Briefly, to explain this, I had just finished a 6 page paper on Wordsworth's "Prelude" and then found out that I had to read the Dejection Ode by Coleridge for the same class, which did not amuse me. So, instead, I wrote my own dejection verses.
What wishful thinking had I in that hour
When challenge met with deep intuit power,
That last o'ercome was last of all.
Great virtue pulled, uplifted from my cower
Until I was upheld, but now the sour
Aftertwinge of duties left did call.
At two, now three, the lines of raw poetic woe (1)
Obscured from time to time night's daydream show;
Good writer true but man of wrong.
Dear Coleridge chanted, overcome with slow
And dark enshrouded thoughts best left alone
For despairing ones amongst the throng.
Itching eyes and sagging brow;
Sleep take me, if thou will, right now!
1. Coleridge's, not my own
Monday, October 8, 2007
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
An Unfinished History
AN UNFINISHED HISTORY
and A Rebuke of Former Musings
Light gathers on the crust of dawn,
Releasing drip by drop
A trickled arc of palest sun,
That vests our heaven’s top.
The dawn of peace may take an age,
But comes with waxing pace,
For in the blackest, cruelest page,
The man of yore found grace.
Ah, and here I sense an urge,
A primal, whelming call,
To draw these lines that I might purge,
The fog from verse for all:
To counter songs of bleakest sight
That from these fingers flew,
I write assured that human plight
Will stain the hands of few.
For champions of mental man
Will cleanse – are cleansing now –
Through open hearts and gentle hands:
Acts in reach of every brow.
Join that partial throng of beast
Who walk (in partial line)
Towards partial light above the East.
and A Rebuke of Former Musings
Light gathers on the crust of dawn,
Releasing drip by drop
A trickled arc of palest sun,
That vests our heaven’s top.
The dawn of peace may take an age,
But comes with waxing pace,
For in the blackest, cruelest page,
The man of yore found grace.
Ah, and here I sense an urge,
A primal, whelming call,
To draw these lines that I might purge,
The fog from verse for all:
To counter songs of bleakest sight
That from these fingers flew,
I write assured that human plight
Will stain the hands of few.
For champions of mental man
Will cleanse – are cleansing now –
Through open hearts and gentle hands:
Acts in reach of every brow.
Join that partial throng of beast
Who walk (in partial line)
Towards partial light above the East.
Monday, October 1, 2007
Oaken Arms (10/1/07)
Mist hangs loosely around the limbs
Of the ancient oak. An owl inquires, with
Sinister calm, as to my identity
But pauses not for an answer,
Storming away on silent limbs,
Swirling the hovering fog.
A reverent heart will suffice,
Win entrance to the core of Nature.
This great tower, this totem, of life
Whispers in the ears of all who listen;
Who seek with honesty to balance
The human with the real,
The fleeting with the immortal,
The ignorant with the omniscient.
For where can humanity learn its place
But from the lips of its elders.
Heed the voice, gentle as it is,
In the Wind, mind the warning
In the Sun's destructive, life-giving rays,
Commune with the Day,
Rest by Night's side.
Learn to love the Earth,
Not for its gifts to Men,
But for the wisdom, the order,
The grace and balance, that
Humanity corrupts.
Transcend, for once, the greed
That grips the reigns of man
And buries the spur, charging
Ahead with a lack of intent
But irreparable harm.
Love.
Of the ancient oak. An owl inquires, with
Sinister calm, as to my identity
But pauses not for an answer,
Storming away on silent limbs,
Swirling the hovering fog.
A reverent heart will suffice,
Win entrance to the core of Nature.
This great tower, this totem, of life
Whispers in the ears of all who listen;
Who seek with honesty to balance
The human with the real,
The fleeting with the immortal,
The ignorant with the omniscient.
For where can humanity learn its place
But from the lips of its elders.
Heed the voice, gentle as it is,
In the Wind, mind the warning
In the Sun's destructive, life-giving rays,
Commune with the Day,
Rest by Night's side.
Learn to love the Earth,
Not for its gifts to Men,
But for the wisdom, the order,
The grace and balance, that
Humanity corrupts.
Transcend, for once, the greed
That grips the reigns of man
And buries the spur, charging
Ahead with a lack of intent
But irreparable harm.
Love.
A Far Too Brief Caution in the Battle for the Mind
Can you imagine the weight of such time?
The crushing inertia of thousands of years?
Like Atlas's burden, the words and the rhymes
Of numberless forebears will not disappear.
The stone has been deeply and boldly engraved,
Far harder to change than the stroke of a pen,
For centuries' poets did not write enslaved
By paper; their pad was the fabric of men!
And now, in an age with a dwindling mind
That scatters by hours of flickering lights,
A Bic-pen swirls patterns so true to their kind,
But empty of hearers, they silently fight.
For battle this is, for a much greater cause
Than that championed chiefly by medial fears.
Their world is without, thus they only find loss
In external misfortune and hope in their peers.
I tell you the struggle cannot be en masse!
Each soul must establish dominion within,
And then can the Kingdom of wisdom surpass
And be built here, with peace flowing forth from all men!
The crushing inertia of thousands of years?
Like Atlas's burden, the words and the rhymes
Of numberless forebears will not disappear.
The stone has been deeply and boldly engraved,
Far harder to change than the stroke of a pen,
For centuries' poets did not write enslaved
By paper; their pad was the fabric of men!
And now, in an age with a dwindling mind
That scatters by hours of flickering lights,
A Bic-pen swirls patterns so true to their kind,
But empty of hearers, they silently fight.
For battle this is, for a much greater cause
Than that championed chiefly by medial fears.
Their world is without, thus they only find loss
In external misfortune and hope in their peers.
I tell you the struggle cannot be en masse!
Each soul must establish dominion within,
And then can the Kingdom of wisdom surpass
And be built here, with peace flowing forth from all men!
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
A Warm Welcome
Like Abraham stands fate with thee,
Atop a mount with unheard plea,
No beast to give, resistance down,
Abandoned but with sober crown.
"How easy now," forked tongue inquires,
"To live with cain 'til breath expires?"
Red plastic bounds each week to next,
Its hemlock dew the mind perplexed.
Great oil of speech, grave action's soap,
With basic grip it coats the slope.
An acid will, the taught core's bane,
Is equal cause of heady pain.
For matters grey dissolve, erased,
And brightest minds take mundane's place.
A lonely aisle presents itself
To one sealed jar upon the shelf.
While shards of neighbors grace floor tiles,
Spoiled, ferment, traitors defiled.
But at the head the trail is mine;
I've room to yield to one devine.
Good luck, warm welcome to the right,
And keep my love within your sight.
Atop a mount with unheard plea,
No beast to give, resistance down,
Abandoned but with sober crown.
"How easy now," forked tongue inquires,
"To live with cain 'til breath expires?"
Red plastic bounds each week to next,
Its hemlock dew the mind perplexed.
Great oil of speech, grave action's soap,
With basic grip it coats the slope.
An acid will, the taught core's bane,
Is equal cause of heady pain.
For matters grey dissolve, erased,
And brightest minds take mundane's place.
A lonely aisle presents itself
To one sealed jar upon the shelf.
While shards of neighbors grace floor tiles,
Spoiled, ferment, traitors defiled.
But at the head the trail is mine;
I've room to yield to one devine.
Good luck, warm welcome to the right,
And keep my love within your sight.
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