Nightfall

Listen to:

Nightfall (:30)

by Martin Schutze

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

The River of Life

Listen to:

The River of Life (1:15)

by Thomas Campbell

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

The more we live, more brief appear
  Our life’s succeeding stages:
A day to childhood seems a year,
  And years like passing ages.

The gladsome current of our youth,      
  Ere passion yet disorders,
Steals lingering like a river smooth
  Along its grassy borders.

But as the care-worn cheeks grow wan,
  And sorrow’s shafts fly thicker,      
Ye Stars, that measure life to man,
  Why seem your courses quicker?

When joys have lost their bloom and breath
  And life itself is vapid,
Why, as we reach the Falls of Death,      
  Feel we its tide more rapid?

It may be strange—yet who would change
  Time’s course to slower speeding,
When one by one our friends have gone
  And left our bosoms bleeding?      

Heaven gives our years of fading strength
  Indemnifying fleetness;
And those of youth, a seeming length,
  Proportion’d to their sweetness.

When I Was One and Twenty

Listen to:

When I Was One and Twenty (:57)

by A.E. Housman

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

When I was one-and-twenty

  I heard a wise man say,

‘Give crowns and pounds and guineas

  But not your heart away;


Give pearls away and rubies
     
  But keep your fancy free.

But I was one-and-twenty,

  No use to talk to me.


When I was one-and-twenty

  I heard him say again,
     
‘The heart out of the bosom

  Was never given in vain;

’Tis paid with sighs a plenty

  And sold for endless rue.’

And I am two-and-twenty,
     
  And oh, ’tis true, ’tis true.

The Invitation

Listen to:

The Invitation (3:28)

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Best and brightest, come away!
Fairer far than this fair Day,
Which, like thee to those in sorrow,
Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow
To the rough Year just awake
In its cradle on the brake.
The Brightest hour of unborn Spring,
Through the winter wandering,
Found, it seems, the halcyon Morn
To hoar February born.
Bending from Heaven, in azure mirth,
It kissed the forehead of the Earth,
And smiled upon the silent sea,
And bade the frozen streams be free,
And waked to music all their fountains,
And breathed upon the frozen mountains,
And like a prophetess of May
Strewed flowers upon the barren way,
Making the wintry world appear
Like one on whom thou smilest, dear.
Away, away, from men and towns,
To the wild wood and the downs—
To the silent wilderness
Where the soul need not repress
Its music lest it should not find
An echo in another’s mind.
While the touch of Nature’s art
Harmonizes heart to heart.
I leave this notice on my door
For each accustomed visitor:—
“I am gone into the fields
To take what this sweet hour yields;—
Reflection, you may come tomorrow,
Sit by the fireside with Sorrow.—
You with the unpaid bill, Despair,—
You, tiresome verse-reciter, Care,—
I will pay you in the grave,—
Death will listen to your stave.
Expectation too, be off!
Today is for itself enough;
Hope, in pity mock not Woe
With smiles, nor follow where I go;
Long having lived on thy sweet food,
At length I find one moment’s good
After long pain—with all your love,
This you never told me of.”

Radiant Sister of the Day,
Awake! arise! And come away!
To the wild woods and the plains,
And the pools where winter rains
Image all their roof of leaves,
Where the pine its garland weaves
Of sapless green, and ivy dun
Round stems that never kiss the sun:
Where the lawns and pastures be,
And the sandhills of the sea:—
Where the melting hoar-frost wets
The daisy-star that never sets,
And wind-flowers, and violets,
Which yet join not scent to hue,
Crown the pale year weak and new;
When the night is left behind
In the deep east, dun and blind,
And the blue noon is over us,
And the multitudinous
Billows murmur at our feet,
Where the earth and ocean meet,
And all things seem only one
In the universal sun.

A Contemplation Upon Flowers

Listen to:

A Contemplation Upon Flowers (1:24)

by Henry King

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Brave flowers--that I could gallant it like you,
And be as little vain!
You come abroad, and make a harmless show,
And to your beds of earth again.
You are not proud: you know your birth:
For your embroider'd garments are from earth.

You do obey your months and times, but I
Would have it ever Spring:
My fate would know no Winter, never die,
Nor think of such a thing.
O that I could my bed of earth but view
And smile, and look as cheerfully as you!

O teach me to see Death and not to fear,
But rather to take truce!
How often have I seen you at a bier,
And there look fresh and spruce!
You fragrant flowers! then teach me, that my breath
Like yours may sweeten and perfume my death.

My Mind to Me a Kingdom Is

Listen to:

My Mind to Me a Kingdom Is (2:52)

by Sir Edward Dyer

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

My mind to me a kingdom is;

  Such present joys therein I find,

That it excels all other bliss

  That earth affords or grows by kind:

Though much I want that most would have,        

Yet still my mind forbids to crave.

No princely pomp, no wealthy store,

  No force to win the victory,

No wily wit to salve a sore,

  No shape to feed a loving eye;        

To none of these I yield as thrall;

For why? my mind doth serve for all.

I see how plenty surfeits oft,

  And hasty climbers soon do fall;

I see that those which are aloft        

  Mishap doth threaten most of all:

They get with toil, they keep with fear:

Such cares my mind could never bear.

Content I live, this is my stay;

  I seek no more than may suffice;        

I press to bear no haughty sway;

  Look, what I lack my mind supplies.

Lo, thus I triumph like a king,

Content with that my mind doth bring.

Some have too much, yet still do crave;        

  I little have, and seek no more.

They are but poor, though much they have,

  And I am rich with little store;

They poor, I rich; they beg, I give;

They lack, I leave; they pine, I live.        

I laugh not at another’s loss,

  I grudge not at another’s gain;

No worldly waves my mind can toss;

  My state at one doth still remain:

I fear no foe, I fawn no friend;        

I loathe not life, nor dread my end.

Some weigh their pleasure by their lust,

  Their wisdom by their rage of will;

Their treasure is their only trust,

  A cloakèd craft their store of skill;        

But all the pleasure that I find

Is to maintain a quiet mind.

My wealth is health and perfect ease,

  My conscience clear my chief defence;

I neither seek by bribes to please,        

  Nor by deceit to breed offence:

Thus do I live; thus will I die;

Would all did so as well as I!

The Widow's Lament in Springtime, The Great Figure

Listen to:

The Widow's Lament in Springtime, The Great Figure (1:25)

by William Carlos Williams

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

THE WIDOW'S LAMENT IN SPRINGTIME

  Sorrow is my own yard
  where the new grass
  flames as it has flamed
  often before but not
  with the cold fire
  that closes round me this year.
  Thirty five years
  I lived with my husband.
  The plum tree is white today
  with masses of flowers.
  Masses of flowers
  load the cherry branches
  and color some bushes
  yellow and some red
  but the grief in my heart
  is stronger than they
  for though they were my joy
  formerly, today I notice them
  and turn away forgetting.
  Today my son told me
  that in the meadows,
  at the edge of the heavy woods
  in the distance, he saw
  trees of white flowers.
  I feel that I would like
  to go there
  and fall into those flowers
  and sink into the marsh near them.


THE GREAT FIGURE

  Among the rain
  and lights
  I saw the figure 5
  in gold
  on a red
  firetruck
  moving
  with weight and urgency
  tense
  unheeded
  to gong clangs
  siren howls
  and wheels rumbling
  through the dark city.

The Thinker

Listen to:

The Thinker (:39)

by William Carlos Williams

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

THE THINKER


  My wife's new pink slippers
  have gay pom-poms.
  There is not a spot or a stain
  on their satin toes or their sides.
  All night they lie together
  under her bed's edge.
  Shivering I catch sight of them
  and smile, in the morning.
  Later I watch them
  descending the stair,
  hurrying through the doors
  and round the table,
  moving stiffly
  with a shake of their gay pom-poms!
  And I talk to them
  in my secret mind
  out of pure happiness.

Youth and Beauty

Listen to:

Youth and Beauty (:29)

by William Carlos Williams

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

YOUTH AND BEAUTY


  I bought a dishmop--
  having no daughter--
  for they had twisted
  fine ribbons of shining copper
  about white twine
  and made a towsled head
  of it, fastened it
  upon a turned ash stick
  slender at the neck
  straight, tall--
  when tied upright
  on the brass wallbracket
  to be a light for me--
  and naked,
  as a girl should seem
  to her father.

Queen-Ann's-Lace

Listen to:

Queen-Ann's-Lace (:58)

by William Carlos Williams

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

QUEEN-ANN'S-LACE

  Her body is not so white as
  anemony petals nor so smooth--nor
  so remote a thing. It is a field
  of the wild carrot taking
  the field by force; the grass
  does not raise above it.
  Here is no question of whiteness,
  white as can be, with a purple mole
  at the center of each flower.
  Each flower is a hand's span
  of her whiteness. Wherever
  his hand has lain there is
  a tiny purple blemish. Each part
  is a blossom under his touch
  to which the fibres of her being
  stem one by one, each to its end,
  until the whole field is a
  white desire, empty, a single stem,
  a cluster, flower by flower,
  a pious wish to whiteness gone over--
  or nothing.