Thursday, July 20, 2017

The Snake

EMILY DICKINSON


A narrow Fellow in the Grass
Occasionally rides 
You may have met Him  did you not
His notice sudden is 

The Grass divides as with a Comb 
A spotted shaft is seen 
And then it closes at your feet
And opens further on 

He likes a Boggy Acre
A Floor too cool for Corn
Yet when a Boy, and Barefoot 
I more than once at Noon
Have passed, I thought, a Whip Lash
Unbraiding in the Sun
When stooping to secure it
It wrinkled, and was gone 

Several of Nature’s People
I know, and they know me 
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality 

But never met this Fellow
Attended, or alone
Without a tighter breathing
And Zero at the Bone 

[Recited 17 August 2017]

Tuesday, July 4, 2017

Sonnet 18.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE


Shall I compare thee to a Summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And Summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimm’d:
But thy eternal Summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
    So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
    So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

[Recited 21 July 2017]