1269 Arts and sciences poems

I.1. Awake, Æolian lyre, awake, And give to rapture all thy trembling strings. From Helicon's harmonious springs A thousand rills their mazy progress take: The laughing flowers, that round them blow, Drink life and fragrance as they flow. Now the rich stream of music winds along Deep, majestic, smooth, and strong, Thro' verdant vales, and Ceres' golden reign: Now rolling down the steep amain, Headlong, impetuous, see it pour: The rocks and nodding groves rebellow to the roar. I.2. Oh! Sovereign of the willing soul, Parent of sweet and solemn-breathing airs, Enchanting shell! the sullen Cares And frantic Passions hear thy soft control. On Thracia's hills the Lord of War, Has curb'd the fury of his car, And dropp'd his thirsty lance at thy command. Perching on the sceptred hand Of Jove, thy magic lulls the feather'd king With ruffled plumes and flagging wing: Quench'd in dark clouds of slumber lie The terror of his beak, and light'nings of his eye. I.3. Thee the voice, the dance, obey, Temper'd to thy warbled lay. O'er Idalia's velvet-green The rosy-crowned Loves are seen On Cytherea's day With antic Sports and blue-ey'd Pleasures, Frisking light in frolic measures; Now pursuing, now retreating, Now in circling troops they meet: To brisk notes in cadence beating Glance their many-twinkling feet. Slow melting strains their Queen's approach declare: Where'er she turns the Graces homage pay. With arms sublime, that float upon the air, In gliding state she wins her easy way: O'er her warm cheek and rising bosom move The bloom of young Desire and purple light of Love. II.1. Man's feeble race what ills await, Labour, and Penury, the racks of Pain, Disease, and Sorrow's weeping train, And Death, sad refuge from the storms of Fate! The fond complaint, my song, disprove, And justify the laws of Jove. Say, has he giv'n in vain the heav'nly Muse? Night, and all her sickly dews, Her spectres wan, and birds of boding cry, He gives to range the dreary sky: Till down the eastern cliffs afar Hyperion's march they spy, and glitt'ring shafts of war. II.2. In climes beyond the solar road, Where shaggy forms o'er ice-built mountains roam, The Muse has broke the twilight-gloom To cheer the shiv'ring native's dull abode. And oft, beneath the od'rous shade Of Chili's boundless forests laid, She deigns to hear the savage youth repeat In loose numbers wildly sweet Their feather-cinctur'd chiefs, and dusky loves. Her track, where'er the goddess roves, Glory pursue, and generous Shame, Th' unconquerable Mind, and Freedom's holy flame. II.3. Woods, that wave o'er Delphi's steep, Isles, that crown th' Ægean deep, Fields, that cool Ilissus laves, Or where Mæander's amber waves In ling'ring Lab'rinths creep, How do your tuneful echoes languish, Mute, but to the voice of Anguish? Where each old poetic mountain Inspiration breath'd around: Ev'ry shade and hallow'd Fountain Murmur'd deep a solemn sound: Till the sad Nine in Greece's evil hour Left their Parnassus for the Latian plains. Alike they scorn the pomp of tyrant Power, And coward Vice, that revels in her chains. When Latium had her lofty spirit lost, They sought, O Albion! next thy sea-encircled coast. III.1. Far from the sun and summer-gale, In thy green lap was Nature's darling laid, What time, where lucid Avon stray'd, To him the mighty Mother did unveil Her awful face: the dauntless child Stretch'd forth his little arms, and smiled. This pencil take (she said) whose colours clear Richly paint the vernal year: Thine too these golden keys, immortal boy! This can unlock the gates of Joy; Of Horror that, and thrilling Fears, Or ope the sacred source of sympathetic tears. III.2. Nor second he, that rode sublime Upon the seraph-wings of Ecstasy, The secrets of th' Abyss to spy. He pass'd the flaming bounds of Place and Time: The living throne, the sapphire-blaze, Where angels tremble, while they gaze, He saw; but blasted with excess of light, Clos'd his eyes in endless night. Behold, where Dryden's less presumptuous car, Wide o'er the fields of Glory bear Two coursers of ethereal race, With necks in thunder cloth'd, and long-resounding pace. III.3. Hark, his hands thy lyre explore! Bright-eyed Fancy hovering o'er Scatters from her pictur'd urn Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn. But ah! 'tis heard no more— O lyre divine, what daring spirit Wakes thee now? tho' he inherit Nor the pride, nor ample pinion, That the Theban Eagle bear, Sailing with supreme dominion Thro' the azure deep of air: Yet oft before his infant eyes would run Such forms, as glitter in the Muse's ray With orient hues, unborrow'd of the Sun: Yet shall he mount, and keep his distant way Beyond the limits of a vulgar fate, Beneath the good how far—but far above the great.

[Let a be taken as . . .] a liquid line beneath the skin and b where the blue tiles meet body and the body’s bridge a seeming road here, endless rain pearling light chamber after chamber of dust-weighted air the project of seeing things so to speak, or things seen namely a hand, namely the logic of the hand holding a bell or clouded lens the vase perched impossibly near the edge obscuring the metal tines. She said “perhaps” then it echoed. I stood there torn felt hat in hand wondering what I had done to cause this dizziness “you must learn to live with.” It reveals no identifiable source (not anyway the same as a forest floor). A vagrant march time, car passes silently, arm rests at his side holding a bell or ground lens where c stands for inessential night – how that body would move vs how it actually does – too abstract &/or not abstract enough but a closed curve in either case she might repeat indicating the shallow eaves nothing but coats and scarves below the window his-her face canted to the left nothing imagined or imaginable dark and nothing actually begun so that the color becomes exactly as it was in the miniuscule word for it scribbled beside an arrow on the far wall perfectly how else continuous with memory. There are pomegranates on the table though they have been placed there salt, pepper, books and schedules all sharing the same error and measure of inattention. What she says rolls forward. I shouted toward motion, other gestured, child laughs, sky, traffic, photograph. I gave a real pain, expelled breath, decided. Both arms in thought, mirror otherwise, abandoned structures mostly, the glass door with its inscription lay open before us, nothing to fear.

I wanted first to end up as a drunk in the gutter and in my twenties I almost ended up there— and then as an alternative to vodka, to live alone like a hermit philosopher and court the extreme poverty that I suspected lay in store for me anyway— and then there were the years in which I needed very badly to take refuge in mediocrity, years like blunt scissors cutting out careful squares, and that was the worst, the very worst— you could say that always my life was like a patchwork quilt always ripped apart— my life like scraps stitched together in a dream in which animals and people, plants, chimeras, stars, even minerals were in a preordained harmony— a dream forgotten because it has to be forgotten, but that I looked for desperately, but only sporadically found in fragments, a hand lifted to strike or caress or simply lifted for some unknown reason— and in memory too, some specific pain, sensation of cold or warmth. I loved that harmony in all its stages of passion, the voices still talking inside me . . . but then, instead of harmony, there was nothing but rags scattered on the ground. And maybe that's all it means to be a poet.

Publication – is the Auction Of the Mind of Man – Poverty – be justifying For so foul a thing Possibly – but We – would rather From Our Garret go White – unto the White Creator – Than invest – Our Snow – Thought belong to Him who gave it – Then – to Him Who bear It's Corporeal illustration – sell The Royal Air – In the Parcel – Be the Merchant Of the Heavenly Grace – But reduce no Human Spirit To Disgrace of Price –

My spirit is too weak—mortality Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep, And each imagined pinnacle and steep Of godlike hardship tells me I must die Like a sick eagle looking at the sky. Yet ’tis a gentle luxury to weep That I have not the cloudy winds to keep Fresh for the opening of the morning’s eye. Such dim-conceived glories of the brain Bring round the heart an undescribable feud; So do these wonders a most dizzy pain, That mingles Grecian grandeur with the rude Wasting of old time—with a billowy main— A sun—a shadow of a magnitude.

What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones, The labor of an age in pilèd stones, Or that his hallowed relics should be hid Under a star-ypointing pyramid? Dear son of Memory, great heir of fame, What need’st thou such weak witness of thy name? Thou in our wonder and astonishment Hast built thyself a live-long monument. For whilst to th’ shame of slow-endeavouring art, Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book Those Delphic lines with deep impression took, Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving, Dost make us marble with too much conceiving; And so sepúlchred in such pomp dost lie, That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.

O golden-tongued Romance with serene lute! Fair plumed Syren! Queen of far away! Leave melodizing on this wintry day, Shut up thine olden pages, and be mute: Adieu! for once again the fierce dispute, Betwixt damnation and impassion'd clay Must I burn through; once more humbly assay The bitter-sweet of this Shakespearian fruit. Chief Poet! and ye clouds of Albion, Begetters of our deep eternal theme, When through the old oak forest I am gone, Let me not wander in a barren dream, But when I am consumed in the fire, Give me new Phoenix wings to fly at my desire.

I find myself in the deep corridor that would have been dark if my right hand wasn’t shining like a torch. — Tomas Tranströmer One of those idle hours I did not want To participate in “group,” when it seemed Impossible I’d know a word to haunt Again, or make me laugh, or spur that dream To roam myself the ranges of the tongue; When on that ward I thought not one aspect Of anything, no matter how strong, strange, Or keen, could sharpen the “blunted affect” Even electric shock had no effect on    ... During one such despondent interval I read these lines from his New Directions New collected poems, and the verbal Sequence somehow composed the correct code To unlock feeling:corridor, right hand, Dark

“Sooner or later we'll all get to speak like Ted Berrigan” A donkey might consider itself a white stallion and the ear-phones oft the desert tune into us A hair-breaking pallor Nothing to be afraid of How long has the checker-board been “on the scene”? It's the miracle she-wolf. I know I am “too serious” For “The Daughters of Nothing already for Nothing” Who will erase my ulcer See its dry its dry it's got a combination My friends. What's left over? Pagliacci. In the guise of Enrico Caruso bangs his drum with hysteric eyes His girl-friend's inside he's beating the heart of his bass drum O that crazy clown Pagliacci! It seems we stood and talked like this before Don't Grab from me Baby I keep my face and open spigot a cry of the winds Fall all your fresh newspapers Inquisitors Happiness It is the divine stone the white stone with the name which no one knows New York City On Ted's 31st Birthday

A trouble, not of clouds, or weeping rain, Nor of the setting sun's pathetic light Engendered, hangs o'er Eildon's triple height: Spirits of Power, assembled there, complain For kindred Power departing from their sight; While Tweed, best pleased in chanting a blithe strain, Saddens his voice again, and yet again. Lift up your hearts, ye Mourners! for the might Of the whole world's good wishes with him goes; Blessings and prayers in nobler retinue Than sceptred king or laurelled conqueror knows, Follow this wondrous Potentate. Be true, Ye winds of ocean, and the midland sea, Wafting your Charge to soft Parthenope!