[Aaron]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')he walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that 's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

[killJOY]

From memory, so I might not get it right:


$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Wallace Steven', 'O')ne must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine trees crusted in snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun: and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land,
Full of the same wind,
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

[erl]

Ah, Wallace Stevens.

[PenultimateManStanding]

Robert Graves is pretty good. Here's a spooky one:


A Child's Nightmare

Through long nursery nights he stood
By my bed unwearying,
Loomed gigantic, formless, queer,
Purring in my haunted ear
That same hideous nightmare thing,
Talking, as he lapped my blood,
In a voice cruel and flat,
Saying for ever, "Cat! ... Cat! ... Cat!..."

That one word was all he said,
That one word through all my sleep,
In monotonous mock despair.
Nonsense may be light as air,
But there's Nonsense that can keep
Horror bristling round the head,
When a voice cruel and flat
Says for ever, "Cat! ... Cat! ... Cat!..."

He had faded, he was gone
Years ago with Nursery Land,
When he leapt on me again
From the clank of a night train,
Overpowered me foot and head,
Lapped my blood, while on and on
The old voice cruel and flat
Says for ever, "Cat! ... Cat! ... Cat!..."

Morphia drowsed, again I lay
In a crater by High Wood:
He was there with straddling legs,
Staring eyes as big as eggs,
Purring as he lapped my blood,
His black bulk darkening the day,
With a voice cruel and flat,
"Cat! ... Cat! ... Cat! ... Cat!..." he said, "Cat! ... Cat!..."

When I'm shot through heart and head,
And there's no choice but to die,
The last word I'll hear, no doubt,
Won't be "Charge!" or "Bomb them out!"
Nor the stretcher-bearer's cry,
"Let that body be, he's dead!"
But a voice cruel and flat
Saying for ever, "Cat! ... Cat! ... Cat!"

[Laurasia]

The Tyger

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forest of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder and what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And, when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand and what dread feet?

What the hammer? What the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And water'd heaven with their tears,
Did He smile His work to see?
Did He who made the lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

~ William Blake ~
1757 - 1827

[oowolf]

As the homebound heart finds home
as ever was, when the day's work done
tenders reconciliation, with kindness comes
at fruitful dusk, down homeward ridings
into gladness, into joy mid gathering darkness;

As the speckled born of wonder,
from her round, rush nest in all
the world's wildness takes flight,
takes praise to the skies, wings dreams
to the kind, cumulus drifts abiding their fleet forever;

As the still, sleepy, and May
none-too-forsaken world awaking
loves the sun, the gentle wanderer
who comes, all night forgiven, walking the wide skied yonder into blue morning heaven;

So I love you.

(Guess who wrote this in high school and slipped it into the locker of a 15 year old gawdess named Emily Roxanne?)

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('oowolf', '
')So I love you.

(Guess who wrote this in high school and slipped it into the locker of a 15 year old gawdess named Emily Roxanne?)

[oowolf]

I had to go home and dig thru a box of old paper to find it. I filled notebooks full of the stuff. Maybbe I was born too late-I cudda been a neurasthenic Pre-Raphaelite poet.

My favorite poem:
http://www.sheilascorner.com/summer.html

My favorite version is the Olimpia Boronat recording of 1904. The Amelita Galli-Curci version of 1919 is also lovely even if the singing is somewhat degenerate.

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('oowolf', 'n')eurasthenic Pre-Raphaelite poet.

[oowolf]

Highly recommended:
http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/alb ... m_id=47548

"The Nightingale" is awesome although some would now call such singing Victorian and viscious. People simply CANNOT sing as well today as they could 100 years ago. Why? Western musical taste and standards have fallen since the days of Catalani http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angelica_Catalani
or Jenny Lind
http://chnm.gmu.edu/lostmuseum/lm/56/
Women would faint and men burst into tears when Lind sang.

[oowolf]

Another, from a couple years later: (last one, I promise)



This meadow, kind with herbs,
where you walk your delicate hagiography,
where in you
did summer ever insist so tenderly
as the plum tree
cascading over your newborn awkwardness
that day
that was the birth of our consanguinity.

Overhead,
opalescent plums,
hanging lanternlike
in the late sun of our time together.

[gary_malcolm]

Two from Nash:

"When called by a Panther... don't anther."

" A two 'L' llamas a beast,
A one 'L' lama is higher,
A three alarmers a fire."

And on from Klibel

"My cat is fat So now I'll dine And eat all up This cat of mine."

G

[oowolf]

http://persephone.cps.unizar.es/General ... sMerci.jpg