Some Clouds

Now that I've unplugged the phone,
no one can reach me--
At least for this one afternoon
they will have to get by without my advice
or opinion.
Now nobody else is going to call
& ask in a tentative voice
if I haven't yet heard that she's dead,
that woman I once loved--
nothing but ashes scattered over a city
that barely itself any longer exists.
Yes, thank you, I've heard.
It had been too lovely a morning.
That in itself should have warned me.
The sun lit up the tangerines
& the blazing poinsettias
like so many candles.
For one afternoon they will have to forgive me.
I am busy watching things happen again
that happened a long time ago.
as I lean back in Josephine's lawnchair
under a sky of incredible blue,
broken--if that is the word for it--
by a few billowing clouds,
all white & unspeakably lovely,
drifting out of one nothingness into another.

-Steve Kowit

Associations

As o'er these hills I take my silent rounds,
Still on that vision which is flown I dwell,
On images I loved, alas, too well!
Now past, and but remembered like sweet sounds
Of yesterday! Yet in my breast I keep
Such recollections, painful though they seem,
And hours of joy retrace, till from my dream
I start, and find them not; then I could weep
To think how Fortune blights the fairest flowers;
To think how soon life's first endearments fail,
And we are still misled by Hope's smooth tale,
Who, like a flatterer, when the happiest hours
Pass, and when most we call on her to stay,
Will fly, as faithless and as fleet as they!

-William Lisle Bowles

At dawn

THE night-long clamour of winds grew still;
The forest rested, its foes withdrawn;
On sounding ocean and silent hill
There crept a sense of the coming dawn.
A bird awoke on a leaning limb
And fluttered its plumes a moment's space;
Dark purple lay on the sea's far rim:
The sky grew pale as a dying face.
Then all the trees and the rocks and heights
With wondering faces watched the East:
It seemed an altar hung with lights
And waiting for a vestured priest.
And in that intimate first hour
When land and sea rejoiced as one,
And Nature, like an opening flower,
Gave incense, came the burning sun.
Yet, while the hour of gold went by,
I saw through all its pageantry
The vast indifference of the sky,
The heartless beauty of the sea.
For wet and wan, and cold and sped
Beyond the breakers' reach of pearl,
There lay a strong man drowned and dead,
And in his arms a drowned white girl.

-Roderic Quinn

SPLEEN

I'M like some king in whose corrupted veins
Flows agèd blood; who rules a land of rains;
Who, young in years, is old in all distress;
Who flees good counsel to find weariness
Among his dogs and playthings, who is stirred
Neither by hunting-hound nor hunting-bird;
Whose weary face emotion moves no more
E'en when his people die before his door.
His favourite Jester's most fantastic wile
Upon that sick, cruel face can raise no smile;
The courtly dames, to whom all kings are good,
Can lighten this young skeleton's dull mood
No more with shameless toilets. In his gloom
Even his lilied bed becomes a tomb.
The sage who takes his gold essays in vain
To purge away the old corrupted strain,
His baths of blood, that in the days of old
The Romans used when their hot blood grew cold,
Will never warm this dead man's bloodless pains,
For green Lethean water fills his veins.

-Charles Baudelaire

Den hemliga liljan

Som duggat ned ur majmilt blå,
så ljust och spätt
det första lövet linden klätt;
runt om fontänens glitter
magnolieträden blomma,
men än är marken kall
och än ej vintern all,
och än stå kronor tomma.

Uti min själ, som i ett flor
av ljumma ljusa töcken, bor
en underblomma tyst och skär,
och dunkelt lyfter, blad vid blad,
en lönnlig längtans sakta vind
dess kalk ur källans skymning.

Där över välver blitt och rent
sig i min själ ett tonfullt rum; -
o ljusa röst, mitt skydd, min tröst
och hjälp i hjärtats vånda,
hur fylles all min själ av dig,
hur lyser all min själv av dig, -
sång utan ord, din melodi
all havets sorgsna skönhet tonar.

Du min aldrig hörda,
av ingen levande drömda
melodi, som jag bär
och som jag vill vårda!
Du som ljuder
i mina bästa stunder,
skall jag en gång
få giva dig fram
ren och hel?
Som en brännande snyftan
har du fyllt min själ,
stundom i drömmar,
stundom vaken,
alltför väldig,
alltför stark kanske för mitt hjärta
som sviktat under din flod; -
ack! som en överfylld skål,
högt buren på rädda händer,
bär dig min själ,
o du min käraste!
Du min hemliga lilja -
Du min ofödda melodi!

-Vilhelm Ekelund

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant --

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant --
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind --

-Emily Dickinson

Debris

HE is wisest who has the most caution,
He only wins who goes far enough.

Any thing is as good as established, when that is established that
will produce it and continue it.

-Walt Whitman

MOUNTAIN LIFE

IN summer dusk the valley lies
With far-flung shadow veil;
A cloud-sea laps the precipice
Before the evening gale:
The welter of the cloud-waves grey
Cuts off from keenest sight
The glacier, looking out by day
O'er all the district, far away,
And crowned with golden light.

But o'er the smouldering cloud-wrack's flow,
Where gold and amber kiss,
Stands up the archipelago,
A home of shining peace.
The mountain eagle seems to sail
A ship far seen at even;
And over all a serried pale
Of peaks, like giants ranked in mail,
Fronts westward threatening heaven.

But look, a steading nestles, close
Beneath the ice-fields bound,
Where purple cliffs and glittering snows
The quiet home surround.
Here place and people seem to be
A world apart, alone; --
Cut off from men by spate and scree
It has a heaven more broad, more free,
A sunshine all its own.

Look: mute the saeter-maiden stays,
Half shadow, half aflame;
The deep, still vision of her gaze
Was never word to name.
She names it not herself, nor knows
What goal my be its will;
While cow-bells chime and alp-horn blows
It bears her where the sunset glows,
Or, maybe, further still.

Too brief, thy life on highland wolds
Where close the glaciers jut;
Too soon the snowstorm's cloak enfolds
Stone byre and pine-log hut.
Then wilt thou ply with hearth ablaze
The winter's well-worn tasks; --
But spin thy wool with cheerful face:
One sunset in the mountain pays
For all their winter asks.

-Henrik Ibsen

En ghasel

Jag står och ser på världen genom gallret;
jag kan, jag vill ej slita mig från gallret,
det är så skönt att se, hur livet sjuder
och kastar höga böljor upp mot gallret,
så smärtsamt glatt och lockande det ljuder,
när skratt och sånger komma genom gallret.

Det skiftar ljust av asp och al och björk,
där ovanför står branten furumörk,
den friska doften tränger genom gallret.
Och över viken vilket präktigt sken,
i varje droppe är en ädelsten,
se, hur det skimrar härligt genom gallret!

Det vimlar båtar där och ångare
med hornmusik och muntra sångare
och glada människor i tusental,
som draga ut till fest i berg och dal;
jag vill, jag vill, jag skall, jag måste ut
och dricka liv, om blott för en minut,
jag vill ej långsamt kvävas bakom gallret!

Förgäves skall jag böja, skall jag rista
det gamla obevekligt hårda gallret
– det vill ej tänja sig, det vill ej brista,
ty i mig själv är smitt och nitat gallret,
och först när själv jag krossas, krossas gallret.

-Gustaf Fröding

Vän! I förödelsens stund

Vän! I förödelsens stund, när ditt inre av mörker betäckes,
När i ett avgrundsdjup minne och aning förgå,
Tanken famlar försagd bland skugggestalter och irrbloss,
Hjärtat ej sucka kan, ögat ej gråta förmår;
När från din nattomtöcknade själ eldvingarne falla,
Och du till intet, med skräck, känner dig sjunka på nytt,
Säg, vem räddar dig då?- Vem är den vänliga ängel,
Som åt ditt inre ger ordning och skönhet igen,
Bygger på nytt din störtade värld, uppreser det fallna
Altaret, tändande där flamman med prästerlig hand? --
Endast det mäktiga väsen, som först ur den eviga natten
Kysste serafen till liv, solarna väckte till dans.
Endast det heliga Ord, som ropte åt världarna: "Bliven!"
Och i vars levande kraft världarna röras ännu.
Därföre gläds, o vän, och sjung i bedrövelsens mörker:
Natten är dagens mor, Kaos är granne med Gud.

-Erik Johan Stagnelius

Justice

That Justice is a blind goddess
Is a thing to which we black are wise:
Her bandage hides two festering sores
That once perhaps were eyes.

-Langston Hughes

Time

Unfathomable Sea! whose waves are years,
Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe
Are brackish with the salt of human tears!
Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow
Claspest the limits of mortality,
And sick of prey, yet howling on for more,
Vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore;
Treacherous in calm, and terrible in storm,
Who shall put forth on thee,
Unfathomable Sea?

-Percy Bysshe Shelley

His Last Sonnet

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art! -
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature's patient sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors -
No -yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillowed upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever -or else swoon to death.

-John Keats

Adieu to a Soldier

ADIEU, O soldier!
You of the rude campaigning, (which we shared,)
The rapid march, the life of the camp,
The hot contention of opposing fronts—the long manoeuver,
Red battles with their slaughter,—the stimulus—the strong, terrific game,
Spell of all brave and manly hearts—the trains of Time through you, and like of you,
all
fill’d,
With war, and war’s expression.

Adieu, dear comrade!
Your mission is fulfill’d—but I, more warlike,
Myself, and this contentious soul of mine,
Still on our own campaigning bound,
Through untried roads, with ambushes, opponents lined,
Through many a sharp defeat and many a crisis—often baffled,
Here marching, ever marching on, a war fight out—aye here,
To fiercer, weightier battles give expression.

-Walt Whitman

Poetics

I look for the way
things will turn
out spiralling from a center,
the shape
things will take to come forth in

so that the birch tree white
touched black at branches
will stand out
wind-glittering
totally its apparent self:

I look for the forms
things want to come as

from what black wells of possibility,
how a thing will
unfold:

not the shape on paper -- though
that, too -- but the
uninterfering means on paper:

not so much looking for the shape
as being available
to any shape that may be
summoning itself
through me
from the self not mine but ours.

-A. R. Ammons

Vågar du?

En kylig vind
leker
kring mina svullna
ögon.
Jag blundar
och känner
en svag
viskning blåsa värme
i mitt nakna frusna
tillstånd.

Jag lever och
hoppas
att väntans fulla
mognad
bryter mark i drömmarens
och på nytt slår fast
de evigas sökande
längtan.

…men vågar du steget?
Vågar du ta det kliv
som förenar ord
och handling?
Då möts vi
kanske
på halva vägen
till slut.

-Göran Hansson

THE REMORSE OF THE DEAD

O SHADOWY Beauty mine, when thou shalt sleep
In the deep heart of a black marble tomb;
When thou for mansion and for bower shalt keep
Only one rainy cave of hollow gloom;

And when the stone upon thy trembling breast,
And on thy straight sweet body's supple grace,
Crushes thy will and keeps thy heart at rest,
And holds those feet from their adventurous race;

Then the deep grave, who shares my reverie,
(For the deep grave is aye the poet's friend)
During long nights when sleep is far from thee,

Shall whisper: "Ah, thou didst not comprehend
The dead wept thus, thou woman frail and weak"--
And like remorse the worm shall gnaw thy cheek.

-Charles Baudelaire

Passing time

Your skin like dawn
Mine like musk

One paints the beginning
of a certain end.

The other, the end of a
sure beginning.

-Maya Angelou

i carry your heart with me

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

- E. E. Cummings

To A Shade

If you have revisited the town, thin Shade,
Whether to look upon your monument
(I wonder if the builder has been paid)
Or happier-thoughted when the day is spent
To drink of that salt breath out of the sea
When grey gulls flit about instead of men,
And the gaunt houses put on majesty:
Let these content you and be gone again;
For they are at their old tricks yet.
A man
Of your own passionate serving kind who had brought
In his full hands what, had they only known,
Had given their children's children loftier thought,
Sweeter emotion, working in their veins
Like gentle blood, has been driven from the place,
And instilt heaped upon him for his pains,
And for his open-handedness, disgrace;
Your enemy, an old fotil mouth, had set
The pack upon him.
Go, unquiet wanderer,
And gather the Glasnevin coverlet
About your head till the dust stops your ear,
The time for you to taste of that Salt breath
And listen at the corners has not come;
You had enough of sorrow before death --
Away, away! You are safer in the tomb.

-William Butler Yeats

Några ord till min kära dotter, ifall jag hade någon

Min kära Betti, du blir stor:
Du från din docka hunnit växa...
Utaf din hulda, fromma mor
Tag, för din framtid, denna lexa!

Uti den verld, du knappast sett,
Så många öden förefalla;
Men med ett gladt och sedigt vett
Skall Betti segra på dem alla.

På lifvets bana varsamt gå,
Men tro ej allt hvad ondt man säger!
Vår verld, min Betti, är ändå
Den allra bästa verld, man eger.

Den är - hvad den beständigt var -
Bebodd af kloka och af dårar;
Och - noga öfverlagdt - den har
Mer rätt till löje än till tårar.

För mycken misstro föder agg,
För mycken lättro ångrens smärta:
Tänk ej i hvarje ros en tagg,
Ej dygd i hvarje manligt hjerta!

Väl dig, om jemt du följa vet
Försigtighet, den kloka gumman:
Den, jemte känslig glädtighet,
Är af all vishet hufvudsumman.

Med läsning öd ej tiden bort -
Vårt kön så föga det behöfver,
Och skall du läsa, gör det kort.
Att såsen ej må fräsa öfver!

Ett odladt vett, en upplyst själ -
Hvad - kunna böcker blott det skänka?
Mitt barn, studera verlden väl:
Den ger dig ämnen nog att tänka!

Hvar menska, Betti, är en bok -
Lär dig att fatta rätt dess värde,
Och mins, att oftast af en tok
Den vise någon visdom lärde!

Men om lektyren roar dig,
Väl - i förädling af ditt väsen
Låt den då blygsamt röja sig,
Men ej i tonen af beläsen!

En lärd i stubb - det är ett rön -
Satirens udd ej undanslipper,
Och vitterheten hos vårt kön
Bör höra blott till våra nipper.

Lyd, Betti, lyd bestämmelsen:
Sök ej att mannabragder hinna
Och känn din värdighet, min vän,
I äran af att vara qvinna!

Se denna mor i huslig krets,
Som vet sitt sanna kall bevaka,
Fullt med den ärelust tillfreds,
Att vara värdig mor och maka!

Se, ordning, mildhet, treflighet
Med blomster hennes fotspår hölja,
Och heder, kärlek, tacksamhet
Dess lefnad och dess minne följa.

Behaget är med fliten slägt:
I nyttig snällhet sätt din heder!
Låt ärbarheten i din drägt
Bli sinnebild af dina seder!

Följ, Betti, smakens enkla bud:
Låt aldrig flärden dig förtrolla!
All prydnad drifven intill skrud
Är blott affischen af en fjolla.

I sällskap sladdrets tomhet fly,
Men sitt ej sluten som en gåta!
För tanklösheten plär man sky,
För mycken klokhet ej förlåta.

Välj uttryck utan brydsamt val,
Se till att du ej domslut fäller!
Och tala, Betti - håll ej tal:
Du tror ej hur det oss förställer!

Gif skämtets udd sitt fina skick
I ord, som glädtigt oförmoda!
Dock mins: man skrattar med en qvick,
Men man bär aktning för den goda.

En lätting, slö till själ och kropp,
Fann en gång lifvet bli en börda:
Då fann en annan lätting opp
Att tiden genom kortspel mörda.

Välj nödigt detta tidsfördrif,
Som, fast af sed och ton ej menligt,
Är - tro mig - med ett verksamt lif
Och själ och känsla oförenligt!

Märk, hur en skönhets blick är hvass
I nit att korten riktgt kasta!
Märk, vid det lumpna ordet »pass»
Hur gracerna på flykten hasta!

Försigtigt äfven undanvik
All brydsam forskning i gazetten!
Vårt hushåll är vår republik,
Vår politik är toaletten.

Blif vid din bågsöm, dina band,
Stick af ditt mönster emot rutan
Och tro, mitt barn, att folk och land
Med Guds hjelp styras oss förutan!

När sig en qvinna nitisk ter
Att staters styrselsätt ransaka,
Gud vet, så tycks mig att jag ser
En skäggbrodd skugga hennes haka.

Nej, slika värf ej stå oss an:
Låt aldrig dem din håg förvilla!
Du skall bli gift - då vill din man
Med tacksamhet min lärdom gilla.

Att giftas ... ej ett ämne fins
Mer rikt att i maximer drifva
Men, goda Betti, hör och mins
Det enda råd, jag har att gifva:

Den make, som dig blir beskärd,
(Märk denna stora hemligheten!)
Var huld, om han är huldhet värd,
Om ej - så var det i förtreten!

Tag händelser och öden lätt,
Mitt barn, så blifva de ej tunga!
Och - mellan oss - är det ett sätt
Att än i åldern synas unga.

Min Betti, lifvet flyr så fort -
Hvad grym, hvad oersättlig skada,
Om, vid det lilla gagn, vi gjort,
Vi nekat oss att vara glada!

Må stojet och förströelsen
Vid andras dom för glädje gälla,
I stilla nöjen sök du den -
Det är för oss vi äro sälla.

Gör nöjet bofast i ditt hus,
Eg i ditt hjerta samvetsfriden!
Den gör vår uppsyn mild och ljus,
Den rår på sorgerna och tiden.

Ja, Betti, lifvets sällhet njut,
Men lifvets pligter ej försaka...
Nu har min lilla lexa slut,
Och till min söm jag går tillbaka.

Anna Maria Lenngren

Love Lies Sleeping

Earliest morning, switching all the tracks
that cross the sky from cinder star to star,
coupling the ends of streets
to trains of light.

now draw us into daylight in our beds;
and clear away what presses on the brain:
put out the neon shapes
that float and swell and glare

down the gray avenue between the eyes
in pinks and yellows, letters and twitching signs.
Hang-over moons, wane, wane!
From the window I see

an immense city, carefully revealed,
made delicate by over-workmanship,
detail upon detail,
cornice upon facade,

reaching up so languidly up into
a weak white sky, it seems to waver there.
(Where it has slowly grown
in skies of water-glass

from fused beads of iron and copper crystals,
the little chemical "garden" in a jar
trembles and stands again,
pale blue, blue-green, and brick.)

The sparrows hurriedly begin their play.
Then, in the West, "Boom!" and a cloud of smoke.
"Boom!" and the exploding ball
of blossom blooms again.

(And all the employees who work in a plants
where such a sound says "Danger," or once said "Death,"
turn in their sleep and feel
the short hairs bristling

on backs of necks.) The cloud of smoke moves off.
A shirt is taken of a threadlike clothes-line.
Along the street below
the water-wagon comes

throwing its hissing, snowy fan across
peelings and newspapers. The water dries
light-dry, dark-wet, the pattern
of the cool watermelon.

I hear the day-springs of the morning strike
from stony walls and halls and iron beds,
scattered or grouped cascades,
alarms for the expected:

queer cupids of all persons getting up,
whose evening meal they will prepare all day,
you will dine well
on his heart, on his, and his,

so send them about your business affectionately,
dragging in the streets their unique loves.
Scourge them with roses only,
be light as helium,

for always to one, or several, morning comes
whose head has fallen over the edge of his bed,
whose face is turned
so that the image of

the city grows down into his open eyes
inverted and distorted. No. I mean
distorted and revealed,
if he sees it at all.

-Elizabeth Bishop

Awake at night

Awake at night--
the sound of the water jar
cracking in the cold.

-Matsuo Basho

Sonnet 60

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end;
Each changing place with that which goes before,
In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
Nativity, once in the main of light,
Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown'd,
Crooked elipses 'gainst his glory fight,
And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth
And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,
Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow:
And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand,
Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.

-William Shakespeare

Love's Deity

I long to talk with some old lover's ghost,
Who died before the God of Love was born:
I cannot think that he, who then loved most,
Sunk so low as to love one which did scorn.
But since this god produced a destiny,
And that vice-nature, Custom, lets it be,
I must love her that loves not me.

Sure, they which made him god meant not so much,
Nor he in his young godhead practised it;
But when an even flame two hearts did touch,
His office was indulgently to fit
Actives to passives. Correspondency
Only his subject was; it cannot be
Love, till I love her that loves me.

But every modern god will now extend
His vast prerogative as far as Jove.
To rage, to lust, to write to, to commend,
All is the purlieu of the God of Love.
Oh were we wakened by this tyranny
To ungod this child again, it could not be
I should love her who loves not me.

Rebel and atheist too, why murmur I
As though I felt the worst that love could do?
Love might make me leave loving, or might try
A deeper plague, to make her love me too,
Which, since she loves before, I'm loth to see;
Falsehood is worse than hate; and that must be,
If she whom I love should love me.

-John Donne

Fragment 168b

The sinking moon has left the sky,
The Pleiades have also gone.
Midnight comes--and goes, the hours fly
And solitary still, I lie.

-Sappho

(Translated by Edwin Marion Cox)

Winter Nightfall

The day begins to droop,--
Its course is done:
But nothing tells the place
Of the setting sun.
The hazy darkness deepens,
And up the lane
You may hear, but cannot see,
The homing wain.
An engine pants and hums
In the farm hard by:
Its lowering smoke is lost
In the lowering sky.
The soaking branches drip,
And all night through
The dropping will not cease
In the avenue.
A tall man there in the house
Must keep his chair:
He knows he will never again
Breathe the spring air:
His heart is worn with work;
He is giddy and sick
If he rise to go as far
As the nearest rick:
He thinks of his morn of life,
His hale, strong years;
And braves as he may the night
Of darkness and tears.

-Robert Seymour Bridges

When Stretch'd on One's Bed

When stretch'd on one's bed
With a fierce-throbbing head,
Which preculdes alike thought or repose,
How little one cares
For the grandest affairs
That may busy the world as it goes!

How little one feels
For the waltzes and reels
Of our Dance-loving friends at a Ball!
How slight one's concern
To conjecture or learn
What their flounces or hearts may befall.

How little one minds
If a company dines
On the best that the Season affords!
How short is one's muse
O'er the Sauces and Stews,
Or the Guests, be they Beggars or Lords.

How little the Bells,
Ring they Peels, toll they Knells,
Can attract our attention or Ears!
The Bride may be married,
The Corse may be carried
And touch nor our hopes nor our fears.

Our own bodily pains
Ev'ry faculty chains;
We can feel on no subject besides.
Tis in health and in ease
We the power must seize
For our friends and our souls to provide.

-Jane Austen

It Is Not Growing Like A Tree

It is not growing like a tree
In bulk doth make Man better be;
Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere:
A lily of a day
Is fairer far in May,
Although it fall and die that night—
It was the plant and flower of light.
In small proportions we just beauties see;
And in short measures life may perfect be.

-Ben Jonson

How Many Bards Gild The Lapses Of Time!

How many bards gild the lapses of time!
A few of them have ever been the food
Of my delighted fancy,—I could brood
Over their beauties, earthly, or sublime:
And often, when I sit me down to rhyme,
These will in throngs before my mind intrude:
But no confusion, no disturbance rude
Do they occasion; 'tis a pleasing chime.
So the unnumbered sounds that evening store;
The songs of birds—the whispering of the leaves—
The voice of waters—the great bell that heaves
With solemn sound,—and thousand others more,
That distance of recognizance bereaves,
Makes pleasing music, and not wild uproar.

-John Keats

Ships that Pass in the Night

Out in the sky the great dark clouds are massing;
I look far out into the pregnant night,
Where I can hear the solemn booming gun
And catch the gleaming of a random light,
That tells me that the ship I seek
is passing, passing.
My tearful eyes my soul's deep hurt are glassing;
For I would hail and check that ship of ships.
I stretch my hands imploring, cry aloud,
My voice falls dead a foot from mine own lips,
And but its ghost doth reach that vessel, passing, passing.
O Earth, O Sky, O Ocean, both surpassing,
O heart of mine, O soul that dreads the dark!
Is there no hope for me? Is there no way
That I may sight and check that speeding bark
Which out of sight and sound is passing, passing?

-Paul Laurence Dunbar