A Poem a day keeps the melancholy away

Manach

For the record, my own favourite Hausmann poem appeals to my own authoritarian streak:

Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries

These, in the day when heaven was falling,
The hour when earth's foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling,
And took their wages, and are dead.

Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and earth's foundations stay;
What God abandoned, these defended,
And saved the sum of things for pay.

A.E. Housman

marienbad

And for the record the people have spoken and this appeals to my democratic streak !

Democracy

Democracy will not come
Today, this year
Nor ever
Through compromise and fear.

I have as much right
As the other fellow has
To stand
On my two feet
And own the land.

I tire so of hearing people say,
Let things take their course.
Tomorrow is another day.
I do not need my freedom when I'm dead.
I cannot live on tomorrow's bread.

Freedom
Is a strong seed
Planted
In a great need.

I live here, too.
I want freedom
Just as you.

Langston Hughes

Manach

Continuing on the military theme, for the week that is in for the US.

During the War

When my brother came home from war
he carried his left arm in a black sling
but assured us most of it was still there.
Spring was late, the trees forgot to leaf out.

I stood in a long line waiting for bread.
The woman behind me said it was shameless,
someone as strong as I still home, still intact
while her Michael was burning to death.

Yes, she could feel the fire, could smell
his pain all the way from Tarawa–
or was it Midway?–and he so young,
younger than I, who was only fourteen,

taller, more handsome in his white uniform
turning slowly gray the way unprimed wood
grays slowly in the grate when the flames
sputter and die. “I think I’m going mad,”

she said when I turned to face her. She placed
both hands on my shoulders, kissed each eyelid,
hugged me to her breasts and whispered wetly
in my bad ear words I’d never heard before.

When I got home my brother ate the bread
carefully one slice at a time until
nothing was left but a blank plate. “Did you see her,”
he asked, “the woman in hell, Michael’s wife?”

That afternoon I walked the crowded streets
looking for something I couldn’t name,
something familiar, a face or a voice or less,
but not these shards of ash that fell from heaven.

—Philip Levine (2007)

barney4001

the factory girl
billy couburn of longstone street used to sing this when he had a few
She wasn't the least bit pretty,
And only the least bit gay;
And she walked with a firm elastic tread,
In a business-like kind of way.
Her dress was of coarse, brown woollen,
Plainly but neatly made,
Trimmed with some common ribbon
Or cheaper kind of braid;
And a hat with a broken feather,
And shawl of a modest plaid.
Her face seemed worn and weary,
And traced with lines of care,
As her nut-brown tresses blew aside
In the keen December air;
Yet she was not old, scarce twenty,
And her form was full and sleek,
But her heavy eye, and tired step,
Seemed of wearisome toil to speak;
She worked as a common factory girl
For two dollars and a half a week.
Ten hours a day of labor
In a close, ill-lighted room;
Machinery's buzz for music,
Waste gas for sweet perfume;
Hot stifling vapors in summer,
Chill draughts on a winter's day,
No pause for rest or pleasure
On pain of being sent away;
So ran her civilized serfdom --
Four cents an hour the pay.
"A fair day's work," say the masters,
And "a fair day's pay," say the men;
There's a strike -- a rise in wages,
What effect to the poor girl then?
A harder struggle than ever
The honest path to keep;
And so sink a little lower,
Some humbler home to seek;
For living is dearer -- her wages,
Two dollars and a half a week.
A man gets thrice the money,
But then "a man's a man,
"And a woman surely can't expect
"To earn as much as he can."
Of his hire the laborer's worthy,
Be that laborer who it may;
If a woman can do a man's work
She should have a man's full pay,
Not to be left to starve -- or sin --
On forty cents a day.
Two dollars and a half to live on,
Or starve on, if you will;
Two dollars and a half to dress on,
And a hungry mouth to fill;
Two dollars and a half to lodge on
In some wretched hole or den,
Where crowds are huddled together,
Girls, and women, and men;
If she sins to escape her bondage
Is there room for wonder then.

John Arthur Phillips

Mr.Nice Guy

Yeats is getting a lot of attention as this year marks 150 years since his birth. Here is a poem by him that I didn't see mentioned.


Lamentation of the Old Pensioner

W.B. Yeats

Although I shelter from the rain
Under a broken tree
My chair was nearest to the fire
In every company
That talked of love or politics,
Ere Time transfigured me.

Though lads are making pikes again
For some conspiracy,
And crazy rascals rage their fill
At human tyranny,
My contemplations are of Time
That has transfigured me.

There's not a woman turns her face
Upon a broken tree,
And yet the beauties that I loved
Are in my memory;
I spit into the face of Time
That has transfigured me.

catallus

Cargo by Samuel Menashe

Old wounds leave good hollows
Where one who goes can hold
Himself in ghostly embraces
Of former powers and graces
Whose domain no strife mars—
I am made whole by my scars

For whatever now displaces
Follows all that once was
And without loss stows
Me into my own spaces

chasmcb

I met Samuel Menashe! He read in Galway at Cuirt years ago, I had a pleasant afternoon chat with him. Love his poems.

Dave!

Acquainted with the Night
BY ROBERT FROST

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

tomasocarthaigh

Bids His Beloved Be At Peace (W.B. Yeats)

I HEAR the Shadowy Horses, their long manes a-shake,
Their hoofs heavy with tumult, their eyes glimmering white;
The North unfolds above them clinging, creeping night,
The East her hidden joy before the morning break,
The West weeps in pale dew and sighs passing away,
The South is pouring down roses of crimson fire:
O vanity of Sleep, Hope, Dream, endless Desire,
The Horses of Disaster plunge in the heavy clay:
Beloved, let your eyes half close, and your heart beat
Over my heart, and your hair fall over my breast,
Drowning love's lonely hour in deep twilight of rest,
And hiding their tossing manes and their tumultuous feet.

Honest Hands Build True



Old Cottage in Oranmore – built with peasent hands, with no engineers, its was build true: and stands where many houses designed and built by engineers has fallen…

Honest hands build walls true:
Work plain for all to see –
Stands the test of time,
Passed by walkers like me

Stones on ground, set into the earth
Walls of mud moulded by hands built high
Stand where many concrete walls have bit the dust
Honest hands being the reason why.

As these walls have stood let your actions be
They build your name – let it be true
Let your memory be as these walls stand today
Strong, proud, beautiful, as if new!

Read more from Tomás:

* The Three Eves

* Magpies

* Seek the Distant Isle

* Drinking to the Health of a Crazed Genius

Dave!

On a Political Prisoner
BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

She that but little patience knew,
From childhood on, had now so much
A grey gull lost its fear and flew
Down to her cell and there alit,
And there endured her fingers' touch
And from her fingers ate its bit.

Did she in touching that lone wing
Recall the years before her mind
Became a bitter, an abstract thing,
Her thought some popular enmity:
Blind and leader of the blind
Drinking the foul ditch where they lie?

When long ago I saw her ride
Under Ben Bulben to the meet,
The beauty of her country-side
With all youth's lonely wildness stirred,
She seemed to have grown clean and sweet
Like any rock-bred, sea-borne bird:

Sea-borne, or balanced in the air
When first it sprang out of the nest
Upon some lofty rock to stare
Upon the cloudy canopy,
While under its storm-beaten breast
Cried out the hollows of the sea.

Dave!

Byzantium
BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

The unpurged images of day recede;
The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed;
Night resonance recedes, night-walkers' song
After great cathedral gong;
A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains
All that man is,
All mere complexities,
The fury and the mire of human veins.

Before me floats an image, man or shade,
Shade more than man, more image than a shade;
For Hades' bobbin bound in mummy-cloth
May unwind the winding path;
A mouth that has no moisture and no breath
Breathless mouths may summon;
I hail the superhuman;
I call it death-in-life and life-in-death.

Miracle, bird or golden handiwork,
More miracle than bird or handiwork,
Planted on the starlit golden bough,
Can like the cocks of Hades crow,
Or, by the moon embittered, scorn aloud
In glory of changeless metal
Common bird or petal
And all complexities of mire or blood.

At midnight on the Emperor's pavement flit
Flames that no f*ggot feeds, nor steel has lit,
Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame,
Where blood-begotten spirits come
And all complexities of fury leave,
Dying into a dance,
An agony of trance,
An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve.

Astraddle on the dolphin's mire and blood,
Spirit after spirit! The smithies break the flood,
The golden smithies of the Emperor!
Marbles of the dancing floor
Break bitter furies of complexity,
Those images that yet
Fresh images beget,
That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.

Dave!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-W7bC8FULgw

Prayer for Messiah

Leonard Cohen

His blood on my arm is warm as a bird
his heart in my hand is heavy as lead
his eyes through my eyes shine brighter than love
O send out the raven ahead of the dove

His life in my mouth is less than a man
his death on my breast is harder than stone
his eyes through my eyes shine brighter than love
O send out the raven ahead of the dove

O send out the raven ahead of the dove
O sing from your chains where you're chained in a cave
your eyes through my eyes shine brighter than love
your blood in my ballad collapses the grave

O break from your branches a green branch of love
after the raven has died for the dove

Dave!

Twelve O’ Clock Chant

Leonard Cohen

Hold me hard light, soft light hold me,
Moonlight in your mountains fold me,
Sunlight in your tall waves scold me,
Ironlight in your wires shield me,
Deathlight in your darkness wield me.

In burlap bags the bankers sew me,
In countries far the merchants sell me,
In icy caves the princes throw me,
In golden rooms the doctors geld me,
In battlefields the hunters rule me.

I will starve till prophets find me,
I will bleed til angels bind me,
Still I sing till churches blind me,
Still I love till cog-wheels wind me.

Hold me hard light, soft light hold me,
Moonlight in your mountains fold me,
Sunlight in your tall waves scald me,
Ironlight in your wires shield me,
Deathlight in your darkness wield me.

barney4001

I Will Wait for You
by Stephen O'Brien
I will wait for you...
Though we never had a chance to say goodbye,
Remember me...
When winter snows are falling through a quiet sky
I'll remember you
When, in our darkest hour,
You held my hand and prayed I wouldn't go,
but a silent voice called out to me;
My time had come, and I had to travel Home...
Since then, I know your life has never been the same,
For I visit you each day:
So many times I've felt your pain:
I've watched you cry:
And I've heard you call my name...
But now, further along life's road I stand
In a timeless world, just beyond your sight,
but waiting for the day when I can take your hand
and bring you across to this Land of Golden Light...
Till then, remember me, you understand - and try not to cry.
But if you do:
Let your tears fall
For the happiness and joy we knew,
And for the special love we shared,
For love can never die.

Here, Pat Boran reads his poem, and gives a brief introduction.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbBVZ_052BM

The spire in the quagmire,
The dagger in the corpse,
The skewer in the sewer,
The single finger up.
The stiffey by the Liffey,
The ace in the hole,
The chopstick stuck in traffic,
The North(side) Pole.

The pin that burst the buuble,
The last tooth in the comb,
The first sign of trouble,
The barbed welcome home.

The spike in the crime rate,
The spine without a back,
The hypo from the Corpo,
The stake through the heart.
The needle in the noodle,
The point of no return,
The stick in the muddle,
The javelin, the harpoon.

The rod, the birch, the bata,
The Christian Brother’s cane,
The crozier of St Patrick
Weaponized again.

The flagpole flying nothing,
The blade-like glint of steel,
The arrow pointing nowhere,
The raver’s broken heel.
Stiletto in the ghetto,
Monument of blight,
The nail in the coffin,
The ’we’ reduced to ‘I’.

tomasocarthaigh

Was at the Body and Soul festival doing a reading with my fellow Tullamore Rhymers, and this one got a good reception. Its one of the few non rhyming ones I do... and was written after seeing footage of the war in Syria where the Peshmerga were fighting IS...

"There Is No Time for Art"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y91qgLQ-Osg

There is no time for art
Where bullets fly
And screams of fear replace song
Even the birds are quiet
But to an artist, this is an ever evolving gallery
Where the shells, explosions, fires and bullets
By the craters, bullets holes and charred buildings
Become one abstract sculpture
Carved by destruction
As if to say
The soldier is an artist
Who paints in blood
And war itself, is art.

Losing my Soul at Body and Soul
- satiring the anti equality elements in Longford at the Circle Session, readings with the Tullamore Rhymers, and other activities...

Charleston Yesterday and Today
What is it that changed it from a place of a crazy dance to a place of crazed killings?

Chapbook printed at last!
It didnt sell well at Body and Soul, but its in print at least!

Swiper the fox

Louis De Paor's tribute to the great Rory Gallagher. John Spillane has incorporated some of his poem into his beautiful song 'A song for Rory Gallagher linked at the bottom



Rory



Cork City Hall 1976



A million miles away from you

right at the back of the hall

my heart was beating

the drums of my hands;

I hadn’t a note in my head

only the grace-notes you picked

from tangled strings

as the knot in my veins

was undone by your brilliant fingers.

I couldn’t work out

why you kept tinkering

with the end of the tune

while the roar of our applause

rose up under the heels of your hands

that kept my dreams above water

as you walked the angry sea.

Did you really not hear

the tide flooding in behind you,

the waves of pounding feet

that rocked the floor of the City Hall

until it rolled like the deck of a ship,

that will never fill the emptiness

you left behind you on stage?

Can you feel it now,

our swiftfingered brightness,

as the light of heaven

shovels silence on the eyes

of the crowd as they press against the stage,

calling you back from the dark:
Rory

Rory

Rory…

Now can you hear me?




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUBhJQv7UnQ

Dave!

All Day It Has Rained

Alun Lewis

All day it has rained, and we on the edge of the moors
Have sprawled in our bell-tents, moody and dull as boors,
Groundsheets and blankets spread on the muddy ground
And from the first grey wakening we have found
No refuge from the skirmishing fine rain
And the wind that made the canvas heave and flap
And the taut wet guy-ropes ravel out and snap.
All day the rain has glided, wave and mist and dream,
Drenching the gorse and heather, a gossamer stream
Too light to stir the acorns that suddenly
Snatched from their cups by the wild south-westerly
Pattered against the tent and our upturned dreaming faces.
And we stretched out, unbuttoning our braces,
Smoking a Woodbine, darning dirty socks,
Reading the Sunday papers – I saw a fox
And mentioned it in the note I scribbled home; –
And we talked of girls and dropping bombs on Rome,
And thought of the quiet dead and the loud celebrities
Exhorting us to slaughter, and the herded refugees;
As of ourselves or those whom we
For years have loved, and will again
Tomorrow maybe love; but now it is the rain
Possesses us entirely, the twilight and the rain.

And I can remember nothing dearer or more to my heart
Than the children I watched in the woods on Saturday
Shaking down burning chestnuts for the schoolyard’s merry play,
Or the shaggy patient dog who followed me
By Sheet and Steep and up the wooded scree
To the Shoulder o’ Mutton where Edward Thomas brooded long
On death and beauty – till a bullet stopped his song.

Rory Gallagher

Here's one to begin the day!

From the Death by Water section of The Wasteland.

Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep seas swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

Lady Chatterton

I'm in Paris with you

Don't talk to me of love. I've had an earful
And I get tearful when I've downed a drink or two.
I'm one of your talking wounded.
I'm a hostage. I'm maroonded.
But I'm in Paris with you.

Yes I'm angry at the way I've been bamboozled
And resentful at the mess I've been through.
I admit I'm on the rebound
And I don't care where are we bound.
I'm in Paris with you.

Do you mind if we do not go to the Louvre
If we say sod off to sodding Notre Dame,
If we skip the Champs Elysées
And remain here in this sleazy

Old hotel room
Doing this and that
To what and whom
Learning who you are,
Learning what I am.

Don't talk to me of love. Let's talk of Paris,
The little bit of Paris in our view.
There's that crack across the ceiling
And the hotel walls are peeling
And I'm in Paris with you.

Don't talk to me of love. Let's talk of Paris.
I'm in Paris with the slightest thing you do.
I'm in Paris with your eyes, your mouth,
I'm in Paris with... all points south.
Am I embarrassing you?
I'm in Paris with you.

James Fenton

Swiper the fox

donegal_man

Archimedes Was All Wet

King Hero of old Syracuse had doubts that made him frown.
"Perhaps my goldsmith did not use pure gold to make the crown."
Since proof of mischief must be strong to put a thief in collar,
The king who feared his judgment wrong called on his science scholar.
"Archimedes, friend of old, find me the solution!
Is my crown pure solid gold, or is that an illusion?"
The scholar's task was serious; he struggled hard with math.
His mind was near delirious until he poured his bath.
He noticed how the water pushed him up as he stepped in.
He thought about it harder as he stroked his bearded chin.
"The weight of displaced liquid should always let me know
When any golden solid has a density too low!"
"Eureka!", he resounded. "I have such a clever mind".
Yet his claim was unfounded 'cause he left his clothes behind!


Robert Z

Swiper the fox

To My Husband

If we were never going to die, I might Not hug you quite as often or as tight, Or say goodbye to you as carefully
If I were certain you’d come back to me. Perhaps I wouldn’t value every day, Every act of kindness, every laugh

As much, if I knew you and I could stay
For ever as each other’s other half.
We may not have too many years before
One disappears to the eternal yonder
And I can’t hug or touch you any more.
Yes, of course that knowledge makes us fonder. Would I want to change things, if I could,

And make us both immortal? Love, I would.

Wendy Cope

SmallTeapot

^^Aw, so sad yet so sweet at the same time

Swiper the fox

SmallTeapot wrote: »

^^Aw, so sad yet so sweet at the same time

I was in a bookshop the other day and saw that Wendy Cope has a memoir style non-poetry book out. Looks very good and she came into my mind when this thread popped into my new threads box. She's brilliant, that poem is beautiful, I'm quite a young man (well 40:o) but it just reminded me of everytime that I say goodbye to my wife when one of us is setting off on a long drive 'promise me you'll drive carefully etc'.

Here's another of her's

Spared, by Wendy Cope


Poet Wendy Cope's meditation on the events of 9/11


"That Love is all there is,
Is all we know of Love... "
Emily Dickinson

It wasn't you, it wasn't me,
Up there, two thousand feet above
A New York street. We're safe and free,
A little while, to live and love,

Imagining what might have been -
The phone-call from the blazing tower,
A last farewell on the machine,
While someone sleeps another hour,

Or worse, perhaps, to say goodbye
And listen to each other's pain,
Send helpless love across the sky,
Knowing we'll never meet again,
Or jump together, hand in hand,
To certain death. Spared all of this
For now, how well I understand
That love is all, is all there is
[/SIZE]

tomasocarthaigh

The portrait above was drawn a few days ago on Shop Street in Galway by a talented artist from Melbourne... on looking at it after I thought of the title of the play "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" and thought of a melancholic twist to that as I reflected on the past few years which have been eventful to say the least. Life takes its toll...

The white hair, welcome, comes in greater numbers
No matter or not if the welcome is there
The black gives way to a growing grey
The hair that once was fair.

The fair gave way to a darkening brown
That became black as a boy became a man
Cutting downly dark stubble from a teenage chin
With a clumsiness never lost as only a young man can.

I sat upon a stool on a Galway street
A wandering artist warts and all drew
Portrait of a poet he only knew as a stranger, a man
Words spoken between artists of different mediums were few.

Both men masters of the pen
In their own mind: let others the truth declare
I'd sat before on a Faro street
For another wandering artist there.

I, younger, looked on life with ambition and hope
Difficulty was opportunity, to be fought
I worn, broken, repaired again by life
This time I solace from life's trials sought.

The hair gets lighter, the heart heavier
Each cut of life's trials makes man weak
He who once the dance of life pursued
Now the couch and sleep does seek.

Am I old before my time
Or is this passing weariness a phase
A rest needed before the fight, the dance, anew
To be prepared for during these melancholic days?

The fields beyond the river are not green
Make the most of where you are while you can
Thinks the poet, pondering the losses of what was fought for all those years
As the artist draws a portrait of the poet as a not so young man

Read more:

No Money in Saving Lives
1916 " A Futile Effort Betrayed
Dark Brown Turf

thegreengoblin

I don't read much poetry these days but stumbled across this on Twitter. It's by a poet named Charles Tomlinson who sadly died the other day. I would often find myself mesmerised by planes streaking overhead so I love the imagery in this.

Tonight

Tonight the sky stands cleansed
Of all its trails save one that, slowly,
Before the dark comes on - dissolving
From wrack to wraith - lets through
A high transparency. I wait beneath
This no-man's territory to see
How far that fringe of vapour can prolong
Its fading signature against space -
Space spreading upwards among shadow
Whose steady seepage has now gained
The ground we are standing on. I grip
With the eye that last dissolution in the sky
And pace the isthmus of the darkness under
A solidity of trunks that wait to bear
The leaf-crowns of another year
Penetrating earth, preparing to drink light,
Upright across their tilted hemisphere.

Swiper the fox

Performed by the poet on todays Liveline in reference to that poor Syrian child
edit: I should point out that this poem was written after the Dublin/Monaghan bombings

Child Of Our Time


Yesterday I knew no lullaby
But you have taught me overnight to order
This song, which takes from your final cry
Its tune, from your unreasoned end its reason;
Its rhythm from the discord of your murder,
Its motive from the fact you cannot listen.


We who should have known how to instruct
With rhymes for your waking, rhythms for your sleep
Names for the animals you took to bed,
Tales to distract, legends to protect,
Later an idiom for you to keep
And living, learn, must learn from you, dead.


To make our broken images rebuild
Themselves around your limbs, your broken
Image, find for your sake whose life our idle
Talk has cost, a new language. Child
Of our time, our times have robbed your cradle.
Sleep in a world your final sleep has woken.

Eavan Boland

Lord Riverside

The Unknown Citizen

(To JS/07 M 378
This Marble Monument
Is Erected by the State)

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a
saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn’t a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his
generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their
education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.


W. H. Auden, 1939

Lord Riverside

To Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,-
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.


John Keats, 19th September, 1819