Slowly, without force, the rain drops into the
city. It stops a moment
on the carved head of Saint John, then slides on again, slipping
and trickling
over his stone cloak. It splashes from the lead conduit
of a gargoyle,
and falls from it in turmoil on the stones in the Cathedral square.
Where are the people, and why does the fretted steeple sweep about
in the sky?
Boom! The sound swings against the rain. Boom,
again! After it, only water
rushing in the gutters, and the turmoil from the spout of the gargoyle.
Silence. Ripples and mutters. Boom!

The room is damp, but warm. Little flashes swarm about
from the firelight.
The lustres of the chandelier are bright, and clusters of rubies
leap in the bohemian glasses on the `etagere’. Her hands
are restless,
but the white masses of her hair are quite still. Boom! Will
it never cease
to torture, this iteration! Boom! The vibration
shatters a glass
on the `etagere’. It lies there, formless and glowing,
with all its crimson gleams shot out of pattern, spilled, flowing
red,
blood-red. A thin bell-note pricks through the silence. A
door creaks.
The old lady speaks: “Victor, clear away that broken
glass.” “Alas!
Madame, the bohemian glass!” “Yes, Victor, one hundred
years ago
my father brought it –” Boom! The room shakes,
the servitor quakes.
Another goblet shivers and breaks. Boom!

It rustles at the window-pane, the smooth, streaming rain, and he
is shut
within its clash and murmur. Inside is his candle, his
table, his ink,
his pen, and his dreams. He is thinking, and the walls
are pierced with
beams of sunshine, slipping through young green. A fountain
tosses itself
up at the blue sky, and through the spattered water in the basin
he can see
copper carp, lazily floating among cold leaves. A wind-harp
in a cedar-tree
grieves and whispers, and words blow into his brain, bubbled, iridescent,
shooting up like flowers of fire, higher and higher. Boom!
The flame-flowers snap on their slender stems. The fountain
rears up
in long broken spears of dishevelled water and flattens into the
earth. Boom!
And there is only the room, the table, the candle, and the sliding
rain.
Again, Boom! — Boom! — Boom! He stuffs his fingers
into his ears.
He sees corpses, and cries out in fright. Boom! It
is night,
and they are shelling the city! Boom! Boom!

A child wakes and is afraid, and weeps in the darkness. What
has made
the bed shake? “Mother, where are you? I am
awake.” “Hush, my Darling,
I am here.” “But, Mother, something so queer happened,
the room shook.”
Boom! “Oh! What is it? What is
the matter?” Boom! “Where is Father?
I am so afraid.” Boom! The child sobs and
shrieks. The house
trembles and creaks. Boom!

Retorts, globes, tubes, and phials lie shattered. All
his trials
oozing across the floor. The life that was his choosing,
lonely, urgent,
goaded by a hope, all gone. A weary man in a ruined laboratory,
that is his story. Boom! Gloom and ignorance,
and the jig of drunken brutes.
Diseases like snakes crawling over the earth, leaving trails of
slime.
Wails from people burying their dead. Through the window,
he can see
the rocking steeple. A ball of fire falls on the lead
of the roof,
and the sky tears apart on a spike of flame. Up the spire,
behind the lacings of stone, zigzagging in and out of the carved
tracings,
squirms the fire. It spouts like yellow wheat from the
gargoyles, coils round
the head of Saint John, and aureoles him in light. It
leaps into the night
and hisses against the rain. The Cathedral is a burning
stain on the white,
wet night.

Boom! The Cathedral is a torch, and the houses next to
it begin to scorch.
Boom! The bohemian glass on the `etagere’ is no longer
there.
Boom! A stalk of flame sways against the red damask curtains.
The old lady cannot walk. She watches the creeping stalk
and counts.
Boom! — Boom! — Boom!

The poet rushes into the street, and the rain wraps him in a sheet
of silver.
But it is threaded with gold and powdered with scarlet beads. The
city burns.
Quivering, spearing, thrusting, lapping, streaming, run the flames.
Over roofs, and walls, and shops, and stalls. Smearing
its gold on the sky,
the fire dances, lances itself through the doors, and lisps and
chuckles
along the floors.

The child wakes again and screams at the yellow petalled flower
flickering at the window. The little red lips of flame
creep along
the ceiling beams.

The old man sits among his broken experiments and looks at
the burning Cathedral. Now the streets are swarming with
people.
They seek shelter and crowd into the cellars. They shout
and call,
and over all, slowly and without force, the rain drops into the
city.
Boom! And the steeple crashes down among the people. Boom! Boom,
again!
The water rushes along the gutters. The fire roars and
mutters. Boom!

— Amy Lowell, The Bombardment

If I could but forget
The fullness of those first sweet days,
When you burst sun-like thro’ the haze
Of unacquaintance, on my sight,
And made the wet, gray day seem bright
While clouds themselves grew fair to see.
And since, no day is gray or wet
But all the scene comes back to me,
If I could but forget.

If I could but forget
How your dusk eyes look into mine,
And how I thrilled as with strong wine
Beneath your touch; while sped amain
The quickened stream thro’ ev’ry vein;
How near my breath fell to a gasp,
When for a space our fingers met
In one electric vibrant clasp,
If I could but forget.

If I could but forget
The months of passion and of pain,
And all that followed in their train–
Rebellious thoughts that would arise,
Rebellious tears that dimmed mine eyes,
The prayers that I might set love’s fire
Aflame within your bosom yet–
The death at last of that desire–
If I could but forget.

— Paul Lawrence Dunbar, If I Could But Forget

Who hath his fancy pleased
With fruits of happy sight,
Let here his eyes be raised
On Nature’s sweetest light;
A light which doth dissever
And yet unite the eyes,
A light which, dying never,
Is cause the looker dies.

She never dies, but lasteth
In life of lover’s heart;
He ever dies that wasteth
In love his chiefest part:
Thus is her life still guarded
In never-dying faith;
Thus is his death rewarded,
Since she lives in his death.

Look then, and die! The pleasure
Doth answer well the pain:
Small loss of mortal treasure,
Who may immortal gain!
Immortal be her graces,
Immortal is her mind;
They, fit for heavenly places–
This, heaven in it doth bind.

But eyes these beauties see not,
Nor sense that grace descries;
Yet eyes deprived be not
From sight of her fair eyes–
Which, as of inward glory
They are the outward seal,
So may they live still sorry,
Which die not in that weal.

But who hath fancies pleased
With fruits of happy sight,
Let here his eyes be raised
On Nature’s sweetest light!

— Sir Philip Sidney, Song

Find the word, understand the word,
Depend on the word;
The word is heaven and space, the word the earth,
The word the universe.
The word is in our ears, the word is on our tongues,
The word the idol.
The word is the holy book, the word is harmony,
The word is music.
The word is magic, the word the Guru.
The word is the body, the word is the spirit, the word is being,
The word Not-being.
The word is man, the word is woman,
The Worshipped Great.
The word is the seen and unseen, the word is the existent
And the non-existent.
Know the word, says Kabir,
The word is All-powerful.

— Kabir, The Word

Simple Simon met a pieman,
Going to the fair;
Says Simple Simon to the pieman,
“Let me taste your ware.”

Says the pieman to Simple Simon,
“Show me first your penny,”
Says Simple Simon to the pieman,
“Indeed, I have not any.”

Simple Simon went a-fishing
For to catch a whale;
All the water he could find
Was in his mother’s pail!

Simple Simon went to look
If plums grew on a thistle;
He pricked his fingers very much,
Which made poor Simon whistle.

He went to catch a dicky bird,
And thought he could not fail,
Because he had a little salt,
To put upon its tail.

He went for water with a sieve,
But soon it ran all through;
And now poor Simple Simon
Bids you all adieu.

— Mother Goose, Simple Simon

BEFORE I trust my fate to thee,
Or place my hand in thine,
Before I let thy future give
Color and form to mine,
Before I peril all for thee, question thy soul to-night for me.

I break all slighter bonds, nor feel
A shadow of regret:
Is there one link within the Past
That holds thy spirit yet?
Or is thy faith as clear and free as that which I can pledge to thee?

Does there within thy dimmest dreams
A possible future shine,
Wherein thy life could henceforth breathe,
Untouch’d, unshar’d by mine?
If so, at any pain or cost, O, tell me before all is lost.

Look deeper still. If thou canst feel,
Within thy inmost soul,
That thou hast kept a portion back,
While I have stak’d the whole;
Let no false pity spare the blow, but in true mercy tell me so.

Is there within thy heart a need
That mine cannot fulfil?
One chord that any other hand
Could better wake or still?
Speak now—lest at some future day my whole life wither and decay.

Lives there within thy nature hid
The demon-spirit Change,
Shedding a passing glory still
On all things new and strange?
It may not be thy fault alone—but shield my heart against thy own.

Couldst thou withdraw thy hand one day
And answer to my claim,
That Fate, and that to-day’s mistake—
Not thou—had been to blame?
Some soothe their conscience thus; but thou wilt surely warn and save me now.

Nay, answer not,—I dare not hear,
The words would come too late;
Yet I would spare thee all remorse,
So, comfort thee, my fate—
Whatever on my heart may fall—remember, I would risk it all!

— Adelaide Anne Procter, A Woman’s Question

Celebrate our anniversary – can’t you see
tonight the snowy night of our first winter
comes back again in every road and tree –
that winter night of diamantine splendour.

Steam is pouring out of yellow stables,
the Moika river’s sinking under snow,
the moonlight’s misted as it is in fables,
and where we are heading – I don’t know.

There are icebergs on the Marsovo Pole.
The Lebyazh’ya’s crazed with crystal art…..
Whose soul can compare with my soul,
if joy and fear are in my heart? –

And if your voice, a marvellous bird’s,
quivers at my shoulder, in the night,
and the snow shines with a silver light,
warmed by a sudden ray, by your words?

— Anna Akhmatova, Celebrate

Alas! and am I born for this,
To wear this slavish chain?
Deprived of all created bliss,
Through hardship, toil and pain!

How long have I in bondage lain,
And languished to be free!
Alas! and must I still complain—
Deprived of liberty.

Oh, Heaven! and is there no relief
This side the silent grave—
To soothe the pain—to quell the grief
And anguish of a slave?

Come Liberty, thou cheerful sound,
Roll through my ravished ears!
Come, let my grief in joys be drowned,
And drive away my fears.

Say unto foul oppression, Cease:
Ye tyrants rage no more,
And let the joyful trump of peace,
Now bid the vassal soar.

Soar on the pinions of that dove
Which long has cooed for thee,
And breathed her notes from Afric’s grove,
The sound of Liberty.

Oh, Liberty! thou golden prize,
So often sought by blood—
We crave thy sacred sun to rise,
The gift of nature’s God!

Bid Slavery hide her haggard face,
And barbarism fly:
I scorn to see the sad disgrace
In which enslaved I lie.

Dear Liberty! upon thy breast,
I languish to respire;
And like the Swan unto her nest,
I’d like to thy smiles retire.

Oh, blest asylum—heavenly balm!
Unto thy boughs I flee—
And in thy shades the storm shall calm,
With songs of Liberty!

— George Moses Horton, On Liberty and Slavery

Old Man, by your broad contented grin
And the gleam in your quiet eyes,
You are back with ‘Jorrocks’ and ‘Binjimin’
In the land where the good fun lies;
You are riding where rifles reach you not
On a line both safe and sure
From the meet at the ‘Cat and Custard Pot’
To the kill on Wandermoor.
In vain do the cannon of memory call
From the Flanders fields forlorn,
When you hear by the stacks of Barley Hall
The twang of the ”ard un’s’ horn;
And little you reck of a broken thigh
And a bandaged arm to boot,
When the old comedian canters by
On his ‘henterpriseless brute.’
For, back to you comes each sound and sight
At a touch of the magic pen,
Till you take your place in the old first flight,
With a lead on the grass again,
And Surtees, the sage with the jester’s art,
Would be proud had he lived to know
He had brightened an hour for your gallant heart
With the ring of his ‘Tally-ho!’

–William Henry Ogilvie, To One of our Wounded