Sonnet XVIII – Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? (by Shakespeare)

XVIII.

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 dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed.
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.



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Success is counted sweetest (by Emily Dickinson)

Emily Dickinson

Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne’er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.

Not one of all the purple Host
Who took the Flag today
Can tell the definition
So clear of Victory

As he defeated–dying–
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Burst agonized and clear!

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Sister Missing (by Ben Rader) – video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnk5j2r1IHk

Ben Rader of Willard, Ohio, shared this poem on 3 August 2008
at Joe Sundae’s in Sandusky – recorded by Jesus Crisis

The Ohio Poetry Association selected Ben Rader as Poet of the Month for January 2009:
http://www.archive.org/details/PoemsByBenRader-January2009OpaPoetOfTheMonth

Sonnet XVII – Who will believe my verse in time to come (by Shakespeare)

XVII.

Who will believe my verse in time to come,
If it were fill’d with your most high deserts?
Though yet heaven knows it is but as a tomb
Which hides your life, and shows not half your parts.
If I could write the beauty of your eyes,
And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
The age to come would say ‘This poet lies;
Such heavenly touches ne’er touched earthly faces.’
So should my papers, yellowed with their age,
Be scorned, like old men of less truth than tongue,
And your true rights be term’d a poet’s rage
And stretchèd metre of an antique song.
    But were some child of yours alive that time,
    You should live twice,—in it, and in my rhyme.

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Sonnet XVI – But wherefore do not you a mightier way (by Shakespeare)

XVI.

But wherefore do not you a mightier way
Make war upon this bloody tyrant, Time,
And fortify your self in your decay
With means more blessèd than my barren rhyme?
Now stand you on the top of happy hours,
And many maiden gardens, yet unset,
With virtuous wish would bear your living flowers,
Much liker than your painted counterfeit.
So should the lines of life that life repair,
Which this time’s pencil, or my pupil pen,
Neither in inward worth nor outward fair
Can make you live your self in eyes of men.
    To give away yourself keeps yourself still,
    And you must live, drawn by your own sweet skill.

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Renascence (by Edna St. Vincent Millay)

photo of the poet by Carl Van Vechten (1933)

Renascence
by Edna St. Vincent Millay
from Renascence (1917)

All I could see from where I stood

Was three long mountains and a wood;

I turned and looked another way,

And saw three islands in a bay.

So with my eyes I traced the line

Of the horizon, thin and fine,

Straight around till I was come

Back to where I’d started from;

And all I saw from where I stood

Was three long mountains and a wood.

Over these things I could not see:

These were the things that bounded me.

And I could touch them with my hand,

Almost, I thought, from where I stand.

And all at once things seemed so small

My breath came short, and scarce at all.

But, sure, the sky is big, I said:

Miles and miles above my head.

So here upon my back I’ll lie

And look my fill into the sky.

And so I looked, and after all,

The sky was not so very tall.

The sky, I said, must somewhere stop. . . 

And–sure enough!–I see the top!

The sky, I thought, is not so grand;

I ‘most could touch it with my hand!

And reaching up my hand to try,

I screamed, to feel it touch the sky.

I screamed, and–lo!–Infinity

Came down and settled over me;

Forced back my scream into my chest;

Bent back my arm upon my breast;

And, pressing of the Undefined

The definition on my mind,

Held up before my eyes a glass

Through which my shrinking sight did pass

Until it seemed I must behold

Immensity made manifold;

Whispered to me a word whose sound

Deafened the air for worlds around,

And brought unmuffled to my ears

The gossiping of friendly spheres,

The creaking of the tented sky,

The ticking of Eternity.

I saw and heard, and knew at last

The How and Why of all things, past,

And present, and forevermore.

The Universe, cleft to the core,

Lay open to my probing sense

That, sickening, I would fain pluck thence

But could not,–nay! But needs must suck

At the great wound, and could not pluck

My lips away till I had drawn

All venom out.–Ah, fearful pawn:

For my omniscience paid I toll

In infinite remorse of soul.

All sin was of my sinning, all

Atoning mine, and mine the gall

Of all regret. Mine was the weight

Of every brooded wrong, the hate

That stood behind each envious thrust,

Mine every greed, mine every lust.

And all the while for every grief,

Each suffering, I craved relief

With individual desire;

Craved all in vain! And felt fierce fire

About a thousand people crawl;

Perished with each,–then mourned for all!

A man was starving in Capri;

He moved his eyes and looked at me;

I felt his gaze, I heard his moan,

And knew his hunger as my own.

I saw at sea a great fog bank

Between two ships that struck and sank;

A thousand screams the heavens smote;

And every scream tore through my throat.

No hurt I did not feel, no death

That was not mine; mine each last breath

That, crying, met an answering cry

From the compassion that was I.

All suffering mine, and mine its rod;

Mine, pity like the pity of God.

Ah, awful weight! Infinity

Pressed down upon the finite Me!

My anguished spirit, like a bird,

Beating against my lips I heard;

Yet lay the weight so close about

There was no room for it without.

And so beneath the weight lay I

And suffered death, but could not die.

Long had I lain thus, craving death,

When quietly the earth beneath

Gave way, and inch by inch, so great

At last had grown the crushing weight,

Into the earth I sank till I

Full six feet under ground did lie,

And sank no more,–there is no weight

Can follow here, however great.

From off my breast I felt it roll,

And as it went my tortured soul

Burst forth and fled in such a gust

That all about me swirled the dust.

Deep in the earth I rested now.

Cool is its hand upon the brow

And soft its breast beneath the head

Of one who is so gladly dead.

And all at once, and over all

The pitying rain began to fall;

I lay and heard each pattering hoof

Upon my lowly, thatchèd roof,

And seemed to love the sound far more

Than ever I had done before.

For rain it hath a friendly sound

To one who’s six feet underground;

And scarce the friendly voice or face,

A grave is such a quiet place.

The rain, I said, is kind to come

And speak to me in my new home.

I would I were alive again

To kiss the fingers of the rain,

To drink into my eyes the shine

Of every slanting silver line,

To catch the freshened, fragrant breeze

From drenched and dripping apple-trees.

For soon the shower will be done,

And then the broad face of the sun

Will laugh above the rain-soaked earth

Until the world with answering mirth

Shakes joyously, and each round drop

Rolls, twinkling, from its grass-blade top.

How can I bear it buried here,

While overhead the sky grows clear

And blue again after the storm?

O, multi-coloured, multi-form,

Belovèd beauty over me,

That I shall never, never see

Again! Spring-silver, autumn-gold,

That I shall never more behold!–

Sleeping your myriad magics through,

Close-sepulchred away from you!

O God, I cried, give me new birth,

And put me back upon the earth!

Upset each cloud’s gigantic gourd

And let the heavy rain, down-poured

In one big torrent, set me free,

Washing my grave away from me!

I ceased; and through the breathless hush

That answered me, the far-off rush

Of herald wings came whispering

Like music down the vibrant string

Of my ascending prayer, and–crash!

Before the wild wind’s whistling lash

The startled storm-clouds reared on high

And plunged in terror down the sky!

And the big rain in one black wave

Fell from the sky and struck my grave.

I know not how such things can be;

I only know there came to me

A fragrance such as never clings

To aught save happy living things;

A sound as of some joyous elf

Singing sweet songs to please himself,

And, through and over everything,

A sense of glad awakening.

The grass, a-tiptoe at my ear,

Whispering to me I could hear;

I felt the rain’s cool finger-tips

Brushed tenderly across my lips,

Laid gently on my sealèd sight,

And all at once the heavy night

Fell from my eyes and I could see!–

A drenched and dripping apple-tree,

A last long line of silver rain,

A sky grown clear and blue again.

And as I looked a quickening gust

Of wind blew up to me and thrust

Into my face a miracle

Of orchard-breath, and with the smell,–

I know not how such things can be!–

I breathed my soul back into me.

Ah! Up then from the ground sprang I

And hailed the earth with such a cry

As is not heard save from a man

Who has been dead, and lives again.

About the trees my arms I wound;

Like one gone mad I hugged the ground;

I raised my quivering arms on high;

I laughed and laughed into the sky,

Till at my throat a strangling sob

Caught fiercely, and a great heart-throb

Sent instant tears into my eyes:

O God, I cried, no dark disguise

Can e’er hereafter hide from me

Thy radiant identity!

Thou canst not move across the grass

But my quick eyes will see Thee pass,

Nor speak, however silently,

But my hushed voice will answer Thee.

I know the path that tells Thy way

Through the cool eve of every day;

God, I can push the grass apart

And lay my finger on Thy heart!

The world stands out on either side

No wider than the heart is wide;

Above the world is stretched the sky,–

No higher than the soul is high.

The heart can push the sea and land

Farther away on either hand;

The soul can split the sky in two,

And let the face of God shine through.

But East and West will pinch the heart

That can not keep them pushed apart;

And he whose soul is flat–the sky

Will cave in on him by and by.


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Chicory and Daisies (by William Carlos Williams)

Chicory and Daisies
by William Carlos Williams
[from Al Que Quiere! (1917)]

    I

Lift your flowers
on bitter stems
chicory!
Lift them up
out of the scorched ground!
Bear no foliage
but give yourself
wholly to that!
Strain under them
you bitter stems
that no beast eats—
and scorn greyness!
Into the heat with them:
cool!
luxuriant! sky-blue!
The earth cracks and
is shriveled up;
the wind moans piteously;
the sky goes out
if you should fail.

    II

I saw a child with daisies
for weaving into the hair
tear the stems
with her teeth!


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Pencil Sharpener (by Roger Craik) – video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaFVT6S7Nf0


Pencil Sharpener © 2009 by Roger Craik, all rights reserved

Read by the author on 18 November 2008 during Lix and Kix 2
at the 806 Wine and Martini Bar in Cleveland, Ohio

Photography and editing by John “Jesus Crisis” Burroughs

* * * * *

Roger Craik is English by birth, was educated at the Universities of Reading and Southampton, and
came to the United States in 1991.  Roger taught in Bulgaria on a Fulbright Scholarship in 2007
 and currently serves as an Associate Professor of English at Kent State University, Ashtabula, in Ohio.

We recommend the following Roger Craik poetry collections:

Those Years (2007) [available from vanZeno Press]

Darkening Green (2004), Rhinoceros in Clumber Park (2003), I Simply Stared (2002)

Question (1) by Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes in 1925
Question [1]

When the old junk man Death
Comes to gather up our bodies
And toss them into the sack of oblivion,
I wonder if he will find
The corpse of a white multi-millionaire
Worth more pennies of eternity,
Than the black torso of
A Negro cotton-picker? 


[first published in the March 1922 issue of Crisis]

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To find more by Langston Hughes in the Crisis Chronicles Online Library, click here.

Even more is available in these volumes:

     

England (by Marianne Moore)

Marianne Moore in 1948  [photo by Carl Van Vechten]
England

With its baby rivers and little towns, each with its abbey or its cathedral,
    with voices–one voice perhaps, echoing through the transept–the
criterion of suitability and convenience; and Italy with its equal
    shores–contriving an epicureanism from which the grossness has been

extracted: and Greece with its goat and its gourds, the nest of modified illusions:
    and France, the “chrysalis of the nocturnal butterfly,” in
whose products, mystery of construction diverts one from what was originally one’s
    object–substance at the core: and the East with its snails, its emotional

shorthand and jade cockroaches, its rock crystal and its imperturbability,
    all of museum quality: and America where there
is the little old ramshackle victoria in the south, where cigars are smoked on the 
    street in the north; where there are no proofreaders, no silk-worms, no digressions;

the wild man’s land; grassless, linksless, languageless country in which letters are written 
    not in Spanish, not in Greek, not in Latin, not in shorthand,
but in plain American which cats and dogs can read! The letter a in psalm and calm, when 
    pronounced with the sound of a in candle, is very noticeable,

but why should continents of misapprehension have to be accounted for by the 
    fact? Does it follow that because there are poisonous toadstools
which resemble mushrooms, both are dangerous? Of mettlesomeness which may be 
    mistaken for appetite, of heat which may appear to be haste, no con-

clusions may be drawn. To have misapprehended the matter is to have confessed 
    that one has not loooked far enough. The sublimated wisdom
of China, Egyptian discernment, the cataclysmic torrent of emotion compressed 
    in the verbs of the Hebrew language, the books of the man who is able

to say, “I envy nobody but him, and him only, who catches more fish than 
    I do”–the flower and fruit of all that noted superi-
ority–should one not have stumbled upon it in America, must one imagine 
    that it is not there? It has never been confined to one locality.


[fromMarianne Moore’s Poems (London: Egoist Press, 1921); first published in Dial 68 (April 1920)]



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