Tired And Unhappy, You Think Of Houses
Tired and unhappy, you think of houses
Soft-carpeted and warm in the December evening,
While snow's white pieces fall past the window,
And the orange firelight leaps.
A young girl sings
That song of Gluck where Orpheus pleads with Death;
Her elders watch, nodding their happiness
To see time fresh again in her self-conscious eyes:
The servants bring in the coffee, the children go to bed,
Elder and younger yawn and go to bed,
The coals fade and glow, rose and ashen,
It is time to shake yourself! and break this
Banal dream, and turn your head
Where the underground is charged, where the weight
Of the lean building is seen,
Where close in the subway rush, anonymous
In the audience, well-dressed or mean,
So many surround you, ringing your fate,
Caught in an anger exact as a machine!
poem by Delmore Schwartz
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Sonnet On Famous And Familiar Sonnets And Experiences
(With much help from Robert Good, William Shakespeare,
John Milton, and little Catherine Schwartz)
Shall I compare her to a summer play?
She is too clever, too devious, too subtle, too dark:
Her lies are rare, but then she paves the way
Beyond the summer's sway, within the jejune park
Where all souls' aspiration to true nobility
Obliges Statues in the Frieze of Death
And when this pantomime and Panama of Panorama Fails,
"I'll never speak to you agayne" -- or waste her panting breath.
When I but think of how her years are spent
Deadening that one talent which -- for woman is --
Death or paralysis, denied: nature's intent
That each girl be a mother -- whether or not she is
Or has become a lawful wife or bride
-- 0 Alma Magna Mater, deathless the living death of pride.
poem by Delmore Schwartz
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This Is A Poem I Wrote At Night, Before The Dawn
This is a poem I wrote before I died and was reborn:
- After the years of the apples ripening and the eagles
soaring,
After the festival here the small flowers gleamed like the
first stars,
And the horses cantered and romped away like the
experience of skill; mastered and serene
Power, grasped and governed by reins, lightly held by
knowing hands.
The horses had cantered away, far enough away
So that I saw the horses' heads farther and farther away
And saw that they had reached the black horizon on the
dusk of day
And were or seemed black thunderheads, massy and
ominous waves in the doomed sky:
And it was then, for the first time, then that I said as I
must always say
All through living death of night:
It is always darkness before delight!
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poem by Delmore Schwartz
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Philology Recapitulates Ontology, Poetry Is Ontology
Faithful to your commandments, o consciousness, o
Holy bird of words soaring ever whether to nothingness or
to inconceivable fulfillment slowly:
And still I follow you, awkward as that dandy of ontology
and as awkward as his albatross and as
another dandy of ontology before him, another shepherd
and watchdog of being, the one who
Talked forever of forever as if forever of having been
and being an ancient mariner,
Hesitant forever as if forever were the albatross
Hung round his neck by the seven seas of the seven muses,
and with as little conclusion, since being never concludes,
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poem by Delmore Schwartz
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The Ballet Of The Fifth Year
Where the sea gulls sleep or indeed where they fly
Is a place of different traffic. Although I
Consider the fishing bay (where I see them dip and curve
And purely glide) a place that weakens the nerve
Of will, and closes my eyes, as they should not be
(They should burn like the street-light all night quietly,
So that whatever is present will be known to me),
Nevertheless the gulls and the imagination
Of where they sleep, which comes to creation
In strict shape and color, from their dallying
Their wings slowly, and suddenly rallying
Over, up, down the arabesque of descent,
Is an old act enacted, my fabulous intent
When I skated, afraid of policemen, five years old,
In the winter sunset, sorrowful and cold,
Hardly attained to thought, but old enough to know
Such grace, so self-contained, was the best escape to know.
poem by Delmore Schwartz
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At This Moment Of Time
Some who are uncertain compel me. They fear
The Ace of Spades. They fear
Loves offered suddenly, turning from the mantelpiece,
Sweet with decision. And they distrust
The fireworks by the lakeside, first the spuft,
Then the colored lights, rising.
Tentative, hesitant, doubtful, they consume
Greedily Caesar at the prow returning,
Locked in the stone of his act and office.
While the brass band brightly bursts over the water
They stand in the crowd lining the shore
Aware of the water beneath Him. They know it. Their eyes
Are haunted by water
Disturb me, compel me. It is not true
That "no man is happy," but that is not
The sense which guides you. If we are
Unfinished (we are, unless hope is a bad dream),
You are exact. You tug my sleeve
Before I speak, with a shadow's friendship,
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poem by Delmore Schwartz
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Now He Knows All There Is To Know. Now He Is Acquainted With The Day And Night
(Robert Frost, 1875-1963)
Whose wood this is I think I know:
He made it sacred long ago:
He will expect me, far or near
To watch that wood immense with snow.
That famous horse must feel great fear
Now that his noble rider's no longer here:
He gives his harness bells to rhyme
--Perhaps he will be back, in time?
All woulds were promises he kept
Throughout the night when others slept:
Now that he knows all that he did not know,
His wood is holy, and full of snow,
and all the beauty he made holy long long ago
In Boston, London, Washington,
And once by the Pacific and once in Moscow:
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poem by Delmore Schwartz
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Occasional Poems
I Christmas Poem for Nancy
Noel, Noel
We live and we die
Between heaven and hell
Between the earth and the sky
And all shall be well
And all shall be unwell
And once again! all shall once again!
All shall be well
By the ringing and the swinging
of the great beautiful holiday bell
Of Noel! Noel!
II Salute Valentine
I'll drink to thee only with my eyes
When two are three and four,
And guzzle reality's rise and cries
And praise the truth beyond surmise
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poem by Delmore Schwartz
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The Greatest Thing In North America
This is the greatest thing in North America:
Europe is the greatest thing in North America!
High in the sky, dark in the heart, and always there
Among the natural powers of sunlight and of air,
Changing, second by second, shifting and changing the
light,
Bring fresh rain to the stone of the library steps.
Under the famous names upon the pediment:
Thales, Aristotle,
Cicero, Augustine, Scotus, Galileo,
Joseph, Odysseus, Hamlet, Columbus and Spinoza,
Anna Karenina, Alyosha Karamazov, Sherlock Holmes.
And the last three also live upon the silver screen
Three blocks away, in moonlight's artificial day,
A double bill in the darkened palace whirled,
And the veritable glittering light of the turning world's
Burning mind and blazing imagination, showing, day by
day
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poem by Delmore Schwartz
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A Young Child And His Pregnant Mother
At four years Nature is mountainous,
Mysterious, and submarine. Even
A city child knows this, hearing the subway's
Rumor underground. Between the grate,
Dropping his penny, he learned out all loss,
The irretrievable cent of fate,
And now this newest of the mysteries,
Confronts his honest and his studious eyes----
His mother much too fat and absentminded,
Gazing past his face, careless of him,
His fume, his charm, his bedtime, and warm milk,
As soon the night will be too dark, the spring
Too late, desire strange, and time too fast,
This estrangement is a gradual thing
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poem by Delmore Schwartz
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