I sing the body electric,
The armies of those I love engirth me
and I engirth them,
They will not let me off till I go with them,
respond to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full
with the charge of the soul.
Was it doubted that those who corrupt
their own bodies conceal themselves?
And if those who defile the living are as bad
as they who defile the dead?
And if the body does not do fully
as much as the soul?
And if the body were not the soul,
what is the soul?
Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protruded, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
There's a certain slant of light,
Winter Afternoons --
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes --
Heavenly Hurt, it gives us --
We can find no scar,
But internal difference --
Where the Meanings, are --
Non may teach it -- Any --
'Tis the seal Despair --
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the Air --
When it comes, the Landscape listens --
Shadows -- hold their breath --
When it goes, 'tis like the Distance
On the look of Death --
Should the wide world roll away
Leaving black terror
Limitless night,
Nor God, nor man, nor place to stand
Would be to me essential
If thou and thy white arms were there
And the fall to doom a long way.
Listless he eyes the palisades
And sentries in the glare;
'Tis barren as a pelican-beach --
But his world is ended there.
Nothing to do; and vacant hands
Bring on the idiot-pain;
He tries to think -- to recollect,
But the blur is on his brain.
Around him swarm the plaining ghosts
Like those on Virgil's shore --
A wilderness of faces dim,
And pale ones gashed and hoar.
A smiting sun. No shed, no tree;
He totters to his lair --
A den that sick hands dug in earth
Ere famine wasted there,
Or, dropping in his place, he swoons,
Walled in by throngs that press,
Till forth from the throngs they bear him
dead --
Dead in his meagerness.
I have never seen "Volcanoes" --
But, when Travellers tell
How those old -- phlegmatic mountains
Usually so still --
Bear within -- appalling Ordnance,
Fire, and smoke, and gun,
Taking Villages for breakfast,
And appalling Men --
If the stillness is Volcanic
In the human face
When upon a pain Titanic
Features keep their place --
If at length the smouldering anguish
Wil not overcome ---
And the palpitating Vineyard
In the dust, be thrown?
If some loving Antiquary,
On Resumption Morn,
Will not cry with joy "Pompeii"!
To the Hills return!
In placid hours well-pleased we dream
Of many a brave unbodied scheme.
But form to lend, pulsed life create,
What unlike things must meet and mate:
A flame to melt -- a wind to freeze;
Sad patience -- joyous energies;
Humility -- yet pride and scorn;
Instinct and study; love and hate;
Audacity -- reverence. These must mate,
And fuse with Jacob's mystic heart,
To wrestle with the angel -- Art.
Men say they know many things;
But lo! they have taken wings, --
The arts and sciences,
And a thousand appliances;
The wind that blows
Is all that any body knows.
A cold rain blurs the edges of the river.
Night enters Wu.
In the level brightness of dawn
I saw my friend start alone for the Ch'u mountain.
I gave him this message for my friends and relations:
My heart is a piece of ice in a jade cup.
This is the Amy Lowell translation of a poem by Tang Dynasty Poet, Wang Changling (王昌齡) --a.k.a. Shaobo (少伯)
I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing,
All alone stood it and the moss hung down
from the branches,
Without any companion it grew there
uttering joyous leaves of dark green,
And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made
me think of myself,
But I wonder'd how it could utter joyous
leaves standing alone there without its
friend near, for I knew I could not,
And I broke off a twig with a certain
number of leaves upon it, and twined
around it a little moss,
And brought it away, and I have placed it in
sight in my room,
It is not needed to remind me as of my own
dear friends,
(For I believe lately I think of little else than
of them,)
Yet it remains to me a curious token, it
makes me think of manly love;
For all that, and though the live-oak glistens
there in Louisiana solitary in a wide flat
space,
Uttering joyous leaves all its life without a
friend a lover near,
I know very well I could not.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 