“Song” “The Wedding”

Lady Mary Wroth Monzia Alvi

Love a child is ever crying; I expected a quiet wedding

Please him, and he straight is flying; high above a lost city
Give him, he the more is craving, a marriage to balance on my head
Never satisfied with having.
like a forest of sticks, a pot of water.
His desires have no measure; The ceremony tasted of nothing
Endless folly is his treasure; had little colour – guests arrived
What he promiseth he breaketh,
Trust not one word that he speaketh. stealthy as sandalwood smugglers.
When they opened their suitcases
He vows nothing but false matter, England spilled out.
And to cozen you he’ll flatter.
Let him gain the hand, he’ll leave you, They scratched at my veil
And still glory to deceive you. like beggars on a car window.
I insisted my dowry was simple –
He will triumph in your wailing,
And yet cause be of your failing, a smile, a shadow, a whisper,
These his virtues are, and slighter my house an incredible structure
Are his gifts, his favours lighter. of stiffened rags and bamboo.

Feathers are as firm in staying, We travelled along roads with English

Wolves no fiercer in their preying, names, my bridegroom and I.
As a child then leave him crying, Our eyes changed colour
Nor seek him so given to flying.
like traffic-lights, so they said.
The time was not ripe
for us to view each other.

We stared straight ahead as if

we could see through mountains
breathe life into new cities.

“If Thou must Love Me” I wanted to marry a country

Elizabeth Barrett Browning take up a river for a veil
sing in the Jinnah Gardens
If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love’s sake only. Do not say hold up my dream, tricky
“I love her for her smile… her look… her way as a snake-charmer’s snake.
Of speaking gently…; for a trick of thought Our thoughts half-submerged
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day -“
For these things in themselves, beloved, may like buffaloes under dark water
Be changed, or change for thee, … and love so wrought, we turned and faced each other
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for with turbulence
Thine own dear pity wiping my cheeks dry! –
For one might well forget to weep, who bore and imprints like maps on our hands.
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby –
But love me for love’s sake, that evermore
Thou may’st love on through love’s eternity –
 “The Pride of Lions”
Joanna Preston

But before we could marry, he became a lion –

thick pelted, and rich with the musk of beast.

The switch to all fours was not easy – all his weight
slung from the blades of his shoulders.
His deltoids knotted like teak burls,
and I burnished them as he slept.

Burrs matted his mane, and for days

he wouldn’t let me groom him –
slapped me away with a suede paw,
snarled against my throat.

He would not eat fruit, or drink milk,

but tore meat from the bones I provided.

His claws caught in the carpet,

so I stripped the rugs from the floor
and polished the boards until they gleamed
and rang with the chime of his nails.

I stroke his saffron hide

and tangle my fingers deep in his ruff,
draw him up around me, ardent
as the gleam of his topaz eyes

– the hypnotic lash of his tail,

the rasp of his tongue on my thighs.

“Sonnet 19”
William Shakespeare

Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion’s paws,

And make the earth devour her own sweet brood;
Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger’s jaws,
And burn the long-liv’d Phoenix in her blood;
Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleets,
And do whate’er thou wilt, swift-footed Time,
To the wide world and all her fading sweets;
But I forbid thee one more heinous crime:
O, carve not with the hours my love’s fair brow,
Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen!
Him in thy course untainted do allow
For beauty’s pattern to succeeding men.
Yet do thy worst, old Time! Despite thy wrong
My love shall in my verse ever live young.
 Written Near a Port on a Dark Evening The Cry of the Children
Charlotte Smith Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Huge vapors brood above the clifted shore, ‘Pheu pheu, ti prosderkesthe m ommasin, tekna.’ – Medea*
Night on the Ocean settles, dark and mute,
Save where is heard the repercussive roar Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers,
Of drowsy billows, on the rugged foot Ere the sorrow comes with years?
Of rocks remote; or still more distant tone They are leaning their young heads against their mothers, –
Of seamen in the anchored bark that tell And that cannot stop their tears.
The watch relieved; or one deep voice alone The young lambs are bleating in the meadows;
Singing the hour, and bidding “Strike the bell.” The young birds are chirping in the nest;
All is black shadow, but the lucid line The young fawns are playing with the shadows;
Marked by the light surf on the level sand, The young flowers are blowing toward the west –
Or where afar the ship-lights faintly shine But the young, young children, O my brothers,
Like wandering fairy fires, that oft on land They are weeping bitterly! –
Mislead the Pilgrim – Such the dubious ray They are weeping in the playtime of the others,
That wavering Reason lends, in life’s long darkling way. In the country of the free.

The Mountain Do you question the young children in the sorrow,

Why their tears are falling so? –
Elizabeth Bishop
The old man may weep for his to-morrow
Which is lost in Long Ago –
At evening, something behind me. The old tree is leafless in the forest –
I start for a second, I blench, The old year is ending in the frost –
or staggeringly halt and burn. The old wound, if stricken, is the sorest –
I do not know my age. The old hope is hardest to be lost:
But the young, young children, O my brothers,
In the morning it is different. Do you ask them why they stand
An open book confronts me, Weeping sore before the bosoms of their mothers,
too close to read in comfort. In our happy Fatherland?
Tell me how old I am.
They look up with their pale and sunken faces,
And then the valleys stuff And their looks are sad to see,
impenetrable mists For the man’s grief abhorrent, draws and presses
like cotton in my ears. Down the cheeks of infancy –
I do not know my age. ‘Your old earth,’ they say, ‘is very dreary;’
‘Our young feet,’ they say, ‘are very weak!
I do not mean to complain. Few paces have we taken, yet are weary –
They say it is my fault. Our grave-rest is very far to seek.
Nobody tells me anything. Ask the old why they weep, and not the children,
Tell me how old I am. For the outside earth is cold, –
And we young ones stand without, in our bewildering,
The deepest demarcations And the graves are for the old.’
can slowly spread and sink
like any blue tattoo.
* ‘Alas, why do you gaze at me with your eyes, my children?’
I do not know my age. from the Greek tragedy Medea (c. 430 BCE) by Euripides

Shadows fall down, lights climb.

Clambering lights, oh children!
you never stay long enough.
Tell me how old I am.

Stone wings have sifted here

with feather hardening feather.
The claws are lost somewhere.
I do not know my age.
 Shirt
Robert Pinsky

The back, the yoke, the yardage. Lapped seams, Like Hart Crane’s Bedlamite, “shrill shirt ballooning”.
The nearly invisible stitches along the collar Wonderful how the pattern matches perfectly
Turned in a sweatshop by Koreans or Malaysians Across the placket and over the twin bar-tacked

Gossiping over tea and noodles on their break Corners of both pockets, like a strict rhyme
Or talking money or politics while one fitted Or a major chord. Prints, plaids, checks,
This armpiece with its overseam to the band Houndstooth, Tattersall, Madras. The clan tartans

Of cuff I button at my wrist. The presser, the cutter, Invented by mill-owners inspired by the hoax of Ossian,
The wringer, the mangle. The needle, the union, To control their savage Scottish workers, tamed
The treadle, the bobbin. The code. The infamous blaze By a fabricated heraldry: MacGregor,

At the Triangle Factory in nineteen-eleven. Bailey, MacMartin. The kilt, devised for workers
One hundred and forty-six died in the falmes To wear among the dusty clattering looms.
On the ninth floor, no hydrants, no fire escapes – Weavers, carders, spinners. The loader,

The witness in a building across the street The docker, the navvy. The planter, the picker, the sorter
Who watched how a young man helped a girl to step Sweating at her machine in a litter of cottom
up to the windowsill, then held her out As slaves in calico headrags sweated in fields:
George Herbert, your descendant is a Black
Away from the masonry wall and let her drop. Lady in South Carolina, her name is Irma
And then another. As if he were helping them up And she inspected my shirt. Its color and fit
To enter a streetcar, and not eternity.
And feel and its clean smell have satisfied
A third before he dropped her put her arms Both her and me. We have culled its cost and quality
Around his neck and kissed him, Then he held Down to the buttons of simulated bone,
Her into space, and dropped her. Almost at once
The buttonholes, the sizing, the facing, the characters
He stepped to the sill himself, his jacket flared Printed in black on neckband and tail. The shape,
And fluttered up from his shirt as he came down, The label, the labor, the colour, the shade. The shirt.
Air filling up the legs of his gray trousers –
 The Song of the Shirt
Thomas Hood

With fingers weary and worn, “Work – work – work!

With eyelids heavy and red, From weary chime to chime,
A woman sat in unwomanly rags, Work – work – work,
Plying her needle and thread – As prisoners work for crime!
Stitch! stitch! stitch! Band, and gusset, and seam,
In poverty, hunger, and dirt, Seam, and gusset, and band,
And still with a voice of dolorous pitch Till the heart is sick, and the brain benumb’d,
She sang the “Song of the Shirt!” As well as the weary hand.

“Work – work – work “Work – work – work,

Till the brain begins to swim; In the dull December light,
Work – work – work And work – work – work,
Till the eyes are heavy and dim. When the weather is warm and bright,
Seam, and gusset, and band, While underneath the eaves
Band, and gusset, and seam, The brooding swallows cling
Till over the buttons I fall asleep, As if to show me their sunny backs
And sew them on in a dream! And twit me with the spring.

“Oh, Men, with Sisters dear! “Oh! but to breathe the breath
Oh, Men, with Mothers and Wives! Of the cowslip and primrose sweet,
It is not linen you ‘re wearing out, With the sky above my head,
But human creatures’ lives! And the grass beneath my feet,
Stitch – stitch – stitch, For only one short hour
In poverty, hunger, and dirt, To feel as I used to feel,
Sewing at once, with a double threat, Before I knew the woes of want
A Shroud as well as a Shirt. And the walk that costs a meal,

“But why do I talk of Death? “Oh, but for one short hour!
That Phantom of grisly bone, A respite however brief!
I hardly fear his terrible shape, No blessed leisure for Love or Hope,
It seems so like my own – But only time for Grief!
It seems so like my own, A little weeping would ease my heart,
Because of the fasts I keep; But in their briny bed
Oh, Gods! that bread should be so dear, My tears must stop, for every drop
And flesh and blood so cheap! Hinders needle and thread!”

“Work – work – work, With fingers weary and worn,

My labor never flags; With eyelids heavy and red,
And what are its wages? A bed of straws, A woman sat in unwomanly rags,
A crust of bread – and rags. Plying her needle and thread –
That shatter’d roof – and this naked floor – Stitch! stitch! stitch!
A table – a broken chair – In poverty, hunger, and dirt,
And a wall so blank, my shadow I thank And still with a voice of dolorous pitch,
For sometimes falling there. Would that its tone could reach the Rich!
She sang this “Song of the Shirt!”
 First March On the Day of Judgement
Ivor Gurney Jonathan Swift

It was first marching, hardly we had settled yet With a whirl of thought oppressed,
To think of England, or escaped body pain – I sink from reverie to rest.
Flat country going leaves but small chance for An horrid vision seized my head,
The mind to escape to any resort but its vain I saw the graves give up their dead.
Own circling greyness and stain. Jove, armed with terrors, burst the skies,
First halt, second halt, and then to spoiled country again. And thunder roars, and light’ning flies!
There were unknown kilometres to march, one must settle amazed, confused, its fate unknown,
To play chess or talk home-talk or think as might happen. The world stands trembling at his throne.
After three weeks of February frost few were in fettle, While each pale sinner hangs his head,
Barely frostbite the most of us had escapen. Jove, nodding, shook the heav’ns, and said,
To move, then to go onward, at least to be moved. ‘Offending race of human kind,
Myself had revived and then dulled down, it was I By nature, reason, learning, blind;
Who stared for body-ease at the grey sky You who through frailty stepped aside,
And watched in grind of pain the monotony And you who never fell – through pride;
Of grit, road metal, slide underneath by. You who in different sects have shammed,
To get there being the one way not to die. And come to see each other damned;
Suddenly a road’s turn brought the sweet unexpected (So some folks told you, but they knew
Balm. Snowdrops bloomed in a ruined garden neglected:
No more of Jove’s designs than you);
Roman the road as of Birdlip we were on the verge,
The world’s mad business now is o’er,
And this west country thing so from chaos to emerge.
And I resent these pranks no more.
One gracious touch the whole wilderness corrected.
I to such blockheads set my wit!
I damn such fools! – Go, go, you’re bit.’

A Complaint
William Wordsworth

There is a change – and I am poor;

Your love hath been, nor long ago,
A fountain at my fond heart’s door,
Whose only business was to flow;
And flow it did; not taking heed
Of its own bounty, or my need.

What happy moments did I count!

Blest was I then all bliss above!
Now, for that consecrated fount
Of murmuring, sparkling, living love,
What have I? shall I dare to tell?
A comfortless and hidden well.

A well of love – it may be deep –

I trust it is, – and never dry:
What matter? if the waters sleep
In silence and obscurity.
– Such change, and at the very door
Of my fond heart, hath made me poor.
 Darkness
George Gordon, Lord Byron

I had a dream, which was not all a dream. But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Did wander darkling in the eternal space, Which answered not with a caress – he died.
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth The crowd was famish’d by degrees; but two
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air; Of an enormous city did survive,
Morn came, and went – and came, and brought no day, And they were enemies; they met beside
And men forgot their passions in the dread The dying embers of an altar-place,
Of this their desolation; and all hearts Where had been heap’d a mass of holy things
Were chill’d into a selfish prayer for light: For an unholy usage; they raked up,
And they did live by watchfires – and the thrones, And shivering scraped with their cold skeleton hands
The palaces of crowned kings – the huts, The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
The habitations of all things which dwell, Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consumed, Which was mockery; then they lifted up
And men were gathered round their blazing homes Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld
To look once more into each other’s face; Each other’s aspects – saw, and shriek’d, and died –
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch: Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
A fearful hope was all the world contain’d; Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,
Forests were set on fire – but hour by hour The populous and the powerful – was a lump,
They fell and faded – and the crackling trunks Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless –
Extinguish’d with a crash – and all was black. A lump of death – a chaos of hard clay.
The brows of men by the despairing light The rivers, lakes, and ocean all stood still,
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits And nothing stirred within their silent depths;
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest And their masts fell down piecemeal; as they dropp’d
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smiled; They slept on the abyss without a surge –
And others hurried to and fro, and fed The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
Their funeral piles with fuel, and looked up The moon their mistress had expired before;
With mad disquietude on the dull sky, The winds were withered in the stagnant air,
The pall of a past world; and then again And the clouds perish’d; Darkness had no need
With curses cast them down upon the dust, Of aid from them – She was the universe.
And gnash’d their teeth and howl’d: the wild birds shriek’d,
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl’d
And twined themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless – they were slain for food:
And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again; – a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;
All earth was but one thought – and that was death,
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails – men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devoured,
Even dogs assail’d their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famish’d men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lured their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
 A Song of Faith Forsworn
John Warren, Lord de Tabley

Take back your suit. Take back delight,

It came when I was weary and distraught A paper boat launched on a heaving pool
With hunger. Could I guess the fruit you brought? To please a child, and folded by a fool;
I ate in mere desire of any food, The wild elms roared: it sailed – a yard or more.
Nibbled its edge and nowhere found it good. Out went our ship but never came to shore.
Take back your suit. Take back delight.

Take back your love, Take back your wreath.

It is a bird poached from my neighbour’s wood: Has it done service on a fairer brow?
Its wings are wet with tears, its beak with blood. Fresh, was it folded round her bosom snow?
‘Tis a strange fowl with feathers like a crow: Her cast-off weed my breast will never wear:
Death’s raven, it may be, for all we know. Your word is ‘love me.’ My reply ‘despair!’
Take back your love. Take back your wreath.

Take back your gifts.

False is the hand that gave them; and the mind
That planned them, as a hawk spread in the wind
To poise and snatch the trembling mouse below.
To ruin where it dares – and then to go.
Take back your gifts.

Take back your vows.

Elsewhere you trimmed and taught these lamps to Farewell, Ungrateful Traitor
burn; John Dryden
You bring them stale and dim to serve my turn.
You lit those candles in another shrine, Farewell, ungrateful traitor,
Guttered and cold you offer them on mine. Farewell, my perjured swain,
Take back your vows. Let never injured creature
Believe a man again.
Take back your words. The pleasure of possessing
What is your love? Leaves on a woodland plain, Surpasses all expressing,
Where some are running and where some remain: But ’tis too short a blessing,
What is your faith? Straws on a mountain height, And love too long a pain.
Dancing like demons on Walpurgis night.
Take back your words. ‘Tis easy to deceive us
In pity of your pain,
Take back your lies. But when we love you leave us
Have them again: they wore a rainbow face, To rail at you in vain.
Hollow with sin and leprous with disgrace; Before we have descried it
Their tongue was like a mellow turret bell There is no bliss beside it,
To toll hearts burning into wide-lipped hell. But she that once has tried it
Take back your lies. Will never love again.

Take back your kiss. The passion you pretended

Shall I be meek, and lend my lips again Was only to obtain,
To let this adder daub them with his stain? But when the charm is ended
Shall I turn cheek to answer, when I hate? The charmer you disdain.
You kiss like Judas in the garden gate! Your love by ours we measure
Take back your kiss. Till we have lost our treasure,
But dying is a pleasure,
When living is a pain.
 When We Two Parted Homecoming
George Gordon, Lord Byron Lenrie Peters

When we two parted The present reigned supreme

In silence and tears, Like the shallow floods over the gutters
Half broken-hearted Over the raw paths where we had been,
To sever for years, The house with the shutters.
Pale grew thy cheek and cold,
Colder thy kiss; Too strange the sudden change
Truly that hour foretold Of the times we buried when we left
Sorrow to this. The time before we had properly arranged
The memories that we kept.
The dew of the morning
Sunk chill on my brow – Our sapless roots have fed
It felt like the warning The wind-swept seedlings of another age.
Of what I feel now. luxuriant weeds have grown where we led
Thy vows are all broken, The Virgins to the water’s edge.
And light is thy fame:
I hear thy name spoken, There at the edge of the town
And share in its shame. Just by the burial ground
Stands the house without a shadow
They name thee before me, Lived in by new skeletons.
A knell to mine ear;
A shudder comes o’er me – That is all that is left
Why wert thou so dear? To greet us on the home-coming
They know not I knew thee, After we have paced the world
Who knew thee too well: And longed for returning.
Long, long shall I rue thee,
Too deeply to tell. Sleep
Kenneth Slessor
In secret we met –
In silence I grieve, Do you give yourself to me utterly,
That thy heart could forget, Body and no-body, flesh and no-flesh
Thy spirit deceive. Not as a fugitive, blindly or bitterly,
If I should meet thee But as a child might, with no other wish?
Yes, utterly.
After long years,
How should I greet thee? Then I shall bear you down my estuary,
With silence and tears. Carry you and ferry you to burial mysteriously,
Take you and receive you,
Consume you, engulf you,
In the huge cave, my belly, love you
With huge waves continually.

And you shall cling and clamber there

And slumber there, in that dumb chamber,
Beat with my blood's beat, hear my heart move
Blindly in bones that ride above you,
Delve in my flesh, dissolved and bedded,

Through viewless valves embodied so –

Till daylight, the expulsion and awakening,
The riving and the driving forth,
Life with remorseless forceps beckoning –
Pangs and betrayal of harsh birth.
 I Years Had Been from Home Waterfall
Emily Dickinson Lauris Edmond

I Years had been from Home I do not ask for youth, nor for delay
And now before the Door in the rising of time’s irreversible river
I dared not enter, lest a Face that takes the jewelled arc of the waterfall
I never saw before in which I glimpse, minute by glinting minute,
all that I have and all I am always losing
Stare stolid into mine as sunlight lights each drop fast, fast falling.
And ask my Business there –
“My Business but a Life I left I do not dream that you, young again,
Was such remaining there?” might come to me darkly in love’s green darkness
where the dust of the bracken spices the air
I leaned upon the Awe – moss, crushed, gives out an astringent sweetness
I lingered with Before – and water holds our reflections
The Second like an Ocean rolled motionless, as if for ever.
And broke against my ear –
It is enough now to come into a room
I laughed a crumbling Laugh and find the kindness we have for each other
That I could fear a Door – calling it love – in eyes that are shrewd
Who Consternation compassed but trustful still, face chastened by years
And never winced before. of careful judgement; to sit in the afternoons
in mild conversation, without nostalgia.
I fitted to the Latch
My Hand, with trembling care But when you leave me, with your jauntiness
Lest back the awful Door should spring sinewed by resolution more than strength
And leave me in the Floor – – suddenly then I love you with a quick
intensity, remembering that water,
Then moved my Fingers off however luminous and grand, falls fast
As cautiously as Glass and only once to the dark pool below.
And held my ears, and like a Thief
Fled gasping from the House –
Distant Fields / ANZAC Parade
Rhian Gallagher
When You Are Old
William Butler Yeats Medalled, ribboned chest, an effort
carried through them, the war
When you are old and grey and full of sleep, still going on inside their heads,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book, gathered up for roll call.
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep; Where all the flowers had gone
came a quiet of ash,
How many loved your moments of glad grace, line after line after line.
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, As if the grainy footage played above the leafy street
And loved the sorrows of your changing faces; my father lifted me on to his shoulders to see.

And bending down beside the glowing bars, My uncles looked to the back of the one in front,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled marching to the heart-beat drum.
And paced upon the mountains overhead,
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars. At end of Mass the bugle rose,
life unto life, a single breath
took flight into the bird-light zone.
 On This day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year The Death-Bed
George Gordon, Lord Byron Siegfried Sassoon

‘Tis time this heart should be unmoved, He drowsed and was aware of silence heaped
Since others it hath ceased to move: Round him, unshaken as the steadfast walls;
Yet though I cannot be beloved, Aqueous like floating rays of amber light,
Still let me love! Soaring and quivering in the wings of sleep.
Silence and safety; and his mortal shore
My days are in the yellow leaf; Lipped by the inward, moonless waves of death.
The flowers and fruits of Love are gone;
The worm – the canker, and the grief Someone was holding water to his mouth.
Are mind alone! He swallowed, unresisting; moaned and dropped
Through crimson gloom to darkness; and forgot
The fire that on my bosom preys The opiate throb and ache that was his wound.
Is lone as some Volcanic Isle; Water – calm, sliding green above the weir.
No torch is kindled at its blaze Water – a sky-lit alley for his boat,
A funeral pile! Bird-voiced, and bordered with reflective flowers
And shaken hues of summer; drifting down,
The hope, the fear, the jealous care, He dipped contented oars, and sighed, and slept.
The exalted portion of the pain
And power of Love I cannot share, Night, with a gust of wind, was in the ward,
But wear the chain. Blowing the curtain to a glimmering curve.
Night. He was blind; he could not see the stars
But ’tis not thus – and ’tis not here Glinting among the wraiths of wandering cloud;
Such thoughts should shake my Soul, nor now Queer blots of colour, purple, scarlet, green,
Where Glory decks the hero’s bier Flickered and faded in his drowning eyes.
Or binds his brow.
Rain – he could hear it rustling through the dark;
The Sword, the Banner, and the Field, Fragrance and passionless music woven as one;
Glory and Greece around us see! Warm rain on drooping roses; pattering showers
The Spartan borne upon his shield That soak the woods; not the harsh rain that sweeps
Was not more free! Behind the thunder, but a trickling peace,
Gently and slowly washing life away.
Awake (not Greece – she is awake!)
Awake, my Spirit! think through whom He stirred, shifting his body; then the pain
Thy life-blood tracks its parent lake Leapt like a prowling beast, and gripped and tore
And then strike home! His groping dreams with grinding claws and fangs.
But someone was beside him; soon he lay
Tread those reviving passions down Shuddering because that evil thing has passed.
Unworthy Manhood – unto thee And death, who’d stepped toward him, paused and stared.
Indifferent should the smile or frown
Of Beauty be. Light many lamps and gather round his bed.
Lend him your eyes, warm blood, and will to live.
If thou regret’st thy Youth, why live? Speak to him; rouse him; you may save him yet.
The land of honourable Death He’s young; he hated War; how should he die
Is here: – up to the Field, and give When cruel old campaigners win safe through?
Away thy Breath!
But death replied: ‘I choose him.’ So he went,
Seek out – less often sought than found – And there was silence in the summer night;
A Soldier’s Grave, for thee the best; Silence and safety; and the veils of sleep.
Then look around, and choose thy Ground, Then, far away, the thudding of the guns.
And take thy Rest!
 A Wife in London (December, 1899) The Pains of Sleep
Thomas Hardy Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I—The Tragedy Ere on my bed my limbs I lay,

She sits in the tawny vapour It hath not been my use to pray
That the Thames-side lanes have uprolled, With moving lips or bended knees;
Behind whose webby fold-on-fold But silently, by slow degrees,
My spirit I to Love compose,
Like a waning taper
In humble trust mine eye-lids close,
The street-lamp glimmers cold. With reverential resignation
No wish conceived, no thought exprest,
A messenger's knock cracks smartly, Only a sense of supplication;
Flashed news in her hand A sense o'er all my soul imprest
Of meaning it dazes to understand That I am weak, yet not unblest,
Though shaped so shortly: Since in me, round me, every where
He—he has fallen—in the far South Land… Eternal strength and Wisdom are.

II—The Irony But yester-night I prayed aloud

In anguish and in agony,
'Tis the morrow; the fog hangs thicker,
Up-starting from the fiendish crowd
The postman nears and goes: Of shapes and thoughts that tortured me:
A letter is brought whose lines disclose A lurid light, a trampling throng,
By the firelight flicker Sense of intolerable wrong,
His hand, whom the worm now knows: And whom I scorned, those only strong!
Thirst of revenge, the powerless will
Fresh—firm—penned in highest feather— Still baffled, and yet burning still!
Page-full of his hoped return, Desire with loathing strangely mixed
And of home-planned jaunts of brake and burn On wild or hateful objects fixed.
In the summer weather, Fantastic passions! maddening brawl!
And shame and terror over all!
And of new love that they would learn.
Deeds to be hid which were not hid,
Which all confused I could not know
Whether I suffered, or I did:
For all seemed guilt, remorse or woe,
My own or others still the same
Futility Life-stifling fear, soul-stifling shame.
Wilfred Owen
So two nights passed: the night's dismay
Move him into the sun— Saddened and stunned the coming day.
Gently its touch awoke him once, Sleep, the wide blessing, seemed to me
Distemper's worst calamity.
At home, whispering of fields half-sown.
The third night, when my own loud scream
Always it woke him, even in France, Had waked me from the fiendish dream,
Until this morning and this snow. O'ercome with sufferings strange and wild,
If anything might rouse him now I wept as I had been a child;
The kind old sun will know. And having thus by tears subdued
My anguish to a milder mood,
Think how it wakes the seeds— Such punishments, I said, were due
Woke once the clays of a cold star. To natures deepliest stained with sin,—
Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides For aye entempesting anew
Full-nerved, still warm, too hard to stir? The unfathomable hell within,
The horror of their deeds to view,
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
To know and loathe, yet wish and do!
—O what made fatuous sunbeams toil Such griefs with such men well agree,
To break earth's sleep at all? But wherefore, wherefore fall on me?
To be loved is all I need,
And whom I love, I love indeed.