This was shared with me by the coolest girl in Utah, Lisa Poce — a selection from Gustave Dore’s 1884 illustrations of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven.” I’m guessing the waiflike girl beside him is the specter of the lost Lenore?
See the link below at openculture.com for more info on Dore’s original steel engravings:
Gustave Doré’s Splendid Illustrations of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” (1884)
… and, whaddya know … a few of my friends just happen to be ACTORS.
Russ, Linsee … care to stop over sometime?
Dear Lord, I LOVE this poem! Why have I never heard this before?!
“Oracle of the Dog,” by Vincent Starrett
Only the dog knows why the moon
Floats down the night; his raucous tune
Is urgent with the thing he fears
But falls on unbelieving ears.
If we had only learned to speak
The tongue of dogs instead of Greek
We should be better schooled to fight
The spells and portents of the night.
Now at the coming of the dark,
Young fools adrift in street and park
Yield to an epidemic swoon,
Abuse the dog and praise the moon.
(Part VI of “The Quest”)
“The First Temptation”
Ashamed to be the darling of his grief,
He joined a gang of rowdy stories where
His gift for magic quickly made him chief
Of all these boyish powers of the air;
Who turned his hungers into Roman food,
The town’s asymmetry into a park;
All hours took taxis; any solitude
Became his flattered duchess in the dark.
But, if he wished for anything less grand,
The nights came padding after him like wild
Beasts that meant harm, and all the doors cried Thief;
And when Truth had met him and put out her hand,
He clung in panic to his tall belief
And shrank away like an ill-treated child.
“The Worship of Nature,” by John Greenleaf Whittier
The harp at Nature’s advent strung
Has never ceased to play;
The song the stars of morning sung
Has never died away.
And prayer is made, and praise is given,
By all things near and far;
The ocean looketh up to heaven,
And mirrors every star.
Its waves are kneeling on the strand,
As kneels the human knee,
Their white locks bowing to the sand,
The priesthood of the sea!
They pour their glittering treasures forth,
Their gifts of pearl they bring,
And all the listening hills of earth
Take up the song they sing.
The green earth sends its incense up
From many a mountain shrine;
From folded leaf and dewy cup
She pours her sacred wine.
The mists above the morning rills
Rise white as wings of prayer;
The altar-curtains of the hills
Are sunset’s purple air.
The winds with hymns of praise are loud,
Or low with sobs of pain,—
The thunder-organ of the cloud,
The dropping tears of rain.
With drooping head and branches crossed
The twilight forest grieves,
Or speaks with tongues of Pentecost
From all its sunlit leaves.
The blue sky is the temple’s arch,
Its transept earth and air,
The music of its starry march
The chorus of a prayer.
So Nature keeps the reverent frame
With which her years began,
And all her signs and voices shame
The prayerless heart of man.
I lie belly-up
In the sunshine, happier than
You ever will be.
Today I sniffed
Many dog butts—I celebrate
By kissing your face.
I sound the alarm!
Paperboy—come to kill us all —
Look! Look! Look! Look! Look!
I sound the alarm!
Garbage man—come to kill us all —
Look! Look! Look! Look! Look!
I lift my leg and
Whiz on each bush. Hello, Spot—
Sniff this and weep.
I Hate my choke chain—
Look, world, they strangle me! Ack
Ack Ack Ack Ack Ack!
Sleeping here, my chin
On your foot—no greater bliss—well,
Maybe catching cats.
Look in my eyes and
Deny it. No human could
Love you as much as I do.
Anonymous
“The Road Not Taken,” by Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
(Part V. of “The Quest.”)
“The City”
In villages from which their childhoods came
Seeking Necessity, they had been taught
Necessity by nature is the same
No matter how or by whom it be sought.
The city, though, assumed no such belief,
But welcomed each as if he came alone,
The nature of Necessity like grief
Exactly corresponding to his own.
And offered them so many, every one
Found some temptation fit to govern him,
And settled down to master the whole craft
Of being nobody; sat in the sun
During the lunch-hour round the fountain rim,
And watched the country kids arrive, and laughed.
“safe,” by Charles Bukowski
the house next door makes me
sad.
both man and wife rise early and
go to work.
they arrive home in early evening.
they have a young boy and a girl.
by 9 p.m. all the lights in the house
are out.
the next morning both man and
wife rise early again and go to
work.
they return in early evening.
By 9 p.m. all the lights are
out.
the house next door makes me
sad.
the people are nice people, I
like them.
but I feel them drowning.
and I can’t save them.
they are surviving.
they are not
homeless.
but the price is
terrible.
sometimes during the day
I will look at the house
and the house will look at
me
and the house will
weep, yes, it does, I
feel it.
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 