Poems

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Full many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye,
Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchymy;
Anon permit the basest clouds to ride
With ugly rack on his celestial face,
And from the forlorn world his visage hide,
Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace:
Even so my sun one early morn did shine,
With all-triumphant splendour on my brow;
But, out! alack! he was but one hour mine,
The region cloud hath mask’d him from me now.
Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth;
Suns of the world may stain when heaven’s sun staineth.

~William Shakespeare, 1609

This next poem summarizes summer for me, I love William Carlos Williams, and after reading this poem I put the plums in the fridge before eating them and he was right, they are scrumptious!

This Is Just to Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

~William Carlos Williams, 1934

And this next few lines always make me bend, their power and beauty is such and the feeling that John Donne gives them and I just love the rhythm (poetry is music first for me and rhythm before sense – there’s been times I hear the music first and only later grasp the word’s meaning):

Batter my heart, three-personed God; for You
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand,o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

~John Donne, 1633

….. I love the rest of the poem as well, but this is enough I think.

• 25 Sep, 2008
• 1 like

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