CAMELOT FANTASIES

Voyages




by Hart Crane



 I

 Above the fresh ruffles of the surf
 Bright striped urchins flay each other with sand.
 They have contrived a conquest for shell shucks,
 And their fingers crumble fragments of baked weed
 Gaily digging and scattering.

 And in answer to their treble interjections
 The sun beats lightning on the waves,
 The waves fold thunder on the sand;
 And could they hear me I would tell them:

 O brilliant kids, frisk with your dog,
 Fondle your shells and sticks, bleached
 By time and the elements; but there is a line
 You must not cross nor ever trust beyond it
 Spry cordage of your bodies to caresses
 Too lichen-faithful from too wide a breast.
 The bottom of the sea is cruel.

 II

—And yet this great wink of eternity,
 Of rimless floods, unfettered leewardings,
 Samite sheeted and processioned where
 Her undinal vast belly moonward bends,
 Laughing the wrapt inflections of our love;

 Take this Sea, whose diapason knells
 On scrolls of silver snowy sentences,
 The sceptred terror of whose sessions rends
 As her demeanors motion well or ill,
 All but the pieties of lovers’ hands.

 And onward, as bells off San Salvador
 Salute the crocus lustres of the stars,
 In these poinsettia meadows of her tides,—
Adagios of islands, O my Prodigal,
 Complete the dark confessions her veins spell.

 Mark how her turning shoulders wind the hours,
 And hasten while her penniless rich palms
 Pass superscription of bent foam and wave,—
Hasten, while they are true,—sleep, death, desire,
 Close round one instant in one floating flower.

 Bind us in time, O Seasons clear, and awe.
 O minstrel galleons of Carib fire,
 Bequeath us to no earthly shore until
 Is answered in the vortex of our grave
 The seal’s wide spindrift gaze toward paradise.

 III

 Infinite consanguinity it bears—
This tendered theme of you that light
 Retrieves from sea plains where the sky
 Resigns a breast that every wave enthrones;
 While ribboned water lanes I wind
 Are laved and scattered with no stroke
 Wide from your side, whereto this hour
 The sea lifts, also, reliquary hands.

 And so, admitted through black swollen gates
 That must arrest all distance otherwise,—
Past whirling pillars and lithe pediments,
 Light wrestling there incessantly with light,
 Star kissing star through wave on wave unto
 Your body rocking!
 and where death, if shed,
 Presumes no carnage, but this single change,—
Upon the steep floor flung from dawn to dawn
 The silken skilled transmemberment of song;

 Permit me voyage, love, into your hands ...

 IV

 Whose counted smile of hours and days, suppose
 I know as spectrum of the sea and pledge
 Vastly now parting gulf on gulf of wings
 Whose circles bridge, I know, (from palms to the severe
 Chilled albatross’s white immutability)
 No stream of greater love advancing now
 Than, singing, this mortality alone
 Through clay aflow immortally to you.

 All fragrance irrefragably, and claim
 Madly meeting logically in this hour
 And region that is ours to wreathe again,
 Portending eyes and lips and making told
 The chancel port and portion of our June—

Shall they not stem and close in our own steps
 Bright staves of flowers and quills today as I
 Must first be lost in fatal tides to tell?

 In signature of the incarnate word
 The harbor shoulders to resign in mingling
 Mutual blood, transpiring as foreknown
 And widening noon within your breast for gathering
 All bright insinuations that my years have caught
 For islands where must lead inviolably
 Blue latitudes and levels of your eyes,—

In this expectant, still exclaim receive
 The secret oar and petals of all love.

 V

 Meticulous, past midnight in clear rime,
 Infrangible and lonely, smooth as though cast
 Together in one merciless white blade—
The bay estuaries fleck the hard sky limits.

—As if too brittle or too clear to touch!
 The cables of our sleep so swiftly filed,
 Already hang, shred ends from remembered stars.
 One frozen trackless smile ... What words
 Can strangle this deaf moonlight? For we

 Are overtaken. Now no cry, no sword
 Can fasten or deflect this tidal wedge,
 Slow tyranny of moonlight, moonlight loved
 And changed ... “There’s

 Nothing like this in the world,” you say,
 Knowing I cannot touch your hand and look
 Too, into that godless cleft of sky
 Where nothing turns but dead sands flashing.

“—And never to quite understand!” No,
 In all the argosy of your bright hair I dreamed
 Nothing so flagless as this piracy.

 But now
 Draw in your head, alone and too tall here.
 Your eyes already in the slant of drifting foam;
 Your breath sealed by the ghosts I do not know:
 Draw in your head and sleep the long way home.

 VI

 Where icy and bright dungeons lift
 Of swimmers their lost morning eyes,
 And ocean rivers, churning, shift
 Green borders under stranger skies,

 Steadily as a shell secretes
 Its beating leagues of monotone,
 Or as many waters trough the sun’s
 Red kelson past the cape’s wet stone;

 O rivers mingling toward the sky
 And harbor of the phoenix’ breast—
My eyes pressed black against the prow,
—Thy derelict and blinded guest

 Waiting, afire, what name, unspoke,
 I cannot claim: let thy waves rear
 More savage than the death of kings,
 Some splintered garland for the seer.

 Beyond siroccos harvesting
 The solstice thunders, crept away,
 Like a cliff swinging or a sail
 Flung into April’s inmost day—

Creation’s blithe and petalled word
 To the lounged goddess when she rose
 Conceding dialogue with eyes
 That smile unsearchable repose—

Still fervid covenant, Belle Isle,
—Unfolded floating dais before
 Which rainbows twine continual hair—
Belle Isle, white echo of the oar!

 The imaged Word, it is, that holds
 Hushed willows anchored in its glow.
 It is the unbetrayable reply
 Whose accent no farewell can know.

 Hart Crane's "Voyages" is the best love poem of all time, and the second-best love poem isn't even close. Hart Crane was an "uneven" poet who sometimes borders on being unreadable, but in his best poems, he is a wonder. Other poems of his such as "To Brooklyn Bridge" and "The Broken Tower" rank with the best poems in the English language.

I am glad you are enjoying this thread lady Divine.



Amazing poetry that entertains as it enriches.

At Last


 Elizabeth Akers Allen


 At last, when all the summer shine
    That warmed life's early hours is past,
 Your loving fingers seek for mine
    And hold them close—at last—at last!
 Not oft the robin comes to build
    Its nest upon the leafless bough
 By autumn robbed, by winter chilled,—
   But you, dear heart, you love me now.

 Though there are shadows on my brow
    And furrows on my cheek, in truth,—
The marks where Time's remorseless plough
    Broke up the blooming sward of Youth,—
Though fled is every girlish grace
    Might win or hold a lover's vow,
 Despite my sad and faded face,
    And darkened heart, you love me now!

 I count no more my wasted tears;
    They left no echo of their fall;
 I mourn no more my lonesome years;
    This blessed hour atones for all.
 I fear not all that Time or Fate
    May bring to burden heart or brow,—
Strong in the love that came so late,
    Our souls shall keep it always now!

Love Arm'd


 by Aphra Behn



 Love in Fantastique Triumph sat,
 Whilst bleeding Hearts around him flow'd,
 For whom Fresh pains he did create,
 And strange Tryanic power he show'd;
 From thy Bright Eyes he took his fire,
 Which round about, in sport he hurl'd;
 But 'twas from mine he took desire,
 Enough to undo the Amorous World.
 From me he took his sighs and tears,
 From thee his Pride and Crueltie;
 From me his Languishments and Feares,
 And every Killing Dart from thee;
 Thus thou and I, the God have arm'd,
 And sett him up a Deity;
 But my poor Heart alone is harm'd,
 Whilst thine the Victor is, and free.
   

Life in a Love


by Robert Browning



Escape me?
 Never—
Beloved!
 While I am I, and you are you,
 So long as the world contains us both,
 Me the loving and you the loth,
 While the one eludes, must the other pursue.
 My life is a fault at last, I fear—
It seems too much like a fate, indeed!
 Though I do my best I shall scarce succeed—
But what if I fail of my purpose here?

 It is but to keep the nerves at strain,
 To dry one's eyes and laugh at a fall,
 And baffled, get up to begin again,—
So the chase takes up one's life, that's all.
 While, look but once from your farthest bound,
 At me so deep in the dust and dark,
 No sooner the old hope drops to ground
 Than a new one, straight to the selfsame mark,
 I shape me—
Ever
 Removed!

i carry your heart with me 


                                   
 by e. e. Cummings



 i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
 my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
 i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
 by only me is your doing, my darling)
                                     i fear
 no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
 no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
 and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
 and whatever a sun will always sing is you

 here is the deepest secret nobody knows
 (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
 and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
 higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
 and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

 i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

Farewell to Love




 by Michael Drayton (1563 - 1631)



 Since there's not help, come let us kiss and part;
 Nay, I am done, you get no more of me;
 And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart,
 That thus so cleanly I myself can free;
 Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows,
 And when we meet at any time again,
 Be it not seen in either of our brows
 That we, one jot of former love retain.
 Now, at the last gasp of love's latest breath,
 When his pulse failing, passion speechless lies,
 When faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
 And innocence is closing up his eyes,
 Now, if thou woulds't, when all have given him over,
 From death to life Thou might'st him yet recover.

Longing


 by Matthew Arnold (1822 1888)



 Come to me in my dreams, and then
 By day I shall be well again.
 For then the night will more than pay
 The hopeless longing of the day.

 Come, as thou cam'st a thousand times,
 A messenger from radiant climes,
 And smile on thy new world, and be
 As kind to others as to me.

 Or, as thou never cam'st in sooth,
 Come now, and let me dream it truth.
 And part my hair, and kiss my brow,
 And say My love! why sufferest thou?

 Come to me in my dreams, and then
 By day I shall be well again.
 For then the night will more than pay
 The hopeless longing of the day.

Arnold is one of my favorites!  Love The Forsaken Merman and Sohrab and Rustum...