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The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter


While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of Chokan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.

At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.

At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever.
Why should I climb the lookout?

At sixteen you departed,
You went into far Ku-to-en, by the river of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.

You dragged your feet when you went out.
By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me. I grow older.
If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you
As far as Cho-fo-Sa.

-- Ezra Pound


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A Late Walk

by Robert Frost - 1913

WHEN I go up through the mowing field,
The headless aftermath,
Smooth-laid like thatch with the heavy dew,
Half closes the garden path.
And when I come to the garden ground,
The whir of sober birds
Up from the tangle of withered weeds
Is sadder than any words.
A tree beside the wall stands bare,
But a leaf that lingered brown,
Disturbed, I doubt not, by my thought,
Comes softly rattling down.
I end not far from my going forth
By picking the faded blue
Of the last remaining aster flower
To carry again to you.



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Thank you wordwind, you know, that Frost fellow wasn't bad.

This is not as good, but it's cute.

       IT HAPPENS OFTEN

There was a man in our town
Whose Christian name was Jim;
He stepped into a pot of glue,
And fell and broke his limb.

The doctors tried to set it,
But still it would not mend;
He limped about, and would, no doubt,
Be limping to the end.

But on a day it happened
He walked abroad, and then
He stepped into some other glue,
And broke his leg again.

And when his leg was mended,
And he was out once more,
Both leg and man were stronger than
They had ever been before!

So, when I broke my heart, once,
I thought of Mister Jim -
I went and broke it once again,
Now I'm as well as him!
Edwin Meade Robinson




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No, milum, that Frost fellow wasn't bad, but he wasn't thought to be good enough to win the Nobel prize. Pity, really. He should have won it. Here's another:

BY June our brook’s run out of song and speed.
Sought for much after that, it will be found
Either to have gone groping underground
(And taken with it all the Hyla breed
That shouted in the mist a month ago, 5
Like ghost of sleigh-bells in a ghost of snow)—
Or flourished and come up in jewel-weed,
Weak foliage that is blown upon and bent
Even against the way its waters went.
Its bed is left a faded paper sheet 10
Of dead leaves stuck together by the heat—
A brook to none but who remember long.
This as it will be seen is other far
Than with brooks taken otherwhere in song.
We love the things we love for what they are.

Hyla Brook
Robert Lee Frost



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LITTLE ORPHANT ANNIE
James Whitcomb Riley

Little Orphant Annie’s come to our house to stay,
An’ wash the cups and saucers up, an’ brush the crumbs away,
An’ shoo the chickens off the porch, an’ dust the hearth, an’ sweep,
An’ make the fire, an’ bake the bread, an’ earn her board-an’-keep;
An’ all us other children, when the supper things is done,
We set around the kitchen fire an’ has the mostest fun
A-list’nin’ to the witch tales ‘at Annie tells about,
An’ the Gobble-uns ‘at gits you
Ef you
Don’t
Watch
Out!

Onc’t they was a little boy wouldn’t say his prayers,—
So when he went to bed at night, away upstairs,
His Mammy heerd him holler, an’ his Daddy heerd him bawl,
An’ when they turn’t the kivvers down, he wasn’t there at all!
An’ they seeked him in the rafter room, an’ cubbyhole, an’ press,
An’ seeked him up the chimbly flue, an’ ever’wheres, I guess;
But all they ever found was thist his pants an’ roundabout:—
An’ the Gobble-uns ‘II git you
Ef you
Don’t
Watch
Out!

An une time a little girl ‘ud allus laugh an’ grin,
An’ make fun of ever’one, an’ all her blood an’ kin;
An’ onc’t, when they was “company,” an’ ole folks was there,
She mocked ‘em an’ shocked ‘em, an’ said she didn’t care!
An’ thist as she kicked her heels, an’ turn’t to run an’ hide,
They was two great big Black Things a-standin’ by her side,
An’ they snatched her through the ceilin’ ‘fore she knowed what she’s about!
An’ the Gobble-uns ‘11 git you
Ef you
Don’t
Watch
Out!

An’ little Orphant Annie says, when the blaze is blue,
An’ the lamp-wick sputters, an’ the wind goes woo-oo!
An’ you hear the crickets quit, an’ the moon is gray,
An’ the lightnin’ bugs in dew is all squenched away,—
You better mind yer parents, and yer teachers fond an’ dear,
An’ churish them ‘at loves you, an’ dry the orphant’s tear,
An’ he’p the pore an’ needy ones ‘at clusters all about,
Er the Gobble-uns ‘11 git you
Ef you
Don’t
Watch
Out!



(Sorry about the lines being all screwed up!)


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Music is in the ear of the behearer...




>>>>>[OVERTONES]<<<<<
                                                      
I heard a bird at break of day
Sing from the autumn trees
A song so mystical and calm,
So full of certainties.
No man, I think, could listen long
Except upon his knees.
Yet this was but a simple bird,
Alone among [DEAD]trees.

William Alexander Percy


~~~~~*****~~~~~*****~~~~~*****~~~~~*****~~~~~*****


THE BLACKBIRD

In the corner
close by the swings,
every morning
a blackbird sings.

His bill is so yellow
his coat is so black
that makes a fellow
whistle back.

Ann, my daughter,
thinks that he
sings for us two
especially.

____________________Humbert Wolfe__________________



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Untitled

Shy warbler who sings to me from leafy shade,
Although my eyes look high to see,
It's by your song alone I know you,
And you know less than that of me.

I'm quite content to leave it as we have it.
We'll share the tree and summer, but
Your song will be the one we put our faith in.
The ones I know sometimes have proven wrong.

-Max Ellison


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Guys, I can't read this thread. It falls off on both sides of my screen. Why is that? Can we fix it so my eyes don't get boogled?



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Wordwind!..."Hyla brook" is my Favorite frost poem, I know it by heart and present it all the time...especially love the last line...thanks!

HER HAIR

by Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867)-French


O fleece, which covers her neck like wool!
O curls! O perfume heavy with nonchalance!
Ecstasy! Tonight, in order to people this dark alcove
With the memories sleeping in this hair,
I want to shake them in the air like a handkerchief!

Languorous Asia and burning Africa,
A whole distant world, absent, almost defunct,
Lives in your depths, O aromatic forest!
As other spirits sail on music,
Mine, O my love, swims on your perfume.

I will go there where the tree and man, full of sap,
Swoon for a long time in the ardour of the climate;
Strong tresses, be the ocean swell that carries me off!
You contain, O sea of ebony, a dazzling dream
Of sails and rowers of flames and masts;

A resounding port where my soul can drink
In long draughts perfume, sound and color;
Where ships, gliding in the gold and mixed shades,
Open their vast arms to embrace the glory
Of a pure sky where eternal heat quivers.

I'll plunge my head in love with intoxification
Into that black ocean where she is enclosed;
And my subtle spirit which the rolling ocean caresses
Will be able to find you again, O fertile idleness!
Infinite rockings of my embalmed leisure!

Blue hair, tent of stretched darkness,
You give me back the blue of the huge round sky;
On the downy edges of your twisted locks
My ardor grows drunk on the mingled smells
Of coconut oil, of musk and tar.

For a long time! Forever! My hand in your heavy mane
Will sow rubies, pearls and sapphires,
So that you will never be deaf to my desire!
Are you not the oasis where I dream, and the gourd
From which I draw in long draughts the wine of memory?



The Only WO'N!

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*swoon*


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