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?

A-Roving

Listen to:

A-Roving (:43)

by George Gordon, Lord Byron 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

So, we'll go no more a-roving

   So late into the night,

Though the heart be still as loving,

   And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,

   And the soul wears out the breast,

And the heart must pause to breathe,

   And love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,

   And the day returns too soon,

Yet we'll go no more a-roving

   By the light of the moon.

Sonnet: "Lo, Even As I Passed"

Listen to:

Lo, Even As I Passed (:58)

by Wallace Stevens 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Lo, even as I passed beside the booth

Of roses, and beheld them brightly twine

To damask heights, taking them as a sign

Of my own self still unconcerned with truth;

Even as I held up in hands uncouth

And drained with joy the golden-bodied wine,

Deeming it half-unworthy, half divine,

From out the sweet-rimmed goblet of my youth.

Even in that pure hour I heard the tone

Of grievous music stir in memory,

Telling me of the time already flown

From my first youth. It sounded like the rise

Of distant echo from dead melody,

Soft as a song heard far in Paradise.

Rubaiyat - Verses XXV - XXVIII

Listen to:

Rubaiyat - Verses XXV - XXVIII (1:18)

by Omar Khayyam 

translated by Edward Fitzgerald

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

 XXV
    Alike for those who for To-day prepare,
    And those that after some To-morrow stare,
    A Muezzin from the Tower of Darkness cries    
    "Fools! your Reward is neither Here nor There."


    XXVI
    Why, all the Saints and Sages who discuss'd
    Of the Two Worlds so wisely--they are thrust
    Like foolish Prophets forth; their Words to Scorn
    Are scatter'd, and their Mouths are stopt with Dust.


    XXVII
    Myself when young did eagerly frequent
    Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument
    About it and about: but evermore
    Came out by the same door where in I went.


    XXVIII
    With them the seed of Wisdom did I sow,
    And with mine own hand wrought to make it grow;
    And this was all the Harvest that I reap'd--
    "I came like Water, and like Wind I go."

The Road Not Taken

Listen to:

The Road Not Taken (1:07)

by Robert Frost

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Rhapsodize - Reviving the Role of the Rhapsode

Rhapsodize Audio Catalog

Rhapsodize Central

Rhapsodize Vision and Mission

Sonnet

Listen to:

Sonnet (1:21)

by Horace Spencer Fiske

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Webster Ford

Listen to:

Webster Ford (2:16)

from Spoon River Anthology
by Edgar Lee Masters

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Do you remember, O Delphic Apollo,
  The sunset hour by the river, when Mickey M'Grew
  Cried, "There's a ghost," and I, "It's Delphic Apollo,".
  And the son of the banker derided us, saying, "It's light
  By the flags at the water's edge, you half-witted fools."
  And from thence, as the wearisome years rolled on, long after
  Poor Mickey fell down in the water tower to his death
  Down, down, through bellowing darkness, I carried
  The vision which perished with him like a rocket which falls
  And quenches its light in earth, and hid it for fear
  Of the son of the banker, calling on Plutus to save me?
  Avenged were you for the shame of a fearful heart
  Who left me alone till I saw you again in an hour
  When I seemed to be turned to a tree with trunk and branches
  Growing indurate, turning to stone, yet burgeoning
  In laurel leaves, in hosts of lambent laurel,
  Quivering, fluttering, shrinking, fighting the numbness
  Creeping into their veins from the dying trunk and branches!
  'Tis vain, O youth, to fly the call of Apollo.
  Fling yourselves in the fire, die with a song of spring,
  If die you must in the spring. For none shall look
  On the face of Apollo and live, and choose you must
  'Twixt death in the flame and death after years of sorrow,
  Rooted fast in the earth, feeling the grisly hand,
  Not so much in the trunk as in the terrible numbness
  Creeping up to the laurel leaves that never cease
  To flourish until you fall. O leaves of me
  Too sere for coronal wreaths, and fit alone
  For urns of memory, treasured, perhaps, as themes
  For hearts heroic, fearless singers and livers--
  Delphic Apollo.

Willie Metcalf

Listen to:

Willie Metcalf (1:23)

from Spoon River Anthology
by Edgar Lee Masters

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

I was Willie Metcalf.
  They used to call me "Doctor Meyers,"
  Because, they said, I looked like him.
  And he was my father, according to Jack McGuire.
  I lived in the livery stable,
  Sleeping on the floor
  Side by side with Roger Baughman's bulldog,
  Or sometimes in a stall.
  I could crawl between the legs of the wildest horses
  Without getting kicked--we knew each other.
   On spring days I tramped through the country
  To get the feeling, which I sometimes lost,
  That I was not a separate thing from the earth.
  I used to lose myself, as if in sleep,
  By lying with eyes half-open in the woods.
  Sometimes I talked with animals--even toads and snakes--
  Anything that had an eye to look into.
  Once I saw a stone in the sunshine
  Trying to turn into jelly.
  In April days in this cemetery
  The dead people gathered all about me,
  And grew still, like a congregation in silent prayer.
  I never knew whether I was a part of the earth
  With flowers growing in me, or whether I walked--
  Now I know.

Oaks Tutt

Listen to:

Oaks Tutt (1:31)

from Spoon River Anthology
by Edgar Lee Masters

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

My mother was for woman's rights
  And my father was the rich miller at London Mills.
  I dreamed of the wrongs of the world and wanted to right them.
  When my father died, I set out to see peoples and countries
  In order to learn how to reform the world.
  I traveled through many lands. I saw the ruins of Rome
  And the ruins of Athens, And the ruins of Thebes.
  And I sat by moonlight amid the necropolis of Memphis.
  There I was caught up by wings of flame,
  And a voice from heaven said to me:
  "Injustice, Untruth destroyed them.
  Go forth Preach Justice! Preach Truth!"
  And I hastened back to Spoon River
  To say farewell to my mother before beginning my work.
  They all saw a strange light in my eye.
  And by and by, when I talked, they discovered
  What had come in my mind.
  Then Jonathan Swift Somers challenged me to debate
  The subject, (I taking the negative):
  "Pontius Pilate, the Greatest Philosopher of the World."
  And he won the debate by saying at last,
  "Before you reform the world, Mr. Tutt
  Please answer the question of Pontius Pilate:
  "What is Truth?"

Harmon Whitney

Listen to:

Harmon Whitney (1:47)

from Spoon River Anthology
by Edgar Lee Masters

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Out of the lights and roar of cities,
  Drifting down like a spark in Spoon River,
  Burnt out with the fire of drink, and broken,
  The paramour of a woman I took in self-contempt,
  But to hide a wounded pride as well.
  To be judged and loathed by a village of little minds--
  I, gifted with tongues and wisdom,
  Sunk here to the dust of the justice court,
  A picker of rags in the rubbage of spites and wrongs,--
  I, whom fortune smiled on!
  I in a village,
  Spouting to gaping yokels pages of verse,
  Out of the lore of golden years,
  Or raising a laugh with a flash of filthy wit
  When they bought the drinks to kindle my dying mind.
  To be judged by you,
  The soul of me hidden from you,
  With its wound gangrened
  By love for a wife who made the wound,
  With her cold white bosom, treasonous, pure and hard,
  Relentless to the last, when the touch of her hand,
  At any time, might have cured me of the typhus,
  Caught in the jungle of life where many are lost.
  And only to think that my soul could not react,
  Like Byron's did, in song, in something noble,
  But turned on itself like a tortured snake--judge me this way,
  O world.

Petit the Poet

Listen to:

Petit the Poet (1:25)

from Spoon River Anthology
by Edgar Lee Masters

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

 Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick,
  Tick, tick, tick, like mites in a quarrel--
  Faint iambics that the full breeze wakens--
  But the pine tree makes a symphony thereof.
  Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus,
  Ballades by the score with the same old thought:
  The snows and the roses of yesterday are vanished;
  And what is love but a rose that fades?
  Life all around me here in the village:
  Tragedy, comedy, valor and truth,
  Courage, constancy, heroism, failure--
  All in the loom, and oh what patterns!
  Woodlands, meadows, streams and rivers--
  Blind to all of it all my life long.
  Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus,
  Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick, Tick, tick, tick, what little iambics,
  While Homer and Whitman roared in the pines?

Fiddler Jones

Listen to:

Fiddler Jones (1:19)

from Spoon River Anthology
by Edgar Lee Masters

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

The earth keeps some vibration going
  There in your heart, and that is you.
  And if the people find you can fiddle,
  Why, fiddle you must, for all your life.
  What do you see, a harvest of clover?
  Or a meadow to walk through to the river?
  The wind's in the corn; you rub your hands
  For beeves hereafter ready for market;
  Or else you hear the rustle of skirts
  Like the girls when dancing at Little Grove.
  To Cooney Potter a pillar of dust
  Or whirling leaves meant ruinous drouth;
  They looked to me like Red-Head Sammy
  Stepping it off, to "Toor-a-Loor."
  How could I till my forty acres
  Not to speak of getting more,
  With a medley of horns, bassoons and piccolos
  Stirred in my brain by crows and robins
  And the creak of a wind-mill--only these?
  And I never started to plow in my life
  That some one did not stop in the road
  And take me away to a dance or picnic.
  I ended up with forty acres;
  I ended up with a broken fiddle--
  And a broken laugh, and a thousand memories,
  And not a single regret.

Doctor Meyers

Listen to:

Doctor Meyers (:57)

from Spoon River Anthology

by Edgar Lee Masters

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

No other man, unless it was Doc Hill,
  Did more for people in this town than I.
  And all the weak, the halt, the improvident
  And those who could not pay flocked to me.
  I was good-hearted, easy Doctor Meyers.
  I was healthy, happy, in comfortable fortune,
  Blest with a congenial mate, my children raised,
  All wedded, doing well in the world.
  And then one night, Minerva, the poetess,
  Came to me in her trouble, crying.
  I tried to help her out--she died--
  They indicted me, the newspapers disgraced me,
  My wife perished of a broken heart.
  And pneumonia finished me.

Trainor the Druggist

Listen to:

Trainor the Druggist (:46)

from Spoon River Anthology
by Edgar Lee Masters

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

   Only the chemist can tell, and not always the chemist,
  What will result from compounding
  Fluids or solids.
  And who can tell
  How men and women will interact
  On each other, or what children will result?
  There were Benjamin Pantier and his wife,
  Good in themselves, but evil toward each other;
  He oxygen, she hydrogen,
  Their son, a devastating fire.
  I Trainor, the druggist, a miser of chemicals,
  Killed while making an experiment,
  Lived unwedded.

The Hill

Listen to:

The Hill (2:27)

from Spoon River Anthology
by Edgar Lee Masters

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Where are Elmer, Herman, Bert, Tom and Charley,
  The weak of will, the strong of arm, the clown, the boozer, the fighter?
  All, all are sleeping on the hill.

  One passed in a fever,
  One was burned in a mine,
  One was killed in a brawl,
  One died in a jail,
  One fell from a bridge toiling for children and wife--
  All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.

  Where are Ella, Kate, Mag, Lizzie and Edith,
  The tender heart, the simple soul, the loud, the proud, the happy one?--
  All, all are sleeping on the hill.

  One died in shameful child-birth,
  One of a thwarted love,
  One at the hands of a brute in a brothel,
  One of a broken pride, in the search for heart's desire;
  One after life in far-away London and Paris
  Was brought to her little space by Ella and Kate and Mag--
  All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.

  Where are Uncle Isaac and Aunt Emily,
  And old Towny Kincaid and Sevigne Houghton,
  And Major Walker who had talked
  With venerable men of the revolution?--
  All, all are sleeping on the hill.

  They brought them dead sons from the war,
  And daughters whom life had crushed,
  And their children fatherless, crying--
  All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.
  Where is Old Fiddler Jones
  Who played with life all his ninety years,
  Braving the sleet with bared breast,
  Drinking, rioting, thinking neither of wife nor kin,
  Nor gold, nor love, nor heaven?
  Lo! he babbles of the fish-frys of long ago,
  Of the horse-races of long ago at Clary's Grove,
  Of what Abe Lincoln said
  One time at Springfield.

No, Time, Thou Shalt Not Boast

Listen to:

No, Time, Thou Shalt Not Boast (:57)

by William Shakespeare

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Sonnet 123

No, Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change:
Thy pyramids built up with newer might
To me are nothing novel, nothing strange;
They are but dressings of a former sight.
Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire
What thou dost foist upon us that is old;
And rather make them born to our desire
Than think that we before have heard them told.
Thy registers and thee I both defy,
Not wondering at the present nor the past,
For thy records and what we see doth lie,
Made more or less by thy continual haste.
This I do vow and this shall ever be;
I will be true despite thy scythe and thee.

Happy the Man

Listen to:

Happy the Man (:33)

by Horace (translation by John Dryden)

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Book III of Odes

Ode 29, section 8

 Happy the man, and happy he alone,

 He who can call today his own:

 He who, secure within, can say,

 Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.

 Be fair or foul or rain or shine

 The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine.

 Not Heaven itself upon the past has power,

 But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.