Ode, by Arthur O'Shaughnessy

We are the music makers,

  And we are the dreamers of dreams,

Wandering by lone sea-breakers,

  And sitting by desolate streams;—

World-losers and world-forsakers, 

  On whom the pale moon gleams:

Yet we are the movers and shakers

  Of the world for ever, it seems.

With wonderful deathless ditties

  We build up the world's great cities

And out of a fabulous story

  We fashion an empire's glory:

One man with a dream, at pleasure,

  Shall go forth and conquer a crown;

And three with a new song's measure

  Can trample a kingdom down.

We, in the ages lying

  In the buried past of the earth,

Built Nineveh with our sighing,

  And Babel itself in our mirth;

And o'erthrew them with prophesying

  To the old of the new world's worth;

For each age is a dream that is dying,

  Or one that is coming to birth.

A breath of our inspiration

  Is the life of each generation;

A wondrous thing of our dreaming

  Unearthly, impossible seeming—

The soldier, the king, and the peasant

  Are working together in one,    

Till our dream shall become their present,

  And their work in the world be done.

They had no vision amazing

  Of the goodly house they are raising;

They had no divine foreshowing    

  Of the land to which they are going:

But on one man's soul it hath broken,

  A light that doth not depart;

And his look, or a word he hath spoken,

  Wrought flame in another man's heart.    

And therefore to-day is thrilling

  With a past day's late fulfilling;

And the multitudes are enlisted

  In the faith that their fathers resisted,

And, scorning the dream of to-morrow,  

  Are bringing to pass, as they may,

In the world, for its joy or its sorrow,

  The dream that was scorned yesterday.

But we, with our dreaming and singing,

  Ceaseless and sorrowless we!    

The glory about us clinging

  Of the glorious futures we see,

Our souls with high music ringing:

  O men! it must ever be

That we dwell, in our dreaming and singing,    

  A little apart from ye.

For we are afar with the dawning

  And the suns that are not yet high,

And out of the infinite morning

  Intrepid you hear us cry—    

How, spite of your human scorning,

  Once more God's future draws nigh,

And already goes forth the warning

  That ye of the past must die.

Great hail! we cry to the comers    

  From the dazzling unknown shore;

Bring us hither your sun and your summers;

  And renew our world as of yore;

You shall teach us your song's new numbers,

  And things that we dreamed not before:    

Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers,
  And a singer who sings no more.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou

The free bird leaps

on the back of the wind

and floats downstream

till the current ends

and dips his wings

in the orange sun rays

and dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks

down his narrow cage

can seldom see through

his bars of rage

his wings are clipped and

his feet are tied

so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings

with a fearful trill

of the things unknown

but longed for still

and his tune is heard

on the distant hill

for the caged bird

sings of freedom

The free bird thinks of another breeze

an the trade winds soft through the sighing trees

and the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawn

and he names the sky his own.

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams

his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream

his wings are clipped and his feet are tied

so he opens his throat to sing

The caged bird sings

with a fearful trill

of things unknown

but longed for still

and his tune is heard

on the distant hill

for the caged bird
sings of freedom.

The Hollow Men, by T.S. Eliot

Mistah Kurtz—he dead.

      A penny for the Old Guy

      I

We are the hollow men

We are the stuffed men

Leaning together

Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!

Our dried voices, when

We whisper together

Are quiet and meaningless

As wind in dry grass

Or rats’ feet over broken glass

In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,

Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed

With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom

Remember us—if at all—not as lost

Violent souls, but only

As the hollow men

The stuffed men.

      II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams

In death’s dream kingdom

These do not appear:

There, the eyes are

Sunlight on a broken column

There, is a tree swinging

And voices are

In the wind’s singing

More distant and more solemn

Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer

In death’s dream kingdom

Let me also wear

Such deliberate disguises

Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves

In a field

Behaving as the wind behaves

No nearer—

Not that final meeting

In the twilight kingdom

      III

This is the dead land

This is cactus land

Here the stone images

Are raised, here they receive

The supplication of a dead man’s hand

Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this

In death’s other kingdom

Waking alone

At the hour when we are

Trembling with tenderness

Lips that would kiss

Form prayers to broken stone.

      IV

The eyes are not here

There are no eyes here

In this valley of dying stars

In this hollow valley

This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places

We grope together

And avoid speech

Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless

The eyes reappear

As the perpetual star

Multifoliate rose

Of death’s twilight kingdom

The hope only

Of empty men.    

 

V

Here we go round the prickly pear

Prickly pear prickly pear

Here we go round the prickly pear

At five o’clock in the morning.

Between the idea

And the reality

Between the motion

And the act

Falls the Shadow

                                For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception

And the creation

Between the emotion

And the response

Falls the Shadow

                                Life is very long

Between the desire

And the spasm

Between the potency

And the existence

Between the essence

And the descent

Falls the Shadow

                   For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is

Life is

For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

North American Bear, by Charles Wright

Early November in the soul,

                                    a hard rain, and dusky gold

From the trees, late afternoon

Squint-light and heavy heart-weight.

It's always downleaf and dim.

A sixty-two-year-old, fallow-voiced, night-leaning man,

I stand at ease on the blank sidewalk.

Unhinder my habitat, starlight, make me insoluble;

Negative in my afterscape

                                    sidle the shadow across my mouth.

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Random geometry of the stars,

                                    random word-strings,

As beautiful as the alphabet.

Or so I remember them,

                                    North American Bear,

Orion, Cassiopeia, and the Pleiades,

Stitching their syntax across the deep North Carolina sky

A half-century ago,

The lost language of summer nights, the inarticulate scroll

Of time

                                    pricked on its dark, celestial cylinder.

-------------------------------------

What is it about the stars we can't shake?

                                    What pulse, what tide drop

Pulls us like vertigo upward, what

Height-like reversal urges us towards their clear deeps?

Tonight, for instance,

Something is turning behind my eyes,

                                    something unwept, something unnamable

Spinning its line out.

Who is to say the hijacked heart has not returned to its cage?

Who is to say some angel has not

                                    breathed in my ear?

-------------------------------------

I walk in the chill of the late autumn night

                                    like Orpheus,

Thinking my song, anxious to look back,

My vanished life an ornament, a drifting cloud, behind me,

A soft, ashen transcendence

Buried and resurrected once, then time and again.

The sidewalk unrolls like a deep sleep.

Above me the stars, stern stars,

Uncover their faces.

                                    No heartbeat on my heels, no footfall.

-------------------------------------

Some of these star fires must surely be ash by now.

I dawdle outside in the backyard,

Humming old songs that no one cares about anymore.

The hat of darkness tilts the night sky,

Inch by inch, foot by black foot,

                                    over the Blue Ridge.

How bright the fire of the world was, I think to myself

Before white hair and the ash of days.

I gaze at the constellations,

                                    forgetting whatever it was I had to say.

-------------------------------------

The sidewalk again, unrolling grey and away. 9 p.m.

A cold wind from the far sky.

There is a final solitude I haven’t arrived at yet,

Weariness like a dust in my throat.

                                    I simmer inside its outline,

However, and feel safe, as the stars spill by, for one more night

Like some medieval journeyman enfrescoed with his poem in his hand,

Heaven remaining in my neighborhood.

And like him, too, with something red and inviolate

                                    under my feet.

Ulysses, by Alfred Lord Tennyson

I am a part of all that I have met;

Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough 

Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades 

For ever and for ever when I move. 

How dull it is to pause, to make an end, 

To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!

Death closes all: but something ere the end, 

Some work of noble note, may yet be done,

Come, my friends, 

'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

Though much is taken, much abides; and though 

We are not now that strength which in old days 

Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are; 

One equal temper of heroic hearts, 

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will 

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.