DayPoems: A Seven-Century Poetry Slam
93,142 lines of verse * www.daypoems.net
Timothy Bovee, editor
STILL do the stars impart their light
To those that travel in the night;
Still time runs on, nor doth the hand
Or shadow on the dial stand;
The streams still glide and constant are:
Only thy mind
Untrue I find,
Which carelessly
Neglects to be
Like stream or shadow, hand or star.
Fool that I am! I do recall
My words, and swear thou'rt like them all,
Thou seem'st like stars to nourish fire,
But O how cold is thy desire!
And like the hand upon the brass
Thou point'st at me
In mockery;
If I come nigh
Shade-like thou'lt fly,
And as the stream with murmur pass.
Walk into the night, walk...
And let the wind caress you
And sing you its song
Fly into the night,
Naked, boundless...
And make love to stars, moon, skies...
Dissolve into the Universe
And become BLISS
"~Why do you seek the sun,
In your Bubble-Crown ascending?
Your chariot will melt to mist,
Your crown will have an ending.~"
"Nay, sun is but a Bubble,
Earth is a whiff of Foam --
To my caves on the coast of Thule
Each night I call them home.
Thence Faiths blow forth to angels
And Loves blow forth to men --
They break and turn to nothing
And I make them whole again:
On the crested waves of chaos
I ride them back reborn:
New stars I bring at evening
For those that burst at morn:
My soul is the wind of Thule
And evening is the sign,
The sun is but a Bubble,
A fragile child of mine."
INTO the silver night
She brought with her pale hand
The topaz lanthorn-light,
And darted splendour o'er the land;
Around her in a band,
Ringstraked and pied, the great soft moths came flying,
And flapping with their mad wings, fann'd
The flickering flame, ascending, falling, dying.
Behind the thorny pink
Close wall of blossom'd may,
I gazed thro' one green chink
And saw no more than thousands may,--
Saw sweetness, tender and gay,--
Saw full rose lips as rounded as the cherry,
Saw braided locks more dark than bay,
And flashing eyes decorous, pure, and merry.
With food for furry friends
She pass'd, her lamp and she,
Till eaves and gable-ends
Hid all that saffron sheen from me:
Around my rosy tree
Once more the silver-starry night was shining,
With depths of heaven, dewy and free,
And crystals of a carven moon declining.
Alas! for him who dwells
In frigid air of thought,
When warmer light dispels
The frozen calm his spirit sought;
By life too lately taught
He sees the ecstatic Human from him stealing;
Reels from the joy experience brought,
And dares not clutch what Love was half revealing.
LIKE to Diana in her summer weed,
Girt with a crimson robe of brightest dye,
Goes fair Samela.
Whiter than be the flocks that straggling feed
When wash'd by Arethusa faint they lie,
Is fair Samela.
As fair Aurora in her morning grey,
Deck'd with the ruddy glister of her love
Is fair Samela;
Like lovely Thetis on a calmed day
Whenas her brightness Neptune's fancy move,
Shines fair Samela.
Her tresses gold, her eyes like glassy streams,
Her teeth are pearl, the breasts are ivory
Of fair Samela;
Her cheeks like rose and lily yield forth gleams;
Her brows bright arches framed of ebony.
Thus fair Samela
Passeth fair Venus in her bravest hue,
And Juno in the show of majesty
(For she 's Samela!),
Pallas in wit,--all three, if you well view,
For beauty, wit, and matchless dignity,
Yield to Samela.
My land was the west land; my home was on the hill,
I never think of my land but it makes my heart to thrill;
I never smell the west wind that blows the golden skies,
But old desire is in my feet and dreams are in my eyes.
My home crowned the high land; it had a stately grace.
I never think of my land but I see my mother's face;
I never smell the west wind that blows the silver ships
But old delight is in my heart and mirth is on my lips.
My land was a high land; my home was near the skies.
I never think of my land but a light is in my eyes;
I never smell the west wind that blows the summer rain --
But I am at my mother's knee, a little lad again.
I KNOW my soul hath power to know all things,
Yet she is blind and ignorant in all:
I know I'm one of Nature's little kings,
Yet to the least and vilest things am thrall.
I know my life 's a pain and but a span;
I know my sense is mock'd in everything;
And, to conclude, I know myself a Man--
Which is a proud and yet a wretched thing.
O hearken, all ye little weeds
That lie beneath the snow,
(So low, dear hearts, in poverty so low!)
The sun hath risen for royal deeds,
A valiant wind the vanguard leads;
Now quicken ye, lest unborn seeds
Before ye rise and blow.
O furry living things, adream
On winter's drowsy breast,
(How rest ye there, how softly, safely rest!)
Arise and follow where a gleam
Of wizard gold unbinds the stream,
And all the woodland windings seem
With sweet expectance blest.
My birds, come back! the hollow sky
Is weary for your note.
(Sweet-throat, come back! O liquid, mellow throat!)
Ere May's soft minions hereward fly,
Shame on ye, laggards, to deny
The brooding breast, the sun-bright eye,
The tawny, shining coat!
'TWAS the dream of a God,
And the mould of His hand,
That you shook 'neath His stroke,
That you trembled and broke
To this beautiful land.
Here He loosed from His hold
A brown tumult of wings,
Till the wind on the sea
Bore the strange melody
Of an island that sings.
He made you all fair,
You in purple and gold,
You in silver and green,
Till no eye that has seen
Without love can behold.
I have left you behind
In the path of the past,
With the white breath of flowers,
With the best of God's hours,
I have left you at last.
Child Ballad 99
When Johnie Scot saw this big, broad letter,
It caused him for to smile,
But the very first line that he did read,
The tears run down for a while,
But the very first line he did read,
The tears run down for a while.
Away to old England I must go,
King Edwards has sent for me.
Up spoke young Jimmy Scot himself
As he sat by his knees:
Five hundred of my best brave men
Shall bear you company.
The very first town that they rode through,
The drums, the fifes, they played;
The very next town that they rode through,
The drums they beat all around.
They rode, they rode to King Edwards's gate,
They dingled at the ring;
But who did he spy but his own sweetheart
And her footpage a-peeping down.
I can't come down, dear Johnny, she says,
For Poppy has scolded me.
I'm forced to wear a ball and chain
Instead of ivory.
Is this young Jimmy Scot himself,
Or Jimmy Scotland's king?
Or is the father of that bastard child
From Scotland just come in?
I'm not young Jimmy Scot,
Nor Jimmy Scotland's king;
But I am young Johnie Scot himself
From Scotland just come in.
There's a taveren in our town
That's killed more lords than one,
And before the sun rises tomorrow morning
A dead man you shall be.
The taveren flew over young Johnie's head
As swift as any bird:
He pierced the taveren to the heart
With the point of his broad sword.
He whipped King Edwards and all his men,
And the king he liked to have swung.
I'll make your girl my gay lady
And her child the heir of my land.
The love in her eyes lay sleeping,
As stars that unconscious shine,
Till, under the pink lids peeping,
I wakened it up with mine;
And we pledged our troth to a brimming oath
In a bumper of blood-red wine.
Alas! too well I know
That it happened long ago;
Those memories yet remain,
And sting, like throbs of pain,
And I'm alone below,
But still the red wine warms, and the rosy goblets glow;
If love be the heart's enslaver,
'Tis wine that subdues the head.
But which has the fairest flavour,
And whose is the soonest shed?
Wine waxes in power in that desolate hour
When the glory of love is dead.
Love lives on beauty's ray,
But night comes after day,
And when the exhausted sun
His high career has run,
The stars behind him stay,
And then the light that lasts consoles our darkening way.
When beauty and love are over,
And passion has spent its rage,
And the spectres of memory hover,
And glare on life's lonely stage,
'Tis wine that remains to kindle the veins
And strengthen the steps of age.
Love takes the taint of years,
And beauty disappears,
But wine in worth matures
The longer it endures,
And more divinely cheers,
And ripens with the suns and mellows with the spheres.
Trepid tears stain their beaded trail
Across arching waves of flesh;
Over shadowed ridges they pour,
Seeping through neurosis' pores.
Grotesque---the gruesome gestures of lore
Amid the intensifying indenting of darkness;
Feverishly fraught the impending mind's gaunt,
As the bells wailed inward
And the cries screeched outward.
Haunting veils every windowed thought;
Torture? merely a name
Within this indifferent game,
Where keeping score is all for naught.
A smirk here, a quirk there;
Both parties know their place
Inside the keyhole of dares---
Unlocking mystery's trace.
Trapped fears grind their beating call
Unto archangel wings of bone;
Through encompassing plains they soar,
Weeping over psychosis' sores.