Eclectic Rhapsodics

Friday, October 16, 2015

To An Athlete Dying Young (1:34)

by A. E. Housman

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

The time you won your town the race

We chaired you through the market-place;

Man and boy stood cheering by,

And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,

Shoulder-high we bring you home,

And set you at your threshold down,

Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away

From fields where glory does not stay,

And early though the laurel grows

It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut

Cannot see the record cut,

And silence sounds no worse than cheers

After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout

Of lads that wore their honours out,

Runners whom renown outran

And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,

The fleet foot on the sill of shade,

And hold to the low lintel up

The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head

Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,

And find unwithered on its curls

The garland briefer than a girl's.

Rhapsodize - Reviving the Role of the Rhapsode

Thursday, October 15, 2015

A Fish Answers (1:07)

by Leigh Hunt

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Amazing monster! that, for aught I know,

With the first sight of thee didst make our race

For ever stare! O flat and shocking face,

Grimly divided from the breast below!

Thou that on dry land horribly dost go

With a split body and most ridiculous pace,

Prong after prong, disgracer of all grace,

Long-useless-finned, haired, upright, unwet, slow!

O breather of unbreathable, sword-sharp air,

How canst exist? How bear thyself, thou dry

And dreary sloth? What particle canst share

Of the only blessed life, the watery?

I sometimes see of ye an actual pair

Go by! linked fin by fin! most odiously.

Rhapsodize - Reviving the Role of the Rhapsode

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

To a Fish (1:11)

by Leigh Hunt

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

You strange, astonished-looking, angle-faced,

Dreary-mouthed, gaping wretches of the sea,

Gulping salt-water everlastingly,

Cold-blooded, though with red your blood be graced,

And mute, though dwellers in the roaring waste;

And you, all shapes beside, that fishy be,--

Some round, some flat, some long, all devilry,

Legless, unloving, infamously chaste:--

O scaly, slippery, wet, swift, staring wights,

What is't ye do? What life lead? eh, dull goggles?

How do ye vary your vile days and nights?

How pass your Sundays? Are ye still but joggles

In ceaseless wash? Still nought but gapes, and bites,

And drinks, and stares, diversified with boggles?

Rhapsodize - Reviving the Role of the Rhapsode

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

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

Monday, October 12, 2015

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Rhapsodize - Reviving the Role of the Rhapsode

Sunday, October 11, 2015

One Day I Wrote Her Name

Listen to:

Sonnet 75 (1:03)

by Edmund Spenser

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washéd it away:
Again I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.
Vain man, said she, that dost in vain assay
A mortal thing so to immortalize!
For I myself shall like to this decay,
And eek my name be wipéd out likewise.
Not so (quoth I), let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:
My verse your virtues rare shall eternize,
And in the heavens write your glorious name;
Where, whenas death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew.

Rhapsodize - Reviving the Role of the Rhapsode

Saturday, October 10, 2015

Go and Catch a Falling Star

Listen to:

Song (Go and Catch a Falling Star) (1:14)

by John Donne

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the Devil's foot;
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy's stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.

If thou be'st born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights
Till Age snow white hairs on thee;
Thou, when thou return'st, wilt tell me
All strange wonders that befell thee,
And swear
No where
Lives a woman true and fair.

If thou find'st one, let me know;
Such a pilgrimage were sweet.
Yet do not; I would not go,
Though at next door we might meet.
Though she were true when you met her,
And last till you write your letter,
Yet she
Will be
False, ere I come, to two or three.

Rhapsodize - Reviving the Role of the Rhapsode

Friday, October 9, 2015

Psalm of the Day

Listen to:

Psalm of the Day (1:36)

by Emily Dickinson

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

A something in a summer's day,
As slow her flambeaux burn away,
Which solemnizes me.

A something in a summer's noon, —
An azure depth, a wordless tune,
Transcending ecstasy.

And still within a summer's night
A something so transporting bright,
I clap my hands to see;

Then veil my too inspecting face,
Lest such a subtle, shimmering grace
Flutter too far for me.

The wizard-fingers never rest,
The purple brook within the breast
Still chafes its narrow bed;

Still rears the East her amber flag,
Guides still the sun along the crag
His caravan of red,

Like flowers that heard the tale of dews,
But never deemed the dripping prize
Awaited their low brows;

Or bees, that thought the summer's name
Some rumor of delirium
No summer could for them;

Or Arctic creature, dimly stirred
By tropic hint, — some travelled bird
Imported to the wood;

Or wind's bright signal to the ear,
Making that homely and severe,
Contented, known, before

The heaven unexpected came,
To lives that thought their worshipping
A too presumptuous psalm.

Rhapsodize - Reviving the Role of the Rhapsode

Thursday, October 8, 2015

Pied Beauty

Listen to:

Pied Beauty (:56)

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Glory be to God for dappled things –
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.

Rhapsodize - Reviving the Role of the Rhapsode