To an Athlete Dying Young by A. E. Housman

The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

Today, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears.

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl’s.

Body by Mabel Simpson

 My body is only lent to me,

I carry it with me tenderly.

I have given it sleep, I have given it sky,

So it will not be afraid to die.

I have taught it how to lie so still

It can hear the heartbeats of the hill.

I have given it gentle care,

I have washed its hands, I have brushed its hair.

And I think when it goes down with earth

Something beautiful will have birth.

A bit of grass or a willow tree,

My body is only lent to me.

When First We Met by Robert Bridges

 When first we met we did not guess

That Love would prove so hard a master;

Of more than common friendliness

When first we met we did not guess.

Who could foretell this sore distress,

This irretrievable disaster

When first we met?--We did not guess

That Love would prove so hard a master.

Nantucket Whalers by Daniel Henderson

I

This is the breed that followed the tails

Of clumsy, crowding, challenging whales,

Choosing infinite toil instead

Of indolent lives the Blackbeards led,

Spurning such foul wealth as might be

In opium or "black ivory,"

Questing instead of Pieces of Eight

Or ropes of pearl or Portugal plate,

Blubber for their Golden Fleece--

Barrels sloshing with whales' grease.

These are the men sagacious whales

Lured away from wives and daughters

Down to brassy, palm-fringed waters,

Spouting beyond their cloudy sails,

Lifting a frolicking fluke or nose

To their masthead's road of "There she blows!"

Playing a perilous hide-and-seek

By Patagonia, Mozambique,

Leading them on through eternities,

Plotting with typhoons, ice-choked seas,

Bladed reef, insidious shoal

To cheat them of their hard-wrung toll.

II

This is the isle of the new Ulysses

Who dropped his sails in coral rings,

Fearless of blow-guns, war-clubs, krisses --

 Who wandered home from the world's abysses

And made no boast of his voyagings,

Leaving laconic logs to tell

That his ship was saved by a miracle

From the bull sperm carrying in his hide--

As tokens of triumphant wars--

A dozen irons, a score of scars

From hounding whalemen long defied;

How he drew them into a milling school

And drenched them in a blood whirlpool;

 How he crushed Mate Obed in his jaws

And drowned Saul, clawing at his back,

and turned, took the ship for mark

And hurled his bulk against the bark,

Making the stalwart timbers shake

Like red froth in the creature's wake--

How yet the master, as he swayed,

Hurled unerringly his blad

And saw his rallying sailors drag

The Killer, spouting a crimson flag.

III

This is the isle where women mated

And gave their men to the deep, and waited,

Bearing their babes alone

And by the bare hearthstone

Battling the awful dread

Interminable absence bred;

This is the isle whose roofs are towers

Where women watched eternal hours

For the lovely and incredible sight

Of a yearned-for ship in its homing flight.

IV

Such were the old Nantucketers

And the men of Bedford and Vineyard Haven--

Would that their spirits were our spurs--

Whose decks were never trod by craven:

Who dared the unknown, took the chance

And rose the kings of circumstance--

Yet reverent beneath the span

Of heaven's infinite caravan,

Or when they brooded on the scroll

Jehovah spread from pole to pole.

V

Such were the circumnavigators

Who deemed themselves but mere harpooners

Nor dreamed that their malodorous schooners

Were the galleons of creators:

Captains who with but whales for quarry

Yet made the barren sea-maps starry

With dazzling islands lost to man

Since first the sundering currents ran;

Who loved supremely and who went

Leaving their moorland eloquent

Of men who found in their sea goal

Riches propitious for the soul--

Such fortitude and grace

As grudging ocean yields a conquering race.

Men at Forty by Donald Justice

Men at forty

Learn to close softly

The doors to rooms they will not be

Coming back to.

At rest on a stair landing,

They feel it

Moving beneath them now like the deck of a ship,

Though the swell is gentle.

 

And deep in mirrors

They rediscover

The face of the boy as he practices tying

His father's tie there in secret

 

And the face of that father,

Still warm with the mystery of lather.

They are more fathers than sons themselves now.

Something is filling them, something

 

That is like the twilight sound

Of the crickets, immense,

Filling the woods at the foot of the slope

Behind their mortgaged houses.

On the Anniversary of My Death by W. S. Merwin

 Every year without knowing it I have passed the day

When the last fires will wave to me

And the silence will set out

Tireless traveller

Like a beam of a lightless star

Then I will no longer

Find myself in life as in a strange garment

Surprised at the earth

And the love of one woman

And the shamelessness of men

As today writing after three days of rain

Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease

And bowing not knowing to what

I Met a Genius by Charles Bukowski

 I met a genius on the train
today
about 6 years old,
he sat beside me
and as the train
ran down along the coast
we came to the ocean
and then he looked at me
and said,
it's not pretty.

it was the first time I'd
realized
that.