Failing and Flying
(Jack Gilbert)
Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It's the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.
“Western Wind" (Anonymous)
Western wind, when wilt thou blow,
The small rain down can rain
Christ, if my love were in my arms
And I in my bed again!
in Old English spelling:
Westron wynde, when wyll thow blow
the smalle rayne downe can rayne?
Cryst yf my love were in my armys,
And I yn my bed agayne!
About "Western Wind"
A Tudor manuscript from the court of Henry VIII provides the earliest known version of "Western Wind". The lyric was used as the basis (cantus firmus) of Masses by English composers John Taverner, Christopher Tye and John Sheppard. The tune first appears with words in a partbook of around 1530, which contains mainly keyboard music. Historians believe that the lyrics are a few hundred years older ('Middle English') and the words are a fragment of medieval poetry.
The small rain down can rain
Christ, if my love were in my arms
And I in my bed again!
in Old English spelling:
Westron wynde, when wyll thow blow
the smalle rayne downe can rayne?
Cryst yf my love were in my armys,
And I yn my bed agayne!
About "Western Wind"
A Tudor manuscript from the court of Henry VIII provides the earliest known version of "Western Wind". The lyric was used as the basis (cantus firmus) of Masses by English composers John Taverner, Christopher Tye and John Sheppard. The tune first appears with words in a partbook of around 1530, which contains mainly keyboard music. Historians believe that the lyrics are a few hundred years older ('Middle English') and the words are a fragment of medieval poetry.
“Never give all the heart" by W. B. Yeats
Never give all the heart
(W. B. Yeats)
Never give all the heart, for love
Will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women if it seem
Certain, and they never dream
That it fades out from kiss to kiss;
For everything that's lovely is
But a brief, dreamy, kind delight.
O never give the heart outright,
For they, for all smooth lips can say,
Have given their hearts up to the play.
And who could play it well enough
If deaf and dumb and blind with love?
He that made this knows all the cost,
For he gave all his heart and lost.
(W. B. Yeats)
Never give all the heart, for love
Will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women if it seem
Certain, and they never dream
That it fades out from kiss to kiss;
For everything that's lovely is
But a brief, dreamy, kind delight.
O never give the heart outright,
For they, for all smooth lips can say,
Have given their hearts up to the play.
And who could play it well enough
If deaf and dumb and blind with love?
He that made this knows all the cost,
For he gave all his heart and lost.
“A Walk" by Rainer Maria Rilke
Already my eyes touch the sunlit hill.
far ahead of the road I have just begun.
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
we see its light, even from a distance-
and it changes us, even if we do not reach it,
into something else, which, hardly sensing it, we already are;
a gesture seems to wave us on, answering our own wave...
but what we feel is the wind in our faces.
far ahead of the road I have just begun.
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
we see its light, even from a distance-
and it changes us, even if we do not reach it,
into something else, which, hardly sensing it, we already are;
a gesture seems to wave us on, answering our own wave...
but what we feel is the wind in our faces.
“The Gift" by Sara Teasdale
The Gift
(Sara Teasdale)
What can I give you, my lord, my lover,
You who have given the world to me,
Showed me the light and the joy that cover
The wild sweet earth and restless sea?
All that I have are gifts of your giving—
If I gave them again, you would find them old,
And your soul would weary of always living
Before the mirror my life would hold.
What shall I give you, my lord, my lover?
The gift that breaks the heart in me:
I bid you awake at dawn and discover
I have gone my way and left you free.
(Sara Teasdale)
What can I give you, my lord, my lover,
You who have given the world to me,
Showed me the light and the joy that cover
The wild sweet earth and restless sea?
All that I have are gifts of your giving—
If I gave them again, you would find them old,
And your soul would weary of always living
Before the mirror my life would hold.
What shall I give you, my lord, my lover?
The gift that breaks the heart in me:
I bid you awake at dawn and discover
I have gone my way and left you free.
“Come, come thou bleak December wind" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Come, come thou bleak December wind (fragment)
(Samuel Taylor Coleridge)
Come, come thou bleak December wind,
And blow the dry leaves from the tree!
Flash, like a Love-thought, thro' me, Death
And take a Life that wearies me.
“What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why" by Edna St. Vincent Millay
What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply;
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in the winter stands a lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet know its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone;
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.
About Edna St. Vincent Millay One of the finest poets of the twentieth century, and almost certainly the best writer of sonnets, Edna St. Vincent Millay won the Pulitzer Price for Poetry for her 1922 collection, The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver. In addition to the title poem (one of Millay's best regarded), this anthology featured Sonnet 42, "What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why," first published in 1920 in Vanity Fair. Using the most traditional of poetical forms, the sonnet, Millay crafts an evocative verse of longing and liberation.
Although many of her poems seem aggressively modern to us, Millay grew up in the age of great Victorian poets and writers. Her sentiments and verse were radical for their time, but she received praise from the lights of her day. The great novelist Thomas Hardy said that America had two great attractions: the skyscraper and the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay.
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply;
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in the winter stands a lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet know its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone;
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.
About Edna St. Vincent Millay One of the finest poets of the twentieth century, and almost certainly the best writer of sonnets, Edna St. Vincent Millay won the Pulitzer Price for Poetry for her 1922 collection, The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver. In addition to the title poem (one of Millay's best regarded), this anthology featured Sonnet 42, "What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why," first published in 1920 in Vanity Fair. Using the most traditional of poetical forms, the sonnet, Millay crafts an evocative verse of longing and liberation.
Although many of her poems seem aggressively modern to us, Millay grew up in the age of great Victorian poets and writers. Her sentiments and verse were radical for their time, but she received praise from the lights of her day. The great novelist Thomas Hardy said that America had two great attractions: the skyscraper and the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay.
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