In this installment, Geraldine Monk reads “We do lie beneath the grass” by Thomas Lovell Beddoes. Monk was born in England in 1952. Her work has appeared in many of the major anthologies including Conductors of Chaos, the Oxford Anthology of 20th Century British & Irish Poetry and the first Ahadada Reader. Noctivagations, her 2001 collection of poetry and other texts was published by West House Books and her Selected Poems from Salt Publications appeared in 2003. Escafeld Hangings her latest collection is due to be published by West House Books in 2005. More information and a personal web page is available here.

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Thomas Lovell Beddoes, Death’s Jest Book, “We do lie beneath the grass”

We do lie beneath the grass
In the moonlight, in the shade
Of the yew-tree. They that pass
Hear us not. We are afraid
They would envy our delight,
In our graves by glow-worm night.

Come follow us, and smile as we;
We sail to the rock in the ancient waves,
Where the snows fall by thousands into the sea,
And the drown’d and the shipwreck’d have happy graves.

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In this installment, Geraldine Monk reads “If thou wilt ease thine heart” by Thomas Lovell Beddoes. Monk was born in England in 1952. Her work has appeared in many of the major anthologies including Conductors of Chaos, the Oxford Anthology of 20th Century British & Irish Poetry and the first Ahadada Reader. Noctivagations, her 2001 collection of poetry and other texts was published by West House Books and her Selected Poems from Salt Publications appeared in 2003. Escafeld Hangings her latest collection is due to be published by West House Books in 2005. More information and a personal web page is available here.

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Thomas Lovell Beddoes, Death’s Jest Book, “If thou wilt ease thine heart”

If thou wilt ease thine heart
Of love and all its smart,
Then sleep, dear, sleep;
And not a sorrow
Hang any tear on your eye-lashes;
Lie still and deep,
Sad soul, until the sea-wave washes
The rim o’ the sun to-morrow,
In eastern sky.

But wilt thou cure thine heart
Of love and all its smart,
Then die, dear, die;
’T is deeper, sweeter,
Than on a rose bank to lie dreaming
With folded eye;
And then alone, amid the beaming
Of love’s stars, thou ’lt meet her
In eastern sky.

admin Uncategorized geraldine monk, if thou wilt ease thine heart, thomas lovell beddoes

In this installment, Michael Collier reads “Emmonsail’s Health in Winter” by John Clare. Collier is a professor of English at the University of Maryland and director of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Middlebury College.

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John Clare, “Emmonsail’s Heath in Winter”

I love to see the old heath’s withered brake
Mingle its crimpled leaves with furze and ling,
While the old heron from the lonely lake
Starts slow and flaps his melancholy wing,
And oddling crow in idle motions swing
On the half rotten ashtree’s topmost twig,
Beside whose trunk the gipsy makes his bed.
Up flies the bouncing woodcock from the brig
Where a black quagmire quakes beneath the tread,
The fieldfares chatter in the whistling thorn
And for the awe round fields and closen rove,
And coy bumbarrels twenty in a drove
Flit down the hedgerows in the frozen plain
And hang on little twigs and start again.

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In this installment, Michael Collier reads “The Mouse’s Nest” by John Clare. Collier is a professor of English at the University of Maryland and director of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Middlebury College.

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John Clare, “The Mouse’s Nest”

I found a ball of grass among the hay
And proged it as I passed and went away
And when I looked I fancied something stirred
And turned again and hoped to catch the bird
When out an old mouse bolted in the wheat
With all her young ones hanging at her teats
She looked so odd and so grotesque to me
I ran and wondered what the thing could be
And pushed the knapweed bunches where I stood
When the mouse hurried from the crawling brood
The young ones squeaked and when I went away
She found her nest again among the hay.
The water o’er the pebbles scarce could run
And broad old cesspools glittered in the sun.

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In this installment, Curtis Bauer reads “To Autumn” by John Keats. Bauer is the author of Fence Line, winner of the 2003 John Ciardi Prize for Poetry selected by Christopher Buckley.  He is a graduate of Central College and earned the Master of Fine Arts in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College. His poetry, non fiction, and translations have appeared in Rivendell, The Cortland Review, Barrow Street, The Iowa Review, Rhino, and numerous other journals. He co-directs the Writing Studio at Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, Iowa.

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John Keats, “To Autumn”

1.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

2.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

3.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

admin Uncategorized curtis bauer, john keats, to autumn