Wednesday 29 November 2017

Four quartets, T. S. Eliot


«...Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality. Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, wich is always present.
...And the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent from nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, 'theres' we have been: but I cannot say where...»

(Four quartets, T. S. Eliot)

John Clare, The Tell-Tale Flowers

Aye, flowers! The very name of flowers,
That bloom in wood and glen,
Brings Spring to me in Winter's hours,
And childhood's dreams again.

John Clare, The Tell-Tale Flowers

Sunday 19 November 2017

I felt a Cleaving in my Mind

I felt a Cleaving in my Mind —
As if my Brain had split —
I tried to match it — Seam by Seam —
But could not make them fit.

The thought behind, I strove to join
Unto the thought before —
But Sequence ravelled out of Sound
Like Balls — upon a Floor.

Tuesday 14 November 2017

Part Four: Time and Eternity by Emily Dickinson (1830–86).  Complete Poems.  1924.


Part Four: Time and Eternity

LXIX

ONE need not be a chamber to be haunted,
One need not be a house;
The brain has corridors surpassing
Material place.  

Far safer, of a midnight meeting        
5External ghost,
Than an interior confronting
That whiter host.  

Far safer through an Abbey gallop,
The stones achase,        
10Than, moonless, one’s own self encounter
In lonesome place.  

Ourself, behind ourself concealed,
Should startle most;
Assassin, hid in our apartment,        

15Be horror’s least.  

The prudent carries a revolver,
He bolts the door,
O’erlooking a superior spectre
More near.

Thursday 9 November 2017

The Sick Rose, by William Blake

O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

Tuesday 7 November 2017

Christina Rossetti

“Lie still, lie still, my breaking heart; 
My silent heart, lie still and break: 
Life, and the world, and mine own self, are changed 
For a dream's sake.” 

Fragment: Questions, by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Is it that in some brighter sphere
We part from friends we meet with here?
Or do we see the Future pass
Over the Present’s dusky glass?
Or what is that that makes us seem
To patch up fragments of a dream,
Part of which comes true, and part
Beats and trembles in the heart?

I wandered lonely as a Cloud, by William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a Cloud
That floats on high o’er Vales and Hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden Daffodils;
Beside the Lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:—
A Poet could not but be gay
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the shew to me had brought:

For oft when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude,
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the Daffodils.