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
      The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
      The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
      With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

      What is all this juice and all this joy?
      A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginning
      In Eden garden. -- Have, get, before it cloy,
      Before it cloud, Christ, lord and sour with sinning,
      Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
      Most, O maid's child, thy choice and worthy the winning.
 




 
ENGLISH POEMS
of February 2024
D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930)
Selected Poems

           Rose of All the World

I am here myself; as though this heave of effort
At starting other life, fulfilled my own;
Rose-leaves that whirl in colour round a core
Of seed-specks kindled lately and softly blown

By all the blood of the rose-bush into being -
Strange, that the urgent will in me, to set
My mouth on hers in kisses, and so softly
To bring together two strange sparks, beget

Another life from our lives, so should send
The innermost fire of my own dim soul out-spinning
And whirling in blossom of flame and being upon me!
That my completion of manhood should be the beginning

Another life from mine! For so it looks.
The seed is purpose, blossom accident.
The seed is all in all, the blossom lent
To crown the triumph of this new descent.

Is that it, woman? Does it strike you so?
The Great Breath blowing a tiny seed of fire
Fans out your petals for excess of flame,
Till all your being smokes with fine desire?

Or are we kindled, you and I, to be
One rose of wonderment upon the tree
Of perfect life, and is our possible seed
But the residuum of the ecstasy?

How will you have it? - the rose is all in all,
Or the ripe rose-fruits of the luscious fall?
The sharp begetting, or the child begot?
Our consummation matters, or does it not?

To me it seems the seed is just left over
From the red rose-flowers' fiery transience;
Just orts and slarts; berries that smoulder in the bush
Which burnt just now with marvellous immanence.

Blossom, my darling, blossom, be a rose
Of roses unchidden and purposeless; a rose
For rosiness only, without an ulterior motive;
For me it is more than enough if the flower unclose.


                               Piano

Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.

In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song
Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong
To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside
And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide.

So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour
With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour
Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.




 
ENGLISH POEMS
of January 2024
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892-1973)
Songs

            Bath Song

Sing hey! for the bath at close of day
That washes the weary mud away!
A loon is he that will not sing:
O! Water Hot is anoble thing!

O! Sweet is the sound of falling rain.
And the brook that leaps from hill to plain;
But better than rain or rippling streams
Is Water Hot that smokes and steams.

O! Water cold we may pour at need
Down a thirsty throat and be glad indeed;
But better is Beer, if drink we lack,
And Water Hot poured down the back.

O! Water is fair that leaps on high
In a fountain white beneath the sky;
But never did fountain sound so sweet
As splashing Hot Water with my feet!


    Song About Fifteen 'Birds'
 

Fifteen birds in five firtrees,
Their feathers were fanned in a fiery breeze!
But, funny little birds, they had no wings!
O what shall we do with the funny little things?
Roast 'em alive, or stew them in a pot;
Fry them, boil them and eat them hot?
Burn, burn tree and fern!
Shrivel and scorch! A fizzling torch
To light the night for our delight,
Ya hey!
Bake and toast 'em, fry and roast 'em!
Till beards blaze, and eyes glaze;
Till hair smells and skins crack,
Fat melts, and bones black
In cinders lie
Beneath the sky!
So dwarves shall die,
And light the night for our delight,
Ya hey!
Ya-harri-hey!
Ya hoy!




 
ENGLISH POEM
of December 2023
Robert Burns (1759-1796)
Birthday Ode For 31st December, 1787

 

  Afar the illustrious Exile roams,
  Whom kingdoms on this day should hail;
  An inmate in the casual shed,
  On transient pity's bounty fed,
  Haunted by busy memory's bitter tale!
  Beasts of the forest have their savage homes,
  But He, who should imperial purple wear,
  Owns not the lap of earth where rests his royal head!
  His wretched refuge, dark despair,
  While ravening wrongs and woes pursue,
  And distant far the faithful few
  Who would his sorrows share.

  False flatterer, Hope, away!
  Nor think to lure us as in days of yore:
  We solemnize this sorrowing natal day,
  To prove our loyal truth-we can no more,
  And owning Heaven's mysterious sway,
  Submissive, low adore.

  Ye honored, mighty Dead,
  Who nobly perished in the glorious cause,
  Your King, your Country, and her laws,

  From great Dundee, who smiling Victory led,
  And fell a Martyr in her arms,
  (What breast of northern ice but warms!)
  To bold Balmerino's undying name,
  Whose soul of fire, lighted at Heaven's high flame,
  Deserves the proudest wreath departed heroes claim:
  Nor unrevenged your fate shall lie,
  It only lags, the fatal hour,
  Your blood shall, with incessant cry,
  Awake at last, th' unsparing Power;
  As from the cliff, with thundering course,
  The snowy ruin smokes along
  With doubling speed and gathering force,
  Till deep it, crushing, whelms the cottage in the vale;
  So Vengeance' arm, ensanguin'd, strong,
  Shall with resistless might assail,
  Usurping Brunswick's pride shall lay,
  And Stewart's wrongs and yours, with tenfold weight repay.

  Perdition, baleful child of night!
  Rise and revenge the injured right
  Of Stewart's royal race:
  Lead on the unmuzzled hounds of hell,
  Till all the frighted echoes tell
  The blood-notes of the chase!
  Full on the quarry point their view,
  Full on the base usurping crew,
  The tools of faction, and the nation's curse!
  Hark how the cry grows on the wind;
  They leave the lagging gale behind,
  Their savage fury, pitiless, they pour;
  With murdering eyes already they devour;
  See Brunswick spent, a wretched prey,
  His life one poor despairing day,
  Where each avenging hour still ushers in a worse!
  Such havock, howling all abroad,
  Their utter ruin bring,
  The base apostates to their God,
  Or rebels to their King.
 




 
ENGLISH POEMS
of November 2023
e. e. cummings (1894-1962)
Selected Poems

      why

      do the
      fingers

      of the lit
      tle once beau
      tiful la

      dy(sitting sew
      ing at an o
      pen window this
      fine morning)fly

      instead of dancing
      are they possibly
      afraid that life is
      running from
      then(i wonder)or

      isn't she a
      ware that life(who
      never grows old)
      is always beau

      tiful and
      that nobod
      y beauti

      ful ev
      er hur

      ries


      Buffalo Bill's
      defunct
              who used to
              ride a watersmooth-silver
                                        stallion
      and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
                                                         Jesus

      he was a handsome man
                            and what i want to know is
      how do you like your blueeyed boy
      Mister Death
 




 
ENGLISH POEMS
of October 2023
William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)
Selected Poems

    This Is Just To Say (1934)

        I have eaten
         the plums
         that were in
         the icebox

         and which
         you were probably
         saving for breakfast

         Forgive me
         they were delicious
         so sweet
         and so cold.


          The Dance (1944)

In Breughel's great picture, The Kermess,
the dancers go round, they go round and
around, the squeal and the blare and the
tweedle of bagpipes, a bugle and fiddles
tipping their bellies (round as the thick-
sided glasses whose wash they impound)
their hips and their bellies off balance
to turn them. Kicking and rolling about
the Fair Grounds, swinging thir butts, those
shanks must be sound to bear up under such
rollicking measures, prance as they dance
in Breughel's great picture, The Kermess.
 




 
ENGLISH POEMS
of September 2023
Ezra Pound (1885-1972)
Selected Poems

          E.P. Ode... etc.

For three years, out of key with his time,
He strove to resuscitate the dead art
Of poetry; to maintain "the sublime"
In the old sense. Wrong from the start--

No, hardly, but seeing he had been born
In a half savage country, out of date;
Bent resolutely on wringing lilies from the acorn;
Capaneus; trout for factitious bait;

Idmen gar toi panth, hos eni troie
Caught in the unstopped ear;
Giving the rocks small lee-way
The chopped seas held him, therefore, that year.

His true Penelope was Flaubert,
He fished by obstinate isles;
Observed the elegance of Circe's hair
Rather than the mottoes on sun-dials.

Unaffected by "the march of events,"
He passed from men's memory in l'an trentuniesme
de son eage; the case presents
No adjunct to the Muses' diadem.
 

            II

The age demanded an image
Of its accelerated grimace,
Something for the modern stage
Not, at any rate, an Attic grace;

Not, certainly, the obscure reveries
Of the inward gaze;
Better mendacities
Than the classics in paraphrase!

The "age demanded" chiefly a mould in plaster,
Made with no loss of time,
A prose kinema, not, not assuredly, alabaster
Or the "sculpture" of rhyme.
 

            III

The tea-rose tea-gown, etc.
Supplants the mousseline of Cos,
The pianola "replaces"
Sappho's barbitos.

Christ follows Dionysus,
Phallic and ambrosial
Made way for macerations;
Caliban casts out Ariel.

All things are a flowing
Sage Heracleitus say;
But a tawdry cheapness
Shall outlast our days.

Even the Christian beauty
Defects--after Samothrace;
We see to kalon
Decreed in the market place.

Faun's flesh is not to us,
Nor the saint's vision.
We have the press for wafer;
Franchise for circumcision.

All men, in law, are equals.
Free of Pisistratus,
We choose a knave or an eunuch
To rule over us.

O bright Apollo,
Tin andra, tin heroa, tina theon,
What god, man or hero
Shall I place a tin wreath upon!
 

            IV

These fought in any case,
And some believing,
pro domo, in any case...

Some quick to arm,
some for adventure,
some from fear of weakness,
some from fear of censure,
some for love of slaughter, in imagination,
learning later...
some in fear, learning love of slaughter;

Died some, pro patria,
non "dulce" not "et decor"...
walked eye-deep in hell
believing old men's lies, then unbelieving
came home, home to a lie,
home to many deceits,
home to old lies and new infamy;
usury age-old and age-thick
and liars in public places.

Daring as never before, wastage as never before.
Young blood and high blood,
fair cheeks, and fine bodies;

fortitude as never before

frankness as never before,
disillusions as never told in the old days,
hysterias, trench confessions,
laughter out of dead bellies.
 

            V

There died a myriad,
And of the best, among them,
For an old bitch gone in the teeth,
For a botched civilization,

Charm, smiling at the good mouth,
Quick eyes gone under earth's lid,

For two gross of broken statues,
For a few thousand battered books.


          Canto XLIX

For the seven lakes, and by no man these verses:
Rain; empty river; a voyage,
Fire from frozen cloud, heavy rain in the twilight
Under the cabin roof was one lantern.
The reeds are heavy; bent;
and the bamboos speak as if weeping.

Autumn moon; hills rise about lakes
against sunset
Evening is like a curtain of cloud,
a blur above ripples; and through it
sharp long spikes of the cinnamon,
a cold tune amid reeds.
Behind hill the monk's bell
borne on the wind.
Sail passed here in April; may return in October
Boat fades in silver; slowly;
Sun blaze alone on the river.

Where wine flag catches the sunset
Sparse chimneys smoke in the cross light

Comes then snow scour on the river
And a world is covered with jade
Small boat floats like a lanthorn,
The flowing water closts as with cold. And at San Yin
they are a people of leisure.

Wild geese swoop to the sand-bar,
Clouds gather about the hole of the window
Broad water; geese line out with the autumn
Rooks clatter over the fishermen's lanthorns,

A light moves on the north sky line;
where the young boys prod stones for shrimp.
In seventeen hundred came Tsing to these hill lakes.
A light moves on the South sky line.

State by creating riches shd. thereby get into debt?
Thsi is infamy; this is Geryon.
This canal goes still to TenShi
Though the old king built it for pleasure

K E I M E N R A N K E I
K I U M A N M A N K E I
JITSU GETSU K O K W A
T A N FUKU T A N K A I

Sun up; work
sundown; to rest
dig well and drink of the water
dig field; eat of the grain
Imperial power is? and to us what is it?

The fourth; the dimension of stillness.
And the power over wild beasts.




 
ENGLISH POEMS
of August 2023
Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997)
Nagasaki Days (Everybody's Fantasy)

Nagasaki Days (Everybody's Fantasy)

I walked outside & the bomb'd
      dropped lots of plutonium
      all over the Lower East Side
There weren't any buildings left just
      iron skeletons
groceries burned, potholes open to
      stinking sewer waters

There were people starving and crawling
      across the desert
the Martian UFOs with blue
      Light destroyer rays
passed over and dried up all the
      waters
Charred Amazon palm trees for
      hundreds of miles on both sides
      of the river



 
Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
Song of Myself

20

389 Who goes there? hankering, gross, mystical, nude;
390 How is it I extract strength from the beef I eat?

391 What is a man anyhow? what am I? what are you?

392 All I mark as my own you shall offset it with your own,
393 Else it were time lost listening to me.

394 I do not snivel that snivel the world over,
395 That months are vacuums and the ground but wallow and filth.

396 Whimpering and truckling fold with powders for invalids,
     conformity goes to the fourth-remov'd,
397 I wear my hat as I please indoors or out.

398 Why should I pray? why should I venerate and be ceremonious?

399 Having pried through the strata, analyzed to a hair,
     counsel'd with doctors and calculated close,
400 I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones.

401 In all people I see myself, none more and not one a barley-corn less,
402 And the good or bad I say of myself I say of them.

403 I know I am solid and sound,
404 To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow,
405 All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means.

406 I know I am deathless,
407 I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by a carpenter's compass,
408 I know I shall not pass like a child's carlacue cut
     with a burnt stick at night.

409 I know I am AUGUST,
410 I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood,
411 I see that the elementary laws never apologize,
412 (I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house by,
     after all.)

413 I exist as I am, that is enough,
414 If no other in the world be aware I sit content,
415 And if each and all be aware I sit content.

416 One world is aware and by far the largest to me, and that is myself,
417 And whether I come to my own to-day or in ten thousand
     or ten million years,
418 I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait.

419 My foothold is tenon'd and mortis'd in granite,
420 I laugh at what you call dissolution,
421 And I know the amplitude of time.




 
ENGLISH POEMS
of July 2023
Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)
To His Coy Mistress

1     Had we but world enough, and time,
2     This coyness, lady, were no crime.
3     We would sit down and think which way
4     To walk, and pass our long love's day;
5     Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
6     Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
7     Of Humber would complain. I would
8     Love you ten years before the Flood;
9     And you should, if you please, refuse
10   Till the conversion of the Jews.
11   My vegetable love should grow
12   Vaster than empires, and more slow.
13   An hundred years should go to praise
14   Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
15   Two hundred to adore each breast,
16   But thirty thousand to the rest;
17   An age at least to every part,
18   And the last age should show your heart.
19   For, lady, you deserve this state,
20   Nor would I love at lower rate.

21       But at my back I always hear
22   Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
23   And yonder all before us lie
24   Deserts of vast eternity.
25   Thy beauty shall no more be found,
26   Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
27   My echoing song; then worms shall try
28   That long preserv'd virginity,
29   And your quaint honour turn to dust,
30   And into ashes all my lust.
31   The grave's a fine and private place,
32   But none I think do there embrace.

33       Now therefore, while the youthful hue
34   Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
35   And while thy willing soul transpires
36   At every pore with instant fires,
37   Now let us sport us while we may;
38   And now, like am'rous birds of prey,
39   Rather at once our time devour,
40   Than languish in his slow-chapp'd power.
41   Let us roll all our strength, and all
42   Our sweetness, up into one ball;
43   And tear our pleasures with rough strife
44   Thorough the iron gates of life.
45   Thus, though we cannot make our sun
46   Stand still, yet we will make him run.




 
ENGLISH POEMS
of June 2023
June Jordan (1936-)
Poem about Process and Progress

          for Haruko

Hey Baby you betta
hurry it up!
Because
since you went totally
off
I seen a full moon
I seen a half moon
I seen a quarter moon
I seen no moon whatsoever!

I seen a equinox
I seen a solstice
I seen Mars and Venus on a line
I seen a mess a fickle stars
and lately
I seen this new kind a luva
on an' off the telephone
who like to talk to me
all the time

real nice
 
 
 

        1994 from Haruko/Love Poems (High Risk)
 



 
John Donne (1572-1638)
Song

Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the devil's foot,
Teach me to hear mermaid's singing,
Or to keep off envy's stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.

If thou be'st born to strange sights,
Things invisible go see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights,
Till Age snow white hairs on thee;
Thou, when thou return'st, wilt tell me,
All strange wonders that befell thee,
And swear
No where
Lives a woman true, and fair.

If thou find'st one, let me know;
Such a pilgrimage were sweet.
Yet do not, I would not go,
Though at next door we might meet.
Though she were true when you met her,
And last till you write your letter,
Yet she
Will be
False, ere I come, to two or three.
 




 
ENGLISH POEMS
of May 2023
Simon & Garfunkel
April Come She Will

April come she will
When streams are ripe and swelled with rain;
MAY, she will stay,
Resting in my arms again.

June, she'll change her tune,
In restless walks she'll prowl the night;
July, she will fly
And give no warning to her flight.

August, die she must,
The autumn winds blow chilly and cold;
September I'll remember
A love once new has now grown old.  (1964)
 



 
John Keats (1795-1821)
Ode to a Nightingale

         1
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
  My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
  One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
  But being too happy in thine happiness,-
    That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
         In some melodious plot
  Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
     Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
 

                    2
O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
  Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
  Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
  Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
      And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
  And with thee fade away into the forest dim:
 

                    3
Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
  What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
  Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
  Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
     Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
         And leaden-eyed despairs,
  Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
     Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.
 

                     4
Away!  Away!  For I will fly to thee,
  Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
  Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee!  Tender is the night,
  And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
   Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays;
     But here there is no light,
  Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
   Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.
 

                     5
I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
  Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
  Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
  White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
     Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
        And mid-MAY's eldest child,
  The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
    The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.
 

                     6
Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
  I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
  To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
  To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
     While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
           In such an ecstasy!
  Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain-
     To thy high requiem become a sod.
 

                     7
Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
  No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
  In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
  Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
    She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
        The same that oft-times hath
  Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
    Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
 

                     8
Forlorn! The very word is like a bell
  To toil me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! The fancy cannot cheat so well
  As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! Adieu! Thy plaintive anthem fades
  Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
    Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
       In the next valley-glades:
  Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
    Fled is that music: -Do I wake or sleep?
                                          (May 1819)
 




 


        


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