The Daydream by Alfred Tennyson

The Sleeping Palace

The varying year with blade and sheaf
    Clothes and reclothes the happy plains;
Here rests the sap within the leaf,
    Here stays the blood along the veins.
Faint shadows, vapours lightly curl'd,
    Faint murmurs from the meadows come,
Like hints and echoes of the world
    To spirits folded in the womb.

Soft lustre bathes the range of urns
    On every slanting terrace-lawn.
The fountain to his place returns
    Deep in the garden lake withdrawn.
Here droops the banner on the tower,
    On the hall-hearths the festal fires,
The peacock in his laurel bower,
    The parrot in his gilded wires.

Roof-haunting martins warm their eggs:
    In these, in those the life is stay'd.
The mantles from the golden pegs
    Droop sleepily: no sound is made,
Not even of a gnat that sings.
    More like a picture seemeth all
Than those old portraits of old kings,
    That watch the sleepers from the wall.

Here sits the Butler with a flask
    Between his knees, half-drain'd; and there
The wrinkled steward at his task,
    The maid-of-honor blooming fair:
The page has caught her hand in his:
    Her lips are sever'd as to speak:
His own are pouted to a kiss:
    The blush is fix'd upon her cheek.

Till all the hundred summers pass,
    The beams, that thro' the Oriel shine,
Make prisms in every carven glass,
    And beaker brimm'd with noble wine.
Each baron at the banquet sleeps,
    Grave faces gather'd in a ring.
His state the king reposing keeps.
    He must have been a jolly king.

All round a hedge upshoots and shows
    At distance like a little wood;
Thorns, ivies, woodbine, misletoes,
    And grapes with bunches red as blood;
All creeping plants, a wall of green
    Close-matted, bur and brake and briar,
And glimpsing over these, just seen,
    High up, the topmost palace-spire.

When will the hundred summers die,
    And thought and time be born again,
And newer knowledge, drawing nigh,
    Bring truth that sways the soul of men?
Here all things in their place remain,
    As all were order'd ages since.
Come, Care and Pleasure, Hope and Pain,
    And bring the fated fairy Prince.


The Sleeping Beauty

Year after year unto her feet,
    She lying on her couch alone,
Across the purpled coverlet,
    The maiden's jet-black hair has grown,
On either side her tranced form
    Forthstreaming from a braid of perl:
The slumbrous light is rich and warm,
    And moves not on the rounded curl.

The silk star-broider'd coverlid
    Unto her limbs itself doth mould
Languidly ever; and, amid
    Her full black ringlets downward roll'd,
Glows forth each softly-shadow'd arm
    With bracelets of the diamond bright:
Her constant beauty doth inform
    Stillness with love, and day with light.

She sleeps: her breathings are not heard
    In palace chambers far apart.
The fragrant tresses are not stirr'd
    That lie upon her charmed heart.
She sleeps: on either hand upswells
    The gold-fringed pillow lightly pressed:
She sleeps, nor dreams, but ever dwells
    A perfect form in perfect rest.



The Arrival

All precious things, discover'd late,
    To those that seek them issue forth;
For love in sequel works with fate,
    And draws the veil from hidden worth.
He travels far from other skies--
    His mantle glitters on the rocks--
A fairy Prince, with joyful eyes,
    And lighter-footed than the fox.

The bodies and the bones of those
    That strove in other days to pass,
Are wither'd in the thorny close,
    Or scatter'd blanching in the grass.
He gazes on the silent dead:
    "They perish'd in their daring deeds."
This proverb flashes thro' his head,
    "The many fail: the one succeeds."

He comes, scarce knowing what he seeks:
    He breaks the hedge: he enters there:
The colour flies into his cheeks:
    He trusts to light on something fair;
For all his life the charm did talk
    About his path, and hover near
With words of promise in his walk,
    And wisper'd voices in his ear.

More close and close his footsteps wind;
    The magic music in his heart
Beats quick and quicker, till he find
    The quiet chamber far apart.
His spirit flutters like a lark,
    He stoops--to kiss her--on his knee.
"Love, if thy tresses be so dark,
    How dark those hidden eyes must be!"


The Revival

A touch, a kiss! the charm was snapt.
    There rose a noise of striking clocks,
And feet that ran, and doors that clapt,
    And barking dogs, and crowing cocks.
A fuller light illumined all,
    A breeze thro' all the garden swept,
A sudden hubbub shook the hall,
    And sixty feet the fountain lept.

The hedge broke in, the banner blew,
    The butler drank, the steward scrawl'd,
The fire shot up, the martin flew,
    The parrot scream'd, the peacock squall'd,
The maid and page renew'd their strife,
    The palace bang'd, and buzz'd and clackt,
And all the long pent stream of life
    Dash'd downward in a cataract.

And last of all the king awoke,
    And in his chair himself uprear'd,
And yawn'd, and rubb'd his face, and spoke,
    "By holy rood, a royal beard!
How say you? we have slept, my lords.
    My beard has grown into my lap."
The barons swore, with many words,
    "Twas but an after-dinner's nap."

"Pardy," return'd the king, "but still
    My joints are something stiff or so.
My lord, and shall we pass the bill
    I mention'd half an hour ago?"
The chancellor, sedate and vain,
    In courteous words return'd reply;
But dallied with his golden chain,
    And, smiling, put the question by.


The Departure

And on her lover's arm she leant,
    And round her waist she felt it fold.
And far across the hills they went
    In that new world which is the old.
Across the hills, and far away
    Beyond their utmost purple rim,
And deep into the dying day
    The happy princess follow'd him.

"I'd sleep another hundred years,
    O love, for such another kiss;"
"O wake forever, love," she hears,
    "O love, 'twas such as this and this."
And o'er them many a sliding star,
    And many a merry wind was borne,
And, stream'd thro' many a golden bar,
    The twilight melted into morn.

"Oh eyes long laid in happy sleep!"
    "O happy sleep, that lightly fled!"
"O happy kiss, that woke thy sleep!"
    "O love, thy kiss would wake the dead!"
And o'er them many a flowing range
    Of vapour buoy'd the crescent-bark,
And, rapt thro' many a rosy change,
    The twilight died into the dark.

"A hundred summers! can it be?
    And whither goest thou, tell me where?"
"O seek my father's court with me,
    For there are greater wonders there."
And o'er the hills, and far away
    Beyond their utmost purple rim,
Beyond the night, across the day,
    Thro' all the world she follow'd him.

In a Dark Time by Theodore Roethke

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood--
A lord of nature weeping to a tree,
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

What's madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall,
That place among the rocks--is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is--
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.
Dark,dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy

I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.

The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seem'd to be
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seem'd fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carollings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessèd Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.

(untitled) by Christopher King

sad mother sea turtle
trapped in the mud
treading her flippers to no avail

she has seen the watchful lunar eye open and close for aeons
generations of her life etched like scarred patterns into her shell
she has seen the sun burn and the stars cry

she has watched generations of her young
swallowed alive and squeaking tears of panic
as their infantile faces pressed into the sand by claws and teeth
by those who would walk on them to consume their innards
felt the indifferent caress of the waves over her face as
she watches the heavens cook them alive
watches them drown in lungfulls of
inexperience

her love long passed
he was hauled from the ocean
decades ago
and roasted by men
who greedily devoured his rich green flesh
she watched his struggles
his mouth silently gaping for life as they
ran their blades the marathon length of his neck
creating a crimson grin in his proud skin

she wept for this

she knows the cool calm of the rain against the surface of her body
rolling off her back and pooling in the sand
so that she might drink

she watched the hurricanes and the floods wash her body along the shores
she remembers burying deep into the sand to escape
the oppressive radiation of
the omnipresent sun gods
the cool earthen embrace soothing her cheeks

she can recall the taste of seaweed
the smell of rain
the sight of the night stars
the shrill cries of the aboriginal peoples as they gutted her loved ones
and
then went on to make jewelry from shell and skin
for good luck
she can remember the acrid smoke that comes from
her babies tossed into the fire on their shells
alive and frantically kicking their feet
cooking alive at the watchful gaze of men

sad momma sea turtle
trapped in the mud
generations of struggle do her no good
her body is tired
succumbing to the elements
the sick and fetid stench of inevitability filling her mouth

her mind can trace the black-and-white outline of
being young
and being able to race the beaches with relative wings
the taste of fresh berries torn from flowers
the delicate nuzzle of her lost love against her leathery neck

sad mother sea turtle waits
for something bigger than her
"greater" than her
to lift her by the sides
and turn her on her back so that she might not escape
her soft belly
exposed to the knife
the teeth
the bullet
the world
waiting to die
having no sword, no claws

sad mother sea turtle
those slow brown eyes hold a plethora of secrets
a lifetime of solitude and mystery
what whispered truths does your tiny brain contain
that the rest of the universe might never be able to understand?

there in the mud lies
beauty
your tragedy is one that knows no great story, no song
no protest

Song of the Church Bells by Pier Paolo Pasolini

When evening dips inside water fountains
my town disappears among muted hues.


From far away I remember frogs croaking,
the moonlight, the cricket's sad cries.


The fields devour the Vespers' church bells
but I am dead to the sound of those bells.


Stranger, don't fear my tender return
across mountains, I am the spirit of love


coming back home from faraway shores.