time

CARVED WITH A CUPID'S HEAD, AND PLAYED ON FOR THE FIRST TIME AFTER MORE THAN A CENTURY.


What fairy music clear and light,
Responsive to your fingers,
Swells rippling on the summer night,
And amorously lingers
Upon the sense, as long ago
In days of rouge and rococo!

A century of silence lay
On strings that had not spoken
Since powdered lords to ladies gay
Gave, for a lover's token,
Fans glowing fresh from Watteau's art,
Well worth a marchioness's heart.

Amherst never had a witch
O Coos or of Grafton

But once upon a time
There were three old women.

One wore a small beard
And carried a big umbrella.

One stood in the middle
Of the road hailing cars.

One drove an old cart
All over the town collecting junk.

They were not weird sisters,
No relation to one another.

A duly accredited witch I
Never heard Amherst ever had

But as I say there
Were these three old women.

One was prone to appear

The whole green sky is dying.The last tree flares
With a great burst of supernatural rose
Under a canopy of poisonous airs.

Could we imagine our return to prayers
To end in time before time's final throes,
The green sky dying as the last tree flares?

But we were young in judgement, old in years
Who could make peace; but it was war we chose,
To spread its canopy of poisoning airs.

Not all our children's pleas and women's fears
Could steer us from this hell.And now God knows

Don't be downcast, soon the night will come,
When we can see the cool moon laughing in secret
Over the faint countryside,
And we rest, hand in hand.


Don't be downcast, the time will soon come
When we can have rest. Our small crosses will stand
On the bright edge of the road together,
And rain fall, and snow fall,
And the winds come and go.


Translated by James Wright


Submitted by Holt

Thou pretty heav'n whose great and lesser spheares
With constant wheelings measure hours and yeares
Soe faithfully that thou couldst solve the doubt
Of erring Time if Nature should be out,
Where's thy intelligence? thy Soule? the Key
That gives thee Life and Motion? must thou stay
Thus cramp'd with rusty Sloth? and shall each wheele
Disorganis'd confess it is but steele?
Art's Living Creature, is thy thread all spent?
Thy Pulse quite dead? hath Time a period sent
To his owne Sister? slaine his Eeven Match?

Come, come, I faint: thy heavy stay
Doubles each houre of the day:
The winged hast of nimble love
Makes aged Time not seeme to move:
Did not the light,
And then the night
Instruct my sight
I should believe the Sunne forgot his flight.


Show not the drooping marygold
Whose leaves like grieving amber fold:
My longing nothing can explain
But soule and body rent in twain:
Did I not moane,
And sigh and groane,
And talk alone,
I should believe my soul was gone from home.

Beautiful landscape! I could look on thee
For hours,--unmindful of the storm and strife,
And mingled murmurs of tumultuous life.
Here, all is still as fair--the stream, the tree,
The wood, the sunshine on the bank: no tear
No thought of time's swift wing, or closing night
Which comes to steal away the long sweet light,
No sighs of sad humanity are here.

Here is no tint of mortal change--the day
Beneath whose light the dog and peasant-boy
Gambol with look, and almost bark, of joy--

I was Mojeska's leading man
And famous parts I used to play,
But now I do the best I can
To earn my bread from day to day;
Here in this Burg of Breaking Hears,
Where one wins as a thousand fail,
I play a score of scurvy parts
Till Time writes Finis to my tale.

My wife is dead, my daughter wed,
With heaps of trouble of their own;
And though I hold aloft my head
I'm humble, scared and all alone . . .
To-night I burn each photograph,
Each record of my former fame,
And oh, how bitterly I laugh

Oh Maggie, do you mind the day
We went to school together,
And as we stoppit by the way
I rolled you in the heather?
My! but you were the bonny lass
And we were awfu' late for class.

Your locks are now as white as snow,
And you are ripe and wrinkled,
A grandmother ten times or so,
Yet how your blue eyes twinkled
At me above your spectacles,
Recalling naughty neck-tickles!

It must be fifty years today
I left you for the Yukon;

Oh, the sight entrancing,
When morning's beam is glancing
O'er files array'd
With helm and blade,
And plumes in the gay wind dancing!
When hearts are all high beating
And the trumpet's voice repeating
That song, whose breath
May lead to death,
But never to entreating.
Oh, the sight entrancing,
When morning's beam is glancing
O'er files array'd
With helm and blade,
And plumes in the gay wind dancing!

Yet, tis not helm or feather --
For ask yon despot, whether