Metaphysics

Listen to: 

Metaphysics (1:08)

by Oliver Herford 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Why and Wherefore set out one day

       To hunt for a wild Negation.

They agreed to meet at a cool retreat

       On the Point of Interrogation.

But the night was dark and they missed their mark,

       And, driven well-nigh to distraction,

They lost their ways in a murky maze

       Of utter abstruse abstraction.

Then they took a boat and were soon afloat

       On a sea of Speculation,

But the sea grew rough, and their boat, though tough,

       Was split into an Equation.

As they floundered about in the waves of doubt

       Rose a fearful Hypothesis,

Who gibbered with glee as they sank in the sea,

       And the last they saw was this:

On a rock-bound reef of Unbelief

       There sat the wild Negation;

Then they sank once more and were washed ashore

       At the Point of Interrogation.

A Song of Joys

Listen to:

A Song of Joys (1:36)

by Walt Whitman 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Walt Whitman was born this day is 1819 in West Hills, near Huntington, Long Island

  O to make the most jubilant song!

  Full of music--full of manhood, womanhood, infancy!

  Full of common employments--full of grain and trees.

  O for the voices of animals--O for the swiftness and balance of fishes!

  O for the dropping of raindrops in a song!

  O for the sunshine and motion of waves in a song!

 ….

  O to sail to sea in a ship!

  To leave this steady unendurable land,

  To leave the tiresome sameness of the streets, the sidewalks and the

      houses,

  To leave you O you solid motionless land, and entering a ship,

  To sail and sail and sail!

  O to have life henceforth a poem of new joys!

  To dance, clap hands, exult, shout, skip, leap, roll on, float on!

  To be a sailor of the world bound for all ports,

  A ship itself, (see indeed these sails I spread to the sun and air,)

  A swift and swelling ship full of rich words, full of joys.

Imagination

Listen to:

Imagination  (1:08)

by John Davidson 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

There is a dish to hold the sea,

  A brazier to contain the sun,

A compass for the galaxy,

  A voice to wake the dead and done!

That minister of ministers,

  Imagination, gathers up

The undiscovered Universe,

  Like jewels in a jasper cup.

  

Its flame can mingle north and south;

  Its accent with the thunder strive;

The ruddy sentence of its mouth

  Can make the ancient dead alive.

The mart of power, the fount of will,

  The form and mould of every star,

The source and bound of good and ill,

  The key of all the things that are,

Imagination, new and strange

  In every age, can turn the year;

Can shift the poles and lightly change

  The mood of men, the world's career.

Mezzo Cammin

Listen to:

Mezzo Cammin (1:05)

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Half of my life is gone, and I have let 

   The years slip from me and have not fulfilled 

   The aspiration of my youth, to build 

   Some tower of song with lofty parapet. 

Not indolence, nor pleasure, nor the fret 

   Of restless passions that would not be stilled, 

   But sorrow, and a care that almost killed, 

   Kept me from what I may accomplish yet; 

Though, half-way up the hill, I see the Past 

   Lying beneath me with its sounds and sights,— 

   A city in the twilight dim and vast, 

With smoking roofs, soft bells, and gleaming lights,— 

   And hear above me on the autumnal blast 

   The cataract of Death far thundering from the heights.

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--

Poetry

Listen to:

Poetry (1:58)

by Marianne Moore 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond

      all this fiddle.

   Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one

      discovers in

   it after all, a place for the genuine.

      Hands that can grasp, eyes

      that can dilate, hair that can rise

         if it must, these things are important not because a

high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because

      they are

   useful. When they become so derivative as to become

      unintelligible,

   the same thing may be said for all of us, that we

      do not admire what

      we cannot understand: the bat

         holding on upside down or in quest of something to 

eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless

      wolf under

   a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse

      that feels a flea, the base-

   ball fan, the statistician--

      nor is it valid

         to discriminate against “business documents and

school-books”; all these phenomena are important. One must make

      a distinction

   however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the

      result is not poetry,

   nor till the poets among us can be

     “literalists of

      the imagination”--above

         insolence and triviality and can present

for inspection, “imaginary gardens with real toads in them,"

      shall we have

   it. In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,

   the raw material of poetry in

      all its rawness and

      that which is on the other hand

         genuine, you are interested in poetry.

The Clod and the Pebble

Listen to:

The Clod and the Pebble (:45)

by William Blake

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

"Love seeketh not itself to please,

Nor for itself hath any care,

But for another gives its ease,

And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair."

So sung a little Clod of Clay

Trodden with the cattle's feet,

But a Pebble of the brook

Warbled out these metres meet:

"Love seeketh only self to please,

To bind another to its delight,

Joys in another's loss of ease,

And builds a Hell in Heaven's despite."

The Song of Wandering Aengus

Listen to:

The Song of Wandering Aengus (1:19)

by William Butler Yeats 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,

And moth-like stars were flickering out,

I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor, 

And someone called me by my name: 

It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran 

And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering 

Through hollow lands and hilly lands, 

I will find out where she has gone, 

And kiss her lips and take her hands; 

And walk among long dappled grass, 

And pluck till time and times are done, 

The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

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.

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.

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.

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.

  

Bright Star

Listen to:

Bright Star (1:05)

by John Keats 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art--
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors
No--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever-or else swoon to death.

Euclid Alone

Listen to:

Euclid Alone  (1:01)

by Edna St. Vincent Millay 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare.
Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace,
And lay them prone upon the earth and cease
To ponder on themselves, the while they stare
At nothing, intricately drawn nowhere
In shapes of shifting lineage; let geese
Gabble and hiss, but heroes seek release
From dusty bondage into luminous air.
O blinding hour, O holy, terrible day,
When first the shaft into his vision shone
Of light anatomized! Euclid alone
Has looked on Beauty bare. Fortunate they
Who, though once only and then but far away,
Have heard her massive sandal set on stone. 

Jack Frost

Listen to:

Jack Frost (1:36)

by Gabriel Setoun 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

The door was shut, as doors should be,

Before you went to bed last night;

Yet Jack Frost has got in, you see,

And left your window silver white.
He must have waited till you slept;

And not a single word he spoke,

But pencilled o'er the panes and crept

Away again before you woke.
And now you cannot see the hills

Nor fields that stretch beyond the lane;

But there are fairer things than these

His fingers traced on every pane.
Rocks and castles towering high;

Hills and dales, and streams and fields;

And knights in armor riding by,

With nodding plumes and shining shields.
And here are little boats, and there

Big ships with sails spread to the breeze;

And yonder, palm trees waving fair

On islands set in silver seas,
And butterflies with gauzy wings;

And herds of cows and flocks of sheep;

And fruit and flowers and all the things

You see when you are sound asleep.
For, creeping softly underneath

The door when all the lights are out,

Jack Frost takes every breath you breathe,

And knows the things you think about.
He paints them on the window-pane

In fairy lines with frozen steam;

And when you wake you see again

The lovely things you saw in dream.