A Poem a day keeps the melancholy away

Freedom by Seán O Riordain

(I love this poem, sometimes I read the Irish version aloud for myself, to keep the language alive in my head, and because i think it sounds better in the Irish original. PS it's a satire)

I’ll go out and mingle with people.
I’ll head down on my own two feet.
I’ll walk down tonight.

I’ll go down looking for Confinedom,
counteract the rabid freedom
coursing here.

I’ll fetter the pack of snarling thoughts
hounding me
in my aloneness.

I’ll look for a regular chapel
chock-a-block with people
at a set time.

I’ll seek the company of folk
who never practise freedom,
nor aloneness,

and listen to pennythoughts
exchanged
like something coined.

I’ll bear affection for people
without anything original
in their stockthoughts.

I’ll stay with them day and night.
I’ll be humble
and loyal to their snuffed minds

since I heard them
rising in my mind
without control.

I’ll give all my furious affection
to everything that binds them
to every stockthing:

to control, to contracts, to the communal temple,
to the poor common word,
to the concise time,

to the cowl, to the cockerel, to the cook,
to the weak comparison,
to the coward,

to the cosy mouse, to the cost, to the covert flea,
to the code, to the codex,
to the codicil,

to the cocky coming and going,
to the costly night gambling,
to the conferred blessing,

to the concerned farmer testing
the wind, contemplating
a field of corn,
to co-understanding, to co-memory,
to the co-behaviour of co-people,
to the co-stockthing.

And I condemn now and forever
the goings-on of freedom,
independence.

The mind is finished
that falls into the abyss of freedom.
There’s no hills made by god there,
only abstract hills — specifically of the imagination.
Every hill crawls with desires
that climb without ever reaching fulfilment.
There’s no limit to freedom
on Mount Fancy,
nor is there limit to desire,
nor any relief
to be found.



Saoirse

Raghaidh mé síos i measc na ndaoine
De shiúl mo chos
Is raghaidh mé síos anocht.

Raghaidh mé síos ag lorg daoirse
Ón mbinibshaoirse
Tá ag liú anseo

Is ceanglód an chonairt smaointe
Tá ag drannadh im thimpeall
San uaigneas

Is loirgeod an teampall rialta
Bhionn lán de dhaoine
Ag am fé leith

Is loirgeod comhluadar daoine
Nár chleacht riamh saoirse,
Ná uaigneas.
Is éistfead leis na scillingsmaointe,
A malartaítear
Mar airgead.

Is bhféarfad gean mo chroí do dhaoine
Nár samhlaidh riamh leo
Ach macsmaointe.

Ó fanfad libh de ló is d’oiche,
Is beidh mé íseal,
Is beidh mé dílis,
D’bhur snabsmaointe.

Mar do chuala iad ag fás im intinn,
Ag fás gan chuimse,
Gan mheasarthacht.

Is do thugas gean mo chroí go fíochmhar
Don rud tá srianta,
Don gach macrud.

Don smacht, don reacht, don teampall daoineach,
Don bhfocal bocht coitianta
Don am fé leith.

Don ab, don chlog, don seirbhiseach
Don chomparáid fhaitíosach,
Don bheaguchtach.

Don luch, don tomhas, don dreancaid bhideach,
Don chaibidil, don líne
Don aibítir.

Don mhórgacht imeachta is tíochta,
Don chearrbhachas istoíche,
Don bheannachtain.

Don bhfeirmeoir ag tomhas na gaoithe
Sa bhfómhar is é ag cuirnhneamh
Ar pháirc eornan.

Don chomhthuiscint, don chomh-sheanchuimhne,
Do chomhiompar comhdhaoine,
Don chomh-mhacrud

Is bheirim fuath anois is choíche
Do imeachtaí na saoirse,
Don neamhspleáchas.

Is atuirseach an intinn
A thit in iomar doimhin na saoirse,
Ní mhaireann cnoc dar chruthaigh Dia ann,
Ach cnoic theibi, sainchnoic shamhlaíochta.
Is bíonn gach cnoc díobh lán de mhianta
Ag dreapadóireacht gan chomhlíonadh,
Nil teora leis an saoirse
Ná le cnoca na samhlaíochta,
Ná níl teora leis na mianta,
Ná faoiseamh
Le fail.

I Know I Am But Summer To Your Heart

Edna St Vincent Millay

I know I am but summer to your heart,
And not the full four seasons of the year;
And you must welcome from another part
Such noble moods as are not mine, my dear.

No gracious weight of golden fruits to sell
Have I, nor any wise and wintry thing;
And I have loved you all too long and well
To carry still the high sweet breast of Spring.

Wherefore I say: O love, as summer goes,
I must be gone, steal forth with silent drums,
That you may hail anew the bird and rose
When I come back to you, as summer comes.

Else will you seek, at some not distant time,
Even your summer in another clime.

Mutability

Percy Bysshe Shelley

We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;
How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver,
Streaking the darkness radiantly!—yet soon
Night closes round, and they are lost for ever:

Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings
Give various response to each varying blast,
To whose frail frame no second motion brings
One mood or modulation like the last.

We rest. —A dream has power to poison sleep;
We rise. —One wandering thought pollutes the day;
We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;
Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:

It is the same! —For, be it joy or sorrow,
The path of its departure still is free:
Man’s yesterday may ne’er be like his morrow;
Nought may endure but Mutability.

Spring Offensive
BY WILFRED OWEN

Halted against the shade of a last hill,
They fed, and, lying easy, were at ease
And, finding comfortable chests and knees
Carelessly slept.
But many there stood still
To face the stark, blank sky beyond the ridge,
Knowing their feet had come to the end of the world.
Marvelling they stood, and watched the long grass swirled
By the May breeze, murmurous with wasp and midge,
For though the summer oozed into their veins
Like the injected drug for their bones’ pains,
Sharp on their souls hung the imminent line of grass,
Fearfully flashed the sky’s mysterious glass.

Hour after hour they ponder the warm field—
And the far valley behind, where the buttercups
Had blessed with gold their slow boots coming up,
Where even the little brambles would not yield,
But clutched and clung to them like sorrowing hands;
They breathe like trees unstirred.
Till like a cold gust thrilled the little word
At which each body and its soul begird
And tighten them for battle. No alarms
Of bugles, no high flags, no clamorous haste—
Only a lift and flare of eyes that faced
The sun, like a friend with whom their love is done.
O larger shone that smile against the sun,—
Mightier than his whose bounty these have spurned.

So, soon they topped the hill, and raced together
Over an open stretch of herb and heather
Exposed. And instantly the whole sky burned
With fury against them; and soft sudden cups
Opened in thousands for their blood; and the green slopes
Chasmed and steepened sheer to infinite space.

Of them who running on that last high place
Leapt to swift unseen bullets, or went up
On the hot blast and fury of hell’s upsurge,
Or plunged and fell away past this world’s verge,
Some say God caught them even before they fell.
But what say such as from existence’ brink
Ventured but drave too swift to sink.
The few who rushed in the body to enter hell,
And there out-fiending all its fiends and flames
With superhuman inhumanities,
Long-famous glories, immemorial shames—
And crawling slowly back, have by degrees
Regained cool peaceful air in wonder—
Why speak they not of comrades that went under?

Reading On the Beach by Nevil Shute at the minute, so I looked this one up.

The Hollow Men - TS Elliot


Mistah Kurtz—he dead.

A penny for the Old Guy

I
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer—

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

III
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper

(Sonnet XXVII)
Edna St. Vincent Millay

I know I am but summer to your heart,
And not the full four seasons of the year;
And you must welcome from another part
Such noble moods as are not mine, my dear.
No gracious weight of golden fruits to sell
Have I, nor any wise and wintry thing;
And I have loved you all too long and well
To carry still the high sweet breast of Spring.
Wherefore I say: O love, as summer goes,
I must be gone, steal forth with silent drums,
That you may hail anew the bird and rose
When I come back to you, as summer comes.
Else will you seek, at some not distant time,
Even your summer in another clime.