SAY NOT THE STRUGGLE NOUGHT AVAILETH (By Arthur Hugh Clough)
Say not, the struggle nought availeth,
The labour and the wounds are vain,
The enemy faints not, nor faileth,
And as things have been they remain.
If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;
It may be, in yon smoke concealed,
Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers,
And, but for you, possess the field.
For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back, through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in, the main,
And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light,
In front, the sun climbs slow, how slowly,
But westward, look, the land is bright.
NOCTURNE (By W.H. Auden)
Make this night loveable,
Moon, and with eye single
Looking down from up there,
Bless me, One especial
And friends everywhere.
With a cloudless brightness
Surround our absences;
Innocent be our sleeps,
Watched by great still spaces,
White hills, glittering deeps.
Parted by by circumstance,
Grant each your indelgence
That we may meet in dreams
For talk, for dalliance,
By warm hearths, by cool streams.
Shine lest tonight any,
In the dark suddenly,
Wake alone in a bed
To hear his own fury
Wishing his love were dead.
IT'S NO USE RAISING A SHOUT (By W.H. Auden)
It's no use raising a shout.
No, Honey, you can cut that right out.
I don't want any more hugs;
Make me some fresh tea, fetch me some rugs.
Here am I, here are you;
But what does it mean? What are we going to do?
It wasn't always like this?
Perhaps it wasn't, but it is.
Put the car away; when life fails,
What's the good of going to Wales?
Here am I, here are you;
But what does it mean? What are we going to do?
In my spine there was a base,
And I knew the general's face:
But they've served all the wires,
And I can't tell what the general desires.
Here am I, here are you;
But what does it mean? What are we going to do?
In my veins there is a wish,
And a memory of fish:
When I lie crying on the floor,
It says, 'You've often done this before,'
Here am I, here are you;
But what does it mean? What are we going to do?
A bird used to visit this shore:
It isn't going to come any more.
I've come a very long way to prove
No land, no water, and no love.
Here am I, here are you;
But what does it mean? What are we going to do?
DOVER BEACH (By Matthew Arnold)
The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the Straits; - on the French coast, the light
Gleams, and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the ebb meets the moon-blanch'd sand,
Listen! You hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves suck back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
The sea of faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd;
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retrating to the breath
Of the night-wind down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah love, let us be true
To one another! For the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
THE RAINY DAY (By Henry Wadsworth Longfallow)
The day is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.
My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still clings to the mouldering Past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.
Be still, sad heart! And cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.
THE PAINS OF SLEEP (by Samuel Taylor Coleridge)
Ere on my bed my limbs I lay,
It hath not been my use to pray,
With moving lips or bended knees;
But silently, by slow degrees,
My spirit I to Love compose,
In humble trust mine eye-lids close,
With reverential resignation,
No wish conceived, no thought exprest,
Only a sense of supplication;
A sense o'er all my soul imprest
That I am weak, yet not unblest,
Since in me, round me, every where
Eternal Strength and Wisdom are.
But yester-night I prayed aloud
In anguish and in agony,
Up-starting from the fiendish crowd
Of shapes and thoughts that tortured me;
Thirst of revenge, the powerless will
Still baffled, and yet burning still!
Desire with loathing strangely mixed
On wild or hateful objects fixed.
Fantastic passions! Maddening brawl!
And shame and terror over all!
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
Life-stifling fear, soul-stifling shame.
So two nights passed; the night's dismay
Saddened and stunned the coming day.
Sleep, the wide blessing, seemes to me
Distemper's worst calamity.
The third night, when my own loud scream
Had waken me from the fiendish dream,
O'ercome with sufferings strange and wild,
I wept as I had been a child;
And having thus by tears subdued
My anguish to a milder mood,
Such punishments, I said were due
To natures deepliest strained with sin,---
For aye entempesting anew
The unfathomable hell within,
The horror of their deeds to view,
To know and loathe, yet wish and do!
Such griefs with such men well agree,
But wherefore, wherefore fall on me?
To be beloved is all I need,
And whom I love, I love indeed.
MIRAGE (by Christina Rossetti~~ my fave poet!!)
The hope I dreamed of was a dream,
Was but a dream, but now I wake,
Exceeding comfortless, and worn, and old,
For a dream's sake.
I hang my harp upon a tree,
A weeping willow in a lake;
I hang my silenced harp there, wrung and snapt
For a dream's sake.
Lie still, lie still, my breaking heart;
My silent heart, lie still and break:
Life, and the world, and mine own self, are changed
For a dream's sake.
PARTING (by C. Rossetti)
Parting after parting,
Sore loss and gnawing pain:
Meeting grows half a sorrow
Because of parting again.
When shall the day break
That these things shall not be?
When shall new earth be ours
Without a sea,
And time that is not time
But eternity?
To meet, worth living for;
Worth dying for, to meet;
To meet, worth parting for,
Bitter forgot in sweet:
To meet, worth parting before,
Never to part more.
SNOW (by Ivor Gurney)
There's not a sound tonight
I look out and am beaten
In my face by curious, white,
Unexpected flakes
Of snow in a daze fleeting
And retire shievering to
The warm room and the lamplight
Where my music waits, and O
Ben Jonson lies......
For delight my man's nature with his great spirit.
O warmth! O Golden light!
O books behind me waiting
Their turn for my love's thought......
Turning from work
To wrap myself in a past of golden lighting.
Music must flow with his power, I
Bend over my task and am hard
At wrestling with the stuff for mastery
That is dumb music now---
My spirit and I wrsetle, you may hear us breathing hard.
Was there and Love, could draw me
Out of my true way of work and action?
Yes, one there was, but Time has dared show me
(A soldier and maker)
That time dares all things, and defies ever question.
QUOTE of the fortnight:
"Sadness overwhelms me
My mind flies and carelessly
Imagines that you're happy with your life right now
Forever's gone
So now I must place you with all the things
That I can never have..."
~~~ From the lyrics of "Set Adrift on Memory Bliss"
Back to my Dreamland!
