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"Fern Hill"
(Dylan
Thomas)
Now as I was young
and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting
house and happy as the grass was green,
The night
above the dingle starry,
Time let me
hail and climb
Golden in
the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among
wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a
time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with
daisies and barley
Down the
rivers of the windfall light.
And as I was green
and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy
yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun
that is young once only,
Time let me
play and be
Golden in
the mercy of his means,
And green and
golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn,
the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the
sabbath rang slowly
In the
pebbles of the holy streams.
All the sun long
it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the
house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And
playing, lovely and watery
And fire
green as grass.
And
nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep
the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long
I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing
into the dark.
And then to wake,
and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come
back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it
was Adam and maiden,
The
sky gathered again
And the sun
grew round that very day.
So it must
have been after the birth of the simple light
In the
first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the
whinnying green stable
On
to the fields of praise.
And honoured among
foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made
clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In
the sun born over and over
I ran my
heedless ways,
My wishes
raced through the house-high hay
And nothing
I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his
tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace.
Nothing I cared,
in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow
thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon
that is always rising,
Nor
that riding to sleep
I should
hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the
farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young
and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held
me green and dying
Though I
sang in my chains like the sea.
"Sunday Morning"
(Wallace
Stevens)
Complacencies of
the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges
in a sunny chair,
And the green
freedom of a cockatoo
Upon a rug mingle
to dissipate
The holy hush of
ancient sacrifice.
She dreams a
little, and she feels the dark
Encroachment of
that old catastrophe,
As a calm darkens
among water-lights.
The pungent
oranges and bright, green wings
Seem things in
some procession of the dead,
Winding across
wide water, without sound.
The day is like
wide water, without sound,
Stilled for the
passing of her dreaming feet
Over the seas, to
silent Palestine,
Dominion of the
blood and sepulchre.
2
Why should she
give her bounty to the dead?
What is divinity
if it can come
Only in silent
shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find
in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit
and bright, green wings, or else
In any balm or
beauty of the earth,
Things to be
cherished like the thought of heaven?
Divinity must live
within herself:
Passions of rain,
or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in
loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the
forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet
roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and
all pains, remembering
The bough of
summer and the winter branch.
These are the
measures destined for her soul.
3
Jove in the clouds
had his inhuman birth.
No mother suckled
him, no sweet land gave
Large-mannered
motions to his mythy mind.
He moved among us,
as a muttering king,
Magnificent, would
move among his hinds,
Until our blood,
commingling, virginal,
With heaven,
brought such requital to desire
The very hinds
discerned it, in a star.
Shall our blood
fail? Or shall it come to be
The blood of
paradise? And shall the earth
Seem all of
paradise that we shall know?
The sky will be
much friendlier then than now,
A part of labor
and a part of pain,
And next in glory
to enduring love,
Not this dividing
and indifferent blue.
4
She says, "I
am content when wakened birds,
Before they fly,
test the reality
Of misty fields,
by their sweet questionings;
But when the birds
are gone, and their warm fields
Return no more,
where, then, is paradise?"
There is not any
haunt of prophecy,
Nor any old
chimera of the grave,
Neither the golden
underground, nor isle
Melodious, where
spirits gat them home,
Nor visionary
south, nor cloudy palm
Remote on heaven's
hill, that has endured
As April's green
endures; or will endure
Like her
remembrance of awakened birds,
Or her desire for
June and evening, tipped
By the
consummation of the swallow's wings.
5
She says, "But
in contentment I still feel
The need of some
imperishable bliss."
Death is the
mother of beauty; hence from her,
Alone, shall come
fulfillment to our dreams
And our desires.
Although she strews the leaves
Of sure
obliteration on our paths,
The path sick
sorrow took, the many paths
Where triumph rang
its brassy phrase, or love
Whispered a little
out of tenderness,
She makes the
willow shiver in the sun
For maidens who
were wont to sit and gaze
Upon the grass,
relinquished to their feet.
She causes boys to
pile new plums and pears
On disregarded
plate. The maidens taste
And stray
impassioned in the littering leaves.
6
Is there no change
of death in paradise?
Does ripe fruit
never fall? Or do the boughs
Hang always heavy
in that perfect sky,
Unchanging, yet so
like our perishing earth,
With rivers like
our own that seek for seas
They never find,
the same receding shores
That never touch
with inarticulate pang?
Why set the pear
upon those river-banks
Or spice the
shores with odors of the plum?
Alas, that they
should wear our colors there,
The silken
weavings of our afternoons,
And pick the
strings of our insipid lutes!
Death is the
mother of beauty, mystical,
Within whose
burning bosom we devise
Our earthly
mothers waiting, sleeplessly.
7
Supple and
turbulent, a ring of men
Shall chant in
orgy on a summer morn
Their boisterous
devotion to the sun,
Not as a god, but
as a god might be,
Naked among them,
like a savage source.
Their chant shall
be a chant of paradise,
Our of their
blood, returning to the sky;
And in their chant
shall enter, voice by voice,
The windy lake
wherein their lord delights,
The trees, like
serafin, and echoing hills,
That choir among
themselves long afterward.
They shall know
well the heavenly fellowship
Of men that perish
and of summer morn.
And whence they
came and whither they shall go
The dew upon their
feet shall manifest.
8
She hears, upon
that water without sound,
A voice that
cries, "The tomb in Palestine
Is not the porch
of spirits lingering.
It is the grave of
Jesus, where he lay."
We live in an old
chaos of the sun,
Or old dependency
of day and night,
Or island
solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide
water, inescapable.
Deer walk upon our
mountains, and the quail
Whistle about us
their spontaneous cries;
Sweet berries
ripen in the wilderness;
And, in the
isolation of the sky,
At evening, casual
flocks of pigeons make
Ambiguous
undulations as they sink,
Downward to
darkness, on extended wings.
. . . . . . . . .
. . . .
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