A Birthday
My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a watered shoot;
My heart is like an apple tree
Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these
Because my love is come to me.
Raise me a dais of silk and down;
Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
Carve it in doves and pomegranates,
And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my life
Is come, my love is come to me.
WALT WHITMAN
We Two Boys together Clinging
We two boys together clinging,
One the other never leaving,
Up and down the roads going, North and South
excursions making,
Power enjoying, elbows stretching, fingers clutching,
Arm’d and fearless, eating, drinking, sleeping, loving,
No law less than ourselves owning, sailing, soldiering,
thieving, threatening,
Misers, menials, priests alarming, air breathing, water
drinking, on the turf or the sea-beach dancing,
Cities wrenching, ease scorning, statutes mocking,
feebleness chasing,
Fulfilling our foray.
A. E. HOUSMAN
from A Shropshire Lad: II
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.
Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.
And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
LOUIS MACNEICE
Apple Blossom
The first blossom was the best blossom
For the child who never had seen an orchard;
For the youth whom whisky had led astray
The morning after was the first day.
The first apple was the best apple
For Adam before he heard the sentence;
When the flaming sword endorsed the Fall
The trees were his to plant for all.
The first ocean was the best ocean
For the child from streets of doubt and litter;
For the youth for whom the skies unfurled
His first love was his first world.
But the first verdict seemed the worst verdict
When Adam and Eve were expelled from Eden;
Yet when the bitter gates clanged to
The sky beyond was just as blue.
For the next ocean is the first ocean
And the last ocean is the first ocean
And, however often the sun may rise,
A new thing dawns upon our eyes.
For the last blossom is the first blossom
And the first blossom is the best blossom
And when from Eden we take our way
The morning after is the first day.
SIR HENRY WOTTON
The Character of a Happy Life
How happy is he born and taught,
That serveth not another’s will;
Whose Armour is his honest thought,
And simple truth his utmost skill;
Whose passions not his Masters are;
Whose Soul is still prepar’d for Death,
Unti’d unto the World by care
Of public Fame, or private Breath;
Who envies none that chance doth raise,
Or vice; who never understood
How deepest Wounds are given by praise;
Nor Rules of State, but Rules of good;
Who hath his Life from Rumours freed;
Whose Conscience is his strong retreat;
Whose State can neither Flatterers feed,
Nor Ruin make Oppressors great;
Who God doth late and early pray
More of his Grace than Gifts to lend;
And entertains the harmless day
This man is freed from servile bands
Of hope to rise, or fear to fall:
Lord of himself, though not of lands;
And having nothing, yet hath all.
BEN JONSON
from The Alchemist, II, i
SIR EPICURE MAMMON:
Come on, sir. Now you set your foot on shore
In Novo Orbe; here’s the rich Peru,
And there within, sir, are the golden mines,
Great Solomon’s Ophir! He was sailing to ’t
Three years, but we have reached it in ten months.
This is the day wherein, to all my friends,
I will pronounce the happy word, ‘Be rich!’
This day you shall be spectatissimi.
You shall no more deal with the hollow die,
Or the frail card. No more be at charge of keeping
The livery-punk for the young heir, that must
Seal, at all hours, in his shirt; no more,
If he deny, ha’ him beaten to ’t, as he is
That brings him the commodity; no more
Shall thirst of satin, or the covetous hunger
Of velvet entrails for a rude-spun cloak,
To be displayed at Madam Augusta’s, make
The sons of sword and hazard fall before
The golden calf, and on their knees, whole nights,
Commit idolatry with wine and trumpets,
Or go a-feasting after drum and ensign.
No more of this. You shall start up young viceroys,
And have your punks and punketees, my Surly.
And unto thee I speak it first, ‘Be rich!’
JOHN DAVIDSON
Thirty Bob a Week
I couldn’t touch a stop and turn a screw,
And set the blooming world a-work for me,
Like such as cut their teeth – I hope, like you –
On the handle of a skeleton gold key;
I cut mine on a leek, which I eat it every week:
I’m a clerk at thirty bob as you can see.
But I don’t allow it’s luck and all a toss;
There’s no such thing as being starred and
crossed;
It’s just the power of some to be a boss,
And the bally power of others to be bossed:
I face the music, sir; you bet I ain’t a cur;
Strike me lucky if I don’t believe I’m lost!
For like a mole I journey in the dark,
A-travelling along the underground
From my Pillar’d Halls and broad Suburbean Park,
To come the daily dull official round;
And home again at night with my pipe all alight,
A-scheming how to count ten bob a pound.
And it’s often very cold and very wet,
And my missis stitches towels for a hunks;
And the Pillar’d Halls is half of it to let –
Three rooms about the size of travelling trunks,
And we cough, my wife and I, to dislocate a sigh,
When the noisy little kids are in their bunks.
But you never hear her do a growl or whine,
For she’s made of flint and roses, very odd;
And I’ve got to cut my meaning rather fine,
Or I’d blubber, for I’m made of greens and sod:
So p’r’aps we are in Hell for all that I can tell,
And lost and damn’d and served up hot to God.
I ain
’t blaspheming, Mr Silver-tongue;
I’m saying things a bit beyond your art:
Of all the rummy starts you ever sprung,
Thirty bob a week’s the rummiest start!
With your science and your books and your the’ries
about spooks,
Did you ever hear of looking in your heart?
I didn’t mean your pocket, Mr, no:
I mean that having children and a wife,
With thirty bob on which to come and go,
Isn’t dancing to the tabor and the fife:
When it doesn’t make you drink, by Heaven! it
makes you think,
And notice curious items about life.
I step into my heart and there I meet
A god-almighty devil singing small,
Who would like to shout and whistle in the street,
And squelch the passers flat against the wall;
If the whole world was a cake he had the power to take,
He would take it, ask for more, and eat them all.
And I meet a sort of simpleton beside,
The kind that life is always giving beans;
With thirty bob a week to keep a bride
He fell in love and married in his teens:
At thirty bob he stuck; but he knows it isn’t luck:
He knows the seas are deeper than tureens.
And the god-almighty devil and the fool
That meet me in the High Street on the strike,
When I walk about my heart a-gathering wool,
Are my good and evil angels if you like.
And both of them together in every kind of weather
Ride me like a double-seated bike.
That’s rough a bit and needs its meaning curled.
But I have a high old hot un in my mind –
A most engrugious notion of the world,
That leaves your lightning ’rithmetic behind:
I give it at a glance when I say ‘There ain’t no
chance,
Nor nothing of the lucky-lottery kind.’
And it’s this way that I make it out to be:
No fathers, mothers, countries, climates – none;
Not Adam was responsible for me,
Nor society, nor systems, nary one:
A little sleeping seed, I woke – I did, indeed –
A million years before the blooming sun.
I woke because I thought the time had come;
Beyond my will there was no other cause;
And everywhere I found myself at home,
Because I chose to be the thing I was;
And in whatever shape of mollusc or of ape
I always went according to the laws.
I was the love that chose my mother out;
I joined two lives and from the union burst;
My weakness and my strength without a doubt
Are mine alone forever from the first:
It’s just the very same with a difference in the name
As ‘Thy will be done.’ You say it if you durst!
They say it daily up and down the land
As easy as you take a drink, it’s true;
But the difficultest go to understand,
And the difficultest job a man can do,
Is to come it brave and meek with thirty bob a week,
And feel that that’s the proper thing for you.
It’s a naked child against a hungry wolf;
It’s playing bowls upon a splitting wreck;
It’s walking on a string across a gulf
With millstones fore-and-aft about your neck;
But the thing is daily done by many and many a one;
And we fall, face forward, fighting, on the deck.
THEODORE ROETHKE
Dolor
I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,
Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper-weight,
All the misery of manilla folders and mucilage,
Desolation in immaculate public places,
Lonely reception room, lavatory, switchboard,
The unalterable pathos of basin and pitcher,
Ritual of multigraph, paper-clip, comma,
Endless duplication of lives and objects.
And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions,
Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica,
Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium,
Dropping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows,
Glazing the pale hair, the duplicate grey standard faces.
THOMAS HOOD
The Song of the Shirt
With fingers weary and worn,
With eyelids heavy and red,
A Woman sat, in unwomanly rags,
Plying her needle and thread –
Stitch! stitch! stitch!
In poverty, hunger, and dirt,
And still with a voice of dolorous pitch
She sang the ‘Song of the Shirt’!
‘Work! work! work!
While the cock is crowing aloof!
And work – work – work,
Till the stars shine through the roof!
It’s O! to be a slave
Along with the barbarous Turk,
Where woman has never a soul to save,
If this is Christian work!
Work – work – work
Till the brain begins to swim;
Work – work – work
Till the eyes are heavy and dim!
Seam, and gusset, and band,
Band, and gusset, and seam,
Till over the buttons I fall asleep,
And sew them on in a dream!
O! Men, with Sisters dear!
O! Men! with Mothers and Wives!
It is not linen you’re wearing out,
But human creatures’ lives!
Stitch – stitch – stitch,
In poverty, hunger and dirt,
Sewing at once, with a double thread,
A Shroud as well as a Shirt.
But why do I talk of Death?
That Phantom of grisly bone,
I hardly fear its terrible shape,
It seems so like my own –
It seems so like my own,
Because of the fasts I keep,
Oh! God! that bread should be so dear,
And flesh and blood so cheap!
Work – work – work!
My labour never flags;
And what are its wages? A bed of straw,
A crust of bread – and rags.
That shatter’d roof – and this naked floor –
A table – a broken chair –
And a wall so blank, my shadow I thank
For sometimes falling there!
Work – work – work!
From weary chime to chime,
Work – work – work –
As prisoners work for crime!
Band, and gusset, and seam,
Seam, and gusset, and band,
Till the heart is sick, and the brain benumb’d,
As well as the weary hand.
Work – work – work,
In the dull December light,
And work – work – work,
When the weather is warm and bright!
While underneath the eaves
The brooding swallows cling
As if to show me their sunny backs
And twit me with the spring.
Oh! but to breathe the breath
Of the cowslip and primrose sweet –
With the sky above my head,
And the grass beneath my feet,
For only one short hour
To feel as I used to feel,
Before I knew the woes of want
And the walk that costs a meal!
Oh! but for one short hour!
A respite however brief!
No blessed leisure for Love or Hope,
But only tim
e for Grief!
A little weeping would ease my heart,
But in their briny bed
My tears must stop, for every drop
Hinders needle and thread!’
With fingers weary and worn,
With eyelids heavy and red,
A Woman sate in unwomanly rags,
Plying her needle and thread –
Stitch! stitch! stitch!
In poverty, hunger, and dirt,
And still with a voice of dolorous pitch,
Would that its tone could reach the Rich!
She sang this ‘Song of the Shirt’!
LINTON KWESI JOHNSON
More Time
wi mawchin out di ole towards di new centri
arm wid di new teknalagy
wi gettin more an more producktivity
some seh tings lookin-up fi prasperity
but if evrywan goin get a share dis time
ole mentality mus get lef behine
wi want di shatah workin day
gi wi di shatah workin week
langah holiday
wi need decent pay
more time fi leasure
more time fi pleasure
more time fi edificaeshun
more time fi reckreashan
more time fi contemplate
more time fi ruminate
more time fi relate
more time
wi need
more
time
gi wi more time
a full time dem abalish unemployment
an revalueshanize laybah deployment
a full time dem banish owevahtime
mek evrybady get a wok dis time
wi need a highah quality a livity
wi need it now an fi evrybady
wi need di shatah workin year
gi wi di shatah workin life
more time fi di huzban
more time fi di wife
more time fi di children
more time fi wi fren dem