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Goblin Market

MORNING and evening
Maids heard the goblins cry:
"Come buy our orchard fruits,
Come buy, come buy:
Apples and quinces,
Lemons and oranges,
Plump unpecked cherries-
Melons and raspberries,
Bloom-down-cheeked peaches,
Swart-headed mulberries,
Wild free-born cranberries,
Crab-apples, dewberries,
Pine-apples, blackberries,
Apricots, strawberries--
All ripe together
In summer weather--
Morns that pass by,
Fair eves that fly;
Come buy, come buy;
Our grapes fresh from the vine,

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poem by Christina Georgina Rossetti
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The City of Dreadful Night

Per me si va nella citta dolente.

--Dante

Poi di tanto adoprar, di tanti moti
D'ogni celeste, ogni terrena cosa,
Girando senza posa,
Per tornar sempre la donde son mosse;
Uso alcuno, alcun frutto
Indovinar non so.

Sola nel mondo eterna, a cui si volve
Ogni creata cosa,
In te, morte, si posa
Nostra ignuda natura;
Lieta no, ma sicura
Dell' antico dolor . . .
Pero ch' esser beato
Nega ai mortali e nega a' morti il fato.

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poem by James Thomson
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VI. Giuseppe Caponsacchi

Answer you, Sirs? Do I understand aright?
Have patience! In this sudden smoke from hell,—
So things disguise themselves,—I cannot see
My own hand held thus broad before my face
And know it again. Answer you? Then that means
Tell over twice what I, the first time, told
Six months ago: 't was here, I do believe,
Fronting you same three in this very room,
I stood and told you: yet now no one laughs,
Who then … nay, dear my lords, but laugh you did,
As good as laugh, what in a judge we style
Laughter—no levity, nothing indecorous, lords!
Only,—I think I apprehend the mood:
There was the blameless shrug, permissible smirk,
The pen's pretence at play with the pursed mouth,
The titter stifled in the hollow palm
Which rubbed the eyebrow and caressed the nose,
When I first told my tale: they meant, you know,
"The sly one, all this we are bound believe!
"Well, he can say no other than what he says.

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poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Too Much of Nothing

My space is sacred.
My vital signs are fine for me.
No rat race paced.
I've removed myself from that misery.

Back off of my satisfaction.
Not attracted to a mess defined.
Nothing of mine is padlocked and stacked.
I've got a peace that sets me free.

My space is sacred.
My vital signs are fine for me.
No rat race paced.
I've removed myself from that misery.
Too much of nothing,
Is what others wish to bleed.
Too much of nothing isn't company I need.

Wrapped up and shackled...
I've got that madness packed.

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poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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Moments of Truth

Fishing for just who has been paid,
To dismiss the red tape usually laid...
With a duplication generally instigated,
To complicate a masquerade paced to chase...
Fakes away.

Moments of truth,
Are often reduced...
To a mocking done with folly!

Disguising the lies,
Told to rise to heights...
Those who become idolized.

Moments of truth,
Are often reduced...
To criminalize those who choose not to hide lies.

Fishing for just who has been paid,
To dismiss the red tape usually laid...

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poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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Pacing off the steps

At times the stretch
to the jumping board
and landing patch
lay magical
in front of me

and without real strain
I glided through the air
and a slit second
almost lasted for an eternity.

In that moment
the interaction of no competitor,
no coach,
no cheering onlooker
was with me
and the white
sand glided past
before kissing
my landing feet.

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poem by Gert Strydom
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Instead of Portraying Togetherness

Haven't we once touched upon this before?
Haven't we both together paced...
Back and forth upon these floors?
Haven't we sat,
In corners...
Facing closed doors latched?
Quietly dispatched to a matching silence,
We attracted in defiance!

Didn't we have our backs against the walls...
Calling out to one another,
In faint whispers no one now recalls?

As darkness descended upon each other....
Discovering then we both needed to begin anew,
Perhaps with someone other.
Like so many have done and do!

You promised that to me...
And I promised that to you!

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poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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In a Minor Key

(AN ECHO FROM A LARGER LYRE.)

That was love that I had before
Years ago, when my heart was young;
Ev'ry smile was a gem you wore;
Ev'ry word was a sweet song sung.

You came--all my pulses burn'd and beat.
(O sweet wild throbs of an early day!)
You went--with the last dear sound of your feet
The light wax'd dim and the place grew grey.

And I us'd to pace with a stealthy tread
By a certain house which is under a hill;
A cottage stands near, wall'd white, roof'd red--
Tall trees grow thick--I can see it still!

How I us'd to watch with a hope that was fear
For the least swift glimpse of your gown's dear fold!

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poem by Amy Levy
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The Torture of Cuauhtemoc

Their strength had fed on this when Death's white arms
Came sleeved in vapors and miasmal dew,
Curling across the jungle's ferny floor,
Becking each fevered brain. On bleak divides,
Where Sleep grew niggardly for nipping cold
That twinged blue lips into a mouthed curse,
Not back to Seville and its sunny plains
Winged their brief-biding dreams, but once again,
Lords of a palace in Tenochtitlan,
They guarded Montezuma's treasure-hoard.
Gold, like some finny harvest of the sea,
Poured out knee deep around the rifted floors,
Shiny and sparkling, -- arms and crowns and rings:
Gold, sweet to toy with as beloved hair, --
To plunge the lustful, crawling fingers down,
Arms elbow deep, and draw them out again,
And watch the glinting metal trickle off,
Even as at night some fisherman, home bound
With speckled cargo in his hollow keel
Caught off Campeche or the Isle of Pines,

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poem by Alan Seeger
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Mistress Gurton's Cat

Old MISTRESS GURTON had a Cat,
A Tabby, loveliest of the race,
Sleek as a doe, and tame, and fat
With velvet paws, and whisker'd face;
The Doves of VENUS not so fair,
Nor JUNO'S Peacocks half so grand
As MISTRESS GURTON'S Tabby rare,
The proudest of the purring band;
So dignified in all her paces--
She seem'd, a pupil of the Graces!
There never was a finer creature
In all the varying whims of Nature!

All liked Grimalkin, passing well!
Save MISTRESS GURTON, and, 'tis said,
She oft with furious ire would swell,
When, through neglect or hunger keen,
Puss, with a pilfer'd scrap, was seen,
Swearing beneath the pent-house shed:
For, like some fav'rites, she was bent

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poem by Mary Darby Robinson
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