SNOW

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay window was 

Spawning snow and pink roses against it

Soundlessly collateral and incompatible;

World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,

Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion

A tangerine and spit the pips and feel

The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world

Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes -

On he tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one's hands -

There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.

Louis Macneice

1907-1963

SOMEWHERE OR OTHER

Somewhere or other there must surely be

The face not seen, the voice not heard,

The heart that not yet - never yet - ah me!

Made answer to my word.

Somewhere or other, may be near or far;

Past land and sea, clean out of sight;

Beyond the wandering moon, beyond the star

That tracks her night by night.

Somewhere or other, may be far or near;

With just a wall, a hedge, between;

With just the last leaves of the dying year

Fallen on turf grown green.

Christina Rossetti
1830-1894

EVENING

The sky puts on the darkening blue coat

held for it by a row of ancient trees;

you watch: and the lands grow distant in your sight,

one journeying to heaven, one that falls;

and leave you, not at home in either one,

not quite so still and dark as the darkened houses,

not calling to eternity with the passion

of what becomes a star each night, and rises;

and leave you (inexpressibly to unravel)

your life, with its immensity and fear,

so that, now bounded, now immeasurable,

it is alternatively stone in you and star.

Rainer Maria Rilke

1875-1926

translated by Stephen Mitchell 

MY NOVEMBER GUEST

My Sorrow, when she's here with me,

Thinks these dark days of autumn rain

Are beautiful as days can be;

She loves the bare, the withered tree;

She walked the sodden pasture lane.

Her pleasure will not let me stay.

She talks and I am fain to list:

She's glad the birds are gone away,

She's glad her simple worsted gray

Is silver now with clinging mist.

The desolate, deserted trees,

The faded earth, the heavy sky,

The beauties she so truly sees,

She thinks I have no eye for these,

And vexes me for reason why.

Not yesterday I learned to know

The love of bare November days

Before the coming of the snow,

But it were vain to tell her so,

And they are better for her praise.

Robert Frost

1874-1963

AYE, BUT TO DIE AND GO WE KNOW NOT WHERE

Aye, but to die, and go we know not where;

To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;

This sensible, warm motion to become

A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit

To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside

In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice;

To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,

And blown with restless violence round about

The pendant world; or to be worse than worst

Of those that lawless and incertain thoughts

Imagine howling: 'tis too horrible!

The weariest and most loathed worldly life

That age, ache, penury and imprisonment

Can lay on nature is a paradise

To what we fear of death.

Shakespeare 

From Measure for Measure, 

Act 3, Scene 1

APPLE BLOSSOM

Apple Blossom 

The first blossom was the best blossom 

For the child who never had seen an orchard; 

For the youth whom whiskey had led astray 

The morning after was the first day. 

The first apple was the best apple 

For Adam before he heard the sentence; 

When the flaming sword endorsed the Fall 

The trees were his to plant for all. 

The first ocean was the best ocean 

For the child from streets of doubt and litter; 

For the youth for whom the skies unfurled 

His first love was his first world. 

But the first verdict seemed the worst verdict 

When Adam and Eve were expelled from Eden, 

Yet when the bitter gates clanged to 

The sky beyond was just as blue. 

For the next ocean is the first ocean 

And the last ocean is the first ocean 

And, however often the sun may rise, 

A new thing dawns upon our eyes. 

For the last blossom is the first blossom 

And the first blossom is the last blossom 

And when from Eden we take our way 

The morning after is the first day.

Louis MacNeice

1907-1963

AS MUCH AS YOU CAN

Cocktail Party by Mike Jones

Even if you can't shape your life the way you want,

at least try as much as you can

not to degrade it

by too much contact with the world,

by too much activity and talk.

Do not degrade it by dragging it along,

taking it around and exposing it so often

to the daily silliness

of social relations and parties,

until it comes to seem a boring hanger-on.

C.P. Cavafy

1863-1933

translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard

THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS

When despair grows in me

and I wake in he middle of the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting for their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry

Aug 5th 1934 -