In our busy, complicated and often difficult lives, we seldom get to pause and quietly reflect. I have found that the wisdom of the poets gives me insight, solace and a means to understand things that are otherwise unfathomable.

It is the poet’s job, and genius, to show us elements of the human experience.  On this page I will try to add a poem each week. Given my love of  the vocal recital, many of these will be the texts for song literature.

I encourage you to pause, read, reflect, refresh, renew.  And, if possible, attend a song recital to revel in the pairing of poetry and music.

Illustration: The Dream of Human Life

by Michelangelo Buonarroti

              Ravished by all that to the eyes is fair,
Yet hungry for the joys that truly bless,
My soul can find no stair
To mount to heaven, save earth's loveliness.
For from the stars above
Descends a glorious light
That lifts our longing to their highest height
And bears the name of love.
Nor is there aught can move
A gentle heart, or purge or make it wise,
But beauty and the starlight of her eyes.

   [This poem, by Michelangelo Buonarroti, was translated into English by George Santayana (1863-1952).]

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ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE, BY JOHN KEATS

READ BY ROBERT DONAT:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xri3eQsMT7A

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    ON THE EXTINCTION OF THE VENETIAN REPUBLIC [1802]

       ONCE did she hold the gorgeous East in fee;
And was the safeguard of the West: the worth
Of Venice did not fall below her birth,
Venice, the eldest Child of Liberty.
She was a maiden City, bright and free;
No guile seduced, no force could violate;
And, when she took unto herself a mate,
She must espouse the everlasting Sea.
And what if she had seen those glories fade,
Those titles vanish, and that strength decay;
Yet shall some tribute of regret be paid
When her long life hath reach'd its final day:
Men are we, and must grieve when even the Shade
Of that which once was great is pass'd away.

by: William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

Note: The glorious Republic of Venice met its end in 1797

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O sweet spontaneous

by: e.e. cummings (1894-1962)

O  sweet spontaneous

earth how often have

the

doting

 

fingers of

prurient philosophers pinched

and

poked

 

thee

, has the naughty thumb

of science prodded

thy

 

beauty, how

often have religions taken

thee upon their scraggy knees

squeezing and

 

buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive

gods

(but

true

 

to the incomparable

couch of death thy

rhythmic

lover

 

thou answerest

 

them only with

 

spring)

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SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY

by: George Gordon (Lord) Byron (1788-1824)

SHE walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
 
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair'd the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.
 
And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

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THE OWL AND THE PUSSY-CAT

by: Edward Lear (1812-1888)

THE Owl and the Pussy-Cat went to sea
In a beautiful Pea-green boat:
They took some honey, and plenty of money
Wrapped up in a five-pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
"Oh, lovely Pussy, oh, Pussy, my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are, You are,
You are!


What a beautiful Pussy you are!"
 
Pussy said to the Owl, "You elegant fowl,
How charmingly sweet you sing!
Oh, let us be married; too long we have tarried:
But what shall we do for a ring?"
They sailed away for a year and a day,
To the land where the bong-tree grows;
And there in the wood a Piggy-wig stood,
With a ring at the end of his nose, His nose,
His nose,


With a ring at the end of his nose.
 
"Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling
Your ring?" Said the Piggy, "I will."
So they took it away and were married next day
By the Turkey who lives on the hill.
They dined on mince and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon, The moon,
The moon,


They danced by the light of the moon.

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April Rain Song

BY LANGSTON HUGHES

Let the rain kiss you.

Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops.

Let the rain sing you a lullaby.

The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk.

The rain makes running pools in the gutter.

The rain plays a little sleep-song on our roof at night—

And I love the rain.

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The Darkling Thrush

BY THOMAS HARDY

I leant upon a coppice gate

      When Frost was spectre-grey,

And Winter's dregs made desolate

      The weakening eye of day.

The tangled bine-stems scored the sky

      Like strings of broken lyres,

And all mankind that haunted nigh

      Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be

      The Century's corpse outleant,

His crypt the cloudy canopy,

      The wind his death-lament.

The ancient pulse of germ and birth

      Was shrunken hard and dry,

And every spirit upon earth

      Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among

      The bleak twigs overhead

In a full-hearted evensong

      Of joy illimited;

An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,

      In blast-beruffled plume,

Had chosen thus to fling his soul

      Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings

      Of such ecstatic sound

Was written on terrestrial things

      Afar or nigh around,

That I could think there trembled through

      His happy good-night air

Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew

      And I was unaware.

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Returning Native

BY JOHN UPDIKE

What can you say about Pennsylvania

in regard to New England except that

it is slightly less cold, and less rocky,

or rather that the rocks are different?

Redder, and gritty, and piled up here and there,

whether as glacial moraine or collapsed springhouse

is not easy to tell, so quickly

are human efforts bundled back into nature.

In fall, the trees turn yellower—

hard maple, hickory, and oak

give way to tulip poplar, black walnut,

and locust. The woods are overgrown

with wild-grape vines, and with greenbrier

spreading its low net of anxious small claws.

In warm November, the mulching forest floor

smells like a rotting animal.

A genial pulpiness, in short: the sky

is soft with haze and paper-gray

even as the sun shines, and the rain

falls soft on the shoulders of farmers

while the children keep on playing,

their heads of hair beaded like spider webs.

A deep-dyed blur softens the bleak cities

whose people palaver in prolonged vowels.

There is a secret here, some death-defying joke

the eyes, the knuckles, the bellies imply—

a suet of consolation fetched straight

from the slaughterhouse and hung out

for chickadees to peck in the lee of the spruce,

where the husks of sunflower seeds

and the peace-signs of bird feet crowd

the snow that barely masks the still-green grass.

I knew that secret once, and have forgotten.

The death-defying secret—it rises

toward me like a dog’s gaze, loving

but bewildered. When winter sits cold and black

on Boston’s granite hills, in Philly,

slumped between its two polluted rivers,

warmth’s shadow leans close to the wall

and gets the cement to deliver a kiss.

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Venetian Candy

BY JOHN UPDIKE

How long will our bewildered heirs

marooned in possessions not theirs

puzzle at disposing of these three

cunning feignings of hard candy in glass—

the striped little pillowlike mock-sweets,

the flared end-twists as of transparent paper?

No clue will be attached, no trace

of the sunny day of their purchase,

at a glittering shop a few doors

up from Harry’s Bar, a disappointing place

for all its testaments from Hemingway.

The Grand Canal was also aglitter

while the lesser canals lay in the shade

like snakes, flicking wet tongues

and gliding to green rendezvous.

The immaculate salesgirl, in her aloof

Italian succulence, sized us up,

a middle-aged American couple,

as unserious shoppers who,

still half jet-lagged, would cling to their lire

in the face of any enchanted vase

or ethereal wineglass that might shatter

in the luggage going home.

Yet we wanted something, something small ....

This? No ... How much is ten thousand? Dizzy,

at last we decided. She wrapped

the three glass candies, the cheapest

items in the shop, with a showy care

worthy of crown jewels—tissue,

tape, and tissue again sprang up

beneath her blood-red fingernails,

plus a jack-in-the-box-shaped paper bag

adorned with harlequin lozenges, sad

though she surely was, on her feet waiting

all day for a wild rich Arab, a compulsive Japanese.

Grazie, signor ... grazie, signora ... ciao.

Nor will our thing-weary heirs decipher

the little repair, the reattached triangle

of glass from the paper-imitating end-twist,

its mending a labor of love in the cellar,

by winter light, by the man of the house,

mixing transparent epoxy and rigging

a clever small clamp as if to keep

intact the time that we, alive,

had spent in the feathery bed

at the Europa e Regina.

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