1269 Arts and sciences poems

My poems: fledglings, heirs, Plaintiffs and executors, The silent ones, the loud, The humble and the proud. As soon as the shovel of time Threw me onto the potter’s wheel— Myself without kith or kin— I grew beneath the hand, a miracle. Something stretched out my long neck And hollowed round my soul And marked on my back Legends of flowers and leaves. I stoked the birch in the fire As Daniel commanded And blessed my red temper Until I spoke as a prophet. I had long been the earth— Arid, ochre, forlorn since birth— But you fell on my chest by chance From beaks of birds, from eyes of grass.

There is delight in singing, tho’ none hear Beside the singer; and there is delight In praising, tho’ the praiser sit alone And see the prais’d far off him, far above. Shakspeare is not our poet, but the world’s, Therefore on him no speech! and brief for thee, Browning! Since Chaucer was alive and hale, No man hath walkt along our roads with step So active, so inquiring eye, or tongue So varied in discourse. But warmer climes Give brighter plumage, stronger wing: the breeze Of Alpine highths thou playest with, borne on Beyond Sorrento and Amalfi, where The Siren waits thee, singing song for song.

TO show the lab’ring bosom’s deep intent, And thought in living characters to paint, When first thy pencil did those beauties give, And breathing figures learnt from thee to live, How did those prospects give my soul delight, A new creation rushing on my sight? Still, wond’rous youth! each noble path pursue, On deathless glories fix thine ardent view: Still may the painter’s and the poet’s fire To aid thy pencil, and thy verse conspire! And may the charms of each seraphic theme Conduct thy footsteps to immortal fame! High to the blissful wonders of the skies Elate thy soul, and raise thy wishful eyes. Thrice happy, when exalted to survey That splendid city, crown’d with endless day, Whose twice six gates on radiant hinges ring: Celestial Salem blooms in endless spring. Calm and serene thy moments glide along, And may the muse inspire each future song! Still, with the sweets of contemplation bless’d, May peace with balmy wings your soul invest! But when these shades of time are chas’d away, And darkness ends in everlasting day, On what seraphic pinions shall we move, And view the landscapes in the realms above? There shall thy tongue in heav’nly murmurs flow, And there my muse with heav’nly transport glow: No more to tell of Damon’s tender sighs, Or rising radiance of Aurora’s eyes, For nobler themes demand a nobler strain, And purer language on th’ ethereal plain. Cease, gentle muse! the solemn gloom of night Now seals the fair creation from my sight.

Oft, when my lips I open to rehearse Thy wondrous spell of wisdom, and of power, And that my voice, and thy immortal verse, On listening ears, and hearts, I mingled pour, I shrink dismayed – and awful doth appear The vain presumption of my own weak deed; Thy glorious spirit seems to mine so near, That suddenly I tremble as I read – Thee an invisible auditor I fear: Oh, if it might be so, my master dear! With what beseeching would I pray to thee, To make me equal to my noble task, Succor from thee, how humbly would I ask, Thy worthiest works to utter worthily.

That neither fame nor love might wanting be To greatness, Cary, I sing that and thee; Whose house, if it no other honor had, In only thee might be both great and glad; Who, to upbraid the sloth of this our time, Durst valor make almost, but not, a crime; Which deed I know not, whether were more high, Or thou more happy, it to justify Against thy fortune: when no foe, that day, Could conquer thee but chance, who did betray. Love thy great loss, which a renown hath won, To live when Broick not stands, nor Ruhr doth run. Love honors, which of best example be When they cost dearest and are done most free; Though every fortitude deserves applause, It may be much or little in the cause. He’s valiant’st that dares fight, and not for pay; That virtuous is, when the reward’s away.

(Variant printed in Samuel Daniel’s 1623 Works ) To thee, pure spirit, to thee alone addressed Is this joint work, by double interest thine, Thine by his own, and what is done of mine Inspired by thee, thy secret power impressed. My Muse with thine, itself dared to combine As mortal stuff with that which is divine: Let thy fair beams give luster to the rest That Israel’s King may deign his own, transformed In substance no, but superficial ’tire; And English guised in some sort may aspire To better grace thee what the vulgar formed: His sacred tones, age after age admire; Nations grow great in pride and pure desire So to excel in holy rites performed. Oh, had that soul which honor brought to rest Too soon not left and reft the world of all What man could show, which we perfection call, This precious piece had sorted with the best. But ah, wide festered wounds that never shall Nor must be closed, unto fresh bleeding fall: Ah, memory, what needs this new arrest? Yet blessed grief, that sweetness can impart Since thou art blest! Wrongly do I complain: Whatever weights my heavy thoughts sustain Dear feels my soul for thee. I know my part Nor be my weakness to thy rites a stain, Rites to aright, life-blood would not refrain: Assist me, then, that life what thine did part. Time may bring forth what time hath yet suppressed In whom thy loss hath laid to utter waste; The wrack of time, untimely all defaced, Remaining as the tomb of life deceased, Where, in my heart the highest room thou hast; There, truly there, thy earthly being is placed, Triumph of death: in life how more than blest. Behold, oh, that thou were now to behold This finished long perfection’s part begun, The rest but pieced, as left by thee undone. Pardon blest soul, presumption overbold, If love and zeal hath to this error run: ’Tis zealous love, love that hath never done, Nor can enough, though justly here controlled. But since it hath no other scope to go, Nor other purpose but to honor thee, That thine may shine, where all the Graces be; And that my thoughts (like smallest streams that flow, Pay to their sea, their tributary fee) Do strive, yet have no means to quit nor free That mighty debt of infinities I owe To thy great worth which time to times enroll, Wonder of men, sole born, sole of thy kind Complete in all, but heavenly was thy mind, For wisdom, goodness, sweetness, fairest soul: Too good to wish, too fair for earth, refined For heaven, where all true glory rests confined; And where but there no life without control? Oh, when from this account, this cast-up sum, This reck’ning made the audit of my woe, Sometime of rase my swelling passions know How work my thoughts, my sense is stricken dumb That would thee more than words could ever show, Which all fall short. Who knew thee best do know There lives no wit that may thy praise become. And rest fair monuments of thy fair fame, Though not complete. Nor can we reach, in thought, What on that goodly piece time would have wrought Had divers so spared that life (but life) to frame The rest. Alas, such loss! The world hath naught Can equal it, nor, oh, more grievance brought, Yet what remains must ever crown thy name. Receive these hymns, these obsequies receive, (If any mark of thy secret spirit thou bear) Made only thine, and no name else must wear. I can no more: Dear Soul, I take my leave; My sorrow strives to mount the highest sphere.

For Arthur Russell All that glitters isn’t music. Once, hidden in tall grass, I tossed fistfuls of dirt into the air: doe after doe of leaping. You said it was nothing but a trick of the light. Gold curves. Gold scarves. Am I not your animal? You’d wait in the orchard for hours to watch a deer break from the shadows. You said it was like lifting a cello out of its black case.

I. I come from fields of fractured ice, Whose wounds are cured by squeezing, Melting they cool, but in a trice, Get warm again by freezing. Here, in the frosty air, the sprays With fern-like hoar-frost bristle, There, liquid stars their watery rays Shoot through the solid crystal. II. I come from empyrean fires— From microscopic spaces, Where molecules with fierce desires, Shiver in hot embraces. The atoms clash, the spectra flash, Projected on the screen, The double D, magnesian b, And Thallium’s living green. III. We place our eye where these dark rays Unite in this dark focus, Right on the source of power we gaze, Without a screen to cloak us. Then, where the eye was placed at first, We place a disc of platinum, It glows, it puckers! will it burst? How ever shall we flatten him! IV. This crystal tube the electric ray Shows optically clean, No dust or haze within, but stay! All has not yet been seen. What gleams are these of heavenly blue? What air-drawn form appearing, What mystic fish, that, ghostlike, through The empty space is steering? V. I light this sympathetic flame, My faintest wish that answers, I sing, it sweetly sings the same, It dances with the dancers. I shout, I whistle, clap my hands, And stamp upon the platform, The flame responds to my commands, In this form and in that form. VI. What means that thrilling, drilling scream, Protect me! 'tis the siren: Her heart is fire, her breath is steam, Her larynx is of iron. Sun! dart thy beams! in tepid streams, Rise, viewless exhalations! And lap me round, that no rude sound May mar my meditations. VII. Here let me pause.—These transient facts, These fugitive impressions, Must be transformed by mental acts, To permanent possessions. Then summon up your grasp of mind, Your fancy scientific, Till sights and sounds with thought combine Become of truth prolific. VIII. Go to! prepare your mental bricks, Fetch them from every quarter, Firm on the sand your basement fix With best sensation mortar. The top shall rise to heaven on high— Or such an elevation, That the swift whirl with which we fly Shall conquer gravitation.

To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name, Am I thus ample to thy book and fame; While I confess thy writings to be such As neither man nor muse can praise too much; 'Tis true, and all men's suffrage. But these ways Were not the paths I meant unto thy praise; For seeliest ignorance on these may light, Which, when it sounds at best, but echoes right; Or blind affection, which doth ne'er advance The truth, but gropes, and urgeth all by chance; Or crafty malice might pretend this praise, And think to ruin, where it seem'd to raise. These are, as some infamous bawd or whore Should praise a matron; what could hurt her more? But thou art proof against them, and indeed, Above th' ill fortune of them, or the need. I therefore will begin. Soul of the age! The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage! My Shakespeare, rise! I will not lodge thee by Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie A little further, to make thee a room: Thou art a monument without a tomb, And art alive still while thy book doth live And we have wits to read and praise to give. That I not mix thee so, my brain excuses, I mean with great, but disproportion'd Muses, For if I thought my judgment were of years, I should commit thee surely with thy peers, And tell how far thou didst our Lyly outshine, Or sporting Kyd, or Marlowe's mighty line. And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek, From thence to honour thee, I would not seek For names; but call forth thund'ring Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles to us; Pacuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead, To life again, to hear thy buskin tread, And shake a stage; or, when thy socks were on, Leave thee alone for the comparison Of all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come. Tri'umph, my Britain, thou hast one to show To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe. He was not of an age but for all time! And all the Muses still were in their prime, When, like Apollo, he came forth to warm Our ears, or like a Mercury to charm! Nature herself was proud of his designs And joy'd to wear the dressing of his lines, Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit, As, since, she will vouchsafe no other wit. The merry Greek, tart Aristophanes, Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please, But antiquated and deserted lie, As they were not of Nature's family. Yet must I not give Nature all: thy art, My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part. For though the poet's matter nature be, His art doth give the fashion; and, that he Who casts to write a living line, must sweat, (Such as thine are) and strike the second heat Upon the Muses' anvil; turn the same (And himself with it) that he thinks to frame, Or, for the laurel, he may gain a scorn; For a good poet's made, as well as born; And such wert thou. Look how the father's face Lives in his issue, even so the race Of Shakespeare's mind and manners brightly shines In his well-turned, and true-filed lines; In each of which he seems to shake a lance, As brandish'd at the eyes of ignorance. Sweet Swan of Avon! what a sight it were To see thee in our waters yet appear, And make those flights upon the banks of Thames, That so did take Eliza and our James! But stay, I see thee in the hemisphere Advanc'd, and made a constellation there! Shine forth, thou star of poets, and with rage Or influence, chide or cheer the drooping stage; Which, since thy flight from hence, hath mourn'd like night, And despairs day, but for thy volume's light.

It is all right. All they do Is go in by dividing One rib from another. I wouldn’t Lie to you. It hurts Like nothing I know. All they do Is burn their way in with a wire. It forks in and out a little like the tongue Of that frightened garter snake we caught At Cloverfield, you and me, Jenny So long ago. I would lie to you If I could. But the only way I can get you to come up Out of the suckhole, the south face Of the Powhatan pit, is to tell you What you know: You come up after dark, you poise alone With me on the shore. I lead you back to this world. Three lady doctors in Wheeling open Their offices at night. I don’t have to call them, they are always there. But they only have to put the knife once Under your breast. Then they hang their contraption. And you bear it. It’s awkward a while. Still, it lets you Walk about on tiptoe if you don’t Jiggle the needle. It might stab your heart, you see. The blade hangs in your lung and the tube Keeps it draining. That way they only have to stab you Once. Oh Jenny. I wish to God I had made this world, this scurvy And disastrous place. I Didn’t, I can’t bear it Either, I don’t blame you, sleeping down there Face down in the unbelievable silk of spring, Muse of black sand, Alone. I don’t blame you, I know The place where you lie. I admit everything. But look at me. How can I live without you? Come up to me, love, Out of the river, or I will Come down to you.