A salutary reflection

On repentance and procrastination. From St Augustine. At the Daily Eudemon.

Requiescat
by Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

Tread lightly, she is near
    Under the snow,
Speak gently, she can hear
    The daisies grow.

All her bright golden hair
    Tarnished with rust,
She that was young and fair
    Fallen to dust.

Lily-like, white as snow,
    She hardly knew
She was a woman, so
    Sweetly she grew.

Coffin-board, heavy stone,
    Lie on her breast,
I vex my heart alone,
    She is at rest.

Peace, Peace, she cannot hear
    Lyre or sonnet,
All my life's buried here,
    Heap earth upon it.

Too busy to blog

I've been doing two things:

1. Reading Fred Reed columns.

2. Waiting for October.

I'm with Rudy on that last point

An Onion article worth reading.

Seamus Heaney
from the first of the "Glanmore Sonnets"

Old ploughsocks gorge the subsoil of each sense
And I am quickened with a redolence
Of farmland as a dark unblown rose.
Wait then ... Breasting the mist, in sowers’ aprons,
My ghosts come striding into their spring stations.
The dream grain whirls like freakish Easter snows.

Cummings

when the proficient poison of sure sleep
bereaves us of our slow tranquillities

and He without Whose favour nothing is
(being of men called Love)upward doth leap
from the mute hugeness of depriving deep

with thunder of those hungering wings of His,

into the lucent and large signories
—i shall not smile,beloved;i shall not weep:

when from the less-than-whiteness of thy face
(whose eyes inherit vacancy)will time
extract his inconsiderable doom,
when these thy lips beautifully embrace
nothing
              and when thy bashful hands assume

silence beyond the mystery of rhyme

Back to poetry!

Meredith of For Keats' Sake! searches for the perfect line.

A few of my candidates:

She moved in circles, and those circles moved (Roethke)

She sang beyond the genius of the sea (Stevens)

A fasted will marauding through the body (Heaney)

The sundering ultimate kingdom of genesis' thunder (Dylan Thomas, see below)

e quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle (Dante)

benignamente d'umiltà vestuta (Dante)

Le vierge, le vivace, et le bel aujourd'hui (Mallarmé)

How wrong they are in always being right (Auden)

one's not half two. It's two are halves of one (Cummings)

And night is all a settlement of snow (Wilbur)

(I don't know if I should include such masterful single lines as "upon" by William Carlos Williams, or "satis-" by Robert Creeley ... )

Speaking of names

Channel 7 here in Boston has a weather forecaster whose given name is Dylan.

Dylan is a woman.

Political conversation
a name-recognition problem?

"Why do I think of a gay guy that cross-dresses when you say 'Ron Paul'?

"No, Mom, that's RuPaul."

from Ceremony after a Fire Raid
by Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)

III

Into the organpipes and steeples
Of the luminous cathedrals,
Into the weathercocks' molten mouths
Rippling in twelve-winded circles,
Into the dead clock burning the hour
Over the urn of sabbaths
Over the whirling ditch of daybreak
Over the sun's hovel and the slum of fire
And the golden pavements laid in requiems,
Into the cauldrons of the statuary,
Into the bread in a wheatfield of flames,
Into the wine burning like brandy,
The masses of the sea
The masses of the sea under
The masses of the infant-bearing sea
Erupt, fountain, and enter to utter forever
Glory glory glory
The sundering ultimate kingdom of genesis' thunder.

Cummings
from i: six nonlectures, Nonlecture Two

One ever memorable day, our ex-substantialist (deep in structural meditation) met head-on professor Royce; who was rolling peacefully home from a lecture. "Estlin" his courteous and gentle voice hazarded "I understand that you write poetry." I blushed. "Are you perhaps" he inquired, regarding a particular leaf of a particular tree "acquainted with the sonnets of Dante Gabriel Rossetti?" I blushed a different blush and shook an ignorant head. "Have you a moment?" he shyly suggested, less than half looking at me; and just perceptibly appended "I rather imagine you might enjoy them." Shortly thereafter, sage and ignoramus were sitting opposite each other in a diminutive study (marvellously smelling of tobacco and cluttered with student notebooks of a menacing bluish shade)--the ignoramus listening, enthralled; the sage intoning, lovingly and beautifully, his favorite poems. And very possibly (although I don't, as usual, know) that is the reason--or more likely the unreason--I've been writing sonnets ever since.

Mary's Girlhood
(For a Picture)
by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)

This is that blessed Mary, pre-elect
    God's Virgin. Gone is a great while, and she
    Dwelt young in Nazareth of Galilee.
Unto God's will she brought devout respect,
Profound simplicity of intellect,
    And supreme patience. From her mother's knee
    Faithful and hopeful; wise in charity;
Strong in grave peace; in pity circumspect.

So held she through her girlhood; as it were
    An angel-water'd lily, that near God
        Grows and is quiet. Till, one dawn at home,
She woke in her white bed, and had no fear
    At all,—yet wept till sunshine, and felt aw'd:
        Because the fulness of the time was come.

Keats
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The young Endymion sleeps Endymion's sleep;
      The shepherd-boy whose tale was left half told!
      The solemn grove uplifts its shield of gold
      To the red rising moon, and loud and deep
The nightingale is singing from the steep;
      It is midsummer, but the air is cold;
      Can it be death? Alas, beside the fold
      A shepherd's pipe lies shattered near his sheep.
Lo! in the moonlight gleams a marble white,
      On which I read: "Here lieth one whose name
      Was writ in water." And was this the meed
Of his sweet singing? Rather let me write:
      "The smoking flax before it burst to flame
      Was quenched by death, and broken the bruised reed."

Does God hate sinners?

From the Word Incarnate blog.

Dylan Thomas
from "There was a saviour"

Silence, silence to do, when earth grew loud,
In lairs and asylums of the tremendous shout.

from Divina Commedia
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

IV

With snow-white veil, and garments as of flame,
    She stands before thee, who so long ago
    Filled thy young heart with passion and the woe
    From which thy song in all its splendors came;
And while with stern rebuke she speaks thy name,
    The ice about thy heart melts as the snow
    On mountain heights, and in swift overflow
    Comes gushing from thy lips in sobs of shame.
Thou makest full confession; and a gleam
    As of the dawn on some dark forest cast,
    Seems on thy lifted forehead to increase;
Lethe and Eunoë -- the remembered dream
    And the forgotten sorrow -- bring at last
    That perfect pardon which is perfect peace.

V

I lift mine eyes, and all the windows blaze
    With forms of saints and holy men who died,
    Here martyred and hereafter glorified;
    And the great Rose upon its leaves displays
Christ's Triumph, and the angelic roundelays,
    With splendor upon splendor multiplied;
    And Beatrice again at Dante's side
    No more rebukes, but smiles her words of praise.
And then the organ sounds, and unseen choirs
    Sing the old Latin hymns of peace and love
    And benedictions of the Holy Ghost;
And the melodious bells among the spires
    O'er all the house-tops and through heaven above
    Proclaim the elevation of the Host!

The Dark Angel
by Lionel Johnson (1867-1902)

Dark Angel, with thine aching lust
To rid the world of penitence:
Malicious Angel, who still dost
My soul such subtile violence!

Because of thee, no thought, no thing,
Abides for me undesecrate:
Dark Angel, ever on the wing,
Who never reachest me too late!

When music sounds, then changest thou
Its silvery to a sultry fire:
Nor will thine envious heart allow
Delight untortured by desire.

Through thee, the gracious Muses turn,
To Furies, O mine Enemy!
And all the things of beauty burn
With flames of evil ecstasy.

Because of thee, the land of dreams
Becomes a gathering place of fears:
Until tormented slumber seems
One vehemence of useless tears.

When sunlight glows upon the flowers,
Or ripples down the dancing sea:
Thou, with thy troop of passionate powers,
Beleaguerest, bewilderest, me.

Within the breath of autumn woods,
Within the winter silences:
Thy venomous spirit stirs and broods,
O Master of impieties!

The ardour of red flame is thine,
And thine the steely soul of ice:
Thou poisonest the fair design
Of nature, with unfair device.

Apples of ashes, golden bright;
Waters of bitterness, how sweet!
O banquet of a foul delight,
Prepared by thee, dark Paraclete!

Thou art the whisper in the gloom,
The hinting tone, the haunting laugh:
Thou art the adorner of my tomb,
The minstrel of mine epitaph.

I fight thee, in the Holy Name!
Yet, what thou dost, is what God saith:
Tempter! should I escape thy flame,
Thou wilt have helped my soul from Death:

The second Death, that never dies,
That cannot die, when time is dead:
Live Death, wherein the lost soul cries,
Eternally uncomforted.

Dark Angel, with thine aching lust!
Of two defeats, of two despairs:
Less dread, a change to drifting dust,
Than thine eternity of cares.

Do what thou wilt, thou shalt not so,
Dark Angel! triumph over me:
Lonely, unto the Lone I go;
Divine, to the Divinity.

To Emily Dickinson
by Hart Crane (1899-1932)

You who desired so much — in vain to ask —
Yet fed you hunger like an endless task,
Dared dignify the labor, bless the quest —
Achieved that stillness ultimately best,

Being, of all, least sought for: Emily, hear!
O sweet, dead Silencer, most suddenly clear
When singing that Eternity possessed
And plundered momently in every breast;

— Truly no flower yet withers in your hand.
The harvest you descried and understand
Needs more than wit to gather, love to bind.
Some reconcilement of remotest mind —

Leaves Ormus rubyless, and Ophir chill.
Else tears heap all within one clay-cold hill.

* * *

To Emily Dickinson
by Yvor Winters (1900-1968)

Dear Emily, my tears would burn your page,
But for the fire-dry line that makes them burn—
Burning my eyes, my fingers, while I turn
Singly the words that crease my heart with age.
If I could make some tortured pilgrimage
Through words or Time or the blank pain of Doom
And kneel before you as you found your tomb,
Then I might rise to face my heritage.

Yours was an empty upland solitude
Bleached to the powder of a dying name;
The mind, lost in a word’s lost certitude
That faded as the fading footsteps came
To trace an epilogue to words grown odd
In that hard argument which led to God.

Cummings

it is at moments after i have dreamed
of the rare entertainment of your eyes,
when(being fool to fancy)i have deemed

with your peculiar mouth my heart made wise;
at moments when the glassy darkness holds

the genuine apparition of your smile
(it was through tears always)and silence moulds
such strangeness as was mine a little while;

moments when my once more illustrious arms
are filled with fascination,when my breast
wears the intolerant brightness of your charms:

one pierced moment whiter than the rest

--turning from the tremendous lie of sleep
i watch the roses of the day grow deep.

The Cross of Snow
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)


In the long, sleepless watches of the night,
      A gentle face — the face of one long dead —
      Looks at me from the wall, where round its head
      The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light.
Here in this room she died; and soul more white
      Never through martyrdom of fire was led
      To its repose; nor can in books be read
      The legend of a life more benedight.
There is a mountain in the distant West
      That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines
      Displays a cross of snow upon its side.
Such is the cross I wear upon my breast
      These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes
      And seasons, changeless since the day she died.

The Author Loving These Homely Meats
Specially, Viz.: Cream, Pancakes, Buttered Pippin-Pies
(Laugh, Good People) and Tobacco;
Writ to That Worthy and Virtuous Gentlewoman,
Whom He Calleth Mistress, As Followeth
by John Davies of Hereford (1563?-1618)

If there were, oh! an Hellespont of cream
Between us, milk-white mistress, I would swim
To you, to show to both my love's extreme,
Leander-like, -- yea! dive from brim to brim.
But met I with a buttered pippin-pie
Floating upon 't, that would I make my boat
To waft me to you without jeopardy,
Though sea-sick I might be while it did float.
Yet if a storm should rise, by night or day,
Of sugar-snows and hail of caraways,
Then, if I found a pancake in my way,
It like a plank should bring me to your kays;
    Which having found, if they tobacco kept,
    The smoke should dry me well before I slept.

More eagerly anticipated than the Motu Proprio

Theological Implications of Henry John Deutschendorf's Lyrics.

A lecture given by TSO to his cats and dog.

Novalis
pen-name of Friedrich von Hardenberg (1772-1801)

Ich sehe dich in tausend Bildern,
Maria, lieblich ausgedrückt,
Doch keins von allen kann dich schildern,
Wie meine Seele dich erblickt.

Ich weiß nur, daß der Welt Getümmel
Seitdem mir wie ein Traum verweht,
Und ein unnennbar süßer Himmel
Mir ewig im Gemüte steht.

A prose paraphrase: I see you in a thousand pictures, Mary, lovingly expressed, yet none of them can portray you as my soul looks upon you. I only know that the world's turmoil fades like a dream since then, and an ineffably sweeter heaven stays ever in my mind.

Carlo Carretto

The blogger at TCRNews Musings gives us an ample sampling from the works of the noted spiritual writer (1910-88), and indicates that this is part one of a two-part post.

(And from this blog, four and a half years ago, is Carretto on chastity.)

Cummings
from the sonnet beginning
"you shall above all things be glad and young"

I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance