Poetry Corner: "A Dream Within a Dream" by Edgar Allan Poe

{Image Source}

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream? 

-- Edgar Allan Poe

Poetry Corner: "When I Heard at the Close of Day" by Walt Whitman

{Image credit: Barry Underwood}

When I heard at the close of the day how my name had been receiv’d with plaudits in the capitol, still it was not a happy night for me that follow’d,

And else when I carous’d, or when my plans were accomplish’d, still I was not happy,

But the day when I rose at dawn from the bed of perfect health, refresh’d, singing, inhaling the ripe breath of autumn,

When I saw the full moon in the west grow pale and disappear in the morning light,

When I wander’d alone over the beach, and undressing bathed, laughing with the cool waters, and saw the sun rise,

And when I thought how my dear friend my lover was on his way coming, O then I was happy,

O then each breath tasted sweeter, and all that day my food nourish’d me more, and the beautiful day pass’d well,

And the next came with equal joy, and with the next at evening came my friend,

And that night while all was still I heard the waters roll slowly continually up the shores,

I heard the hissing rustle of the liquid and sands as directed to me whispering to congratulate me,

For the one I love most lay sleeping by me under the same cover in the cool night,

In the stillness in the autumn moonbeams his face was inclined toward me,

And his arm lay lightly around my breast – and that night I was happy.

- Walt Whitman

Poetry Corner: The Lanyard by Billy Collins

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

Poetry Corner: "For My Old Self, at Notre Dame" by Marie Ponsot

For My Old Self, At Notre Dame:

Fluctuat nec mergitur

By Marie Ponsot

The dark madonna cut from a knot of wood

has robes whose folds make waves against the grain

and a touching face – noble in side view,

impish or childish seen head-on from above.

The wood has the rich stain of tannin, raised

to all-color lustre by the steep of time.

The mouths of her shadows are pursed by time

to suck sun-lit memories from the wood.

Freezing damp and candle-smut have raised

her eyebrows into wings flung up by the grain,

caught in the light of bulbs plugged high above.

She stands alert, as if hailed, with beasts in view.

Outside on the jeweled river-ship, I view

a girl’s back, walking off. Oh. Just in time

I shut up. She’d never hear me shout above

the tour-guides and ski-skate kids. How I would

have liked to see her face again, the grain

of beauty on her forehead, her chin raised

startled; her Who are you? wild, a question raised

by seeing me, an old woman, in plain view.

Time is a tree in me; in her it’s a grain

ready to plant. I go back in, taking my time

leafy among stone trunsk that soar in stone woods

where incense drifts, misty, lit pink from above.

She’s headed for her hotel room then above

Cluny’s garden. She’ll sit there then, feet raised

notebook on her knees, to write. Maybe she would

have heard, turned, known us both in a larger view

and caught my age in the freshness of its time.

She dreads clocks, she says. Such dry rot warps the grain.

They still say mass here. Wine and wheat-grain

digest to flesh in words that float above

six kneeling women, a man dressed outside time,

and the dark madonna, her baby raised

dangerously high to pull in our view.

Magic dame, cut knot, your ancient wood

would reach back to teach her if it could. Spring rain.

Through it I call to thank her, loud above

the joy she raised me for, this softfall. Sweet time.

Poetry Corner: A Deep-Sworn Vow by W.B. Yeats

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Others because you did not keep

That deep-sworn vow have been friends of mine;

Yet always when I look death in the face, 

When I clamber to the heights of sleep,

Or when I grow excited with wine,

Suddenly I meet your face.

- William Butler Yeats

{This is my favorite poem of all time. I had to share it this week because I am working on a story that is sort of inspired by it.}

Poetry Corner: "The Second Coming" by William Yeats

Painting by Maxim Katsnelson

I love this creepy little poem, even though I have a more positive outlook on the future, and a Christian outlook on the Second Coming. I frequently find the events of this modern world disturbing and disheartening. And lately, with a lot of stress in my life, I find the line "the center cannot hold" going through my mind over and over again. So, because the groundhog has decided it is winter for another six weeks, I'm giving you a dark poem this month.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

    

Surely some revelation is at hand;
    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
    Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
    Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

    

The darkness drops again but now I know
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Poetry Corner: Shakespeare's Sonnet 52

So am I as the rich, whose blessed key 

Can bring him to his sweet up-locked treasure,

The which he will not every hour survey, 

For blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure.

Therefore are feasts so solemn and so rare, 

Since, seldom coming, in the long year set, 

Like stones of worth they thinly placed are, 

Or captain jewels in the carcanet. 

So is the time that keeps you as my chest,

Or as the wardrobe which the robe doth hide, 

To make some special instant special blest, 

By new unfolding his imprison'd pride. 

   Blessed are you, whose worthiness gives scope,

   Being had, to triumph, being lack'd, to hope.

I think the main reason this sonnet appealed to me is because I am a savorer -- I like things to last. If a book is amazing, I don't want to finish it -- I'll cut down to a few pages a day because I don't want it to end. I could relate to the metaphor of the rich man not surveying his treasure constantly due to the desire to keep it a rare and special pleasure. And I think this idea does translate well into love -- while I am always happy to be with my husband, I definitely appreciate and crave his company more when I have been away from him all day. I love the image of moments with the poet's love being placed in a chest as jewels carefully preserved, to be looked at only on special occasions but dreamt of and savored always. 

For more posts about Shakespeare, check out Allie's Shakespeare Month. 

Poetry Corner: "Alone" by Edgar Allen Poe

From childhood's hour I have not been 
As others were — I have not seen 
As others saw — I could not bring 
My passions from a common spring. 
From the same source I have not taken 
My sorrow; I could not awaken 
My heart to joy at the same tone; 
And all I lov'd, I lov'd alone. 
Then — in my childhood — in the dawn 
Of a most stormy life — was drawn 
From ev'ry depth of good and ill 
The mystery which binds me still: 
From the torrent, or the fountain, 
From the red cliff of the mountain, 
From the sun that 'round me roll'd 
In its autumn tint of gold — 
From the lightning in the sky 
As it pass'd me flying by — 
From the thunder and the storm, 
And the cloud that took the form 
(When the rest of Heaven was blue) 
Of a demon in my view.
- Edgar Allen Poe


How beautiful -- and haunting -- is this poem? I came across it while reading Nevermore by Kelly Creagh (review coming Friday) and have been unable to get it from my mind ever since. I dabbled in reading a few Poe stories in high school, and I am now intrigued by the man and his writings once again. This poem is so desperate with loneliness, yet full of beauty as well. 


(I feel frivolous adding this last comment, but the scene in Nevermore when Varen reads this poem to Isobel is the most romantic scene I have ever read. I literally had butterflies to rival my first kiss when I read it.)

Poetry Corner: Sonnet 28 by Shakespeare

Painting by P. Eric Keys

How can I then return in happy plight

That am debarred the benefit of rest?

When day's oppression is not eased by night,

But day by night and night by day oppressed. 

And each (though enemies to either's reign)

Do in consent shake hands to torture me,

The one by toil, the other to complain

How far I toil, still farther off from thee.

I tell the day to please him thou art bright,

And dost him grace when clouds do blot the heaven:

So flatter I the swart-complexioned night, 

When sparkling stars twire not thou gild'st the even

But day doth daily draw my sorrows longer,

And night doth nightly make grief's length seem stronger. 

- Shakespeare

I related to this sonnet immediately, not so much due to the heartbreak aspect - I am quite happy with my love life - but the insomnia aspect. For as long as I can remember I have had episodes where I can't fall asleep at night, and while they have decreased as I've grown up, it is still one of my least favorite feelings in the world. I was amazed at how this poem nailed my exact feelings, despite the 400 year difference.

Poetry Corner: Sonnet XV by Shakespeare

Image Source

When I consider every thing that grows

Holds in perfection but a little moment,

That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows

Whereon the stars in secret influence comment;

When I perceive that men as plants increase,

Cheered and cheque'd even by the self-same sky,

Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease,

And wear their brave state out of memory;

Then the conceit of this inconstant stay

Sets you most rich in youth before my sight,

Where wasteful Time debateth with Decay,

To change your day of youth to sullied night;

And all in war with Time for love of you,

As he takes from you, I engraft you new.

- Shakespeare

This is the point of writing about love - to beat the war with Time. The nature of the world is for everything to be in constant flux, but art, whether it be a novel, a painting, a dance, or a song, allows those moments to be preserved and revisited.

Poetry Corner: Sonnet II by Shakespeare

I have lately decided that I need to start reading more Shakespeare. I went through a phase in high school where I read tons of the plays one summer, but I didn't get much out of the experience because I had no idea what I was reading. Because I'm pretty sure I will still have no idea what I am reading, I am working my ways through the sonnets before I attempt anything else. I've only read two so far, and this is Sonnet 2. I had to include it because my brother has been trying to convince me for years to get married and have children (he really wants to be an uncle). I should mention at this point that I am 23 - my biological clock isn't ticking too loudly yet. I just married in to nieces and nephews - I have ten, all from my husband's family. Sorry Jace, I won't be having any kids just yet. But I dedicate this poem to you.

Photo Credit

When forty winters shall beseige thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now,
Will be a tatter'd weed, of small worth held:
Then being ask'd where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days,
To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserved thy beauty's use,
If thou couldst answer 'This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count and make my old excuse,'
Proving his beauty by succession thine!
This were to be new made when thou art old,
And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.

Poetry Corner: Sonnet VI by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, from Sonnets from the Portuguese

Sonnet VI by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand

Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore

Alone upon the threshold of my door

Of individual life, I shall command

The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand

Serenely in the sunshine as before,

Without the sense of that which I forbore --

Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land

Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine

With pulses that beat double. What I do

And what I dream include thee, as the wine

Must taste of its own grapes.

And when I sue God for myself,

He hears that name of thine,

And sees within my eyes the tears of two.

I love the way this poem describes the union of two people in love. I love the image of them as inseparable from each other. I don't think this means that they aren't their own people, with their own personalities, but that their interests are forever wrapped up in each other. Their union is so complete that when they pray, even though only one voice is heard, it represents two, and though only one person may be directly helped when the prayer is answered, it benefits both.

I should also mention that while the part I love is those last lines where the poet describes the inseparableness of her lover and herself, the poem is a sad one - she is saying that although he is leaving her, he is eternally a part of her.

Poetry Corner: The LOOOOOVE Edition

Happy Valentines Day, blogosphere! I hope it's treating you well. I don't actually get to see The Husband hardly at all today - last day working an evening shift at the old stressful job. However, I thought I'd leave you all with some love poetry, whether or not you have someone special with you today.

I've been reading Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. My Kindle edition of it is absolutely appalling - no line breaks whatsoever. But I'm a cheapskate. And the words are stunning. So first, a love poem for someone who is in love...


Indeed this very love which is my boast,
And which, when rising up from breast to brow,
Doth crown me with a ruby large enow
To draw men's eyes and prove the inner cost, --
This love even, all my worth, to the uttermost,
I should not love withal, unless that thou
Hadst set me an example, shown me how,
When first thine earnest eyes with mine were crossed,
And love called love.
And thus, I cannot speak
Of love even, as a good thing of my own:
Thy soul hath snatched up mine all faint and weak,
And placed it by thee on a golden throne, --
And that I love (O soul, we must be meek!)
Is by thee only, whom I love alone.

Oh, I love this. I love that image of her love snatching up her faint, weakened soul and placing it beside him on a golden throne because so often I feel like that is what my love did with me. I had gone through so many bad relationships, while my good friend let me cry on his shoulder, and then when I was ready showed me what love really was.

Ok, ok, the gagfest is over. I have one more sonnet I love for those not in love who do not want to be, whether because their hearts are already broken ore because they are just not interested. This is my favorite poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Photo credit

What can I give thee back, O liberal
And princely giver, who has brought the gold
And purple of thine heart, unstained, untold,
And laid them on the outside of the wall
For such as I to take or leave withal,
In unexpected largesse? am I cold,
Ungrateful, that for these most manifold High gifts,
I render nothing back at all?
Not so; not cold, -- but very poor instead.
Ask God who knows. For frequent tears have run
The colours from my life, and left so dead
And pale a stuff, it were not fitly done
To give the same as pillow to they head.
Go farther, let it serve to trample on.

This poem is so heartbreaking to me, both on behalf of the narrator and the rejected lover. He wants to offer her the world, "the gold and purple of [his] heart," and it is left in the cold. She sees how wonderful his offer is, but is so jaded and scarred that she won't accept it. It's poignancy makes it romantic even though the actual romance is being rejected.

That's all for today! Happy love day. :)

Poetry Corner: The Line-Gang

Photo Credit

Here come the line-gang pioneering by,
They throw a forest down less cut than broken.
They plant dead trees for living, and the dead
They string together with a living thread.
They string an instrument against the sky
Wherein words whether beaten out or spoken
Will run as hushed as when they were a thought.
But in no hush they string it: they go past
With shouts afar to pull the cable taut,
To hold it hard until they make it fast,
To ease away- they have it. With a laugh,
An oath of towns that set the wild at naught,
They bring the telephone and telegraph.
- Robert Frost

I'm not sure exactly why this poem appealed to me - it isn't on the most poetic of subjects, and I've never seen a line-gang. For some reason though, the rhythm of the words and the images were very beautiful and clever to me. I thought the line "They plant dead trees for a living, and the dead/They string together with a living thread" was brilliant.

This is probably my last poetry corner for Robert Frost, as I have gotten through the poems I have by him on my Kindle. I am trying to decide what my next daily poetry book should be - I'm torn between Elizabeth Barret Browning, e.e. cummings, and Emily Dickinson. Any suggestions on good poets to read?

Poety Corner: Bond and Free

It's been a while since I've done one of these!

(Photo Credit)

Bond and Free


Love has earth to which she clings


With hills and circling arms about --


Wall within wall to shut fear out.


But Thought has need of no such things,


For Thought has a pair of dauntless wings.





On snow and sand and turf, I see


Where Love has left a printed trace


With straining in the world's embrace.


And such is Love and glad to be.


But Thought has shaken his ankles free.





Thought cleaves the interstellar gloom


And sits in Sirius' disc all night,


Till day makes him retrace his flight,


With smell of burning on every plume,


Back past the sun to an earthly room.





His gains in heaven are what they are.


Yet some say Love by being thrall


And simply staying possesses all


In several beaty that Thought fares far


To find fused in another star.


- Robert Frost





I love the contrast between Love and Thought - I think often I have been one to want my freedom and to "cleave the interstellar gloom" but I think I'm happier now that I have "earth to which she clings."

Poetry Corner: My November Guest

My November Guest
My Sorrow, when she's here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.

Her pleasure will not let me stay.
She talks and I am fain to list:
She's glad the birds are gone away,
She's glad her simple worsted gray
Is silver now with clinging mist.

The desolate, deserted trees,
The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
And vexes me for reason why.

Not yesterday I learned to know
The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
And they are better for her praise.
- Robert Frost

Even though these images are gray and loved by Frost's personification of Sorrow, I think they illustrate that there is still beauty even though it is muted and cold.

Poetry Corner: After Apple-Picking

Just read this one and, as it was more alluring than going through slides for my physiology lab, I decided I needed to post it immediately.
After Apple-Picking
My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.
-Robert Frost

I loved the rhythm of this poem. Read it aloud, the way the words fall are beautiful. I also loved the sensory detail. I could feel all those sensations: the lingering ache in the arch of the foot, even though the pressure of the ladder is gone, the scent of apples, the coldness as you skim the ice off the water outside (we had horses and sheep, so breaking the ice was a common occurrence in winter), and more than anything, being ready to drop into sleep, only to dream more of what you have been doing all day. Of course, I dreamed about o chem last night.

Poetry corner: October

I read one poem a day, because reading full on books of poetry at one time overwhelm me but I love poetry in small doses. I thought this morning's poem fit in well with today -

October
O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
To-morrow's wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
To-morrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow,
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know;
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from the trees, one far away;
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes' sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost -
For the grapes' sake along the wall.
- Robert Frost

I love how he asks the morning to be more slow - that we will allow our hearts to be beguiled. October is my favorite month because I love the crisp mornings and the beautiful leaves. Thanks, Robert.