The Storms - To My Candle

Peter Pindar

Thou lone companion of the spectred night,
I wake amid thy friendly watchful light,
To steal a precious hour from lifeless sleep -
Hark, the wild uproar of the winds! And hark,
Hell’s genius roams the regions of the dark,
And swells the thund’ring horrors of the deep.
From cloud to cloud the pale moon hurrying flies;
Now blacken’d, and now slashing thro’ her skies,
But all is silence here - beneath thy beam,
I own I labour for the voice of praise -
For who would sink in dull oblivion’s stream?
Who would not live in songs of distant days?
Thus while I wond’ring pause o’er Shakespeare’s page;
I mark, in vision of delight, the Sage,
High o’er the wrecks of man, who stands sublime;
A column in the melancholy waste
(Its cities humbled, and its glories past),
Majestic, ‘mid the solitude of time.
Yet now to sadness let me yield the hour -
Yes, let the tears of purest friendship show’r.
I view, alas! what ne’er should die -
A form that wakes my deepest sigh;
A form, that feels of death the leaden sleep -
Descending to the realms of shade,
I view a pale ey’d panting maid,
I see the Virtues o’er their fav’rite weep.
Ah! could the Muse’s simple pray’r
Command the envied trump of fame,
Oblivion should Eliza spare:
A world should echo with her name,
Art thou departing too, my trembling friend?
Ah! draws thy little lustre to its end?
Yes, on thy frame Fate too shall fix her seal -
O let me, pensive, watch thy pale decay;
How fast that frame, so tender, wears away!
How fast thy life the restless minutes steal!
How slender now, alas! they thread of fire!
Ah! falling, falling, ready to expire!
In vain thy struggles - all will soon be o’er.
At life thous snatchest with an eager leap:
Now round I see thy flame so feeble creep,
Faint less’ning, quiv’ring, glimm’ring - now no more!
Thus shall the funs of Science sink away,
And thus of beauty fade the fairest flow’r -
For where’s the Giant who to Time shall say,
"Destructive tyrant, I arrest thy pow’r?"

Lawrence, Dementors and Dark Things

The Long Day Closes, Henry Fothergill Chorley and Arthur Sullivan

No star is o'er the lake,
Its pale watch keeping,
The moon is half awake,
Through gray mist creeping,
The last red leaves fall round
The porch of roses,
The clock hath ceased to sound,
The long day closes.

Sit by the silent hearth
In calm endeavour,
To count the sounds of mirth,
Now dumb for ever.
Heed not how hope believes
And fate disposes:
Shadow is round the eaves,
The long day closes.

The lighted windows dim
Are fading slowly.
The fire that was so trim
Now quivers lowly.
Go to the dreamless bed
Where grief reposes;
Thy book of toil is read,
The long day closes.

Lawrence, The Research Subject

The Lost Man, Judith Wright

To reach the pool you must go through the rain-forest -
through the bewildering midsummer of darkness
lit with ancient fern,
laced with poison and thorn.
You must go by the way he went - the way of the bleeding
hands and feet, the blood on the stones like flowers,
under the hooded flowers
that fall on the stones like blood.
To reach the pool you must go by the black valley,
among the crowding columns made of silence,
under the hanging clouds
of leaves and voiceless birds.
To go by the way he went to the voice of the water,
where the priest stinging-tree waits with his whips and fevers,
under the hooded flowers
that fall from the trees like blood,
you must forget the song of the gold bird dancing
over tossed light; you must remember nothing
except the drag of darkness
that draws your weakness under.
To go by the way he went, you must find beneath you
that last and faceless pool, and fall. And falling
find between breath and death
the sun by which you live.

Balhann

Unlove’s the Heavenless Hell and Homeless Home, EE CUMMINGS

unlove’s the heavenless hell and homeless home

of knowledgeable shadows (quick to seize
each nothing which all soulless wraiths proclaim
substance;all heartless spectres, happiness)

lovers alone wear sunlight. The whole truth

not hid by matter; not by mind revealed
(more than all dying life, all living death)
and never which has been or will be told

sings only—and all lovers are the song.

Here (only here) is freedom: always here
no then of winter equals now of spring;
but april’s day transcends november’s year

(eternity being so sans until
twice i have lived forever in a smile)