SEPTEMBER
1.
The city now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
2.
God made the country, and man made the town.
What wonder then, that health and virtue, gifts
That can alone make sweet the bitter draught
That life holds out to all, should most abound
And least be threatened in the fields and groves?
3.
Long ago, in 1945, all the nice people in England were poor, allowing for exceptions. The streets of the cities were lined with buildings in bad repair or in no repair at all, bomb-sites piled with stony rubble, houses like giant teeth in which decay had been drilled out, leaving only the cavity.
4.
And wee will sit upon the Rocks,
Seeing the Sheepheards feed theyr flocks,
By shallow Rivers, to whose falls,
Melodious byrds sing Madrigalls.
5.
I’ll handle dainties on the docks
And thou shalt read of summer frocks:
At evening by the sour canals
We’ll hope to hear some madrigals.
6.
… and then the building of more, strongly, beautifully, and in groups of limited extent, kept in proportion to their streams, and walled round, so that there may be no festering and wretched suburb anywhere, but clean and busy street within, and the open country without, with a belt of beautiful garden and orchard round the walls, so that from any part of the city perfectly fresh air and grass, and sight of far horizon, might be reachable in a few minutes’ walk.
7.
In London, the rich disdain the poor. The courtier the citizen. The citizen the countryman. One occupation disdaineth another. The merchant the retailer. The retailer the craftsman. The better sort of craftsmen the baser. The shoemaker the cobbler. The cobbler the carman.
1.
Last night in Notting Hill
I saw Blake passing by
Who saw Ezekiel
Airborne in Peckham Rye
2.
Somewhere afield here something lies
In Earth’s oblivious eyeless trust
That moved a poet to prophecies –
A pinch of unseen, unguarded dust:
The dust of the lark that Shelley heard,
And made immortal through times to be;
3.
John Keats, who was kill’d off by one critique,
Just as he really promised something great,
If not intelligible, without Greek
Contrived to talk about the gods of late,
Much as they might have been supposed to speak.
Poor fellow! His was an untoward fate: –
’Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle,
Should let itself be snuffed out by an Article.
4.
To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name,
Am I thus ample to thy book and fame;
While I confess thy writings to be such
As neither man nor muse can praise too much;
5.
Next with a gentle Dart strike Dryden down,
Who but begins to aim at the Renown
Bestow’d on Satyrists, and quits the Stage,
To lash the witty Follies of the Age.
6.
His Intellectuals are very good yet (1680) and he makes verses, but he growes feeble. He wrote verses of the Bermudas 50 yeares since, upon the information of one who had been there; walking in his fine woods the poetique spirit came upon him.
7.
Yet malice never was his aim;
He lash’d the vice, but spar’d the name;
No individual could resent,
Where thousands equally were meant.
His satire points at no defect,
But what all mortals may correct;
1.
“What I tell you three times is true.”
2.
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
3.
Never, never, never, never, never.
4.
and yes I said yes I will Yes
5.
She, she, she, and only she
6.
Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie,
A fish can’t whistle and neither can I.
7.
Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea.
1.
“Why do you sit, O pale thin man,
At the end of the room
By that harpsichord, built on the quaint old plan?
—It is cold as a tomb,
And there’s not a spark within the grate;
And the jingling wires
Are as vain desires
That have lagged too late.”
2.
And what if all of animated nature
Be but organic Harps diversely fram’d,
That tremble into thought, as o’er them sweeps
Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze,
At once the Soul of each, and God of all?
3.
When I play on my fiddle in Dooney,
Folk dance like a wave of the sea;
My cousin is priest in Kilvarnet,
My brother in Moharabuiee.
4.
When the Day that he must go hence, was come, many accompanied him to the River side, into which as he went, he said, Death, where is thy Sting? — And as he went down deeper, he said, Grave, where is thy Victory? — So he passed over, and all the Trumpets sounded for him on the other side.
5.
With my ‘Pilly-willy-pinky-winky-popp!’
(Oh, it’s any tune that comes into my head!)
So I keep ’em moving forward till they drop;
So I play ’em up to water and to bed.
6.
There was a barrel-organ playing at the corner of Torrington Square. It played Destiny and La Paloma and Le Rêve Passe, all tunes I liked, and the wind was warm and kind not spiteful, which doesn’t often happen in London.
7.
My lute awake! Perform the last
Labour that thou and I shall waste,
And end that I have now begun;
For when this song is sung and past,
My lute, be still for I have done.
1.
She was only four foot ten. I made love to her in the sweetness of the weary morning. Then, two tired angels of some kind, hung-up forlornly in an LA shelf, having found the closest and most delicious thing in life together, we fell asleep and slept till late afternoon.
2.
I grant the linnet, lark and bull-finch sing,
But best the dear good angel of the Spring,
3.
There had been a grave debate in the servants’ hall about the exact status of angels. Even Mr. Blenkinsop, the butler, had been uncertain. ‘Angels are certainly not guests,’ he had said, ‘and I don’t think they are deputations. Nor they ain’t governesses, nor clergy, not strictly speaking; they’re not entertainers, because entertainers dine nowadays, the more’s the pity.’
4.
At thy Nativity a glorious Quire
Of Angels in the fields of Bethlehem sung
To Shepherds watching at their folds by night,
And told them the Messiah now was born,
Where they might see him, and to thee they came,
Directed to the Manger where thou lais’t,
5.
Our job is to arrange for the arrival
of angels, by the coachload, in white vests.
6.
First we lov’d well and faithfully,
Yet knew not what wee lov’d, nor why,
Difference of sex no more wee knew,
Than our Guardian Angells doe;
7.
How angel-like he sings!