‘Smooth between sea and land’
by A. E. Housman (1859-1936)
Smooth between sea and land
Is laid the yellow sand,
And here through summer days
The seed of Adam plays.
Here the child comes to found
His unremaining mound,
And the grown lad to score
Two names upon the shore.
Here, on the level sand,
Between the sea and land,
What shall I build or write
Against the fall of night?
Tell me of runes to grave
That hold the bursting wave,
Or bastions to design
For longer date than mine.
Shall it be Troy or Rome
I fence against the foam,
Or my own name, to stay
When I depart for aye?
Nothing: too near at hand,
Planing the figure sand,
Effacing clean and fast
Cities not built to last
And charms devised in vain,
Pours the confounding main.
A. E. Housman
author of A Shropshire Lad (1896)
A Thunderstorm
by Emily Dickenson
The wind begun to rock the grass
With threatening tunes and low, -
He flung a menace at the earth,
A menace at the sky.
The leaves unhooked themselves from trees
And started all abroad;
The dust did scoop itself like hands
And throw away the road.
The wagons quickened on the streets,
The thunder hurried slow;
The lightning showed a yellow beak,
And then a livid claw.
The birds put up the bars to nests,
The cattle fled to barns;
There came one drop of giant rain,
And then, as if the hands.
That held the dams had parted hold,
The waters wrecked the sky,
But overlooked my father's house,
Just quartering a tree.
Emily Dickenson
"Full Fathom Five" by William Shakespeare
"Full Fathom Five"
(from The Tempest)
by William Shakespeare
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Hark! now I hear them—Ding-dong, bell.
William Shakespeare
V. Innocentia Veritas Viat Fides
Circumdederunt me inimici mei 1
by Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-42)
Who list his wealth and ease retain,
Himself let him unknown contain.
Press not too fast in at that gate
Where the return stands by disdain,
For sure, circa Regna tonat.2
The high mountains are blasted oft
When the low valley is mild and soft.
Fortune with Health stands at debate.
The fall is grievous from aloft.
And sure, circa Regna tonat.
These bloody days have broken my heart.
My lust, my youth did them depart,
And blind desire of estate.
Who hastes to climb seeks to revert.
Of truth, circa Regna tonat.
The bell tower showed me such sight
That in my head sticks day and night.
There did I learn out of a grate,
For all favour, glory, or might,
That yet circa Regna tonat.
By proof, I say, there did I learn:
Wit helpeth not defence too yerne,
Of innocency to plead or prate.
Bear low, therefore, give God the stern,
For sure, circa Regna tonat.
Sir Thomas Wyatt
an English poet of the Renaissance
1. The Latin title adapts Psalm 16.9: "My enemies surround my soul."
Wyatt's name ("Viat") in the title is surrounded by Innocence, Truth,
and Faith.
2. "It thunders through the realms," Seneca, Phaedra, 1.1140.
The first two stanzas paraphrase lines from that play.
[Note: It is generally thought Wyatt wrote this poem after witnessing
the execution of Anne Boleyn and her "accomplices" from the window
grate of his cell in the Bell Tower at the Tower of London.]
Stormy Sea
by Scarlet
I’m stuck in a stormy sea
wave after wave
crushing me
drowning me
each breath shorter than the last
I start to think I see a calm coming
but I was fooled
for it was a new storm coming in
wave after wave
they crash against me
barely giving me time to breath
I start to think that each breath might be my last
but then I think I see a calm coming
but once again I was fooled
for it was once again a storm coming in
I can see the calm
I know it will eventually reach me
but for now I’m trapped under these waves
wave after wave
breath after breath
I keep looking for that calm
searching for that calm
I see it
but as it moves towards me
it becomes a storm
as it gets closer it gets tougher
tougher to catch my breath
for the waves become rougher and rougher
wave by wave
I start to lose it
lose sight of that calm
for it just keeps moving back
moving away from me
leaving me trapped
trapped by wave after wave
stuck thinking that breath after breath
it could be my last
for I will soon sink in this stormy sea
for soon I will take my last breath
then I will sink
sink deeper and deeper
slowly reaching a calm
different calm
a permanent calm
maybe that is the only calm for me
Scarlet
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Amoretti: Sonnet LXXV
by Edmund Spenser
One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washed it away:
Again I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.
‘Vain man,’ said she, ‘that dost in vain assay,
A mortal thing so to immortalize;
For I myself shall like to this decay,
And eke my name be wiped out likewise.’
‘Not so,’ (quod I); ‘let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:
My verse your vertues rare shall eternize,
And in the heavens write your glorious name:
Where whenas death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew.’
Edmund Spenser
The Thunder Mutters
by John Clare (1793-1864)
The thunder mutters louder & more loud
With quicker motion hay folks ply the rake
Ready to burst slow sails the pitch black cloud
& all the gang a bigger haycock make
To sit beneath—the woodland winds awake
The drops so large wet all thro’ in an hour
A tiney flood runs down the leaning rake
In the sweet hay yet dry the hay folks cower
& some beneath the waggon shun the shower.
John Clare
*Known as a Romantic, nature, and great English poet
Second Coming
by R.E. Slater
Tall wheat heads bend
to hot wind's heavy breath
Rippling across golden fields.
Heads bending, stalks swaying,
falling back, moving forward,
In unison, together.
Bent before the broad storm
rumbling it's coming wake
Across croplands of waking hearts.
Shaking slumbering, ripe fields
waking fell airs stirring alive
Unbowed author to life's deepest longings.
R.E. Slater
May 9, 2021
Rev. May 10, 2021
@copyright R.E. Slater Publications
all rights reserved
Stormy
(an Italian Sonnet)
by Gert Strydom
With pouring rain as many other days,
with clouds in the sky the sun seems dead,
as if for weeks from the earth it has fled
where of it there is not even a small trace,
yet radiant with smiling beauty are your face,
where very few words between us is said,
where against each other we lie in our bed
and with a own music the rain outside plays,
where here we are in a hot and happy home,
outside in the pine forest the wind does not rest,
while very turbulent is the surging of the deep,
where in tempest the ocean does break and foam,
with you right here hot and tender it seems best,
where our love and promises to each other we keep.
by Gert Strydom
Thursday, November 1, 2018
© Gert Strydom
Stormy Weather
by Sandra Feldman
There is no song for loneliness,
Just storming clouds of sadness,
The skies are gray, and lightning rays,
Illuminate the darkness.
There is no song for Love that's gone,
And you, you keep on caring,
Your heart becomes a jaded cage,
From then on all despairing.
Sandra Feldman
Saturday, April 19, 2014
The Waste Land Part V –
What the Thunder said
by T.S. Eliot
V. What the Thunder said
After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palace and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience
Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If there were only water amongst the rock
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even solitude in the mountains
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
From doors of mudcracked houses
If there were water
And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
And water
A spring
A pool among the rock
If there were the sound of water only
Not the cicada
And dry grass singing
But sound of water over a rock
Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But there is no water
Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
– But who is that on the other side of you?
What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal
A woman drew her long black hair out tight
And fiddled whisper music on those strings
And bats with baby faces in the violet light
Whistled, and beat their wings
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall
And upside down in air were towers
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.
In this decayed hole among the mountains
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home.
It has no windows, and the door swings,
Dry bones can harm no one.
Only a cock stood on the rooftree
Co co rico co co rico
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain
Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
Waited for rain, while the black clouds
Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
Then spoke the thunder
DA
Datta: what have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed
Which is not to be found in our obituaries
Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
In our empty rooms
DA
Dayadhvam: I have heard the key
Turn in the door once and turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
Only at nightfall, aetherial rumours
Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus
DA
Damyata: The boat responded
Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar
The sea was calm, your heart would have responded
Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
To controlling hands
I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order?
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam ceu chelidon – O swallow swallow
Le Prince d'Aquitaine ? la tour abolie
These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih shantih shantih
T.S. Eliot
from Collected Poems 1909-1962 (Faber, 1974),
by permission of the publisher, Faber & Faber Ltd.
