Poetry ABCs

[MaryLupin]

Francois Villon - Ballade To Our Lady

For biographical data (such as it is) http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/1535

Dame du ciel, regents terrienne,
Emperiere des infemaux palus....

Lady of Heaven and earth, and therewithal
Crowned Empress of the nether clefts of Hell,—

I, thy poor Christian, on thy name do call,
Commending me to thee, with thee to dwell,
Albeit in nought I be commendable.

But all mine undeserving may not mar
Such mercies as thy sovereign mercies are;
Without the which (as true words testify)
No soul can reach thy Heaven so fair and far.
Even in this faith I choose to live and die.
Unto thy Son say thou that I am His,
And to me graceless make Him gracious.
Said Mary of Egypt lacked not of that bliss,
Nor yet the sorrowful clerk Theopbilus,
Whose bitter sins were set aside even thus
Though to the Fiend his bounden service was.
Oh help me, lest in vain for me should pass
(Sweet Virgin that shalt have no loss thereby!)
The blessed Host and sacring of the Mass
Even in this faith I choose to live and die.

A pitiful poor woman, shrunk and old,
I am, and nothing learn'd in letter-lore.
Within my parish-cloister I behold
A painted Heaven where harps and lutes adore,
And eke an Hell whose damned folk seethe full sore:
One bringeth fear, the other joy to me.
That joy, great Goddess, make thou mine to be,—
Thou of whom all must ask it even as I;
And that which faith desires, that let it see.
For in this faith I choose to live and die.

O excellent Virgin Princess! thou didst bear
King Jesus, the most excellent comforter,
Who even of this our weakness craved a share
And for our sake stooped to us from on high,
Offering to death His young life sweet and fair.
Such as He is, Our Lord, I Him declare,
And in this faith I choose to live and die.


Dante Gabriel Rossetti, trans.

[Thomas Hood]

Whose wreathed friezes intertwine
The viol, the violet, and the vine.

Poe, "The City in the Sea"

[DWill]

Can't do "V" better than that, Tom. Mine is Thomas Hardy's "The Voice," in which Hardy is said to be addressing his dead wife, Emma. The marriage had been strained for its last 20 years.

Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,
Saying that now you are not as you were
When you had changed from the one who was all to me,
But as at first, when our day was fair.

Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then,
Standing as when I drew near to the town
Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,
Even to the original air-blue gown!

Or is it only the breeze in its listlessness
Travelling across the wet mead to me here,
You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness,
Heard no more again far or near?

Thus I; faltering forward,
Leaves around me falling,
Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward,
And the woman calling.

[Saffron]

W

[Saffron]

William Carlos Williams

Here is one of my first favorite poems and the poem that really hooked me. Each time I read this poem my mouth waters and I can feel the coolness of plum flesh from the frig. What I remember reading about this poem is that Williams left it as a note on the refrigerator door for his wife. I also remember reading that Williams wrote poetry while driving his car. Watch out for poets in cars!

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

[poettess]

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
- William Wordsworth

[Saffron]

Oh, hell. I am trying not to over post, but there are just too many good Ws! I have to post this one, at least the first stanza.

The Waking
by Theodore Roethke

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

[MaryLupin]

The Pear Orchard by Joanne Weber

Mother, now that you’ve let me be deaf,
scraped your womb of its dank winter trees,
cleared the unkempt patches,
you’ve let me be a pure seed begun
in you, a room of buried longings.

Your passion sang long and hard for me,
this lushness beginning in the spring orchard.

My longings begin their fleshly protrusions,
my most wild need is heard
and is not yours, but mine

as the dreams of pears accompanies me
through your seasons until the burst

of my deaf body, a blossom
through your floor, my limbs, strong green vines
push through your windows, straining
with the flesh of my stray desire:

Let me be deaf, hold my ear to your breast,
let me see how the pear orchard grows.

[Saffron]

The Pear Orchard by Joanne Weber

This poem caught my attention because I did not know what to make of it. I had to look it up, for help and out of curiosity. Here is a link that I found useful.

Joanne Weber

[MaryLupin]

David Wagoner has a bunch of cool poems about Thoreau. Here is a site with some of his work. http://books.google.ca/books?id=ybr1ijA ... 5#PPA85,M1


Thoreau and the Stumps By David Wagoner

Farmers along the river found no profit
In stumps, those plow-breakers. They shoveled
The dirt from under them and chained them
To mules or oxen, strained and hacked
Till the last of the roots gave way, then hauled them
Off to the edge of the woods
By the riverbank like bony demons
To be left for dead. And there Thoreau would choose
One, would hitch his ropes, and drag it slowly
Downslope, having to joggle and lurch,
Push, unsnag it, and drag again
And struggle it into the stern of his rowboat
And get it seated with its ungainly legs
Stretched skyward and stiffened over the gunwales,
And row that hulking passenger toward home,
Where he would have to lumber it to his woodyard
And settle it beside more orderly firewood,
A misshapen presence, hardheaded
And stubborn. With wedge and maul, with ax
And bucksaw, he would split and chop at the base,
At the involuted, knotted, almost unbreakable
Mass of the heartroot and wrench loose,
A few at a time, crookshank, elbow, and twist,
And savor them in his fire, crosshatched,
At odds with each other, and likely to fidget
Apart as if not fit for any posture
But their own. They would snap
And shimmer into flame and then glare
And hiss, sputter and redden
Like iron at the mouth of the smith’s bellows
But instead of melting would gradually
Shrink into a near-whiteness that would hover
At the backs of his eyes, shut
Or open in the afterglow. He could remember,
He told himself, the shape of every root
As it took its place in his fire, the earth
Still clinging tight as if one fed the other
To the end while both turned luminous
To cast their light over his scrawled pages.