The Flight

Listen to:

The Flight (:58)

by Lloyd Mifflin

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Upon a cloud among the stars we stood.

The angel raised his hand and looked and said,

"Which world, of all yon starry myriad

Shall we make wing to?" The still solitude

Became a harp whereon his voice and mood

Made spheral music round his haloed head.

I spake—for then I had not long been dead—

"Let me look round upon the vasts, and brood

A moment on these orbs ere I decide ...

What is yon lower star that beauteous shines

And with soft splendor now incarnadines

Our wings?—There would I go and there abide."

He smiled as one who some child's thought divines:

"That is the world where yesternight you died."

The Hill

Listen to:

The Hill (1:11)

by Rupert Brooke

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

   Breathless, we flung us on the windy hill,

    Laughed in the sun, and kissed the lovely grass.

    You said, "Through glory and ecstasy we pass;

   Wind, sun, and earth remain, the birds sing still,

   When we are old, are old. . . ."  "And when we die

    All's over that is ours; and life burns on

   Through other lovers, other lips," said I,

   -- "Heart of my heart, our heaven is now, is won!"

   "We are Earth's best, that learnt her lesson here.

    Life is our cry.  We have kept the faith!" we said;

    "We shall go down with unreluctant tread

   Rose-crowned into the darkness!" . . .  Proud we were,

   And laughed, that had such brave true things to say.

   -- And then you suddenly cried, and turned away.

Lucifer in Starlight

Listen to:

Lucifer in Starlight (1:01)

by George Meredith 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

  

On a starr'd night Prince Lucifer uprose.  

  Tired of his dark dominion swung the fiend  

  Above the rolling ball in cloud part screen'd,  

Where sinners hugg'd their spectre of repose.  

Poor prey to his hot fit of pride were those.          

  And now upon his western wing he lean'd,  

  Now his huge bulk o'er Afric's sands careen'd,  

Now the black planet shadow'd Arctic snows.  

Soaring through wider zones that prick'd his scars  

  With memory of the old revolt from Awe,  

He reach'd a middle height, and at the stars,  

Which are the brain of heaven, he look'd, and sank.  

Around the ancient track march'd, rank on rank,  

  The army of unalterable law.

Old Chants

Listen to:

Old Chants (2:14)

by Walt Whitman 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

  An ancient song, reciting, ending,

  Once gazing toward thee, Mother of All,

  Musing, seeking themes fitted for thee,

  Accept me, thou saidst, the elder ballads,

  And name for me before thou goest each ancient poet.

  (Of many debts incalculable,

  Haply our New World's chieftest debt is to old poems.)

  Ever so far back, preluding thee, America,

  Old chants, Egyptian priests, and those of Ethiopia,

  The Hindu epics, the Grecian, Chinese, Persian,

  The Biblic books and prophets, and deep idyls of the Nazarene,

  The Iliad, Odyssey, plots, doings, wanderings of Eneas,

  Hesiod, Eschylus, Sophocles, Merlin, Arthur,

  The Cid, Roland at Roncesvalles, the Nibelungen,

  The troubadours, minstrels, minnesingers, skalds,

  Chaucer, Dante, flocks of singing birds,

  The Border Minstrelsy, the bye-gone ballads, feudal tales, essays, plays,

  Shakespere, Schiller, Walter Scott, Tennyson,

  As some vast wondrous weird dream-presences,

  The great shadowy groups gathering around,

  Darting their mighty masterful eyes forward at thee,

  Thou! with as now thy bending neck and head, with courteous hand

      and word, ascending,

  Thou! pausing a moment, drooping thine eyes upon them, blent

      with their music,

  Well pleased, accepting all, curiously prepared for by them,

  Thou enterest at thy entrance porch.

At Home from Church

Listen to: 

At Home from Church (1:19)

by Sarah Orne Jewett 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

The lilacs lift in generous bloom

   Their plumes of dear old-fashioned flowers;

Their fragrance fills the still old house

   Where left alone I count the hours.

High in the apple-trees the bees

   Are humming, busy in the sun,—

An idle robin cries for rain

   But once or twice and then is done.

The Sunday-morning quiet holds

   In heavy slumber all the street,

While from the church, just out of sight

   Behind the elms, comes slow and sweet

The organ’s drone, the voices faint

   That sing the quaint long-meter hymn—

I somehow feel as if shut out

   From some mysterious temple, dim

And beautiful with blue and red

   And golden lights from windows high,

Where angels in the shadows stand

   And earth seems very near the sky.

The day-dream fades—and so I try

   Again to catch the tune that brings

No thought of temple nor of priest,

   But only of a voice that sings.

Dying Speech of an Old Philosopher

Listen to:

Dying Speech of an Old Philosopher (:28)

by Walter Savage Landor 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

I strove with none, for none was worth my strife:

         Nature I loved, and, next to Nature, Art:

I warm’d both hands before the fire of Life;

         It sinks; and I am ready to depart.

If He from Heaven that Filched that Living Fire

Listen to:

If He from Heaven that Filched that Living Fire (1:01)

by Michael Drayton  

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

If he from heaven that filched that living fire 

Condemned by Jove to endless torment be, 

I greatly marvel how you still go free, 

That far beyond Prometheus did aspire. 

The fire he stole, although of heavenly kind, 

Which from above he craftily did take, 

Of liveless clods, us living men to make, 

He did bestow in temper of the mind. 

But you broke into heaven’s immortal store, 

Where virtue, honor, wit, and beauty lay; 

Which taking thence you have escaped away, 

Yet stand as free as ere you did before; 

   Yet old Prometheus punished for his rape. 

   Thus poor thieves suffer when the greater ‘scape.

All Is Truth

Listen to:

All Is Truth (2:02)

by Walt Whitman

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

O me, man of slack faith so long,

Standing aloof, denying portions so long,

Only aware to-day of compact all-diffused truth,

Discovering to-day there is no lie or form of lie, and can be none,

    but grows as inevitably upon itself as the truth does upon itself,

Or as any law of the earth or any natural production of the earth does.

(This is curious and may not be realized immediately, but it must be

    realized,

I feel in myself that I represent falsehoods equally with the rest,

And that the universe does.)

Where has fail'd a perfect return indifferent of lies or the truth?

Is it upon the ground, or in water or fire? or in the spirit of man?

    or in the meat and blood?

Meditating among liars and retreating sternly into myself, I see

    that there are really no liars or lies after all,

And that nothing fails its perfect return, and that what are called

    lies are perfect returns,

And that each thing exactly represents itself and what has preceded it,

And that the truth includes all, and is compact just as much as

    space is compact,

And that there is no flaw or vacuum in the amount of the truth--but

    that all is truth without exception;

And henceforth I will go celebrate any thing I see or am,

And sing and laugh and deny nothing.

Limitations

Listen to:

Limitations (1:01)

Henrietta Cordelia Ray 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

The subtlest strain a great musician weaves,
Cannot attain in rhythmic harmony
To music in his soul. May it not be
Celestial lyres send hints to him? He grieves
That half the sweetness of the song, he leaves
Unheard in the transition. Thus do we
Yearn to translate the wondrous majesty
Of some rare mood, when the rapt soul receives
A vision exquisite. Yet who can match
The sunset’s iridescent hues? Who sing
The skylark’s ecstasy so seraph-fine?
We struggle vainly, still we fain would catch
Such rifts amid life’s shadows, for they bring
Glimpses ineffable of things divine.

  

January Cold Desolate

Listen to:

January Cold Desolate (:44)

by Christina Rossetti 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

January cold desolate; 


February all dripping wet; 


March wind ranges; 


April changes; 


Birds sing in tune 


To flowers of May, 


And sunny June 


Brings longest day; 


In scorched July 


The storm-clouds fly 


Lightning-torn; 


August bears corn, 


September fruit; 


In rough October 


Earth must disrobe her; 


Stars fall and shoot 


In keen November; 


And night is long 


And cold is strong 


In bleak December.