Bacchanalia

Listen to:

Bacchanalia (5:04)

by Matthew Arnold 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

I 

The evening comes, the fields are still. 

The tinkle of the thirsty rill, 

Unheard all day, ascends again; 

Deserted is the half-mown plain, 

Silent the swaths! the ringing wain, 

The mower's cry, the dog's alarms, 

All housed within the sleeping farms! 

The business of the day is done, 

The last belated gleaner gone. 

And from the thyme upon the height, 

And from the elder-blossom white 

And pale dog-roses in the hedge, 

And from the mint-plant in the sedge, 

In puffs of balm the night-air blows 

The perfume which the day forgoes. 

And on the pure horizon far, 

See, pulsing with the first-born star, 

The liquid sky above the hill! 

The evening comes, the fields are still. 

       Loitering and leaping, 

       With saunter, with bounds— 

       Flickering and circling 

       In files and in rounds— 

       Gaily their pine-staff green 

       Tossing in air, 

       Loose o'er their shoulders white 

       Showering their hair— 

       See! the wild Maenads 

       Break from the wood, 

       Youth and Iacchus 

       Maddening their blood. 

       See! through the quiet land 

       Rioting they pass— 

       Fling the fresh heaps about, 

       Trample the grass. 

       Tear from the rifled hedge 

       Garlands, their prize; 

       Fill with their sports the field, 

       Fill with their cries. 

       Shepherd, what ails thee, then? 

       Shepherd, why mute? 

       Forth with thy joyous song! 

       Forth with thy flute! 

       Tempts not the revel blithe? 

       Lure not their cries? 

       Glow not their shoulders smooth? 

       Melt not their eyes? 

       Is not, on cheeks like those, 

       Lovely the flush? 

       —Ah, so the quiet was! 

       So was the hush! 

II 

The epoch ends, the world is still. 

The age has talk'd and work'd its fill— 

The famous orators have shone, 

The famous poets sung and gone, 

The famous men of war have fought, 

The famous speculators thought, 

The famous players, sculptors, wrought, 

The famous painters fill'd their wall, 

The famous critics judged it all. 

The combatants are parted now— 

Uphung the spear, unbent the bow, 

The puissant crown'd, the weak laid low. 

And in the after-silence sweet, 

Now strifes are hush'd, our ears doth meet, 

Ascending pure, the bell-like fame 

Of this or that down-trodden name, 

Delicate spirits, push'd away 

In the hot press of the noon-day. 

And o'er the plain, where the dead age 

Did its now silent warfare wage— 

O'er that wide plain, now wrapt in gloom, 

Where many a splendour finds its tomb, 

Many spent fames and fallen mights— 

The one or two immortal lights 

Rise slowly up into the sky 

To shine there everlastingly, 

Like stars over the bounding hill. 

The epoch ends, the world is still. 

       Thundering and bursting 

       In torrents, in waves— 

       Carolling and shouting 

       Over tombs, amid graves— 

       See! on the cumber'd plain 

       Clearing a stage, 

       Scattering the past about, 

       Comes the new age. 

       Bards make new poems, 

       Thinkers new schools, 

       Statesmen new systems, 

       Critics new rules. 

       All things begin again; 

       Life is their prize; 

       Earth with their deeds they fill, 

       Fill with their cries. 

       Poet, what ails thee, then? 

       Say, why so mute? 

       Forth with thy praising voice! 

       Forth with thy flute! 

       Loiterer! why sittest thou 

       Sunk in thy dream? 

       Tempts not the bright new age? 

       Shines not its stream? 

       Look, ah, what genius, 

       Art, science, wit! 

       Soldiers like Caesar, 

       Statesmen like Pitt! 

       Sculptors like Phidias, 

       Raphaels in shoals, 

       Poets like Shakespeare— 

       Beautiful souls! 

       See, on their glowing cheeks 

       Heavenly the flush! 

       —Ah, so the silence was! 

       So was the hush! 

The world but feels the present's spell, 

The poet feels the past as well; 

Whatever men have done, might do, 

Whatever thought, might think it too. 

No Second Troy

Listen to:

No Second Troy (:50)

by William Butler Yeats 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Why should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late

Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great,
Had they but courage equal to desire?

What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,

With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind

That is not natural in an age like this,

Being high and solitary and most stern?

Why, what could she have done being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?

Two Hymns to Love

Listen to:

Two Hymns to Love (1:04)

by Robert Herrick 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

A Short Hymn to Venus

Goddess, I do love a Girl

Ruby-lipp’d, and tooth’d with Pearl:

If so be, I may but prove

Lucky in the Maid I love:

I will promise there shall be

Myrtles offer’d up to Thee.

A Hymn to Venus and Cupid

Sea-born Goddess, let me be

By thy son thus grac'd, and thee;

That whene’er I woo, I find 

Virgins coy, but not unkind.

Let me, when I kiss a maid,

Taste her lips, so over-laid

With Love-syrup, that I may,

In your Temple, when I pray,

Kiss the Altar, and confess

There’s in love no bitterness.

The Galaxy

Listen to:

The Galaxy (1:01)

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

      Torrent of light and river of the air,

      Along whose bed the glimmering stars are seen

      Like gold and silver sands in some ravine

      Where mountain streams have left their channels bare!

      The Spaniard sees in thee the pathway, where

      His patron saint descended in the sheen

      Of his celestial armor, on serene

      And quiet nights, when all the heavens were fair.

      Not this I see, nor yet the ancient fable

      Of Phaeton's wild course, that scorched the skies

      Wherever the hoofs of his hot coursers trod;

      But the white drift of worlds o'er chasms of sable,

      The star-dust, that is whirled aloft and flies

      From the invisible chariot-wheels of God.

There Shines the Morning Star

Listen to:

There Shines the Morning Star (:58)

by Wallace Stevens 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

There shines the morning star! Through the forlorn

  And silent spaces of cold heaven's height

  Pours the bright radiance of his kingly light,

Swinging in revery before the morn.

The flush and fall of many tides have worn

  Upon the coasts beneath him, in their flight

  From sea to sea ; yet ever on the night

His clear and splendid visage is upborne.

Like this he pondered on the world's first day,

  Sweet Eden's flowers heavy with the dew;

And so he led bold Jason on his way

    Sparkling forever in the galley's foam;

  And still he shone most perfect in the blue,

    All bright and lovely on the hosts of Rome.

First published in The Harvard Advocate, LXVII, 2, 10 Apr 1899 

To Hope

Listen to:

To Hope (1:14)

by Charlotte Smith 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Oh, Hope! thou soother sweet of human woes!
    How shall I lure thee to my haunts forlorn!
For me wilt thou renew the wither’d rose,
    And clear my painful path of pointed thorn?
Ah come, sweet nymph! in smiles and softness drest,
    Like the young hours that lead the tender year,
Enchantress! come, and charm my cares to rest:—
    Alas! the flatterer flies, and will not hear!
A prey to fear, anxiety, and pain,
    Must I a sad existence still deplore?
Lo!—the flowers fade, but all the thorns remain,
    “For me the vernal garland blooms no more.”
Come then, “pale Misery’s love!” be thou my cure,
And I will bless thee, who, tho’ slow, art sure.

Song: To Celia

Listen to:

Song: To Celia  (:52)

by Ben Jonson 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Drink to me only with thine eyes,

         And I will pledge with mine;

Or leave a kiss but in the cup,

         And I’ll not look for wine.

The thirst that from the soul doth rise

         Doth ask a drink divine;

But might I of Jove’s nectar sup,

         I would not change for thine.

I sent thee late a rosy wreath,

         Not so much honouring thee

As giving it a hope, that there

         It could not withered be.

But thou thereon didst only breathe,

         And sent’st it back to me;

Since when it grows, and smells, I swear,

         Not of itself, but thee.

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.

Sonnet: To Science

Listen to:

Sonnet: To Science (:58)

by Edgar Allan Poe 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art!
   Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet’s heart,
   Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?
How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise,
   Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering
To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,
   Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?
Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car,
   And driven the Hamadryad from the wood
To seek a shelter in some happier star?
   Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,
The Elfin from the green grass, and from me
The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?

Sonnet 23: Methought I Saw My Late Espoused Saint

Listen to:

Sonnet 23: Methought I Saw My Late Espoused Saint (1:02)

by John Milton

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Methought I saw my late espoused saint
       Brought to me, like Alcestis, from the grave,
       Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave,
       Rescu'd from death by force, though pale and faint.
Mine, as whom wash'd from spot of child-bed taint
       Purification in the old Law did save,
       And such as yet once more I trust to have
       Full sight of her in Heaven without restraint,
Came vested all in white, pure as her mind;
       Her face was veil'd, yet to my fancied sight
       Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shin'd
So clear as in no face with more delight.
       But Oh! as to embrace me she inclin'd,
       I wak'd, she fled, and day brought back my night.

The First Kiss of Love

Listen to:

The First Kiss of Love (2:04)

by George Gordon, Lord Byron

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Away with your fictions of flimsy romance,

     Those tissues of falsehood which Folly has wove;

Give me the mild beam of the soul-breathing glance,

     Or the rapture which dwells on the first kiss of love.

Ye rhymers, whose bosoms with fantasy glow,

     Whose pastoral passions are made for the grove;

From what blest inspiration your sonnets would flow,

     Could you ever have tasted the first kiss of love.

If Apollo should e'er his assistance refuse,

     Or the Nine be dispos'd from your service to rove,

Invoke them no more, bid adieu to the Muse,

     And try the effect, of the first kiss of love.

I hate you, ye cold compositions of art,

     Though prudes may condemn me, and bigots reprove;

I court the effusions that spring from the heart,

     Which throbs, with delight, to the first kiss of love.

Your shepherds, your flocks, those fantastical themes,

     Perhaps may amuse, yet they never can move:

Arcadia displays but a region of dreams;

     What are visions like these, to the first kiss of love?

Oh! cease to affirm that man, since his birth,

     From Adam, till now, has with wretchedness strove;

Some portion of Paradise still is on earth,

     And Eden revives, in the first kiss of love.

When age chills the blood, when our pleasures are past—

     For years fleet away with the wings of the dove—

The dearest remembrance will still be the last,

     Our sweetest memorial, the first kiss of love.

Alack! What Poverty

Listen to:

Alack! What Poverty (:55)

Sonnet 103

by William Shakespeare

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Alack! what poverty my Muse brings forth,
That having such a scope to show her pride,
The argument all bare is of more worth
Than when it hath my added praise beside!
O! blame me not, if I no more can write!
Look in your glass, and there appears a face
That over-goes my blunt invention quite,
Dulling my lines, and doing me disgrace.
Were it not sinful then, striving to mend,
To mar the subject that before was well?
For to no other pass my verses tend
Than of your graces and your gifts to tell;
And more, much more, than in my verse can sit,
Your own glass shows you when you look in it.

Cupid Laid By His Brand

Listen to:

Cupid Laid By His Brand (:57)

Sonnet 153

by William Shakespeare

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Cupid laid by his brand and fell asleep:
A maid of Dian's this advantage found,
And his love-kindling fire did quickly steep
In a cold valley-fountain of that ground;
Which borrowed from this holy fire of Love,
A dateless lively heat, still to endure,
And grew a seething bath, which yet men prove
Against strange maladies a sovereign cure.
But at my mistress' eye Love's brand new-fired,
The boy for trial needs would touch my breast;
I, sick withal, the help of bath desired,
And thither hied, a sad distempered guest,
But found no cure, the bath for my help lies
Where Cupid got new fire; my mistress' eyes.

Ulysses Degree Speech

Listen to:

Ulysses' Degree Speech (1:59)

by William Shakespeare

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

The Greek army has been fighting the Trojans for seven years. Camped out on the beaches, the soldiers are divided into factions contesting with one another. Ulysses, the cunning warrior, counsels the Lord Marshall Agamemnon on the need for unity along a hierarchical order and the dangers of disorderly organization.

from Troilus and Cressida
Act One, Scene Three

The heavens themselves, the planets and this centre
Observe degree, priority and place,
Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,
Office and custom, in all line of order;
And therefore is the glorious planet Sol
In noble eminence enthroned and sphered
Amidst the other; whose medicinable eye
Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil,
And posts, like the commandment of a king,
Sans cheque to good and bad: but when the planets
In evil mixture to disorder wander,
What plagues and what portents! what mutiny!
What raging of the sea! shaking of earth!
Commotion in the winds! frights, changes, horrors,
Divert and crack, rend and deracinate
The unity and married calm of states
Quite from their fixure! O, when degree is shaked,
Which is the ladder to all high designs,
Then enterprise is sick! How could communities,
Degrees in schools and brotherhoods in cities,
Peaceful commerce from dividable shores,
The primogenitive and due of birth,
Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels,
But by degree, stand in authentic place?
Take but degree away, untune that string,
And, hark, what discord follows! each thing meets
In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters
Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores
And make a sop of all this solid globe:
Strength should be lord of imbecility,
And the rude son should strike his father dead ...

First Player's Speech from Hamlet

Listen to:

First Player's Speech from Hamlet (2:55)

by William Shakespeare

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Hamlet receives a troupe of traveling players to Elsinore. An avid fan of theatre, Hamlet requests from the leader of the troupe a "passionate speech," specifically Aeneas' tale to Dido. With just one false start, Hamlet begins the speech:

"The rugged Pyrrhus, he whose sable arms,

Black as his purpose, did the night resemble

When he lay couched in the ominous horse,

Hath now this black and dread complexion smear'd

With heraldry more dismal; head to foot 

Now is he total gules; horridly trick'd

With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons,

Bak'd and impasted with the parching streets,

That lend a tyrannous and damned light

To their vile murders: roasted in wrath and fire,

With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus

Old grandsire Priam seeks."

Then Hamlet tells the actor to continue the speech and the actor complies with:

First Player

'Anon he finds him
Striking too short at Greeks; his antique sword,
Rebellious to his arm, lies where it falls,
Repugnant to command: unequal match'd,
Pyrrhus at Priam drives; in rage strikes wide;
But with the whiff and wind of his fell sword
The unnerved father falls. Then senseless Ilium,
Seeming to feel this blow, with flaming top
Stoops to his base, and with a hideous crash
Takes prisoner Pyrrhus' ear: for, lo! his sword,
Which was declining on the milky head
Of reverend Priam, seem'd i' the air to stick:
So, as a painted tyrant, Pyrrhus stood,
And like a neutral to his will and matter,
Did nothing.
But, as we often see, against some storm,
A silence in the heavens, the rack stand still,
The bold winds speechless and the orb below
As hush as death, anon the dreadful thunder
Doth rend the region, so, after Pyrrhus' pause,
Aroused vengeance sets him new a-work;
And never did the Cyclops' hammers fall
On Mars's armour forged for proof eterne
With less remorse than Pyrrhus' bleeding sword
Now falls on Priam.
Out, out, thou strumpet, Fortune! All you gods,
In general synod 'take away her power;
Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel,
And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven,
As low as to the fiends!'

***

‘But who, O, who had seen the mobled queen
Run barefoot up and down, threatening the flames
With bisson rheum; a clout upon that head
Where late the diadem stood, and for a robe,
About her lank and all o'er-teemed loins,
A blanket, in the alarm of fear caught up;
Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steep'd,
'Gainst Fortune's state would treason have
pronounced:
But if the gods themselves did see her then
When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport
In mincing with his sword her husband's limbs,
The instant burst of clamour that she made,
Unless things mortal move them not at all,
Would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven,
And passion in the gods.'

On the Prospect of Planting Arts & Learning

"American Progress" (1873) by George Crogut

Listen to:

On the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning (1:43)

by George Berkeley

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

The Muse, disgusted at an age and clime
  Barren of every glorious theme,
In distant lands now waits a better time,
  Producing subjects worthy fame.

In happy climes, where from the genial sun      
  And virgin earth such scenes ensue,
The force of art by nature seems outdone,
  And fancied beauties by the true;

In happy climes, the seat of innocence,
  Where nature guides and virtue rules,      
Where men shall not impose for truth and sense
  The pedantry of courts and schools:

There shall be sung another golden age,
  The rise of empire and of arts,
The good and great inspiring epic rage,      
  The wisest heads and noblest hearts.

Not such as Europe breeds in her decay;
  Such as she bred when fresh and young,
When heavenly flame did animate her clay,
  By future poets shall be sung.      

Westward the course of empire takes its way;
  The first four acts already past,
A fifth shall close the drama with the day;
  Time’s noblest offspring is the last.

Song to the Heliconian Muses

Listen to:

Song to the Heliconian Muses (1:59)

from Theogony

by Hesiod

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

In ancient Greece, the other most popular poet to rhapsodize, after the divine Homer, was Hesiod, whose birthday we celebrate today. Here is the opening to Theogony, Hesiod’s account of the birth of the gods. It appropriately enough begins with an account of the Muses, who inspire poets as poets inspire rhapsodes:

Of the Heliconian Muses let us begin to sing,

who hold the great and holy mount of Helicon,

and dance on soft feet about the deep-blue spring

and the altar of the almighty son of Cronos,

and, when they have washed their tender bodies,

they make their fair, lovely dances upon highest Helicon

and move with vigorous feet.

From there, they arise and go abroad by night,

veiled in thick mist,

and utter their song with lovely voice,

praising Zeus the aegis-bearer

and queenly Hera of Argos

who walks on golden sandals

and the daughter of Zeus the aegis-bearer – bright-eyed Athene,

and Phoebus Apollo, and Artemis who delights in arrows,

and Poseidon the earth-bearer who shakes the earth,

and quick-glancing Aphrodite,

and the holy race of all the other deathless ones that are for ever. 

And one day they taught Hesiod glorious song

while he was shepherding his lambs under holy Helicon,

and this word first the goddesses said to me –

the Muses of Olympus,

daughters of Zeus who bears the aegis:

“Shepherds of the wilderness,

wretched things of shame, mere bellies,

we know how to speak many false things

as though they were true;

but we know, when we will,

to utter true things.”

So said the ready-voiced daughters of great Zeus,

and they plucked and gave me a rod,

a shoot of sturdy laurel, a marvellous thing,

and breathed into me a divine voice

to celebrate things that shall be

and things there were in the past;

and they bade me sing

of the race of the blessed gods that are eternally,

but ever to sing of themselves both first and last.

The World is Too Much With Us

Listen to:

The World is Too Much With Us (:48)

by William Wordsworth

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

          The world is too much with us; late and soon,

          Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:

          Little we see in Nature that is ours;

          We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

          The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

          The winds that will be howling at all hours,

          And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

          For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

          It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be

          A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;                        

          So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

          Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

          Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

          Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

"Ulysses" - Excerpt Part I

Listen to:

Ulysses (excerpt - Part I) (1:32)

by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

    I cannot rest from travel: I will drink

    Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed

    Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those

    That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when

    Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades

    Vexed the dim sea: I am become a name;

    For always roaming with a hungry heart

    Much have I seen and known; cities of men

    And manners, climates, councils, governments,

    Myself not least, but honoured of them all;

    And drunk delight of battle with my peers,

    Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.

    I am a part of all that I have met;

    Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough

    Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades

    For ever and for ever when I move.

    How dull it is to pause, to make an end,

    To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!

    As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life

    Were all too little, and of one to me

    Little remains: but every hour is saved

    From that eternal silence, something more,

    A bringer of new things; and vile it were

    For some three suns to store and hoard myself,

    And this grey spirit yearning in desire

    To follow knowledge like a sinking star,

    Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.