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People, People, Lovely Little People

The crooning
Of the clocks,
The redundant
Machinism:
I am undaunted.

People
Too tired
Bereft of sleep,
Of reason,
Of life,
Of sex and fire,
Drugs and magic,
Souls raw
With soliloquy.

People
Too scared
To fall off ledges,
Off beds,
Off their skins,
To the pits,
The bottomless submissions
And the tasteless thrills.

And it’s either
They take you
Away,
Or you
Drive them
Astray.

People, people,
Lovely little people
What are you doing?
It’s too late
To be just slumbering
Inside yourselves

Love battles,
Hatred sinks
Into seas,
Sins lurk,
The temptations
Are ubiquitous

Small wonders
Into immense
Waves of
Peccadilloes and

[...] Read more

poem by Windsor Guadalupe Jr
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Magic Dance

You remind me of the baby
What baby? baby with the power
What power? power of voodoo
Who do? you do
Do what? remind me of the baby
I saw my baby, crying hard as babe could cry
What could I do
My babys love had gone
And left my baby blue
Nobody knew
What kind of magic spell to use
Slime and snails
Or puppy dogs tails
Thunder or lightning
Then baby said
Dance magic, dance (dance magic, dance)
Dance magic, dance (dance magic, dance)
Put that baby spell on me
Jump magic, jump (jump magic, jump)
Jump magic, jump (jump magic, jump)
Put that magic jump on me
Slap that baby, make him free
I saw my baby, trying hard as babe could try
What could I do
My babys fun had gone
And left my baby blue
Nobody knew
What kind of magic spell to use
Slime and snails
Or puppy dogs tails
Thunder or lightning
Then baby said
Dance magic, dance (dance magic, dance)
Dance magic, dance (dance magic, dance)
Put that baby spell on me
Jump magic, jump (jump magic, jump)
Jump magic, jump (jump magic, jump)
Put that magic jump on me
Slap that baby, make him free
Dance magic, dance (dance magic, dance)
Dance magic, dance (dance magic, dance)
Dance magic, dance (dance magic, dance)
Dance magic, dance (dance magic, dance)
Jump magic, jump (jump magic, jump)
Jump magic, jump (jump magic, jump)
Put that baby spell on me (ooh)
You remind me of the baby
What baby? the baby with the power
What power? power of voodoo
Who do? you do

[...] Read more

song performed by David Bowie
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Sex & The Church

Though the idea of compassion
Is said to be
The union of christ
And his bride, the christian
Its all very puzzling
Sex and the church
Sex and the church
Sex and the church
And the church
And the church
All the great mystic religions
Put strong emphasis, on
Redeame this spiritual qualities
Of sex of sex
Chrstianity
Has been pretty modern
About sex
Of sex of sex of sex of sex
Sex and the church
Sex and the church
Sex and the church
Sex sex
I think there is a union
Between the flesh and the spirit
Its sex and the church
Sex and the church
All religions mother
Give me youre freedom of spirit
And the joys of the flesh
Of sex sex sex and the church
Give me youre freedom of spirit
And the joys of the flesh
Of sex sex sex and the church
Sex and the church
Sex and the church
Sex and the church
And the church
And the church
Sex sex
Sex and the church
Sex and the church
Sex and the church
Sex sex
Sex and the church
Sex and the church
Sex and the church
And the church
And the church
Sex sex
Sex and the church

[...] Read more

song performed by David Bowie
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Heavy Metal Poisoning

Written by james young
Lead vocals by james young
Murolces odro suvon sitpeoc tiunna
What the devils goin on
Why dont your turn that music down
Youre going deaf and thats for sure
But all you do is scream for more
Get the lead out go for broke
Pop your pills and drink and smoke
Shoot those chemicals into your vein
Anything to ease the pain
Heavy metal (heavy metal) poisoning (its a poison)
A toxic wasteland (got a toxic wasteland) in your ear canal (in your ear canal!)
Overloaded (Im overloaded), suffering (yeah!)
Overloaded (overloaded) on sex and drugs
Everything is black and white
You are wrong and we are right
First well spank your big behinds
Then well twist your little minds
Im dr. righteous (Im dr. righteous), and Im here to sing (yeah!)
That heavy metal (heavy metal) is poisoning
Its a music wasteland, that destroys the young (yeah!)
Theyre overloaded (overloaded) on sex and drugs, sex and drugs, sex and drugs
And rock and roll!
Sterces eht sdloh natas
Im dr. righteous (Im dr. righteous), and Im here to sing (yeah!)
That heavy metal (heavy metal) is poisoning
Its a music wasteland, that destroys the young (yeah!)
Theyre overloaded (overloaded) on sex and drugs, sex and drugs, sex and drugs
And rock and roll!
Heavy metal (heavy metal) poisoning (its a poison)
A toxic wasteland (got a toxic wasteland) in your love canal love canal!)
Overloaded (Im overloaded), suffering (yeah!)
Overloaded (overloaded) on sex and drugs, sex and drugs, sex and drugs
Sex and drugs, sex and drugs, sex and drugs, sex and drugs, sex and drugs
Righteous! righteous!...
Shut up!
...righteous! righteous! righteous! righteous! righteous! yeah!
Shut up! shut up!
[giggles]

song performed by Styx
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Raw Power

(pop/williamson)
(burp)
Dance to the beet of the living dead
Lose sleep baby and stay away from bed
Raw power is sure to come a runnin to you
If youre alone and you got the shakes
So am I baby and I got what it takes
Raw power wlll surely come a running to you
Raw power got a healin hand
Raw power can destroy a man
Raw power is more than soul
Has got a son called rock and roll
Raw power nohey just wont quit
Raw power I can feeeeeel it
Raw power baby cant be beat
Qpin eyes and flashin feet
Everybodys always tryin to tell me what to do
Dont you try
Don t you try to tell me what to do
Look in the eye of the savage girl
Fall deep in love in the underworld
Raw power is sure to come a runnin to you
If youre alone and you got the fear
So am I baby lets move on out of here
Raw power is sure to come a runnin to you
Raw power got a magic touch
Raw power is much too much
Happiness is guaranteed
It was made for you and me
Raw power honey just wont quit
Raw power I can feel it
Raw power honey cant be beat
Get down and kiss my feet
Raw powers got no place to go
Raw power honey
It dontwantto know
Raw power is a guaranteed o.d.
Raw power is laughin at you and me
And this is what I wanta know
Can you feeeeeel it
Can you feeeeeeeeel it
Can you feeeeeel it
Can you feeeeeeeeeeeel it
Raw power! raw powwwwwwer!
Raw power! raw powwwwwwwwer!
Can you feeeeeeeeeeeel it

song performed by Iggy Pop
Added by Lucian Velea
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The Castle Of Indolence

The castle hight of Indolence,
And its false luxury;
Where for a little time, alas!
We lived right jollily.

O mortal man, who livest here by toil,
Do not complain of this thy hard estate;
That like an emmet thou must ever moil,
Is a sad sentence of an ancient date:
And, certes, there is for it reason great;
For, though sometimes it makes thee weep and wail,
And curse thy star, and early drudge and late;
Withouten that would come a heavier bale,
Loose life, unruly passions, and diseases pale.
In lowly dale, fast by a river's side,
With woody hill o'er hill encompass'd round,
A most enchanting wizard did abide,
Than whom a fiend more fell is no where found.
It was, I ween, a lovely spot of ground;
And there a season atween June and May,
Half prankt with spring, with summer half imbrown'd,
A listless climate made, where, sooth to say,
No living wight could work, ne cared even for play.
Was nought around but images of rest:
Sleep-soothing groves, and quiet lawns between;
And flowery beds that slumbrous influence kest,
From poppies breathed; and beds of pleasant green,
Where never yet was creeping creature seen.
Meantime, unnumber'd glittering streamlets play'd,
And hurled every where their waters sheen;
That, as they bicker'd through the sunny glade,
Though restless still themselves, a lulling murmur made.
Join'd to the prattle of the purling rills
Were heard the lowing herds along the vale,
And flocks loud bleating from the distant hills,
And vacant shepherds piping in the dale:
And, now and then, sweet Philomel would wail,
Or stock-doves plain amid the forest deep,
That drowsy rustled to the sighing gale;
And still a coil the grasshopper did keep;
Yet all these sounds yblent inclined all to sleep.
Full in the passage of the vale, above,
A sable, silent, solemn forest stood;
Where nought but shadowy forms was seen to move,
As Idless fancied in her dreaming mood:
And up the hills, on either side, a wood
Of blackening pines, aye waving to and fro,
Sent forth a sleepy horror through the blood;
And where this valley winded out, below,
The murmuring main was heard, and scarcely heard, to flow.

[...] Read more

poem by James Thomson
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Through the eyes of a Field Coronet (Epic)

Introduction

In the kaki coloured tent in Umbilo he writes
his life’s story while women, children and babies are dying,
slowly but surely are obliterated, he see how his nation is suffering
while the events are notched into his mind.

Lying even heavier on him is the treason
of some other Afrikaners who for own gain
have delivered him, to imprisonment in this place of hatred
and thoughts go through him to write a book.

Prologue

The Afrikaner nation sprouted
from Dutchmen,
who fought decades without defeat
against the super power Spain

mixed with French Huguenots
who left their homes and belongings,
with the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.
Associate this then with the fact

that these people fought formidable
for seven generations
against every onslaught that they got
from savages en wild animals

becoming marksmen, riding
and taming wild horses
with one bullet per day
to hunt a wild antelope,

who migrated right across the country
over hills in mass protest
and then you have
the most formidable adversary
and then let them fight

in a natural wilderness
where the hunter,
the sniper and horseman excels
and any enemy is at a lost.

Let them then also be patriotic
into their souls,
believe in and read
out of the word of God

[...] Read more

poem by Gert Strydom
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Strange Magic

Youre sailing softly through the sun
In a broken stone age dawn.
You fly so high.
I get a strange magic,
Oh, what a strange magic,
Oh, its a strange magic.
Got a strange magic,
Got a strange magic.
Youre walking meadows in my mind,
Making waves across my time,
Oh no, oh no.
I get a strange magic,
Oh, what a strange magic,
Oh, its a strange magic.
Got a strange magic,
Got a strange magic.
Oh, Im never gonna be the same again,
Now Ive seen the way its got to end,
Sweet dream, sweet dream.
Strange magic,
Oh, what a strange magic,
Oh, its a strange magic.
Got a strange magic,
Got a strange magic.
Its magic, its magic, its magic.
Strange magic,
Oh, what a strange magic,
Oh, its a strange magic.
Got a strange magic.
Strange magic strange magic
Oh, what a strange magic strange magic
Oh, its a strange magic.
Got a strange magic.
Strange magic strange magic
Oh, what a strange magic strange magic
Oh, its a strange magic.
Got a strange magic,
Got a strange magic,
You know I got a strange magic,
Yeah, I got a strange magic,
Oo-o-o-oo, strange magic. (fade)

song performed by Electric Light Orchestra
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Fire Ferocious

Fire! Fire! Ferocious fire!
You restless wall of flame.
Fire! Fire! Roaring higher!
Your fury to never tame.

You show no mercy – no regard:
A writhing army uncontrolled.
At least you don’t discriminate,
Selecting to exterminate:
All dealt with equal pain untold.

Fire! Fire! Ferocious fire!
You restless wall of flame.
Fire! Fire! Roaring higher!
Your fury to never tame.

In time of drought you run amok –
An open chimney of the land.
Prefer to scorch than suffocate:
In blinding zeal, incinerate
To blackened vista now unmanned.

Fire! Fire! Ferocious fire!
You restless wall of flame.
Fire! Fire! Roaring higher!
Your fury to never tame.

Destruction be your only goal
For you to vent your jealous wrath
On gentle life with caring soul
And human victims to console:
As you are none, but psychopath.

Fire! Fire! Ferocious fire!
You restless wall of flame.
Fire! Fire! Roaring higher!
Your fury to never tame.

So there it is – you are but flame:
Reacting gases to adorn –
With orange flicks of flailing arms,
You’re flaunting your demonic charms!
Now leave us for bereaved to mourn.

Fire! Fire! Ferocious fire!
You restless wall of flame.
Fire! Fire! Roaring higher!
Your fury to never tame.

So many lives to claim.

[...] Read more

poem by Mark R Slaughter
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XI. Guido

You are the Cardinal Acciaiuoli, and you,
Abate Panciatichi—two good Tuscan names:
Acciaiuoli—ah, your ancestor it was
Built the huge battlemented convent-block
Over the little forky flashing Greve
That takes the quick turn at the foot o' the hill
Just as one first sees Florence: oh those days!
'T is Ema, though, the other rivulet,
The one-arched brown brick bridge yawns over,—yes,
Gallop and go five minutes, and you gain
The Roman Gate from where the Ema's bridged:
Kingfishers fly there: how I see the bend
O'erturreted by Certosa which he built,
That Senescal (we styled him) of your House!
I do adjure you, help me, Sirs! My blood
Comes from as far a source: ought it to end
This way, by leakage through their scaffold-planks
Into Rome's sink where her red refuse runs?
Sirs, I beseech you by blood-sympathy,
If there be any vile experiment
In the air,—if this your visit simply prove,
When all's done, just a well-intentioned trick,
That tries for truth truer than truth itself,
By startling up a man, ere break of day,
To tell him he must die at sunset,—pshaw!
That man's a Franceschini; feel his pulse,
Laugh at your folly, and let's all go sleep!
You have my last word,—innocent am I
As Innocent my Pope and murderer,
Innocent as a babe, as Mary's own,
As Mary's self,—I said, say and repeat,—
And why, then, should I die twelve hours hence? I—
Whom, not twelve hours ago, the gaoler bade
Turn to my straw-truss, settle and sleep sound
That I might wake the sooner, promptlier pay
His due of meat-and-drink-indulgence, cross
His palm with fee of the good-hand, beside,
As gallants use who go at large again!
For why? All honest Rome approved my part;
Whoever owned wife, sister, daughter,—nay,
Mistress,—had any shadow of any right
That looks like right, and, all the more resolved,
Held it with tooth and nail,—these manly men
Approved! I being for Rome, Rome was for me.
Then, there's the point reserved, the subterfuge
My lawyers held by, kept for last resource,
Firm should all else,—the impossible fancy!—fail,
And sneaking burgess-spirit win the day.
The knaves! One plea at least would hold,—they laughed,—
One grappling-iron scratch the bottom-rock

[...] Read more

poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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VII. Pompilia

I am just seventeen years and five months old,
And, if I lived one day more, three full weeks;
'T is writ so in the church's register,
Lorenzo in Lucina, all my names
At length, so many names for one poor child,
—Francesca Camilla Vittoria Angela
Pompilia Comparini,—laughable!
Also 't is writ that I was married there
Four years ago: and they will add, I hope,
When they insert my death, a word or two,—
Omitting all about the mode of death,—
This, in its place, this which one cares to know,
That I had been a mother of a son
Exactly two weeks. It will be through grace
O' the Curate, not through any claim I have;
Because the boy was born at, so baptized
Close to, the Villa, in the proper church:
A pretty church, I say no word against,
Yet stranger-like,—while this Lorenzo seems
My own particular place, I always say.
I used to wonder, when I stood scarce high
As the bed here, what the marble lion meant,
With half his body rushing from the wall,
Eating the figure of a prostrate man—
(To the right, it is, of entry by the door)
An ominous sign to one baptized like me,
Married, and to be buried there, I hope.
And they should add, to have my life complete,
He is a boy and Gaetan by name—
Gaetano, for a reason,—if the friar
Don Celestine will ask this grace for me
Of Curate Ottoboni: he it was
Baptized me: he remembers my whole life
As I do his grey hair.

All these few things
I know are true,—will you remember them?
Because time flies. The surgeon cared for me,
To count my wounds,—twenty-two dagger-wounds,
Five deadly, but I do not suffer much—
Or too much pain,—and am to die to-night.

Oh how good God is that my babe was born,
—Better than born, baptized and hid away
Before this happened, safe from being hurt!
That had been sin God could not well forgive:
He was too young to smile and save himself.
When they took two days after he was born,
My babe away from me to be baptized
And hidden awhile, for fear his foe should find,—

[...] Read more

poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Before and After Having Sex

There's more than sex,
I want from you.
And with you,
There is more than sex...
To do!

Before and after having sex.

There's more than sex,
I want from you.
And with you,
There is more than sex...
To do!

Before and after having sex.

When we walk along the beach...
There is a sweet,
Nectar in the air.

We don't need to touch to please.
Or be detoxed...
By the flow of easy listening.
There's nothing we have missing,
But more of this.
Since with us this love we have is a hit.
After striking out and getting over it!

Before and after having sex.
Before and after having sex.

There's more than sex,
I want from you.
And with you,
There is more than sex...
To do!

Before and after having sex.

After mid-day heat.
When the Sun shine starts to blazing.
We sip on lemonaide...
As we welcome the Sunset that comes.
Sitting back and relaxed.
Awaiting something spectacular to be done.

And when we touch there is more to please.
Before and after having sex.
And when we touch there is more to please.
Before and after having sex.

[...] Read more

poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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Magic dance (lyrics)

You remind me of the babe,
(What babe.)
Babe with the power,
(What power.)
The power of voodoo,
(who do?)
You do!
(Do what.)
Remind me of the babe.

I saw my baby, crying hard as babe could cry,
What could I do.
My baby's love had gone and left my baby blue,
No one ever knew.

What kind of magic spell to use.
Slime and snails.
Puppy dog tails.
Thunder and lightning.

And baby said,
Dance, magic dance. (Dance Magic dance.)
Dance, magic dance. (Dance Magic dance.)
Put that magic dance on me.
Jump, magic jump. (Jump, Magic jump.)
Jump, magic jump. (Jump, Magic jump.)
Put that magic spell on me.

I saw my baby trying hard as babe could try,
What could I do.
My baby's love had gone adn left my baby blue.
No one ever knew.

What kind of magic spell to use.
Slime and snails.
Puppy dog tails.
Thunder and lightning.

And baby said,
Dance, magic dance. (Dance Magic dance.)
Dance, magic dance. (Dance Magic dance.)
Put that magic dance on me.
Jump, magic jump. (Jump, Magic jump.)
Jump, magic jump. (Jump, Magic jump.)
Put that magic spell on me.

What kind of magic spell to use.
Slime and snails.
Puppy dog tails.
Thunder and lightning.

[...] Read more

poem by Satan's Sibling
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The Aeneid of Virgil: Book 2

ALL were attentive to the godlike man,
When from his lofty couch he thus began:
“Great queen, what you command me to relate
Renews the sad remembrance of our fate:
An empire from its old foundations rent, 5
And ev’ry woe the Trojans underwent;
A peopled city made a desart place;
All that I saw, and part of which I was:
Not ev’n the hardest of our foes could hear,
Nor stern Ulysses tell without a tear. 10
And now the latter watch of wasting night,
And setting stars, to kindly rest invite;
But, since you take such int’rest in our woe,
And Troy’s disastrous end desire to know,
I will restrain my tears, and briefly tell 15
What in our last and fatal night befell.
“By destiny compell’d, and in despair,
The Greeks grew weary of the tedious war,
And by Minerva’s aid a fabric rear’d,
Which like a steed of monstrous height appear’d: 20
The sides were plank’d with pine; they feign’d it made
For their return, and this the vow they paid.
Thus they pretend, but in the hollow side
Selected numbers of their soldiers hide:
With inward arms the dire machine they load, 25
And iron bowels stuff the dark abode.
In sight of Troy lies Tenedos, an isle
(While Fortune did on Priam’s empire smile)
Renown’d for wealth; but, since, a faithless bay,
Where ships expos’d to wind and weather lay. 30
There was their fleet conceal’d. We thought, for Greece
Their sails were hoisted, and our fears release.
The Trojans, coop’d within their walls so long,
Unbar their gates, and issue in a throng,
Like swarming bees, and with delight survey 35
The camp deserted, where the Grecians lay:
The quarters of the sev’ral chiefs they show’d;
Here Phœnix, here Achilles, made abode;
Here join’d the battles; there the navy rode.
Part on the pile their wond’ring eyes employ: 40
The pile by Pallas rais’d to ruin Troy.
Thymoetes first (’t is doubtful whether hir’d,
Or so the Trojan destiny requir’d)
Mov’d that the ramparts might be broken down,
To lodge the monster fabric in the town. 45
But Capys, and the rest of sounder mind,
The fatal present to the flames designed,
Or to the wat’ry deep; at least to bore
The hollow sides, and hidden frauds explore.
The giddy vulgar, as their fancies guide, 50

[...] Read more

poem by Publius Vergilius Maro
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Sex Drive

Sit back, relax, enjoy the ride!
Tell the boys in the bank,
Put the gas in my tank,
Polish your skin on my leather,
In which position you rank.
My car is fast, and its big,
Its one heck of a [? ],
Its a beast, get in,
If you know whats best,
Co-wirst the wind,
No backing out,
Concentrate, liberating, escape!
Well?
Sex drive!
Take a ride in my car,
Sex drive!
Impress your friends,
Sex drive!
Take a ride in my car,
Sex drive!
See inside of my eyes,
Sex drive!
Take a ride in my car,
Sex drive!
Impress your friends,
Sex drive!
Take aride in my car.
Excellerate with my spurge,
Fell the engine purr,
Just push the pedal to the metal,
I wanna see you squirm,
Im double esque,
And Im lean, Im one mean machine,
Im a beast, get in if you know whats best!
Well co-wirst the wind and kiss the sky,
No backing out, its satisfying!!
Sex drive!
Take a ride in my car,
Sex drive!
Impress your friends,
Sex drive!
Take a ride in my car,
Sex drive!
See inside of my eyes,
Sex drive!
Take a ride in my car,
Sex drive!
Impress your friends,
Sex drive!
Take aride in my car.

[...] Read more

song performed by Grace Jones
Added by Lucian Velea
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Sex Drive (Dominatrix Mix)

Sit back, relax, enjoy the ride!
Tell the boys in the bank,
Put the gas in my tank,
Polish your skin on my leather,
In which position you rank.
My car is fast, and its big,
Its one heck of a [? ],
Its a beast, get in,
If you know whats best,
Co-wirst the wind,
No backing out,
Concentrate, liberating, escape!
Well?
Sex drive!
Take a ride in my car,
Sex drive!
Impress your friends,
Sex drive!
Take a ride in my car,
Sex drive!
See inside of my eyes,
Sex drive!
Take a ride in my car,
Sex drive!
Impress your friends,
Sex drive!
Take aride in my car.
Excellerate with my spurge,
Fell the engine purr,
Just push the pedal to the metal,
I wanna see you squirm,
Im double esque,
And Im lean, Im one mean machine,
Im a beast, get in if you know whats best!
Well co-wirst the wind and kiss the sky,
No backing out, its satisfying!!
Sex drive!
Take a ride in my car,
Sex drive!
Impress your friends,
Sex drive!
Take a ride in my car,
Sex drive!
See inside of my eyes,
Sex drive!
Take a ride in my car,
Sex drive!
Impress your friends,
Sex drive!
Take aride in my car.

[...] Read more

song performed by Grace Jones
Added by Lucian Velea
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Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Saviour of Society

Epigraph

Υδραν φονεύσας, μυρίων τ᾽ ἄλλων πόνων
διῆλθον ἀγέλας . . .
τὸ λοίσθιον δὲ τόνδ᾽ ἔτλην τάλας πόνον,
. . . δῶμα θριγκῶσαι κακοῖς.

I slew the Hydra, and from labour pass'd
To labour — tribes of labours! Till, at last,
Attempting one more labour, in a trice,
Alack, with ills I crowned the edifice.

You have seen better days, dear? So have I —
And worse too, for they brought no such bud-mouth
As yours to lisp "You wish you knew me!" Well,
Wise men, 't is said, have sometimes wished the same,
And wished and had their trouble for their pains.
Suppose my Œdipus should lurk at last
Under a pork-pie hat and crinoline,
And, latish, pounce on Sphynx in Leicester Square?
Or likelier, what if Sphynx in wise old age,
Grown sick of snapping foolish people's heads,
And jealous for her riddle's proper rede, —
Jealous that the good trick which served the turn
Have justice rendered it, nor class one day
With friend Home's stilts and tongs and medium-ware,—
What if the once redoubted Sphynx, I say,
(Because night draws on, and the sands increase,
And desert-whispers grow a prophecy)
Tell all to Corinth of her own accord.
Bright Corinth, not dull Thebes, for Lais' sake,
Who finds me hardly grey, and likes my nose,
And thinks a man of sixty at the prime?
Good! It shall be! Revealment of myself!
But listen, for we must co-operate;
I don't drink tea: permit me the cigar!
First, how to make the matter plain, of course —
What was the law by which I lived. Let 's see:
Ay, we must take one instant of my life
Spent sitting by your side in this neat room:
Watch well the way I use it, and don't laugh!
Here's paper on the table, pen and ink:
Give me the soiled bit — not the pretty rose!
See! having sat an hour, I'm rested now,
Therefore want work: and spy no better work
For eye and hand and mind that guides them both,
During this instant, than to draw my pen
From blot One — thus — up, up to blot Two — thus —
Which I at last reach, thus, and here's my line
Five inches long and tolerably straight:

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poem by Robert Browning (1871)
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Give Your Heart To The Hawks

1 he apples hung until a wind at the equinox,

That heaped the beach with black weed, filled the dry grass

Under the old trees with rosy fruit.

In the morning Fayne Fraser gathered the sound ones into a

basket,

The bruised ones into a pan. One place they lay so thickly
She knelt to reach them.

Her husband's brother passing
Along the broken fence of the stubble-field,
His quick brown eyes took in one moving glance
A little gopher-snake at his feet flowing through the stubble
To gain the fence, and Fayne crouched after apples
With her mop of red hair like a glowing coal
Against the shadow in the garden. The small shapely reptile
Flowed into a thicket of dead thistle-stalks
Around a fence-post, but its tail was not hidden.
The young man drew it all out, and as the coil
Whipped over his wrist, smiled at it; he stepped carefully
Across the sag of the wire. When Fayne looked up
His hand was hidden; she looked over her shoulder
And twitched her sunburnt lips from small white teeth
To answer the spark of malice in his eyes, but turned
To the apples, intent again. Michael looked down
At her white neck, rarely touched by the sun,
But now the cinnabar-colored hair fell off from it;
And her shoulders in the light-blue shirt, and long legs like a boy's
Bare-ankled in blue-jean trousers, the country wear;
He stooped quietly and slipped the small cool snake
Up the blue-denim leg. Fayne screamed and writhed,
Clutching her thigh. 'Michael, you beast.' She stood up
And stroked her leg, with little sharp cries, the slender invader
Fell down her ankle.

Fayne snatched for it and missed;

Michael stood by rejoicing, his rather small

Finely cut features in a dance of delight;

Fayne with one sweep flung at his face

All the bruised and half-spoiled apples in the pan,

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poem by Robinson Jeffers
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IX. Juris Doctor Johannes-Baptista Bottinius, Fisci et Rev. Cam. Apostol. Advocatus

Had I God's leave, how I would alter things!
If I might read instead of print my speech,—
Ay, and enliven speech with many a flower
Refuses obstinate to blow in print,
As wildings planted in a prim parterre,—
This scurvy room were turned an immense hall;
Opposite, fifty judges in a row;
This side and that of me, for audience—Rome:
And, where yon window is, the Pope should hide—
Watch, curtained, but peep visibly enough.
A buzz of expectation! Through the crowd,
Jingling his chain and stumping with his staff,
Up comes an usher, louts him low, "The Court
"Requires the allocution of the Fisc!"
I rise, I bend, I look about me, pause
O'er the hushed multitude: I count—One, two—

Have ye seen, Judges, have ye, lights of law,—
When it may hap some painter, much in vogue
Throughout our city nutritive of arts,
Ye summon to a task shall test his worth,
And manufacture, as he knows and can,
A work may decorate a palace-wall,
Afford my lords their Holy Family,—
Hath it escaped the acumen of the Court
How such a painter sets himself to paint?
Suppose that Joseph, Mary and her Babe
A-journeying to Egypt, prove the piece:
Why, first he sedulously practiseth,
This painter,—girding loin and lighting lamp,—
On what may nourish eye, make facile hand;
Getteth him studies (styled by draughtsmen so)
From some assistant corpse of Jew or Turk
Or, haply, Molinist, he cuts and carves,—
This Luca or this Carlo or the like.
To him the bones their inmost secret yield,
Each notch and nodule signify their use:
On him the muscles turn, in triple tier,
And pleasantly entreat the entrusted man
"Familiarize thee with our play that lifts
"Thus, and thus lowers again, leg, arm and foot!"
—Ensuring due correctness in the nude.
Which done, is all done? Not a whit, ye know!
He,—to art's surface rising from her depth,—
If some flax-polled soft-bearded sire be found,
May simulate a Joseph, (happy chance!)—
Limneth exact each wrinkle of the brow,
Loseth no involution, cheek or chap,
Till lo, in black and white, the senior lives!
Is it a young and comely peasant-nurse

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poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
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Tamar

I
A night the half-moon was like a dancing-girl,
No, like a drunkard's last half-dollar
Shoved on the polished bar of the eastern hill-range,
Young Cauldwell rode his pony along the sea-cliff;
When she stopped, spurred; when she trembled, drove
The teeth of the little jagged wheels so deep
They tasted blood; the mare with four slim hooves
On a foot of ground pivoted like a top,
Jumped from the crumble of sod, went down, caught, slipped;
Then, the quick frenzy finished, stiffening herself
Slid with her drunken rider down the ledges,
Shot from sheer rock and broke
Her life out on the rounded tidal boulders.

The night you know accepted with no show of emotion the little
accident; grave Orion
Moved northwest from the naked shore, the moon moved to
meridian, the slow pulse of the ocean
Beat, the slow tide came in across the slippery stones; it drowned
the dead mare's muzzle and sluggishly
Felt for the rider; Cauldwell’s sleepy soul came back from the
blind course curious to know
What sea-cold fingers tapped the walls of its deserted ruin.
Pain, pain and faintness, crushing
Weights, and a vain desire to vomit, and soon again
die icy fingers, they had crept over the loose hand and lay in the
hair now. He rolled sidewise
Against mountains of weight and for another half-hour lay still.
With a gush of liquid noises
The wave covered him head and all, his body
Crawled without consciousness and like a creature with no bones,
a seaworm, lifted its face
Above the sea-wrack of a stone; then a white twilight grew about
the moon, and above
The ancient water, the everlasting repetition of the dawn. You
shipwrecked horseman
So many and still so many and now for you the last. But when it
grew daylight
He grew quite conscious; broken ends of bone ground on each
other among the working fibers
While by half-inches he was drawing himself out of the seawrack
up to sandy granite,
Out of the tide's path. Where the thin ledge tailed into flat cliff
he fell asleep. . . .
Far seaward
The daylight moon hung like a slip of cloud against the horizon.
The tide was ebbing
From the dead horse and the black belt of sea-growth. Cauldwell
seemed to have felt her crying beside him,

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poem by Robinson Jeffers
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Metamorphoses: Book The Seventh

THE Argonauts now stemm'd the foaming tide,
And to Arcadia's shore their course apply'd;
Where sightless Phineus spent his age in grief,
But Boreas' sons engage in his relief;
And those unwelcome guests, the odious race
Of Harpyes, from the monarch's table chase.
With Jason then they greater toils sustain,
And Phasis' slimy banks at last they gain,
Here boldly they demand the golden prize
Of Scythia's king, who sternly thus replies:
That mighty labours they must first o'ercome,
Or sail their Argo thence unfreighted home.
The Story of Meanwhile Medea, seiz'd with fierce desire,
Medea and By reason strives to quench the raging fire;
Jason But strives in vain!- Some God (she said)
withstands,
And reason's baffl'd council countermands.
What unseen Pow'r does this disorder move?
'Tis love,- at least 'tis like, what men call love.
Else wherefore shou'd the king's commands appear
To me too hard?- But so indeed they are.
Why shou'd I for a stranger fear, lest he
Shou'd perish, whom I did but lately see?
His death, or safety, what are they to me?
Wretch, from thy virgin-breast this flame expel,
And soon- Oh cou'd I, all wou'd then be well!
But love, resistless love, my soul invades;
Discretion this, affection that perswades.
I see the right, and I approve it too,
Condemn the wrong- and yet the wrong pursue.
Why, royal maid, shou'dst thou desire to wed
A wanderer, and court a foreign bed?
Thy native land, tho' barb'rous, can present
A bridegroom worth a royal bride's content:
And whether this advent'rer lives, or dies,
In Fate, and Fortune's fickle pleasure lies.
Yet may be live! for to the Pow'rs above,
A virgin, led by no impulse of love,
So just a suit may, for the guiltless, move.
Whom wou'd not Jason's valour, youth and blood
Invite? or cou'd these merits be withstood,
At least his charming person must encline
The hardest heart- I'm sure 'tis so with mine!
Yet, if I help him not, the flaming breath
Of bulls, and earth-born foes, must be his death.
Or, should he through these dangers force his way,
At last he must be made the dragon's prey.
If no remorse for such distress I feel,
I am a tigress, and my breast is steel.
Why do I scruple then to see him slain,

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poem by Ovid
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