Poetry Minestrone Selection - Adriana

Emily Bronte

Love and Friendship

Love is like the wild rose-briar;
Friendship like the holly-tree.
The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms,
But which will bloom most constantly?

The wild rose-briar is sweet in spring,
Its summer blossoms scent the air;
Yet wait till winter comes again,
And who will call the wild-briar fair?

Then, scorn the silly rose-wreath now,
And deck thee with holly's sheen,
That, when December blights thy brow,
He still may leave thy garland green.

Poems for Monday, April 18 - Gabe's Submission

Margaret J. Hoehn


Witness


Not Botticelli’s Venus skimming over
the sea toward shore on fluted shell,
but the beautiful body of a boy heaved

from the river by a woman: perhaps
his mother, or a goddess who saw him
paddling in the water with his friends,

then, weighted with shadow, thrash
and slip beneath the surface. Play of light
on morning water, glisten and sparkle

of the meadowlark’s trill that rose like
a sun from the thicket above the bank,
and the stillness of a boy who was

turning into twilight, becoming an indigo sky.
Impossible to hold, his hands were clouds,
his body, rain. Doves fluttered behind

his clavicle. This woman who tilted his head
and breathed deeply, gravely, into his mouth,
was gilded shell and bird song, was the brush

of memory that painted the hour.
And I was twelve, begging a god I barely
knew to give back the shoreline,

to let a child choke up the darkness
and ascend into a day, more terrible,
more lovely, than any I had seen.

Poems for Monday, April 18 - Frank's Offering

William Wordsworth

I WANDERED LONELY AS A CLOUD

I WANDERED lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
1804