Young Love

Listen to:

Young Love (1:35)

by Andrew Marvell 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Andrew Marvell was born this day in 1621

Come, little infant, love me now,

   While thine unsuspected years

Clear thine agèd father’s brow

   From cold jealousy and fears.

Pretty, surely, ’twere to see

   By young love old time beguiled,

While our sportings are as free

   As the nurse’s with the child.

Common beauties stay fifteen;

   Such as yours should swifter move,

Whose fair blossoms are too green

   Yet for lust, but not for love.

Love as much the snowy lamb,

   Or the wanton kid, does prize,

As the lusty bull or ram,

   For his morning sacrifice.

Now then love me: time may take

   Thee before thy time away:

Of this need we’ll virtue make,

   And learn love before we may.

So we win of doubtful fate;

   And if good she to us meant,

We that good shall antedate,

   Or, if ill, that ill prevent.

Thus as kingdoms, frustrating

   Other titles to their crown,

In the cradle crown their king,

   So all foreign claims to drown,

So, to make all rivals vain,

   Now I crown thee with my love:

Crown me with thy love again,

   And we both shall monarchs prove.

Edward Fitzgerald, translator of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, was born this day in 1809

Listen to quatrains from Edward Fitzgerald's translation of Omar Khayyam on Eclectic Rhapsodics:

May 2, 2015

February 12, 2016

February 25, 2016

Hope

Listen to:

Hope (:41)

by Emily Dickinson 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul,

And sings the tune without the words,

And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;

And sore must be the storm

That could abash the little bird

That kept so many warm.

I 've heard it in the chillest land,

And on the strangest sea;

Yet, never, in extremity,

It asked a crumb of me.

If I Can Stop

Listen to:

If I Can Stop (:27)

by Emily Dickinson 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

If I can stop one heart from breaking,

I shall not live in vain;

If I can ease one life the aching,

Or cool one pain,

Or help one fainting robin

Unto his nest again,

I shall not live in vain.

I'm Nobody

Listen to:

I'm Nobody (:31)

by Emily Dickinson 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

I'm nobody!  Who are you?

Are you nobody, too?

Then there 's a pair of us -- don't tell!

They 'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!

How public, like a frog

To tell your name the livelong day

To an admiring bog!

Love (II)

Listen to:

Love (II) (1:10)

by George Herbert 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Immortal Heat, O let Thy greater flame

      Attract the lesser to it; let those fires

      Which shall consume the world first make it tame,

And kindle in our hearts such true desires

As may consume our lusts, and make Thee way:

      Then shall our hearts pant Thee, then shall our brain

      All her invention on Thine altar lay,

And there in hymns send back Thy fire again.

Our eyes shall see Thee, which before saw dust,

      Dust blown by wit, till that they both were blind:

      Thou shalt recover all Thy goods in kind,

Who wert disseized by usurping lust:

All knees shall bow to Thee; all wits shall rise,

And praise Him Who did make and mend our eyes.

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!

The Awakening

Listen to:

The Awakening (1:00)

by James Weldon Johnson 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

I dreamed that I was a rose
That grew beside a lonely way,
Close by a path none ever chose,
And there I lingered day by day.
Beneath the sunshine and the show’r
I grew and waited there apart,
Gathering perfume hour by hour,
And storing it within my heart,
        Yet, never knew,
Just why I waited there and grew.

I dreamed that you were a bee
That one day gaily flew along,
You came across the hedge to me,
And sang a soft, love-burdened song.
You brushed my petals with a kiss,
I woke to gladness with a start,
And yielded up to you in bliss
The treasured fragrance of my heart;
        And then I knew
That I had waited there for you.