Poets on Poets: Halsey Reading Beddoes
This week, Poets on Poets MP3 archive presents more Beddoes: Alan Halsey reading “Song in the Air.” Halsey’s edition of the later text of Beddoes’s Death’s Jest-Book was published by West House Books in 2003, and his several essays on Beddoes’s life and work have appeared in various journals and pamphlets.
Here’s the poem:
The moon doth mock and make me crazy,
And midnight tolls her horrid claim
On ghostly homage. Fie, for shame!
Deaths, to stand painted there so lazy.
There’s nothing but the stars about us,
And they’re no tell-tales, but shine quiet:
Come out, and hold a midnight riot,
Where no mortal fool dare flout us:
And, as we rattle in the moonlight pale;
Wanderers shall think ’tis the nightingale.
Categories: Poets on Poets
