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INI File | 1993-08-30 | 5.5 KB | 155 lines |
- [EASY 1]
- I'm nobody. Who are you?
- Are you nobody too?
- Then there's a pair of us.
- Don't tell - they'd banish us, you know.
- How dreary to be somebody,
- How public - like a frog -
- To tell your name the livelong June
- To an admiring bog.
- [EASY 2]
- Not in this world to see his face.
- Sounds long, until I read the place
- Where this is said to be
- But just the primer to a life
- Unopened, rare, upon the shelf
- Clasped yet to hm and me;
- and yet my primer suits me so,
- I would not choose a book to know
- Than that be sweeter wise.
- Might someone else so learned be
- and leave me just my ABC,
- Himself could have the skies.
- [EASY 3]
- I stepped from plank to plank,
- A slow and cautious way;
- The stars about my head I felt,
- About my feet the sea.
- I knew not but the next
- would be my final inch.
- This gave me the precarious gait
- some call experience.
- [EASY 4]
- A deed knocks first at thought,
- And then it knocks at will.
- That is the manufacturing spot.
- And, will at home and well,
- It then goes out an act,
- Or is entombed so still
- That only to the ear of God
- Its doom is audible.
- [INTER 1]
- Proudly the flood comes in, shouting, foaming, advancing
- Long it holds at the high, with bosom broad outswelling
- All throbs, dilates - the farms, woods, streets of cities -
- workmen at work,
- Mainsails, topsails, jibs, appear in the offing - steamers'
- pennants of smoke - and under the forenoon sun,
- Freighted with human lives, gaily the outward bound,
- gaily the inward bound,
- flaunting from many a spar the flag I love.
- [INTER 2]
- I sing the body electric,
- The armies of those I know engirth me
- And I engirth them,
- They will not let me off until
- I go with them, respond to them,
- And discorrupt them, and charge them full
- with the charge of the soul
-
- [INTER 3]
- Come said the Muse,
- Sing me a song no poet yet has chanted,
- Sing me the universal.
- In this broad earth of ours,
- amid the measureless grossness and the slag,
- enclosed and safe within its central heart,
- Nestles the seed perfection.
- By every life a share or more or less
- None born but it is born, concealed
- or unconcealed, the seed is waiting.
- Lo keen-eyed towering science,
- As from tall peaks the modern overlooking,
- successful absolute fiats issuing
- [INTER 4]
- That music always round me, unceasing,
- unbeginning, yet long untaught I do not hear,
- But now the chorus I hear and am elated,
- A tenor, strong, ascending with power and health,
- with glad note of daybreak I hear,
- A soprano at intervals sailing buoyantly
- over the tops of immense waves,
- A transparent base shuddering lusciously
- under and through the universe,
- The triumphant tutti, the funeral wailings
- with sweet flutes and violins,
- all these I fill myself with,
- I hear not the volumes of sound merely,
- I am moved by the exquisite meanings,
- I listen to the different voices winding in and out,
- striving, contending with fiery vehemence
- to excel each other in emotion;
- I do not think the performers know themselves
- - but now I think I begin to know them
- [HARD 1]
- Not mine own feat, nor the prophetic soul,
- Of the wide world, dreaming on things to come,
- Can yet the lease of my true love control,
- Suppos'd as forfeit to a confin'd doom.
- The mortal Moon hath her eclipse endur'd,
- and the sad augurs mock their own presage,
- Incertainties now crown themselves assur'd,
- And peace proclaims olives of endless age.
- Now with the drops of this most balmy time,
- My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes,
- Since spite of him I'll live in this poor rhyme,
- While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes.
- And thou in this shalt find thy monument,
- When tyrants' crest and tombs of brass are spent.
- [HARD 2]
- When in the Chronicle of wasted time,
- I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
- And beauty making beautiful old rhyme,
- In praise of Ladies dead, and lovely Knights,
- Then in the blazon of sweet beauty's best,
- Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,
- I see their antique pen would have expess'd,
- Even such a beauty as you master now.
- So all their praises are but prophecies
- Of this our time, all you prefiguring,
- And for they look'd but with divining eyes,
- They had not skill enough your worth to sing:
- For we which now behold these present days,
- Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.
- [HARD 3]
- When in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes,
- I all alone beweep my outcast state,
- And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
- And look upon myself and curse my fate,
- Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
- Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd,
- Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
- With what I most enjoy contented least,
- Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
- Haply I think on thee, and then my state
- (Like to the lark at break of day arising),
- From sullen earth sings hymns at Heaven's gate
- For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings,
- That then I scorn to change my state with Kings.
- [HARD 4]
- When to the sessions of sweet silent thought,
- I summon up remembrance of things past,
- I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
- And with old woes new wail my dear times' waste:
- Then can I drown an eye (unus'd to flow)
- For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
- And weep afresh love's long-since cancell'd woe,
- And moan th' expense of many a vanish'd sight.
- Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
- And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er,
- The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
- Which I new pay, as if not paid before.
- But if the while I think on thee (dear friend)
- All losses are restor'd, and sorrows end.
- [end]
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