Late, late yestreen I saw the new Moon,
With the old Moon in her arms ;
And I fear, I fear, My Master dear !
We shall have a deadly storm.
Ballad of Sir Patrick Spence
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I
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Happy the man, whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air,
In his own ground.
Whose heards with milk, whose fields with bread,
Whose flocks supply him with attire,
Whose trees in summer yield him shade,
In winter fire.
......
O Goddess! hear these tuneless numbers, wrung
By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear,
And pardon that thy secrets should be sung
Even into thine own soft-conched ear:
Surely I dreamt to-day, or did I see
The winged Psyche with awaken'd eyes?
I wander'd in a forest thoughtlessly,
And, on the sudden, fainting with surprise,
Saw two fair creatures, couched side by side
In deepest grass, beneath the whisp'ring roof
......
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thy happiness,---
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
......
Deathless Aphrodite, throned in flowers,
Daughter of Zeus, O terrible enchantress,
With this sorrow, with this anguish, break my spirit
Lady, not longer!
Hear anew the voice! O hear and listen!
Come, as in that island dawn thou camest,
Billowing in thy yoked car to Sappho
Forth from thy father's
......
I C E : Ode to Self
few Hearts can fancy dress their
nakedness in icicle Presence
fewer minds will slip into cemetery’s dusk
soul appears, no hectic heady harkening
glancing what is needed or already seeded
Insight measures wisdom, not cerebral chancing
silence answers chaos, no questions
......
Primeval palm! Survivor over Earth eons -
yet still enduring in this faddish age.
So majestic in maturity you are
that one cannot contemplate your seedling stage.
Brandish your sophisticated stalwart trunk,
resplendent in solid confidence,
firmly pedestaled on solid root ball
propagating nutrition-seeking filaments.
......
At Penny Lane,
among Strawberry Fields,
which swished in global excitement
and superbly choreographed words,
came a voice deep and long —
a voice we will hear time after time —
the voice of John
a protest of Lennon.
We call her Oma.
She’s a simple, old, haggard wooden bridge
In my neighbourhood,
On the shaved navel of the forest, heavy and solemn,
With the colour of an aged, wizened python,
Spotted here and there and striped there and then.
So ramshackle, but friendly, cosy to the naked feet,
With that royal smell of wood-cellar combined with
The health of ancient wine.
Nothing more . . . .
......
Upon the desk, a silent stage, it lies,
A realm of keys, where thoughts take flight.
Each button, firm and cold as winter's ice,
Bears tales of dreams, of endless night.
It sings no song, yet music flows,
A symphony of clacking sounds.
The stage is set, the actors poised,
In this grand play of written bounds.
......