St. Michael the Weigher

 

Stood the tall Archangel weighing

All man's dreaming, doing, saying,

All the failure and the pain,

All the triumph and the gain,

In the unimagined years,

Full of hopes, more full of tears,

Since old Adam's hopeless eyes

Backward searched for Paradise,

And, instead, the flame-blade saw

Of inexorable Law.

Waking, I beheld him there,

With his fire-gold, flickering hair,

In his blinding armor stand,

And the scales were in his hand:

Mighty were they, and full well

They could poise both heaven and Hell.

'Angel,' asked I humbly then,

'Weighest thou the souls of men?

That thine office is, I know.'

'Nay,' he answered me, 'not so;

But I weigh the hope of Man

Since the power of choice began,

In the world, of good or ill.'

Then I waited and was still.

In one scale I saw him place

All the glories of our race,

Cups that lit Belsbazzar's feast,

Gems, the lightning of the East,

Kublai's sceptre, Caesar's sword,

Many a poet's golden word,

Many a skill of science, vain

To make men as gods again.

In the other scale he threw

Things regardless, outcast, few,

Martyr-ash, arena sand,

Of St. Francis' cord a strand,

Beechen cups of men whose need

Fasted that the poor might feed,

Disillusions and despairs

Of young saints with, grief-grayed hairs,

Broken hearts that brake for Man.

Marvel through my pulses ran

Seeing then the beam divine

Swiftly on this hand decline,

While Earth's splendor and renown

Mounted light as thistle-down.

James Russell Lowell

BIO: James Russell Lowell (1819 - 1891) was an American poet and member of the Fireside Poets, whose poetry became as popular and highly-regarded as the well-known British poets of his day. Lowell became an abolitionist, often expressing his political views through his poetry, and was hired to be the editor of an abolitionist newspaper. In 1854, he was appointed Professor of Languages at Harvard University. In 1857, he took the job of editor of The Atlantic Monthly. Twenty years later, he was appointed ambassador to Spain. Later on, he became ambassador to the Court of St. James. Lowell was part of the Romantic Movement in poetry and an expert in linguistics. He served as an inspiration to writers such as Mark Twain and H.L. Mecken because of his love of dialects. Some of his abolitionist poetry was used in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. He died at Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1891.

Adam Cast Forth - The Poetry of Jorges Luis Borges

 

Adam Cast Forth

Was there a Garden or was the Garden a dream?

Amid the fleeing light, I have slowed myself and queried,

Almost for consolation, if the bygone period

Over which this Adam, wretched now, once reigned supreme,

Might not have been just a magical illusion

Of that God I dreamed. Already it's imprecise

In my memory, the clear paradise,

But I know it exists, in flower and profusion,

Although not for me. My punishment for life

Is the stubborn earth with the incestuous strife

Of Cains and Abels and their brood; I await no pardon.

Yet, it's much to have loved, to have known true joy,

To have had -- if only for just one day --

The experience of touching the living Garden.

Jorge Luis Borges (translated by Richard Eberhart)

The Art of Poetry

To gaze at a river made of time and water

   And remember Time is another river.

      To know we stray like a river

     and our faces vanish like water.

To feel that waking is another dream

that dreams of not dreaming and that the death

      we fear in our bones is the death

      that every night we call a dream.

To see in every day and year a symbol

   of all the days of man and his years,

   and convert the outrage of the years

   into a music, a sound, and a symbol.

To see in death a dream, in the sunset

   a golden sadness -- such in poetry,

     humble and immortal, poetry,

  returning, like dawn and the sunset.

Sometimes at evening there's a face

that sees us from the deeps of a mirror.

      Art must be that sort of mirror,

      disclosing to each of us his face.

They say Ulysses, wearied of wonders,

      wept with love on seeing Ithaca,

  humble and green. Art is that Ithaca,

      a green eternity, not wonders.

Art is endless like a river flowing,

passing, yet remaining, a mirror to the same

inconstant Heraclitus, who is the same

and yet another, like the river flowing.

Jorge Luis Borges

BIO:  Jorge Luis Borges (24 Aug 1899 - 14 Jun 1986) was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He published poems and essays in surrealist literary journals and became a big proponent of preserving Argentine folklore and history. In 1955, he became director of the National Public Library. A Professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires (he was bilingual in both Spanish and English), he became blind by the age of 55. He received the first Formentor Prize in 1961, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. His works became popular internationally in the 1960s. In 1971, he earned the Jerusalem Prize. He went on to create novels and screenplays and was well-known for his lectures. He died of liver cancer in 1986.

  

   

May and the Poets

 

There is May in books forever;

May will part from Spenser never;

May's in Milton, May's in Prior,

May's in Chaucer, Thomson, Dyer;

May's in all the Italian books: --

She has old and modern nooks,

Where she sleeps with nymphs and elves,

In happy places they call shelves,

And will rise and dress your rooms

With a drapery thick with blooms.

Come, ye rains, then if ye will,

May's at home, and with me still;

But come rather, thou, good weather,

And find us in the fields together.

Leigh Hunt

BIO: Leigh Hunt was born in London, England and became a well-known critic, essayist, poet, and writer. His parents were forced to leave America after the American Revolution due to their loyalty to the Crown. He married and had ten children. His notable poetical work, "The Story of Rimini," was published in 1816. He became editor of The Examiner, a newspaper known for its controversy and rebelliousness against the Crown, and spent time in jail as a result. Well-acquainted with Byron, Lamb, Shelley, Keats, and other intellectuals, Hunt frequently lived in poverty and was forced to seek the patronage of Shelley and then Byron. After Byron dropped him, Hunt published a tell-all book about the notorious Lord and his companions which further isolated him from society. He earned the reputation of a "rascal" and died in 1859. Charles Dickens' Bleak House character, Harold Skimpole, is based on Hunt.