/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.20366267]

I love sonnets so much bros

[Anonymous No.20366297]

>>20366267
My favorite sonnet :)

[Anonymous No.20366314]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2vGa-yLiso

[Anonymous No.20366324]

A woman’s face with nature’s own hand painted
Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion.
A woman’s gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change as is false women’s fashion;
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;
A man in hue, all hues in his controlling,
Which steals men’s eyes and women’s souls amazeth.
And for a woman wert thou first created,
Till nature as she wrought thee fell a-doting,
And by addition me of thee defeated
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
But since she pricked thee out for women's pleasure,
Mine be thy love and thy love’s use their treasure.

[Anonymous No.20367832]

Marqués (como el Divino lo eres), te saludo.
Es el Otoño, y vengo de un Versalles doliente.
Había mucho frío y erraba vulgar gente.
El chorro de agua de Verlaine estaba mudo.

Me quedé pensativo ante un mármol desnudo,
cuando vi una paloma que pasó de repente,
y por caso de cerebración inconsciente
pensé en ti. Toda exégesis en este caso eludo.

Versalles otoñal; una paloma; un lindo
mármol; un vulgo errante, municipal y espeso;
anteriores lecturas de tus sutiles prosas;

la reciente impresión de tus triunfos... Prescindo
de más detalles para explicarte por eso
cómo, autumnal, te envió este ramo de rosas.

[Anonymous No.20368191]

>>20366267
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFrIOG4kx3c

[Anonymous No.20368196]

>>20366267
Ur welcome bro

[Anonymous No.20368202]

>>20366267
A noir, E blanc, I rouge, U vert, O bleu, voyelles,
Je dirai quelque jour vos naissances latentes.
A, noir corset velu des mouches éclatantes
Qui bombillent autour des puanteurs cruelles,

Golfes d’ombre : E, candeur des vapeurs et des tentes,
Lance des glaciers fiers, rois blancs, frissons d’ombelles ;
I, pourpres, sang craché, rire des lèvres belles
Dans la colère ou les ivresses pénitentes ;

U, cycles, vibrements divins des mers virides,
Paix des pâtis semés d’animaux, paix des rides
Que l’alchimie imprime aux grands fronts studieux

O, suprême Clairon plein de strideurs étranges,
Silences traversés des Mondes et des Anges :
— O l’Oméga, rayon violet de Ses yeux !

Translation by George Dance:

Black A, white E, red I, green U, blue O: you vowels,
Some day I'll tell the tale of where your mystery lies:
Black A, a jacket formed of hairy, shiny flies
That buzz among harsh stinks in the abyss's bowels;

White E, the white of kings, of moon-washed fogs and tents,
Of fields of shivering chervil, glaciers' gleaming tips;
Red I, magenta, spat-up blood, the curl of lips
In laughter, hatred, or besotted penitence;

Green U, vibrating waves in viridescent seas,
Or peaceful pastures flecked with beasts – furrows of peace
Imprinted on our brows as if by alchemies;

Blue O, great Trumpet blaring strange and piercing cries
Through Silences where Worlds and Angels pass crosswise;
Omega, O, the violet brilliance of Those Eyes!

[Anonymous No.20368297]

Friendless and faint, with martyred steps and slow,
Faint for the flesh, but for the spirit free,
Stung by the mob that came to see the show,
The Master toiled along to Calvary;
We gibed him, as he went, with houndish glee,
Till his dimmed eyes for us did overflow;
We cursed his vengeless hands thrice wretchedly,
And this was nineteen hundred years ago.
But after nineteen hundred years the shame
Still clings, and we have not made good the loss
That outraged faith has entered in his name.
Ah, when shall come love's courage to be strong!
Tell me, O Lord--tell me, O Lord, how long
Are we to keep Christ writhing on the cross!

[Anonymous No.20369435]

bump for more sonnets

[Anonymous No.20370254]

>>20366267
Sonnet XVII by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Gazing upon him now, severe and dead,
It seemed a curious thing that she had lain
Beside him many a night in that cold bed,
And that had been which would not be again.
From his desirous body the great heat
Was gone at last, it seemed, and the taut nerves
Loosened forever. Formally the sheet
Set forth for her today those heavy curves
And lengths familiar as the bedroom door.
She was as one who enters, sly, and proud,
To where her husband speaks before a crowd,
And sees a man she never saw before--
The man who eats his victuals at her side,
Small, and absurd, and hers: for once, not hers unclassified.

[Anonymous No.20370256]

As due by many titles I resign
Myself to thee, O God. First I was made
By Thee; and for Thee, and when I was decay’d
Thy blood bought that, the which before was Thine.
I am Thy son, made with Thyself to shine,
Thy servant, whose pains Thou hast still repaid,
Thy sheep, Thine image, and—till I betray’d
Myself—a temple of Thy Spirit divine.
Why doth the devil then usurp on me?
Why doth he steal, nay ravish, that’s Thy right?
Except Thou rise and for Thine own work fight,
O! I shall soon despair, when I shall see
That Thou lovest mankind well, yet wilt not choose me,
And Satan hates me, yet is loth to lose me.

[Anonymous No.20370263]

>>20366267
I love that for you, OP. Please share something to start with for the uninitiated.

[Anonymous No.20370270]

>>20370256
I’ve read three of my favorite authors gushing over Donne and never knew what I was missing. Now I do. Thanks, anon.

[Anonymous No.20370278]

>>20370263
Here is a very straightforward, but very beautiful, sonnet. Note that an "eremite" is a hermit, and that "ablutions" are ritualized washings.

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art—
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of 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.

>>20370270
You're very welcome.

[Anonymous No.20370281]

>>20370263
Not OP, but start with the Shakespearean sonnets.

[Anonymous No.20370316]

[Anonymous No.20370389]

>>20366314
Gay Liso

[Anonymous No.20370406]

>>20366267
Is it weird how the form is so old and confining yet many of the best poems I've read are sonnets? Like what's special about it, we took it from Italian, why can't we think of something better by now.

[Anonymous No.20370474]

>>20370406
It's just long enough to present an idea, develop that idea, and then present a related idea or a new perspective on the first idea, and the structure of the poem is very conducive to that.

[Anonymous No.20370527]

And if it snowed and snow covered the drive
he took a spade and tossed it to one side.
And always tucked his daughter up at night
And slippered her the one time that she lied.
And every week he tipped up half his wage.
And what he didn't spend each week he saved.
And praised his wife for every meal she made.
And once, for laughing, punched her in the face.

And for his mum he hired a private nurse.
And every Sunday taxied her to church.
And he blubbed when she went from bad to worse.
And twice he lifted ten quid from her purse.

Here's how they rated him when they looked back:
sometimes he did this, sometimes he did that.

Simon Armitage, 'Poem'

[Anonymous No.20370534]

Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind,
But as for me, hélas, I may no more.
The vain travail hath wearied me so sore,
I am of them that farthest cometh behind.

Yet may I by no means my wearied mind
Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore
Fainting I follow. I leave off therefore,
Sithens in a net I seek to hold the wind.
Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt,
As well as I may spend his time in vain.

And graven with diamonds in letters plain
There is written, her fair neck round about:
Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am,
And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.

Thomas Wyatt

[Anonymous No.20371036]

MUERTO DE AMOR - Rafael de León

No lo sabe mi brazo, ni mi pierna,
ni el hilo de mi voz, ni mi cintura,
ni lo sabe la luna que está interna
en mi jardín de amor y calentura.

Y yo estoy muerto, sí, como una tierna
rosa, o una gacela en la llanura,
como una agua redonda en la cisterna
o un perro de amarilla dentadura.

Y hoy que es Corpus, Señor, he paseado
mi cadáver, de amor iluminado,
como un espantapájaro siniestro.

La gente, sin asombro, me ha mirado
y ninguno el sombrero se ha quitado
para rezarme un triste padrenuestro.

[Anonymous No.20371816]

>>20366267
I live sonnets too

[Anonymouṡ No.20371846]

>>20366267


TO FAILURE

You do not come dramatically, with dragons
That rear up with my life between their paws
And dash me butchered down beside the wagons,
The horses panicking; nor as a clause
Clearly set out to warn what can be lost,
What out-of-pocket charges must be borne;
Expenses met; nor as a draughty ghost
That's seen, some mornings, running down a lawn.

It is these sunless afternoons, I find,
Install you at my elbow like a bore:
The chestnut trees are caked with silence. I'm
Aware the days pass quicker than before,
Smell staler too. And once they fall behind
They look like ruin. You have been here some time.

— Philip Larkin

[Anonymouṡ No.20371857]

>>20366267


AMONG THOSE KILLED IN THE DAWN RAID WAS A MAN AGED A HUNDRED

When the morning was waking over the war
He put on his clothes and stepped out and he died,
The locks yawned loose and a blast blew them wide,
He dropped where he loved on the burst pavement stone
And the funeral grains of the slaughtered floor.
Tell his street on its back he stopped a sun
And the craters of his eyes grew springshots and fire
When all the keys shot from the locks, and rang.
Dig no more for the chains of his grey-haired heart.
The heavenly ambulance drawn by a wound
Assembling waits for the spade's ring on the cage.
O keep his bones away from the common cart,
The morning is flying on the wings of his age
And a hundred storks perch on the sun's right hand.

— Dylan Thomas

[Anonymouṡ No.20371871]

>>20366267


SPOILS

When all is over and you march for home
The spoils of war are easily disposed of:
Standards, weapons of combat, helmets, drums
May decorate a staircase or a study,
While lesser gleanings of the battlefield —
Coins, watches, wedding-rings, gold teeth and such —
Are sold anonymously for solid cash.

The spoils of love present a different case,
When all is over and you march for home:
That lock of hair, these letters and the portrait
May not be publicly displayed; nor sold;
Nor burned; nor returned (the heart being obstinate) —
Yet never dare entrust them to a safe
For fear they burn a hole through two-foot steel.

— Robert Graves

[Anonymous No.20372363]

>>20371857
Based DTbro

[Anonymous No.20372367]

Someone posted this one in a previous sonnet thread, and I quite liked it. "Design."

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth—
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth—
A snow-drop spider, a flower like froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appal?—
If design govern in a thing so small.

[Anonymous No.20373752]

>>20366267
Here's an interesting poem from Yeats which takes a formally mathematical new approach.

Lapis Lazuli (for Harry Clifton)

I have heard that hysterical women say
They are sick of the palette and fiddle-bow,
Of poets that are always gay,
For everybody knows or else should know
That if nothing drastic is done
Aeroplane and Zeppelin will come out,
Pitch like King Billy bomb-balls in
Until the town lie beaten flat.

All perform their tragic play,
There struts Hamlet, there is Lear,
That's Ophelia, that Cordelia;
Yet they, should the last scene be there,
The great stage curtain about to drop,
If worthy their prominent part in the play,
Do not break up their lines to weep.
They know that Hamlet and Lear are gay;
Gaiety transfiguring all that dread.
All men have aimed at, found and lost;
Black out; Heaven blazing into the head:
Tragedy wrought to its uttermost.
Though Hamlet rambles and Lear rages,
And all the drop scenes drop at once
Upon a hundred thousand stages.
It cannot grow by an inch or an ounce.

On their own feet they came, or on shipboard,
Camel-back, horse-back, ass-back, mule-back,
Old civilisations put to the sword.
Then they and their wisdom went to rack:
No handiwork of Callimachus
Who handled marble as if it were bronze,
Made draperies that seemed to rise
When sea-wind swept the corner, stands;
His long lamp chimney shaped like the stem
Of a slender palm, stood but a day;
All things fail and are built again
And those that build them again are gay.

Two Chinamen, behind them a third,
Are carved in Lapis Lazuli,
Over them flies a long-legged bird
A symbol of longevity;
The third, doubtless a serving-man,
Carries a musical instrument.

Every discolouration of the stone,
Every accidental crack or dent
Seems a water-course or an avalanche,
Or lofty slope where it still snows
Though doubtless plum or cherry-branch
Sweetens the little half-way house
Those Chinamen climb towards, and I
Delight to imagine them seated there;
There, on the mountain and the sky,
On all the tragic scene they stare.
One asks for mournful melodies;
Accomplished fingers begin to play.
Their eyes mid many wrinkles, their eyes,
Their ancient, glittering eyes, are gay.

[Anonymous No.20373968]

>>20373752
>They know that Hamlet and Lear are gay

[Anonymous No.20374024]

>>20370389
Huh?

[Anonymous No.20374833]

>>20366297
based fuck the science, NPC freaks without soul and gods footprints

[Anonymous No.20375107]

>>20366267
The Illiterate
BY WILLIAM MEREDITH
Touching your goodness, I am like a man
Who turns a letter over in his hand
And you might think this was because the hand
Was unfamiliar but, truth is, the man
Has never had a letter from anyone;
And now he is both afraid of what it means
And ashamed because he has no other means
To find out what it says than to ask someone.

His uncle could have left the farm to him,
Or his parents died before he sent them word,
Or the dark girl changed and want him for beloved.
Afraid and letter-proud, he keeps it with him.
What would you call his feeling for the words
That keep him rich and orphaned and beloved?
>>20366297
>>20374833
based

[Anonymous No.20376097]

>>20366297
Reads mediocre, are you sure its your favorite?

[Anonymous No.20376778]

>>20366267
How has no one posted some Shakespeare yet? you fuckin queers.

Sonnet 130: My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun
BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

[Anonymous No.20377379]

>>20370527
i liked this one

[Anonymous No.20377625]

We deemed the secret lost, the spirit gone,
Which spake in Greek simplicity of thought,
And in the forms of gods and heroes wrought
Eternal beauty from the sculptured stone,--
A higher charm than modern cultures won
With all the wealth of metaphysic lore,
Gifted to analyze, dissect, explore.
A many-colored light flows from one sun;
Art, 'neath its beams, a motley thread has spun;
The prism modifies the perfect day;
But thou hast known such mediums to shun,
And cast once more on life a pure, white ray.
Absorbed in the creations of thy mind,
Forgetting daily self, my truest self I find.

Margaret Fuller, 'Flaxman'

[Anonymous No.20377720]

Hand trembling towards hand; the amazing lights
Of heart and eye. They stood on supreme heights.

Ah, the delicious weeks of honeymoon!
Soon they returned, and, after strange adventures,
Settled at Balham by the end of June.
Their money was in Can. Pacs. B. Debentures,
And in Antofagastas. Still he went
Cityward daily; still she did abide
At home. And both were really quite content
With work and social pleasures. Then they died.
They left three children (besides George, who drank):
The eldest Jane, who married Mr. Bell,
William, the head clerk of the County Bank,
And Henry, a stock broker, doing well.

Rupert Brooke, 'A Sonnet Reversed'

[Anonymous No.20377738]

A lens of crystal whose transparence calms
Queer stars to clarity, and disentangles
Fox-fires to form austere refracted angles:
A texture polished on the horny palms
Of vast equivocal creatures, beast of human:
A flint, a substance finer-grained than snow,
Graved with the Graces in intaglio
To set sarcastic sigil on the woman.
This for the mind and for the little rest
A hollow scooped to blackness in the breast,
The simulacrum of a cloud, a feather:
Instead of stone, instead of sculptured strength,
This soul, this vanity, blown hither and thither
By trivial breath, over the whole world's length.

Elinor Wylie, 'Self-portrait'

[Anonymous No.20377752]

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

[Anonymous No.20377761]

Move him into the sun--
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields half-sown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.
Think how it wakes the seeds--
Woke once the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs, so dear achieved, are sides
Full-nerved, still warm, too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
--O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth's sleep at all?

Wilfred Owen, 'Futility'

[Anonymous No.20377776]

I watch an old man working in his garden
Dealing life to plant and death to weed.
Of one he saves, of one destroys the seed.
He knows the weeds and not one will he pardon.
He bids the pea vines bloom and they obey.
He teaches them to climb. He tests a pod.
Much that another man might throw away
He saves, he forks it under for decay
To be another generation's need.
This is his work to do. This is his day.
He makes all birth and growth and death his deed.
Slowly he moves, but slow is not delay.
He has all time to work. I watch him plod.
Old man, old man, who told you you were God?

Robert Francis, 'The Gardener'

[Anonymous No.20377797]

I have lived in important places, times
When great events were decided, who owned
That half a rood of rock, a no-man's land
Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims.
I heard the Duffys shout 'Damn your soul'
And old McCabe stripped to the waist, seen
Step the plot defying blue cast-steel--
'Here is the march along these iron stones'
That was the year of the Munich bother. Which
Was more important? I inclined
To lose by faith in Ballyrush and Gortin
Till Homer's ghost came whispering to my mind
He said: I made the Iliad from such
A local row. Gods make their own importance.

Patrick Kavanagh, 'Epic'

[Anonymous No.20377810]

We tunnel through your noonday out to you.
We carry our tube's narrow darkness there
Where, nostrum-plastered, with prepared air,
With old men running and trains whining through

We ants may tap your aphids for your dew.
You may not wish their sucking or our care;
Our all-but freedom, too, your branch must bear,
High as roots' depth in earth, all earth to view.

No, by too much this station the air nears.
How small a chink lets in how dire a foe.
What though the garden in one glance appears?

Winter will come and all her leaves will go.
We do not know what skeleton endures.
Carry at least her parasites below.

William Empson, 'The Ants'

[Anonymous No.20377834]

I see the blue, the green, the golden and the red,
I have forgotten all the angel said.
The flower, the leaf, the meadow and the tree,
But of the words I have no memory.
I hear the swift, the martin, and the wren,
But what was told me, past all though is gone.
The dove, the rainbow, echo, and the wind,
But of the meaning, all is out of mind.

Only I know he spoke the word that sings its way
In my blood streaming, over rocks to sea,
A word engraved in the bone, that burns within
To apotheosis the substance of a dream,
That living I shall never hear again,
Because I pass, I pass, while dreams remain.

Kathleen Raine, 'Angelus'

[Anonymous No.20377871]

>>20377379
It's so simple and good. Funny and tragic and profound without being pretentious.

[Anonymous No.20377878]

For some reason, out of the wall of text in this thread, I first noticed the word "sucking". What might it mean?

[Anonymous No.20377892]

>>20377878
Here's a sonnet more in line with your brain power

Christ in Alabama by Langston Hughes

Christ is a Nigger,
Beaten and black--
O, bare your back.

Mary is His Mother
Mammy of the South,
Silence your Mouth.

God's His Father--
White Master above
Grant us your love.

Most holy bastard
Of the bleeding mouth:
Nigger Christ
On the cross of the South.

[Anonymous No.20378015]

>>20370527
enjoy the groundedness of this one

[Anonymous No.20378034]

>>20377761
something gently heartbreaking abt this one
>>20377776
this one was great too