Remember - Christina Rossetti

 



Remember me when I am gone away,

         Gone far away into the silent land;

         When you can no more hold me by the hand,

Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.

Remember me when no more day by day

         You tell me of our future that you plann'd:

         Only remember me; you understand

It will be late to counsel then or pray.

Yet if you should forget me for a while

         And afterwards remember, do not grieve:

         For if the darkness and corruption leave

         A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,

Better by far you should forget and smile

         Than that you should remember and be sad.


Christina Georgina Rossetti, 1830-1894.  



copy of photo: James Franco and Sophia Myles as Tristan and Isolde in film from 2006. 

The Road Not Taken

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood, 
And sorry I could not travel both 
And be one traveler, long I stood 
And looked down one as far as I could 
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 

Then took the other, as just as fair, 
And having perhaps the better claim 
Because it was grassy and wanted wear; 
Though as for that, the passing there 
Had worn them really about the same, 

And both that morning equally lay 
In leaves no step had trodden black. 
Oh, I marked the first for another day! 
Yet knowing how way leads on to way 
I doubted if I should ever come back. 

I shall be telling this with a sigh 
Somewhere ages and ages hence: 
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, 
I took the one less traveled by, 
And that has made all the difference. 

Robert Frost (1874-1963) 

photo, Silkeborg, November 2008: gb 

The Wild Swans at Cole - W.B. Yeats

The Wild Swans at Coole

 The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty swans.

The nineteenth Autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold,
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.

But now they drift on the still water
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake’s edge or pool
Delight men’s eyes, when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?










W.B.Yeats 1865-1939



photo:gb 

Christina Rossetti, Dream Land

Dante Gabriel Rossetti: Day Dream

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Where sunless rivers weep
Their waves into the deep,
She sleeps a charmed sleep:
Awake her not.
Led by a single star,
She came from very far
To seek where shadows are
Her pleasant lot.

She left the rosy morn,
She left the fields of corn,
For twilight cold and lorn
And water springs.
Through sleep, as through a veil,
She sees the sky look pale,
And hears the nightingale
That sadly sings.

Rest, rest, a perfect rest
Shed over brow and breast;
Her face is toward the west,
The purple land.
She cannot see the grain
Ripening on hill and plain;
She cannot feel the rain
Upon her hand.

Rest, rest, for evermore
Upon a mossy shore;
Rest, rest at the heart's core
Till time shall cease:
Sleep that no pain shall wake;
Night that no morn shall break
Till joy shall overtake
Her perfect peace.

 

Christina Rossetti  (1830-1894).

  

 

 

 

Inuit Poem - I Remember the White Bear.

I remember the white bear,

With its back-body raised high;

It thought it was the only male here,

And came towards me at full speed.

     Unaya, unaya.

Again and again it threw me down,

But it did not lie over me,

But quickly went from me again.

It had not thought

Of meeting other males here,

And by the edge of an ice floe

It lay down calmly.

     Unaya, unaya.

I shall never forget the great blubber-beast;

On the firm ice I had already flayed it,

When the neighbors with whom I shared the

     land here

Had just woken.

It was as if I had just gone to its breathing hole

     out there.

     Unaya, unaya.

There as I came across it,

And as I stood over it, it heard me,

Without scratching at the ice,

At the under edge of the firm ice to which it

     had hooked itself,

Truly it was a cunning beast–

Just as I felt sorry that I had not caught it,

     Unaya, unaya,

I caught it fast with my harpoon head,

Before it had even drawn breath!

NETSILIK INUIT

photo 2009:gb 

The Twilight Turns - James Joyce

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The twilight turns from amethyst
To deep and deeper blue,
The lamp fills with a pale green glow
The trees of the avenue.

The old piano plays an air,
Sedate and slow and gay;
She bends upon the yellow keys,
Her head inclines this way.

Shy thought and grave wide eyes and hands
That wander as they list -- -
The twilight turns to darker blue
With lights of amethyst.

James Joyce (1882-1941)

photo: gb

Paul Verlaine - Clair de lune

Clair de lune 

Votre âme est un paysage choisi
Que vont charmant masques et bergamasques
Jouant du luth et dansant et quasi
Tristes sous leurs déguisements fantasques.
Tout en chantant sur le mode mineur
L'amour vainqueur et la vie opportune,
Ils n'ont pas l'air de croire à leur bonheur
Et leur chanson se mêle au clair de lune,
Au calme clair de lune triste et beau,
Qui fait rêver les oiseaux dans les arbres
Et sangloter d'extase les jets d'eau,
Les grands jets d'eau sveltes parmi les marbres.
From Fêtes galantes (1869)  

Moonlight

Your soul is like a landscape fantasy,
Where masks and Bergamasks, in charming wise,
Strum lutes and dance, just a bit sad to be
Hidden beneath their fanciful disguise.
Singing in minor mode of life's largesse
And all-victorious love, they yet seem quite
Reluctant to believe their happiness,
And their song mingles with the pale moonlight,
The calm, pale moonlight, whose sad beauty, beaming,
Sets the birds softly dreaming in the trees,
And makes the marbled fountains, gushing, streaming--
Slender jet-fountains--sob their ecstasies.


Paul-Marie Verlaine (1844-1896) 


photo: gb