Ode to a Nightingale

John Keats

1

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

  My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,

Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains

  One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:

'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,

  But being too happy in thine happiness,—

    That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,

      In some melodious plot

  Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,

  Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

2

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been

  Cool'd a long ago in the deep-delved earth,

Tasting of Flora and the country green,

  Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!

O for a beaker full of the warm South,

Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,

    With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,

      And purple-stained mouth;

That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,

And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

3

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget

  What thou among the leaves hast never known,

The weariness, the fever, and the fret

  Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;

Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,

  Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;

    Where but to think is to be full of sorrow

      And leaden-eyed despairs,

Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,

  Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

4

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,

  Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,

But on the viewless wings of Poesy,

  Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:

Already with thee! tender is the night,

  And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,

    Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays;

      But here there is no light,

Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown

      Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

      

5

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,

  Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,

But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet

  Wherewith the seasonable month endows

The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;

  White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;

    Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;

      And mid-May's eldest child,

The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,

The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

6

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time

  I have been half in love with easeful Death,

Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,

  To take into the air my quiet breath;

Now more than ever seems it rich to die,

  To cease upon the midnight with no pain,

    While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad

      In such an ecstasy!

Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—

  To thy high requiem become a sod.

7

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!

  No hungry generations tread thee down;

 The voice I hear this passing night was heard

  In ancient days by emperor and clown:

Perhaps the self-same song that found a path

  Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,

    She stood in tears amid the alien corn;

      The same that oft-times hath

  Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam

    Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

8

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell

  To tell me back from thee to my sole self!

Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well

  As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf.

Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades

  Past the near meadows, over the still stream,

    Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep

      In the next valley-glades:

  Was it a vision, or a waking dream?

    Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?

From: Letter to an Imaginary Friend, Part III
Thomas McGrath


6.

Green permission...
                                 Dusk of the brass whistle...
Gooseberry dark.
Green moonlight of the willow.
Ironwood, basswood and the horny elm.
June berry; box-elder; thick in the thorny brake
The black choke cherry, the high broken ash and the slick
White bark of poplar.
                                 I called the king of the woods,
The wind-sprung oak.
I called the queen of ivy,
Maharani to his rut-barked duchies;
Summoned the foxgrape, the lank woodbine,
And the small flowers: the wood violets, the cold
Spears of the iris, the spikes of the ghostflower—
It was before the alphabet of the trees
Or later.
Runeless I stood in the green rain
Of the leaves.
Waiting.
                                     Nothing.
                                     Echo of distant horns.
Then
Under the hush and whisper of the wood,
I heard the echoes of the little war.
A fox barked in the hills; and a red hawk boomed
Down on the darkening flats in a feathery splash of hunger.
Silence and waiting.
The rivery rustle
Of a hunting mink.
Upstream in the chuckling shallows
A beaver spanked the water where, in its time,
The dam would be where my brother, now in his diapers,
Would trap for the beaver's grandsons.
I could not
See in that green dark.
                                     I went downstream
Below the crossing where I'd swum the midnight river
On my way home from a move.
I put my clothes
Stinking with sweat and dusty (I thought:
How the dust had jumped from Cal's shirt!)
I put them on the broken stump.
I dived from the hummock where the cut-bank crumbled.
Under the river the silence was humming, singing:
Night-song.
In the arrest and glaucous light
Delicate, snake-like, the water-weed waved and retracted.
The water sang. The blood in my ears whistled.
I roared up out of the river into the last of the sunlight.
Then: I heard the green singing of the leaves;
The water-mystery,
The night-deep and teasing terror on the lone river
Sang in my bones,
And under its eves and seas I broke my weeping,
In that deeper grieving,
The long, halting— the halt and the long hurry—
Towards the heaving, harsh, the green blurring of the salt
                                                                                       mysterious sea.

Wind Secrets
Diane Wakoski


I like the wind
with its puffed cheeks and closed eyes.
Nice wind.
I like its gentle sounds
and fierce bites.
When I was little
I used to sit by the black, potbellied stove and stare
at a spot on the ceiling,
while the wind breathed and blew
outside.
"Nice wind,"
I murmured to myself.
I would ask mother when she kneeled to tie my shoes
what the wind said.

Mother knew.

And the wind whistled and roared outside
while the coals opened their eyes in anger
at me.
I would hear mother crying under the wind.
"Nice wind," I said.
But my heart leapt like a darting fish.
I remember the wind better than any sound.
It was the first thing I heard
with blazing ears,
a sound that didn't murmur and coo,
and the sounds wrapped round my head
and huffed open my eyes.
It was the first thing I heard
beside my father beating my mother.
The sounds slashed at my ears like scissors.
Nice wind.

The wind blows
while the glowing coals from the stove look at me
with angry eyes.
Nice wind.
Nice wind.
Oh, close your eyes.
There was nothing I could do.

The Phoenix and the Turtle
William Shakespeare


Let the bird of loudest lay
On the sole Arabian tree
Herald sad and trumpet be,
To whose sound chaste wings obey.

But thou shrieking harbinger,
Foul precurrer of the fiend,
Augur of the fever's end,
To this troop come thou not near.

From this session interdict
Every fowl of tyrant wing,
Save the eagle, feather'd king;
Keep the obsequy so strict.

Let the priest in surplice white,
That defunctive music can,
Be the death-divining swan,
Lest the requiem lach his right.

And thou treble-dated crow,
That thy sable gender mak'st
With the breath thou giv'st and tak'st,
'Mongst our mourners shalt thou go.

Here the anthem doth commence:
Love and constancy is dead;
Phoenix and the Turtle fled
In a mutual flame from hence.

So they lov'd, as love in twain
Had the essence but in one;
Two distincts, division none:
Number there in love was slain.

Hearts remote, yet no asunder;
Distance and no space was seen
'Twixt this Turtle and his queen:
But in them it were a wonder.

So between them love did shine
That the Turtle saw his right
Flaming in the Phoenix' sight:
Either was the other's mine.

Property was thus appalled
That the self was not the same;
Single nature's double name
Neither two nor one was called.

Reason, in itself confounded,
Saw division grow together,
To themselves yet either neither,
Simple were so well compounded;

That it cried, "How true a twain
Seemeth this concordant one!
Love has reason, reason none,
If what parts can so remain."

Whereupon it made this threne
To the Phoenix and the Dove,
Co-supremes and stars of love,
As chorus to their tragic scene:

       
               THRENOS

Beauty, truth, and rarity,
Grace in all simplicity,
Here enclos'd, in cinders lie.

Death is now the Phoenix' nest,
And the Turtle's loyal breast
To eternity doth rest,

Leaving no posterity:
'twas not their infirmity,
It was married chastity.

Truth may seem but cannot be;
Beauty brag but 'tis not she;
Truth and beauty buried be.

To this urn let those repair
That are either true of fair;
For those dead birds sigh a prayer.

Stone
Charles Simic

Go inside a stone

That would be my way.

Let somebody else become a dove

Or gnash with a tiger’s tooth.

I am happy to be a stone.

From the outside the stone is a riddle:

No one knows how to answer it.

Yet within, it must be cool and quiet

Even though a cow steps on it full weight,

Even though a child throws it in a river;

The stone sinks, slow, unperturbed

To the river bottom

Where the fishes come to knock on it

And listen.

I have seen sparks fly out

When two stones are rubbed,

So perhaps it is not dark inside at all;

Perhaps there is a moon shining

From somewhere, as though behind a hill—

Just enough light to make out

The strange writings, the star charts

On the inner walls.

Flight
B. H. Fairchild


In the early stages of epilepsy there
occurs a characteristic dream...One is 
somehow lifted free of one's own body;
looking back one sees oneself and feels a
sudden, maddening fear; another presence is
entering one's own person, and there is no
avenue of return.
—George Steiner


Outside my window the wasps
are making their slow circle,
dizzy flights of forage and return,
hovering among azaleas
that bob in a sluggish breeze
this humid, sun-torn morning.

Yesterday my wife held me here
as I thrashed and moaned, her hand
in my foaming mouth, and my son
saw what he was warned he might.

Last night dreams stormed my brain
in thick swirls of shame and fear.
Behind a white garage a locked shed
full of wide-eyed dolls burned,
yellow smoke boiling up in huge clumps
as I watched, feet nailed to the ground.
In dining cars white table cloths
unfolded wings and flew like gulls.
An old German in a green Homburg
sang lieder, Mein Herz is müde.
In a garden in Pasadena my father
posed in Navy whites while overhead
silver dirigibles moved like great whales.
And in the narrowing tunnel
of the dream's end I flew down
onto the iron red road
of my grandfather's farm.
There was a white rail fence.
In the green meadow beyond,
a small boy walked toward me. 
His smile was the moon's rim.  
Across his egg-shell eyes
ran scenes from my future life,
and he embraced me like a son
or father or my lost brother.