Rainy December day
blows in - not long to stay.
From season to season,
without any reason,
sometimes we feel the fray.
The Fray [Lyric Poem]
Reply
Tag Archives: Melancholy
“The Bridge” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow [w/ Audio]
I stood on the bridge at midnight,
As the clocks were striking the hour,
And the moon rose o’er the city,
Behind the dark church-tower.
I saw her bright reflection
In the waters under me,
Like a golden goblet filling
And sinking into the sea.
And far in the hazy distance
Of that lovely night in June,
The blaze of the flaming furnace
Gleamed redder than the moon.
Among the long, black rafters
The wavering shadows lay,
And the current that came from the ocean
Seemed to lift and bear them away;
As, sweeping and eddying through them,
Rose the belated tide,
And, streaming into the moonlight,
The seaweed floated wide.
And like those waters rushing
Among the wooden piers,
A flood of thoughts came o'er me
That filled my eyes with tears.
How often, O, how often,
In the days that had gone by,
I had stood on that bridge at midnight
And gazed on that wave and sky!
How often, O, how often,
I had wished that the ebbing tide
Would bear me away on its bosom
O'er the ocean wild and wide!
For my heart was hot and restless,
And my life was full of care,
And the burden laid upon me
Seemed greater than I could bear.
But now it has fallen from me,
It is buried in the sea;
And only the sorrow of others
Throws its shadow over me.
Yet whenever I cross the river
On its bridge with wooden piers,
Like the odor of brine from the ocean
Comes the thought of other years.
And I think how many thousands
Of care-encumbered men,
Each bearing his burden of sorrow,
Have crossed the bridge since then.
I see the long procession
Still passing to and fro,
The young heart hot and restless,
And the old subdued and slow!
And forever and forever,
As long as the river flows,
As long as the heart has passions,
As long as life has woes;
The moon and its broken reflection
And its shadows shall appear,
As the symbol of love in heaven,
And its wavering image here.
Share on Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc.
“A Dream Within a Dream” by Edgar Allan Poe [w/ Audio]
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow --
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand --
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep -- while I weep!
O God! Can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
Share on Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc.
“Sad” [Poetry Style #19 (悲慨)] by Sikong Tu [w/ Audio]
Strong winds ripple water;
Forest trees are laid low...
A bitter urge to die --
One can't come; one can't go.
Ten decades flow, stream-like;
Riches are cold, gray ash.
Life 's a death procession --
Unless you're adept and brash,
And can take up the sword
To hasten the anguish...
No rustling dry leaves, or
Leaky roof as you languish.
NOTE: The late Tang Dynasty poet, Sikong Tu (a.k.a. Ssŭ-k‘ung T‘u,) wrote an ars poetica entitled Twenty-Four Styles of Poetry. It presents twenty-four poems that are each in a different tone, reflecting varied concepts from Taoist philosophy and aesthetics. Above is a crude translation of the nineteenth of the twenty-four poems. This poem’s Chinese title is 悲慨, and it has been translated as: “Despondent,” and “Sorrowful.”
Share on Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc.
BOOK REVIEW: 100 Poems to Break Your Heart ed. Edward Hirsch
100 Poems to Break Your Heart by Edward HirschMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Amazon.in Page
Release Date: January 31, 2023
This anthology (and the accompanying analytical essays by Hirsch) covers over two-hundred years of poetry and works with a large set of translated languages as well as poems of English language origin. Therefore, the poems include an eclectic set of forms and schools of poetry. There are narrative poems and philosophical poems. There are sparse poems and elaborate poems. Besides the fact that they are all short to intermediate length poems (a few pages, at most,) the only thing the included poems have in common is some serious subject matter at each poem’s core. There are elegies and cathartic poems of illness or ended relationships, as well as tales of various types of tragedy (personal, global, and of scales in between.)
That said, not all of the poems feature a dark and melancholic tone. There are several poems that are humorous — in a gallows humor sort of way. Such poems include: Dunya Mikhail’s “The War Works Hard,” Harryette Mullen’s “We Are Not Responsible,” and Stanley Kunitz’s “Halley’s Comet.”
Of course, there are many poems that are as devastatingly sad as the title leads one to expect. Of these, Eavan Boland’s “Quarantine,” the story of a man carrying his illness-ravaged wife in search of survival during a famine in Ireland in 1847 takes the award for saddest. There are poems in this book that are more brutal, encompass vaster scales of suffering, or combine lyrical skill and emotional experience more artfully. But none of those poems socked me in the chest like Boland’s. One thing that struck me during my reading was what an intense force multiplier story is in creating poignant poems. Several others among my favorites told stories that made for visceral reads. These include: “Song” by Brigit Pageen Kelly, “The Race” by Sharon Olds, “Terminus” by Nicholas Christopher (also among the most savage tear-jerkers,) and “The Gas-Poker” by Thom Gunn.
Other favorites include: Langston Hughes’s “Song for a Dark Girl,” Miklós Radnóti’s “The Fifth Eclogue,” Stevie Smith’s “Not Waving but Drowning,” and “Mendocino Rose” by Garrett Hongo.
I’d highly recommend this book for poetry readers.
View all my reviews
Share on Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc.
Cemetery Walk [Free Verse]
And in the end, the dead are still and the graveyard's quiet is not so bad. The monuments weather; in due time, letters become less crisp & dates become debatable. A clean read means there maybe someone left to mourn. And fresh flowers mean that someone has tracked their melancholy through the place, and the air feels heavier, and my mind feels heavier. And I read names: familiar & not, popular & not. I read names to distract me from thoughts of my own dead -- to avoid tracking my own melancholy through the place. For, you see, I've brought no flowers.
Share on Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc.
Stormy Shore [Common Meter]
Sitting on cold, volcanic rock upon a stormy shore, Watching waves crash, hearing naught but wind, and crying for more in a scream that cannot be heard over nature's harsh din as I feel the snap of gusty wind, through cloth so thin that it can't hold back nature's force to draw the heat from bone, and, feeling under this black sky, I am now all alone.
Share on Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc.
5 Melancholic Works of Nonfiction You Should Read
5.) Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl: Deep life lessons learned inside a Nazi death camp.
4.) Being Mortal by Atul Gawande: A medical doctor discusses how living longer doesn’t necessarily mean living better, and what that can mean for one’s final years.
3.) When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi: Contemplations on the meaning of life from a doctor who was dying from a terminal illness, and who succumbed before completion of the book.
2.) The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby: The story of a man who developed Locked-In Syndrome in the wake of a severe stroke and couldn’t move a muscle, save one eyelid.
1.) First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung: The title captures the family level tragedy of Pol Pot’s rule, but the book conveys something of the national tragedy as well.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 