(©) Poetry! :)

There was a girl, stood tall as trees,
As straight as man can straighten,
Her skin was pure and eyes were gray:
They called her White-Stone-Maiden.

Her hair was red as dancing flame,
Her lips as dark as claret,
Her cheeks like flowers in the spring,
Her glance--no man could bear it.

Her father bought her many silks
As rich as man can weave them,
Embroidered like a wedding gown,
Delicacy to deceive them.

She went a-hunting, dressed in green
Upon the fields of Caverhill,
Her bow in hand, her horn on hip,
Her hound was naméd Caval.



Caval she called, he sprinted fast,
Her gray jumped quick behind him,
He disappeared into the trees
And the lady could not find him.

She rode for hours, lost and lost,
Her brave heartbeat was quick’ning,
He hound was gone, the branches drooped:
The forest, it was thick’ning.

A man stepped out from ‘tween the trees,
As straight as an can straighten,
He led her home, she wed him there,
The woodsman and the maiden.

Their love was strong as oaken staves,
An inferno was their passion,
It flooded high and higher yet
Like a wondrous, tideless ocean.

One day, a woman came to see
The great King-lord of Caverhill
And seeing her, the woodsman’s cheek
Turned white; seemed he was deathly ill.

The witch, she was a crafty one, 
As gnarled as her old coven-tree;
Her mind, well it was twisted too,
As poison’d as man’s could ever be.

The woodsman knew her gnarled face,
He’d see her poison dripping,
He stepp’d before his beauty-love
When she red wine was sipping.

“You stole my tree, you stole my wood,”
The witch spoke with great anger,
“Now I will turn you into stone,
No longer be a danger.”

The marble woman made a sound a
Like all her heart was breaking,
She jumped up from her dinner chair
And all her limbs were shaking.

Before her stood the woodsman now,
A statue made of granite,
Rough kiss she planted on his brow
And placed her heart within it.

And with a silent shuddering,
She drew her hands before her,
And raised her head, and like her love,
She asked God to transform her.

And there they stood, two statues stone,
One gray and one of whiteness,
The marble lady turned to Love
To freeze her with its brightness.

The marble girl is standing still—
The fools walk as a passel,
Forget that she is standing there
In the hall of Caverhill Castle.

And if one day her hand is touched
In its white marble coldness,
She’ll melt to flesh and kiss her love
In her impassioned boldness.

His lips were turn to claret flesh,
His flesh will grow from fissures,
She’ll fall into his arms again
With love-impassioned kisses.

The witch’s curse has failed he now— 
Instead of dead with sorrow,
They live as flesh made into stone
Tomorrow and tomorrow.



"Following the Example of the Gods" by Henryk Hector Siemiradzki


Spanish Class 5/22/03
Have you ever sat still
an hour after you've eaten,
and felt your heartbeat thudding
heavily, damply, in your chest?
It's like a sledghammer beating the earth.
I can see my shirt over my stomach
jumping with the beats.
My life is passing in great gulps
Just below the surface.



I can say nothing,
My words are like lead,
No thoughts are conveyed
Through the ink of my pen.
When my tongue is empty,
Then also my head,
And my thoughts slide like oil
And refuse to be sent.

My rhymes do not match
And neither do thoughts--
I feel like a leaf
That hangs in the breeze.
I have no rest,
Like the sound of a shot,
Like a cry of the grass
By the base of the tree.

Five minutes more
To the end of this class,
Five years more
To the end of my school,
Fifty years more
Til old age will pass
And many times more
Will these thoughts be reused.



By Jim Warren


This is a letter
To my world,
To my people,
Who are all people.
Do you have joy?
Do you understand its meaning?
Anytime of the day or night,
Can you pull yourself out of mere emotions
And grasp it in your heart?
Or am I alone?



Night comes
In tongues like flame,
A glow of darkness.



Even the spears of grass bow to you,
Great Conqueror-King!
We lay our swords before you,
Our tongues to your service,
Our feet to your courses,
Out hands to your commands.
Let melodious throats
Shout harmony with the flaming ones.
You ahve conquered!
Conquer me that I may be subdued;
I surrender my darts to your quiver.
I remove this shirt of mail,
Only clean linen covers me--
And if I give up my safety,
He gives me a greater metal
In more eternal rings.
My fealty I owe to my King!
He demands my service; it is His right,
For He is just.
I give it gladly--what do I care
If his service demands my life?
This is a war. I gladly give my life
For my Kinsmen, my Country,
    My King.



"The Two Crowns" by Sir Frank Dicksee


To Grass I Will Return
Once I laid myself
Over the nest of green grass
      And golden straw.
It was my mattress.
One day,
      It will be my blanket,
      My bedspread,
      My comforter.
Grass I was,
Grass I am...



My brain is a fitful thing.



What is Holiness?
What is Goodness?
Light Love Life
Truth Victory
Faith Hope Joy
I desire them all!
Don't you?



The hedge-bird is singing,
The hedge-bird is singing,
My heart’s on the wing
And the hedge-bird is singing.
He calls to my soul
And he laughs at my fears,
For over the hedge,
The horizon appears.
Beyond the high hedge 
Is the mountain’s blue face;
Up the hills flies the wind,
And it calls me to trace
Its path ever onward
To the sun in the west;
Those who follow the wind
Are eternally blest.
The hedge-bird is singing,
The hedge-bird is singing,
My heart’s on the wing 
And the hedge-bird is singing!
He has ridden the wind
O’er the widening plains,
He has sung at his fears 
And abandoned his pains.
He knows how it is
To look far up the hill
And long for beyond,
Long to see past the rill,
But finds when he climbs
Up the currents of air
That the world still eludes him—
More horizons are there!
He knows how it feels
To be homesick with joy
For a land you’ve not seen
And a peace that can’t cloy.
He knows what I feel
And he laughs at my fears;
He flies toward the hill
Where the future appears.
The hedge-bird is singing,
The hedge-bird is singing,
I run through the gate,
For the hedge-bird is singing!


When I am pure and full of joy
Then to the fields I roam;
I feel that I'm the lost-lost son
That is led back to home.
And all the joy within me spread
Upon the ground; I know
The dew is but the happy tear
That from grass' welcome grows.

When I am sad and full of gray,
Misty clouds that float on high,
The dew that wets my feet and knees
Is but the tear of mourner's eye;
For all the fields, they mourn with me
And all the meadow sweet,
Like suppliants, with hair they dry
And with tears they wash my feet.

But oftentimes, when to the fields
I go, I feel the space
Press in on me; the vastness there
Is cast up in my face.
And I cannot seem to find
In all the beauty that I see
The thing that caused the pricking pain--
The grasses, mocking, spit on me.


"Comet" by Tim White

From the realm of starry morn
We all have come, 'fore we were born,
And into starry night we go
After the sky has lost its glow.
From heaven's dreams we all are sent
And all we seek is but a sign
Of that home we seek to own
High up in the starry clime.
For all our joy is but a taste
Reminding of that home unknonw
That we forgot upon our way;
Homesickness like a stone.
From east we come, to west we go
As soars the sun upon her flight;
If we go westward far enough,
        We'll reach the east where skies are bright,
        We'll reach the morn, where hearts are light,
        And sorrows drown in vanished night.