If I make the lashes dark
And the eyes more bright
And the lips more scarlet,
Or ask if all be right
From mirror after mirror,
No vanity's displayed:
I'm looking for the face I had
Before the world was made.
~W.B. Yeats
From: A Woman Young and Old, by Yeats (For the Full text, CLICK HERE)
Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.
Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.
As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rarely ever wrong.
Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect in it's weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.
-Anonymous
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms,
And then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel,
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lin'd,
With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose well sav'd, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
William Shakespeare
From As You Like It, Act 2, Scene 7
We don't stand at your grave and weep.
You are not there. You do not sleep.
You are a thousand winds that blow.
You are the diamond glints on snow.
You are the sunlight on ripened grain.
You are the gentle autumn rain.
When we awaken in the morning's hush,
You are the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight.
You are the soft star that shines at night.
We don't stand at your grave and cry.
You are not there. You did not die.
Mary Elizabeth Frye nee Clark [adapted]
Photo by Ilona Wellman, The Stranger
May the blessing of light be on you, light without
and light within. May the blessed sunshine shine on
you and warm your heart till it glows like a great
peat fire, so that the stranger may come and warm himself
at it, and also a friend....
Photograph: Philip Pankov, Japanese Branches, view onto Sugar Loaf, Enniskerry, Co. Wicklow, Ireland 2004
Wolfgang Wackernagel
GILGAMESH'S IRISGLANCE (english)
published in : Diogenes n° 156, New York - Oxford, Berg 1992
genre : calligramme • concrete poetry
A "Calligramme" is also known as shaped stanza or Heiroglyphic verse. The way the words are arranged on the paper evokes a shape, either through the use of the words or the use of the space around the words. It can also be done with multiple colors, such as black and red.
-PoetryRenewal.com
French Version:
Source: Ymago.net
Hold on to what is good,
even if it's a handful of earth.
Hold on to what you believe,
even if it's a tree that stands by itself.
Hold on to what you must do,
even if it's a long way from here.
Hold on to your life,
even if it's easier to let go.
Hold on to my hand,
even if I've gone away from you.
Photograph, "Rosalinda," by: Manuel Librodo Jr. (Used with Permission)
For a superb analysis of William Blake's timeless poem, see Dr. Ed Friedlander's "Understanding William Blake's 'The Tyger'"
Black shadows fall
From the lindens tall,
That lift aloft their massive wall
Against the southern sky;
And from the realms
Of the shadowy elms
A tide-like darkness overwhelms
The fields that round us lie.
But the night is fair,
And everywhere
A warm, soft vapor fills the air,
And distant sounds seem near;
And above, in the light
Of the star-lit night,
Swift birds of passage wing their flight
Through the dewy atmosphere.
I hear the beat
Of their pinions fleet,
As from the land of snow and sleet
They seek a southern lea.
I hear the cry
Of their voices high
Falling dreamily through the sky,
But their forms I cannot see.
Oh, say not so!
Those sounds that flow
In murmurs of delight and woe
Come not from wings of birds.
They are the throngs
Of the poet's songs,
Murmurs of pleasures, and pains, and wrongs,
The sound of winged words.
This is the cry
Of souls, that high
On toiling, beating pinions, fly,
Seeking a warmer clime.
From their distant flight
Through realms of light
It falls into our world of night,
With the murmuring sound of rhyme.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Soothsayer
Caesar!
CAESAR
Ha! who calls?
CASCA
Bid every noise be still: peace yet again!
CAESAR
Who is it in the press that calls on me?
I hear a tongue, shriller than all the music,
Cry 'Caesar!' Speak; Caesar is turn'd to hear.
Soothsayer
Beware the ides of March.
The ides of March is a day that continues to appeal, marked because that was the date that Julius Caesar was assassinated in the senate, in 44 BC.
Photo: Stormy Tree by Glenn Williams
