epigram 22 [john taylor]

As gold is better that's in fire tride,

So is the Bankside Globe that late was burn'd:

For where before it had a thatched hide,

Now a stately Theator 'tis turn'd.

Which is an emblem that great things are won,

By those that dare through greatest dangers run. 

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There's something rather affecting about the idea of an unknown poet walking past the hulk of the Globe in 1614, soon to vanish for half a millenium and more and coming up with the following lines. Also might be worth noting that at that time, neither would the subsequent immortality of the Globe's star playwright have been suspected (the plays didn't even exist in print), nor the building's future fame and glory.

delight in disorder [robert herrick]

A sweet disorder in the dresse

Kindles in clothes a wantonnesse:

A lawne about the shoulders thrown 

Into a fine distraction:

An erring lace, which here and there 

Enthralls the crimson stomacher:

A cuffe neglectfull, and thereby 

Ribbands to flow confusedly:

A winning wave (deserving note)

In the tempestuous petticote:

A careless shoe-string, in whose tye 

I see a wilde civility:

Doe more bewitch me, than when art

Is too precise in every part.

Awakening [Robert Bly]

We are approaching sleep: the chestnut blossoms in the mind

Mingle with thoughts of pain

And the long roots of barley, bitterness

As of the oak roots staining the waters dark

In Louisiana, the wet streets soaked with rain

And sodden blossoms, out of this 

We have come, a tunnel softly hurtling into darkness.

The storm is coming. The small farmhouse in Minnesota 

Is hardly strong enough for the storm. 

Darkness, darkness in grass, darkness in trees.

Even the water in wells trembles. 

Bodies give off darkness, and chrysanthemums 

Are dark, and horses, who are bearing great loads of hay

To the deep barns where the dark air is moving from corners.

Lincoln's statue and the traffic. From the long past

Into the long present

A bird, forgotten in these pressures, warbling,

As the great wheel turns around, grinding 

The living in water. 

Washing, continual washing, in water now stained 

With blossoms and rotting logs,

Cries, half-muffled, from beneath the earth, the living awakened at last like the dead.