THE CONGO

BY VACHEL LINDSAY

I. THEIR BASIC SAVAGERY

Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room,

Barrel-house kings, with feet unstable,

Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table,

Pounded on the table,

Beat an empty barrel with the handle of a broom,

Hard as they were able,

Boom, boom, BOOM,

With a silk umbrella and the handle of a broom,

Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM.

THEN I had religion, THEN I had a vision.

I could not turn from their revel in derision.

THEN I SAW THE CONGO, CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK,

CUTTING THROUGH THE FOREST WITH A GOLDEN TRACK.

Then along that riverbank

A thousand miles

Tattooed cannibals danced in files;

Then I heard the boom of the blood-lust song

And a thigh-bone beating on a tin-pan gong.

And “BLOOD” screamed the whistles and the fifes of the warriors,

“BLOOD” screamed the skull-faced, lean witch-doctors,

“Whirl ye the deadly voo-doo rattle,

Harry the uplands,

Steal all the cattle,

Rattle-rattle, rattle-rattle,

Bing.

Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM,”

A roaring, epic, rag-time tune

From the mouth of the Congo

To the Mountains of the Moon.

Death is an Elephant,

Torch-eyed and horrible,

Foam-flanked and terrible.

BOOM, steal the pygmies,

BOOM, kill the Arabs,

BOOM, kill the white men,

HOO, HOO, HOO.

Listen to the yell of Leopold’s ghost

Burning in Hell for his hand-maimed host.

Hear how the demons chuckle and yell

Cutting his hands off, down in Hell.

Listen to the creepy proclamation,

Blown through the lairs of the forest-nation,

Blown past the white-ants’ hill of clay,

Blown past the marsh where the butterflies play: —

“Be careful what you do,

Or Mumbo-Jumbo, God of the Congo,

And all of the other

Gods of the Congo,

Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you,

Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you,

Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you.”

THE LADY OF THE LAKE

by Sir Walter Scott

xxx

Harp of the North! that mouldering long hast hung

   On the witch-elm that shades Saint Fillan's spring

And down the fitful breeze thy numbers flung,

   Till envious ivy did around thee cling,

Muffling with verdant ringlet every string,--

   O Minstrel Harp, still must thine accents sleep?

Mid rustling leaves and fountains murmuring,

   Still must thy sweeter sounds their silence keep,

Nor bid a warrior smile, nor teach a maid to weep?

An annotated version by William J. Rolfe can be found here.

CHILDHOOD

The bestest time of your life 

When you feel very, very good

What is that time called? 

Oh Yes! Its childhood! 

xxx

It’s the only time you remember

When you were in your best mood

What is that time called? 

Oh Yes! Its childhood! 

It’s the time you don’t need to study

And have lots of time to play in house and woods

What is that time called? 

Oh Yes! Its childhood! 

It’s the only time when

Your mother herself feeds you food

What is that time called? 

Oh Yes! Its childhood! 

It’s the only time in life

For which the most willing must be you 

Which can never return again once gone

It is called childhood!

BY ASHMITA SAHA

A PSALM OF LIFE

xxx

BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

What The Heart Of The Young Man Said To The Psalmist.

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,

   Life is but an empty dream!

For the soul is dead that slumbers,

   And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!

   And the grave is not its goal;

Dust thou art, to dust returnest,

   Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,

   Is our destined end or way;

But to act, that each to-morrow

   Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,

   And our hearts, though stout and brave,

Still, like muffled drums, are beating

   Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world’s broad field of battle,

   In the bivouac of Life,

Be not like dumb, driven cattle!

   Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!

   Let the dead Past bury its dead!

Act,— act in the living Present!

   Heart within, and God o’erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us

   We can make our lives sublime,

And, departing, leave behind us

   Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,

   Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,

A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,

   Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,

   With a heart for any fate;

Still achieving, still pursuing,

   Learn to labor and to wait.

THE ROAD NOT TAKEN

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

by Robert Frost

photo from pinterest

THE WALTZ WE WERE BORN FOR

xxx

I never knew them all, just hummed

and thrummed my fingers with the radio,

driving five hundred miles to Austin.

Her arms held all the songs I needed.

Our boots kept time with fiddles

and the charming sobs of blondes,

the whine of steel guitars

sliding us down in deer-hide chairs

when jukebox music was over.

Sad music’s on my mind tonight

in a jet high over Dallas, earphones

on channel five. A lonely singer,

dead, comes back to beg me,

swearing in my ears she’s mine,

rhymes set to music that make

her lies seem true. She’s gone

and others like her, leaving their songs

to haunt us. Letting down through clouds

I know who I’ll find waiting at the gate,

the same woman faithful to my arms

as she was those nights in Austin

when the world seemed like a jukebox,

our boots able to dance forever,

our pockets full of coins.

By Walt McDonald, 1934

TO THE MOON

The Bay of Naples at moonlit night by Ivan Aivazovsky

Art thou pale for weariness

     Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,

Wandering companionless

     Among the stars that have a different birth,

And ever changing, like a Joyless eye

     That finds no object worth its constancy?

By Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) 

A MAN SAID TO THE UNIVERSE

xxx

“A man said to the universe: 'Sir, I exist!' 

'However,' replied the universe. 

'The fact has not created in me

A sense of obligation.” 

~ Stephen Crane, War Is Kind and Other Poems

REQUIEM

xxx

Under the wide and starry sky,

Dig the grave and let me lie.

Glad did I live and gladly die,

    And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:

Here he lies where he longed to be;

Home is the sailor, home from sea,

    And the hunter home from the hill.

~ Robert Louis Stevenson ~

WHY HEAR'ST THOU MUSIC SADLY

>>

Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly?

Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy.

Why lov'st thou that which thou receiv'st not gladly,

Or else receiv'st with pleasure thine annoy?

If the true concord of well-tunèd sounds,

By unions married, do offend thine ear,

They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds

In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear.

Mark how one string, sweet husband to another,

Strikes each in each by mutual ordering,

Resembling sire and child and happy mother,

Who, all in one, one pleasing note do sing;

Whose speechless song being many, seeming one,

Sings this to thee: "Thou single wilt prove none."

Sonnet 8 by William Shakespeare

GRETNA GREEN

>>

Last night when I kissed you,

My soul caught alight;

And oh! how I missed you

The rest of the night -

Till Love in derision

Smote sleep with his wings,

And gave me in vision

Impossible things.

TREES

I THINK that I shall never see  

A poem as lovely as a tree.  

  A tree whose hungry mouth is prest  

Against the sweet earth's flowing breast;  

  A tree that looks at God all day,

And lifts her leafy arms to pray;  

  A tree that may in summer wear  

A nest of robins in her hair;  

  Upon whose bosom snow has lain;  

Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,  

But only God can make a tree.

A poem by Joyce Kilmer

SHIPWRECK

>>

It tossed and tossed, —

A little brig I knew, —

O'ertook by blast,

It spun and spun,

And groped delirious, for morn.

It slipped and slipped,

As one that drunken stepped;

Its white foot tripped,

Then dropped from sight.

Ah, brig, good-night

To crew and you;

The ocean's heart too smooth, too blue,

To break for you.

~ Emily Dickinson ~

The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Series Two.