Bus Ride on a Summer Night / George J. Dance

Bus Ride on a Summer Night

Bus crammed, I squeeze and stumble to a seat,
Loathing the heat, rank sweat, and noise, so I
Avert my gaze, stare at a cobalt sky
And miles of matching boxes on the street,

Screen shot from YouTube.

Which cut to a new picture suddenly –
Black velvet crossed by lines of red and white
Clear shining beads, bright rosaries of light,
Stretching past the horizon towards infinity . . .

I see the threads that run through every bead,
Each prayer and fear, each joy and agony,
Entangling into one humanity:
One flesh, one blood, from one uncommon seed –

It's passed; I shift, relax into my seat,
And breathe in human life, so warm, so sweet.

~~
George J. Dance, 2007
from Doggerel, and other doggerel, 2015

[All rights reserved - used with permission]

George J. Dance biography 

The Sun Rising / John Donne

The Sun Rising

                Busy old fool, unruly sun,
                Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run?
                Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
                Late school boys and sour prentices,
        Go tell court huntsmen that the king will ride,
        Call country ants to harvest offices;
Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

                Thy beams, so reverend and strong
                Why shouldst thou think?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
But that I would not lose her sight so long;
                If her eyes have not blinded thine,
                Look, and tomorrow late, tell me,
        Whether both th' Indias of spice and mine
        Be where thou leftst them, or lie here with me.
Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,
And thou shalt hear, All here in one bed lay.

                She's all states, and all princes, I;
                Nothing else is;
Princes do but play us; compared to this,
All honor's mimic, all wealth alchemy.
                Thou, sun, art half as happy as we,
                In that the world's contracted thus.
        Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
        To warm the world, that's done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;
This bed thy center is, these walls, thy sphere.

~~
John Donne (1572-1631)
from Poems, 1633

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

John Donne biography

"The Sun Rising" read by Richard Burton. Courtesy Thundridgebury Manor.

Good Friday, 1613, Riding Westward / John Donne

Good Friday, 1613, Riding Westward

Let man’s soul be a sphere, and then, in this,
Th' intelligence that moves, devotion is;
And as the other spheres, by being grown
Subject to foreign motion, lose their own,
And being by others hurried every day,  
Scarce in a year their natural form obey;
Pleasure or business, so, our souls admit
For their first mover, and are whirl’d by it.
Hence is't, that I am carried towards the west,
This day, when my soul's form bends to the East.
There I should see a Sun by rising set,
And by that setting endless day beget.
But that Christ on His cross did rise and fall,
Sin had eternally benighted all.
Yet dare I almost be glad, I do not see
That spectacle of too much weight for me.
Who sees God’s face, that is self-life, must die;
What a death were it then to see God die?
It made His own lieutenant, Nature, shrink,
It made His footstool crack, and the sun wink.
Could I behold those hands, which span the poles
And tune all spheres at once, pierced with those holes?
Could I behold that endless height, which is
Zenith to us and our antipodes,
Humbled below us? or that blood, which is
The seat of all our souls, if not of His,
Made dirt of dust, or that flesh which was worn
By God for His apparel, ragg’d and torn?
If on these things I durst not look, durst I
On His distressed Mother cast mine eye,
Who was God’s partner here, and furnish’d thus
Half of that sacrifice which ransom’d us?
Though these things as I ride be from mine eye,
They’re present yet unto my memory,
For that looks towards them; and Thou look'st towards me,
O Saviour, as Thou hang'st upon the tree.
I turn my back to Thee but to receive
Corrections till Thy mercies bid Thee leave.
O think me worth Thine anger, punish me,
Burn off my rust, and my deformity;      
Restore Thine image, so much, by Thy grace,
That Thou mayst know me, and I’ll turn my face.

~~
John Donne (1572-1631)
From Poems, 1896

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

John Donne biography

"Good Friday, 1613, Riding Westward" read by John Snelling.

The Bright Extensive Will / AE Reiff

The Bright Extensive Will

                         For Beatrice

As starry seas are caught up into clouds
To whirl Earth's sphere throughout all time,
Through space and out, where rising in a shroud
They roll the bright extensive will to find
Their will to fall again in showers, so crowds
Descending off the wheel give misty signs
Of life, and sons of Elohim who bow
From out the sky, concentrated and blind
In all their beams, then enter creation.
As though one could with the word written
In earth's center in the matter of its making,
As earth's heart was into pieces breaking,
Come into the body. Then wars should cease,
And earth, all surface, sky and core, find peace.

~~
AE Reiff, 2017

from The True Light that Lights, 2020

[All rights reserved by the author - Used with permission]

AE Reiff biography

Snow (I-II) / John Davidson

Snow

I

'Who affirms that crystals are alive?'
     I affirm it, let who will deny:
Crystals are engendered, wax and thrive,
     Wane and wither; I have seen them die.

Trust me, masters, crystals have their day,
     Eager to attain the perfect norm,
Lit with purpose, potent to display
     Facet, angle, colour, beauty, form.


II

Water-crystals need for flower and root
     Sixty clear degrees, no less, no more;
Snow, so fickle, still in this acute
     Angle thinks, and learns no other lore:

Such its life, and such its pleasure is,
     Such its art and traffic, such its gain,
Evermore in new conjunctions this
     Admirable angle to maintain.

Crystalcraft in every flower and flake
     Snow exhibits, of the welkin free:
Crystalline are crystals for the sake,
     All and singular, of crystalry.

Yet does every crystal of the snow
     Individualize, a seedling sown
Broadcast, but instinct with power to grow
     Beautiful in beauty of its own.

Every flake with all its prongs and dints
     Burns ecstatic as a new-lit star:
Men are not more diverse, finger prints
     More dissimilar than snow-flakes are.

Worlds of men and snow endure, increase,
     Woven of power and passion to defy
Time and travail: only races cease,
     Individual men and crystals die.

~~

John Davidson (1857-1909)

from Fleet Street, and other poems, 1909

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

"Snow" (I-II) read for Audiobook Passion.

[Read the complete poem here]

John Davidson biography

Snow (III-V) / John Davidson

III

Jewelled shapes of snow whose feathery showers,
     Fallen or falling wither at a breath,
All afraid are they, and loth as flowers
     Beasts and men to tread the way to death.

Once I saw upon an object-glass,
     Martyred underneath a microscope,
One elaborate snow-flake slowly pass,
     Dying hard, beyond the reach of hope.

Still from shape to shape the crystal changed,
     Writhing in its agony; and still,
Less and less elaborate, arranged
     Potently the angle of its will.

Tortured to a simple final form,
     Angles six and six divergent beams,
Lo, in death it touched the perfect norm
     Verifying all its crystal dreams!


IV 

Such the noble tragedy of one
     Martyred snow-flake. Who can tell the fate
Heinous and uncouth of showers undone,
     Fallen in cities!– showers that expiate

Errant lives from polar worlds adrift
     Where the great millennial snows abide;
Castaways from mountain-chains that lift
     Snowy summits in perennial pride;

Nomad snows, or snows in evil day
     Born to urban ruin, to be tossed,
Trampled, shovelled, ploughed and swept away
     Down the seething sewers: all the frost

Flowers of heaven melted up with lees,
     Offal, recrement, but every flake
Showing to the last in fixed degrees
     Perfect crystals for the crystal's sake.


V

Usefulness of snow is but a chance
     Here in temperate climes with winter sent,
Sheltering earth's prolonged hibernal trance:
     All utility is accident.

Sixty clear degrees the joyful snow,
     Practising economy of means,
Fashions endless beauty in, and so
     Glorifies the universe with scenes

Arctic and antarctic: stainless shrouds,
     Ermine woven in silvery frost, attire
Peaks in every land among the clouds
     Crowned with snows to catch the morning's fire.

~~

John Davidson (1857-1909)

from Fleet Street, and other poems, 1909

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

[Read the complete poem here]

John Davidson biography

Hurrahing in Harvest / Gerard Manley Hopkins

Hurrahing in Harvest

Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks rise
   Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behaviour
   Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavier
Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?
I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes,
   Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour;
   And, éyes, heárt, what looks, what lips yet gave you a
Rapturous love's greeting of realer, of rounder replies?
And the azurous hung hills are his world-wielding shoulder
   Majestic — as a stallion stalwart, very-violet-sweet!—
These things, these things were here and but the beholder
   Wanting; which two when they once meet,
The heart rears wings bold and bolder
   And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off under his feet.

~~
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)
from Poems, 1918

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]

Gerard Manley Hopkins biography

"Hurrahing in Harvest" read by Jonathan Roumie. Courtesy World on Fire Institute.

Christmas (I) / George Herbert

I

After all pleasures as I rid one day,
My horse and I, both tired, body and mind,
With full cry of affections, quite astray;
I took up the next inn I could find.

There when I came, whom found I but my dear,
My dearest Lord, expecting till the grief
Of pleasures brought me to Him, ready there
To be all passengers' most sweet relief?

Oh Thou, whose glorious, yet contracted light,
Wrapt in night's mantle, stole into a manger;
Since my dark soul and brutish is Thy right,
To man of all beasts be not Thou a stranger:

Furnish and deck my soul, that Thou mayst have
A better lodging, than a rack, or grave.

~~
George Herbert (1593-1633)
from The Temple, 1633

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

George Herbert biography

"Christmas" I and II read by Dr Iain McGilchrist.

See also: Christmas (II}

Christmas (II) / George Herbert

II

The shepherds sing; and shall I silent be?
      My God, no hymn for Thee?
My soul's a shepherd too; a flock it feeds
      Of thoughts, and words, and deeds.
The pasture is Thy word: the streams, Thy grace
      Enriching all the place.
Shepherd and flock shall sing, and all my powers
      Outsing the daylight hours.
Then will we chide the sun for letting night
      Take up his place and right:
We sing one common Lord; wherefore he should
      Himself the candle hold.
I will go searching, till I find a sun
      Shall stay, till we have done;
A willing shiner, that shall shine as gladly,
      As frost-nipped suns look sadly.
Then will we sing, and shine all our own day,
      And one another pay:
His beams shall cheer my breast, and both so twine,
Till ev'n His beams sing, and my music shine.

~~
George Herbert (1593-1633)
from The Temple, 1633

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

George Herbert biography

See also: Christmas (I}

The Starlight Night / Gerard Manley Hopkins

The Starlight Night

Look at the stars! look, look up at the skies!
   O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!
   The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there!
Down in dim woods the diamond delves! the elves’-eyes!
The grey lawns cold where gold, where quickgold lies!
   Wind-beat whitebeam! airy abeles set on a flare!
   Flake-doves sent floating forth at a farmyard scare!—
Ah well! it is all a purchase, all is a prize.
Buy then! bid then!—What?—Prayer, patience, aims, vows.
Look, look: a May-mess, like on orchard boughs!
   Look! March-bloom, like on mealed-with-yellow sallows!
These are indeed the barn; withindoors house
The shocks. This piece-bright paling shuts the spouse
   Christ home, Christ and his mother and all his hallows.

---
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), 1877
from Poems, 1918

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]

Gerard Manley Hopkins biography

"The Starlight Night" read by The Wordman. Courtesy PoemRecital.

Spring / Gerard Manley Hopkins

Spring

Nothing is so beautiful as spring —

    When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;

    Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush

Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring

The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;

    The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush

    The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush

With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

What is all this juice and all this joy?

    A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning

In Eden garden.— Have, get, before it cloy,

    Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,

Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,

    Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.

~~

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)
from Poems, 1918

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]

Gerard Manley Hopkins biography

"Spring" read by The Wordman. Courtesy PoemRecital.

Icicle Drops / Arthur John Lockhart

Icicle Drops

I

Fast from yon icicle's inverted spire,
Yon shining minims, glittering in the sun,
Fall brightly down, sheen drops of fluent fire,
Momently hanging, — sinking, one by one, —
Sliding clear beads as down a silver wire;
So archer-stars shoot thro' abysses dun;
So blood drips down from the knive's fierce desire;
So fall our moments; so our tears do run.

With drop on drop, with everlasting flow,
With changing atom, and revolving sphere,
Our never-resting lives must downward go; —
Still hung in momentary brightness here,
Then sinking to that breast toward which incline
The drops that glow, and eke the beams that shine.


II

The sun, at length, with a more fervent fire,
Hath gained a subtle mastery of the dawn;
And, still more swiftly, from the less'ning spire
The hastening gems descend, till all are gone.
But, lo! they come! The vanish'd ones surprise
In golden mist, my wistful, musing sight;
Soul o' th' earth, its exhalations rise,
And soon the drops return to air and light.

There shall they hang 'mid purple glooms aloof,
With clouds noon-white, or tinct with crimson eve:
Or shine supreme in Iris' circling woof,
Wherein his married hues the sun doth weave.
And so this falling life shall not remain
Sunk in the earth; 'twill rise to Heaven again.

~~
Arthur John Lockhart (1850-1922)
from Beside the Narraguagus, and other poems, 1895

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]

Arthur John Lockhart biography

The Token / John Donne

Sonnet: The Token

Send me some token, that my hope may live,
    Or that my easeless thoughts may sleep and rest;
Send me some honey to make sweet my hive,
    That in my passion I may hope the best.
I beg no ribbon wrought with thine own hands,
    To knit our loves in the fantastic strain
Of new-toucht youth; nor Ring to shew the stands
    Of our affection, as that’s round and plain,
So should our loves meet in simplicity.
    No, nor the Corals which thy wrist infold,
Lac’d up together in congruity,
    To shew our thoughts should rest in the same hold;
No, nor thy picture, though most gracious,
    And most desir’d, because best like the best;
Nor witty Lines, which are most copious,
    Within the Writings which thou hast addressed.
Send me nor this, nor that, t’increase my store,
But swear thou thinkst I love thee, and no more.

~~
John Donne (1572-1631)
from Poems, 1633

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

John Donne biography

"The Token" read for Audiobook Passion.