Hyla Brook

Listen to:

Hyla Brook (:47)

by Robert Frost

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

By June our brook's run out of song and speed.

  Sought for much after that, it will be found

  Either to have gone groping underground

  (And taken with it all the Hyla breed

  That shouted in the mist a month ago,

  Like ghost of sleigh-bells in a ghost of snow)--

  Or flourished and come up in jewel-weed,

  Weak foliage that is blown upon and bent

  Even against the way its waters went.

  Its bed is left a faded paper sheet

  Of dead leaves stuck together by the heat--

  A brook to none but who remember long.

  This as it will be seen is other far

  Than with brooks taken otherwhere in song.

  We love the things we love for what they are.

A Thing of Beauty

Listen to:

A Thing of Beauty (1:51)

by John Keats

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

from Endymion by John Keats

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:

Its loveliness increases; it will never

Pass into nothingness; but still will keep

A bower quiet for us, and a sleep

Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing

A flowery band to bind us to the earth,

Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth

Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,

Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkened ways

Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,

Some shape of beauty moves away the pall

From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,

Trees old, and young, sprouting a shady boon

For simple sheep; and such are daffodils

With the green world they live in; and clear rills

That for themselves a cooling covert make

'Gainst the hot season; the mid-forest brake,

Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:

And such too is the grandeur of the dooms

We have imagined for the mighty dead;

All lovely tales that we have heard or read:

An endless fountain of immortal drink,

Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink.

Nor do we merely feel these essences

For one short hour; no, even as the trees

That whisper round a temple become soon

Dear as the temple's self, so does the moon,

The passion poesy, glories infinite,

Haunt us till they become a cheering light

Unto our souls, and bound to us so fast

That, whether there be shine or gloom o'ercast,

They always must be with us, or we die.

"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.

"Seasons Pursuing Each Other" - excerpt from Song of Myself

Listen to:

Seasons Pursuing Each Other (1:23)

by Walt Whitman

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Seasons pursuing each other the plougher ploughs, the mower mows,

    and the winter-grain falls in the ground;

Off on the lakes the pike-fisher watches and waits by the hole in

    the frozen surface,

The stumps stand thick round the clearing, the squatter strikes deep

    with his axe,

Flatboatmen make fast towards dusk near the cotton-wood or pecan-trees,

Coon-seekers go through the regions of the Red river or through

    those drain'd by the Tennessee, or through those of the Arkansas,

Torches shine in the dark that hangs on the Chattahooche or Altamahaw,

Patriarchs sit at supper with sons and grandsons and great-grandsons

    around them,

In walls of adobie, in canvas tents, rest hunters and trappers after

    their day's sport,

The city sleeps and the country sleeps,

The living sleep for their time, the dead sleep for their time,

The old husband sleeps by his wife and the young husband sleeps by his wife;

And these tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them,

And such as it is to be of these more or less I am,

And of these one and all I weave the song of myself.

"Know Then Thyself" - excerpt from An Essay on Man

Listen to:

Know Then Thyself (1:09)

by Alexander Pope

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Know, then, thyself, presume not God to scan;

The proper study of mankind is man.

Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,

A being darkly wise, and rudely great:

With too much knowledge for the sceptic side,

With too much weakness for the stoic's pride,

He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;

In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast;

In doubt his mind or body to prefer;

Born but to die, and reasoning but to err;

Alike in ignorance, his reason such,

Whether he thinks too little, or too much:

Chaos of thought and passion, all confused;

Still by himself abused, or disabused;

Created half to rise, and half to fall;

Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;

Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled:

The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!