Poetry

Ode: Intimations of Immortality - William Wordsworth

The child is father of the man;

And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
(Wordsworth, "My Heart Leaps Up")
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day.
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

The Rainbow comes and goes,

And lovely is the Rose,
The Moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare,
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where'er I go,
That there hath past away a glory from the earth.

Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,

And while the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound,
To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong:
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;
I hear the Echoes through the mountains throng,
The Winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
And all the earth is gay;
Land and sea
 Give themselves up to jollity,
And with the heart of May
Doth every Beast keep holiday;—
Thou Child of Joy,
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy Shepherd-boy.

Ye blessèd creatures, I have heard the call

Ye to each other make; I see
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival,
My head hath its coronal,
The fulness of your bliss, I feel—I feel it all.
Oh evil day! if I were sullen
While Earth herself is adorning,
This sweet May-morning,
And the Children are culling
On every side,
In a thousand valleys far and wide,
Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
And the Babe leaps up on his Mother's arm:—
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
—But there's a Tree, of many, one,
A single field which I have looked upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone;
The Pansy at my feet
Doth the same tale repeat:
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;

Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And, even with something of a Mother's mind,
And no unworthy aim,
The homely Nurse doth all she can
To make her Foster-child, her Inmate Man,
Forget the glories he hath known,
And that imperial palace whence he came.

Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,

A six years' Darling of a pigmy size!
See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,
With light upon him from his father's eyes!
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,
Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly-learn{e}d art
A wedding or a festival,
A mourning or a funeral;
And this hath now his heart,
And unto this he frames his song:
Then will he fit his tongue
To dialogues of business, love, or strife;
But it will not be long
Ere this be thrown aside,
And with new joy and pride
The little Actor cons another part;
Filling from time to time his "humorous stage"
With all the Persons, down to palsied Age,
That Life brings with her in her equipage;
As if his whole vocation
 Were endless imitation.

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie

Thy Soul's immensity;
Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep
Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind,
That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,
Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,—
Mighty Prophet! Seer blest!
On whom those truths do rest,
Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;
Thou, over whom thy Immortality
Broods like the Day, a Master o'er a Slave,
A Presence which is not to be put by;
Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?
Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lie upon thee with a weight,
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!

O joy! that in our embers

Is something that doth live,
That Nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction: not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest;
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:—
Not for these I raise
The song of thanks and praise
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings;
Blank misgivings of a Creature
Moving about in worlds not realised,
High instincts before which our mortal Nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised:
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,
Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,
To perish never;
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
Nor Man nor Boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy!
Hence in a season of calm weather
Though inland far we be,
Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither,
And see the Children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song!

And let the young Lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound!
We in thought will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,
Ye that through your hearts to-day
Feel the gladness of the May!
What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
 Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.
And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquished one delight
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love the Brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripped lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
Is lovely yet;
The Clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening - Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Where the Mind is without Fear - Rabindranath Tagore

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of
dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
Freedom, Justice and Equality - Lonnie Hicks

Freedom, Justice and Equality

sat down to discuss their differences
as to who in the final differentiation
was best for the Citizens.

Equality spoke stating 'Every human being

is to be seen as equal.
Classes, Kings, and Robber Barons
have mounted historically over-weening excesses.

From them sprung oppression, slavery,

disease and poverty
other multiple negatives
in the sad human panoply.

Society rebelled against them

all hoisting my banner
which reads:
'What We Need is Equality'

All agreed this was so

for a time
with Justice finally noting
'Well Equality all you say is true
but also mark
how easy it is to confuse Economic Opportunity
with Political Equality.
Some systems have one
but surely not the other.

These two, of course, are not the same;

in fact you Equality are perfectly
compatible with Perfect Slavery.
All you have to is treat
all the slaves the same!

'Besides' Justice said 'Economic Opportunity

merely addresses the beginning of the race.
What of the middle and the end;
is Perfect Inequality tolerated there
as millions sink into poverty? '

'No' Justice sighed, 'Equality you are a good plank

but you do not over-arc and don't really solve
important problems.
I, Justice, am needed to balance all the ills
you're not able to address.'

Justice shifted slightly in her dark robes

and spoke of that need to protect Citizens
utilizing legal and governing rules.

'Rule by law
not women or men is better
grafted to all systems:
Balancing and adjusting many of the
the ills Undemocracy brings.'

'Justice is centerpiece
where all the values of the citizens
are sifted and set aright-
enforcements of the Covenants.
It is I,
through which
all society is possible.'

Freedom spoke slowly

gathering verbal momentum:
'Justice you are mystical
but in the end precisely note that
laws are made by men and women
and is therefore rule by Judges.
This does not seem to me
to be much better than rule by Kings.'
'No mere Justice
does not work for me.
Clearly the object we all seek,
is Freedom- Me.
Justice merely refers to
misdeeds but not the essence
of what we seek.
That would be me Freedom.
For here is where all potential is protected,
the Cauldron of the Probabilities.

Freedom is what we fight for,

you, Justice, we merely sue for-
if we have the money
to pay your attorneys! '

Equality smiled wryly at Freedom's joke saying

'but you Freedom have many aliases
many definitions labeled;
which Freedom are you today:
Freedom From
or Freedom to
Free speech
or the Freedom of the Road
or merely Freedom From All Rules?
And I would note you proclaim
Liberty For All
while tolerating
Tyranny while at Work.

You Americans define Freedom

as Freedom for Yourself
what of Freedom for Others,
in fact, the Freedom of the World.
You fall silent there.'

Outside a crowd gathered,

Justice leaned to part the curtains,
describing the outside scene.
There was Ethics and Morality,
Nature
God and Divinity
the usual crowd all clamoring
to be heard
or to gain entry.

Freedom said
'they have right to their say.'
Equality mused 'they all make equal claims.'
Justice said 'if given the chance
like vigilante villagers
they'll be pounding closed-fisted
at every citizens door.'

They all agreed

and sipped their tea
until at the appointed hour
when key in lock
admitted the rightful owner of the house.

Citizens Us
was framed in the doorway Portal
with her constant companion Social Covenant;
They entered
with Citizen saying
'You get all three of you
if you chose Citizen Community
because there you get all of you
plus me.
"Law Like Love"

Law, say the gardeners, is the sun, tangible - abstract

Law is the one Natural - cultural

All gardeners obey simple - complex (content & form)

Tomorrow, yesterday, today.

Law is the wisdom of the old,

The impotent grandfathers feebly scold;

The grandchildren put out a treble tongue,

Law is the senses of the young.

Law, says the priest with a priestly look,

Expounding to an unpriestly people,

Law is the words in my priestly book

Law is my pulpit and my steeple.

Law, says the judge as he looks down his nose,

Speaking clearly and most severly,

Law is as I've told you before,

Law is as you know I suppose,

Law is but let me explain it once more,

Law is The Law.

Yet law-abiding scholars write:

Law is neither wrong nor right,

Law is only crimes

Punished by places and by times,

Law is the clothes men wear

Anytime, anwhere.

Law is Good-morning and Good-night.

Others say, Law is our Fate;

Others say, Law is our State;

Others say, others say

Law is no more.

Law has gone away.

And always the loud angry crowd,

Very angry and very loud,

Law is We,

And always the soft idiot softly Me.

If we, dear, know we know no more

Than they about the Law,

If I no more than you

Know what we should and should not do

Except that all agree

Gladly or miserably

That the Law is

And that all know this,

If therefore thinking it absurd

To identify Law with some other word,

Unlike so many men

I cannot say Law is again

No more than they can we suppress

The universal wish to guess

Or slip out of our own position

Into an unconcerned condition.

Although I can at least confine

Your vanity and mine

To stating timidly

A timid similarity,

We shall boast anyway:

Like Love I say.

Like love we don't know where or why,

Like love we can't compel or fly,

Like love we often weep.

Like love we seldom keep.

-- W. H. Auden