sky

Unrivall'd Greece! thou ever honor'd name,
Thou nurse of heroes dear to deathless fame!
Though now to worth, to honor all unknown,
Thy lustre faded, and thy glories flown;
Yet still shall Memory, with reverted eye,
Trace thy past worth, and view thee with a sigh.


Thee Freedom cherish'd once with fostering hand,
And breath'd undaunted valour through the land;
Here, the stern spirit of the Spartan soil,
The child of poverty, inur'd to toil.


Here, lov'd by Pallas and the sacred Nine,

Let us go out and celebrate
Let us dance, sing
And hug one other
The sky has turned blue…

It has brought with it
The spirits of happiness,
It has brought with it a positive energy
The energy to transform our mental vibration…

Let us go out and loose ourselves
Go and be possess by
The spirits of happiness
The sky has turned blue…

Maybe one could notice
One’s mental vibration
Being changed to a high level,
Regardless our five senses…

My glad feet shod with the glittering steel
I was the god of the wingèd heel.
The hills in the far white sky were lost;
The world lay still in the wide white frost;
And the woods hung hushed in their long white dream
By the ghostly, glimmering, ice-blue stream.
Here was a pathway, smooth like glass,
Where I and the wandering wind might pass
To the far-off palaces, drifted deep,
Where Winter's retinue rests in sleep.

I followed the lure, I fled like a bird,

Fine is the wine that is in love with us,
The goodly bread we wait for from the oven,
And woman whom we have possessed, at last,
After we've suffered under yoke her own.

But what to do if a red sunset freezes
Above a sky that's drowning in cold,
Where there is silence and unearthly peace,
What can one do with the immortal ode?

You can't eat it, or drink, or even kiss ...
The moment fled, and next one now hovers,
And we wring hands, but yet once more miss -
We are condemned to miss and miss it over.

I heard Old Ocean raise her voice and cry,
   In that still hour between the night and day;
   I saw the answering tides, green robed and gray,
Turn to her with a low contented sigh;
Marching with silent feet they passed me by,
   For the white moon had taught them to obey,
   And scarce a wavelet broke in fretful spray,
As they went forth to kiss the stooping sky.

So, to my heart, when the last sunray sleeps,
   And the wan night, impatient for the moon,
Throws her gray mantle over land and sea,

THE SIEGE OF CORINTH.


TO

JOHN HOBHOUSE, ESQ.,

THIS POEM IS INSCRIBED BY HIS FRIEND.

January 22, 1816.


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"Lord, being dark," I said, "I cannot bear
The further touch of earth, the scented air;
Lord, being dark, forewilled to that despair
My color shrouds me in, I am as dirt
Beneath my brother's heel; there is a hurt
In all the simple joys which to a child
Are sweet; they are contaminate, defiled
By truths of wrongs the childish vision fails
To see; too great a cost this birth entails.
I strangle in this yoke drawn tighter than
The worth of bearing it, just to be man.
I am not brave enough to pay the price

Listen my masters! I speak naught but truth.
From dawn to dawn they drifted on and on,
Not knowing wither nor to what dark end.
Now the North froze them, now the hot South scorched.
Some called to God, and found great comfort so;
Some gnashed their teeth with curses, some laughed
An empty laughter, seeing they yet lived,
So sweet was breath between their foolish lips.
Day after day the same relentless sun,
Night after night the same unpitying stars.
At intervals fierce lightning tore the clouds,

MONDAY, OR, THE SQUABBLE
Lobbin Clout, Cuddy, CloddipoleCUDDY

Hold, witless Lobbin Clout, I thee advise,
Lest blisters sore on thy own tongue arise.
Lo yonder Cloddipole, the blithesome swain,
The wisest lout of all the neighbouring plain!
From Cloddipole we learnt to read the skies,
To know when hail will fall, or winds arise.
He taught us erst the heifer's tail to view,
When stuck aloft, that show'rs would straight ensue;
He first that useful secret did explain,

Before the glare o’ dawn I rise
To milk the sleepy cows, an’ shake
The droving dust from tired eyes,
Look round the rabbit traps, then bake
The children’s bread.
There’s hay to stook, an’ beans to hoe,
An’ ferns to cut in the scrub below,
Women must work, when men must go
Shearing from shed to shed.

I patch an’ darn, now evening comes,
An’ tired I am with labour sore,
Tired o’ the bush, the cows, the gums,
Tired, but we must dree for long months more
What no tongue tells.