| (a farewell love letter relayed, and a journey through old poetry...) | |
1. He bid me to send you this goodbye:
2. Run from Gerald Griffin's cloud which over his pathway glooms-
3. it must never break upon thee!
4. Before you run, he asks but one request-
5. when Ella Wheeler Wilcox's sun grows dim and her winds blow cold
6. upon his bosom where Alfred Joyce Kilmer's snow has lain,
7. and as Alfred, Lord Tennyson's waves break, break, break
8. over the cold, gray stones of his love-torn sea,
9. wrench Percy Bysshe Shelley's rivets from his quivering wounds
10. whose many-voicèd Echoes are heard through the mists...
11. Don't shed a tear for him, he implores-
12. he's learned not to fear Theodore Roethke's infinity- that dying of time
13. in the white light of tomorrow...
14. He is but a T. S. Eliot Hollow Man- a stuffed man, just a twinkling of a fading star-
15. quiet and meaningless, as wind in dry grass, or rats' feet over broken glass...
16. while you- of your choice virtues only God should speak,
17. or Roethke's English poets who grew up on Greek. So you see, it would never work out...
18. and he gives you this confession:
19. He loved your lips when they were wet with Ella's wine,
20. and especially when they were red with a wild desire!
21. He just wish he'd have kissed you when the two of you met,
22. jumping from the Leigh Hunt chair he sat in,
23. (though the little horse Robert Frost gave him would have thought it queer)...
24. He wondered when Tennyson's dancers would leave you alone-
25. he knew you were weary of dance and play.
26. He also bids thee this, and I quote: "O my love, my many Tennyson-fountain'd love,
27. dear dearest of loves, hear me: Harken ere I die!"
28. He was seen on a path that leads to Corinne Roosevelt's nowhere-
29. in a meadow that you know, where together you have sometimes found your souls;
30. and remembering friends like Henry Van Dyke who know and dare to say
31. the brave sweet words that cheer the way- he said
32. it was only you who laughed as softly as Elizabeth Barrett Browning sighs,
33. and who sang beyond the genius of Wallace Stevens' sea,
34. and it was you alone who walked in beauty in the cloudless climes and starry skies of Lord Byron...
35. So dry your tears, your big idle Tennyson tears, that, from the depth of your divine despair
36. which gathers in your heart and rises in your eyes- such sorrow waves Edgar Allen Poe's curtain canopy
37. so fitfully, so fearfully- and you're giving him nightmares! Stop already!
38. Before we parted, he wept, "God bless you and Edna St. Vincent Millay for the apples and the pears
39. you gave him"; you know, that time when he gave you all his money except his subway fare.
40. At last he departed for Ralph Waldo Emerson's woodland walks
41. and to birds and trees he talked, just like RW did, and
42. with William Wordsworth's transitory being in the eye of nature
43. and two of Emily Dickinson's butterflies, he went out at noon
44. and waltzed above a stream, and the espied the circumference, and caught a ride with him.
45. "We?" as he described his wonderful times with you, "We would turn,
46. and we'd stand in Tennyson's heart of things, leaving our books behind!"
47. "Books?" He would say, like Wordsworth, "Tis a dull and endless strife!" So the two of you would learn from nature...
48. "God bless Roethke's ground", he said; he would walk softly there, thinking of you;
49. and learn by going where he has to go,
50. and that, if you were there, together you would build a dome in air-
51. a sunny pleasure dome- with caves of ice;
52. and all who heard Samuel Taylor Coleridge would see you there-
53. where Shelley's crystal-winged snow would run down the slanted sunlight of the dawn
54. and whistle through your hair in a beautifully fierce and mighty gale...
55. "With you", he said as he bid farewell, "It was a hand at first, and then they let you kiss-
56. he went beyond, it was quite a crime!"
57. it was not Lord Byron's fault, he'd tell you all the time...
Lines and the Poems They Were Pilfered From:
2,3: Gerald Griffin "A Place in Thy Memory"
5: Ella Wheeler Wilcox "Growing Old"
6: Alfred Joyce Kilmer "Trees"
7,8: Alfred, Lord Tennyson "Break Break Break"
9, 10: Percy Bysshe Shelley "Prometheus Unbound"
12,13. Theodore Roethke "The Far Field"
14,15: T. S. Eliot "Hollow Men"
16, 17: Theodore Roethke "I Knew a Woman"
19, 20: Ella Wheeler Wilcox "I Love You"
21, 22: Leigh Hunt "Jenny Kissed Me"
23. Robert Frost "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening"
24, 25: Alfred, Lord Tennyson "Maud"
26, 27: Alfred, Lord Tennyson "OEnone"
28, 29: Corinne Roosevelt "Path that Leads to Nowhere"
30, 31: Henry Van Dyke "A Mile With Me"
32: Elizabeth Barrett Browning "A Woman's Shortcomings"
33: Wallace Stevens "The Idea of Order at Key West"
34: Lord Byron "She Walks in Beauty"
35: Alfred, Lord Tennyson "Tears, Idle Tears"
36, 37: Edgar Allen Poe "The Sleeper"
38, 39: Edna St. Vincent Millay "Recuerdo"
40, 41: Ralph Waldo Emerson "Woodnotes"
42: William Wordsworth "The Old Cumberland Beggar"
43, 44: Emily Dickinson "Two butterflies went out at noon"
45, 46: Alfred, Lord Tennyson "Maud"
47: William Wordsworth "The Tables Turned"
48, 49: Theodore Roethke "The Waking"
50,51,52: Samuel Taylor Coleridge "Kubla Khan"
53,54: Percy Bysshe Shelley "Prometheus Unbound"
55, 56, 57: Lord Byron "Don Juan" Canto I, Stanzas 79-80
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