Identity

"We think by feeling. What else is there to know." Theodore Roethke

"I can live an adventuresome life vicariously through my characters. It's inexpensive and a dandy form of ready made self-expression. The perfect sort of sublimation exists after all. For years I wore myself out trying to amass enough experience to commence serious writing. You know the having to see all and do all syndrome. I realize the pursuit of that plateaus sheer idiocy as it remains ever distant as one grows older."

Wenceslaus at that point placed his pen down and turned to open a glossy picture print of a ship under full sail, a clipper mail packet on the China run over a century ago.

"Shakespeare never experienced the myriad situations he subjected his characters to - how could he - except perhaps subliminally. Jules Verne must ha...

My soul is like the oar that momently
Dies in a desperate stress beneath the wave,
Then glitters out again and sweeps the sea:
Each second I'm new-born from some new grave.

My trade was old when the world was new,
    Ere the pyramids rose by the Nile
Men quitted their wives, and gave me their goods
    For the warmth of my kiss, and my smile.
For never was wife who could hold her man
    By the honeymoon's afterglow
Did I veil mine eyes and beckon to him,
    God's truth, and 'tis you who know.

My trade was old when the world was new,
    Long ere Caesar ruled in Rome,
To spend their gold in a harlot's cell
    Patricians quitted home.
And high born dames since the world began
    Have learned to sit and to sigh
And to patiently wait for their lords to leave
    The woman that you pass by.

I'm only a pawn in the game called life,
    Yet I take what you never could hold;
I garner the kisses you'd barter lif...

    Better than granite, Spoon River,
    Is the memory-picture you keep of me
    Standing before the pioneer men and women
    There at Concord Church on Communion day.
    Speaking in broken voice of the peasant youth
    Of Galilee who went to the city
    And was killed by bankers and lawyers;
    My voice mingling with the June wind
    That blew over wheat fields from Atterbury;
    While the white stones in the burying ground
    Around the Church shimmered in the summer sun.
    And there, though my own memories
    Were too great to bear, were you, O pioneers,
    With bowed heads breathing forth your sorrow
    For the sons killed in battle and the daughters
    And little children who vanished in life's morning,
    Or at the intolerable hour of no...

Ye wild-eyed Muses, sing the Twins of Jove,
Whom the fair-ankled Leda, mixed in love
With mighty Saturn's Heaven-obscuring Child,
On Taygetus, that lofty mountain wild,
Brought forth in joy: mild Pollux, void of blame,
And steed-subduing Castor, heirs of fame.
These are the Powers who earth-born mortals save
And ships, whose flight is swift along the wave.
When wintry tempests o'er the savage sea
Are raging, and the sailors tremblingly
Call on the Twins of Jove with prayer and vow,
Gathered in fear upon the lofty prow,
And sacrifice with snow-white lambs, - the wind
And the huge billow bursting close behind,
Even then beneath the weltering waters bear
The staggering ship - they suddenly appear,
On yellow wings rushing athwart the sky,
And lull the blasts ...

Why has Spring one syllable less
Than any its fellow season?
There may be some other reason,
And I'm merely making a guess;
But surely it hoards such wealth
Of happiness, hope and health,
Sunshine and musical sound,
It may spare a foot from its name
Yet all the same
Superabound.

Soft-named Summer,
Most welcome comer,
Brings almost everything
Over which we dream or sing
Or sigh;
But then Summer wends its way,
To-morrow, - to-day, -
Good-bye!

Autumn, - the slow name lingers,
While we likewise flag;
It silences many singers;
Its slow days drag,
Yet hasten at speed
To leave us in chilly need
For Winter to strip indeed.

In all-lack Winter,
Dull of sense and of sound,
We huddle and shiver
...

King and Queen of the Pelicans we;
No other Birds so grand we see!
None but we have feet like fins!
With lovely leathery throats and chins!
Ploffskin, Pluffskin, Pelican jee!
We think no Birds so happy as we!
Plumpskin, Ploshkin, Pelican Jill!
We think so then, and we thought so still

We live on the Nile. The Nile we love.
By night we sleep on the cliffs above;
By day we fish, and at eve we stand
On long bare islands of yellow sand.
And when the sun sinks slowly down,
And the great rock walls grow dark and brown,

Where the purple river rolls fast and dim
And the Ivory Ibis starlike skim,
Wing to wing we dance around,
Stamping our feet with a flumpy sound,
Opening our mouths as Pelicans o...

I went by the Druid stone
That broods in the garden white and lone,
And I stopped and looked at the shifting shadows
That at some moments fall thereon
From the tree hard by with a rhythmic swing,
And they shaped in my imagining
To the shade that a well-known head and shoulders
Threw there when she was gardening.

I thought her behind my back,
Yea, her I long had learned to lack,
And I said: "I am sure you are standing behind me,
Though how do you get into this old track?"
And there was no sound but the fall of a leaf
As a sad response; and to keep down grief
I would not turn my head to discover
That there was nothing in my belief.

Yet I wanted to look and see
That nobody stood at the back of me;
But I thought once more: "Nay, I'll not unvi...

    On that day
I shall put roses on roses, and cover your grave
With multitude of white roses: and since you were brave
    One bright red ray.

    So people, passing under
The ash-trees of the valley-road, will raise
Their eyes and look at the grave on the hill, in wonder,
    Wondering mount, and put the flowers asunder

    To see whose praise
Is blazoned here so white and so bloodily red.
Then they will say: "'Tis long since she is dead,
    Who has remembered her after many days?"

    And standing there
They will consider how you went your ways
Unnoticed among them, a still queen lost in the maze
    Of this earthly affair.

    A queen, they'll say,
Has slept unnoticed on a forgotten hill.
Sleeps on unknown, unnoticed the...

Sound the deep waters: -
    Who shall sound that deep? -
Too short the plummet,
    And the watchmen sleep.
Some dream of effort
    Up a toilsome steep;
Some dream of pasture grounds
    For harmless sheep.

White shapes flit to and fro
    From mast to mast;
They feel the distant tempest
    That nears them fast:
Great rocks are straight ahead,
    Great shoals not past;
They shout to one another
    Upon the blast.

Oh, soft the streams drop music
    Between the hills,
And musical the birds' nests
    Beside those rills:
The nests are types of home
    Love-hidden from ills,
The nests are types of spirits
    Love-music fills.

So dream the sleepers,
    Each man in his place;
The lightning ...

In spring of youth it was my lot
To haunt of the wide world a spot
The which I could not love the less,
So lovely was the loneliness
Of a wild lake, with black rock bound,
And the tall pines that towered around.

But when the Night had thrown her pall
Upon that spot, as upon all,
And the mystic wind went by
Murmuring in melody,
Then, ah then I would awake
To the terror of the lone lake.

Yet that terror was not fright,
But a tremulous delight,
A feeling not the jewelled mine
Could teach or bribe me to define,
Nor Love, although the Love were thine.

Death was in that poisonous wave,
And in its gulf a fitting grave
For him who thence could solace bring
To his lone imagining,
Whose solitary soul could make
An Eden of ...

Old it is, and worn and battered,
As I lift it from the stall;
And the leaves are frayed and tattered,
And the pendent sides are shattered,
Pierced and blackened by a ball.

'Tis the tale of grief and gladness
Told by sad St. Pierre of yore,
That in front of France's madness
Hangs a strange seductive sadness,
Grown pathetic evermore.

And a perfume round it hovers,
Which the pages half reveal,
For a folded corner covers,
Interlaced, two names of lovers,--
A "Savignac" and "Lucile."

As I read I marvel whether,
In some pleasant old château,
Once they read this book together,
In the scented summer weather,
With the shining Loire below?

Nooked--secluded from espial,
Did Love slip and snare them so,
While the hour...

Dear Mother-Earth
Of Titan birth,
Yon hills are your large breasts, and often I
Have climbed to their top-nipples, fain and dry
To drink my mother's-milk so near the sky.

O ye hill-stains,
Red, for all rains!
The blood that made you has all bled for us,
The hearts that paid you are all dead for us,
The trees that shade you groan with lead, for us!

And O, hill-sides,
Like giants' brides
Ye sleep in ravine-rumpled draperies,
And weep your springs in tearful memories
Of days that stained your robes with stains like these!

Sleep on, ye hills!
Weep on, ye rills!
The stainers have decreed the stains shall stay.
They chain the hands might wash the stains away.
They wait with cold hearts till we "rue the day".

O Mother-Earth...

Awm havin a smook bi misel,
Net a soul here to spaik a word to,
Awve noa gossip to hear nor to tell,
An ther's nowt aw feel anxious to do.

Awve noa noashun o' writin a line,
Tho' awve just dipt mi pen into th' ink,
Towards warkin aw dooant mich incline,
An awm ommost too lazy to think.

Awve noa riches to mak me feel vain,
An yet awve as mich as aw need;
Awve noa sickness to cause me a pain,
An noa troubles to mak mi heart bleed.

Awr Dolly's crept off to her bed,
An aw hear shoo's beginnin to snoor;
(That upset me when furst we wor wed,
But nah it disturbs me noa moor.)

Like me, shoo taks things as they come,
Makkin th' best o' what falls to her lot,
Shoo's content wi her own humble hooam,
For her world's i' this snug litt...

Reply to Rudyard Kipling's "He travels the fastest who travels alone."

Who travels alone with his eyes on the heights,
Though he laughs in the day time oft weeps in the nights;

For courage goes down at the set of the sun,
When the toil of the journey is all borne by one.

He speeds but to grief though full gaily he ride
Who travels alone without love at his side.

Who travels alone without lover or friend
But hurries from nothing, to naught at the end.

Though great be his winnings and high be his goal,
He is bankrupt in wisdom and beggared in soul.

Life's one gift of value to him is denied
Who travels alone without love at his side.

It is easy enough in this world to make haste
If one live for that purpose - but think of the waste...

As a white stone in the well's cool deepness,
There lays in me one wonderful remembrance.
I am not able and don't want to miss this:
It is my torture and my utter gladness.

I think, that he whose look will be directed
Into my eyes, at once will see it whole.
He will become more thoughtful and dejected
Than someone, hearing a story of a dole.

I knew: the gods turned once, in their madness,
Men into things, not killing humane senses.
You've been turned in to my reminiscences
To make eternal the unearthly sadness.

Yes, Nightingale, through all the summer-time
    We followed on, from moon to golden moon;
    From where Salerno day-dreams in the noon,
And the far rose of Pæstum once did climb.
    All the white way beside the girdling blue,
Through sun-shrill vines and campanile chime,
    We listened;--from the old year to the new.
        Brown bird, and where were you?

You, that Ravello lured not, throned on high
    And filled with singing out of sun-burned throats!
    Nor yet Minore of the flame-sailed boats;
Nor yet--of all bird-song should glorify--
    Assisi, Little Portion of the blest,
Assisi, in the bosom of the sky,
    Where God's own singer thatched his sunward nest;
        That little, heavenliest!

And north and north, to where the hedge-row...

All day upon the garden bright
The sun shines strong,
But in my heart there is no light,
Or any song.

Voices of merry life go by,
Adown the street;
But I am weary of the cry
And drift of feet.

With all dear things that ought to please
The hours are blessed,
And yet my soul is ill at ease,
And cannot rest.

Strange spirit, leave me not too long,
Nor stint to give,
For if my soul have no sweet song,
It cannot live.