"A Birthday"

My heart is happier than a wet, hard, shell--hum--and this made it to the top 400? I must be missing a lot.

319. "I taste a liquor never brewed," by Emily Dickinson

I taste a liquor never brewed,
From tankards scooped in pearl;
Not all the vats upon the Rhine
Yield such an alcohol!

Inebriate of air am I,
And debauchee of dew,
Reeling, through endless summer days,
From inns of molten blue.

When landlords turn the drunken bee
Out of the foxglove's door,
When butterflies renounce their drams,
I shall but drink the more!

Till seraphs swing their snowy hats,
And saints to windows run,
To see the little tippler
Leaning against the sun!

318. "Success is counted sweetest," by Emily Dickinson

Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.

Not one of all the purple host
Who took the flag to-day
Can tell the definition,
So clear, of victory!

As he, defeated, dying,
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Burst agonized and clear!

#319, Go Emily! What a great line, "Inebriate of air am I."

Saffron wrote:#319, Go Emily! What a great line, "Inebriate of air am I."

Indeed. I would say it should go down in the record books, but apparently it has.

I just feel like throwing in two bits of E.D. that I especially like.

There is a pain – so utter –
It swallows substance up –
Then covers the Abyss with Trance –
So Memory can step
Around – across – upon it –
As one within a Swoon –
Goes safely – where an open eye –
Would drop Him – Bone by Bone.
—from “599” by Emily Dickinson

I felt my life with both my hands
To see if it was there—
I held my spirit to the Glass,
To prove it possibler—
—from "#351" by Emily Dickinson

I like the idea, in "Success is counted sweetest," of the having or achieving inevitably not living up to the expectation. Only those who fall short can keep the intensity of anticipation. This is a little like the idea in Keats' "Grecian Urn," in which the lovers in chase will never be sated and therefore never taste the disappointment of all things finite. I wonder whether E. D. looked a her own life as a withholding of consummation, producing the intense inner life she certainly had.

317. "The Fairies," by William Allingham

UP the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren't go a-hunting
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,
And a white owl's feather!



Down along the rocky shore
Some make their home,
They live on crispy pancakes
Of yellow tide-foam;
Some in the reeds
Of the black mountain lake,
With frogs for their watch-dogs,
All night awake.

High on the hill-top
The old King sits;
He is now so old and gray
He's nigh lost his wits.
With a bridge of white mist
Columbkill he crosses,
On his stately journeys
From Slieveleague to Rosses;
Or going up with music
On cold starry nights,
To sup with the Queen
Of the gay Northern Lights.

They stole little Bridget
For seven years long;
When she came down again
Her friends were all gone.
They took her lightly back,
Between the night and morrow,
They thought that she was fast asleep,
But she was dead with sorrow.
They have kept her ever since
Deep within the lake,
On a bed of flag-leaves,
Watching till she wake.

By the craggy hill-side,
Through the mosses bare,
They have planted thorn-trees
For pleasure here and there.
Is any man so daring
As dig them up in spite,
He shall find their sharpest thorns
In his bed at night.

Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren't go a-hunting
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,
And a white owl's feather!

What a delight to read out loud (espeically - Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen) and I want to live on crispy pancakes.

Saffron wrote:What a delight to read out loud (espeically - Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen) and I want to live on crispy pancakes.

But not of yellow tide-foam, I assume!

Yeats' "The Stolen Child" is a kind of faery poem as well that I like.

WHERE dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats;
There we've hid our faery vats,
Full of berrys
And of reddest stolen cherries.

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim gray sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And anxious in its sleep.

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Away with us he's going,
The solemn-eyed:
He'll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal chest.

For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than he can understand.

(Hmmm...beware of internet poems. What Yeats' final line actually is, according to the print Collected Poems, is "From a world more full of weeping....")

DWill wrote:

Saffron wrote:What a delight to read out loud (espeically - Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen) and I want to live on crispy pancakes.

But not of yellow tide-foam, I assume!

Yeats' "The Stolen Child" is a kind of faery poem as well that I like.

No yellow tide-foam for me. Having grown up so close to the ocean, I've had my fill of that delicacy. Thanks for posting the poem. I really like the rythm of this poem. It is easy for me to imagine Yeats reciting this one.

Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren't go a-hunting
For fear of little men

I can only think of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and what the tinker says to Charlie while he's looking at the closed gates of the Wonka factory. I never knew where the quote came from, and now I do, and it made me happy. I love this forum.