In this installment, Aracelis Girmay reads “Dream-Pedlary” by Thomas Lovell Beddoes. Girmay is the author of Teeth, a collection of poems published by Curbstone Press in 2007. Her poems have also been published in Ploughshares, Bellevue Literary Review, Indiana Review, Callaloo, and MiPOesias, among other journals. A Cave Canem fellow, Girmay teaches writing workshops in New York & California.

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Thomas Lovell Beddoes, “Dream-Pedlary”

If there were dreams to sell,
What would you buy?
Some cost a passing bell;
Some a light sigh,
That shakes from Life’s fresh crown
Only a rose-leaf down.
If there were dreams to sell,
Merry and sad to tell,
And the crier rang the bell,
What would you buy?

A cottage lone and still,
With bowers nigh,
Shadowy, my woes to still,
Until I die.
Such pearls from Life’s fresh crown
Fain would I shake me down.
Were dreams to have at will,
This would best heal my ill,
This would I buy.

But there were dreams to sell
Ill didst thou buy;
Life is a dream, they tell,
Waking, to die.
Dreaming a dream to prize,
Is wishing ghosts to rise;
And, if I had the spell
To call the buried well,
Which one should I?

If there are ghosts to raise,
What shall I call
Out of hell’s murky haze,
Heaven’s blue pall?
Raise my lov’d long-lost boy
To lead me to his joy.
There are no ghosts to raise;
Out of death lead no ways;
Vain is the call.

Know’st thou not ghosts to sue?
No love thou hast.
Else lie, as I will do,
And breathe thy last.
So out of Life’s fresh crown
Fall like a rose-leaf down.
Thus are the ghosts to woo;
Thus are all dreams made true,
Ever to last!

DougGuerra Uncategorized aracelis girmay, dream-pedlary, thomas lovell beddoes

In this installment, Alan Halsey reads “Song in the Air” by Thomas Lovell Beddoes. Halsey’s books include The Text of Shelley’s Death (1995), Wittgenstein’s Devil: Selected Writing 1978-98 (2000) and Marginalien (2005). His 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 & work have appeared in various journals & pamphlets. Learn more about him here.

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Thomas Lovell Beddoes, “Song in the Air”

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.

admin Uncategorized alan halsey, song in the air, thomas lovell beddoes

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.

admin Uncategorized geraldine monk, thomas lovell beddoes, we do lie beneath the grass

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