with rue my heart is laden (repost from myspace)

august 5, 2007:

With rue my heart is laden
For golden friends I had,
For many a rose-lipped maiden,
And many a lightfoot lad.

By brooks too broad for leaping
The lightfoot boys are laid;
The rose-lipt girls are sleeping
in fields where roses fade.
- A.E. Housman


The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
And from there those that lifted eyes could count
Five mountain ranges one behing the other
Under the sunset far into Vermont.
And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,
As it ran light, or had to bear a load.
And nothing happened: day was all but done.
Call it a day, I wish they might have said
To please the boy by giving him the half hour
That a boy counts so much when saved from work.
His sister stood beside him in her apron
To tell them "Supper." At the word, the saw,
As if it meant to prove saws know what supper meant,
Leaped out at the boy's hand, or seemed to leap -
He must have given the hand. However it was,
Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!
Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all -
Since he was old enough to know, big boy
Doing a man's work, though a child at heart -
He saw all was spoiled. "Don't let him cut my hand off -
The doctor, when he comes. Don't let him, sister!"
So. The hand was gone already.
The doctor put him in the dark of ether.
He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.
And then - the watcher at his pulse took a fright.
No one believed. They listened to his heart.
Little - less - nothing! - and that ended it.
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.
-Robert Frost


In silent night when rest I took,
For sorrow near I did not look,
I waken'd was with thundring noise
And Piteous shreiks of dreadful voice;
That fearful sound of fire and fire,
Let no man know is my desire.

I, starting up the light did spy,
And to my God my heart did cry
To strengthen me in my distress
And not to leave me succorless,
When coming out, beheld a space,
The flame consume my dwelling place.

And, when I could no longer look,
I blest His name that gave and took,
That laid my goods now in the dust;
Yea so it was, and so 'twas just.
It was His own; it was not mine
far be it that I should repine....
- Anne Bradstreet