Health Care

Pass or fail, I really don't see any way but that the health care reform debate is going to take us into next February at the earliest.

A Triolet

Love had not matched their early hope,
There at the end of life's proceeding.
Life showed them on the downward slope
Love had not matched their early hope.
The dismal frayed end of the rope
Outdid their dread, their fears exceeding.
Love had not matched their early hope,
There at the end of life's proceeding.

-Thomas Banks-

Horace Ode 1.19

Beware, O bark, the waves that wish to tear thee from these shores;
And bravely seek the harbor, for thy sides are reft of oars;
See how thy broken mast and yards are groaning in the gale!
Unsound, alas! thy ropeless hull, unsafe thy shredded sail!

Thou hast no gods to call upon when Sable Care is thine;
The sailor trusts no showy sterns, though built of Pontic pine.
O ship that wert my woe, that art my love, avoid the seas
And shun the treacherous waters of the shining Cyclades.

-Translated from the Latin by Franklin P. Adams-

A Villanelle of Changes

Since Persia fell at Marathon
The yellow years have gathered fast.
Long centuries have come and gone.

And yet (they say) the place will don
A phantom fury of the past,
Since Persia fell at Marathon.

And as of old, when Helicon
Trembled and swayed with rapture vast
(Long centuries have come and gone),

This ancient plain, when night comes on,
Shakes with a ghostly battle-blast,
Since Persia fell at Marathon.

But into soundless Acheron
The glory of Greek shame was cast:
Long centuries have come and gone,

The suns of Hellas have all shone,
The first is fallen to the last,
Since Persia fell at Marathon,
Long centuries have come and gone.

-Edward Arlington Robinson-

You Ask Me Why...

You ask me why, though ill at ease
Within this region I subsist,
Whose spirits falter in the mist
And languish for the purple seas.

It is the land that freemen till,
That sober-suited Freedom chose,
The land where, girt with friends or foes
A man may speak the thing he will;

A land of settled government,
A land of just and old renown,
Where Freedom slowly broadens down
From precedent to precedent;

Where Faction seldom gathers head,
But, by degrees to fullness wrought,
The strength of some diffusive thought
Hath time and space to work and spread.

Should banded unions persecute
Opinion, and induce a time
When single thought is civil crime,
And individual freedom mute,

Tho' power should make from land to land
The name of Britain trebly great-
Tho' every channel of the state
Is filled and choked with golden sand-

Yet waft me from the harbor mouth
Wild Wind! I seek a warmer sky,
And I shall see before I die
The palms and temples of the South.

-Alfred, Lord Tennyson-

The Trees

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too.
Their yearly trick of growing new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

-Philip Larkin-

Transit

A woman I have never seen before
Steps from the darkness of her townhouse door
At just that crux of time when she is made
So beautiful that she or time must fade.

What use to claim that as she tugs her gloves
A phantom heraldry of all the loves
Blares from the lintel? That the staggered sun
Forgets, in his confusion, how to run?

Still, nothing changes as her perfect feet
Click down the walk that issue in the street,
Leaving the stations of her body there
Like whips that map the countries of the air.

-Richard Wilbur-

Everyone Sang

Everyone suddenly burst out singing;
And I was filled with such delight
As prisoned birds must find in freedom,
Winging wildly across the white
Orchards and dark green fields- on, on, and out of sight.

Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted;
And beauty came like the setting sun;
My heart was shaken with tears; and horror
Drifted away; O, but everyone
Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.

-Siegfried Sassoon-

Nobel

So President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. They might as well just change the name of it to the "Thanks for Not Being Bush Prize."

Juliet

"How did the party go in Portman Square?"
"I cannot tell you; Juliet was not there."

"And how did Lady Gaster's party go?"
"Juliet was next to me and I do not know."

-Hillaire Belloc-

Lines

Say not the righteous come into Death's keep:
For here good Saon lies, whose noble name
Secures him holy sleep.

-Translated from the Greek by Thomas Banks-

Laura

Rose cheeked Laura, come;
Sing thou smoothly with thy beauty's
Silent music, either other
Sweetly gracing.

Lovely forms do flow
From consent divinely framed:
Heaven is music, and thy beauty's
Birth is heavenly.

These dull notes we sing
Discords need for help to grace them;
Only beauty purely loving
Knows no discord.

But still moves delight,
Like clear springs renew'd by flowing,
Ever perfect, ever in them-
Selves eternal.

-Thomas Campion-

Minor Key

Let me enjoy the earth no less
Because the all-enacting Might
That fashioned forth its loveliness
Had other aims than my delight.

About my path their flits a Fair,
Who throws me not a word or sign;
I'll charm me with her ignoring air,
And laud the lips not meant for mine.

From manuscripts of moving songs
Inspired by scenes and dreams unknown,
I'll pour out raptures that belong
To others, as they were my own.

And some day hence, towards Paradise
And all its blest-if such there be-
I will lift glad, afar-off eyes,
Though it contain no place for me.

-Thomas Hardy-

For a Dead Lady

No more with overflowing light
Shall fill the eyes that now are faded,
Nor shall another's fringe with night
Their woman-hidden world as they did.
No more shall quiver down the days
The flowing wonder of her ways,
Whereof no language may requite
The shifting and the many-shaded.

The grace, divine, definitive,
Clings only as a faint forestalling;
The laugh that love could not forgive
Is hushed, and answers to no calling;
The forehead and the little ears
Have gone where Saturn keeps the years;
The breast where roses could not live
Has done with rising and with falling.

The beauty, shattered by the laws
That have creation in their keeping,
No longer trembles at applause,
Or over children that are sleeping;
And we who delve in beauty's lore
Know all that we have known before
Of what inexorable cause
Makes Time so vicious in his reaping.

-Edward Arlington Robinson-

Credo

I cannot find my way; there is no star
In all the shrouded heavens anywhere;
And there is not a whisper in the air
Of any living voice but one so far
That I can hear it only as a bar
Of lost, imperial music, played when fair
And angel fingers wove, and unaware,
Dead leaves to garlands where no roses are.

No, there is not a glimmer, nor a call,
For one that welcomes, welcomes when he fears,
The black and awful chaos of the night;
For through it all-above, beyond it all-
I know the far-sent message of the years,
I feel the coming glory of the light.

-Edward Arlington Robinson-

Your Body Is Stars

Your body is stars whose millions glitter here:
I am lost amongst the branches of the sky
Here near my breast, here in my nostrils, here
Where our vast arms like streams of fire lie.

How can this end? My healing fills the night
And hangs its flags in worlds I cannot near.
Our movements range through miles, and when we kiss
The moment widens to enclose long years.

Beholders of the promised dawn of truth
The explorers of immense and simple lines,
Here is our goal, men cried, but it was lost
Amongst the mountain mists and mountain pines.

So with this face of love, whose breathings are
A mystery shadowed on the desert floor:
The promise hangs, this swarm of stars and flowers,
And then there comes the shutting of a door.

-Stephen Spender-

Away

There is no sorrow
Time heals never;
No loss, betrayal,
Beyond repair.
Balm for the soul, then,
Though grave shall sever
Lover from loved
And all they share;
See, the sweet sun shines,
The shower is over,
Flowers preen their beauty,
The day how fair!

Brood not too closely
On love, on duty;
Friends long forgotten
May wait you where
Life with death
Brings all to an issue;
None will long mourn for you,
Pray for you, miss you,
Your place left vacant,
You not there.

-Walter De La Mare

To Laurels

A funeral stone
Or verse, I covet none;
But only crave
Of you that I may have
A sacred laurel springing from my grave:
Which being seen
Blessed with perpetual green,
May grow to be
Not so much called a tree,
As the eternal monument of me.

-Robert Herrick-

Epitaph

He wished for none to wait on his commanding;
He knew no thralldom, and he wished no throne.
But what few seek and fewer find, he won-
The Peace of God Which Passes Understanding.

-Thomas Banks-

A Reckoning

At my age one begins
To chalk up all his sins,
Hoping to wipe the slate
Before it is too late.

Therefore I call to mind
All memories of the kind
That make me wince and sweat
And tremble with regret.

What do these prove to be?
In every one, I see
Shocked faces that, alas,
Now know me for an ass.

Fatuities that I
Have uttered, drunk or dry,
Return now in a rush
And make my old cheek blush.

But how can I repent
From mere embarrassment?
Damn-foolishness can't well
Entitle me to Hell.

Well, I shall put the blame
On the pride that's in my shame.
Of that I must be shriven
Before I'll be forgiven.

-Richard Wilbur-