Some Tuckerman poems. I have a version of "The Cricket" edited by Ben but he told me it is classified.
THREE SONNETS
But unto him came swift calamity
In the sweet springtime when his beds were green;
And my heart waited, trustfully serene,
For the new blossom on my household tree.
But flowers and gods and quaint philosophy
Are poor, in truth, to fill the empty place;
Nor any joy nor season's jollity
Can aught indeed avail to grace our grief.
Can spring return to him a brother's face,
Or bring my darling back to me—to me?
Undimmed the May went on with bird and bower;
The summer filled and faded like a flower;
But rainy autumn and the red-turned leaf
Found us at tears and wept for company.
Each common object too, the house, the grove,
The street, the face, the ware in the window, seems
Alien and sad, the wreck of perished dreams;
Painfully present, yet remote in love.
The day goes down in rain, the winds blow wide.
I leave the town; I climb the mountain side,
Striving from stumps and stones to wring relief,
And in the senseless anger of my grief,
I rave and weep, I roar to the unmoved skies;
But the wild tempest carries away my cries.
Then back I turn to hide my face in sleep,
Again with dawn the same dull round to sweep,
And buy and sell and prate and laugh and chide,
As if she had not lived, or had not died.
And so, as this great sphere (now turning slow
Up to the light from that abyss of stars,
Now wheeling into gloom through sunset bars)—
With all its elements of form and flow,
And life in life; where crowned, yet blind, must go
The sensible king,—is but an Unity
Compressed of motes impossible to know;
Which worldlike yet in deep analogy,
Have distance, march, dimension, and degree;
So the round earth—which we the world do call—
Is but a grain in that that mightiest swells,
Whereof the stars of light are particles,
As ultimate atoms of one infinite Ball,
On which God moves, and treads beneath his feet the All!
GREEN RIVER CEMETERY
DEDICATION HYMN
Beside the River's dark green flow,
Here, where the pine trees weep,
Red Autumn's winds will coldly blow
Above their dreamless sleep:
Their sleep, for whom with prayerful breath
We've put apart today
This spot, for shadowed walks of Death,
And gardens of decay.
This crumbling bank with Autumn crowned,
These pining woodland ways,
Seem now no longer common ground;
But each in turn conveys
A saddened sense of something more:
Is it the dying year?
Or a dim shadow, sent before,
Of the next gathering here?
Is it that He, the silent Power,
Has now assumed the place
And drunk the light of morning's house,
The life of Nature's grace?
Not so-the spot is beautiful,
And holy is the sod;
Tis we are faint, our eyes are dull;
All else is fair in God.
So let them lie, their graves bedecked,
Whose bones these shades invest,
Nor grief deny, nor fear suspect,
The beauty of their rest.
---------------------------------
8:00? 8:25? 8:40? Find a flick in no time
with theYahoo! Search movie showtime shortcut.
|