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. 

The Fairies Dancing 1873

Listen to:

The Fairies Dancing (1:21)

by Walter de la Mare 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Walter de la Mare was born this day in 1873

I heard along the early hills,

  Ere yet the lark was risen up,

Ere yet the dawn with firelight fills

  The night-dew of the bramble-cup,--

I heard the fairies in a ring

  Sing as they tripped a lilting round

Soft as the moon on wavering wing.

  The starlight shook as if with sound,

As if with echoing, and the stars

  Prankt their bright eyes with trembling gleams;

While red with war the gusty Mars

  Rained upon earth his ruddy beams.

He shone alone, low down the West,

  While I, behind a hawthorn-bush,

Watched on the fairies flaxen-tressed

  The fires of the morning flush.

Till, as a mist, their beauty died,

  Their singing shrill and fainter grew;

And daylight tremulous and wide

  Flooded the moorland through and through;

Till Urdon's copper weathercock

  Was reared in golden flame afar,

And dim from moonlit dreams awoke

  The towers and groves of Arroar.

Queen Mab

Painting by Johann Heinrich Fussli

Listen to:

Queen Mab (3:08)

by William Shakespeare  

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

William Shakespeare was most probably born this day in 1564
(inferred from his baptismal record April 26, 1564)

from Romeo and Juliet, Act I, scene iv

Romeo is on his way to crash the Capulet's party with a group of friends, including his best friend, Mercutio. They exchange this dialogue:

ROMEO

And we mean well in going to this mask;

But 'tis no wit to go.

MERCUTIO

Why, may one ask?

ROMEO

I dream'd a dream to-night.

MERCUTIO

And so did I.

ROMEO

Well, what was yours?

MERCUTIO

That dreamers often lie.

ROMEO

In bed asleep, while they do dream things true.

to which Mercutio answers:

MERCUTIO

O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.

She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes

In shape no bigger than an agate-stone

On the fore-finger of an alderman,

Drawn with a team of little atomies

Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep;

Her wagon-spokes made of long spinners' legs,

The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,

The traces of the smallest spider's web,

The collars of the moonshine's watery beams,

Her whip of cricket's bone, the lash of film,

Her wagoner a small grey-coated gnat,

Not half so big as a round little worm

Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid;

Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut

Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,

Time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers.

And in this state she gallops night by night

Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love;

O'er courtiers' knees, that dream on court'sies straight,

O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees,

O'er ladies ' lips, who straight on kisses dream,

Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,

Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are:

Sometime she gallops o'er a courtier's nose,

And then dreams he of smelling out a suit;

And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig's tail

Tickling a parson's nose as a' lies asleep,

Then dreams he of another benefice:

Sometime she driveth o'er a soldier's neck,

And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,

Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,

Of healths five-fathom deep; and then anon

Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes,

And being thus frighted swears a prayer or two

And sleeps again. This is that very Mab

That plats the manes of horses in the night,

And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs,

Which once untangled, much misfortune bodes:

This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs,

That presses them and learns them first to bear,

Making them women of good carriage:

This is she--

Michael Robartes Remembers Forgotten Beauty

Listen to:

Michael Robartes Remembers Forgotten Beauty (1:24)

by William Butler Yeats 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

When my arms wrap you round I press

My heart upon the loveliness

That has long faded from the world;

The jewelled crowns that kings have hurled

In shadowy pools, when armies fled;

The love-tales wove with silken thread

By dreaming ladies upon cloth

That has made fat the murderous moth;

The roses that of old time were

Woven by ladies in their hair,

The dew-cold lilies ladies bore 

Through many a sacred corridor

Where such gray clouds of incense rose

That only the gods' eyes did not close:

For that pale breast and lingering hand

Come from a more dream-heavy land,

A more dream-heavy hour than this;

And when you sigh from kiss to kiss

I hear white Beauty sighing, too,

For hours when all must fade like dew

But flame on flame, deep under deep,

Throne over throne, where in half sleep

Their swords upon their iron knees

Brood her high lonely mysteries.

(from The Wind Among the Reeds)

Miracles

Listen to:

Miracles (1:52)

by Walt Whitman 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Why, who makes much of a miracle?
As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love,
Or sit at table at dinner with the rest,
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon,
Or animals feeding in the fields,
Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,
Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so quiet and bright,
Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring;
These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,
The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.

To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same,
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.

To me the sea is a continual miracle,
The fishes that swim—the rocks—the motion of the waves—the ships with men in them,
What stranger miracles are there?

Spring Day

Listen to:

Spring Day (1:25)

by Amy Lowell 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

The day is fresh-washed and fair, and there is a smell of tulips and narcissus in the air.

The sunshine pours in at the bath-room window and bores through the water in the bath-tub in lathes and planes of greenish-white. It cleaves the water into flaws like a jewel, and cracks it to bright light.

Little spots of sunshine lie on the surface of the water and dance, dance, and their reflections wobble deliciously over the ceiling; a stir of my finger sets them whirring, reeling. I move a foot and the planes of light in the water jar. I lie back and laugh, and let the green-white water, the sun-flawed beryl water, flow over me. The day is almost too bright to bear, the green water covers me from the too bright day. I will lie here awhile and play with the water and the sun spots. The sky is blue and high. A crow flaps by the window, and there is a whiff of tulips and narcissus in the air.

In a Vale

Listen to:

In a Vale (1:23)

by Robert Frost 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Robert Frost was born this day in 1874

    When I was young, we dwelt in a vale

    By a misty fen that rang all night,

    And thus it was the maidens pale

    I knew so well, whose garments trail

    Across the reeds to a window light.

    The fen had every kind of bloom,

    And for every kind there was a face,

    And a voice that has sounded in my room

    Across the sill from the outer gloom.

    Each came singly unto her place,

    But all came every night with the mist;

    And often they brought so much to say

    Of things of moment to which, they wist,

    One so lonely was fain to list,

    That the stars were almost faded away

    Before the last went, heavy with dew,

    Back to the place from which she came—

    Where the bird was before it flew,

    Where the flower was before it grew,

    Where bird and flower were one and the same.

    And thus it is I know so well

    Why the flower has odor, the bird has song.

    You have only to ask me, and I can tell.

    No, not vainly there did I dwell,

    Nor vainly listen all the night long.

from A Boy's Will

First published by David Nutt of London in 1913

Flame-Heart

Listen to:

Flame-Heart (2:02)

by Claude McKay 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

So much have I forgotten in ten years,
  So much in ten brief years; I have forgot
What time the purple apples come to juice
  And what month brings the shy forget-me-not;
Forgotten is the special, startling season
  Of some beloved tree’s flowering and fruiting,
What time of year the ground doves brown the fields
  And fill the noonday with their curious fluting:
I have forgotten much, but still remember
The poinsettia’s red, blood-red in warm December.

I still recall the honey-fever grass,
  But I cannot bring back to mind just when
We rooted them out of the ping-wing path
  To stop the mad bees in the rabbit pen.
I often try to think in what sweet month
  The languid painted ladies used to dapple
The yellow bye road mazing from the main,
  Sweet with the golden threads of the rose-apple:
I have forgotten, strange, but quite remember
The poinsettia’s red, blood-red in warm December.

What weeks, what months, what time o’ the mild year
  We cheated school to have our fling at tops?
What days our wine-thrilled bodies pulsed with joy
  Feasting upon blackberries in the copse?
Oh, some I know! I have embalmed the days,
  Even the sacred moments, when we played,
All innocent of passion uncorrupt.
  At noon and evening in the flame-heart’s shade:
We were so happy, happy,—I remember
Beneath the poinsettia’s red in warm December.

Keep Your Splendid Silent Sun

Listen to:

Keep Your Splendid Silent Sun (2:21)

by Walt Whitman 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Keep your splendid silent sun,

Keep your woods O Nature, and the quiet places by the woods,

Keep your fields of clover and timothy, and your corn-fields and orchards,

Keep the blossoming buckwheat fields where the Ninth-month bees hum;

Give me faces and streets--give me these phantoms incessant and

    endless along the trottoirs!

Give me interminable eyes--give me women--give me comrades and

    lovers by the thousand!

Let me see new ones every day--let me hold new ones by the hand every day!

Give me such shows--give me the streets of Manhattan!

Give me Broadway, with the soldiers marching--give me the sound of

    the trumpets and drums!

(The soldiers in companies or regiments--some starting away, flush'd

    and reckless,

Some, their time up, returning with thinn'd ranks, young, yet very

    old, worn, marching, noticing nothing;)

Give me the shores and wharves heavy-fringed with black ships!

O such for me! O an intense life, full to repletion and varied!

The life of the theatre, bar-room, huge hotel, for me!

The saloon of the steamer! the crowded excursion for me! the

    torchlight procession!

The dense brigade bound for the war, with high piled military wagons

    following;

People, endless, streaming, with strong voices, passions, pageants,

Manhattan streets with their powerful throbs, with beating drums as now,

The endless and noisy chorus, the rustle and clank of muskets, (even

    the sight of the wounded,)

Manhattan crowds, with their turbulent musical chorus!

Manhattan faces and eyes forever for me.

Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun

Listen to:

Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun (1:20)

by Walt Whitman 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Give me the splendid silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling,

Give me autumnal fruit ripe and red from the orchard,

Give me a field where the unmow'd grass grows,

Give me an arbor, give me the trellis'd grape,

Give me fresh corn and wheat, give me serene-moving animals teaching

    content,

Give me nights perfectly quiet as on high plateaus west of the

    Mississippi, and I looking up at the stars,

Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I can

    walk undisturb'd,

Give me for marriage a sweet-breath'd woman of whom I should never tire,

Give me a perfect child, give me away aside from the noise of the

    world a rural domestic life,

Give me to warble spontaneous songs recluse by myself, for my own ears only,

Give me solitude, give me Nature, give me again O Nature your primal

    sanities!

Most Sweet It Is

Listen to:

Most Sweet It Is  (:58)

by William Wordsworth 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Most sweet it is with unuplifted eyes
To pace the ground, if path be there or none,
While a fair region round the traveller lies
Which he forbears again to look upon;
Pleased rather with some soft ideal scene,
The work of Fancy, or some happy tone
Of meditation, slipping in between
The beauty coming and the beauty gone.
If Thought and Love desert us from that day,
Let us break off all commerce with the Muse:
With Thought and Love companions of our way,
Whate’er the senses take or may refuse,
The Mind’s internal heaven shall shed her dews
Of inspiration on the humblest lay.

Rubaiyat - Verses LXVI-LXIX

Listen to:

Rubaiyat - Verses LXVI-LXIX (1:13)

by Omar Khayyam 

translated by Edward Fitzgerald

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

    LXVI

    I sent my Soul through the Invisible,

    Some letter of that After-life to spell:

    And by and by my Soul return'd to me,

    And answer'd "I Myself am Heav'n and Hell:"

    LXVII

    Heav'n but the Vision of fulfill'd Desire,

    And Hell the Shadow from a Soul on fire,

    Cast on the Darkness into which Ourselves,

    So late emerged from, shall so soon expire.

    LXVIII

    We are no other than a moving row

    Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go

    Round with the Sun-illumined Lantern held

    In Midnight by the Master of the Show;

    LXIX

    But helpless Pieces of the Game He plays

    Upon this Chequer-board of Nights and Days;

    Hither and thither moves, and checks, and slays,

    And one by one back in the Closet lays.

Sea-Violet

Listen to:

Sea-Violet (:45)

by H. D. 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

The white violet
is scented on its stalk,
the sea-violet
fragile as agate,
lies fronting all the wind
among the torn shells
on the sand-bank.

The greater blue violets
flutter on the hill,
but who would change for these
who would change for these
one root of the white sort?

Violet
your grasp is frail
on the edge of the sand-hill,
but you catch the light—
frost, a star edges with its fire.

Snow-Flakes

Listen to:

Snow-Flakes (1:07)

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Out of the bosom of the Air,

    Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,

Over the woodlands brown and bare,

    Over the harvest-fields forsaken,

      Silent, and soft, and slow

      Descends the snow.

Even as our cloudy fancies take

    Suddenly shape in some divine expression,

Even as the troubled heart doth make

In the white countenance confession,

      The troubled sky reveals

      The grief it feels.

This is the poem of the air,

    Slowly in silent syllables recorded;

This is the secret of despair,

    Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,

      Now whispered and revealed

      To wood and field.

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.

Clouds

Listen to:

Clouds (1:08)

by Rupert Brooke 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

   

Down the blue night the unending columns press
In noiseless tumult, break and wave and flow,
Now tread the far South, or lift rounds of snow
Up to the white moon's hidden loveliness.

Some pause in their grave wandering comradeless,
And turn with profound gesture vague and slow,
As who would pray good for the world, but know
Their benediction empty as they bless.

They say that the Dead die not, but remain
Near to the rich heirs of their grief and mirth.
I think they ride the calm mid-heaven, as these,
In wise majestic melancholy train,
And watch the moon, and the still-raging seas,
And men, coming and going on the earth.

January

Listen to:

January (1:03)

by Cornelius Webb 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Cold January comes in Winter's car,

Thick hung with icicles-its heavy wheels

Cumbered with clogging snow, which cracks and peels

With its least motion or concussive jar

'Gainst hard hid ruts, or hewn trees buried far

In the heaped whiteness which awhile conceals

The green and pastoral earth. Old Christmas feels,-

That well-fed and wine-reeling wassailer,-

With all his feasts and fires, feels cold and shivers,

And the red runnel of his indolent blood

Creeps slow and curdled as a northern flood.

And lakes and winter-rills, impetuous rivers

And headlong cataracts, are in silence bound,

Like trammelled tigers lashed to th'unyielding ground.

Winter

Listen to:

Winter (2:17)

by Samuel Johnson 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

No more the morn with tepid rays

Unfolds the flower of various hue; 

Noon spreads no more the genial blaze,

Nor gentle eve distills the dew.

The lingering hours prolong the night,

Usurping darkness shares the day;

Her mists restrain the force of light,

And Phoebus holds a doubtful sway.

By gloomy twilight half revealed,

With sighs we view the hoary hill,

The leafless wood, the naked field,

The snow-topp'd cot, the frozen rill.

No music warbles through the grove,

No vivid colours paint the plain;

No more with devious steps I rove

Through verdant paths, now sought in vain.

Aloud the driving tempest roars;

Congeal'd impetuous showers descend;

Haste, close the window, bar the doors,

Fate leaves me Stella, and a friend.

In nature's aid let art supply

With light and heat my little sphere;

Rouse, rouse the fire, and pile it high;

Light up a constellation here.

Let music sound the voice of joy!

Or mirth repeat the jocund tale;

Let love his wanton wiles employ,

And o'er the season wine prevail.

Yet time life's dreary winter brings,

When mirth's gay tale shall please no more;

Nor music charm, though Stella sings;

Nor love, nor wine the spring restore.

Catch the, O! catch the transient hour,

Improve each moment as it flies;

Life's a short Summer - man a flower,

He dies - alas! how soon he dies!

To the Moon

Listen to:

To the Moon (1:03)

by Charlotte Smith 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Queen of the silver bow!--by thy pale beam
Alone and pensive, I delight to stray,
And watch thy shadow trembling in the stream,
Or mark the floating clouds that cross thy way.
And while I gaze, thy mild and placid light
Sheds a soft calm upon my troubled breast;
And oft I think--fair planet of the night--
That in thy orb, the wretched may have rest:
The sufferers of the earth perhaps may go,
Released by Death--to thy benignant sphere,
And the sad children of Despair and Woe
Forget, in thee, their cup of sorrow here.
Oh! that I soon may reach thy world serene,
Poor wearied pilgrim--in this toiling scene!

Written January 1st, 1832

Listen to:

Written January 1st, 1832 (1:56)

by Henry Alford 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

The year is born today -- methinks it hath
A chilly time of it; for down the sky
The flaky frost-cloud stretches, and the Sun
Lifted his large light from the Eastern plains,
With gloomy mist-enfolded countenance,
And garments rolled in blood. Under the haze
Along the face of the waters, gather fast
Sharp spikes of the fresh ice; as if the year
That died last night, had dropt down suddenly
In his full strength of genial government,
Prisoning the sharp breath of the Northern winds;
Who now burst forth and revel unrestrained
Over the new king's months of infancy.

The bells rung merrily when the old year died;
He past away in music; his death-sleep
Closed on him like the slumber of a child
When a sweet hymn in a sweet voice above him
Takes up into its sound his gentle being.

And we will raise to him two monuments;
One where he died, and one where he lies buried;
One in the pealing of those midnight bells,
Their swell and fall, and varied interchange,
The tones that come again upon the spirit
In years far off, mid unshaped accidents;--
And one in the deep quiet of the soul,
The mingled memories of a thousand moods
Of joy and sorrow;--and his epitaph
Shall be upon him;--``Here lie the remains
Of one, who was less valued while he lived,
Than thought on when he died.''