Ink SpotsPoetry of The United Kingdom

Compiled by Dana Knudsen

Ink SpotsPoetry of The United Kingdom

Compiled by Dana Knudsen

Ink Spots: Poetry of the United Kingdom. Copyright 2012 by Dana Knudsen. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America.

First edition published 2012 by Danasaur Book Company.

ContentsDover beach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2Bright star. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6Mont blanc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8London . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14Do not go gentle into that good night . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16Tintern abbey. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

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Dover beachBy Matthew Arnold

The sea is calm tonight.The tide is full, the moon lies fairUpon the straits; on the French coast the lightGleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.Come to the window, sweet is the night–air!

Only, from the long line of sprayWhere the sea meets the moon–blanched land,Listen! you hear the grating roarOf pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,At their return, up the high strand,Begin, and cease, and then again begin,With tremulous cadence slow, and bringThe eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long agoHeard it on the Ægean, and it broughtInto his mind the turbid ebb and flowOf human misery; weFind also in the sound a thought,Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

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The Sea of FaithWas once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shoreLay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.But now I only hearIts melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,Retreating, to the breathOf the night–wind, down the vast edges drearAnd naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be trueTo one another! for the world, which seemsTo 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 plainSwept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,Where ignorant armies clash by night.

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Bright starBy John Keats

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art—Not in lone splendour hung aloft the nightAnd watching, with eternal lids apart,Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,The moving waters at their priestlike taskOf pure ablution round earth’s human shores,Or gazing on the new soft–fallen maskOf snow upon the mountains and the moors—No—yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,Still, still to hear her tender–taken breath,And so live ever—or else swoon to death.

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Mont blancBy Percy Bysshe Shelley

The everlasting universe of things Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves,Now dark—now glittering—now reflecting gloom—Now lending splendour, where from secret springsThe source of human thought its tribute bringsOf waters—with a sound but half its own, Such as a feeble brook will oft assume,In the wild woods, among the mountains lone,Where waterfalls around it leap for ever,Where woods and winds contend, and a vast riverOver its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves.

Thus thou, Ravine of Arve—dark, deep Ravine—Thou many–colour’d, many–voiced vale,Over whose pines, and crags, and caverns sailFast cloud–shadows and sunbeams: awful scene,Where Power in likeness of the Arve comes downFrom the ice–gulfs that gird his secret throne,Bursting through these dark mountains like the flameOf lightning through the tempest;—thou dost lie,Thy giant brood of pines around thee clinging,Children of elder time, in whose devotionThe chainless winds still come and ever came

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To drink their odours, and their mighty swingingTo hear—an old and solemn harmony;Thine earthly rainbows stretch’d across the sweepOf the aethereal waterfall, whose veilRobes some unsculptur’d image; the strange sleepWhich when the voices of the desert failWraps all in its own deep eternity;Thy caverns echoing to the Arve’s commotion,A loud, lone sound no other sound can tame;Thou art pervaded with that ceaseless motion,Thou art the path of that unresting sound—Dizzy Ravine! and when I gaze on theeI seem as in a trance sublime and strangeTo muse on my own separate fantasy,My own, my human mind, which passivelyNow renders and receives fast influencings,Holding an unremitting interchangeWith the clear universe of things around;One legion of wild thoughts, whose wandering wingsNow float above thy darkness, and now restWhere that or thou art no unbidden guest,In the still cave of the witch Poesy,Seeking among the shadows that pass byGhosts of all things that are, some shade of thee,Some phantom, some faint image; till the breastFrom which they fled recalls them, thou art there!

Some say that gleams of a remoter worldVisit the soul in sleep, that death is slumber,And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumberOf those who wake and live.—I look on high;

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Has some unknown omnipotence unfurl’dThe veil of life and death? or do I lieIn dream, and does the mightier world of sleepSpread far around and inaccessiblyIts circles? For the very spirit fails,Driven like a homeless cloud from steep to steepThat vanishes among the viewless gales! Far, far above, piercing the infinite sky,Mont Blanc appears—still, snowy, and serene;Its subject mountains their unearthly formsPile around it, ice and rock; broad vales betweenOf frozen floods, unfathomable deeps,Blue as the overhanging heaven, that spreadAnd wind among the accumulated steeps;A desert peopled by the storms alone,Save when the eagle brings some hunter’s bone,And the wolf tracks her there—how hideouslyIts shapes are heap’d around! rude, bare, and high,Ghastly, and scarr’d, and riven.—Is this the sceneWhere the old Earthquake–daemon taught her youngRuin? Were these their toys? or did a seaOf fire envelop once this silent snow?None can reply—all seems eternal now.The wilderness has a mysterious tongueWhich teaches awful doubt, or faith so mild,So solemn, so serene, that man may be,But for such faith, with Nature reconcil’d;Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repealLarge codes of fraud and woe; not understoodBy all, but which the wise, and great, and goodInterpret, or make felt, or deeply feel.

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The fields, the lakes, the forests, and the streams,Ocean, and all the living things that dwellWithin the daedal earth; lightning, and rain,Earthquake, and fiery flood, and hurricane,The torpor of the year when feeble dreamsVisit the hidden buds, or dreamless sleepHolds every future leaf and flower; the boundWith which from that detested trance they leap;The works and ways of man, their death and birth,And that of him and all that his may be;All things that move and breathe with toil and soundAre born and die; revolve, subside, and swell.Power dwells apart in its tranquillity,Remote, serene, and inaccessible:And this , the naked countenance of earth,On which I gaze, even these primeval mountainsTeach the adverting mind. The glaciers creepLike snakes that watch their prey, from their far fountains,Slow rolling on; there, many a precipiceFrost and the Sun in scorn of mortal powerHave pil’d: dome, pyramid, and pinnacle,A city of death, distinct with many a towerAnd wall impregnable of beaming ice.Yet not a city, but a flood of ruinIs there, that from the boundaries of the skyRolls its perpetual stream; vast pines are strewingIts destin’d path, or in the mangled soilBranchless and shatter’d stand; the rocks, drawn downFrom yon remotest waste, have overthrownThe limits of the dead and living world,Never to be reclaim’d. The dwelling–place

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Of insects, beasts, and birds, becomes its spoil;Their food and their retreat for ever gone,So much of life and joy is lost. The raceOf man flies far in dread; his work and dwellingVanish, like smoke before the tempest’s stream,And their place is not known. Below, vast cavesShine in the rushing torrents’ restless gleam,Which from those secret chasms in tumult wellingMeet in the vale, and one majestic River,The breath and blood of distant lands, for everRolls its loud waters to the ocean–waves,Breathes its swift vapours to the circling air.

Mont Blanc yet gleams on high:—the power is there,The still and solemn power of many sights,And many sounds, and much of life and death.In the calm darkness of the moonless nights,In the lone glare of day, the snows descendUpon that Mountain; none beholds them there,Nor when the flakes burn in the sinking sun,Or the star–beams dart through them. Winds contendSilently there, and heap the snow with breathRapid and strong, but silently! Its homeThe voiceless lightning in these solitudesKeeps innocently, and like vapour broodsOver the snow. The secret Strength of thingsWhich governs thought, and to the infinite domeOf Heaven is as a law, inhabits thee!And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea,If to the human mind’s imaginingsSilence and solitude were vacancy?

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LondonBy William Blake

I wander thro’ each charter’d street,Near where the charter’d Thames does flow. And mark in every face I meetMarks of weakness, marks of woe.In every cry of every Man,In every Infants cry of fear,In every voice: in every ban,The mind–forg’d manacles I hear How the Chimney–sweepers cryEvery blackning Church appalls, And the hapless Soldiers sighRuns in blood down Palace walls But most thro’ midnight streets I hearHow the youthful Harlots curseBlasts the new–born Infants tear And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.

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Do not go gentle into that good night

By Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,Old age should burn and rave at close of day;Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,Because their words had forked no lightning theyDo not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how brightTheir frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sightBlind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

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And you, my father, there on the sad height,Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.Do not go gentle into that good night.Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

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Tintern abbeyBy William Wordsworth

FIVE years have past; five summers, with the lengthOf five long winters! and again I hearThese waters, rolling from their mountain–springWith a soft inland murmur.—Once againDo I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,That on a wild secluded scene impress Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connectThe landscape with the quiet of the sky. The day is come when I again repose Here, under this dark sycamore, and viewThese plots of cottage–ground, these orchard–tufts,Which at this season, with their unripe fruits,Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves‘Mid groves and copses. Once again I seeThese hedge–rows, hardly hedge–rows, little linesOf sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms,Green to the very door; and wreaths of smokeSent up, in silence, from among the trees!With some uncertain notice, as might seemOf vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,Or of some Hermit’s cave, where by his fire The Hermit sits alone.

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These beauteous forms,Through a long absence, have not been to meAs is a landscape to a blind man’s eye:But oft, in lonely rooms, and ‘mid the dinOf towns and cities, I have owed to themIn hours of weariness, sensations sweet,Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;And passing even into my purer mind,With tranquil restoration:—feelings too Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps, As have no slight or trivial influenceOn that best portion of a good man’s life,His little, nameless, unremembered, actsOf kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust, To them I may have owed another gift, Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,In which the burthen of the mystery,In which the heavy and the weary weightOf all this unintelligible world,Is lightened:—that serene and blessed mood,In which the affections gently lead us on,—Until, the breath of this corporeal frameAnd even the motion of our human bloodAlmost suspended, we are laid asleepIn body, and become a living soul: While with an eye made quiet by the powerOf harmony, and the deep power of joy,We see into the life of things.

If this / Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft—In darkness and amid the many shapes

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Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stirUnprofitable, and the fever of the world,Have hung upon the beatings of my heart—How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee,O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer thro’ the woods,How often has my spirit turned to thee!And now, with gleams of half–extinguished thought, With many recognitions dim and faint, And somewhat of a sad perplexity, The picture of the mind revives again: While here I stand, not only with the sense Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts That in this moment there is life and food For future years. And so I dare to hope, Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first I came among these hills; when like a roe I bounded o’er the mountains, by the sides Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams, Wherever nature led: more like a man Flying from something that he dreads, than one Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then (The coarser pleasures of my boyish days, And their glad animal movements all gone by) To me was all in all.—I cannot paint What then I was. The sounding cataract Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock, The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, Their colours and their forms, were then to me An appetite; a feeling and a love, That had no need of a remoter charm, By thought supplied, nor any interest

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Unborrowed from the eye.—That time is past, And all its aching joys are now no more, And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur, other gifts Have followed; for such loss, I would believe, Abundant recompence. For I have learned To look on nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes The still, sad music of humanity, Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue. And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still A lover of the meadows and the woods, And mountains; and of all that we behold From this green earth; of all the mighty world Of eye, and ear,—both what they half create, And what perceive; well pleased to recognise In nature and the language of the sense, The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul Of all my moral being.

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Nor perchance, If I were not thus taught, should I the more Suffer my genial spirits to decay: For thou art with me here upon the banks Of this fair river; thou my dearest Friend, My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch The language of my former heart, and read My former pleasures in the shooting lights Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while May I behold in thee what I was once, My dear, dear Sister! and this prayer I make, Knowing that Nature never did betray The heart that loved her; ‘tis her privilege, Through all the years of this our life, to lead From joy to joy: for she can so inform The mind that is within us, so impress With quietness and beauty, and so feed With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues, Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all The dreary intercourse of daily life, Shall e’er prevail against us, or disturb Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon Shine on thee in thy solitary walk; And let the misty mountain–winds be free To blow against thee: and, in after years, When these wild ecstasies shall be matured Into a sober pleasure; when thy mind Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms, Thy memory be as a dwelling–place

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For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then, If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief, Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts Of tender joy wilt thou remember me, And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance— If I should be where I no more can hear Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams Of past existence—wilt thou then forget That on the banks of this delightful stream We stood together; and that I, so long A worshipper of Nature, hither came Unwearied in that service: rather say With warmer love—oh! with far deeper zeal Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget, That after many wanderings, many years Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs, And this green pastoral landscape, were to me More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake!