W.B. Yeats
The Scholars
BALD heads forgetful of their sins,
Old, learned, respectable bald heads
Edit and annotate the lines
That young men, tossing on their beds,
Rhymed out in love's despair
To flatter beauty's ignorant ear.
They'll cough in the ink to the world's end;
Wear out the carpet with their shoes
Earning respect; have no strange friend;
If they have sinned nobody knows.
Lord, what would they say
Should their Catullus walk that way?
WHY should not old men be mad?
Some have known a likely lad
That had a sound fly-fisher's wrist
Turn to a drunken journalist;
A girl that knew all Dante once
Live to bear children to a dunce;
A Helen of social welfare dream,
Climb on a wagonette to scream.
Some think it a matter of course that chance
Should starve good men and bad advance,
That if their neighbours figured plain,
As though upon a lighted screen,
No single story would they find
Of an unbroken happy mind,
A finish worthy of the start.
Young men know nothing of this sort,
Observant old men know it well;
And when they know what old books tell
And that no better can be had,
Know why an old man should be mad.
How can I, that girl standing there,
The broken pillar of the wing jags from the clotted shoulder,
II
RONDEAU
People expect old men to die,
I, being born a woman and distressed
What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I took her to the river,
I roused her sleeping bosom
The dark unsilvered treetops
When we had passed the brambles
Not nard nor snail had ever The whole night saw me posting
Dirty with sand and kisses
To act in decent fashion
Why Should Not Old Men Be Mad?
My attention
fix
On Roman or on Russian
Or on Spanish politics?
Yet here's
a travelled man that knows
What he talks about,
And there's a
politician
That has read and thought,
And maybe what they say is
true
Of war and war's alarms,
But O that I were young again
And held her in my arms!
HURT HAWKS
Robinson Jeffers
The wing trails like a banner in defeat,
No more to use the sky forever but live with famine
And pain a few days: cat nor coyote
Will shorten the week of waiting for death, there is game
without talons.
He stands under the oak-bush and waits
The lame feet of salvation; at night he remembers freedom
And flies in a dream, the dawns ruin it.
He is strong and pain is worse to the strong, incapacity
is worse.
The curs of the day come and torment him
At distance, no one but death the redeemer will humble
that head,
The intrepid readiness, the terrible eyes.
The wild God of the world is sometimes merciful to those
That ask mercy, not often to the arrogant.
You do not know him, you communal people, or you have
forgotten him;
Intemperate and savage, the hawk remembers him;
Beautiful and wild, the hawks, and men that are dying,
remember him.
but the great redtail
Had nothing left but unable misery
From the bone too shattered for mending, the wing that
trailed under his talons when he moved.
We had fed him six weeks, I gave him freedom,
He wandered over the foreland hill and returned in the
evening, asking for death,
Not like a beggar, still eyed with the old
Implacable arrogance. I gave him the lead gift in the
twilight.
What fell was relaxed,
Owl-downy, soft feminine feathers; but what
Soared: the fierce rush: the night-herons by the flooded
river cried fear at its rising
Before it was quite unsheathed from reality.
Leigh Hunt
Jenny kissed me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in:
Say I'm weary, say I'm sad,
Say that health and wealth have missed me,
Say I'm growing old, but add,
Jenny kissed me.
Old Men
Ogden Nash
They do not really mourn old men.
Old men are different. People look
At them with eyes that wonder when...
People watch with unshocked eyes;
But the old men know when an old man dies.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Untitled
By all the needs and notions of my
kind,
Am urged by your propinquity to find
Your person fainr, 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 onvce 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 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 ald listen for
reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremmermbered lads
that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in the winter
stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet
knows 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.
Garcia-Lorca
The unfaithful married Woman
(translated by Rolfe Humphries)
believing her unwed;
the fact she had a husband
was something left unsaid.
St. Jame's night is timely--
She would not let me wait--
The lights are put out
early,
the fireflies light up late.
right earily in our
walk;
her heart unfolded for me
like hyacinths on the stalk.
Her
starchy skirts kept rustling
and crackled in my ears
like sheets of
silk cut crosswise
at once by twenty shears.
grew tall, as on we
strode;
dogs barked, a whole horizon,
far from the river
road.
and the thickets on
our round,
her colied hair made a pillow
in a hollow on the
ground:
As I undid my necktie,
her petticoats left their place;
I
shed my leather holster,
and she, four layers of lace.
texture of skin so
fine,
nor crystal in the moonlight
glimmered with purer
shine:
Her thighs slipped from beneath me
like little trout in
fright,
half chilly (but not frigid),
half full of shining
light.
Upon my lovely
mare;
mother-of-pearl the saddle,
no need for bridle and
spur;
and what her whispers told me
a man should not repeat
when
perfect understanding
has made the mind discreet.
I brought her from the
shore
as the iris poised green sabres
at the night wind once
more.
as loyal gypsy should,
I
gave her a sewing-basket,
satin and straw, and good;
and yet I would
not love her
in spite of what she said
when I took her to the
river,
for she was not unwed.
