#WingedWordsWindsday: 12/29/2021 -- A Trio of Poems for the New Year

 

WINGED WORDS WINDSDAY

Compiled by Rob Chappell (@RHCLambengolmo)

Vol. 1, No. 9: December 29, 2021

 

 

A Trio of Poems for the New Year – 2022!

 

“Ode” (1873)

By Arthur William Edgar O’Shaughnessy (1844-1881)

 

We are the music makers,

And we are the dreamers of dreams,

Wandering by lone sea-breakers,

And sitting by desolate streams;

World-losers and world-forsakers,

On whom the pale Moon gleams:

Yet we are the movers and shakers

Of the world forever, it seems.

 

With wonderful deathless ditties,

We build up the world’s great cities,

And out of a fabulous story,

We fashion an empire’s glory:

One man with a dream, at pleasure,

Shall go forth and conquer a crown;

And three with a new song’s measure

Can trample an empire down.

 

We, in the ages lying

In the buried past of the Earth,

Built Nineveh with our sighing,

And Babel itself with our mirth;

And overthrew them with prophesying

To the old of the new world’s worth;

For each age is a dream that is dying,

Or one that is coming to birth.

 

A breath of our inspiration

Is the life of each generation.

A wondrous thing of our dreaming,

Unearthly, impossible seeming –

The soldier, the king, and the peasant

Are working together in one,

Till our dream shall become their present,

And their work in the world be done.

 

They had no vision amazing

Of the goodly house they are raising.

They had no divine foreshowing

Of the land to which they are going:

But on one man’s soul it hath broken,

A light that doth not depart,

And his look, or a word he hath spoken,

Wrought flame in another man’s heart.

 

And therefore today is thrilling

With a past day’s late fulfilling.

And the multitudes are enlisted

In the faith that their fathers resisted,

And, scorning the dream of tomorrow,

Are bringing to pass, as they may,

In the world, for its joy or its sorrow,

The dream that was scorned yesterday.

 

But we, with our dreaming and singing,

Ceaseless and sorrowless we!

The glory about us clinging

Of the glorious futures we see,

Our souls with high music ringing;

O men! It must ever be

That we dwell, in our dreaming and singing,

A little apart from ye.

 

For we are afar with the dawning

And the suns that are not yet high,

And out of the infinite morning

Intrepid you hear us cry –

How, spite of your human scorning,

Once more God’s future draws nigh,

And already goes forth the warning

That ye of the past must die.

 

“Great hail!” we cry to the comers

From the dazzling unknown shore;

Bring us hither your Sun and your summers,

And renew our world as of yore;

You shall teach us your song’s new numbers,

And things that we dreamt not before;

Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers,

And a singer who sings no more.

 

“Ring Out, Wild Bells” (1850)

By Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

 

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,

The flying cloud, the frosty light;

The year is dying in the night;

Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

 

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow:

The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true.

 

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,

For those that here we see no more,

Ring out the feud of rich and poor,

Ring in redress to all mankind.

 

Ring out a slowly dying cause,

And ancient forms of party strife;

Ring in the nobler modes of life,

With sweeter manners, purer laws.

 

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,

The faithless coldness of the times;

Ring out, ring out thy mournful rhymes,

But ring the fuller minstrel in.

 

Ring out false pride in place and blood,

The civic slander and the spite;

Ring in the love of truth and right,

Ring in the common love of good.

 

Ring out old shapes of foul disease,

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;

Ring out the thousand wars of old,

Ring in the thousand years of peace.

 

Ring in the valiant man and free,

The larger heart, the kindlier hand;

Ring out the darkness of the land,

Ring in the Christ that is to be.

 

Orphic Hymn #77: “To Aurora”

Translated by Thomas Taylor (1758-1835)

 

Hear me, O goddess! whose emerging ray

Leads on the broad refulgence of the day;

Blushing Aurora, whose celestial light

Beams on the world with reddening splendors bright:

Angel of Titan, whom with constant round,

Thy orient beams recall from night profound:

Labor of every kind to lead is thine,

Of mortal life the minister divine.

Mankind in thee eternally delight,

And none presumes to shun thy beauteous sight.

Soon as thy splendors break the bands of rest,

And eyes unclose with pleasing sleep oppressed;

Men, reptiles, birds, and beasts, with general voice,

And all the nations of the deep, rejoice;

For all the culture of our life is thine.

Come, blessed power! and to these rites incline:

Thy holy light increase, and unconfined

Diffuse its radiance on thy mystic's mind.

 

The aurora australis (southern lights), as photographed from the International Space Station. (Photo Credit: NASA – Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)