The posting lately seemed to demand the original...

[pyralid.livejournal.com]

It struck me, reading the rest of the Ophelia poems, how amazing it is that these poets of different times and backgrounds all can write about the death of a fictional character as if they had each witnessed it, both separately and intimately. This, of course, is the original inspiration.

Gertrude's soliloquy from Hamlet, Act 4 scene 7, by Shakespeare

There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
There with fantastic garlands did she come
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them:
There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes;
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element: but long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.

Gerald Stern - Dog That I Am

[natelyswhore.livejournal.com]

Dog That I Am


I sing for the similarity and I moan for
the face, dog that I am, whippet that I was,
her face of exhaustion, lines on her forehead, her hair
uncombed and unbrushed, the wind in her eyes, she could be
from Thrace, from Denmark, I could be from Rome
waiting for her command, I could be from
Egypt and dogging her and I could be from
Spain, a silky wearing a sweater and she with
a scarf at her throat and another one over her mouth
bending to hold my face up, wearing a herring-bone
overcoat with deep pockets and buttons
circa 1940, 1950 with
black westies on her feet and neat little
lapets at the top, the neighborhood of Skinker
near a birch tree, only an accident,
just a mistake -- I scream outright at the likeness.

(no subject)

[redheartleaf.livejournal.com]

Cologne

In Kohln, a town of monks and bones,
And pavements fang'd with murderous stones
And rags, and hags, and hideous wenches;
I counted two and seventy stenches,
All well defined, and several stinks!
Ye Nymphs that reign o'er sewers and sinks,
The river Rhine, it is well known,
Doth wash your city of Cologne;
But tell me, Nymphs, what power divine
Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine?

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. 1834. Friendship's Offering.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) was an English lyrical poet, critic, and philosopher. His collaborative work, Lyrical Ballads, written with William Wordsworth in 1798, became the foundation for the English Romantic movement.

Coleridge attended Jesus College, Cambridge, where he befriended fellow poet Robert Southey. The two planned a utopian society, but in a debacle typical of youthfulness, the adventure ended with Southey's departure, and Coleridge being married to a woman he did not love. During the same
year (1795), Coleridge met Wordsworth, forming a friendship that would herald one of the most influential periods of
English literature.

Coleridge's marriage finally collapsed in 1802, he having fallen in love with a woman who would become Wordsworth's
sister-in-law. This period was an unhappy one, as Coleridge's health declined and he became addicted to opium, eventually driving away his love in 1810.

Coleridge found salvation in the Anglican Church, reviving his outlook and career in 1811, which had grown stagnant during a dark and unproductive decade of selfishness and addiction. Renewed, Coleridge produced several acclaimed books of criticism and compiled a book of poetry in 1817.

PS: I'm also silverflurry and I run this community which pretty much runs itself!

(no subject)

[greenhoodloxley.livejournal.com]

Serenade
by Oscar Wilde


THE western wind is blowing fair
Across the dark Ægean sea,
And at the secret marble stair
My Tyrian galley waits for thee.
Come down! the purple sail is spread,
The watchman sleeps within the town,
O leave thy lily-flowered bed,
O Lady mine come down, come down!

She will not come, I know her well,
Of lover's vows she hath no care,
And little good a man can tell
Of one so cruel and so fair.
True love is but a woman's toy,
They never know the lover's pain,
And I who loved as loves a boy
Must love in vain, must love in vain.

O noble pilot tell me true
Is that the sheen of golden hair?
Or is it but the tangled dew
That binds the passion-flowers there?
Good sailor come and tell me now
Is that my Lady's lily hand?
Or is it but the gleaming prow,
Or is it but the silver sand?

No! no! 'tis not the tangled dew,
'Tis not the silver-fretted sand,
It is my own dear Lady true
With golden hair and lily hand!
O noble pilot steer for Troy,
Good sailor ply the labouring oar,
This is the Queen of life and joy
Whom we must bear from Grecian shore!

The waning sky grows faint and blue,
It wants an hour still of day,
Aboard! aboard! my gallant crew,
O Lady mine away! away!
O noble pilot steer for Troy,
Good sailor ply the labouring oar,
O loved as only loves a boy!
O loved for ever evermore!

(no subject)

[bay-state-magi.livejournal.com]

The Holy Innocents

By Robert Lowell

Listen, the hay-bells tinkle as the cart
Wavers on rubber tires along the tar
And cindered ice below the burlap mill
And ale-wife run. The oxen drool and start
In wonder at the fenders of a car,
And blunder hugely up St. Peter's hill.
These are the undefiled by women-- their
Sorrow is not the sorrow of this world:
King Herod shrieking vengeance at the curled
Up knees of Jesus choking in the air,

A king of speechless clods and infants. Still
The world out-Herods Herod; and the year,
The nineteen-hundred forty-fifth of grace,
Lumbers with losses up the clinkered hill
Of our purgation; and the oxen near
The worn foundations of their resting-place,
The holy manger where the bed is corn
And holly torn for Christmas. If they die,
As Jesus, in the harness, who will mourn?
Lamb of the shepherds, Child, how still you lie.

"Goodbye" - Bill Knot

[pourquoi-pas.livejournal.com]

If you are still alive when you read this,
close your eyes. I am
under their lids, growing black.

(no subject)

[breathe-ophelia.livejournal.com]

Lady Lazarus

I've done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it--

A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot

A paperweight,
My face featureless, fine
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?--

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot--
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies

These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.

It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
It's the theatrical

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:

'A miracle!'
That knocks me out.
There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart--
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash--
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there--

A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

Herr god, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.
-Sylvia Plath