

The Meeting Of The Dryads By Oliver Wendell Holmes
Written after a general pruning of the trees around Harvard College. A little poem, on a similar occasion, may be found in the works of Swift, from which, perhaps, the idea was borrowed; although I was as much surprised as amused to meet with it some time after writing the following lines. It was not many centuries since, When, gathered on the moonlit green, Beneath the Tree of Liberty, A ring of weeping sprites was seen. The freshman’s lamp had long been dim, The voice of busy day was mute, And tortured Melody had ceased Her sufferings on the evening flute. They met not as they once had met, To laugh o’er many a jocund tale But every pulse was beating low, And every cheek was cold and pale. There rose a fair but faded one, Who oft had cheered them with her song; She waved a mutilated arm, And silence held the listening throng. “Sweet friends,” the gentle nymph began, “From opening bud to withering leaf, One common lot has bound us all, In every change of joy and grief. “While all around has felt decay, We rose in ever-living prime, With broader shade and fresher green, Beneath the crumbling step of Time. “When often by our feet has past Some biped, Nature’s walking whim, Say, have we trimmed one awkward shape, Or lopped away one crooked limb? “Go on, fair Science; soon to thee Shall. Nature yield her idle boast; Her vulgar fingers formed a tree, But thou halt trained it to a post. “Go, paint the birch’s silver rind, And quilt the peach with softer down; Up with the willow’s trailing threads, Off with the sunflower’s radiant crown! “Go, plant the lily on the shore, And set the rose among the waves, And bid the tropic bud unbind Its silken zone in arctic caves; “Bring bellows for the panting winds, Hang up a lantern by the moon, And give the nightingale a fife, And lend the eagle a balloon! “I cannot smile, – the tide of scorn, That rolled through every bleeding vein, Comes kindling fiercer as it flows Back to its burning source again. “Again in every quivering leaf That moment’s agony I feel, When limbs, that spurned the northern blast, Shrunk from the sacrilegious steel. “A curse upon the wretch who dared To crop us with his felon saw! May every fruit his lip shall taste Lie like a bullet in his maw. “In every julep that he drinks, May gout, and bile, and headache be; And when he strives to calm his pain, May colic mingle with his tea. “May nightshade cluster round his path, And thistles shoot, and brambles cling; May blistering ivy scorch his veins, And dogwood burn, and nettles sting. “On him may never shadow fall, When fever racks his throbbing brow, And his last shilling buy a rope To hang him on my highest bough!” She spoke; – the morning’s herald beam Sprang from the bosom of the sea, And every mangled sprite returned In sadness to her wounded tree. |
Sonnet 97: How like a winter hath my absence been BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
How like a winter hath my absence been
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
What old December’s bareness everywhere!
And yet this time remov’d was summer’s time,
The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,
Bearing the wanton burthen of the prime,
Like widow’d wombs after their lords’ decease:
Yet this abundant issue seem’d to me
But hope of orphans and unfather’d fruit;
For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
And thou away, the very birds are mute;
Or if they sing, ’tis with so dull a cheer
That leaves look pale, dreading the winter’s near.
Longing By Sara Teasdale
I am not sorry for my soul
That it must go unsatisfied,
For it can live a thousand times,
Eternity is deep and wide.
I am not sorry for my soul,
But oh, my body that must go
Back to a little drift of dust
Without the joy it longed to know.
I Have Loved Hours At Sea By Sara Teasdale
I have loved hours at sea, gray cities,
The fragile secret of a flower,
Music, the making of a poem
That gave me heaven for an hour;
First stars above a snowy hill,
Voices of people kindly and wise,
And the great look of love, long hidden,
Found at last in meeting eyes.
I have loved much and been loved deeply,
Oh when my spirit’s fire burns low,
Leave me the darkness and the stillness,
I shall be tired and glad to go.
Winter Trees by William Carlos Williams
All the complicated details
of the attiring and
the disattiring are completed!
A liquid moon
moves gently among
the long branches.
Thus having prepared their buds
against a sure winter
the wise trees
stand sleeping in the cold.
A Winter Bluejay By Sara Teasdale
Crisply the bright snow whispered, Crunching beneath our feet; Behind us as we walked along the parkway, Our shadows danced, Fantastic shapes in vivid blue. Across the lake the skaters Flew to and fro, With sharp turns weaving A frail invisible net. In ecstacy the earth Drank the silver sunlight; In ecstacy the skaters Drank the wine of speed; In ecstacy we laughed Drinking the wine of love. Had not the music of our joy Sounded its highest note? But no, For suddenly, with lifted eyes you said, “Oh look!” There, on the black bough of a snow flecked maple, Fearless and gay as our love, A bluejay cocked his crest! Oh who can tell the range of joy Or set the bounds of beauty? |
White-Eyes by Mary Oliver
In winter
all the singing is in
the tops of the trees
where the wind-bird
with its white eyes
shoves and pushes
among the branches.
Like any of us
he wants to go to sleep,
but he’s restless—
he has an idea,
and slowly it unfolds
from under his beating wings
as long as he stays awake.
But his big, round music, after all,
is too breathy to last.
So, it’s over.
In the pine-crown
he makes his nest,
he’s done all he can.
I don’t know the name of this bird,
I only imagine his glittering beak
tucked in a white wing
while the clouds—
which he has summoned
from the north—
which he has taught
to be mild, and silent—
thicken, and begin to fall
into the world below
like stars, or the feathers
of some unimaginable bird
that loves us,
that is asleep now, and silent—
that has turned itself
into snow.
February Twilight By Sara Teasdale
I stood beside a hill
Smooth with new-laid snow,
A single star looked out
From the cold evening glow.
There was no other creature
That saw what I could see
I stood and watched the evening star
As long as it watched me.
Love-Free By Sara Teasdale
I am free of love as a bird flying south in the autumn,
Swift and intent, asking no joy from another,
Glad to forget all of the passion of April
Ere it was love-free.
I am free of love, and I listen to music lightly,
But if he returned, if he should look at me deeply,
I should awake, I should awake and remember
I am my lover’s.
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