If You Refuse Me Once

Listen to:

If You Refuse Me Once (3:05)

by Sir John Suckling 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Sir John Suckling was born this day in 1609 in Middlesex, England.

If you refuse me once, and think again,

            I will complain.

You are deceiv’d, love is no work of art,

            It must be got and born,

            Not made and worn,

By every one that hath a heart.

Or do you think they more than once can die,

            Whom you deny?

Who tell you of a thousand deaths a day,

            Like the old poets feign

            And tell the pain

They met, but in the common way?

Or do you think ’t too soon to yield,

            And quit the field?

Nor is that right, they yield that first entreat;

            Once one may crave for love,

            But more would prove

This heart too little, that too great.

Oh that I were all soul, that I might prove

      For you as fit a love

As you are for an angel; for I know,

None but pure spirits are fit loves for you.

You are all ethereal; there’s in you no dross,

      Nor any part that’s gross.

Your coarsest part is like a curious lawn,

The vestal relics for a covering drawn.

Your other parts, part of the purest fire

      That e’er Heav’n did inspire,

Makes every thought that is refin’d by it

A quintessence of goodness and of wit.

Thus have your raptures reach’d to that degree

      In love’s philosophy,

That you can figure to yourself a fire

Void of all heat, a love without desire.

Nor in divinity do you go less;

      You think, and you profess,

That souls may have a plenitude of joy,

Although their bodies meet not to employ.

But I must needs confess, I do not find

      The motions of my mind

So purified as yet, but at the best

My body claims in them an interest.

I hold that perfect joy makes all our parts

      As joyful as our hearts.

Our senses tell us, if we please not them,

Our love is but a dotage or a dream.

How shall we then agree? you may descend,

      But will not, to my end.

I fain would tune my fancy to your key,

But cannot reach to that obstructed way.

There rests but this, that whilst we sorrow here,

      Our bodies may draw near;

And, when no more their joys they can extend,

Then let our souls begin where they did end.

Sonnet: "If we are leaves that fall"

Listen to:

Sonnet: "If we are leaves that fall" (:55)

by Wallace Stevens 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

If we are leaves that fall upon the ground

To lose our greenness in the quiet dust

Of forest-depths; if we are flowers that must

Lie torn and creased upon a bitter mound,

No touch of sweetness in our ruins found;

If we are weeds whom no one wise can trust

To live an hour before we feel the gust

Of Death, and by our side its last, keen sound;

Then let a tremor through our briefness run,

Wrapping it in with mad, sweet sorcery

Of love; for in the fern I saw the sun

Take fire against the dew; the lily white

Was soft and deep at morn; the rosary

Streamed forth a wild perfume into the light.

First published in:

The Harvard Monthly, XXVIII (Mar. 1899)

The Railway Train

Listen to:

The Railway Train (:46)

by Emily Dickinson 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

I like to see it lap the miles,
And lick the valleys up,
And stop to feed itself at tanks;
And then, prodigious, step

Around a pile of mountains,
And, supercilious, peer
In shanties by the sides of roads;
And then a quarry pare

To fit its sides, and crawl between,
Complaining all the while
In horrid, hooting stanza;
Then chase itself down the hill

And neigh like Boanerges;
Then, punctual as a star,
Stop - docile and omnipotent -
At its own stable door. 

The Prairie Town

Listen to:

The Prairie Town (1:05)

by Helen Hooven Santmyer

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Lovers of beauty laugh at this grey town,
     Where dust lies thick on ragged curb-side trees,
And compass-needle streets lead up and down
     And lose themselves in empty prairie seas.

Here is no winding scented lane, no hill
     Crowned with a steepled church, no garden wall
Of old grey stone where lilacs bloom, and fill
     The air with fragrance when the May rains fall.

But here is the unsoftened majesty
     Of the wide earth where all the wide streets end,
And from the dusty corner one may see
     The full moon rise, and flaming sun descend.

The long main street, whence farmers’ teams go forth,
Lies like an old sea road, star-pointed north.

Prairie Dawn

Listen to:

Prairie Dawn (:34)

by Willa Cather 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

A crimson fire that vanquishes the stars;

A pungent odor from the dusty sage;

A sudden stirring of the huddled herds;

A breaking of the distant table-lands

Through purple mists ascending, and the flare

Of water ditches silver in the light;

A swift, bright lance hurled low across the world;

A sudden sickness for the hills of home.

To the Immortal Memory of the Halibut

Listen to:

To the Immortal Memory of the Halibut (1:47)

by William Cowper 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

To the Immortal Memory of the Halibut

on Which I Dined This Day

[Written in a letter to Unwin April 25, 1784.  Published by

     Johnson, 1824.]

Where hast thou floated, in what seas pursued

Thy pastime? when wast thou an egg new-spawn'd,

Lost in th' immensity of ocean's waste?

Roar as they might, the overbearing winds

That rock'd the deep, thy cradle, thou wast safe—

And in thy minikin and embryo state,

Attach'd to the firm leaf of some salt weed,

Didst outlive tempests, such as wrung and rack'd

The joints of many a stout and gallant bark,

And whelm'd them in the unexplor'd abyss.

Indebted to no magnet and no chart,

Nor under guidance of the polar fire,

Thou wast a voyager on many coasts,

Grazing at large in meadows submarine,

Where flat Batavia just emerging peeps

Above the brine,—where Caledonia's rocks

Beat back the surge,—and where Hibernia shoots

Her wondrous causeway far into the main.

—Wherever thou hast fed, thou little thought'st,

And I not more, that I should feed on thee.

Peace therefore, and good health, and much good fish,

To him who sent thee! and success, as oft

As it descends into the billowy gulph,

To the same drag that caught thee!—Fare thee well!

Thy lot thy brethern of the slimy fin

Would envy, could they know that thou wast doom'd

To feed a bard, and to be prais'd in verse.

A Prairie Sunset

Listen to:

A Prairie Sunset (:49)

by Walt Whitman 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

  Shot gold, maroon and violet, dazzling silver, emerald, fawn,

  The earth's whole amplitude and Nature's multiform power consign'd

      for once to colors;

  The light, the general air possess'd by them--colors till now unknown,

  No limit, confine--not the Western sky alone--the high meridian--

      North, South, all,

  Pure luminous color fighting the silent shadows to the last.

Nocturne

Listen to:

Nocturne  (:46)

by Thomas Bailey Aldrich 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Up to her chamber window

A slight wire trellis goes,

And up this Romeo's ladder

Clambers a bold white rose.

I lounge in the ilex shadows,

I see the lady lean,

Unclasping her silken girdle,

The curtain's folds between.

She smiles on her white-rose lover,

She reaches out her hand

And helps him in at the window—

I see it where I stand!

To her scarlet lip she holds him,

And kisses him many a time—

Ah, me! it was he that won her

Because he dared to climb!

When All Things Repose

Listen to:

When All Things Repose (:48)

by James Joyce 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

James Joyce was born on this day in 1882 in Dublin.

from Chamber Music

  At that hour when all things have repose,

     O lonely watcher of the skies,

     Do you hear the night wind and the sighs

     Of harps playing unto Love to unclose

     The pale gates of sunrise?

     When all things repose, do you alone

     Awake to hear the sweet harps play

     To Love before him on his way,

     And the night wind answering in antiphon

     Till night is overgone?

     Play on, invisible harps, unto Love,

     Whose way in heaven is aglow

     At that hour when soft lights come and go,

     Soft sweet music in the air above

     And in the earth below.

Inscription on the Monument of a Newfoundland Dog

Listen to:

Inscription on the Monument of a Newfoundland Dog (1:52)

by George Gordon, Lord Byron 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

A Memorial to Boatswain

Newstead Abbey, November 30, 1808.

Near this spot

Are deposited the Remains of one

Who possessed Beauty without Vanity,

Strength without Insolence,

Courage without Ferocity,

And all the Virtues of Man without his Vices.

This Praise, which would be unmeaning Flattery

If inscribed over human ashes,

Is but a just tribute to the Memory of

BOATSWAIN, a DOG

Who was born at Newfoundland, May, 1803,

And died at Newstead, Nov 18th, 1808.

When some proud son of man returns to earth,

Unknown to glory, but upheld by birth,

The sculptor's art exhausts the pomp of woe,

And storied urns record who rest below:

When all is done, upon the tomb is seen,

Not what he was, but what he should have been:

But the poor dog, in life the firmest friend,

The first to welcome, foremost to defend,

Whose honest heart is still his master's own,

Who labours, fights, lives, breathes for him alone,

Unhonour'd falls, unnoticed all his worth,

Denied in heaven the soul he held on earth:

While man, vain insect!  hopes to be forgiven,

And claims himself a sole exclusive heaven.

Oh man! thou feeble tenant of an hour,

Debased by slavery, or corrupt by power,

Who knows thee well must quit thee with disgust,

Degraded mass of animated dust!

Thy love is lust, thy friendship all a cheat,

Thy smiles hypocrisy, thy words deceit!

By nature vile, ennobled but by name,

Each kindred brute might bid thee blush for shame.

Ye! who perchance behold this simple urn,

Pass on --- it honours none you wish to mourn:

To mark a friend's remains these stones arise;

I never knew but one, --- and here he lies.