Selections From Living Literature | CBCS

A BEAUTIFUL YOUNG NYMPH GOING TO BED

BY JONATHAN SWIFT

Corinna, pride of Drury-Lane

For whom no shepherd sighs in vain;

Never did Covent Garden boast

So bright a battered, strolling toast;

No drunken rake to pick her up,

No cellar where on tick to sup;

Returning at the midnight hour;

Four stories climbing to her bow’r;

Then, seated on a three-legged chair,

Takes off her artificial hair:

Now, picking out a crystal eye,

She wipes it clean, and lays it by.

Her eye-brows from a mouse’s hide,

Stuck on with art on either side,

Pulls off with care, and first displays ’em,

Then in a play-book smoothly lays ’em.

Now dexterously her plumpers draws,

That serve to fill her hollow jaws.

Untwists a wire; and from her gums

A set of teeth completely comes.

Pulls out the rags contrived to prop

Her flabby dugs and down they drop.

Proceeding on, the lovely goddess

Unlaces next her steel-ribbed bodice;

Which by the operator’s skill,

Press down the lumps, the hollows fill,

Up goes her hand, and off she slips

The bolsters that supply her hips.

With gentlest touch, she next explores

Her shankers, issues, running sores,

Effects of many a sad disaster;

And then to each applies a plaister.

But must, before she goes to bed,

Rub off the dawbs of white and red;

And smooth the furrows in her front

With greasy paper stuck upon’t.

She takes a bolus ere she sleeps;

And then between two blankets creeps.

With pains of love tormented lies;

Or if she chance to close her eyes,

Of Bridewell and the Compter dreams,

And feels the lash, and faintly screams;

Or, by a faithless bully drawn,

At some hedge-tavern lies in pawn;

Or to Jamaica seems transported,

Alone, and by no planter courted;

Or, near Fleet-Ditch’s oozy brinks,

Surrounded with a hundred stinks,

Belated, seems on watch to lie,

And snap some cully passing by;

Or, struck with fear, her fancy runs

On watchmen, constables and duns,

From whom she meets with frequent rubs;

But, never from religious clubs;

Whose favor she is sure to find,

Because she pays ’em all in kind.

         Corinna wakes. A dreadful sight!

Behold the ruins of the night!

A wicked rat her plaster stole,

Half eat, and dragged it to his hole.

The crystal eye, alas, was missed;

And puss had on her plumpers pissed.

A pigeon picked her issue-peas;

And Shock her tresses filled with fleas.

         The nymph, tho’ in this mangled plight,

Must ev’ry morn her limbs unite.

But how shall I describe her arts

To recollect the scattered parts?

Or shew the anguish, toil, and pain,

Of gath’ring up herself again?

The bashful muse will never bear

In such a scene to interfere.

Corinna in the morning dizened,

Who sees, will spew; who smells, be poison’d.

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Renaissance Poetry | Selections from Living Literatute

THE GARDEN OF LOVE

BY WILLIAM BLAKE

I went to the Garden of Love,

And saw what I never had seen:

A Chapel was built in the midst,

Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut,

And Thou shalt not. writ over the door;

So I turn'd to the Garden of Love,

That so many sweet flowers bore. 

And I saw it was filled with graves,

And tomb-stones where flowers should be:

And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds,

And binding with briars, my joys & desires.

Must Read:

Othello | William Shakespeare

LONDON

BY WILLIAM BLAKE

I wander thro' each charter'd street,

Near where the charter'd Thames does

flow. 

And mark in every face I meet

Marks 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 cry

Every blackning Church appalls, 

And the hapless Soldiers sigh

Runs in blood down Palace walls 

But most thro' midnight streets I hear

How the youthful Harlots curse

Blasts the new-born Infants tear 

And blights with plagues the Marriage

hearse 

Composed Upon Westminster Bridge

BY WORDSWORTH

Earth has not any thing to show more

fair:

Dull would he be of soul who could

pass by

A sight so touching in its majesty:

This City now doth, like a garment,

wear

The beauty of the morning; silent,

bare,

Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and

temples lie

Open unto the fields, and to the sky;

All bright and glittering in the

smokeless air.

Never did sun more beautifully steep

In his first splendour, valley, rock, or

hill;

Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!

The river glideth at his own sweet will:

Dear God! the very houses seem

asleep;

And all that mighty heart is lying still!

IT IS A BEAUTIOUS EVENING, CALM AND FREE

BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

It is a beauteous evening, calm and free,

The holy time is quiet as a Nun

Breathless with adoration; the broad sun

Is sinking down in its tranquility;

The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the Sea;

Listen! the mighty Being is awake,

And doth with his eternal motion make

A sound like thunder—everlastingly.

Dear child! dear Girl! that walkest with me here,

If thou appear untouched by solemn thought,

Thy nature is not therefore less divine:

Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year;

And worshipp'st at the Temple's inner shrine,

God being with thee when we know it not.

FROST AT MIDNIGHT
BY SAMEUL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

The frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry
Came loud—and hark, again! loud as before.

The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings: save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.
'Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood, 
This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood, 
With all the numberless goings-on of life,
Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame
Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;
Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,
Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.
Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature
Gives it dim sympathies with me who live, 
Making it a companionable form,
Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit
By its own moods interprets, everywhere
Echo or mirror seeking of itself, 
And makes a toy of Thought.

                                   But O! how oft,
How oft, at school, with most believing mind,
Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars, 
To watch that fluttering stranger! and as oft
With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt
Of my sweet birthplace, and the old church-tower,
Whose bells, the poor man's only music, rang
From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day, 
So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me
With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear
Most like articulate sounds of things to come!
So gazed I, till the soothing things I dreamt
Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!
And so I brooded all the following morn, 
Awed by the stern preceptor's face, mine eye
Fixed with mock study on my swimming book:
Save if the door half opened, and I snatched
A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up, 
For still I hoped to see the stranger's face,
Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved, 
My playmate when we both were clothed alike!

   Dear babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,
Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm, 
Fill up the interspersed vacancies
And momentary pauses of the thought!
My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart
With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,
And think that thou shalt learn far other lore
And in far other scenes! For I was reared
In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.
But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds, 
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language, which thy God
Utters, who fro eternity doth teach 
Himself in all, and all things in himself. 
Great universal Teacher! he shall mould 
They spirit, and by giving make it ask.

   Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch
Smokes in the sunthaw; whether the eve-drops fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles, 
Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.

TO AUTUMN 
BY JOHN KEATS

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
 Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
   With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
   And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
      To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
   With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
      For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
   Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
   Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
   Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
      Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
   Steady thy laden head across a brook;
   Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
      Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?
   Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
   And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
   Among the river sallows, borne aloft
      Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
   Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
   The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
      And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Thanks For Reading,

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