“Mezzo Cammin" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Mezzo Cammin

Half my life is gone, and I have let
    The years slip from me and have not fulfilled
    The aspiration of my youth, to build
   Some tower of song with lofty parapet.
Not indolence, nor pleasure, nor the fret
   Of restless passions that would not be stilled,
   But sorrow, and a care that almost killed,
   Kept me from what I may accomplish yet;
Though, half-way up the hill, I see the Past
   Lying beneath me with its sounds and sights,--
   A city in the twilight dim and vast,
With smoking roofs, soft bells, and gleaming lights,--
   And hear above me on the autumnal blast
   The cataract of Death far thundering from the heights.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

About "Mezzo Cammin"
The title of Longfellow's poem refers to the first lines of one of the most famous poems in literature, Dante Alighieri's Inferno, from his Divine Comedy.

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
che la diritta via era smarrita.

Longfellow himself provided one of the best English-language translations of Dante's masterpiece. He rendered the first lines:

Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

“Failing and Flying" by Jack Gilbert

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.

“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.

“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.

“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.

“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.