Poems Flashcards
What is an elegy ?
Subject matter of change and loss, complains about love. Lament for the death if a person and a consolation.
What is a pastoral elegy ?
Poet mourns and is a shepherd. Accusing nature of being negligent. Having a consolation.
What is pastoral Genre?
About the life of a shepherd and its simplicity, living a rural life. Country living and idealized countryside.
What is pastoral mode?
Broader, nature , simplicity, nostalgia stylistic choice.
What is Ekphasis?
Poem about a work of art.
What is a Carpe diem?
Encourage readers to seize the day, live fully in the present moment, live life now. Theme nature.
What is a epithalamion ?
Poem written to celebrate weddings - wishes them happiness.
My galley, chargèd with forgetfulness,
Thorough sharp seas in winter nights doth pass
‘Tween rock and rock; and eke mine en’my, alas,
That is my lord, steereth with cruelness;
And every owre a thought in readiness,
As though that death were light in such a case.
An endless wind doth tear the sail apace
Of forced sighs and trusty fearfulness
My galley , Charged with forgetfulness, Wyatt
A rain of tears, a cloud of dark disdain,
Hath done the weared cords great hinderance;
Wreathèd with error and eke with ignorance.
The stars be hid that led me to this pain;
Drownèd is Reason that should me comfort,
And I remain despairing of the port.
My galley, charged with forgetness, wyatt
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee
Shakespeare sonnet 18
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee
Shakespeare sonnet 18
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“T wo vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
T ell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sand stretched far away.
Ozymandias, Shelley
met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“T wo vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
T ell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
Ozymandias, Shelly
I, being born a woman and distressed
By all the needs and notions of my kind,
Am urged by your propinquity to find
Your person fair, and feel a certain zest
To bear your body’
s weight upon my breast:
So subtly is the fume of life designed,
To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,
And leave me once again undone, possessed.
Think not for this, however, the poor treason
Of my stout blood against my staggering brain,
I shall remember you with love, or season
My scorn with pity,—let me make it plain:
I find this frenzy insufficient reason
For conversation when we meet again.
I, being born a woman and distressed, Millay
So subtly is the fume of life designed,
To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,
And leave me once again undone, possessed.
Think not for this, however, the poor treason
Of my stout blood against my staggering brain,
I shall remember you with love, or season
My scorn with pity,—let me make it plain:
I find this frenzy insufficient reason
For conversation when we meet again.
I, being born a woman and distressed, Millay
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.
O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth.
Ode to a nightingale, Keats.
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:
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
Ode to a Nightingale, Keats
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.
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.
Ode to a nightingale, keats
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.
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;
Ode to a nightingale. Keats
The same that oft-times hath
Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll 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?
Ode to a nightingale, keats
Little tapers leaning lighted diagonally
Stuck in coffin tables of the Café du Néant
Leaning to the breath of baited bodies
Like young poplars fringing the Loire
Eyes that are full of love
And eyes that are full of kohl
Projecting light across the fulsome ambiente
T railing the rest of the animal behind them
Telling of tales without words
Café du Néant, Mina Loy
The young lovers hermetically buttoned up in black
To black cravat
To the blue powder edge dusting the yellow throat
What color could have been your bodies
When last you put them away
Nostalgic youth
Holding your mistress’s pricked finger
In the indifferent flame of the taper
Synthetic symbol of LIFE
In this factitious chamber of DEATH
The woman
As usual
Is smiling as bravely
As it is given to her to be brave
Cafe du neant, loy
While the brandy cherries
In winking glasses
Are decomposing
Harmoniously
With the flesh of spectators
And at a given spot
There is one
Who
Having the concentric lighting focussed precisely upon her
Prophetically blossoms in perfect putrefaction.
Cafe du neant, loy
Genial poets, pink-faced earnest wits—
you have given the world some choice morsels,
gobbets of language presented as one presents T-bone steak and Cherries Jubilee.
Goodbye, goodbye,
I don’t care
if I never taste your fine food again, neutral fellows, seers of every side.
Tolerance, what crimes are committed in your name.
And you, good women, bakers of nicest bread, blood donors. Your crumbs choke me, I would not want
a drop of your blood in me, it is pumped by weak hearts, perfect pulses that never falter: irresponsive
Goodbye to tolerance, Levertov
It is my brothers, my sisters, whose blood spurts out and stops forever
because you choose to believe it is not your business.
Goodbye, goodbye, your poems
shut their little mouths, your loaves grow moldy, a gulf has split the ground between us,
and you won’t wave, you’re looking another way.
We shan’t meet again— unless you leap it, leaving behind you the cherished
Goodbye to tolerance, Levertov
Goodbye, goodbye,
your poems
shut their little mouths,
your loaves grow moldy,
a gulf has split
the ground between us,
and you won’t wave, you’re looking
another way.
We shan’t meet again—
unless you leap it, leaving
behind you the cherished
worms of your dispassion,
your pallid ironies,
your jovial, murderous,
wry-humored balanced judgment,
leap over, un-
balanced? … then
how our fanatic tears
would flow and mingle
for joy …
Goodbye to tolerance, Levertov
Come to me in the silence of the night;
Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright As sunlight on a stream;
Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.
Oh dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet, Whose wakening should have been in Paradise, Where souls brimfull of love abide and meet;
Where thirsting longing eyes
Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, lets out no more.
Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live My very life again tho cold in death:
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:
Speak low, lean low,
As long ago, my love, how long ago.
Echo Rossetie
Where thirsting longing eyes
Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, lets out no more.
Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live My very life again tho cold in death:
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:
Speak low, lean low,
As long ago, my love, how long ago.
Echo. Rossetie
I heard a Fly buzz - when I died - The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air -
Between the Heaves of Storm -
The Eyes around - had wrung them dry - And Breaths were gathering firm
For that last Onset - when the King Be witnessed - in the Room -
I willed my Keepsakes - Signed away
What portion of me be
Assignable - and then it was There interposed a Fly -
I herd a fly buzz when i died, Dickenson
I willed my Keepsakes - Signed away
What portion of me be
Assignable - and then it was There interposed a Fly -
With Blue - uncertain - stumbling Buzz -
Between the light - and me - And then the Windows failed - and then
I could not see to see -
I herd a fly buzz when i died, dickenson
This, then, is the gift the world has given me
(you have given me)
softly the snow
cupped in hollows
lying on the surface of the pond
matching my long white candles
which stand at the window
which will burn at dusk while the snow
fills up our valley
this hollow
no friend will wander down
no one arriving brown from Mexico
from the sunfields of California, bearing pot
they are scattered now, dead or silent
or blasted to madness
by the howling brightness of our once common vision
and this gift of yours—
white silence filling the contours of my life
First snow, di prima
Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
Ode on a grecian urn, keats
Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d, For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d, A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.
Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead st thou that heifer lowing at the skies, And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea shore, Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
Ode on a grecian urn. Keats
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea shore, Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.
O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
Ode on a grecian urn, keats
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
Sonnet 130, Shakespeare
In a solitude of the sea
Deep from human vanity,
And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.
II
Steel chambers, late the pyres
Of her salamandrine fires,
Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.
III
Over the mirrors meant
To glass the opulent
The sea-worm crawls — grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.
IV
Jewels in joy designed
To ravish the sensuous mind
Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black
Convergence of the twain, Hardy
And your quaint honour turn to dust, And into ashes all my lust;
The grave’s a fine and private place, But none, I think, do there embrace.
Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew, And while thy willing soul transpires At every pore with instant fires, Now let us sport us while we may, And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapped power.
Let us roll all our strength and all Our sweetness up into one ball, And tear our pleasures with rough strife Through the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun Stand still, yet we will make him run.
To his coy mistress,Marvell
Vaster than empires and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast, But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part, And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state, Nor would I love at lower rate.
But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found;
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try That long-preserved virginity,
To his coy mistress, marvell
Had we but world enough and time, This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way To walk, and pass our long love’s day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide Of Humber would complain. I would Love you ten years before the flood, And you should, if you please, refuse Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
To his coy mistress, marvell
Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,
I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude, And with forc’d fingers rude
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.
Bitter constraint and sad occasion dear
Compels me to disturb your season due;
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime, Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer.
Who would not sing for Lycidas? he knew Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme.
He must not float upon his wat ry bier Unwept, and welter to the parching wind, Without the meed of some melodious tear.
Begin then, Sisters of the sacred well
That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring;
Begin, and somewhat loudly sweep the string.
Hence with denial vain and coy excuse!
Lycidas, milton
Rough Satyrs danc’d, and Fauns with clov’n heel, From the glad sound would not be absent long;
And old Damatas lov’d to hear our song.
But O the heavy change now thou art gone,
Now thou art gone, and never must return!
Thee, Shepherd, thee the woods and desert caves, With wild thyme and the gadding vine o’ergrown, And all their echoes mourn.
The willows and the hazel copses green
Shall now no more be seen
Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays.
As killing as the canker to the rose, Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze, Or frost to flowers that their gay wardrobe wear
When first the white thorn blows:
Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherd’s ear.
Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep
Lycidas, milton
Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep
Clos’d o’er the head of your lov’d Lycidas?
For neither were ye playing on the steep
Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie,
Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high, Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream.
Ay me! I fondly dream
Had ye bin there’ —for what could that have done?
What could the Muse herself that Orpheus bore, The Muse herself, for her enchanting son,
Whom universal nature did lament,
When by the rout that made the hideous roar His gory visage down the stream was sent, Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore?
Lycidas, milton
Alas! what boots it with incessant care To tend the homely, slighted shepherd’s trade, And strictly meditate the thankless Muse?
Were it not better done, as others use, To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, Or with the tangles of Neara’s hair?
Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise (That last infirmity of noble mind)
To scorn delights and live laborious days;
But the fair guerdon when we hope to find, And think to burst out into sudden blaze,
Comes the blind Fury with th’abhorred shears, And slits the thin-spun life. “But not the praise,” Phoebus replied, and touch’d my trembling ears;
“Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,
Nor in the glistering foil
Set off to th’world, nor in broad rumour lies, But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes And perfect witness of all-judging Jove;
As he pronounces lastly on each deed,
Lycidas, milton
O fountain Arethuse, and thou honour’d flood, Smooth-sliding Mincius, crown’d with vocal reeds,
That strain I heard was of a higher mood.
But now my oat proceeds,
And listens to the Herald of the Sea, That came in Neptune’s plea.
He ask’d the waves, and ask’d the felon winds,
“What hard mishap hath doom’d this gentle swain?”
And question’d every gust of rugged wings That blows trom off each beaked promontory.
They knew not of his story;
And sage Hippotades their answer brings, That not a blast was from his dungeon stray’d;
The air was calm, and on the level brine
Lycidas, milton
It was that fatal and perfidious bark, Built in th’ eclipse, and rigg’d with curses dark,
That sunk so low that sacred head of thine.
Next Camus, reverend sire, went footing slow,
His mantle hairy, and his bonnet sedge, Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge Like to that sanguine flower inscrib’d with woe.
“Ah! who hath reft,” quoth he, “my dearest pledge?”
Last came, and last did go,
The Pilot of the Galilean lake;
Two massy keys he bore of metals twain (The golden opes, the iron shuts amain).
He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake:
“How well could I have spar’d for thee, young swain,
Enow of such as for their bellies’ sake
Creep and intrude, and climb into the fold?
Of other care they little reck’ning make
Than how to scramble at the shearers’ feast And shove away the worthy bidden guest.
Lycidas, milton
“How well could I have spar’d for thee, young swain,
Enow of such as for their bellies’ sake
Creep and intrude, and climb into the fold?
Of other care they little reck’ning make
Than how to scramble at the shearers’ feast And shove away the worthy bidden guest.
Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold A sheep-hook, or have learn’d aught else the least That to the faithful herdman’s art belongs!
What recks it them? What need they? They are sped;
And when they list their lean and flashy songs Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw, The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, But, swoll’n with wind and the rank mist they draw, Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread;
Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw
Lycidas, milton
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread;
Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw Daily devours apace, and nothing said, But that two-handed engine at the door Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more”
Return, Alpheus: the dread voice is past That shrunk thy streams; return, Sicilian Muse, And call the vales and bid them hither cast Their bells and flow’rets of a thousand hues.
Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use Of shades and wanton winds, and gushing brooks, On whose fresh lap the swart star sparely looks, Throw hither all your quaint enamel’d eyes, That on the green turf suck the honied showers And purple all the ground with vernal flowers.
Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies, The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine,
The white pink, and the pansy freak’d with jet, The glowing violet,
Lycidas, milton
The musk-rose, and the well attir’d woodbine, With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head, And every flower that sad embroidery wears;
Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed, And daffadillies fill their cups with tears,
To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid lies.
For so to interpose a little ease,
Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise.
Ay me! Whilst thee the shores and sounding seas Wash far away, where er thy bones are hurl’d;
Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides, Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide Visit’st the bottom of the monstrous world, Or whether thou, to our moist vows denied, Sleep’st by the fable of Bellerus old,
Lycidas, milton
Where the great vision of the guarded mount Looks toward Namancos and Bayona’s hold:
Look homeward Angel now, and melt with ruth;
And, O ye dolphins, waft the hapless youth.
Weep no more, woeful shepherds, weep no more,
For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead, Sunk though he be beneath the wat’:
ry floor;
So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed, And yet anon repairs his drooping head, And tricks his beams, and with new spangled ore Flames in the forehead of the morning sky:
So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high
Through the dear might of him that walk’d the waves;
Where, other groves and other streams along, With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves, And hears the unexpressive nuptial song, In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love.
There entertain him all the Saints above, In solemn troops, and sweet societies,
Lycidas, milton
In solemn troops, and sweet societies, That sing, and singing in their glory move, And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes.
Now, Lycidas, the shepherds weep no more:
Henceforth thou art the Genius of the shore, In thy large recompense, and shalt be good To all that wander in that perilous flood.
Thus sang the uncouth swain to th’oaks and rills,
While the still morn went out with sandals gray;
He touch’d the tender stops of various quills, With eager thought warbling his Doric lay;
And now the sun had stretch’d out all the hills, And now was dropp’d into the western bay;
At last he rose, and twitch’d his mantle blue:
To-morrow to fresh woods, and pastures new.
Lycidas, milton
Hark how the Mower Damon sung,
With love of Juliana stung!
While everything did seem to paint
The scene more fit for his complaint.
Like her fair eyes the day was fair,
But scorching like his am’
rous care.
Sharp like his scythe his sorrow was,
And withered like his hopes the grass.
‘Oh what unusual heats are here,
Which thus our sunburned meadows sear!
Damon the mower, Marvell
The grasshopper its pipe gives o’er;
And hamstringed frogs can dance no more.
But in the brook the green frog wades;
And grasshoppers seek out the shades.
Only the snake, that kept within,
Now glitters in its second skin.
‘This heat the sun could never raise,
Nor Dog Star so inflame the days.
It from an higher beauty grow’th,
Which burns the fields and mower both:
Which mads the dog, and makes the sun
Hotter than his own Phaëton.
Not July causeth these extremes,
Bur julianas scorching beams
Damon the mower, marvell
Tell me where I may pass the fires
Of the hot day, or hot desires.
T o what cool cave shall I descend,
Or to what gelid fountain bend?
Alas! I look for ease in vain,
When remedies themselves complain.
No moisture but my tears do rest,
Nor cold but in her icy breast.
‘How long wilt thou, fair shepherdess,
Esteem me, and my presents less?
T o thee the harmless snake I bring,
Disarmèd of its teeth and sting;
T o thee chameleons, changing hue,
And oak leaves tipped with honey dew.
Yet thou, ungrateful, hast not sought
Nor what they are, nor who them brought
Damon the mower, marvell
‘I am the Mower Damon, known
Through all the meadows I have mown.
On me the morn her dew distills
Before her darling daffodils.
And, if at noon my toil me heat, The sun himself licks off my sweat.
While, going home, the evening sweet In cowslip-water bathes my feet.
‘What, though the piping shepherd stock The plains with an unnumbered flock, This scythe of mine discovers wide More ground than all his sheep do hide.
With this the golden fleece I shear
Damon the mower, marvell
Of all these closes every year.
And though in wool more poor than they,
Yet am I richer far in hay.
‘Nor am I so deformed to sight, If in my scythe I looked right;
In which I see my picture done, As in a crescent moon the sun.
The deathless fairies take me oft
To lead them in their dances soft:
And, when I tune myself to sing, About me they contract their ring.
‘How happy might I still have mowed, Had not Love here his thistles sowed!
But now I all the day complain, Joining my labour to my pain;
And with my scythe cut down the grass, Yet still my grief is where it was:
But, when the iron blunter grows_
Damon the mower, Marvell
But now I all the day complain, Joining my labour to my pain;
And with my scythe cut down the grass, Yet still my grief is where it was:
But, when the iron blunter grows, Sighing, I whet my scythe and woes?
While thus he threw his elbow round,
Depopulating all the ground,
And, with his whistling scythe, does cut Each stroke between the earth and root, The edgèd steel by careless chance Did into his own ankle glance;
And there among the grass fell down, By his own scythe, the Mower mown.
‘Alas!’ said he, ‘these hurts are slight To those that die by love’s despite.
Damon the mower, Marvell
With shepherd’s-purse, and clown’s-all-heal, The blood I staunch, and wound I seal.
Only for him no cure is found, Whom Juliana’s eyes do wound.
‘Tis death alone that this must do:
For Death thou art a Mower too.’
Damon the mower, marvell
