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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
Low Barometer
The south-wind strengthens to a gale,
Across the moon the clouds fly fast,
The house is smitten as with a flail,
The chimney shudders to the blast.
On such a night, when Air has loosed
Its guardian grasp on blood and brain,
Old terrors then of god or ghost
Creep from their caves to life again;
And Reason kens he herits in
A haunted house. Tenants unknown
Assert their squalid lease of sin
With earlier title than his own.
Unbodied presences, the pack’d
Pollution and remorse of Time,
Slipp’d from oblivion reënact
The horrors of unhouseld crime.
Some men would quell the thing with prayer
Whose sightless footsteps pad the floor,
Whose fearful trespass mounts the stair
Or burts the lock’d forbidden door.
Some have seen corpses long interr’d
Escape from hallowing control,
Pale charnel forms—nay ev’n have heard
The shrilling of a troubled soul,
That wanders till the dawn hath cross’d
The dolorous dark, or Earth hath wound
Closer her storm-spredd cloke, and thrust
The baleful phantoms underground.
Robert Bridges
(1844-1930)
Low Barometer
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive A-B, Archive A-B, Bridges, Robert
La Chambrée de nuit
Rêve
On a faim dans la chambrée –
C’est vrai…
Émanations, explosions. Un génie :
« Je suis le gruère ! » –
Lefêbvre « Keller ! »
Le génie « Je suis le Brie ! » –
Les soldats coupent sur leur pain :
« C’est la vie ! »
Le génie. – « Je suis le Roquefort ! »
– « Ça s’ra not’ mort !… »
Je suis le gruère
Et le Brie !… etc.
Valse
On nous a joints, Lefèbvre et moi, etc.
Arthur Rimbaud
(1854 – 1891)
La Chambrée de nuit
Rêve
Derniers vers
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More in: #Editors Choice Archiv, Archive Q-R, Archive Q-R, Arthur Rimbaud, Rimbaud, Arthur
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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More in: # Classic Poetry Archive, Archive C-D, Archive C-D, Archive O-P, Petrarca, Francesco
Märchen
Ich hab vor deinem Hause still gestanden
In einer Nacht.
Und hatte ganz dich lieb und ohne Maßen;
Ich wies zu dir den Sternen goldne Straßen
Und habe selig stumm gelacht.
Ob meinem losen Haar hob ich die Arme
Wie Zweige, schlank und rund.
Da stürzte Regen in das Mainachtschweigen
Und rief sich zage Blüten aus den Zweigen,
Und jede war ein blasser Mund.
Du aber kamst nicht.
So streute ich mit lächelndem Verschwenden
Dem Mond die Blumen her.
Und spürte Treiben herber, dunkler Kräfte,
Mir ward die Frucht voll süßer, süßer Säfte;
Schon fiel sie, duftend, weich und schwer.
Du aber kamst nicht.
Eishagel tanzte höhnend auf den Steinen.
Da klaffte schwarz ein Schacht.
Drein ließ ich die zerbrochnen Arme hangen. –
Geblüht und Frucht getragen – und vergangen
In einer Nacht.
Gertrud Kolmar
(1894 – 1943)
Märchen
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More in: #Editors Choice Archiv, Archive K-L, Archive K-L, Grimm, Andersen e.o.: Fables, Fairy Tales & Stories, Holocaust, Kolmar, Gertrud
Thaw
Blow through me wind
As you blow through apple blossoms…
Scatter me in shining petals over the passers-by…
Joyously I reunite… sway and gather to myself…
Sedately I walk by the dancing feet of children—
Not knowing I too dance over the cobbled spring.
O, but they laugh back at me,
(Eyes like daisies smiling wide open),
And we both look askance at the snowed-in people
Thinking me one of them.
Lola Ridge
(1873-1941)
Thaw
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More in: Archive Q-R, Archive Q-R, Ridge, Lola
All Alone
Alas! they have left me all alone
By the receding tide;
But oh! the countless multitudes
Upon the other side!
The loved, the lost, the cherished ones,
Who dwelt with us awhile,
To scatter sunbeams on our path,
And make the desert smile.
The other side! how fair it is!
Its loveliness untold,
Its “every several gate a pearl,”
Its streets are paved with gold.
Its sun shall never more go down,
For there is no night there!
And oh! what heavenly melodies
Are floating through the air!
How sweet to join the ransomed ones
On the other side the flood,
And sing a song of praise to Him
Who washed us in His blood.
Ten thousand times ten thousand
Are hymning the new song!
O Father, join Thy weary child
To that triumphant throng!
But oh! I would be patient,
“My times are in Thy hand,”
“And glory, glory dwelleth
In Immanuel’s land.”
Eliza Paul Kirkbride Gurney
(1801 – 1888)
All Alone
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More in: # Classic Poetry Archive, Archive G-H, Archive G-H
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
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: # Classic Poetry Archive, 4SEASONS#Spring, Archive C-D, Archive C-D
Spring Rain
I thought I had forgotten,
But it all came back again
To-night with the first spring thunder
In a rush of rain.
I remembered a darkened doorway
Where we stood while the storm swept by,
Thunder gripping the earth
And lightning scrawled on the sky.
The passing motor busses swayed,
For the street was a river of rain,
Lashed into little golden waves
In the lamp light’s stain.
With the wild spring rain and thunder
My heart was wild and gay;
Your eyes said more to me that night
Than your lips would ever say….
I thought I had forgotten,
But it all came back again
To-night with the first spring thunder
In a rush of rain.
Sara Teasdale
(1884-1933)
Spring Rain
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: 4SEASONS#Spring, Archive Q-R, Archive S-T, Archive S-T, Teasdale, Sara
Si tu veux nous nous aimerons
Si tu veux nous nous aimerons
Avec tes lèvres sans le dire
Cette rose ne l’interromps
Qu’à verser un silence pire
Jamais de chants ne lancent prompts
Le scintillement du sourire
Si tu veux nous nous aimerons
Avec tes lèvres sans le dire
Muet muet entre les ronds
Sylphe dans la pourpre d’empire
Un baiser flambant se déchire
Jusqu’aux pointes des ailerons
Si tu veux nous nous aimerons.
Stéphane Mallarmé
(1842 – 1898)
Si tu veux nous nous aimerons
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More in: Archive M-N, Archive M-N, Mallarmé, Stéphane, Mallarmé, Stéphane
The child is father to the man
‘The child is father to the man.’
How can he be? The words are wild.
Suck any sense from that who can:
‘The child is father to the man.’
No; what the poet did write ran,
‘The man is father to the child.’
‘The child is father to the man!’
How can he be? The words are wild!
Gerard Manley Hopkins
(1844-1889)
‘The child is father to the man.’
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive G-H, Archive G-H, Hopkins, Gerard Manley
The Evening Star
Hail, pensile gem, that thus can softly gild
The starry coronal of quiet eve!
What frost-work fabrics man shall vainly build
Ere thou art doomed thy heavenly post to leave!
Bright star! thou seem’st to me a blest retreat,
The wearied pilgrim’s paradise of rest;
I love to think long-parted friends shall meet,
Blissful reunion! in thy tranquil breast.
I saw thee shine when life with me was young,
And fresh as fleet-winged time’s infantile hour,
When Hope her treacherous chaplet ’round me flung,
And daily twined a new-created flower.
I saw thee shine while yet the sacred smile
Of home and kindred round my path would play,
But Time, who loves our fairest joys to spoil,
Destined this hour of bloom to swift decay.
The buds, that then were wreathed around my heart,
Now breathe their hallowed sweetness there no more;
‘Twas thine to see them one by one depart,
And yet thou shinest brightly as before.
So, when this bosom, that ‘mid all its woes
Has longed thy little port of rest to win,
In the calm grave shall find at last repose,
Thou’lt beam as fair as though I ne’er had been.
Eliza Paul Kirkbride Gurney
(1801 – 1888)
The Evening Star
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: # Classic Poetry Archive, Archive G-H, Archive G-H
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