Evgeny Baratynsky "I Love You, Goddesses Of Singing"

 

Evgeny Baratynsky

"I Love You, Goddesses Of Singing"

I love you, goddesses of singing,
But your invasion, so fine,
That tremor of the spirit thrilling,
Is a herald of the future pines.

The Muses’ love and Fortune’s striking
Are one. I’m silent. I’m afraid:
My fingers, casting on the light strings, 
Might here awake these storms and lightnings
In which my sleeping fate was laid.

And, with strong torments ever wound,
I leave the Muse, who favours me,
And say: “Till tomorrow, sounds,
Let the day expire quietly.”

Dewdrops Myra Viola Wilds

 

Dewdrops

Myra Viola Wilds

Watch the dewdrops in the morning,    Shake their little diamond heads, Sparkling, flashing, ever moving,    From their silent little beds. See the grass! Each blade is brightened,    Roots are strengthened by their stay; Like the dewdrops, let us scatter    Gems of love along the way.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on August 16, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.

Sumer is i-cumin in BY ANONYMOUS

Sumer is i-cumin in

BY ANONYMOUS

Sing, cuccu, nu. Sing, cuccu.

Sing, cuccu. Sing, cuccu, nu.

Sumer is i-cumin in—

Lhude sing, cuccu!

Groweth sed and bloweth med

And springth the wude nu.

Sing, cuccu!

Awe bleteth after lomb,

Lhouth after calve cu,

Bulluc sterteth, bucke verteth—

Murie sing, cuccu!

Cuccu, cuccu,

Wel singes thu, cuccu.

Ne swik thu naver nu!

Notes:

a 14th century English round

July in Washington BY ROBERT LOWELL

July in Washington

BY ROBERT LOWELL

The stiff spokes of this wheel

touch the sore spots of the earth.

On the Potomac, swan-white

power launches keep breasting the sulphurous wave.

Otters slide and dive and slick back their hair,

raccoons clean their meat in the creek.

On the circles, green statues ride like South American

liberators above the breeding vegetation—

prongs and spearheads of some equatorial

backland that will inherit the globe.

The elect, the elected . . . they come here bright as dimes,

and die dishevelled and soft.

We cannot name their names, or number their dates—

circle on circle, like rings on a tree—

but we wish the river had another shore,

some further range of delectable mountains,

distant hills powdered blue as a girl’s eyelid.

It seems the least little shove would land us there,

that only the slightest repugnance of our bodies

we no longer control could drag us back.