Muncie Times, Muncie, Delaware County, 6 April 2006 — Page 31

The Muncie Times • April 6, 2006 • Page 31

POETRY CORNER

To a Republican Friend by Matthew Arnold God knows it, I am with you. If to prize Those virtues, priz'd and practis'd by too few, But priz'd, but lov'd, but eminent in you, Man's fundamental life: if to despise The barren optimistic sophistries Of comfortable moles, whom what they do Teaches the limit of the just and true— And for such doing have no need of eyes: If sadness at teh long heart-wasting show Wherein earth's great ones are disquieted: If thoughts, not idle, while before me flow The armies of the homeless and unfed:— If these are yours, if this is what you are, Then am I yours, and what you feel, I share. Affection by Mary Elizabeth Coleridge The earth that made the rose. She also is thy mother, and not I. The flame wherewith thy maiden spirit glows Was lighted at no hearth that I sit by. I am as far below as heaven above thee. Were I thine angel, more I could not love thee. Bid me defend thee! Thy danger over-human strength shall lend me, A hand of iron and a heart of steel,

To strike, to wound, to slay, and not to feel. But if you chide me, I am a weak, defenceless child beside thee. The Rose by Isabella Valancy Crawford The Rose was given to man for this: He, sudden seeing it in later years, Should swift remember Love's first lingering kiss And Griefs last lingering tears; Or, being blind, should feel its yearning soul Knit all its piercing perfume round his own, Till he should see on memory's ample scroll All roses he had known; Or, being hard, perchance his finger-tips Careless might touch the satin of its cup, And he should feel a dead babe's budding lips To his lips lifted up; Or, being deaf and smitten with its star, Should, on a sudden, almost hear a lark Rush singing up the nightingale afar Sing through the dewbright dark; Or, sorrow-lost in paths that round and round Circle old graves, its keen and vital breath Should call to him within the yew's bleak bound Of Life, and not of Death. A Fine Day by Katherine Mansfield After all the rain, the sun Shines on hill and

grassy mead; Fly into the garden, child, You are very glad indeed. For the days have been so dull, Oh, so special dark and drear, That you told me, "Mr. Sun Has forgotten we live here." Dew upon the lily lawn, Dew upon the garden beds; Daintly from all the leaves Pop the little primrose heads. And the violets in the copse With their parasols of green Take a little peek at you; They're the bluest you have seen. On the lilac tree a bird Singing first a little not, Then a burst of happy song Bubbles in his lifted throat. O the sun, the comfy sun! This the song that you must sing, "Thank you for the birds, the flowers, Thank you, sun, for everything." The Seed-Shop by Muriel Stuart Here in a quiet and dusty room they lie, Faded as crumbled stone or shifting sand, Forlorn as ashes, shrivelled, scentless, dry -‘ Meadows and gardens running through my hand. In this brown husk a dale of hawthorn dreams; A cedar in this narrow

Clarence Motley and Friends

cell is thrust That will drink deeply of a century's streams; These lilies shall make summer on my dust. Here in their safe and simple house of death, Sealed in their shells, a million roses leap; Here I can blow a garden with my breath, And in my hand a forest lies asleep. A Prayer For Old Age by William Butler Yeats GOD guard me from those thoughts men think In the mind alone; He that sings a lasting song Thinks in a marrowbone; From all that makes a wise old man That can be praised of all; 0 what am I that I should not seem For the song's sake a fool? I pray - for word is out And prayer comes round again — That I may seem, though I die old, A foolish, passionate man.

Against Unworthy Praise by William Butler Yeats O HEART, be at peace, because Nor knave nor dolt can break What's not for their applause, Being for a woman's sake. Enough if the work has seemed, So did she your strength renew, A dream that a lion had dreamed Till the wilderness cried aloud, A secret between you two, Between the proud and the proud. What, still you would have their praise! But here's a haughtier text, The labyrinth of her days That her own strangeness perplexed; And how what her dreaming gave Earned slander, ingratitude, From self-same dolt and knave; Aye, and worse wrong than these. Yet she, singing upon her* road. Half lion, half child, is at peace.