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In Memory of Sidney Lanier 1842-1881

(Editor's note: In this poem, Lanier takes us on a joyful ride with the mighty Chattahoochee River as it winds itself through the state of Georgia.)

OUT of the hills of Habersham,
Down the valleys of Hall,
I hurry amain to reach the plain,
Run the rapid and leap the fall,
Split at the rock and together again,
Accept my bed, or narrow or wide,
And flee from folly on every side.
With a lover's pain to attain the plain    
Far from the hills of Habersham,    
Far from the valleys of Hall.

                               From "Song of the Chattahoochee"

In Memory of Matthew Arnold (1822-1866)

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So Various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where Ignorant armies clash by night.

                                                       From "Dover Beach"

   

In Memory of William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

(Editor's note:In the following poem, Yeats offers an apocalyptic vision of the increasingly-dangerous world events between WWI and WWII.)

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand;
The Second Coming! Hardly are these words out
When a vast image of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight; somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?

                                                From "The Second Coming"

In Memory of John Milton (1608-1674)

WHEN I consider how my light is spent
  E're half my days, in this dark world and wide,
  And that one Talent which is death to hide,
  Lodg'd with me useless, though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
  My true account, least he returning chide,
  Doth God exact day-labour, light deny'd
  I fondly ask; But patience to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need
  Either man's work or his own gifts, who best
  Bear his milde yoak, they serve him best, his State
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
  And post o're Land and Ocean without rest:
  They also serve who only stand and waite.

                                                               On His Blindness

                                                            

In Memory of Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)

       Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
      About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
               The night above the dingle starry,
                          Time let me hail and climb
              Golden in the heyday of his eyes,
      And honored among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
      And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
                         Trail with daisies and barley
              Down the river of the windfall light.

                                                                                              From "Fern Hill"

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In Memory of William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)

Editor's note: In the following excerpt, the great American poet offers advice on how to die.

So live that when thy summons come to join the innumerable caravan which moves to that mysterious realm where each shall take his chamber in the silent halls of death, thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, scourged to his dungeon, but sustained and soothed by an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave…  Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch about him and lies down to pleasant dreams.

                                                                                                        From  "Thanatopsis"

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In Memory of Robert Herrick 1591-1674

Editor's note: English poet Robert Herrick absolutely adored his wife Julia and wrote several poems about her.  Here are two:

When as in silks, my Julia goes, then,  then, methinks how sweetly flows the liquefaction of her clothes.

Next, when I cast mine eyes and see that brave vibration each way free,

O, how that glittering taketh me!

                                                                  On Julia’s clothes…

Display thy breasts, my Julia, there let me behold that circummortal purity;

Between those glories, there my lips I’ll lay,

Ravished in that fair Via Lactea.

                                                                  On Julia’s breasts...

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In Memory of Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

     O it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, go away";
     But it's "Thank you, Mister Atkins," when the band begins to play.

                                                                                    From "Tommy"

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In Memory of A.E. Housman (1859-1936)

       When I was one-and-twenty
        I heard a wise man say,
        "Give crowns and pounds and guineas
        But not your heart away;
        Give pearls away and rubies
        But keep your fancy free."
        But I was one-and-twenty,
        No use to talk to me.

                                          From "When I was One-and-Twenty"

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In Memory of Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935)

      "So on we worked, and waited for the light,
      And went without meat, and cursed the bread;
      And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
      Went home and put a bullet through his head."

                                                         From "Richard Cory"

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