Poetry Feature Confinement Editors' Prefaces Masters Peers    Poetry I    Poetry II Special 8-Piece Cycle by D. Nurkse Contributor Notes © 2001 Margo Berdeshevsky (Contact) ~ . ~ . ~ Traditional: Lovelace "To Althea" Coleridge "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison" Wordworth "Nuns Fret Not" Hopkins "The Caged Skylark" Modern: Wilde "Reading Gaol" (excerpt) Rilke "The Panther" (new translation) cummings "my love is building a building" Crane "The Broken Tower" (excerpt) ~ . ~ . ~ To Althea, from Prison Richard Lovelace When Love with unconfinèd wings    Hovers within my gates; And my divine Althea brings    To whisper at the grates; When I lie tangled in her hair,    And fettered to her eye; The birds, that wanton in the air,    Know no such liberty. When flowing cups run swiftly round    With no allaying Thames, Our careless heads with roses bound,    Our hearts with loyal flames; When thirsty grief in wine we steep,    When healths and draughts go free, Fishes that tipple in the deep,    Know no such liberty. When (like committed linnets) I    With shriller throat shall sing The sweetness, mercy, majesty,    And glories of my King; When I shall voice aloud, how good    He is, how great should be, Enlargèd winds that curl the flood,    Know no such liberty. Stone walls do not a prison make,    Nor iron bars a cage; Minds innocent and quiet take    That for an hermitage; If I have freedom in my Love,    And in my soul am free; Angels alone that soar above,    Enjoy such liberty. (1649) ~ .~ This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison Samuel Coleridge (1772-1834) In the June of 1797 some long-expected Friends paid a visit to the author's cottage; and on the morning of their arrival, he met with an accident [his wife poured scalding milk on his foot] which disabled him from walking during the whole time of their stay. One evening, when they had left him for a few hours, he composed the following lines in the garden-bower. (SC) Well, they are gone, and here must I remain, This lime-tree bower my prison! I have lost Beauties and feelings, such as would have been Most sweet to my remembrance even when age Had dimm'd mine eyes to blindness! They, meanwhile, Friends, whom I never more may meet again, On springy heath, along the hill-top edge, Wander in gladness, and wind down, perchance, To that still roaring dell, of which I told; The roaring dell, o'erwooded, narrow, deep, And only speckled by the mid-day sun; Where its slim trunk the ash from rock to rock Flings arching like a bridge;—that branchless ash, Unsunn'd and damp, whose few poor yellow leaves Ne'er tremble in the gale, yet tremble still, Fann'd by the water-fall! and there my friends Behold the dark green file of long lank weeds, That all at once (a most fantastic sight!) Still nod and drip beneath the dripping edge Of the blue clay-stone.                Now, my friends emerge Beneath the wide wide Heaven—and view again The many-steepled tract magnificent Of hilly fields and meadows, and the sea, With some fair bark, perhaps, whose sails light up The slip of smooth clear blue betwixt two Isles Of purple shadow! Yes! they wander on In gladness all; but thou, methinks, most glad, My gentle-hearted Charles! for thou hast pined And hunger'd after Nature, many a year, In the great City pent, winning thy way With sad yet patient soul, through evil and pain And strange calamity! Ah! slowly sink Behind the western ridge, thou glorious Sun! Shine in the slant beams of the sinking orb, Ye purple heath-flowers! richlier burn, ye clouds! Live in the yellow light, ye distant groves! And kindle, thou blue Ocean! So my friend Struck with deep joy may stand, as I have stood, Silent with swimming sense; yea, gazing round On the wide landscape, gaze till all doth seem Less gross than bodily; and of such hues As veil the Almighty Spirit, when yet he makes Spirits perceive his presence.                A delight Comes sudden on my heart, and I am glad As I myself were there! Nor in this bower, This little lime-tree bower, have I not mark'd Much that has sooth'd me. Pale beneath the blaze Hung the transparent foliage; and I watch'd Some broad and sunny leaf, and lov'd to see The shadow of the leaf and stem above Dappling its sunshine! And that walnut-tree Was richly ting'd, and a deep radiance lay Full on the ancient ivy, which usurps Those fronting elms, and now, with blackest mass Makes their dark branches gleam a lighter hue Through the late twilight: and though now the bat Wheels silent by, and not a swallow twitters, Yet still the solitary humble-bee Sings in the bean-flower! Henceforth I shall know That Nature ne'er deserts the wise and pure; No plot so narrow, be but Nature there, No waste so vacant, but may well employ Each faculty of sense, and keep the heart Awake to Love and Beauty! and sometimes 'Tis well to be bereft of promis'd good, That we may lift the soul, and contemplate With lively joy the joys we cannot share. My gentle-hearted Charles! when the last rook Beat its straight path along the dusky air Homewards, I blest it! deeming its black wing (Now a dim speck, now vanishing in light) Had cross'd the mighty Orb's dilated glory, While thou stood'st gazing; or, when all was still, Flew creeking o'er thy head, and had a charm For thee, my gentle-hearted Charles, to whom No sound is dissonant which tells of Life. (1797) ~ . ~ Nuns Fret Not William Wordsworth Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room; And hermits are contented with their cells; And students with their private citadels; Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom, Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom, High as the highest Peak of Furness-fells, Will murmur by the hour in the foxglove bells: In truth the prison, unto which we doom Ourselves, no prison is: and hence for me, In sundry moods, 'twas pastime to be bound Within the sonnet's scanty plant of ground; Pleased if some souls (for such there needs must be) Who have felt the weight of too much liberty, Should find brief solace there, as I have found. (1806) ~ . ~ The Caged Skylark Gerard Manley Hopkins As a dare-gate skylark scanted in a dull cage,         Man's mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house, dwells—         That bird beyond the remembering his free fells; This in drudgery, day-labouring-out life's age. Though aloft on turf or perch or poor low stage         Both sing sometimes the sweetest, sweetest spells,         Yet both droop deadly sometimes in their cells Or wring their barriers in bursts of fear or rage. Not that the sweet-fowl, song-fowl needs no rest— Why, hear him, hear him babble and drop down to his nest,         But his own nest, wild nest, no prison. Man's spirit will be flesh-bound, when found at best, But uncumbered meadow-down is not distressed         For a rainbow footing it nor he for his bones risen. [ - - ] ~ . ~ Oscar Wilde ~ . ~ The Panther R.M. Rilke In the Jardin des Plantes, Paris His gaze is weary from scanning the bars blank as the nothing his look contains. To him they seem the thousand bars that are and beyond a thousand bars no world remains. Soft, his gait, all grace and strength revolves in the smallest orbitide like a dance of force around a center where will stands huge and stupefied. On rare occasion, his pupils' curtain parts without a sound. In comes imagery, enters the tense stillness of his limbs and ceases in the heart to be. (from New Poems, 1907, 1908) (Transl.: M Holm) ~ . Der Panther Im Jardin des Plantes, Paris Sein Blick ist vom Vorübergehn der Stäbe so müd' geworden, daß er nichts mehr hält. Ihm ist, als ob es tausend Stäbe gäbe und hinter tausend Stäben keine Welt. Der weiche Gang geschmeidig starker Schritte, der sich im allerkleinsten Kreise dreht, ist wie ein Tanz von Kraft um eine Mitte, in der betäubt ein großer Wille steht. Nur manchmal schiebt der Vorhang der Pupille sich lautlos auf. Dann geht ein Bild hinein, geht durch der Glieder angespannte Stille und hört im Herzen auf zu sein. ~ . ~ my love is building a building e.e. cummings II my love is building a building around you, a frail slippery house, a strong fragile house (beginning at the singular beginning of your smile) a skilful uncouth prison, a precise clumsy prison (building thatandthis into Thus, Around the reckless magic of your mouth) my love is building a magic, a discrete tower of magic and (as i guess) when Farmer Death (whom fairies hate) shall crumble the mouth-flower fleet He'll not my tower,                             laborious, casual where the surrounded smile                                     hangs                                             breathless (from Sonnets - Actualities) ~ . ~ The Broken Tower (excerpt) Hart Crane The bell-rope that gathers God at dawn Dispatches me as though I dropped down the knell Of a spent day—to wander the cathedral lawn From pit to crucifix, feet chill on steps from hell. Have you not heard, have you not seen that corps Of shadows in the tower, whose shoulders sway Antiphonal carillons launched before The stars are caught and hived in the sun's ray? The bells, I say, the bells break down their tower; And swing I now not where. Their tongues engrave Membrane through marrow, my long-scattered score Of broken intervals. …And I, their sexton slave! [ … ] And builds, within, a tower that is not stone (Not stone can jacket heaven)—but slip Of pebbles—visible wings of silence down In azure circles, widening as they dip The matrix of the heart, lift down the eye That shrines the quiet lake and swells a tower … The commodious, tall decorum of that sky Unseals her earth, and lifts love in its shower. (1933) ~ . ~ . ~