Bright Star! Would I Were Steadfast by John Keats

Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art –
Not in lone splendor hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature’s patient sleepless Eremite.
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors: -
No – yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow’d upon my fair Love’s ripening breast
To feel forever its soft fall and swell,
Awake forever in a sweet unrest;
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever, – or else swoon to death.

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Sonnet 12 – Worth by Dennis Lange

Susan Boyle(Photo credit: Deborah Wilbanks via Wikipedia)

Sonnet 12   Worth

A Talent double tragedy occurred,
When Susan Boyle stood lone upon the stage;
Disdain and disbelief, without a word
On faces showed, an instant sour gauge.

She seemed as if a housewife freshly done
With washing dishes, apron put away,
No standing save that of a cloistered nun
Who, without looks or style, is gi’en no say.

But when sweet nightingale stood up to sing,
Jaws dropped as fast as jumper with no chute;
Her stock had risen, praise began to ring
As if, by talent, value made acute.

But price that’s paid for man is what he’s worth,
That bar set by the Cross before his birth.

__________________________________

Susan Boyle’s audition, about which the sonnet was
written, can be seen and heard here, along with the
priceless reaction of Simon Cowell.  I never tire of
watching this inspiring moment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jca_p_3FcWA&feature=related

__________________________________

© Dennis Lange and thebardonthehill.wordpress.com, 2012.

 

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The Human Seasons by John Keats

(photo credits: Spring – BenHur, Summer – Nova, Autumn – Jongleur100 and Winter – SpaceJ via Wikipedia)

          The Human Seasons

Four Seasons fill the measure of the year;
There are four seasons in the mind of man:
He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear
Takes in all beauty with an easy span:

He has his Summer, when luxuriously
Spring’s honey’d cud of youthful though he loves
To ruminate, and by such dreaming high
Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves

His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings
He furleth close: contented so to look
On mists in idleness – to let fair things
Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook.

He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,
Or else he would forego his mortal nature.

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Sonnet II – When Forty Winters by William Shakespeare

                         Sonnet II

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field,
Thy youth’s proud livery, so gaz’d on now,
Will be a tatter’d weed of small worth held.
Then being ask’d where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days,
To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes
Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserv’d thy beauty’s use
If thou couldst answer, ‘This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count and make my old excuse,’
Proving his beauty by succession thine!
This were to be new made when thou art old
And see thy blood warm when thou feel’st it cold.

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Sleep (a sonnet) by Sir Philip Sidney

                                Sleep

Come, Sleep: O Sleep! the certain knot of peace,
The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe,
The poor man’s wealth, the prisoner’s release,
Th’ indifferent judge between the high and low;

With shield of proof shield me from out the prease
Of those fierce darts Despair at me doth throw:
O make in me, those civil wars to cease;
I will good tribute pay, if thou do so.

Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed,
A chamber deaf of noise and blind of light,
A rosy garland and a weary head:
And if these things, as being thine in right,

Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me,
Livelier than elsewhere, Stella’s image see.

 

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Sonnet 14 – Some Bear A Silent Burden by Dennis Lange

Sonnet 14 – Some Bear A Silent Burden

Some bear a silent burden all alone,
Like hiker on a path with heavy pack
With none around to roll away the stone
Another, heartless, loaded on his back.

The nearest one, who should be there to share,
Because a common trail the two have trod,
Has strayed and changed, damaged beyond repair
Since salt was strewn in their once-fertile sod.

Dry withered love and ancient’s sagging breasts,
Both bore, now barren, what was once the rage.
Now, neither honors nurturing requests –
One cold as ice; the other dead with age.

Such lack of love is called, succinctly, hate;
An emptiness which wears with greatest weight.

——————–

© Dennis Lange and thebardonthehill.wordpress.com, 2012.

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Sonnet by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

                             Sonnet

First time he kissed me, he but only kiss’d
The fingers of this hand wherewith I write;
And ever since, it grew more clean and white,
Slow to world-greetings, quick with its “Oh, list,”
When the angels speak.  A ring of amethyst
I could not wear here, plainer to my sight,
Than that first kiss.  The second pass’d in height
The first, and sought the forehead, and half miss’d,
Half falling on the hair.  Oh, beyond meed!
That was the chrism of love, which love’s own crown,
With sanctifying sweetness, did precede.
The third upon my lips was folded down
In perfect, purple state; since when, indeed,
I have been proud, and said, “My love, my own!”

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Sonnet by John Keats

Countryside (Photo credit: Bill Harrison through Wikipedia)

Sonnet

To one who has been long in city pent,
‘Tis very sweet to look into the fair
And open face of heaven, – to breath a prayer
Full in the smile of the blue firmament.
Who is more happy, when, with heart content,
Fatigued he sinks into some pleasant lair
Of wavy grass, and reads a debonair
And gentle tale of love and languishment?
Returning home at evening, with an ear
Catching the notes of Philomel, – an eye
Watching the sailing cloudlet’s bright career,
He mourns that day so soon has glided by:
E’en like the passage of an angel’s tear
That falls through the clear ether silently.

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Sonnet 19 – Fog Weeps by Dennis Lange

Windshield Wipers (Photo credit: shannylynne)

Sonnet 19 – Fog Weeps

Fog weeps against my windshield as I drive;
It knows it is a wisp, a passing mist
That comes on suddenly but can’t survive
For long, past when the sun this earth has kissed.

We weigh its time against the length of day,
And find it transitory, short in span.
It is the sun that lasts, that rules, holds sway,
As fog morosely packs its caravan.

I weigh my years against the centuries,
And find I barely tip the cosmic scale.
I feel the sun, the heated, speeding breeze,
And sense the brevity of life, and wail.

I weep upon the windshield of the world;
I am a moment’s mist against it hurled.

————————————————-

© Dennis Lange and thebardonthehill.wordpress.com, 2012.

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On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer by John Keats

On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer

Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,
   And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
   Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
   That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne:
   Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
   When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
   He star’d at the Pacific – and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise -
   Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

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