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The Song of the Wreck
The wind blew high, the waters raved,
A ship drove on the land,
A hundred human creatures saved
Kneel’d down upon the sand.
Three-score were drown’d, three-score were thrown
Upon the black rocks wild,
And thus among them, left alone,
They found one helpless child.
A seaman rough, to shipwreck bred,
Stood out from all the rest,
And gently laid the lonely head
Upon his honest breast.
And travelling o’er the desert wide
It was a solemn joy,
To see them, ever side by side,
The sailor and the boy.
In famine, sickness, hunger, thirst,
The two were still but one,
Until the strong man droop’d the first
And felt his labours done.
Then to a trusty friend he spake,
“Across the desert wide,
O take this poor boy for my sake!”
And kiss’d the child and died.
Toiling along in weary plight
Through heavy jungle, mire,
These two came later every night
To warm them at the fire.
Until the captain said one day,
“O seaman good and kind,
To save thyself now come away,
And leave the boy behind!”
The child was slumbering near the blaze:
“O captain, let him rest
Until it sinks, when God’s own ways
Shall teach us what is best!”
They watch’d the whiten’d ashy heap,
They touch’d the child in vain;
They did not leave him there asleep,
He never woke again.
Charles Dickens
(1812-1870)
The Song of the Wreck
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Dante
Strong forms were those of the New Life, that stood
Around thy cradle,
O Master of the song that looks above!
A brave young giantess,
Unknown before to Greek or Latin shores,
Daring in love and hate, and fair withal,
Came Tuscan Libertade, and the child
Already with bounteous breast did comfort thee.
And all a-glowing with her spheral rays,
Mild and austere in one,
Came Faith: and she, across a shore
Obscure with crowds of visions and of shades,
Opened for thee the Gate of the Infinite.
Sighing and pensive, yet with locks aglow
With rosy splendour from another air,
Love made long stay.
And such the gentle things
He talked to thee with bashful lips, so sweetly
He entered all the chambers of thy heart,
That no one ever knew to love like thee.
But soon away from lonely meditating,
O youthful recluse,
Wild clamour and fierce tumult tore thee, and
The fury of brothers seeking brothers’ blood.
Thou heard’st the hissing flames of civil war
On neighbour’s walls; thou heardest women shriek
To heaven that altars and the marriage bed,
The dear hearth-stone and the infant’s cradle,—
All that made fair the marital abode,
Were swept away in one great gulf of flame.
Their men had rushed from their embrace to arms;
The youth breathed only anger and destruction.
Thou sawest the raging of swords
Seeking the breast-plunge;
Thou heardest the dying warrior
Blaspheme and curse:
Before thee, streaming with gore,
Gold locks and grey;
And the Furies offering
To Liberty the execrated host
Of human victims;
And Death, the cruel arbiter of fates,
Crumbling the mighty towers and opening
The long-barred gates.
Amid wild scenes
So grew thy Italian soul,
And prayed that the long civil hate might end.
Meanwhile he saw
Of love such pure revealings and so strange,
The which depicted in the shade
Of a young myrtle-tree,
Each one who saw must bow the head in reverence.
But o’er this gentle dream
There came the voice of weeping,
Bitterly sounding from the maternal source.
Alas! broken by the whirlwind,
Lies the fair myrtle,
And with wide-spread wings
The dove of sweet affection is flown forth
To seek a purer aura for its flight.
He, driven here and there
In the thick darkness of the turbulent age,
Sought refuge with the famous shades of old;
So learned to hate himself and present things.
And in the twilight came he forth a giant,
Seeming a shade himself—an angry shade
Who through the desert went from tomb to tomb,
Now questioning and now embracing them:
Until before him rose across the ruin
And dust of these barbaric ages gone,
Like a cloudy pillar, the ancient Latin valour.
Then all that such a ruin tells did burst
Upon the silent air in one great cry.
In the exalted vision
Arose the poet divine; and now, disdaining
His stricken land and time that only wasted
In petty aimless strife the ancient strength,
He, in the seeing of his heart’s desire,
Saluted thee, O modern Italy,—
One, in thy valiant arms, thy laws, thy speech.
And then, to truly tell
What such a vision meant, he sought to know
The life that rolls through all the sea of being.
From beneath the dust of buried centuries
He made things good and ill to tell their tale
Through him the fatal prophet: till his voice
Resounded through the world, and made the ages
Turn and behold themselves. Judge and lord,
He placed them where they could themselves behold,
Admired and wept, disdained and laughed at them;
Then shut them up in his eternal song,
Well pleased that he had power to do this much.
And meanwhile this poor tangle
Where the weeping and the wailing still goes on,
This endless fraud and shadow
Which has the name of life and is so base,—
All this didst thou despise! Thy sacred muse
Explored the depths of all the universe.
Following the good gentile Philosopher
Who placed thee in the midst of secret things,
Thou didst desire to see as angels see
There where there is no intervening veil;
And thou wouldst love as they do love in heaven.
Up through the ways of love
The humble creature
Pushing his way to the Creator’s presence,
Wished to find rest in that eternal Truth
Which taught thee the great love and the great thought.
Here Virgil failed thee,
And thou, deserted,
A lonely human spirit as if drowned
Within the abyss of thy immense desire,
Didst vanish overwhelmed in doubt,—
When as on wings
Angelical there came unto thy grief
She who is love and light and vision
Between the understanding and the True.
No mortal tongue like mine may give her name,
But thou who lovedst didst call her Beatrice.
And so from sphere to sphere
‘T was naught but melody that thou didst hear,
‘T was naught but one great light that thou didst see,
And every single sense thou hadst was love,
And verse and spirit made one harmony
Like unto her who there revealed herself.
Alas! what caredst thou then
For thy poor country and the endless strife
That rent its cities like, alas! even those
That make forever dark the vales of hell!
From heaven descending thou didst thrice bring down
The Hymn Supreme, and all the while there shone
Upon thy brow a radiance divine
Like his who spake with God in Sinai.
Before thee shining
In all the splendour of the holy Kingdom
Flashed in its crimson light the mortal field
Of Montaperto, and along the wastes
Deserted and malignant came the sound,
Dreary and dull, of dying warriors’ sighs:
To which far off responded
With a great cry of mingled human woe
The cursed battle-field of Campaldino.
And thou, Rea Meloria,
Didst rise from the Tuscan sea
To tell the glory of this horrid slaughter,
And of the Thyrrenian shores made desolate
With this our madness, and the sea’s great bosom
All stained with blood, and far Liguria’s strand
Filled with the moan of lonely Pisan exiles
And children born for fratricidal war.
Giosuè Carducci
(1835 – 1907)
Dante
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More in: # Classic Poetry Archive, Archive C-D, Archive C-D, Dante Alighieri
Petrarca
If far from turbid thoughts and gloomy mood
Some smiling day should see my wish fulfilled
Where breathe the vales with gentle brooks enrilled
The soft air of my Tuscan neighbourhood,
There, where is heard no more the garrulous brood
Of thoughtless minds, in deep oblivion stilled,
Would I to thee my heart’s pure altar build
In the green blackness of the tangled wood.
There with the dying splendours of the sun
Thy song should glow amid the flowers springing
On breezy banks where whispering streams do run;
As if, still sweeter sounds and odours flinging
Upward to heaven when the day is done,
A nightingale from bough to bough were singing.
Giosuè Carducci
(1835 – 1907)
Petrarca
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Madrigal
Breaking his way through the white clouds in the azure,
The sun laughs out and cries:
“O Springtime, come!”
Across the greening hills with placid murmurs
The streams sing back to the breeze:
“O Springtime, come!”
“O Springtime, come!” to his heart the poet is saying,
While gazing, O pure Lalage, in thine eyes!
Giosuè Carducci
(1835 – 1907)
Madrigal
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Air and Angels
Twice or thrice had I lov’d thee,
Before I knew thy face or name;
So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame
Angels affect us oft, and worshipp’d be;
Still when, to where thou wert, I came,
Some lovely glorious nothing I did see.
But since my soul, whose child love is,
Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do,
More subtle than the parent is
Love must not be, but take a body too;
And therefore what thou wert, and who,
I bid Love ask, and now
That it assume thy body, I allow,
And fix itself in thy lip, eye, and brow.
Whilst thus to ballast love I thought,
And so more steadily to have gone,
With wares which would sink admiration,
I saw I had love’s pinnace overfraught;
Ev’ry thy hair for love to work upon
Is much too much, some fitter must be sought;
For, nor in nothing, nor in things
Extreme, and scatt’ring bright, can love inhere;
Then, as an angel, face, and wings
Of air, not pure as it, yet pure, doth wear,
So thy love may be my love’s sphere;
Just such disparity
As is ‘twixt air and angels’ purity,
‘Twixt women’s love, and men’s, will ever be.
John Donne
(1572–1631)
Air and Angels
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Because I could not stop for Death
Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.
We slowly drove – He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility –
We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess – in the Ring –
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –
We passed the Setting Sun –
Or rather – He passed Us –
The Dews drew quivering and Chill –
For only Gossamer, my Gown –
My Tippet – only Tulle –
We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground –
The Roof was scarcely visible –
The Cornice – in the Ground –
Since then – ’tis Centuries – and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses’ Heads
Were toward Eternity –
Emily Dickinson
(1830-1886)
Because I could not stop for Death
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XVIII
In Heaven,
Some little blades of grass
Stood before God.
“What did you do?”
Then all save one of the little blades
Began eagerly to relate
The merits of their lives.
This one stayed a small way behind
Ashamed.
Presently God said:
“And what did you do?”
The little blade answered: “Oh, my lord,
“Memory is bitter to me
“For if I did good deeds
“I know not of them.”
Then God in all His splendor
Arose from His throne.
“Oh, best little blade of grass,” He said.
Stephen Crane
(1871 – 1900)
In Heaven XVIII
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More in: *War Poetry Archive, Archive C-D, Archive C-D, Stephen Crane
The Deceased
He was a reprobate I grant,
and always liquired till his money went.
His hair depended on a noose from
his pale brow, his eyes were dumb.
Like prisoners in their cavernous slots were
settled in attitudes of despair.
You who God bless you never sunk so low
censure and pray for him that he was so.
And with his failings you regret the verses
the fellow made, proberly between curses,
proberly in the extreames of moral decay
but he wrote them in a sincere way.
And seems to have felt a sort of pain
to which your imagination can not attain!
Keith Douglas
(1920 – 1944)
The Deceased
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Several years ago, a treasure trove containing some 6,000 original Bob Dylan manuscripts was revealed to exist. Their destination? Tulsa, Oklahoma.
The documents, as essential as they are intriguing—draft lyrics, notebooks, and diverse ephemera— comprise one of the most important cultural archives in the modern world. Along with countless still and moving images and thousands of hours of riveting studio and live recordings, this priceless collection now resides at The Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, just steps away from the archival home of Dylan’s early hero, Woody Guthrie.
Nearly all the materials preserved at The Bob Dylan Center are unique, previously unavailable, and, in many cases, even previously unknown. As the official publication of The Bob Dylan Center, BOB DYLAN: MIXING UP THE MEDICINE is the first wide-angle look at the Dylan archive, a book that promises to be of vast interest to both the Nobel Laureate’s many musical fans and to a broader national and international audience as well.
Edited by Mark Davidson and Parker Fishel, BOB DYLAN: MIXING UP THE MEDICINE focuses a close look at the full scope of Dylan’s working life, particularly from the dynamic perspective of his ongoing and shifting creative processes—his earliest home recordings in the mid-1950s right up through Rough and Rowdy Ways (2020), his most recent studio recording, and into the present day.
The centerpiece of BOB DYLAN: MIXING UP THE MEDICINE is a carefully curated selection of over 600 images including never-before-circulated draft lyrics, writings, photographs, drawings and other ephemera from the Dylan archive.
With an introductory essay by Sean Wilentz and epilogue by Douglas Brinkley, the book features a surprising range of distinguished writers, artists and musicians, including Joy Harjo, Greil Marcus, Michael Ondaatje, Gregory Pardlo, Amanda Petrusich, Tom Piazza, Lee Ranaldo, Alex Ross, Ed Ruscha, Lucy Sante, Greg Tate and many others. After experiencing the collection firsthand in Tulsa, each of the authors was asked to select a single item that beguiled or inspired them. The resulting essays, written specifically for this volume, shed new light on not only Dylan’s creative process, but also their own.
BOB DYLAN: MIXING UP THE MEDICINE is an unprecedented glimpse into the creative life of one of America’s most groundbreaking, influential and enduring artists.
by Mark Davidson & Parker Fishel (Authors)
Publisher: Callaway
October 24, 2023
Language: English
Hardcover: 608 pages
ISBN-10: 1734537795
ISBN-13: 978-1734537796
Item Weight: 4.4 pounds
Dimensions: 8.5 x 2 x 11 inches
$50,00
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More in: - Book News, - Bookstores, Archive C-D, Archive C-D, Bob Dylan, Dylan, Bob
The Rising Sun
Busy old fool, unruly Sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains, call on us ?
Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run ?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late school-boys and sour prentices,
Go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices ;
Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.
Thy beams so reverend, and strong
Why shouldst thou think ?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
But that I would not lose her sight so long.
If her eyes have not blinded thine,
Look, and to-morrow late tell me,
Whether both th’ Indias of spice and mine
Be where thou left’st them, or lie here with me.
Ask for those kings whom thou saw’st yesterday,
And thou shalt hear, “All here in one bed lay.”
She’s all states, and all princes I ;
Nothing else is ;
Princes do but play us ; compared to this,
All honour’s mimic, all wealth alchemy.
Thou, Sun, art half as happy as we,
In that the world’s contracted thus ;
Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
To warm the world, that’s done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere ;
This bed thy center is, these walls thy sphere.
John Donne
(1572–1631)
The Rising Sun
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The Ecstasy
Where, like a pillow on a bed
A pregnant bank swell’d up to rest
The violet’s reclining head,
Sat we two, one another’s best.
Our hands were firmly cemented
With a fast balm, which thence did spring;
Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread
Our eyes upon one double string;
So to’intergraft our hands, as yet
Was all the means to make us one,
And pictures in our eyes to get
Was all our propagation.
As ‘twixt two equal armies fate
Suspends uncertain victory,
Our souls (which to advance their state
Were gone out) hung ‘twixt her and me.
And whilst our souls negotiate there,
We like sepulchral statues lay;
All day, the same our postures were,
And we said nothing, all the day.
If any, so by love refin’d
That he soul’s language understood,
And by good love were grown all mind,
Within convenient distance stood,
He (though he knew not which soul spake,
Because both meant, both spake the same)
Might thence a new concoction take
And part far purer than he came.
This ecstasy doth unperplex,
We said, and tell us what we love;
We see by this it was not sex,
We see we saw not what did move;
But as all several souls contain
Mixture of things, they know not what,
Love these mix’d souls doth mix again
And makes both one, each this and that.
A single violet transplant,
The strength, the colour, and the size,
(All which before was poor and scant)
Redoubles still, and multiplies.
When love with one another so
Interinanimates two souls,
That abler soul, which thence doth flow,
Defects of loneliness controls.
We then, who are this new soul, know
Of what we are compos’d and made,
For th’ atomies of which we grow
Are souls, whom no change can invade.
But oh alas, so long, so far,
Our bodies why do we forbear?
They’are ours, though they’are not we; we are
The intelligences, they the spheres.
We owe them thanks, because they thus
Did us, to us, at first convey,
Yielded their senses’ force to us,
Nor are dross to us, but allay.
On man heaven’s influence works not so,
But that it first imprints the air;
So soul into the soul may flow,
Though it to body first repair.
As our blood labors to beget
Spirits, as like souls as it can,
Because such fingers need to knit
That subtle knot which makes us man,
So must pure lovers’ souls descend
T’ affections, and to faculties,
Which sense may reach and apprehend,
Else a great prince in prison lies.
To’our bodies turn we then, that so
Weak men on love reveal’d may look;
Love’s mysteries in souls do grow,
But yet the body is his book.
And if some lover, such as we,
Have heard this dialogue of one,
Let him still mark us, he shall see
Small change, when we’are to bodies gone.
John Donne
(1572–1631)
The Ecstasy
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Fame is a bee
Fame is a bee.
It has a song—
It has a sting—
Ah, too, it has a wing.
Emily Dickinson
(1830-1886)
Fame is a bee (1788)
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More in: Archive C-D, Archive C-D, Dickinson, Emily
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