George Gordon Byron – To Ianthe

Not in those climes where I have late been straying,

Though Beauty long hath there been matchless deemed,

Not in those visions to the heart displaying

Forms which it sighs but to have only dreamed,

Hath aught like thee in Truth or Fancy seemed:

Nor, having seen thee, shall I vainly seek

To paint those charms which varied as they beamed—

To such as see thee not my words were weak;

To those who gaze on thee what language could they speak?

Ah! may'st thou ever be what now thou art,

Nor unbeseem the promise of thy Spring—

As fair in form, as warm yet pure in heart,

Love's image upon earth without his wing,

And guileless beyond Hope's imagining!

And surely she who now so fondly rears

Thy youth, in thee, thus hourly brightening,

Beholds the Rainbow of her future years,

Before whose heavenly hues all Sorrow disappears.

Young Peri of the West! — 'tis well for me

My years already doubly number thine;

My loveless eye unmoved may gaze on thee,

And safely view thy ripening beauties shine;

Happy, I ne'er shall see them in decline;

Happier, that, while all younger hearts shall bleed,

Mine shall escape the doom thine eyes assign

To those whose admiration shall succeed,

But mixed with pangs to Love's even loveliest hours decreed.

Oh! let that eye, which, wild as the Gazelle's,

Now brightly bold or beautifully shy,

Wins as it wanders, dazzles where it dwells,

Glance o'er this page, nor to my verse deny

That smile for which my breast might vainly sigh

Could I to thee be ever more than friend:

This much, dear Maid, accord; nor question why

To one so young my strain I would commend,

But bid me with my wreath one matchless Lily blend.

Such is thy name with this my verse entwined;

And long as kinder eyes a look shall cast

On Harold's page, Ianthe's here enshrined

Shall thus be first beheld, forgotten last:

My days once numbered — should this homage past

Attract thy fairy fingers near the Lyre

Of him who hailed thee loveliest, as thou wast—

Such is the most my Memory may desire;

Though more than Hope can claim, could Friendship less require?

Sylvia Plath – Admonition

If you dissect a bird

To diagram the tongue

You'll cut the chord

Articulating song.

If you flay a beast

To marvel at the mane

You'll wreck the rest

From which the fur began.

If you pluck out the heart

To find what makes it move,

You'll halt the clock

That syncopates our love.

John Keats – Bards of Passion and of Mirth...

Bards of Passion and of Mirth,

Ye have left your souls on earth!

Have ye souls in heaven too,

Doubled-lived in regions new?

Yes, and those of heaven commune

With the spheres of sun and moon;

With the noise of fountains wondrous,

And the parle of voices thund'rous;

With the whisper of heaven's trees

And one another, in soft ease

Seated on Elysian lawns

Browsed by none but Dian's fawns;

Underneath large blue-bells tented,

Where the daisies are rose-scented,

And the rose herself has got

Perfume which on earth is not;

Where the nightingale doth sing

Not a senseless, tranced thing,

But divine melodious truth;

Philosophic numbers smooth;

Tales and golden histories

Of heaven and its mysteries.

Thus ye live on high, and then

On the earth ye live again;

And the souls ye left behind you

Teach us, here, the way to find you,

Where your other souls are joying,

Never slumber'd, never cloying.

Here, your earth-born souls still speak

To mortals, of their little week;

Of their sorrows and delights;

Of their passions and their spites;

Of their glory and their shame;

What doth strengthen and what maim.

Thus ye teach us, every day,

Wisdom, though fled far away.

Bards of Passion and of Mirth,

Ye have left your souls on earth!

Ye have souls in heaven too,

Double-lived in regions new!

Sylvia Plath – All The Dead Dears

Rigged poker -stiff on her back

With a granite grin

This antique museum-cased lady

Lies, companioned by the gimcrack

Relics of a mouse and a shrew

That battened for a day on her ankle-bone.

These three, unmasked now, bear

Dry witness

To the gross eating game

We'd wink at if we didn't hear

Stars grinding, crumb by crumb,

Our own grist down to its bony face.

How they grip us through think and thick,

These barnacle dead!

This lady here's no kin

Of mine, yet kin she is: she'll suck

Blood and whistle my narrow clean

To prove it. As I think now of her hand,

From the mercury-backed glass

Mother, grandmother, greatgrandmother

Reach hag hands to haul me in,

And an image looms under the fishpond surface

Where the daft father went down

With orange duck-feet winnowing this hair ---

All the long gone darlings: They

Get back, though, soon,

Soon: be it by wakes, weddings,

Childbirths or a family barbecue:

Any touch, taste, tang's

Fit for those outlaws to ride home on,

And to sanctuary: usurping the armchair

Between tick

And tack of the clock, until we go,

Each skulled-and-crossboned Gulliver

Riddled with ghosts, to lie

Deadlocked with them, taking roots as cradles rock.

Rudyard Kipling – A Ballade of Jakko Hill

One moment bid the horses wait,

Since tiffin is not laid till three,

Below the upward path and straight

You climbed a year ago with me.

Love came upon us suddenly

And loosed -- an idle hour to kill --

A headless, armless armory

That smote us both on Jakko Hill.

Ah Heaven! we would wait and wait

Through Time and to Eternity!

Ah Heaven! we could conquer Fate

With more than Godlike constancy

I cut the date upon a tree --

Here stand the clumsy figures still:

"10-7-85, A.D."

Damp with the mist of Jakko Hill.

What came of high resolve and great,

And until Death fidelity!

Whose horse is waiting at your gate?

Whose 'rickshaw-wheels ride over me?

No Saint's, I swear; and -- let me see

To-night what names your programme fill --

We drift asunder merrily,

As drifts the mist on Jakko Hill.

L'envoi.

Princess, behold our ancient state

Has clean departed; and we see

'Twas Idleness we took for Fate

That bound light bonds on you and me.

Amen! Here ends the comedy

Where it began in all good will;

Since Love and Leave together flee

As driven mist on Jakko Hill!