In this installment, Geoffrey Brock reads “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” by John Keats. Brock is the author of Weighing Light (Ivan R. Dee, 2005) and the translator of books by Cesare Pavese, Roberto Calasso, and Umberto Eco. He has held a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, an NEA Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, and he is on the faculty of the Programs in Creative Writing and Translation at the University of Arkansas. His website is www.geoffreybrock.com.

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John Keats, “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”

I.

O WHAT can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has wither’d from the lake,
And no birds sing.

II.

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms!
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel’s granary is full,
And the harvest’s done.

III.

I see a lily on thy brow
With anguish moist and fever dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.

IV.

I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful—a faery’s child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.

V.

I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She look’d at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.

VI.

I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A faery’s song.

VII.

She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna dew,
And sure in language strange she said—
“I love thee true.”

VIII.

She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she wept, and sigh’d fill sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.

IX.

And there she lulled me asleep,
And there I dream’d—Ah! woe betide!
The latest dream I ever dream’d
On the cold hill’s side.

X.

I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried—“La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!”

XI.

I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill’s side.

XII.

And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is wither’d from the lake,
And no birds sing.

admin Uncategorized geoffrey brock, john keats, la belle dame sans merci

In this installment, Michael Haslam reads four stanzas from “Child Harold” by John Clare. Haslman (b. Bolton, Lancashire, U.K., 1947) has lived at Foster Clough, on the Pennine moor-edge above Hebden Bridge, in the Upper Calder Valley, West Yorkshire, since 1970, writing, loving and labouring in the immediate vicinity. Publications include Continual Song (Open Township 1986), A Whole Bauble: Collected Poems 1977-94 (Carcanet 1995), The Music Laid her Songs in Language (Arc 2001), and A Sinner Saved by Grace (Arc 2005).

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John Clare, Four Stanzas from “Child Harold”

My life hath been one love — no blot it out
My life hath been one chain of contradictions —
Madhouses Prisons wh-re shops — never doubt
But that my life hath had some strong convictions
That such was wrong — religion makes restrictions
I would have followed — but life turned a bubble
& clumb the giant stile of maledictions
They took me from my wife & to save trouble
I wed again & made the error double

Yet abscence claims them both & keeps them too
& locks me in a shop in spite of law
Among a low lived set & crew
Here let the Muse oblivions curtain draw
& let man think — for God hath often saw
Things here too dirty for the light of day
For in a madhouse there exists no law —
Now stagnant grows my too refined clay
I envy birds their wings to flye away

How servile is the task to please alone
Through beauty woo & love inspire the song
Mere painted beauty with her heart of stone
Thinks the world worships while she flaunts along
The flower of sunshine butterflye of song
Give me the truth of heart in womans life
The love to cherish one — & do no wrong
To none — O peace of every care & strife
Is true love in an estimable wife

How beautiful this hill of fern swells on
So beautiful the chappel peeps between
The hornbeams — with its simple bell — Alone
I wander here hid in a palace green
Mary is abscent — but the forest queen
Nature is with me — morning noon & gloaming
I write my poems in these paths unseen
& when among these brakes & beeches roaming
I sigh for truth & home & love & woman

admin Uncategorized child harold, john clare, michael haslam

In this installment, A.J. Collins reads “Song” [“Where, O! where’s the chain to fling”] by Laetitia Elizabeth Landon. Collins was raised in coastal North Carolina. He earned his MFA at the University of California, Irvine. His current work-in-progress is supported by a Schaeffer Fellowship from the International Institute of Modern Letters, and he teaches in the undergraduate creative writing program at the University of Maine, Farmington.

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Laetitia Elizabeth Landon, “Song” ["Where, O! where’s the chain to fling"]

Where, O! where’s the chain to fling,
One that will bind CUPID’s wing,
One that will have longer power
Than the April sun or shower?
Form it not of Eastern gold,
All too weighty it to hold;
Form it neither all of bloom,
Never does love find a tomb
Sudden, soon, as when he meets
Death amid unchanging sweets:
But if you would fling a chain,
And not fling it all in vain,
Like a fairy form a spell
Of all that is changeable,
Take the purple tints that deck,
Meteorlike, the peacock’s neck;
Take the many hues that play
On the rainbow’s colour’d way;
Never let a hope appear
Without its companion fear;
Only smile to sigh, and then
Change into a smile again;
Be to-day as sad, as pale,
As minstrel with his lovelorn tale;
But to-morrow gay as all
Life had been one festival.
If a woman would secure
All that makes her reign endure,
And, alas! her reign must be
Ever most in fantasy,
Never let an envious eye
Gaze upon the heart too nigh;
Never let the veil be thrown
Quite aside, as all were known
Of delight and tenderness,
In the spirit’s last recess;
And, one spell all spells above,
Never let her own her love.

admin Uncategorized a.j. collins, laetitia elizabeth landon, song [where o! where's the chain to fling]

In this installment, Rodger LeGrand reads “Darkness” by George Gordon, Lord Byron. LeGrand earned writing degrees from The State University of New York at Oswego and Sarah Lawrence College. His poems have appeared in The Cortland Review, The Atlanta Review, and are forthcoming in Paper Street. Finishing Line Press published his first collection of poems, Various Ways of Thinking about the Universe, in 2005. He has instructed writing courses at Temple University and the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Currently, he teaches writing at North Carolina State University and lives in Greensboro, North Carolina.

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George Gordon, Lord Byron, “Darkness”

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went–and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill’d into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watchfires–and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings–the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consum’d,
And men were gather’d round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other’s face;
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:
A fearful hope was all the world contain’d;
Forests were set on fire–but hour by hour
They fell and faded–and the crackling trunks
Extinguish’d with a crash–and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smil’d;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and look’d up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnash’d their teeth and howl’d: the wild birds shriek’d
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl’d
And twin’d themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless–they were slain for food.
And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again: a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;
All earth was but one thought–and that was death
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails–men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devour’d,
Even dogs assail’d their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famish’d men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lur’d their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answer’d not with a caress–he died.
The crowd was famish’d by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies: they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place
Where had been heap’d a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage; they rak’d up,
And shivering scrap’d with their cold skeleton hands
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld
Each other’s aspects–saw, and shriek’d, and died–
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,
The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless–
A lump of death–a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirr’d within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp’d
They slept on the abyss without a surge–
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon, their mistress, had expir’d before;
The winds were wither’d in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish’d; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them–She was the Universe.

admin Uncategorized darkness, george gordon lord byron, rodger legrand

In this installment, Anne Marie Macari reads “I Am!” by John Clare. Macari‘s first book, Ivory Cradle, won the APR first book prize in 2000. Her second book, Gloryland, was published by Alice James Books in 2005. Her poems have appeared widely in literary magazines and, in 2005, she won the James Dickey Award for poetry from Five Points magazine.

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John Clare, “I Am!”

I am—yet what I am none cares or knows;
My friends forsake me like a memory lost:
I am the self-consumer of my woes—
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shadows in love’s frenzied stifled throes
And yet I am, and live—like vapours tossed

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life or joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems;
Even the dearest that I loved the best
Are strange—nay, rather, stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man hath never trod
A place where woman never smiled or wept
There to abide with my Creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie
The grass below—above the vaulted sky.

admin Uncategorized anne marie macari, i am, john clare