poem.id,poem.ts,poem.title,poem.author,poem.content,poem.category_1_x_poem_id
1,"2018-02-27 21:04:41","Inferno (English)","Dante Alighieri","CANTO I ONE night, when half my life behind me lay, I wandered from the straight lost path afar. Through the great dark was no releasing way; Above that dark was no relieving star. If yet that terrored night I think or say, As death's cold hands its fears resuming are. Gladly the dreads I felt, too dire to tell, The hopeless, pathless, lightless hours forgot, I turn my tale to that which next befell, When the dawn opened, and the night was not. The hollowed blackness of that waste, God wot, Shrank, thinned, and ceased. A blinding splendour hot Flushed the great height toward which my footsteps fell, And though it kindled from the nether hell, Or from the Star that all men leads, alike It showed me where the great dawn-glories strike The wide east, and the utmost peaks of snow. How first I entered on that path astray, Beset with sleep, I know not. This I know. When gained my feet the upward, lighted way, I backward gazed, as one the drowning sea, The deep strong tides, has baffled, and panting lies, On the shelved shore, and turns his eyes to see The league-wide wastes that held him. So mine eyes Surveyed that fear, the while my wearied frame Rested, and ever my heart's tossed lake became More quiet. Then from that pass released, which yet With living feet had no man left, I set My forward steps aslant the steep, that so, My right foot still the lower, I climbed. Below No more I gazed. Around, a slope of sand Was sterile of all growth on either hand, Or moving life, a spotted pard except, That yawning rose, and stretched, and purred and leapt So closely round my feet, that scarce I kept The course I would. That sleek and lovely thing, The broadening light, the breath of morn and spring, The sun, that with his stars in Aries lay, As when Divine Love on Creation's day First gave these fair things motion, all at one Made lightsome hope; but lightsome hope was none When down the slope there came with lifted head And back-blown mane and caverned mouth and red, A lion, roaring, all the air ashake That heard his hunger. Upward flight to take No heart was mine, for where the further way Mine anxious eyes explored, a she-wolf lay, That licked lean flanks, and waited. Such was she In aspect ruthless that I quaked to see, And where she lay among her bones had brought So many to grief before, that all my thought Aghast turned backward to the sunless night I left. But while I plunged in headlong flight To that most feared before, a shade, or man (Either he seemed), obstructing where I ran, Called to me with a voice that few should know, Faint from forgetful silence, ""Where ye go, Take heed. Why turn ye from the upward way?"" I cried, ""Or come ye from warm earth, or they The grave hath taken, in my mortal need Have mercy thou!"" He answered, ""Shade am I, That once was man; beneath the Lombard sky, In the late years of Julius born, and bred In Mantua, till my youthful steps were led To Rome, where yet the false gods lied to man; And when the great Augustan age began, I wrote the tale of Ilium burnt, and how Anchises' son forth-pushed a venturous prow, Seeking unknown seas. But in what mood art thou To thus return to all the ills ye fled, The while the mountain of thy hope ahead Lifts into light, the source and cause of all Delectable things that may to man befall?"" I answered, ""Art thou then that Virgil, he From whom all grace of measured speech in me Derived? O glorious and far-guiding star! Now may the love-led studious hours and long In which I learnt how rich thy wonders are, Master and Author mine of Light and Song, Befriend me now, who knew thy voice, that few Yet hearken. All the name my work hath won Is thine of right, from whom I learned. To thee, Abashed, I grant it. . . Why the mounting sun No more I seek, ye scarce should ask, who see The beast that turned me, nor faint hope have I To force that passage if thine aid deny."" He answered, ""Would ye leave this wild and live, Strange road is ours, for where the she-wolf lies Shall no man pass, except the path he tries Her craft entangle. No way fugitive Avoids the seeking of her greeds, that give Insatiate hunger, and such vice perverse As makes her leaner while she feeds, and worse Her craving. And the beasts with which she breed The noisome numerous beasts her lusts require, Bare all the desirable lands in which she feeds; Nor shall lewd feasts and lewder matings tire Until she woos, in evil hour for her, The wolfhound that shall rend her. His desire Is not for rapine, as the promptings stir Of her base heart; but wisdoms, and devoirs Of manhood, and love's rule, his thoughts prefer. The Italian lowlands he shall reach and save, For which Camilla of old, the virgin brave, Turnus and Nisus died in strife. His chase He shall not cease, nor any cowering-place Her fear shall find her, till he drive her back, From city to city exiled, from wrack to wrack Slain out of life, to find the native hell Whence envy loosed her. For thyself were well To follow where I lead, and thou shalt see The spirits in pain, and hear the hopeless woe, The unending cries, of those whose only plea Is judgment, that the second death to be Fall quickly. Further shalt thou climb, and go To those who burn, but in their pain content With hope of pardon; still beyond, more high, Holier than opens to such souls as I, The Heavens uprear; but if thou wilt, is one Worthier, and she shall guide thee there, where none Who did the Lord of those fair realms deny May enter. There in his city He dwells, and there Rules and pervades in every part, and calls His chosen ever within the sacred walls. O happiest, they!"" I answered, ""By that Go Thou didst not know, I do thine aid entreat, And guidance, that beyond the ills I meet I safety find, within the Sacred Gate That Peter guards, and those sad souls to see Who look with longing for their end to be."" Then he moved forward, and behind I trod. Canto II THE day was falling, and the darkening air Released earth's creatures from their toils, while I, I only, faced the bitter road and bare My Master led. I only, must defy The powers of pity, and the night to be. So thought I, but the things I came to see, Which memory holds, could never thought forecast. O Muses high! O Genius, first and last! Memories intense! Your utmost powers combine To meet this need. For never theme as mine Strained vainly, where your loftiest nobleness Must fail to be sufficient. First I said, Fearing, to him who through the darkness led, ""O poet, ere the arduous path ye press Too far, look in me, if the worth there be To make this transit. &Aelig;neas once, I know, Went down in life, and crossed the infernal sea; And if the Lord of All Things Lost Below Allowed it, reason seems, to those who see The enduring greatness of his destiny, Who in the Empyrean Heaven elect was called Sire of the Eternal City, that throned and walled Made Empire of the world beyond, to be The Holy Place at last, by God's decree, Where the great Peter's follower rules. For he Learned there the causes of his victory. ""And later to the third great Heaven was caught The last Apostle, and thence returning brought The proofs of our salvation. But, for me, I am not &Aelig;neas, nay, nor Paul, to see Unspeakable things that depths or heights can show, And if this road for no sure end I go What folly is mine? But any words are weak. Thy wisdom further than the things I speak Can search the event that would be."" Here I stayed My steps amid the darkness, and the Shade That led me heard and turned, magnanimous, And saw me drained of purpose halting thus, And answered, ""If thy coward-born thoughts be clear, And all thy once intent, infirmed of fear, Broken, then art thou as scared beasts that shy From shadows, surely that they know not why Nor wherefore. . . Hearken, to confound thy fear, The things which first I heard, and brought me here. One came where, in the Outer Place, I dwell, Suspense from hope of Heaven or fear of Hell, Radiant in light that native round her clung, And cast her eyes our hopeless Shades among (Eyes with no earthly like but heaven's own blue), And called me to her in such voice as few In that grim place had heard, so low, so clear, So toned and cadenced from the Utmost Sphere, The Unattainable Heaven from which she came. 'O Mantuan Spirit,' she said, 'whose lasting fame Continues on the earth ye left, and still With Time shall stand, an earthly friend to me, - My friend, not fortune's - climbs a path so ill That all the night-bred fears he hastes to flee Were kindly to the thing he nears. The tale Moved through the peace of I leaven, and swift I sped Downward, to aid my friend in love's avail, With scanty time therefor, that half I dread Too late I came. But thou shalt haste, and go With golden wisdom of thy speech, that so For me be consolation. Thou shalt say, ""I come from Beatricл."" Downward far, From Heaven to I leaven I sank, from star to star, To find thee, and to point his rescuing way. Fain would I to my place of light return; Love moved me from it, and gave me power to learn Thy speech. When next before my Lord I stand I very oft shall praise thee.' Here she ceased, And I gave answer to that dear command, 'Lady, alone through whom the whole race of those The smallest Heaven the moon's short orbits hold Excels in its creation, not thy least, Thy lightest wish in this dark realm were told Vainly. But show me why the Heavens unclose To loose thee from them, and thyself content Couldst thus continue in such strange descent From that most Spacious Place for which ye burn, And while ye further left, would fain return.' "" 'That which thou wouldst,' she said, 'I briefly tell. There is no fear nor any hurt in Hell, Except that it be powerful. God in me Is gracious, that the piteous sights I see I share not, nor myself can shrink to feel The flame of all this burning. One there is In height among the Holiest placed, and she - Mercy her name - among God's mysteries Dwells in the midst, and hath the power to see His judgments, and to break them. This sharp I tell thee, when she saw, she called, that so Leaned Lucia toward her while she spake - and said, ""One that is faithful to thy name is sped, Except that now ye aid him."" She thereat, - Lucia, to all men's wrongs inimical - Left her High Place, and crossed to where I sat In speech with Rachel (of the first of all God saved). ""O Beatrice, Praise of God,"" - So said she to me - ""sitt'st thou here so slow To aid him, once on earth that loved thee so That all he left to serve thee? Hear'st thou not The anguish of his plaint? and dost not see, By that dark stream that never seeks a sea, The death that threats him?"" None, as thus she said, None ever was swift on earth his good to chase, None ever on earth was swift to leave his dread, As came I downward from that sacred place To find thee and invoke thee, confident Not vainly for his need the gold were spent Of thy word-wisdom.' Here she turned away, Her bright eyes clouded with their tears, and I, Who saw them, therefore made more haste to reach The place she told, and found thee. Canst thou say I failed thy rescue? Is the beast anigh From which ye quailed? When such dear saints beseech - Three from the Highest - that Heaven thy course allow Why halt ye fearful? In such guards as thou The faintest-hearted might be bold."" As flowers, Close-folded through the cold and lightless hours, Their bended stems erect, and opening fair Accept the white light and the warmer air Of morning, so my fainting heart anew Lifted, that heard his comfort. Swift I spake, ""O courteous thou, and she compassionate! Thy haste that saved me, and her warning true, Beyond my worth exalt me. Thine I make My will. In concord of one mind from now, O Master and my Guide, where leadest thou I follow."" And we, with no more words' delay, Went forward on that hard and dreadful way. Canto III THE gateway to the city of Doom. Through me The entrance to the Everlasting Pain. The Gateway of the Lost. The Eternal Three Justice impelled to build me. Here ye see Wisdom Supreme at work, and Primal Power, And Love Supernal in their dawnless day. Ere from their thought creation rose in flower Eternal first were all things fixed as they. Of Increate Power infinite formed am I That deathless as themselves I do not die. Justice divine has weighed: the doom is clear. All hope renounce, ye lost, who enter here. This scroll in gloom above the gate I read, And found it fearful. ""Master, hard,"" I said, ""This saying to me."" And he, as one that long Was customed, answered, ""No distrust must wrong Its Maker, nor thy cowarder mood resume If here ye enter. This the place of doom I told thee, where the lost in darkness dwell. Here, by themselves divorced from light, they fell, And are as ye shall see them."" Here he lent A hand to draw me through the gate, and bent A glance upon my fear so confident That I, too nearly to my former dread Returned, through all my heart was comforted, And downward to the secret things we went. Downward to night, but not of moon and cloud, Not night with all its stars, as night we know, But burdened with an ocean-weight of woe The darkness closed us. Sighs, and wailings loud, Outcries perpetual of recruited pain, Sounds of strange tongues, and angers that remain Vengeless for ever, the thick and clamorous crowd Of discords pressed, that needs I wept to hear, First hearing. There, with reach of hands anear, And voices passion-hoarse, or shrilled with fright, The tumult of the everlasting night, As sand that dances in continual wind, Turns on itself for ever. And I, my head Begirt with movements, and my ears bedinned With outcries round me, to my leader said, ""Master, what hear I? Who so overborne With woes are these?"" He answered, ""These be they That praiseless lived and blameless. Now the scorn Of Height and Depth alike, abortions drear; Cast with those abject angels whose delay To join rebellion, or their Lord defend, Waiting their proved advantage, flung them here. - Chased forth from Heaven, lest else its beauties end The pure perfection of their stainless claim, Out-herded from the shining gate they came, Where the deep hells refused them, lest the lost Boast something baser than themselves."" And I, ""Master, what grievance hath their failure cost, That through the lamentable dark they cry?"" He answered, ""Briefly at a thing not worth We glance, and pass forgetful. Hope in death They have not. Memory of them on the earth Where once they lived remains not. Nor the breath Of Justice shall condemn, nor Mercy plead, But all alike disdain them. That they know Themselves so mean beneath aught else constrains The envious outcries that too long ye heed. Move past, but speak not."" Then I looked, and lo, Were souls in ceaseless and unnumbered trains That past me whirled unending, vainly led Nowhither, in useless and unpausing haste. A fluttering ensign all their guide, they chased Themselves for ever. I had not thought the dead, The whole world's dead, so many as these. I saw The shadow of him elect to Peter's seat Who made the great refusal, and the law, The unswerving law that left them this retreat To seal the abortion of their lives, became Illumined to me, and themselves I knew, To God and all his foes the futile crew How hateful in their everlasting shame. I saw these victims of continued death - For lived they never - were naked all, and loud Around them closed a never-ceasing cloud Of hornets and great wasps, that buzzed and clung, - Weak pain for weaklings meet, - and where they stung, Blood from their faces streamed, with sobbing breath, And all the ground beneath with tears and blood Was drenched, and crawling in that loathsome mud There were great worms that drank it. Gladly thence I gazed far forward. Dark and wide the flood That flowed before us. On the nearer shore Were people waiting. ""Master, show me whence These came, and who they be, and passing hence Where go they? Wherefore wait they there content, - The faint light shows it, - for their transit o'er The unbridged abyss?"" He answered, ""When we stand Together, waiting on the joyless strand, In all it shall be told thee."" If he meant Reproof I know not, but with shame I bent My downward eyes, and no more spake until The bank we reached, and on the stream beheld A bark ply toward us. Of exceeding eld, And hoary showed the steersman, screaming shrill, With horrid glee the while he neared us, ""Woe To ye, depraved! - Is here no Heaven, but ill The place where I shall herd ye. Ice and fire And darkness are the wages of their hire Who serve unceasing here - But thou that there Dost wait though live, depart ye. Yea, forbear! A different passage and a lighter fare Is destined thine."" But here my guide replied, ""Nay, Charon, cease; or to thy grief ye chide. It There is willed, where that is willed shall be, That ye shall pass him to the further side, Nor question more."" The fleecy cheeks thereat, Blown with fierce speech before, were drawn and flat, And his flame-circled eyes subdued, to hear That mandate given. But those of whom he spake In bitter glee, with naked limbs ashake, And chattering teeth received it. Seemed that then They first were conscious where they came, and fear Abject and frightful shook them; curses burst In clamorous discords forth; the race of men, Their parents, and their God, the place, the time, Of their conceptions and their births, accursed Alike they called, blaspheming Heaven. But yet Slow steps toward the waiting bark they set, With terrible wailing while they moved. And so They came reluctant to the shore of woe That waits for all who fear not God, and not Them only. Then the demon Charon rose To herd them in, with eyes that furnace-hot Glowed at the task, and lifted oar to smite Who lingered. As the leaves, when autumn shows, One after one descending, leave the bough, Or doves come downward to the call, so now The evil seed of Adam to endless night, As Charon signalled, from the shore's bleak height, Cast themselves downward to the bark. The brown And bitter flood received them, and while they passed Were others gathering, patient as the last, Not conscious of their nearing doom. ""My son,"" - Replied my guide the unspoken thought - ""is none Beneath God's wrath who dies in field or town, Or earth's wide space, or whom the waters drown, But here he cometh at last, and that so spurred By Justice, that his fear, as those ye heard, Impels him forward like desire. Is not One spirit of all to reach the fatal spot That God's love holdeth, and hence, if Char chide, Ye well may take it. - Raise thy heart, for now, Constrained of Heaven, he must thy course allow."" Yet how I passed I know not. For the ground Trembled that heard him, and a fearful sound Of issuing wind arose, and blood-red light Broke from beneath our feet, and sense and sight Left me. The memory with cold sweat once more Reminds me of the sudden-crimsoned night, As sank I senseless by the dreadful shore. Canto IV ARISING thunder from the vast Abyss First roused me, not as he that rested wakes From slumbrous hours, but one rude fury shakes Untimely, and around I gazed to know The place of my confining. Deep, profound, Dark beyond sight, and choked with doleful sound, Sheer sank the Valley of the Lost Abyss, Beneath us. On the utmost brink we stood, And like the winds of some unresting wood The gathered murmur from those depths of woe Soughed upward into thunder. Out from this The unceasing sound comes ever. I might not tell How deep the Abyss down sank from hell to hell, It was so clouded and so dark no sight Could pierce it. ""Downward through the worlds of night We will descend together. I first, and thou My footsteps taking,"" spake my guide, and I Gave answer, ""Master, when thyself art pale, Fear-daunted, shall my weaker heart avail That on thy strength was rested?"" ""Nay,"" said he, ""Not fear, but anguish at the issuing cry So pales me. Come ye, for the path we tread Is long, and time requires it."" Here he led Through the first entrance of the ringed abyss, Inward, and I went after, and the woe Softened behind us, and around I heard Nor scream of torment, nor blaspheming word, But round us sighs so many and deep there came That all the air was motioned. I beheld Concourse of men and women and children there Countless. No pain was theirs of cold or flame, But sadness only. And my Master said, ""Art silent here? Before ye further go Among them wondering, it is meet ye know They are not sinful, nor the depths below Shall claim them. But their lives of righteousness Sufficed not to redeem. The gate decreed, Being born too soon, we did not pass ( for I, Dying unbaptized, am of them). More nor less Our doom is weighed, - to feel of Heaven the need, To long, and to be hopeless."" Grief was mine That heard him, thinking what great names must be In this suspense around me. ""Master, tell,"" I questioned, ""from this outer girth of Hell Pass any to the blessed spheres exalt, Through other's merits or their own the fault. Condoned?"" And he, my covert speech that read, - For surance sought I of my faith, - replied, ""Through the shrunk hells there came a Great One, crowned And garmented with conquest. Of the dead, He rescued from us him who earliest died, Abel, and our first parent. Here He found, Abraham, obedient to the Voice he heard; And Moses, first who wrote the Sacred Word; Isaac, and Israel and his sons, and she, Rachel, for whom he travailed; and David, king; And many beside unnumbered, whom he led Triumphant from the dark abodes, to be Among the blest for ever. Until this thing I witnessed, none, of all the countless dead, But hopeless through the somber gate he came."" Now while he spake he paused not, but pursued, Through the dense woods of thronging spirits, his aim Straight onward, nor was long our path until Before us rose a widening light, to fill One half of all the darkness, and I knew While yet some distance, that such Shades were there As nobler moved than others, and questioned, ""Who, Master, are those that in their aspect bear Such difference from the rest?"" ""All these,"" he said, ""Were named so glorious in thy earth above That Heaven allows their larger claim to be Select, as thus ye see them."" While he spake A voice rose near us: ""Hail!"" it cried, ""for he Returns, who was departed."" Scarce it ceased When four great spirits approached. They did not show Sadness nor joy, but tranquil-eyed as though Content in their dominion moved. My guide Before I questioned told, ""That first ye see, With hand that fits the swordhilt, mark, for he Is Homer, sovereign of the craft we tried, Leader and lord of even the following three, - Horace, and Ovid, and Lucan. The voice ye heard, That hailed me, caused them by one impulse stirred Approach to do me honour, for these agree In that one name we boast, and so do well Owning it in me."" There was I joyed to meet Those shades, who closest to his place belong, The eagle course of whose out-soaring song Is lonely in height. Some space apart (to tell, It may be, something of myself ), my guide Conversed, until they turned with grace to greet Me also, and my Master smiled to see They made me sixth and equal. Side by side We paced toward the widening light, and spake Such things as well were spoken there, and here Were something less than silence. Strong and wide Before us rose a castled height, beset With sevenfold-circling walls, unscalable, And girdled with a rivulet round, but yet We passed thereover, and the water clear As dry land bore me; and the walls ahead Their seven strong gates made open one by one, As each we neared, that where my Master led With ease I followed, although without were none But deep that stream beyond their wading spread, And closed those gates beyond their breach had been, Had they sought entry with us. Of coolest green Stretched the wide lawns we midmost found, for there, Intolerant of itself, was Hell made fair To accord with its containing. Grave, austere, Quiet-voiced and slow, of seldom words were they That walked that verdure. To a place aside Open, and light, and high, we passed, and here Looked downward on the lawns, in clear survey Of such great spirits as are my glory and pride That once I saw them. There, direct in view, Electra passed, among her sons. I knew Hector and &Aelig;neas there; and Cжsar too Was of them, armed and falcon-eyed; and there Camilla and Penthesilea. Near there sate Lavinia, with her sire the Latian king; Brutus, who drave the Tarquin; and Lucrece Julia, Cornelia, Marcia, and their kin; And, by himself apart, the Saladin. Somewhat beyond I looked. A place more high Than where these heroes moved I gazed, and knew The Master of reasoned thought, whose hand withdrew The curtain of the intellect, and bared The secret things of nature; while anigh, But lowlier, grouped the greatest names that shared His searchings. All regard and all revere They gave him. Plato there, and Socrates I marked, who closeliest reached his height; and near Democritus, who dreamed a world of chance Born blindly in the whirl of circumstance; And Anaxagoras, Diogenes, Thales, Heraclitus, Empedocles, Zeno, were there; and Dioscorides Who searched the healing powers of herbs and trees; And Orpheus, Tullius, Livius, Seneca, Euclid and Ptolemжus; Avicenna, Galen, Hippocrates; Averrhoлs, The Master's great interpreter, - but these Are few to those I saw, an endless dream Of shades before whom Hell quietened and cowered. My theme, With thronging recollections of mighty names That there I marked impedes me. All too long They chase me, envious that my burdened song Forgets. - But onward moves my guide anew: The light behind us fades: the six are two: Again the shuddering air, the cries of Hell Compassed, and where we walked the darkness fell. Canto V MOST like the spirals of a pointed shell, But separate each, go downward, hell from hell, The ninefold circles of the damned; but each Smaller, concentrate in its greater pain, Than that which overhangs it. Those who reach The second whorl, on entering, learn their bane Where Minos, hideous, sits and snarls. He hears, Decides, and as he girds himself they go. Before his seat each ill-born spirit appear, And tells its tale of evil, loath or no, While he, their judge, of all sins cognizant, Hears, and around himself his circling tail Twists to the number of the depths below To which they doom themselves in telling. Alway The crowding sinners: their turn they wait: they show Their guilt: the circles of his tail convey Their doom: and downward they are whirled away. ""O thou who callest at this doleful inn,"" Cried Minos to me, while the child of sin That stood confessing before him, trembling stayed, ""Heed where thou enterest in thy trust, nor say, I walk in safety, for the width of way Suffices."" But my guide the answer took, ""Why dost thou cry? or leave thine ordered trade For that which nought belongs thee? Hinder not His destined path. For where he goeth is willed, Where that is willed prevaileth."" Now was filled The darker air with wailing. Wailing shook My soul to hear it. Where we entered now No light attempted. Only sound arose, As ocean with the tortured air contends, What time intolerable tempest rends The darkness; so the shrieking winds oppose For ever, and bear they, as they swerve and sweep, The doomed disastrous spirits, and whirl aloft, Backward, and down, nor any rest allow, Nor pause of such contending wraths as oft Batter them against the precipitous sides, and there The shrieks and moanings quench the screaming air, The cries of their blaspheming. These are they That lust made sinful. As the starlings rise At autumn, darkening all the colder skies, In crowded troops their wings up-bear, so here These evil-doers on each contending blast Were lifted upward, whirled, and downward cast, And swept around unceasing. Striving airs Lift them, and hurl, nor ever hope is theirs Of rest or respite or decreasing pains, But like the long streaks of the calling cranes So came they wailing down the winds, to meet Upsweeping blasts that ever backward beat Or sideward flung them on their walls. And I - ""Master who are they next that drive anigh So scourged amidst the blackness?"" ""These,"" he said, ""So lashed and harried, by that queen are led, Empress of alien tongues, Semiramis, Who made her laws her lawless lusts to kiss, So was she broken by desire; and this Who comes behind, back-blown and beaten thus, Love's fool, who broke her faith to Sichжus, Dido; and bare of all her luxury, Nile's queen, who lost her realm for Antony."" And after these, amidst that windy train, Helen, who soaked in blood the Trojan plain, And great Achilles I saw, at last whose feet The same net trammelled; and Tristram, Paris, he showed; And thousand other along the fated road Whom love led deathward through disastrous things He pointed as they passed, until my mind Was wildered in this heavy pass to find Ladies so many, and cavaliers and kings Fallen, and pitying past restraint, I said, ""Poet, those next that on the wind appear So light, and constant as they drive or veer Are parted never, I fain would speak."" And he, - ""Conjure them by their love, and thou shalt see Their flight come hither."" And when the swerving blast Most nearly bent, I called them as they passed, ""O wearied souls, come downward, if the Power That drives allow ye, for one restful hour."" As doves, desirous of their nest at night, Cleave through the dusk with swift and open flight Of level-lifting wings, that love makes light, Will-borne, so downward through the murky air Came those sad spirits, that not deep Hell's despair Could sunder, parting from the faithless band That Dido led, and with one voice, as though One soul controlled them, spake, ""O Animate! Who comest through the black malignant air, Benign among us who this exile bear For earth ensanguined, if the King of All Heard those who from the outer darkness call Entreat him would we for thy peace, that thou Hast pitied us condemned, misfortunate. - Of that which please thee, if the winds allow, Gladly I tell. Ravenna, on that shore Where Po finds rest for all his streams, we knew; And there love conquered. Love, in gentle heart So quick to take dominion, overthrew Him with my own fair body, and overbore Me with delight to please him. Love, which gives No pardon to the loved, so strongly in me Was empired, that its rule, as here ye see, Endureth, nor the bitter blast contrives To part us. Love to one death led us. The mode Afflicts me, shrinking, still. The place of Cain Awaits our slayer."" They ceased, and I my head Bowed down, and made no answer, till my guide Questioned, ""What wouldst thou more?"" and replied, ""Alas my thought I what sweet keen longings led These spirits, woeful, to their dark abode!"" And then to them, - ""Francesca, all thy pain Is mine. With pity and grief I weep. But say How, in the time of sighing, and in what way, Love gave you of the dubious deeds to know."" And she to me, ""There is no greater woe In all Hell's depths than cometh when those who Look back to Eden. But if thou wouldst learn Our love's first root, I can but weep and tell. One day, and for delight in idleness, - Alone we were, without suspicion, - We read together, and chanced the page to turn Where Galahad tells the tale of Lancelot, How love constrained him. Oft our meeting eyes, Confessed the theme, and conscious cheeks were hot, Reading, but only when that instant came Where the surrendering lips were kissed, no less Desire beat in us, and whom, for all this pain, No hell shall sever (so great at least our gain), Trembling, he kissed my mouth, and all forgot, We read no more."" As thus did one confess Their happier days, the other wept, and I Grew faint with pity, and sank as those who die. Canto VI THE misery of that sight of souls in Hell Condemned, and constant in their loss, prevailed So greatly in me, that I may not tell How passed I from them, sense and memory failed So far. But here new torments I discern, And new tormented, wheresoe'er I turn. For sodden around me was the place of bane, The third doomed circle, where the culprits know The cold, unceasing, and relentless rain Pour down without mutation. Heavy with hail, With turbid waters mixed, and cold with snow, It streams from out the darkness, and below The soil is putrid, where the impious lie Grovelling, and howl like dogs, beneath the flail That flattens to the foul soaked ground, and try Vainly for ease by turning. And the while Above them roams and ravens the loathsome hound Cerberus, and feeds upon them. The swampy ground He ranges; with his long clawed hands he grips The sinners, and the fierce and hairy lips (Thrice-headed is he) tear, and the red blood drips From all his jaws. He clutches, and flays, and rends, And treads them, growling: and the flood descends Straight downward. When he saw us, the loathly worm Showed all his fangs, and eager trembling frame Nerved for the leap. But undeterred my guide. Stooped down, and gathered in full hands the soil, And cast it in the gaping gullets, to foil Gluttonous blind greed, and those fierce mouths and wide Closed on the filth, and as the craving cur Quietens, that strained and howled to reach his food, Biting the bone, those squalid mouths subdued And silenced, wont above the empty dead To bark insatiate, while they tore unfed The writhing shadows. The straight persistent rain, That altered never, had pressed the miry plain With flattened shades that in their emptiness Still showed as bodies. We might not here progress Except we trod them. Of them all, but one Made motion as we passed. Against the rain Rising, and resting on one hand, he said, ""O thou, who through the drenching murk art led, Recall me if thou canst. Thou wast begun Before I ended."" I, who looked in vain For human semblance in that bestial shade, Made answer, ""Misery here hath all unmade, It may be, that thou wast on earth, for nought Recalls thee to me. But thyself shalt tell The sins that scourged thee to this foul resort, That more displeasing not the scope of Hell Can likely yield, though greater pains may lie More deep."" And he to me, ""Thy city, so high With envious hates that swells, that now the sack Bursts, and pours out in ruin, and spreads its wrack Far outward, was mine alike, while clearer air Still breathed I. Citizens who knew me there Called me Ciacco. For the vice I fed At rich men's tables, in this filth I lie Drenched, beaten, hungered, cold, uncomforted, Mauled by that ravening greed; and these, as I, With gluttonous lives the like reward have won."" I answered, ""Piteous is thy state to one Who knew thee in thine old repute, but say, If yet persists thy previous mind, which way The feuds of our rent city shall end, and why These factions vex us, and if still there be One just man left among us."" ""Two,"" said he, ""Are just, but none regards them. Yet more high The strife, till bloodshed from their long contend Shall issue at last: the barbarous Cerchi clan Cast the Donati exiled out, and they Within three years return, and more offend Than they were erst offended, helped by him So long who palters with both parts. The fire Three sparks have lighted - Avarice, Envy, Pride, - And there is none may quench it."" Here he ceased His lamentable tale, and I replied, ""Of one thing more I ask thee. Great desire Is mine to learn it. Where are those who sought Our welfare earlier? Those whose names at least Are fragrant for the public good they wrought, Arrigo, Mosca, and the Tegghiaio Worthiest, and Farinata, and with these Jacopo Rusticucci. I would know If soft in Heaven or bitter-hard in Hell Their lives continue."" ""Cast in hells more low Than yet thou hast invaded, deep they lie, For different crimes from ours, and shouldst thou go So far, thou well mayst see them. If thou tread Again the sweet light land, and overhead Converse with those I knew there, then recall, I pray, my memory to my friends of yore. But ask no further, for I speak no more."" Thereon his eyes, that straight had gazed before Squinted and failed, and slowly sank his head, And blindly with his sodden mates he lay. And spake my guide, ""He shall not lift nor stir, Until the trumpet shrills that wakens Hell; And these, who must inimical Power obey, Shall each return to his sad grave, and there In carnal form the sinful spirit shall dwell Once more, and that time only, from the tomb Rising to hear the irrevocable doom Which shall reverberate through eternity."" So paced we slowly through the rain that fell Unchanging, over that foul ground, and trod The dismal spirits it held, and somewhat spake Of life beyond us, and the things of God; And asked I, ""Master, shall these torments cease, Continue as they are, or more increase, When calls the trumpet, and the graves shall break, And the great Sentence sound?"" And he to me, ""Recall thy learning, as thou canst. We know With more perfection, greater pain or bliss Resolves, and though perfection may not be To these accurs'd, yet nearer then than this It may be they shall reach it."" More to show He sought, as turned we to the fresh descent, But speaking all in such strange words as went Past me. - But ceased our downward path, and Plutus, of human weal the hateful foe. Canto VII HAH, strange! ho, Satan!"" such the sounds half-heard The thick voice gobbled, the while the foul, inflamed, Distended visage toward us turned, and cast Invective from its bestial throat, that slurred Articulate speech. But here the gentle sage, Who knew beforehand that we faced, to me Spake first, ""Regard not; for a threat misaimed Falls idle. Fear not to continue past. His power to us, however else it be, Is not to hinder."" Then, that bulk inflate Confronting, - ""Peace, thou greed! thy lusting rage Consume thee inward! Not thy word we wait The path to open. It is willed on high, - There, where the Angel of the Sword ye know Took ruin upon the proud adultery Of him thou callest as thy prince."" Thereat As sails, wind-rounded, when the mast gives way, Sink tangled to the deck, deflated so Collapsed that bulk that heard him, shrunk and flat; And we went downward till before us lay The fourth sad circle. Ah! what woes contain, Justice of God! what woes those narrowing deeps Contain; for all the universe down-heaps In this pressed space its continent of pain, So voiding all that mars its peace. But why This guilt that so degrades us? As the surge Above Charybdis meets contending surge, Breaks and is broken, and rages and recoils For ever, so here the sinners. More numerous Than in the circles past are these. They urge Huge weights before them. On, with straining breasts, They roll them, howling in their ceaseless toils. And those that to the further side belong l)o likewise, meeting in the midst, and thus Crash vainly, and recoil, reverse, and cry, ""Why dost thou hold?"" ""Why dost thou loose?"" No rest Their doom permits them. Backward course they bend; Continual crescents trace, at either end Meeting again in fresh rebound, and high Above their travail reproachful howlings rise Incessant at those who thwart their round. And I, Who felt my heart stung through with anguish, said, ""O Master, show me who these peoples be, And if those tonsured shades that left we see Held priestly office ere they joined the dead."" He answered, ""These, who with such squinting eyes Regarded God's providing, that they spent In waste immoderate, indicate their guilt In those loud barkings that ye hear. They spilt Their wealth distemperate; and those they meet Who cry 'Why loose ye?' avarice ruled: they bent Their minds on earth to seize and hoard. Of these Hairless, are priests, and popes, and cardinals, For greed makes empire in such hearts complete."" And I, ""Among them that these vices eat Are none that I have known on earth before?"" He answered, ""Vainly wouldst thou seek; a life So blind to bounties has obscured too far The souls once theirs, for that which once they wore Of mortal likeness in their shades to show. Waste was their choice, and this abortive strife And toil unmeaning is the end they are They butt for ever, until the last award Shall call them from their graves. Ill-holding those Ill-loosing these, alike have doomed to know This darkness, and the fairer world forgo. Behold what mockery doth their fate afford! It needs no fineness of spun words to tell. For this they did their subtle wits oppose, Contending for the gifts that Fortune straws So blindly, - for this blind contending hell. ""Beneath the moon there is not gold so great In worth, it could one moment's grief abate, Or rest one only of these weary souls."" ""Master, this Fortune that ye speak, whose claws Grasp all desirable things of earth,"" I said, ""What is she?"" ""O betrayed in foolishness I Blindness of creatures born of earth, whose goals Are folly and loss!"" he answered, ""I would make Thy mouth an opening for this truth I show. ""Transcendent Wisdom, when the spheres He built Gave each a guide to rule it: more nor less Their light distributes. For the earth he gave Like guide to rule its splendours. As we know The heavenly lights move round us, and is spilt Light here, and darkness yonder, so doth she From man to man, from race and kindred take Alternate wealth, or yield it. None may save The spoil that she depriveth: none may flee The bounty that she wills. No human wits May hinder, nor may human lore reject Her choice, that like a hidden snake is set To reach the feet unheeding. Where she sits In judgment, she resolves, and whom she wills Is havened, chased by petulant storms, or wreck ' Remedeless. Races cease, and men forget They were. Slaves rise to rule their lords. She And empties, godlike in her mood. No pause Her changes leave, so many are those who call About her gates, so many she dowers, and all Revile her after, and would crucify If words could reach her, but she heeds nor hears, Who dwells beyond the noise of human laws In the blest silence of the Primal Spheres. - But let us to the greater woes descend. The stars from their meridian fall, that rose When first these hells we entered. Long to stay Our right of path allows not."" While he spake We crossed the circle to the bank beyond, And found a hot spring boiling, and a way, Dark, narrow, and steep, that down beside it goes, By which we clambered. Purple-black the pond Beneath it, widening to a marsh that spreads Far out, and struggling in that slime malign Were muddied shades, that not with hands, heads, And teeth and feet besides, contending tore, And maimed each other in beast-like rage. My guide Expounded, ""Those whom anger overbore On earth, behold ye. Mark the further sign Of bubbles countless on the slime that show. These from the sobs of those immersed arise; For buried in the choking filth they cry, We once were sullen in the rain-sweet air, When waked the light, and all the earth was fair, How sullen in the murky swamp we lie Forbidden from the blessed light on high. This song they gurgle in their throats, that so The bubbles rising from the depths below Break all the surface of the slime."" Between The high bank and the putrid swamp was seen A narrow path, and this, a sweeping arc, We traversed; outward o'er the surface dark Still gazing, at the choking shades who took That diet for their wrath. Till livelier look Was forward drawn, for where at last we came A great tower fronted, and a beacon's flame. Canto VIII I SAY, while yet from that tower's base afar, We saw two flames of sudden signal rise, And further, like a small and distant star, A beacon answered. ""What before us lies? Who signals our approach, and who replies?"" I asked, and answered he who all things knew, ""Already, if the swamp's dank fumes permit, The outcome of their beacon shows in view, Severing the liquid filth."" No shaft can slit Impalpable air, from any corded bow, As came that craft towards us, cleaving so, And with incredible speed, the miry wave. To where we paused its meteor course it clave, A steersman rising in the stern, who cried, ""Behold thy doom, lost spirit!"" To whom my guide, ""Nay, Phlegyas, Phlegyas, here thy cries are We need thine aid the further shore to gain; But power thou hast not."" One amazed to meet With most unlooked and undeserved deceit So rages inly; yet no dared reply There came, as down my Leader stept, and I Deepened the skiff with earthly weight undue, Which while we seated swung its bows anew Outward, and onward once again it flew, Labouring more deep than wont, and slowlier now, So burdened. While that kennel of filth we clave, There rose among the bubbles a mud-soaked head. ""Who art thou, here before thy time?"" it said, And answer to the unfeatured mask I gave, ""I come, but stay not. Who art thou, so blind And blackened from the likeness of thy kind?"" ""I have no name, but only tears,"" said he. I answered, ""Nay, however caked thou be, I know thee through the muddied drench. For thee Be weeping ever, accursed spirit."" At that, He reached his hands to grasp the boat, whereat My watchful Master thrust him down, and cried, ""Away, among the dogs, thy fellows!"" and then To me with approbation, ""Blest art thou, Who wouldst not pity in thy heart allow For these, in arrogance of empty pride Who lived so vainly. In the minds of men Is no good thing of this one left to tell, And hence his rage. How many above that dwell, Now kinglike in their ways, at last shall lie Wallowing in these wide marshes, swine in sty, With all men's scorn to chase them down."" And I, ""Master, it were a seemly thing to see This boaster trampled in the putrid sea, Who dared approach us, knowing of all we know."" He answered, ""Well thy wish, and surely so It shall be, e'er the distant shore we view."" And I looked outward through the gloom, and lo! The envious eaters of that dirt combined Against him, leapt upon him, before, behind, Dragged in their fury, and rent, and tore him through, Screaming derisive, ""Philip! whose horse-hooves shine With silver,"" and the rageful Florentine Turned on himself his gnashing teeth and tore. But he deserveth, and I speak, no more. Now, as we neared the further beach, I heard The lamentable and unceasing wail By which the air of all the hells is stirred Increasing ever, which caused mine eyes unveil Their keenest vision to search what came, and he Who marked, indulgent, told. ""Ahead we see The city of Dis, with all its dolorous crew, Numerous, and burdened with reliefless pain, And guilt intolerable to think."" I said, ""Master, already through the night I view The mosques of that sad city, that fiery red As heated metal extend, and crowd the plain."" He answered, ""These the eternal fire contain, That pulsing through them sets their domes aglow."" At this we came those joyless walls below, - Of iron I thought them, - with a circling moat; But saw no entrance, and the burdened boat Traced the deep fosse for half its girth, before The steersman warned us. ""Get ye forth. The shore Is here, - and there the Entrance."" There, indeed, The entrance. On the barred and burning gate I gazed; a thousand of the fiends that rained From Heaven, to fill that place disconsolate, Looked downward, and derided. ""Who,"" they said, ""Before his time comes hither? As though the dead Arrive too slowly for the joys they would,"" And laughter rocked along their walls. My guide Their mockery with an equal mien withstood, Signalling their leaders he would speak aside, And somewhat closing their contempt they cried, ""Then come thou hither, and let him backward go, Who came so rashly. Let him find his way Through the five hells ye traversed, the best he may. He can but try it awhile! - But thou shalt stay, And learn the welcome of these halls of woe."" Ye well may think how I, discomforted By these accursed words, was moved. The dead, Nay, nor the living were ever placed as I, If this fiends' counsel triumphed. And who should try That backward path unaided? ""Lord,"" I said, ""Loved Master, who hast shared my steps so far, And rescued ever, if these our path would bar, Then lead me backward in most haste, nor let Their malice part us."" He with cheerful mien, Gave answer. ""Heed not that they boast. Forget The fear thou showest, and in good heart abide, While I go forward. Not these fiends obscene Shall thwart the mandate that the Power supplied By which we came, nor any force to do The things they threaten is theirs; nor think that I Should leave thee helpless here."" The gentle Sage At this went forward. Feared I? Half I knew Despair, and half contentment. Yes and no Denied each other; and of so great a woe Small doubt is anguish. In their orgulous rage The fiends out-crowded from the gates to meet My Master; what he spake I could not hear; But nothing his words availed to cool their heat, For inward thronged they with a jostling rear That clanged the gates before he reached, and he Turned backward slowly, muttering, ""Who to me Denies the woeful houses?"" This he said Sighing, with downcast aspect and disturbed Beyond concealment; yet some length he curbed His anxious thought to cheer me. ""Doubt ye nought Of power to hurt in these fiends insolent; For once the wider gate on which ye read The words of doom, with greater pride, they sought To close against the Highest. Already is bent A great One hereward, whose unhindered way Descends the steeps unaided. He shall say Such words as must the trembling hells obey."" Canto IX I THINK the paleness of the fear I showed When he, rejected from that conference, Rejoined me, caused him speak more confident Than felt he inly. For the glance he sent Through the dense darkness of the backward road Denied the valour of his words' pretence; And pausing there with anxious listening mien, While came no sound, nor any help was seen, He muttered, ""Yet we must this conflict win, For else - But whom her aid has pledged herein - How long before he cometh!"" And plain I knew His words turned sideward from the ending due They first portended. Faster beat my fear, Methinks, than had he framed in words more clear The meaning that his care withheld. I said, ""Do others of the hopeless, sinless, dead, Who with thee in the outmost circle dwell, Come ever downward to the narrowing hell That now we traverse?"" ""Once Erichtho fell,"" He answered, ""conjured to such end that I, - Who then short time had passed to those who die, - Came here, controlled by her discerning spell, And entered through these hostile gates, and drew A spirit from the darkest, deepest pit, The place of Judas named, that centres Hell. The path I learnt, and all its dangers well. Content thine heart. This foul-stretched marsh surrounds The dolorous city to its furthest bounds. Without, the dense mirk, and the bubbling mire: Within, the white-hot pulse of eating fire, Whence this fiend-anger thwarts. . .,"" and more he said, To save me doubtless from my thoughts, but I Heeded no more, for by the beacons red That on the lofty tower before us glowed, Three bloodstained and infernal furies showed, Erect, of female form in guise and limb, But clothed in coils of hydras green and grim; And with cerastes bound was every head, And for its crown of hair was serpented; And he, who followed my diverted gaze, The handmaids of the Queen of Woeful Days Well knowing, told me, ""These the Furies three. Megжra leftward: on the right is she Alecto, wailing: and Tisiphone Midmost."" These hateful, in their need of prey, Tore their own breasts with bloodied claws, and when They saw me, from the living world of men, Beneath them standing, with one purpose they Cried, and so loudly that I shrank for fear, ""Medusa! let her from her place appear, To change him into stone! Our first default That venged no wrath on Theseus' deep assault, So brings him."" ""Turn thou from their sight,"" my guide Enjoined, nor wholly on my fear relied, But placed his hands across mine eyes the while He told me further ""Risk no glance. The sight Of Gorgon, if she cometh, would bring thee night From which were no returning."" Ye that read With wisdom to discern, ye well may heed The hidden meaning of the truth that lies Beneath the shadow-words of mysteries That here I show ye. While I turned away, Across the blackness of the putrid bay, There crashed a thunder of most fearful sound, At which the opposing shores, from bound to bound, Trembled. As when an entering tempest rends The brooding heat, and nought its course can stay, That through the forest its dividing way Tears open, and tramples down, and strips, and bends, And levels. The wild things in the woods that be Cower down. The herdsmen from its trumpets flee. With clouds of dust to trace its course it goes, Superb, and leaving ruin. Such sound arose. And he that held me loosened mine eyes, and said, ""Look back, and see what foam the black waves bear."" As frogs, the while the serpent picks his prey, In panic scatter through the stream, and there Flatten themselves upon its bouldered bed, I saw a thousand ruined spirits that fled Before the coming of One who held his way Dry-shod across the water. His left hand He waved before him, and the stagnant air Retreated. Simple it were to understand A Messenger of Heaven he came. My guide Signed me to silence, and to reverence due, While to one stroke of his indignant wand The gate swung open. ""Outcast spawn!"" he cried, His voice heard vibrant through the aperture grim, ""Why spurn ye at the Will that, once defied, Here cast ye grovelling? Have ye felt from Him Aught ever for fresh revolt but harder pains? Has Cerberus' throat, skinned with the threefold chains, No meaning? Why, to fate most impotent, Contend ye vainly?"" Then he turned and went, Nor one glance gave us, but he seemed as one Whom larger issue than the instant done Engages wholly. By that Power compelled, The gates stood open, and our course we held Unhindered. As the threshold dread we crossed, My eager glances swept the scene to know, In those doomed walls imprisoned, how lived the lost. On either hand a wide plain stretched, to show A sight of torment, and most dismal woe. At Arles, where the stagnant Rhone extends, Or Pola, where the gulf Quarnero bends, As with old tombs the plains are ridged, so here, All sides, did rows of countless tombs appear, But in more bitter a guise, for everywhere Shone flames, that moved among them. Every tomb Stood open, white with heat. No craft requires More heated metal than the crawling fires Made hot the sides of those sad sepulchres; And cries of torture and most dire despair Came from them, as the spirits wailed their doom. I said, ""Who are they, in these chests that lie Confined, and join in this lamenting cry?"" My Master answered, ""These in life denied The faith that saves, and that resisting pride Here brought them. With their followers, like to like, Assorted are they, and the keen flames strike With differing anguish, to the same degree They reached in their rebellion."" While he spake Rightward he turned, a narrow path to take Between them and that high-walled boundary. Canto X FIRST went my Master, for the space was small Between the torments and the lofty wall, And I behind him. ""O controlling Will,"" I spake, ""who leadest through such hates, and still Prevailest for me, wilt thou speak, that who Within these tombs are held mine eyes may see? For lifted are they, and unwatched."" And he, - ""The lids stand open till the time arrive When to the valley of Jehoshaphat They each must wend, and earthly flesh resume, And back returning, as the swarming hive, From condemnation, each the doleful tomb Re-enter wailing, and the lids thereat Be bolted. Here in fitting torment lie The Epicurean horde, who dared deny That soul outlasts its mortal home. Is here Their leader, and his followers round him. Soon Shall all thy wish be granted, - and the boon Ye hold in secret."" ""Kind my guide,"" I said, ""I was not silent to conceal, but thou Didst teach, when in thy written words I read, That in brief speech is wisdom."" Here a voice Behind me, ""Tuscan, who canst walk at choice Untouched amidst the torments, wilt thou stay? For surely native of the noble land Where once I held my too-audacious way, Discreet of speech, thou comest."" The sudden cry So close behind me from the chests that came, First drove me closer to my guide, but he, - ""What dost thou? Turn thee!"" - and a kindly hand Impelled me, fearful, where the crawling flame Was all around me, - ""Lift thine eyes and see, For there is Farinata. Be thou short In speech, for time is failing."" Scorn of hell Was in the eyes that met me. Hard he wrought To raise himself, till girdle-deep I knew The greatest of the fierce Uberti crew, Who asked me, with contempt near-waiting, ""Tell Of whom thou art descended?"" I replied, Concealing nothing. With lifted brows he eyed My face in silence some brief while, and then, - ""Foes were they ever to my part, and me. It yet must linger in the minds of men How twice I broke them."" ""Twice ye learned them flee,"" - I answered boldly, - ""but they twice returned; And others fled more late who have not learned The mode of that returning."" Here a shade Arose beside him, only to the chin Revealed: I think it knelt. Beyond and round It rather looked than at me. Nought it found. Thereat it wept, and asked me, ""Ye that go Unhindered through these homes of gateless woe, - Is my son with thee? Hast thou nought to tell?"" I answered, ""Single through the gates of hell","{
    ""1"": {
        ""category_1_x_poem.id"": 1,
        ""category_1.id"": 1,
        ""category_1.ts"": ""2018-02-27 03:36:29"",
        ""category_1.title"": ""Abortion Poems""
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    ""903"": {
        ""category_1_x_poem.id"": 903,
        ""category_1.id"": 42,
        ""category_1.ts"": ""2018-02-27 20:14:31"",
        ""category_1.title"": ""God Poems""
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    ""1046"": {
        ""category_1_x_poem.id"": 1046,
        ""category_1.id"": 50,
        ""category_1.ts"": ""2018-02-27 20:15:17"",
        ""category_1.title"": ""Hate Poems""
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2,"2018-02-27 21:04:44","Part 7 of Trout Fishing in America","Richard Brautigan","THE PUDDING MASTER OF STANLEY BASINTree, snow and rock beginnings, the mountain in back of thelake promised us eternity, but the lake itself was filled withthousands of silly minnows, swimming close to the shoreand busy putting in hours of Mack Sennett time. The minnows were an Idaho tourist attraction. Theyshould have been made into a National Monument. Swimmingclose to shore, like children they believed in their own im-mortality . A third-year student in engineering at the University ofMontana attempted to catch some of the minnows but he wentabout it all wrong. So did the children who came on theFourth of July weekend. The children waded out into the lake and tried to catch theminnows with their hands. They also used milk cartons andplastic bags. They presented the lake with hours of humaneffort. Their total catch was one minnow. It jumped out of acan full of water on their table and died under the table, gasp-ing for watery breath while their mother fried eggs on theColeman stove. The mother apologized. She was supposed to be watchingthe fish --THIS IS MY EARTHLY FAILURE-- holding thedead fish by the tail, the fish taking all the bows like a youngJewish comedian talking about Adlai Stevenson. The third-year student in engineering at the University ofMontana took a tin can and punched an elaborate design ofholes in the can, the design running around and around incircles, like a dog with a fire hydrant in its mouth. Then heattached some string to the can and put a huge salmon eggand a piece of Swiss cheese in the can. After two hours ofintimate and universal failure he went back to Missoula,Montana. The woman who travels with me discovered the best wayto catch the minnows. She used a large pan that had in itsbottom the dregs of a distant vanilla pudding. She put thepan in the shallow water along the shore and instantly, hun-dreds of minnows gathered around. Then, mesmerized bythe vanilla pudding, they swam like a children's crusadeinto the pan. She caught twenty fish with one dip. She putthe pan full of fish on the shore and the baby played withthe fish for an hour. We watched the baby to make sure she was just leaningon them a little. We didn't want her to kill any of them be-cause she was too young. Instead of making her furry sound, she adapted rapidlyto the difference between animals and fish, and was soonmaking a silver sound. She caught one of the fish with her hand and looked at itfor a while. We took the fish out of her hand and put it backinto the pan. After a while she was putting the fish back byherself. Then she grew tired of this. She tipped the pan over anda dozen fish flopped out onto the shore. The children's gameand the banker's game, she picked up those silver things,one at a time, and put them back in the pan. There was stilla little water in it. The fish liked this. You could tell. When she got tired of the fish, we put them back in thelake, and they were all quite alive, but nervous. I doubt ifthey will ever want vanilla pudding again. ROOM 208, HOTEL TROUT FISHING IN AMERICAHalf a block from Broadway and Columbus is Hotel TroutFishing in America, a cheap hotel. It is very old and run bysome Chinese. They are young and ambitious Chinese andthe lobby is filled with the smell of Lysol. The Lysol sits like another guest on the stuffed furniturereading a copy of the Chronicle, the Sports Section. It is theonly furniture I have ever seen in my life that looks like babyfood. And the Lysol sits asleep next to an old Italian pensionerwho listens to the heavy ticking of the clock and dreams ofeternity's golden pasta, sweet basil and Jesus Christ. The Chinese are always doing something to the hotel. Oneweek they paint a lower banister and the next week they putsome new wallpaper on part of the third floor. No matter how many times you pass that part of the thirdfloor, you cannot remember the color of the wallpaper orwhat the design is. All you know is that part of the wallpaperis new. It is different from the old wallpaper. But you can-not remember what that looks like either. One day the Chinese take a bed out of a room and lean itup against the wall. It stays there for a month. You get usedto seeing it and then you go by one day and it is gone. Youwonder where it went. I remember the first time I went inside Hotel Trout Fish-ing in America. It was with a friend to meet some people. ""I'11 tell you what's happening, "" he said. ""She's an ex-hustler who works for the telephone company. He went tomedical school for a while during the Great Depression andthen he went into show business. After that, he was an errandboy for an abortion mill in Los Angeles. He took a fall anddid some time in San Quentin. ""I think you'll like them. They're good people. ""He met her a couple of years ago in North Beach. Shewas hustling for a spade pimp. It's kind of weird. Mostwomen have the temperament to be a whore, but she's oneof these rare women who just don't have it--the whore tem-perament. She's Negro, too. ""She was a teenage girl living on a farm in Oklahoma. Thepimp drove by one afternoon and saw her playing in the frontyard. He stopped his car and got out and talked to her fatherfor a while. ""I guess he gave her father some money. He came upwith something good because her father told her to go andget her things. So she went with the pimp. Simple as that. ""He took her to San Francisco and turned her out and shehated it. He kept her in line by terrorizing her all the time.He was a real sweetheart. ""She had some brains, so he got her a job with the tele-phone company during the day, and he had her hustling atnight. ""When Art took her away from him, he got pretty mad. Agood thing and all that. He used to break into Art's hotelroom in the middle of the night and put a switchblade to Art'sthroat and rant and rave. Art kept putting bigger and biggerlocks on the door, but the pimp just kept breaking in--a hugefellow. ""So Art went out and got a .32 pistol, and the next timethe pimp broke in, Art pulled the gun out from underneaththe covers and jammed it into the pimp's mouth and said,'You'll be out of luck the next time you come through thatdoor, Jack.' This broke the pimp up. He never went back.The pimp certainly lost a good thing. ""He ran up a couple thousand dollars worth of bills in hername, charge accounts and the like. They're still payingthem off. ""The pistol's right there beside the bed, just in case thepimp has an attack of amnesia and wants to have his shoesshined in a funeral parlor. ""When we go up there, he'll drink the wine. She won't.She'Il'have a little bottle of brandy. She won't offer us anyof it. She drinks about four of them a day. Never buys a fifth.She always keeps going out and getting another half-pint.""That's the way she handles it. She doesn't talk very much,and she doesn't make any bad scenes. A good-looking woman, r My friend knocked on the door and we could hear some-body get up off the bed and come to the door. ""Who's there?"" said a man on the other side. ""Me,"" my friend said, in a voice deep and recognizableas any name. ""I'11 open the door. "" A simple declarative sentence. Heundid about a hundred locks, bolts and chains and anchorsand steel spikes and canes filled with acid, and then thedoor opened like the classroom of a great university andeverything was in its proper place: the gun beside the bedand a small bottle of brandy beside an attractive Negro woman, There were many flowers and plants growing in the room,some of them were on the dresser, surrounded by old photo-graphs. All of the photographs were of white people, includ-ing Art when he was young and handsome and looked just likethe 1930s. There were pictures of animals cut out of magazines andtacked to the wall, with crayola frames drawn around themand crayola picture wires drawn holding them to the wall.They were pictures of kittens and puppies. They looked justfine . There was a bowl of goldfish next to the bed, next to thegun. How religious and intimate the goldfish and the gunlooked together. They had a cat named 208. They covered the bathroomfloor with newspaper and the cat crapped on the newspaper.My friend said that 208 thought he was the only cat left in theworld, not having seen another cat since he was a tiny kitten.They never let him out of the room. He was a red cat andvery aggressive. When you played with that cat, he reallybit you. Stroke 208's fur and he'd try to disembowel yourhand as if it were a belly stuffed full of extra soft intestines. We sat there and drank and talked about books. Art hadowned a lot of books in Los Angeles, but they were all gonenow. He told us that he used to spend his spare time in sec-ondhand bookstores buying old and unusual books when hewas in show business, traveling from city to city acrossAmerica. Some of them were very rare autographed books,he told us, but he had bought them for very little and wasforced to sell them for very little.They'd be worth a lot of money now, "" he said. The Negro woman sat there very quietly studying herbrandy. A couple of times she said yes, in a sort of niceway. She used the word yes to its best advantage, when sur-rounded by no meaning and left alone from other words. They did their own cooking in the room and had a singlehot plate sitting on the floor, next to half a dozen plants, in-cluding a peach tree growing in a coffee can. Their closetwas stuffed with food. Along with shirts, suits and dresses,were canned goods, eggs and cooking oil. My friend told me that she was a very fine cook. Thatshe could really cook up a good meal, fancy dishes, too, onthat single hot plate, next to the peach tree. They had a good world going for them. He had such a softvoice and manner that he worked as a private nurse for richmental patients. He made good money when he worked, butsometimes he was sick himself. He was kind of run down.She was still working for the telephone company, but shewasn't doing that night work any more. They were still paying off the bills that pimp had run up.I mean, years had passed and they were still paying themoff: a Cadillac and a hi-fi set and expensive clothes and allthose things that Negro pimps do love to have. Z went back there half a dozen times after that first meet-ing. An interesting thing happened. I pretended that the cat,208, was named after their room number, though I knew thattheir number was in the three hundreds. The room was onthe third floor. It was that simple. I always went to their room following the geography ofHotel Trout Fishing in America, rather than its numericallayout. I never knew what the exact number of their roomwas. I knew secretly it was in the three hundreds and thatwas all. Anyway, it was easier for me to establish order in mymind by pretending that the cat was named after their roomnumber. It seemed like a good idea and the logical reasonfor a cat to have the name 208. It, of course, was not true.It was a fib. The cat's name was 208 and the room numberwas in the three hundreds. Where did the name 208 come from? What did it mean? Ithought about it for a while, hiding it from the rest of mymind. But I didn't ruin my birthday by secretly thinking aboutit too hard. A year later I found out the true significance of 208'sname, purely by accident. My telephone rang one Saturdaymorning when the sun was shining on the hills. It was aclose friend of mine and he said, ""I'm in the slammer. Comeand get me out. They're burning black candles around thedrunk tank. "" I went down to the Hall of Justice to bail my friend out,and discovered that 208 is the room number of the bail office,It was very simple. I paid ten dollars for my friend's lifeand found the original meaning of 208, how it runs like melt-ing snow all the way down the mountainside to a small catliving and playing in Hotel Trout Fishing in America, believ-ing itself to be the last cat in the world, not having seenanother cat in such a long time, totally unafraid, newspaperspread out all over the bathroom floor, and something goodcooking on the hot plate. THE SURGEONI watched my day begin on Little Redfish Lake as clearly asthe first light of dawn or the first ray of the sunrise, thoughthe dawn and the sunrise had long since passed and it wasnow late in the morning. The surgeon took a knife from the sheath at his belt andcut the throat of the chub with a very gentle motion, showingpoetically how sharp the knife was, and then he heaved thefish back out into the lake. The chub made an awkward dead splash and obeyed allthetraffic laws of this world SCHOOL ZONE SPEED 25 MILESand sank to the cold bottom of the lake. It lay there whitebelly up like a school bus covered with snow. A trout swamover and took a look, just putting in time, and swam away. The surgeon and I were talking about the AMA. I don'tknow how in the hell we got on the thing, but we were on it.Then he wiped the knife off and put it back in the sheath. Iactually don't know how we got on the AMA. The surgeon said that he had spent twenty-five years be-coming a doctor. His studies had been interrupted by theDepression and two wars. He told me that he would give upthe practice of medicine if it became socialized in America. ""I've never turned away a patient in my life, and I'venever known another doctor who has. Last year I wrote offsix thousand dollars worth of bad debts, "" he said. I was going to say that a sick person should never underany conditions be abad debt, but I decided to forget it. Noth-ing was going to be proved or changed on the shores of LittleRedfish Lake, and as that chub had discovered, it was not agood place to have cosmetic surgery done. ""I worked three years ago for a union in Southern Utahthat had a health plan, "" the surgeon said. ""I would not careto practice medicine under such conditions. The patientsthink they own you and your time. They think you're theirown personal garbage can. ""I'd be home eating dinner and the telephone would ring,'Help ! Doctor ! I'm dying! It's my stomach ! I've got horriblepains !' I would get up from my dinner and rush over there. ""The guy would meet me at the door with a can of beer inhis hand. 'Hi, dec, come on in. I'11 get you a beer. I'mwatching TV. The pain is all gone. Great, huh? I feel like amillion. Sit down. I'11 get you a beer, dec. The Ed SullivanShow's on.' ""No thank you, "" the surgeon said. ""I wouldn't care topractice medicine under such conditions. No thank you. Nothanks . ""I like to hunt and I like to fish, "" he said. ""That's why Imoved to Twin Falls. I'd heard so much about Idaho huntingand fishing. I've been very disappointed. I've given up mypractice, sold my home in Twin, and now I'm looking for anew place to settle down. ""I've written to Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexi-co, Arizona, California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington fortheir hunting and fishing regulations, and I'm studying themall, "" he said. ""I've got enough money to travel around for six months,looking for a place to settle down where the hunting and fish-ing is good. I'11 get twelve hundred dollars back in incometax returns by not working any more this year. That's twohundred a month for not working. I don't understand thiscountry, "" he said. The surgeon's wife and children were in a trailer nearby.The trailer had come in the night before, pulled by a brand-new Rambler station wagon. He had two children, a boy two-and-a-half years old and the other, an infant born premature-ly, but now almost up to normal weight. The surgeon told me that they'd come over from campingon Big Lost River where he had caught a fourteen-inch brooktrout. He was young looking, though he did not have muchhair on his head. I talked to the surgeon for a little while longer and saidgood-bye. We were leaving in the afternoon for Lake Josephuslocated at the edge of the Idaho Wilderness, and he was leav-ing for America, often only a place in the mind. A NOTE ON THE CAMPING CRAZE THAT IS CURRENTLY SWEEPING AMERICAAs much as anything else, the Coleman lantern is the sym-bol of the camping craze that is currently sweeping America,with its unholy white light burning in the forests of America. Last summer, a Mr. Norris was drinking at a bar in SanFrancisco. It was Sunday night and he'd had six or seven.Turning to the guy on the next stool, he said, ""What are youup to?"" ""Just having a few, "" the guy said. ""That's what I'm doing, "" Mr. Norris said. ""I like it. "" ""I know what you mean, "" the guy said. ""I had to lay offfor a couple years. I'm just starting up again. "" ""What was wrong?"" Mr. Norris said. ""I had a hole in my liver, "" the guy said. ""In your liver?"" ""Yeah, the doctor said it was big enough to wave a flagin. It's better now. I can have a couple once in a while. I'mnot supposed to, but it won't kill me. "" ""Well, I'm thirty-two years old, "" Mr. Norris said. ""I'vehad three wives and I can't remember the names of my child-ren. "" The guy on the next stool, like a bird on the next island,took a sip from his Scotch and soda. The guy liked the soundof the alcohol in his drink. He put the glass back on the bar. ""That's no problem, "" he said to Mr. Norris. ""The bestthing I know for remembering the names of children fromprevious marriages, is to go out camping, try a little troutfishing. Trout fishing is one of the best things in the worldfor remembering children's names."" ""Is that right?"" Mr. Norris said. ""Yeah, "" the guy said. ""That sounds like an idea, "" Mr. Norris said. ""I've got todo something. Sometimes I think one of them is named Carl, but that's impossible. My third-ex hated the name Carl. "" ""You try some camping and that trout fishing, "" the guy on the next stool said. ""And you'll remember the names of Your unborn children. "" ""Carl! Carl! Your mother wants you!"" Mr. Norris yelled as a kind of joke, then he realized that it wasn't very funny. He was getting there. He'd have a couple more and then his head would always fall forward and hit the bar like a gunshot. He'd always miss his glass, so he wouldn't cut his face. His head would always jump up and look startled around the bar, people staring at it. He'd get up then, and take it home. The next morning Mr. Norris went down to a sporting goods store and charged his equipment. He charged a 9 x 9 foot dry finish tent with an aluminum center pole. Then he charged an Arctic sleeping bag filled with eiderdown and an air mattress and an air pillow to go with the sleeping bag. He also charged an air alarm clock to go along with the idea of night and waking in the morning. He charged a two-burner Coleman stove and a Coleman lantern and a folding aluminum table and a big set of inter- locking aluminum cookware and a portable ice box. The last things he charged were his fishing tackle and a bottle of insect repellent. He left the next day for the mountains. Hours later, when he arrived in the mountains, the first sixteen campgrounds he stopped at were filled with people. He was a little surprised. He had no idea the mountains would be so crowded. At the seventeenth campground, a man had just died of a heart attack and the ambulance attendants were taking down his tent. They lowered the center pole and then pulled up the corner stakes. They folded the tent neatly and put it in the back of the ambulance, right beside the man's body. They drove off down the road, leaving behind them in the air, a cloud of brilliant white dust. The dust looked like the light from a Coleman lantern. Mr. Norris pitched his tent right there and set up all his equipment and soon had it all going at once. After he finished eating a dehydrated beef Stroganoff dinner, he turned off all his equipment with the master air switch and went to sleep, for it was now dark. It was about midnight when they brought the body andplaced it beside the tent, less than a foot away from whereMr. Norris was sleeping in his Arctic sleeping bag. He was awakened when they brought the body. They weren'texactly the quietest body bringers in the world. Mr. Norriscould see the bulge of the body against the side of the tent.The only thing that separated him from the dead body was athin layer of 6 oz. water resistant and mildew resistant DRYFINISH green AMERIFLEX poplin. Mr. Norris un-zipped his sleeping bag and went outsidewith a gigantic hound-like flashlight. He saw the body bring-ers walking down the path toward the creek. ""Hey, you guys !"" Mr. Norris shouted. ""Come back here.You forgot something. "" ""What do you mean?"" one of them said. They both lookedvery sheepish, caught in the teeth of the flashlight. ""You know what I mean,"" Mr. Norris said. ""Right now!"" The body bringers shrugged their shoulders, looked ateach other and then reluctantly went back, dragging theirfeet like children all the way. They picked up the body. Itwas heavy and one of them had trouble getting hold of the feet. That one said, kind of hopelessly to Mr. Norris, ""Youwon't change your mind?"" ""Goodnight and good-bye, "" Mr. Norris said. They went off down the path toward the creek, carryingthe body between them. Mr. Norris turned his flashlight offand he could hear them, stumbling over the rocks along thebank of the creek. He could hear them swearing at each other.He heard one of them say, ""Hold your end up.'' Then hecouldn't hear anything. About ten minutes later he saw all sorts of lights go on atanother campsite down along the creek. He heard a distantvoice shouting, ""The answer is no ! You already woke up thekids. They have to have their rest. We're going on a four-mile hike tomorrow up to Fish Konk Lake. Try someplaceelse. ""","{
    ""2"": {
        ""category_1_x_poem.id"": 2,
        ""category_1.id"": 1,
        ""category_1.ts"": ""2018-02-27 03:36:29"",
        ""category_1.title"": ""Abortion Poems""
    },
    ""570"": {
        ""category_1_x_poem.id"": 570,
        ""category_1.id"": 27,
        ""category_1.ts"": ""2018-02-27 20:12:41"",
        ""category_1.title"": ""Depression Poems""
    },
    ""2416"": {
        ""category_1_x_poem.id"": 2416,
        ""category_1.id"": 113,
        ""category_1.ts"": ""2018-02-27 20:21:45"",
        ""category_1.title"": ""Teen Poems""
    },
    ""2490"": {
        ""category_1_x_poem.id"": 2490,
        ""category_1.id"": 116,
        ""category_1.ts"": ""2018-02-27 20:22:02"",
        ""category_1.title"": ""Time Poems""
    }
}"
3,"2018-02-27 21:04:45","The Mother","Gwendolyn Brooks","Abortions will not let you forget.You remember the children you got that you did not get,The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair,The singers and workers that never handled the air.You will never neglect or beatThem, or silence or buy with a sweet.You will never wind up the sucking-thumbOr scuttle off ghosts that come.You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh,Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye.I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killedchildren.I have contracted. I have easedMy dim dears at the breasts they could never suck.I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seizedYour luckAnd your lives from your unfinished reach,If I stole your births and your names,Your straight baby tears and your games,Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your marriages, aches,and your deaths,If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths,Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate.Though why should I whine,Whine that the crime was other than mine?--Since anyhow you are dead.Or rather, or instead,You were never made.But that too, I am afraid,Is faulty: oh, what shall I say, how is the truth to be said?You were born, you had body, you died.It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried.Believe me, I loved you all.Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved youAll.","{
    ""3"": {
        ""category_1_x_poem.id"": 3,
        ""category_1.id"": 1,
        ""category_1.ts"": ""2018-02-27 03:36:29"",
        ""category_1.title"": ""Abortion Poems""
    },
    ""1586"": {
        ""category_1_x_poem.id"": 1586,
        ""category_1.id"": 76,
        ""category_1.ts"": ""2018-02-27 20:18:13"",
        ""category_1.title"": ""Mother Poems""
    }
}"
4,"2018-02-27 21:04:46","The Glove","Robert Browning","(PETER RONSARD _loquitur_.)``Heigho!'' yawned one day King Francis,``Distance all value enhances!``When a man's busy, why, leisure``Strikes him as wonderful pleasure:`` 'Faith, and at leisure once is he?``Straightway he wants to be busy.``Here we've got peace; and aghast I'm``Caught thinking war the true pastime.``Is there a reason in metre?``Give us your speech, master Peter!''I who, if mortal dare say so,Ne'er am at loss with my Naso,``Sire,'' I replied, ``joys prove cloudlets:``Men are the merest Ixions''---Here the King whistled aloud, ``Let's``---Heigho---go look at our lions!''Such are the sorrowful chancesIf you talk fine to King Francis.And so, to the courtyard proceeding,Our company, Francis was leading,Increased by new followers tenfoldBefore be arrived at the penfold;Lords, ladies, like clouds which bedizenAt sunset the western horizon.And Sir De Lorge pressed 'mid the foremostWith the dame he professed to adore most.Oh, what a face! One by fits eyedHer, and the horrible pitside;For the penfold surrounded a hollowWhich led where the eye scarce dared follow,And shelved to the chamber secludedWhere Bluebeard, the great lion, brooded.The King bailed his keeper, an ArabAs glossy and black as a scarab,*1And bade him make sport and at once stirUp and out of his den the old monster.They opened a hole in the wire-workAcross it, and dropped there a firework,And fled: one's heart's beating redoubled;A pause, while the pit's mouth was troubled,The blackness and silence so utter,By the firework's slow sparkling and sputter;Then earth in a sudden contortionGave out to our gaze her abortion.Such a brute! Were I friend Clement Marot(Whose experience of nature's but narrow,And whose faculties move in no small mistWhen he versifies David the Psalmist)I should study that brute to describe you_Illim Juda Leonem de Tribu_.One's whole blood grew curdling and creepyTo see the black mane, vast and heapy,The tail in the air stiff and straining,The wide eyes, nor waxing nor waning,As over the barrier which boundedHis platform, and us who surroundedThe barrier, they reached and they restedOn space that might stand him in best stead:For who knew, he thought, what the amazement,The eruption of clatter and blaze meant,And if, in this minute of wonder,No outlet, 'mid lightning and thunder,Lay broad, and, his shackles all shivered,The lion at last was delivered?Ay, that was the open sky o'erhead!And you saw by the flash on his forehead,By the hope in those eyes wide and steady,He was leagues in the desert already,Driving the flocks up the mountain,Or catlike couched hard by the fountainTo waylay the date-gathering negress:So guarded he entrance or egress.``How he stands!'' quoth the King: ``we may well swear,(``No novice, we've won our spurs elsewhere``And so can afford the confession,)``We exercise wholesome discretion``In keeping aloof from his threshold;``Once hold you, those jaws want no fresh hold,``Their first would too pleasantly purloin``The visitor's brisket or surloin:``But who's he would prove so fool-hardy?``Not the best man of Marignan, pardie!''The sentence no sooner was uttered,Than over the rails a glove flattered,Fell close to the lion, and rested:The dame 'twas, who flung it and jestedWith life so, De Lorge had been wooingFor months past; he sat there pursuingHis suit, weighing out with nonchalanceFine speeches like gold from a balance.Sound the trumpet, no true knight's a tarrier!De Lorge made one leap at the barrier,Walked straight to the glove,---while the lionNeer moved, kept his far-reaching eye onThe palm-tree-edged desert-spring's sapphire,And the musky oiled skin of the Kaffir,---Picked it up, and as calmly retreated,Leaped back where the lady was seated,And full in the face of its ownerFlung the glove.``Your heart's queen, you dethrone her?``So should I!''---cried the King---``'twas mere vanity,``Not love, set that task to humanity!''Lords and ladies alike turned with loathingFrom such a proved wolf in sheep's clothing.Not so, I; for I caught an expressionIn her brow's undisturbed self-possessionAmid the Court's scoffing and merriment,---As if from no pleasing experimentShe rose, yet of pain not much heedfulSo long as the process was needful,---As if she had tried in a crucible,To what ``speeches like gold'' were reducible,And, finding the finest prove copper,Felt the smoke in her face was but proper;To know what she had _not_ to trust to,Was worth all the ashes and dust too.She went out 'mid hooting and laughter;Clement Marot stayed; I followed after,And asked, as a grace, what it all meant?If she wished not the rash deed's recalment?``For I''---so I spoke---``am a poet:``Human nature,---behoves that I know it!''She told me, ``Too long had I heard``Of the deed proved alone by the word:``For my love---what De Lorge would not dare!``With my scorn---what De Lorge could compare!``And the endless descriptions of death``He would brave when my lip formed a breath,``I must reckon as braved, or, of course,``Doubt his word---and moreover, perforce,``For such gifts as no lady could spurn,``Must offer my love in return.``When I looked on your lion, it brought``All the dangers at once to my thought,``Encountered by all sorts of men,``Before he was lodged in his den,---``From the poor slave whose club or bare hands``Dug the trap, set the snare on the sands,``With no King and no Court to applaud,``By no shame, should he shrink, overawed,``Yet to capture the creature made shift,``That his rude boys might laugh at the gift,``---To the page who last leaped o'er the fence``Of the pit, on no greater pretence``Than to get back the bonnet he dropped,``Lest his pay for a week should be stopped.``So, wiser I judged it to make``One trial what `death for my sake'``Really meant, while the power was yet mine,``Than to wait until time should define``Such a phrase not so simply as I,``Who took it to mean just `to die.'``The blow a glove gives is but weak:``Does the mark yet discolour my cheek?``But when the heart suffers a blow,``Will the pain pass so soon, do you know?''I looked, as away she was sweeping,And saw a youth eagerly keepingAs close as he dared to the doorway.No doubt that a noble should more weighHis life than befits a plebeian;And yet, had our brute been Nemean---(I judge by a certain calm fervourThe youth stepped with, forward to serve her)---He'd have scarce thought you did him the worst turnIf you whispered ``Friend, what you'd get, first earn!''And when, shortly after, she carriedHer shame from the Court, and they married,To that marriage some happiness, maugreThe voice of the Court, I dared augur.For De Lorge, he made women with men vie,Those in wonder and praise, these in envy;And in short stood so plain a head tallerThat he wooed and won ... how do you call her?The beauty, that rose in the sequelTo the King's love, who loved her a week well.And 'twas noticed he never would honourDe Lorge (who looked daggers upon her)With the easy commission of stretchingHis legs in the service, and fetchingHis wife, from her chamber, those strayingSad gloves she was always mislaying,While the King took the closet to chat in,---But of course this adventure came pat in.And never the King told the story,How bringing a glove brought such glory,But the wife smiled---``His nerves are grown firmer:``Mine he brings now and utters no murmur.''_Venienti occurrite morbo!_With which moral I drop my theorbo.*1 A beetle.","{
    ""4"": {
        ""category_1_x_poem.id"": 4,
        ""category_1.id"": 1,
        ""category_1.ts"": ""2018-02-27 03:36:29"",
        ""category_1.title"": ""Abortion Poems""
    }
}"
5,"2018-02-27 21:04:48","130. Nature’s Law: A Poem","Robert Burns","LET other heroes boast their scars, The marks of sturt and strife:And other poets sing of wars, The plagues of human life:Shame fa’ the fun, wi’ sword and gun To slap mankind like lumber!I sing his name, and nobler fame, Wha multiplies our number. Great Nature spoke, with air benign, “Go on, ye human race;This lower world I you resign; Be fruitful and increase.The liquid fire of strong desire I’ve pour’d it in each bosom;Here, on this had, does Mankind stand, And there is Beauty’s blossom.” The Hero of these artless strains, A lowly bard was he,Who sung his rhymes in Coila’s plains, With meikle mirth an’glee;Kind Nature’s care had given his share Large, of the flaming current;And, all devout, he never sought To stem the sacred torrent. He felt the powerful, high behest Thrill, vital, thro’ and thro’;And sought a correspondent breast, To give obedience due:Propitious Powers screen’d the young flow’rs, From mildews of abortion;And low! the bard—a great reward— Has got a double portion! Auld cantie Coil may count the day, As annual it returns,The third of Libra’s equal sway, That gave another Burns,With future rhymes, an’ other times, To emulate his sire:To sing auld Coil in nobler style With more poetic fire. Ye Powers of peace, and peaceful song, Look down with gracious eyes;And bless auld Coila, large and long, With multiplying joys;Lang may she stand to prop the land, The flow’r of ancient nations;And Burnses spring, her fame to sing, To endless generations!","{
    ""5"": {
        ""category_1_x_poem.id"": 5,
        ""category_1.id"": 1,
        ""category_1.ts"": ""2018-02-27 03:36:29"",
        ""category_1.title"": ""Abortion Poems""
    },
    ""1659"": {
        ""category_1_x_poem.id"": 1659,
        ""category_1.id"": 79,
        ""category_1.ts"": ""2018-02-27 20:18:27"",
        ""category_1.title"": ""Nature Poems""
    }
}"
6,"2018-02-27 21:04:53","Millenial Hymn to Lord Shiva","Kathleen Raine","Earth no longerhymns the Creator,the seven days of wonder,the Garden is over —all the stories are told,the seven seals brokenall that beginsmust have its ending,our striving, desiring,our living and dying,for Time, the bringerof abundant daysis Time the destroyer —In the Iron Agethe Kali YugaTo whom can we prayat the end of an erabut the Lord Shiva,the Liberator, the purifier?Our forests are felled,our mountains eroded,the wild placeswhere the beautiful animalsfound food and sanctuarywe have desolated,a third of our seas,a third of our riverswe have pollutedand the sea-creatures dying.Our civilization’sblind progressin wrong coursesthrough wrong choiceshas brought us to nightmarewhere what seems,is, to the dreamer,the collective mindof the twentieth century —this world of wondersnot divine creationbut a big bangof blind chance,purposeless accident,mother earth’s children,their living and loving,their delight in beingnot joy but chemistry,stimulus, reflex,valueless, meaningless,while to our machineswe impute intelligence,in computers and robotswe store informationand call it knowledge,we seek guidanceby dialling numbers,pressing buttons, throwing switches,in place of familyour companions are shadows,cast on a screen,bodiless voices, fleshless faces,where was the Gardena Disney-landof virtual reality,in place of angelsthe human imaginationis peopled with foot-ballersfilm-stars, media-men,experts, know-alltelevision personalities,animated puppetswith cartoon faces —To whom can we prayfor release from illusion,from the world-cave,but Time the destroyer,the liberator, the purifier?The curse of Midashas changed at a touch,a golden handshakeearthly paradiseto lifeless matter,where once was seed-time,summer and winter,food-chain, factory farming,monocrops for supermarkets,pesticides, weed-killersbirdless springs, endangered species,battery-hens, hormone injections,artificial insemination,implants, transplants, sterilization,surrogate births, contraception,cloning, genetic engineering, abortion,and our days shall be shortin the land we have sownwith the Dragon’s teethwhere our armies arisefully armed on our killing-fieldswith land-mines and missiles,tanks and artillery,gas-masks and body-bags,our air-craft rain downfire and destruction,our space-craft broadcastlies and corruption,our elected parliamentsparrot their rhetoricof peace and democracywhile the truth we denyreturns in our dreamsof Armageddon,the death-wish, the arms-trade,hatred and slaughterprofitable employmentof our thriving cities,the arms-raceto the end of the worldof our postmodern, post-Christian,post-human nations,progress to the nihilof our spent civilization.But cause and effect,just and inexorablelaw of the universeno fix of science,nor amenable godcan save from ourselvesthe selves we have become —At the end of historyto whom can we praybut to the destroyer,the liberator, the purifier?In the beginningthe stars sang togetherthe cosmic harmony,but Time, imperceptibletaker-awayof all that has been,all that will be,our heart-beat your drum,our dance of lifeyour dance of deathin the crematorium,our high-rise dreams,Valhalla, Utopia,Xanadu, Shangri-la, world revolutionTime has taken, and soon will be goneCambridge, Princeton and M.I.T.,Nalanda, Athens and Alexandriaall for the holocaustof civilization —To whom shall we praywhen our vision has fadedbut the world-destroyer,the liberator, the purifier?But great is the realmof the world-creator,the world-sustainerfrom whom we come,in whom we moveand have our being,about us, within usthe wonders of wisdom,the trees and the fountains,the stars and the mountains,all the children of joy,the loved and the known,the unknowable mysteryto whom we returnthrough the world-destroyer, —Holy, holyat the end of the worldthe purging fireof the purifier, the liberator!","{
    ""6"": {
        ""category_1_x_poem.id"": 6,
        ""category_1.id"": 1,
        ""category_1.ts"": ""2018-02-27 03:36:29"",
        ""category_1.title"": ""Abortion Poems""
    },
    ""1135"": {
        ""category_1_x_poem.id"": 1135,
        ""category_1.id"": 55,
        ""category_1.ts"": ""2018-02-27 20:15:34"",
        ""category_1.title"": ""Holocaust Poems""
    }
}"
7,"2018-02-27 21:04:57",Commination,"Alec Derwent Hope","He that is filthy let him be filthy still. Rev. 22.11 Like John on Patmos, brooding on the Four Last Things, I meditate the ruin of friends Whose loss, Lord, brings this grand new curse to mind Now send me foes worth cursing, or send more - Since means should be proportionate to ends - For mine are few and of the piddling kind: Drivellers, snivellers, writers of bad verse, Backbiting bitches, snipers from a pew, Small turds from the great arse of self-esteem; On such as these I would not waste my curse. God send me soon the enemy or two Fit for the wrath of God, of whom I dream: Some Caliban of Culture, some absurd Messiah of the Paranoiac State, Some Educator wallowing in his slime, Some Prophet of the Uncreating Word Monsters a man might reasonably hate, Masters of Progress, Leaders of our Time; But chiefly the Suborners: Common Tout And Punk, the Advertiser, him I mean And his smooth hatchet-man, the Technocrat. Them let my malediction single out, These modern Dives with their talking screen Who lick the sores of Lazarus and grow fat, Licensed to pimp, solicit and procure Here in my house, to foul my feast, to bawl Their wares while I am talking with my friend, To pour into my ears a public sewer Of all the Strumpet Muses sell and all That prostituted science has to vend. In this great Sodom of a world, which turns The treasure of the Intellect to dust And every gift to some perverted use, What wonder if the human spirit learns Recourses of despair or of disgust, Abortion, suicide and self-abuse. But let me laugh, Lord; let me crack and strain The belly of this derision till it burst; For I have seen too much, have lived too long A citizen of Sodom to refrain, And in the stye of Science, from the first, Have watched the pearls of Circe drop on dung. Let me not curse my children, nor in rage Mock at the just, the helpless and the poor, Foot-fast in Sodom's rat-trap; make me bold To turn on the Despoilers all their age Invents: damnations never felt before And hells more horrible than hot and cold. And, since in Heaven creatures purified Rational, free, perfected in their kinds Contemplate God and see Him face to face In Hell, for sure, spirits transmogrified, Paralysed wills and parasitic minds Mirror their own corruption and disgrace. Now let this curse fall on my enemies My enemies, Lord, but all mankind's as well Prophets and panders of their golden calf; Let Justice fit them all in their degrees; Let them, still living, know that state of hell, And let me see them perish, Lord, and laugh. Let them be glued to television screens Till their minds fester and the trash they see Worm their dry hearts away to crackling shells; Let ends be so revenged upon their means That all that once was human grows to be A flaccid mass of phototropic cells; Let the dog love his vomit still, the swine Squelch in the slough; and let their only speech Be Babel; let the specious lies they bred Taste on their tongues like intellectual wine Let sung commercials surfeit them, till each Goggles with nausea in his nauseous bed. And, lest with them I learn to gibber and gloat, Lead me, for Sodom is my city still, To seek those hills in which the heart finds ease; Give Lot his leave; let Noah build his boat, And me and mine, when each has laughed his fill, View thy damnation and depart in peace.","{
    ""7"": {
        ""category_1_x_poem.id"": 7,
        ""category_1.id"": 1,
        ""category_1.ts"": ""2018-02-27 03:36:29"",
        ""category_1.title"": ""Abortion Poems""
    },
    ""2329"": {
        ""category_1_x_poem.id"": 2329,
        ""category_1.id"": 109,
        ""category_1.ts"": ""2018-02-27 20:21:15"",
        ""category_1.title"": ""Suicide Poems""
    }
}"
8,"2018-02-27 21:04:58","The Commination","Alec Derwent Hope","He that is filthy let him be filthy still. Rev. 22.11 Like John on Patmos, brooding on the Four Last Things, I meditate the ruin of friends Whose loss, Lord, brings this grand new curse to mind Now send me foes worth cursing, or send more - Since means should be proportionate to ends - For mine are few and of the piddling kind: Drivellers, snivellers, writers of bad verse, Backbiting bitches, snipers from a pew, Small turds from the great arse of self-esteem; On such as these I would not waste my curse. God send me soon the enemy or two Fit for the wrath of God, of whom I dream: Some Caliban of Culture, some absurd Messiah of the Paranoiac State, Some Educator wallowing in his slime, Some Prophet of the Uncreating Word Monsters a man might reasonably hate, Masters of Progress, Leaders of our Time; But chiefly the Suborners: Common Tout And Punk, the Advertiser, him I mean And his smooth hatchet-man, the Technocrat. Them let my malediction single out, These modern Dives with their talking screen Who lick the sores of Lazarus and grow fat, Licensed to pimp, solicit and procure Here in my house, to foul my feast, to bawl Their wares while I am talking with my friend, To pour into my ears a public sewer Of all the Strumpet Muses sell and all That prostituted science has to vend. In this great Sodom of a world, which turns The treasure of the Intellect to dust And every gift to some perverted use, What wonder if the human spirit learns Recourses of despair or of disgust, Abortion, suicide and self-abuse. But let me laugh, Lord; let me crack and strain The belly of this derision till it burst; For I have seen too much, have lived too long A citizen of Sodom to refrain, And in the stye of Science, from the first, Have watched the pearls of Circe drop on dung. Let me not curse my children, nor in rage Mock at the just, the helpless and the poor, Foot-fast in Sodom's rat-trap; make me bold To turn on the Despoilers all their age Invents: damnations never felt before And hells more horrible than hot and cold. And, since in Heaven creatures purified Rational, free, perfected in their kinds Contemplate God and see Him face to face In Hell, for sure, spirits transmogrified, Paralysed wills and parasitic minds Mirror their own corruption and disgrace. Now let this curse fall on my enemies My enemies, Lord, but all mankind's as well Prophets and panders of their golden calf; Let Justice fit them all in their degrees; Let them, still living, know that state of hell, And let me see them perish, Lord, and laugh. Let them be glued to television screens Till their minds fester and the trash they see Worm their dry hearts away to crackling shells; Let ends be so revenged upon their means That all that once was human grows to be A flaccid mass of phototropic cells; Let the dog love his vomit still, the swine Squelch in the slough; and let their only speech Be Babel; let the specious lies they bred Taste on their tongues like intellectual wine Let sung commercials surfeit them, till each Goggles with nausea in his nauseous bed. And, lest with them I learn to gibber and gloat, Lead me, for Sodom is my city still, To seek those hills in which the heart finds ease; Give Lot his leave; let Noah build his boat, And me and mine, when each has laughed his fill, View thy damnation and depart in peace.","{
    ""8"": {
        ""category_1_x_poem.id"": 8,
        ""category_1.id"": 1,
        ""category_1.ts"": ""2018-02-27 03:36:29"",
        ""category_1.title"": ""Abortion Poems""
    },
    ""2330"": {
        ""category_1_x_poem.id"": 2330,
        ""category_1.id"": 109,
        ""category_1.ts"": ""2018-02-27 20:21:15"",
        ""category_1.title"": ""Suicide Poems""
    }
}"
9,"2018-02-27 21:05:00",Accordion,"Robert William Service","Some carol of the banjo, to its measure keeping time;Of viol or of lute some make a song.My battered old accordion, you're worthy of a rhyme,You've been my friend and comforter so long.Round half the world I've trotted you, a dozen years or more;You've given heaps of people lots of fun;You've set a host of happy feet a-tapping on the floor . . .Alas! your dancing days are nearly done.I've played you from the palm-belt to the suburbs of the Pole;From the silver-tipped sierras to the sea.The gay and gilded cabin and the grimy glory-holeHave echoed to your impish melody.I've hushed you in the dug-out when the trench was stiff with dead;I've lulled you by the coral-laced lagoon;I've packed you on a camel from the dung-fire on the bled,To the hell-for-breakfast Mountains of the Moon.I've ground you to the shanty men, a-whooping heel and toe,And the hula-hula graces in the glade.I've swung you in the igloo to the lousy Esquimau,And the Haussa at a hundred in the shade.The Nigger on the levee, and the Dinka by the Nilehave shuffled to your insolent appeal.I've rocked with glee the chimpanzee, and mocked the crocodile,And shocked the pompous penquin and the seal.I've set the yokels singing in a little Surrey pub,Apaches swinging in a Belville bar.I've played an obligato to the tom-tom's rub-a-dub,And the throb of Andalusian guitar.From the Horn to Honolulu, from the Cape to Kalamazoo,From Wick to Wicklow, Samarkand to Spain,You've roughed it with my kilt-bag like a comrade tried and true. . . .Old pal! We'll never hit the trail again.Oh I know you're cheap and vulgar, you're an instrumental crime.In drawing-rooms you haven't got a show.You're a musical abortion, you're the voice of grit and grime,You're the spokesman of the lowly and the low.You're a democratic devil, you're the darling of the mob;You're a wheezy, breezy blasted bit of glee.You're the headache of the high-bow, you're the horror of the snob,but you're worth your weight in ruddy gold to me.For you've chided me in weakness and you've cheered me in defeat;You've been an anodyne in hours of pain;And when the slugging jolts of life have jarred me off my feet,You've ragged me back into the ring again.I'll never go to Heaven, for I know I am not fit,The golden harps of harmony to swell;But with asbestos bellows, if the devil will permit,I'll swing you to the fork-tailed imps of Hell.Yes, I'll hank you, and I'll spank you,And I'll everlasting yank youTo the cinder-swinging satellites of Hell.","{
    ""9"": {
        ""category_1_x_poem.id"": 9,
        ""category_1.id"": 1,
        ""category_1.ts"": ""2018-02-27 03:36:29"",
        ""category_1.title"": ""Abortion Poems""
    }
}"
10,"2018-02-27 21:05:05","The Abortion","Anne Sexton","Somebody who should have been born is gone. Just as the earth puckered its mouth, each bud puffing out from its knot,I changed my shoes, and then drove south. Up past the Blue Mountains, where Pennsylvania humps on endlessly,wearing, like a crayoned cat, its green hair, its roads sunken in like a gray washboard; where, in truth, the ground cracks evilly, a dark socket from which the coal has poured,Somebody who should have been bornis gone. the grass as bristly and stout as chives,and me wondering when the ground would break, and me wondering how anything fragile survives; up in Pennsylvania, I met a little man,not Rumpelstiltskin, at all, at all... he took the fullness that love began. Returning north, even the sky grew thinlike a high window looking nowhere.The road was as flat as a sheet of tin. Somebody who should have been born is gone. Yes, woman, such logic will leadto loss without death. Or say what you meant, you coward...this baby that I bleed.","{
    ""10"": {
        ""category_1_x_poem.id"": 10,
        ""category_1.id"": 1,
        ""category_1.ts"": ""2018-02-27 03:36:29"",
        ""category_1.title"": ""Abortion Poems""
    }
}"
11,"2018-02-27 21:05:06","The Break Away","Anne Sexton","Your daisies have comeon the day of my divorce:the courtroom a cement box,a gas chamber for the infectious Jew in meand a perhaps land, a possibly promised landfor the Jew in me,but still a betrayal room for the till-death-do-us—and yet a death, as in the unlocking of scissorsthat makes the now separate parts useless,even to cut each other up as we did yearlyunder the crayoned-in sun.The courtroom keeps squashing our lives as they breakinto two cans ready for recycling,flattened tin humansand a tin law,even for my twenty-five years of hanging onby my teeth as I once saw at Ringling Brothers.The gray room:Judge, lawyer, witnessand me and invisible Skeezix,and all the other tornenduring the bewildermentsof their division.Your daisies have comeon the day of my divorce.They arrive like round yellow fish,sucking with love at the coral of our love.Yet they wait,in their short time,like little utero half-borns,half killed, thin and bone soft.They breathe the air that standsfor twenty-five illicit days,the sun crawling inside the sheets,the moon spinning like a tornadoin the washbowl,and we orchestrated them both,calling ourselves TWO CAMP DIRECTORS.There was a song, our song on your cassette,that played over and overand baptised the prodigals.It spoke the unspeakable,as the rain will on an attic roof,letting the animal join its soulas we kneeled before a miracle--forgetting its knife.The daisies conferin the old-married kitchenpapered with blue and green chefswho call out pies, cookies, yummy,at the charcoal and cigarette smokethey wear like a yellowy salve.The daisies absorb it all--the twenty-five-year-old sanctioned love(If one could call such handfuls of fistsand immobile arms that!)and on this day my world rips itself upwhile the country unfastens alongwith its perjuring king and his court.It unfastens into an abortion of belief,as in me--the legal rift--as on might do with the daisiesbut does notfor they stand for a loveundergoihng open heart surgerythat might takeif one prayed tough enough.And yet I demand,even in prayer,that I am not a thief,a mugger of need,and that your heart surviveon its own,belonging only to itself,whole, entirely whole,and workablein its dark cavern under your ribs.I pray it will know truth,if truth catches in its cupand yet I pray, as a child would,that the surgery take.I dream it is taking.Next I dream the love is swallowing itself.Next I dream the love is made of glass,glass coming through the telephonethat is breaking slowly,day by day, into my ear.Next I dream that I put on the lovelike a lifejacket and we float,jacket and I,we bounce on that priest-blue.We are as light as a cat's earand it is safe,safe far too long!And I awaken quickly and go to the opposite windowand peer down at the moon in the pondand know that beauty has walked over my head,into this bedroom and out,flowing out through the window screen,dropping deep into the waterto hide.I will observe the daisiesfade and dry upwuntil they become flour,snowing themselves onto the tablebeside the drone of the refrigerator,beside the radio playing Frankie(as often as FM will allow)snowing lightly, a tremor sinking from the ceiling--as twenty-five years split from my sidelike a growth that I sliced off like a melanoma.It is six P.M. as I water these tiny weedsand their little half-life,their numbered daysthat raged like a secret radio,recalling love that I picked up innocently,yet guiltily,as my five-year-old daughterpicked gum off the sidewalkand it became suddenly an elastic miracle.For me it was love foundlike a diamondwhere carrots grow--the glint of diamond on a plane wing,meaning: DANGER! THICK ICE!but the good crunch of that orange,the diamond, the carrot,both with four million years of resurrecting dirt,and the love,although Adam did not know the word,the love of Adamobeying his sudden gift.You, who sought me for nine years,in stories made up in front of your naked mirroror walking through rooms of fog women,you trying to forget the motherwho built guilt with the lumber of a locked dooras she sobbed her soured mild and fed you lossthrough the keyhole,you who wrote out your own birthand built it with your own poems,your own lumber, your own keyhole,into the trunk and leaves of your manhood,you, who fell into my words, yearsbefore you fell into me (the other,both the Camp Director and the camper),you who baited your hook with wide-awake dreams,and calls and letters and once a luncheon,and twice a reading by me for you.But I wouldn't!Yet this year,yanking off all past years,I took the baitand was pulled upward, upward,into the sky and was held by the sun--the quick wonder of its yellow lap--and became a woman who learned her own shinand dug into her soul and found it full,and you became a man who learned his won skinand dug into his manhood, his humanhoodand found you were as real as a bakeror a seerand we became a home,up into the elbows of each other's soul,without knowing--an invisible purchase--that inhabits our house forever.We wereblessed by the House-Dieby the altar of the color T.V.and somehow managed to make a tiny marriage,a tiny marriagecalled belief,as in the child's belief in the tooth fairy,so close to absolute,so daft within a year or two.The daisies have comefor the last time.And I who have,each year of my life,spoken to the tooth fairy,believing in her,even when I was her,am helpless to stop your daisies from dying,although your voice cries into the telephone:Marry me! Marry me!and my voice speaks onto these keys tonight:The love is in dark trouble!The love is starting to die,right now--we are in the process of it.The empty process of it.I see two deaths,and the two men plod toward the mortuary of my heart,and though I willed one away in court todayand I whisper dreams and birthdays into the other,they both die like waves breaking over meand I am drowning a little,but always swimmingamong the pillows and stones of the breakwater.And though your daisies are an unwanted death,I wade through the smell of their cancerand recognize the prognosis,its cartful of loss--I say now,you gave what you could.It was quite a ferris wheel to spin on!and the dead city of my marriageseems less importantthan the fact that the daisies came weekly,over and over,likes kisses that can't stop themselves.There sit two deaths on November 5th, 1973.Let one be forgotten--Bury it! Wall it up!But let me not forget the manof my child-like flowersthough he sinks into the fog of Lake Superior,he remains, his fingers the marvelof fourth of July sparklers,his furious ice cream cones of licking,remains to cool my forehead with a washclothwhen I sweat into the bathtub of his being.For the rest that is left:name it gentle,as gentle as radishes inhabitingtheir short life in the earth,name it gentle,gentle as old friends waving so long at the window,or in the drive,name it gentle as maple wings singingthemselves upon the pond outside,as sensuous as the mother-yellow in the pond,that night that it was ours,when our bodies floated and bumpedin moon water and the cicadascalled out like tongues.Let such as thisbe resurrected in all menwhenever they mold their days and nightsas when for twenty-five days and nights you molded mineand planted the seed that dives into my Godand will do so foreverno matter how often I sweep the floor.","{
    ""11"": {
        ""category_1_x_poem.id"": 11,
        ""category_1.id"": 1,
        ""category_1.ts"": ""2018-02-27 03:36:29"",
        ""category_1.title"": ""Abortion Poems""
    },
    ""6092"": {
        ""category_1_x_poem.id"": 6092,
        ""category_1.id"": 70,
        ""category_1.ts"": ""2018-02-27 20:17:21"",
        ""category_1.title"": ""Marriage Poems""
    }
}"
12,"2018-02-27 21:05:10","Rembrandt to Rembrandt","Edwin Arlington Robinson","(AMSTERDAM, 1645)And there you are again, now as you are. Observe yourself as you discern yourself In your discredited ascendency; Without your velvet or your feathers now, Commend your new condition to your fate,And your conviction to the sieves of time. Meanwhile appraise yourself, Rembrandt van Ryn, Now as you are—formerly more or less Distinguished in the civil scenery, And once a painter. There you are again,Where you may see that you have on your shoulders No lovelier burden for an ornament Than one man’s head that’s yours. Praise be to God That you have that; for you are like enough To need it now, my friend, and from now on;For there are shadows and obscurities Immediate or impending on your view, That may be worse than you have ever painted For the bewildered and unhappy scorn Of injured Hollanders in AmsterdamWho cannot find their fifty florins’ worth Of Holland face where you have hidden it In your new golden shadow that excites them, Or see that when the Lord made color and light He made not one thing only, or believeThat shadows are not nothing. Saskia said, Before she died, how they would swear at you, And in commiseration at themselves. She laughed a little, too, to think of them— And then at me.… That was before she died.And I could wonder, as I look at you, There as I have you now, there as you are, Or nearly so as any skill of mine Has ever caught you in a bilious mirror,— Yes, I could wonder long, and with a reason,If all but everything achievable In me were not achieved and lost already, Like a fool’s gold. But you there in the glass, And you there on the canvas, have a sort Of solemn doubt about it; and that’s well For Rembrandt and for Titus. All that’s left Of all that was is here; and all that’s here Is one man who remembers, and one child Beginning to forget. One, two, and three, The others died, and then—then Saskia died;And then, so men believe, the painter died. So men believe. So it all comes at once. And here’s a fellow painting in the dark,— A loon who cannot see that he is dead Before God lets him die. He paints awayAt the impossible, so Holland has it, For venom or for spite, or for defection, Or else for God knows what. Well, if God knows, And Rembrandt knows, it matters not so much What Holland knows or cares. If Holland wantsIts heads all in a row, and all alike, There’s Franz to do them and to do them well— Rat-catchers, archers, or apothecaries, And one as like a rabbit as another. Value received, and every Dutchman happy.All’s one to Franz, and to the rest of them,— Their ways being theirs, are theirs.—But you, my friend, If I have made you something as you are, Will need those jaws and eyes and all the fight And fire that’s in them, and a little more,To take you on and the world after you; For now you fare alone, without the fashion To sing you back and fling a flower or two At your accusing feet. Poor Saskia saw This coming that has come, and with a guileOf kindliness that covered half her doubts Would give me gold, and laugh… before she died. And if I see the road that you are going, You that are not so jaunty as aforetime, God knows if she were not appointed wellTo die. She might have wearied of it all Before the worst was over, or begun. A woman waiting on a man’s avouch Of the invisible, may not wait always Without a word betweenwhiles, or a dashOf poison on his faith. Yes, even she. She might have come to see at last with others, And then to say with others, who say more, That you are groping on a phantom trail Determining a dusky way to nowhere;That errors unconfessed and obstinate Have teemed and cankered in you for so long That even your eyes are sick, and you see light Only because you dare not see the dark That is around you and ahead of you.She might have come, by ruinous estimation Of old applause and outworn vanities, To clothe you over in a shroud of dreams, And so be nearer to the counterfeit Of her invention than aware of yours.She might, as well as any, by this time, Unwillingly and eagerly have bitten Another devil’s-apple of unrest, And so, by some attendant artifice Or other, might anon have had you sharingA taste that would have tainted everything, And so had been for two, instead of one, The taste of death in life—which is the food Of art that has betrayed itself alive And is a food of hell. She might have heardUnhappily the temporary noise Of louder names than yours, and on frail urns That hardly will ensure a dwelling-place For even the dust that may be left of them, She might, and angrily, as like as not,Look soon to find your name, not finding it. She might, like many another born for joy And for sufficient fulness of the hour, Go famishing by now, and in the eyes Of pitying friends and dwindling satellitesBe told of no uncertain dereliction Touching the cold offence of my decline. And even if this were so, and she were here Again to make a fact of all my fancy, How should I ask of her to see with meThrough night where many a time I seem in vain To seek for new assurance of a gleam That comes at last, and then, so it appears, Only for you and me—and a few more, Perchance, albeit their faces are not manyAmong the ruins that are now around us. That was a fall, my friend, we had together— Or rather it was my house, mine alone, That fell, leaving you safe. Be glad for that. There’s life in you that shall outlive my clayThat’s for a time alive and will in time Be nothing—but not yet. You that are there Where I have painted you are safe enough, Though I see dragons. Verily, that was a fall— A dislocating fall, a blinding fall,A fall indeed. But there are no bones broken; And even the teeth and eyes that I make out Among the shadows, intermittently, Show not so firm in their accoutrement Of terror-laden unrealityAs you in your neglect of their performance,— Though for their season we must humor them For what they are: devils undoubtedly, But not so parlous and implacable In their undoing of poor human triumphAs easy fashion—or brief novelty That ails even while it grows, and like sick fruit Falls down anon to an indifferent earth To break with inward rot. I say all this, And I concede, in honor of your silence,A waste of innocent facility In tints of other colors than are mine. I cannot paint with words, but there’s a time For most of us when words are all we have To serve our stricken souls. And here you say,“Be careful, or you may commit your soul Soon to the very devil of your denial.” I might have wagered on you to say that, Knowing that I believe in you too surely To spoil you with a kick or paint you over.No, my good friend, Mynheer Rembrandt van Ryn— Sometime a personage in Amsterdam, But now not much—I shall not give myself To be the sport of any dragon-spawn Of Holland, or elsewhere. Holland was hellNot long ago, and there were dragons then More to be fought than any of these we see That we may foster now. They are not real, But not for that the less to be regarded; For there are slimy tyrants born of nothingThat harden slowly into seeming life And have the strength of madness. I confess, Accordingly, the wisdom of your care That I look out for them. Whether I would Or not, I must; and here we are as oneWith our necessity. For though you loom A little harsh in your respect of time And circumstance, and of ordained eclipse, We know together of a golden flood That with its overflow shall drown awayThe dikes that held it; and we know thereby That in its rising light there lives a fire No devils that are lodging here in Holland Shall put out wholly, or much agitate, Except in unofficial preparationThey put out first the sun. It’s well enough To think of them; wherefore I thank you, sir, Alike for your remembrance and attention. But there are demons that are longer-lived Than doubts that have a brief and evil termTo congregate among the futile shards And architraves of eminent collapse. They are a many-favored family, All told, with not a misbegotten dwarf Among the rest that I can love so littleAs one occult abortion in especial Who perches on a picture (when it’s done) And says, “What of it, Rembrandt, if you do?” This incubus would seem to be a sort Of chorus, indicating, for our good,The silence of the few friends that are left: “What of it, Rembrandt, even if you know?” It says again; “and you don’t know for certain. What if in fifty or a hundred years They find you out? You may have gone meanwhileSo greatly to the dogs that you’ll not care Much what they find. If this be all you are— This unaccountable aspiring insect— You’ll sleep as easy in oblivion As any sacred monk or parricide;And if, as you conceive, you are eternal, Your soul may laugh, remembering (if a soul Remembers) your befrenzied aspiration To smear with certain ochres and some oil A few more perishable ells of cloth,And once or twice, to square your vanity, Prove it was you alone that should achieve A mortal eye—that may, no less, tomorrow Show an immortal reason why today Men see no more. And what’s a mortal eyeMore than a mortal herring, who has eyes As well as you? Why not paint herrings, Rembrandt? Or if not herrings, why not a split beef? Perceive it only in its unalloyed Integrity, and you may find in itA beautified accomplishment no less Indigenous than one that appertains To gentlemen and ladies eating it. The same God planned and made you, beef and human; And one, but for His whim, might be the other.”That’s how he says it, Rembrandt, if you listen; He says it, and he goes. And then, sometimes, There comes another spirit in his place— One with a more engaging argument, And with a softer note for saying truthNot soft. Whether it be the truth or not, I name it so; for there’s a string in me Somewhere that answers—which is natural, Since I am but a living instrument Played on by powers that are invisible.“You might go faster, if not quite so far,” He says, “if in your vexed economy There lived a faculty for saying yes And meaning no, and then for doing neither; But since Apollo sees it otherwise,Your Dutchmen, who are swearing at you still For your pernicious filching of their florins, May likely curse you down their generation, Not having understood there was no malice Or grinning evil in a golden shadowThat shall outshine their slight identities And hold their faces when their names are nothing. But this, as you discern, or should by now Surmise, for you is neither here nor there: You made your picture as your demon willed it;That’s about all of that. Now make as many As may be to be made,—for so you will, Whatever the toll may be, and hold your light So that you see, without so much to blind you As even the cobweb-flash of a misgiving,Assured and certain that if you see right Others will have to see—albeit their seeing Shall irk them out of their serenity For such a time as umbrage may require. But there are many reptiles in the night That now is coming on, and they are hungry; And there’s a Rembrandt to be satisfied Who never will be, howsoever much He be assured of an ascendency That has not yet a shadow’s worth of soundWhere Holland has its ears. And what of that? Have you the weary leisure or sick wit That breeds of its indifference a false envy That is the vermin on accomplishment? Are you inaugurating your new serviceWith fasting for a food you would not eat? You are the servant, Rembrandt, not the master,— But you are not assigned with other slaves That in their freedom are the most in fear. One of the few that are so fortunateAs to be told their task and to be given A skill to do it with a tool too keen For timid safety, bow your elected head Under the stars tonight, and whip your devils Each to his nest in hell. Forget your days,And so forgive the years that may not be So many as to be more than you may need For your particular consistency In your peculiar folly. You are counting Some fewer years than forty at your heels;And they have not pursued your gait so fast As your oblivion—which has beaten them, And rides now on your neck like an old man With iron shins and fingers. Let him ride (You haven’t so much to say now about that),And in a proper season let him run. You may be dead then, even as you may now Anticipate some other mortal strokes Attending your felicity; and for that, Oblivion heretofore has done some runningAway from graves, and will do more of it.” That’s how it is your wiser spirit speaks, Rembrandt. If you believe him, why complain? If not, why paint? And why, in any event, Look back for the old joy and the old roses,Or the old fame? They are all gone together, And Saskia with them; and with her left out, They would avail no more now than one strand Of Samson’s hair wound round his little finger Before the temple fell. Nor more are youIn any sudden danger to forget That in Apollo’s house there are no clocks Or calendars to say for you in time How far you are away from Amsterdam, Or that the one same law that bids you seeWhere now you see alone forbids in turn Your light from Holland eyes till Holland ears Are told of it; for that way, my good fellow, Is one way more to death. If at the first Of your long turning, which may still be longerThan even your faith has measured it, you sigh For distant welcome that may not be seen, Or wayside shouting that will not be heard, You may as well accommodate your greatness To the convenience of an easy ditch,And, anchored there with all your widowed gold, Forget your darkness in the dark, and hear No longer the cold wash of Holland scorn.","{
    ""12"": {
        ""category_1_x_poem.id"": 12,
        ""category_1.id"": 1,
        ""category_1.ts"": ""2018-02-27 03:36:29"",
        ""category_1.title"": ""Abortion Poems""
    },
    ""5623"": {
        ""category_1_x_poem.id"": 5623,
        ""category_1.id"": 59,
        ""category_1.ts"": ""2018-02-27 20:16:07"",
        ""category_1.title"": ""Humorous Poems""
    }
}"
13,"2018-02-27 21:05:11","Winter Trees","Sylvia Plath","Unfortunately this poem has been removed from our archives at the insistence of the copyright holder.","{
    ""13"": {
        ""category_1_x_poem.id"": 13,
        ""category_1.id"": 1,
        ""category_1.ts"": ""2018-02-27 03:36:29"",
        ""category_1.title"": ""Abortion Poems""
    },
    ""8504"": {
        ""category_1_x_poem.id"": 8504,
        ""category_1.id"": 117,
        ""category_1.ts"": ""2018-02-27 20:22:09"",
        ""category_1.title"": ""Tree Poems""
    },
    ""8779"": {
        ""category_1_x_poem.id"": 8779,
        ""category_1.id"": 121,
        ""category_1.ts"": ""2018-02-27 20:22:38"",
        ""category_1.title"": ""Winter Poems""
    }
}"
14,"2018-02-27 21:05:15","My Mother's Body","Marge Piercy","1. The dark socket of the year the pit, the cave where the sun lies down and threatens never to rise, when despair descends softly as the snow covering all paths and choking roads: then hawkfaced pain seized you threw you so you fell with a sharp cry, a knife tearing a bolt of silk. My father heard the crash but paid no mind, napping after lunch yet fifteen hundred miles north I heard and dropped a dish. Your pain sunk talons in my skull and crouched there cawing, heavy as a great vessel filled with water, oil or blood, till suddenly next day the weight lifted and I knew your mind had guttered out like the Chanukah candles that burn so fast, weeping veils of wax down the chanukiya. Those candles were laid out, friends invited, ingredients bought for latkes and apple pancakes, that holiday for liberation and the winter solstice when tops turn like little planets. Shall you have all or nothing take half or pass by untouched? Nothing you got, Nun said the dreydlas the room stopped spinning. The angel folded you up like laundry your body thin as an empty dress. Your clothes were curtains hanging on the window of what had been your flesh and now was glass. Outside in Florida shopping plazas loudspeakers blared Christmas carols and palm trees were decked with blinking lights. Except by the tourist hotels, the beaches were empty. Pelicans with pregnant pouches flapped overhead like pterodactyls. In my mind I felt you die. First the pain lifted and then you flickered and went out. 2.I walk through the rooms of memory. Sometimes everything is shrouded in dropcloths, every chair ghostly and muted. Other times memory lights up from within bustling scenes acted just the other side of a scrim through which surely I could reach my fingers tearing at the flimsy curtain of time which is and isn't and will be the stuff of which we're made and unmade. In sleep the other night I met you, seventeen your first nasty marriage just annulled, thin from your abortion, clutching a book against your cheek and trying to look older, trying to took middle class, trying for a job at Wanamaker's, dressing for parties in cast off stage costumes of your sisters. Your eyes were hazy with dreams. You did not notice me waving as you wandered past and I saw your slip was showing. You stood still while I fixed your clothes, as if I were your mother. Remember me combing your springy black hair, ringlets that seemed metallic, glittering; remember me dressing you, my seventy year old mother who was my last dollbaby, giving you too late what your youth had wanted. 3.What is this mask of skin we wear, what is this dress of flesh, this coat of few colors and little hair? This voluptuous seething heap of desires and fears, squeaking mice turned up in a steaming haystack with their babies? This coat has been handed down, an heirloom this coat of black hair and ample flesh,this coat of pale slightly ruddy skin.This set of hips and thighs, these buttocks they provided cushioning for my grandmother Hannah, for my mother Bert and for me and we all sat on them in turn, those major muscles on which we walk and walk and walk over the earth in search of peace and plenty. My mother is my mirror and I am hers. What do we see? Our face grown young again, our breasts grown firm, legs lean and elegant. Our arms quivering with fat, eyes set in the bark of wrinkles, hands puffy, our belly seamed with childbearing, Give me your dress that I might try it on. Oh it will not fit you mother, you are too fat. I will not fit you mother. I will not be the bride you can dress, the obedient dutiful daughter you would chew, a dog's leather bone to sharpen your teeth. You strike me sometimes just to hear the sound. Loneliness turns your fingers into hooks barbed and drawing blood with their caress. My twin, my sister, my lost love, I carry you in me like an embryo as once you carried me. 4. What is it we turn from, what is it we fear? Did I truly think you could put me back inside? Did I think I would fall into you as into a molten furnace and be recast, that I would become you? What did you fear in me, the child who wore your hair, the woman who let that black hair grow long as a banner of darkness, when youa proper flapper wore yours cropped?You pushed and you pulled on my rubberyflesh, you kneaded me like a ball of dough. Rise, rise, and then you pounded me flat. Secretly the bones formed in the bread.I became willful, private as a cat. You never knew what alleys I had wandered. You called me bad and I posed like a gutter queen in a dress sewn of knives. All I feared was being stuck in a box with a lid. A good woman appeared to me indistinguishable from a dead one except that she worked all the time. Your payday never came. Your dreams ran with bright colors like Mexican cottons that bled onto the drab sheets of the day and would not bleach with scrubbing. My dear, what you said was one thing but what you sang was another, sweetly subversive and dark as blackberries and I became the daughter of your dream. This body is your body, ashes now and roses, but alive in my eyes, my breasts, my throat, my thighs. You run in me a tang of salt in the creek waters of my blood, you sing in my mind like wine. What you did not dare in your life you dare in mine.","{
    ""14"": {
        ""category_1_x_poem.id"": 14,
        ""category_1.id"": 1,
        ""category_1.ts"": ""2018-02-27 03:36:29"",
        ""category_1.title"": ""Abortion Poems""
    },
    ""5104"": {
        ""category_1_x_poem.id"": 5104,
        ""category_1.id"": 46,
        ""category_1.ts"": ""2018-02-27 20:14:51"",
        ""category_1.title"": ""Grandmother Poems""
    },
    ""6476"": {
        ""category_1_x_poem.id"": 6476,
        ""category_1.id"": 76,
        ""category_1.ts"": ""2018-02-27 20:18:13"",
        ""category_1.title"": ""Mother Poems""
    }
}"
15,"2018-02-27 21:05:19","The End","Sharon Olds","We decided to have the abortion, becamekillers together. The period that camechanged nothing. They were dead, that young couplewho had been for life.As we talked of it in bed, the crashwas not a surprise. We went to the window,looked at the crushed cars and the gleamingcurved shears of glass as if we haddone it. Cops pulled the bodies outBloody as births from the small, smokingaperture of the door, laid themon the hill, covered them with blankets that soakedthrough. Bloodbegan to pourdown my legs into my slippers. I stoodwhere I was until they shot the boundform into the black holeof the ambulance and stood the other oneup, a bandage covering its head,stained where the eyes had been.The next morning I had to kneelan hour on that floor, to clean up my blood,rubbing with wet cloths at those glitteringtranslucent spots, as one has to soaka long time to deglaze the panwhen the feast is over.","{
    ""15"": {
        ""category_1_x_poem.id"": 15,
        ""category_1.id"": 1,
        ""category_1.ts"": ""2018-02-27 03:36:29"",
        ""category_1.title"": ""Abortion Poems""
    }
}"
16,"2018-02-27 21:05:21","Sword Blades and Poppy Seed","Amy Lowell","A drifting, April, twilight sky,A wind which blew the puddles dry,And slapped the river into wavesThat ran and hid among the stavesOf an old wharf. A watery lightTouched bleak the granite bridge, and whiteWithout the slightest tinge of gold,The city shivered in the cold.All day my thoughts had lain as dead,Unborn and bursting in my head.From time to time I wrote a wordWhich lines and circles overscored.My table seemed a graveyard, fullOf coffins waiting burial.I seized these vile abortions, toreThem into jagged bits, and sworeTo be the dupe of hope no more.Into the evening straight I went,Starved of a day's accomplishment.Unnoticing, I wandered whereThe city gave a space for air,And on the bridge's parapetI leant, while pallidly there setA dim, discouraged, worn-out sun.Behind me, where the tramways run,Blossomed bright lights, I turned to leave,When someone plucked me by the sleeve.""Your pardon, Sir, but I should beMost grateful could you lend to meA carfare, I have lost my purse.""The voice was clear, concise, and terse.I turned and met the quiet gazeOf strange eyes flashing through the haze.The man was old and slightly bent,Under his cloak some instrumentDisarranged its stately line,He rested on his cane a fineAnd nervous hand, an almandineSmouldered with dull-red flames, sanguineIt burned in twisted gold, uponHis finger. Like some Spanish don,Conferring favours even whenAsking an alms, he bowed againAnd waited. But my pockets provedEmpty, in vain I poked and shoved,No hidden penny lurking thereGreeted my search. ""Sir, I declareI have no money, pray forgive,But let me take you where you live.""And so we plodded through the mireWhere street lamps cast a wavering fire.I took no note of where we went,His talk became the elementWherein my being swam, content.It flashed like rapiers in the nightLit by uncertain candle-light,When on some moon-forsaken swardA quarrel dies upon a sword.It hacked and carved like a cutlass blade,And the noise in the air the broad words madeWas the cry of the wind at a window-paneOn an Autumn night of sobbing rain.Then it would run like a steady streamUnder pinnacled bridges where minarets gleam,Or lap the air like the lapping tideWhere a marble staircase lifts its wideGreen-spotted steps to a garden gate,And a waning moon is sinking straightDown to a black and ominous sea,While a nightingale sings in a lemon tree.I walked as though some opiateHad stung and dulled my brain, a stateAcute and slumbrous. It grew late.We stopped, a house stood silent, dark.The old man scratched a match, the sparkLit up the keyhole of a door,We entered straight upon a floorWhite with finest powdered sandCarefully sifted, one might standMuddy and dripping, and yet no traceWould stain the boards of this kitchen-place.From the chimney, red eyes sparked the gloom,And a cricket's chirp filled all the room.My host threw pine-cones on the fireAnd crimson and scarlet glowed the pyreWrapped in the golden flame's desire.The chamber opened like an eye,As a half-melted cloud in a Summer skyThe soul of the house stood guessed, and shyIt peered at the stranger warily.A little shop with its various wareSpread on shelves with nicest care.Pitchers, and jars, and jugs, and pots,Pipkins, and mugs, and many lotsOf lacquered canisters, black and gold,Like those in which Chinese tea is sold.Chests, and puncheons, kegs, and flasks,Goblets, chalices, firkins, and casks.In a corner three ancient amphorae leanedAgainst the wall, like ships careened.There was dusky blue of Wedgewood ware,The carved, white figures fluttering thereLike leaves adrift upon the air.Classic in touch, but emasculate,The Greek soul grown effeminate.The factory of Sevres had lentElegant boxes with ornamentCulled from gardens where fountains splashedAnd golden carp in the shadows flashed,Nuzzling for crumbs under lily-pads,Which ladies threw as the last of fads.Eggshell trays where gay beaux knelt,Hand on heart, and daintily speltTheir love in flowers, brittle and bright,Artificial and fragile, which told arightThe vows of an eighteenth-century knight.The cruder tones of old Dutch jugsGlared from one shelf, where Toby mugsEndlessly drank the foaming ale,Its froth grown dusty, awaiting sale.The glancing light of the burning woodPlayed over a group of jars which stoodOn a distant shelf, it seemed the skyHad lent the half-tones of his blazonryTo paint these porcelains with unknown huesOf reds dyed purple and greens turned blues,Of lustres with so evanescent a sheenTheir colours are felt, but never seen.Strange winged dragons writhe aboutThese vases, poisoned venoms spout,Impregnate with old Chinese charms;Sealed urns containing mortal harms,They fill the mind with thoughts impure,Pestilent drippings from the ureOf vicious thinkings. ""Ah, I see,""Said I, ""you deal in pottery.""The old man turned and looked at me.Shook his head gently. ""No,"" said he.Then from under his cloak he took the thingWhich I had wondered to see him bringGuarded so carefully from sight.As he laid it down it flashed in the light,A Toledo blade, with basket hilt,Damascened with arabesques of gilt,Or rather gold, and tempered soIt could cut a floating thread at a blow.The old man smiled, ""It has no sheath,'Twas a little careless to have it beneathMy cloak, for a jostle to my armWould have resulted in serious harm.But it was so fine, I could not wait,So I brought it with me despite its state.""""An amateur of arms,"" I thought,""Bringing home a prize which he has bought.""""You care for this sort of thing, Dear Sir?""""Not in the way which you infer.I need them in business, that is all.""And he pointed his finger at the wall.Then I saw what I had not noticed before.The walls were hung with at least five scoreOf swords and daggers of every sizeWhich nations of militant men could devise.Poisoned spears from tropic seas,That natives, under banana trees,Smear with the juice of some deadly snake.Blood-dipped arrows, which savages makeAnd tip with feathers, orange and green,A quivering death, in harlequin sheen.High up, a fan of glancing steelWas formed of claymores in a wheel.Jewelled swords worn at kings' leveesWere suspended next midshipmen's dirks, and theseElbowed stilettos come from Spain,Chased with some splendid Hidalgo's name.There were Samurai swords from old Japan,And scimitars from Hindoostan,While the blade of a Turkish yataghanMade a waving streak of vitreous whiteUpon the wall, in the firelight.Foils with buttons broken or lostLay heaped on a chair, among them tossedThe boarding-pike of a privateer.Against the chimney leaned a queerTwo-handed weapon, with edges dullAs though from hacking on a skull.The rusted blood corroded it still.My host took up a paper spillFrom a heap which lay in an earthen bowl,And lighted it at a burning coal.At either end of the table, tallWax candles were placed, each in a small,And slim, and burnished candlestickOf pewter. The old man lit each wick,And the room leapt more obviouslyUpon my mind, and I could seeWhat the flickering fire had hid from me.Above the chimney's yawning throat,Shoulder high, like the dark wainscote,Was a mantelshelf of polished oakBlackened with the pungent smokeOf firelit nights; a Cromwell clockOf tarnished brass stood like a rockIn the midst of a heaving, turbulent seaOf every sort of cutlery.There lay knives sharpened to any use,The keenest lancet, and the obtuseAnd blunted pruning bill-hook; bladesOf razors, scalpels, shears; cascadesOf penknives, with handles of mother-of-pearl,And scythes, and sickles, and scissors; a whirlOf points and edges, and underneathShot the gleam of a saw with bristling teeth.My head grew dizzy, I seemed to hearA battle-cry from somewhere near,The clash of arms, and the squeal of balls,And the echoless thud when a dead man falls.A smoky cloud had veiled the room,Shot through with lurid glares; the gloomPounded with shouts and dying groans,With the drip of blood on cold, hard stones.Sabres and lances in streaks of lightGleamed through the smoke, and at my rightA creese, like a licking serpent's tongue,Glittered an instant, while it stung.Streams, and points, and lines of fire!The livid steel, which man's desireHad forged and welded, burned white and cold.Every blade which man could mould,Which could cut, or slash, or cleave, or rip,Or pierce, or thrust, or carve, or strip,Or gash, or chop, or puncture, or tear,Or slice, or hack, they all were there.Nerveless and shaking, round and round,I stared at the walls and at the ground,Till the room spun like a whipping top,And a stern voice in my ear said, ""Stop!I sell no tools for murderers here.Of what are you thinking! Please clearYour mind of such imaginings.Sit down. I will tell you of these things.""He pushed me into a great chairOf russet leather, poked a flareOf tumbling flame, with the old long sword,Up the chimney; but said no word.Slowly he walked to a distant shelf,And brought back a crock of finest delf.He rested a moment a blue-veined handUpon the cover, then cut a bandOf paper, pasted neatly round,Opened and poured. A sliding soundCame from beneath his old white hands,And I saw a little heap of sands,Black and smooth. What could they be:""Pepper,"" I thought. He looked at me.""What you see is poppy seed.Lethean dreams for those in need.""He took up the grains with a gentle handAnd sifted them slowly like hour-glass sand.On his old white finger the almandineShot out its rays, incarnadine.""Visions for those too tired to sleep.These seeds cast a film over eyes which weep.No single soul in the world could dwell,Without these poppy-seeds I sell.""For a moment he played with the shining stuff,Passing it through his fingers. EnoughAt last, he poured it back intoThe china jar of Holland blue,Which he carefully carried to its place.Then, with a smile on his aged face,He drew up a chair to the open space'Twixt table and chimney. ""Without preface,Young man, I will say that what you seeIs not the puzzle you take it to be.""""But surely, Sir, there is something strangeIn a shop with goods at so wide a rangeEach from the other, as swords and seeds.Your neighbours must have greatly differing needs.""""My neighbours,"" he said, and he stroked his chin,""Live everywhere from here to Pekin.But you are wrong, my sort of goodsIs but one thing in all its moods.""He took a shagreen letter caseFrom his pocket, and with charming graceOffered me a printed card.I read the legend, ""Ephraim Bard.Dealer in Words."" And that was all.I stared at the letters, whimsicalIndeed, or was it merely a jest.He answered my unasked request:""All books are either dreams or swords,You can cut, or you can drug, with words.My firm is a very ancient house,The entries on my books would rouseYour wonder, perhaps incredulity.I inherited from an ancestryStretching remotely back and far,This business, and my clients areAs were those of my grandfather's days,Writers of books, and poems, and plays.My swords are tempered for every speech,For fencing wit, or to carve a breachThrough old abuses the world condones.In another room are my grindstones and hones,For whetting razors and putting a pointOn daggers, sometimes I even anointThe blades with a subtle poison, soA twofold result may follow the blow.These are purchased by men who feelThe need of stabbing society's heel,Which egotism has brought them to thinkIs set on their necks. I have foils to pinkAn adversary to quaint reply,And I have customers who buyScalpels with which to dissect the brainsAnd hearts of men. UltramundanesEven demand some finer kindsTo open their own souls and minds.But the other half of my business dealsWith visions and fancies. Under seals,Sorted, and placed in vessels here,I keep the seeds of an atmosphere.Each jar contains a different kindOf poppy seed. From farthest IndCome the purple flowers, opium filled,From which the weirdest myths are distilled;My orient porcelains contain them all.Those Lowestoft pitchers against the wallHold a lighter kind of bright conceit;And those old Saxe vases, out of the heatOn that lowest shelf beside the door,Have a sort of Ideal, ""couleur d'or"".Every castle of the airSleeps in the fine black grains, and thereAre seeds for every romance, or lightWhiff of a dream for a summer night.I supply to every want and taste.""'Twas slowly said, in no great hasteHe seemed to push his wares, but IDumfounded listened. By and byA log on the fire broke in two.He looked up quickly, ""Sir, and you?""I groped for something I should say;Amazement held me numb. ""To-dayYou sweated at a fruitless task.""He spoke for me, ""What do you ask?How can I serve you?"" ""My kind host,My penniless state was not a boast;I have no money with me."" He smiled.""Not for that money I beguiledYou here; you paid me in advance.""Again I felt as though a tranceHad dimmed my faculties. AgainHe spoke, and this time to explain.""The money I demand is Life,Your nervous force, your joy, your strife!""What infamous proposal nowWas made me with so calm a brow?Bursting through my lethargy,Indignantly I hurled the cry:""Is this a nightmare, or am IDrunk with some infernal wine?I am no Faust, and what is mineIs what I call my soul! Old Man!Devil or Ghost! Your hellish planRevolts me. Let me go."" ""My child,""And the old tones were very mild,""I have no wish to barter souls;My traffic does not ask such tolls.I am no devil; is there one?Surely the age of fear is gone.We live within a daylight worldLit by the sun, where winds unfurledSweep clouds to scatter pattering rain,And then blow back the sun again.I sell my fancies, or my swords,To those who care far more for words,Ideas, of which they are the sign,Than any other life-design.Who buy of me must simply payTheir whole existence quite away:Their strength, their manhood, and their prime,Their hours from morning till the timeWhen evening comes on tiptoe feet,And losing life, think it complete;Must miss what other men count being,To gain the gift of deeper seeing;Must spurn all ease, all hindering love,All which could hold or bind; must proveThe farthest boundaries of thought,And shun no end which these have brought;Then die in satisfaction, knowingThat what was sown was worth the sowing.I claim for all the goods I sellThat they will serve their purpose well,And though you perish, they will live.Full measure for your pay I give.To-day you worked, you thought, in vain.What since has happened is the trainYour toiling brought. I spoke to youFor my share of the bargain, due.""""My life! And is that all you craveIn pay? What even childhood gave!I have been dedicate from youth.Before my God I speak the truth!""Fatigue, excitement of the pastFew hours broke me down at last.All day I had forgot to eat,My nerves betrayed me, lacking meat.I bowed my head and felt the stormPlough shattering through my prostrate form.The tearless sobs tore at my heart.My host withdrew himself apart;Busied among his crockery,He paid no farther heed to me.Exhausted, spent, I huddled there,Within the arms of the old carved chair.A long half-hour dragged away,And then I heard a kind voice say,""The day will soon be dawning, whenYou must begin to work again.Here are the things which you require.""By the fading light of the dying fire,And by the guttering candle's flare,I saw the old man standing there.He handed me a packet, tiedWith crimson tape, and sealed. ""InsideAre seeds of many differing flowers,To occupy your utmost powersOf storied vision, and these swordsAre the finest which my shop affords.Go home and use them; do not spareYourself; let that be all your care.Whatever you have means to buyBe very sure I can supply.""He slowly walked to the window, flungIt open, and in the grey air rungThe sound of distant matin bells.I took my parcels. Then, as tellsAn ancient mumbling monk his beads,I tried to thank for his courteous deedsMy strange old friend. ""Nay, do not talk,""He urged me, ""you have a long walkBefore you. Good-by and Good-day!""And gently sped upon my wayI stumbled out in the morning hush,As down the empty street a flushRan level from the rising sun.Another day was just begun.","{
    ""16"": {
        ""category_1_x_poem.id"": 16,
        ""category_1.id"": 1,
        ""category_1.ts"": ""2018-02-27 03:36:29"",
        ""category_1.title"": ""Abortion Poems""
    },
    ""5044"": {
        ""category_1_x_poem.id"": 5044,
        ""category_1.id"": 45,
        ""category_1.ts"": ""2018-02-27 20:14:43"",
        ""category_1.title"": ""Grandfather Poems""
    }
}"
17,"2018-02-27 21:05:24","Editor Whedon","Edgar Lee Masters","To be able to see every side of every question;To be on every side, to be everything, to be nothing long;To pervert truth, to ride it for a purpose,To use great feelings and passions of the human familyFor base designs, for cunning ends,To wear a mask like the Greek actors --Your eight-page paper -- behind which you huddle,Bawling through the megaphone of big type:""This is I, the giant.""Thereby also living the life of a sneak-thief,Poisoned with the anonymous wordsOf your clandestine soul.To scratch dirt over scandal for money,And exhume it to the winds for revenge,Or to sell papers,Crushing reputations, or bodies, if need be,To win at any cost, save your own life.To glory in demoniac power, ditching civilization,As a paranoiac boy puts a log on the trackAnd derails the express train.To be an editor, as I was.Then to lie here close by the river over the placeWhere the sewage flows from the village,And the empty cans and garbage are dumped,And abortions are hidden.","{
    ""17"": {
        ""category_1_x_poem.id"": 17,
        ""category_1.id"": 1,
        ""category_1.ts"": ""2018-02-27 03:36:29"",
        ""category_1.title"": ""Abortion Poems""
    }
}"
18,"2018-02-27 21:05:24","And God Created Abortion","Sharon Esther Lampert","1. In the Beginning of God's Creating the Heavens and the Earth -2. When the Womb was Astonishingly Empty, Inside of Every Woman BeingGod Made Millions of Eggs That Lived a Fleeting Lifespan. And One byOne, Each Egg Cascaded to its Death. God Made Abortion for Womankind.And It Was So.And Inside of Every Man Being, God Made Billions of Sperm That Lived aFlittingLifespan, And Cascaded to Their Deaths, on the Upstream, Against Gravity.God Made Abortion for Mankind. And It Was So.3. God said, ""Let there be Abortion,"" And there was Abortion.4. God Saw that Abortion was Good, And God Separated the Eggs from theSperm.5. God Called to the Sperm: ""Male,"" And to the Eggs God Called: ""Female.""And There Were Men and There Were Women, One Day.6. God Said, ""Let There Be a Conception. And One Plummeting Sperm andOne Plunging Egg Melded into One, And Propagated the Human Species.And God Let the Lower Species Have a Greater Survival Ratio of Eggs toSperm.7. And God Said: ""Let There Be More Ants Per Square Inch Than HumanBeings Per Square Mile."" And It Was So.Sharon Esther LampertSexiest Creative Genius in Human History8th Prophetess of Israel: 22 Commandmentshttp://www.poetryjewels.com","{
    ""18"": {
        ""category_1_x_poem.id"": 18,
        ""category_1.id"": 1,
        ""category_1.ts"": ""2018-02-27 03:36:29"",
        ""category_1.title"": ""Abortion Poems""
    },
    ""4969"": {
        ""category_1_x_poem.id"": 4969,
        ""category_1.id"": 42,
        ""category_1.ts"": ""2018-02-27 20:14:31"",
        ""category_1.title"": ""God Poems""
    }
}"
19,"2018-02-27 21:05:29","Drug Trial","Craig Erick Chaffin","IEveryone has their own peculiar price,not quantifiable in currency.When my hypodermic grazed your vein,you confessed yours.It was not exorbitantso I withheld the seruma moment longer before pushing the plunger. IIYou saw rattlesnakes mate in the arroyotangled like hoses, braided like black ropes for a day, utterly vulnerable in the grip of love or instinct. Indians say this sight grants second sight.You saw your victimhoodcupped like a cross of ironin the hollow above your sternum,cold, rusted from fear,dangling from a chain of misinterpreted coincidence. Self-knowledge is a dangerous thingand can't be granted by a single vision.III Spoke a prophet with his head on a platter: ""To stand for something, to protest abortion or the destruction of wetlands,to remember the Holocaust or the Alamo,to disagree with farm subsidiesor campaign against clear-cuttinghelps focus minds dulled by tolerance,not a virtue but a courtesy--like ignoring someone's body odor in an elevator-- which makes it perfectly moral to say,'I understand and accept what you are doingthough I find it utterly abhorrent.'Blessed are those who have found their cause:gun ownership, preservation of historic buildings,the fight against leukemia or for hemp: whatever we are righteously incensed aboutrestores our passion for goodness,however misguided."" Beneath the empty platter the world moves like ancient women gathering fuel in vacant lots.IVThe gut-ache of youth, super-caffeinated though socially melancholy, is beyond the generation previous, confirmed by body-piercing, black leather and ghostly skinas if in preparation, not for a prom but for a funeral.You must have cancer of the throatto sing for them.Pain sustains them.Blessed are the pure, if only driven by glands.VSeeking the river's calmyou stretched before the television, dreaming of a Winnebago and Palm Springs,when suddenly you heard: My sheep hear my voice and my voice is on TV.Was the sound inside or outside your head?No televangelist with cockatoo haircame to explain, so you wept like a sinner,fearing you were the Christ,everyone was their own Christ,and this was too much for youso I injected the antidote out of pity for all the lies you need to make life tolerable.","{
    ""19"": {
        ""category_1_x_poem.id"": 19,
        ""category_1.id"": 1,
        ""category_1.ts"": ""2018-02-27 03:36:29"",
        ""category_1.title"": ""Abortion Poems""
    },
    ""1145"": {
        ""category_1_x_poem.id"": 1145,
        ""category_1.id"": 55,
        ""category_1.ts"": ""2018-02-27 20:15:34"",
        ""category_1.title"": ""Holocaust Poems""
    }
}"
20,"2018-02-27 21:05:30","Touched by An Angel","Maya Angelou","We, unaccustomed to courageexiles from delightlive coiled in shells of lonelinessuntil love leaves its high holy templeand comes into our sightto liberate us into life.Love arrivesand in its train come ecstasiesold memories of pleasureancient histories of pain.Yet if we are bold,love strikes away the chains of fearfrom our souls.We are weaned from our timidityIn the flush of love's lightwe dare be braveAnd suddenly we seethat love costs all we areand will ever be.Yet it is only lovewhich sets us free.","{
    ""20"": {
        ""category_1_x_poem.id"": 20,
        ""category_1.id"": 2,
        ""category_1.ts"": ""2018-02-27 20:10:26"",
        ""category_1.title"": ""Angel Poems""
    }
}"