"argosy" poems
The wild bee reels from bough to bough
With his furry coat and his gauzy wing,
Now in a lily-cup, and now
Setting a jacinth bell a-swing,
In his wandering;
Sit closer love: it was here I trow
I made that vow,
Swore that two lives should be like one
As long as the sea-gull loved the sea,
As long as the sunflower sought the sun,—
It shall be, I said, for eternity
‘Twixt you and me!
Dear friend, those times are over and done;
Love’s web is spun.
Look upward where the poplar trees
Sway and sway in the summer air,
Here in the valley never a breeze
Scatters the thistledown, but there
Great winds blow fair
From the mighty murmuring mystical seas,
And the wave-lashed leas.
Look upward where the white gull screams,
What does it see that we do not see?
Is that a star? or the lamp that gleams
On some outward voyaging argosy,—
Ah! can it be
We have lived our lives in a land of dreams!
How sad it seems.
Sweet, there is nothing left to say
But this, that love is never lost,
Keen winter stabs the ******* of May
Whose crimson roses burst his frost,
Ships tempest-tossed
Will find a harbour in some bay,
And so we may.
And there is nothing left to do
But to kiss once again, and part,
Nay, there is nothing we should rue,
I have my beauty,—you your Art,
Nay, do not start,
One world was not enough for two
Like me and you.
7.1k
Within this restless, hurried, modern world
We took our hearts’ full pleasure—You and I,
And now the white sails of our ship are furled,
And spent the lading of our argosy.
Wherefore my cheeks before their time are wan,
For very weeping is my gladness fled,
Sorrow has paled my young mouth’s vermilion,
And Ruin draws the curtains of my bed.
But all this crowded life has been to thee
No more than lyre, or lute, or subtle spell
Of viols, or the music of the sea
That sleeps, a mimic echo, in the shell.
4.3k
Oft have we trod the vales of Castaly
And heard sweet notes of sylvan music blown
From antique reeds to common folk unknown:
And often launched our bark upon that sea
Which the nine Muses hold in empery,
And ploughed free furrows through the wave and foam,
Nor spread reluctant sail for more safe home
Till we had freighted well our argosy.
Of which despoiled treasures these remain,
Sordello’s passion, and the honeyed line
Of young Endymion, lordly Tamburlaine
Driving his pampered jades, and more than these,
The seven-fold vision of the Florentine,
And grave-browed Milton’s solemn harmonies.
2.4k
Argosy...a bejeweled swan decked in the riches
of the material world.
Body of water unending, tangled in biological
hierarchy--Agamemnon's fateful net.
Sodden to pending depth--forbidding save for
cursory glance.
Blent black, greens, blues covet their color--
invoke static tone.
As it is here and there a secreted navigation
plumbs, facsimile of sky.
Where wave walls glassy calm to ripple, sure
this ****** to near global proportion.
Stoic rhetorical question to land--whose implicit
question mark hooked Atlantis.
This pensive strew, overlay--horizon's sutured
cusp...hazy scare of seagull tossing hale Mary.
Of Ahab and Helen, whereupon to round the
bend of their will cannot be sought here.
Down in niche of sand where starfish spreads
its forehead, beholds enlightenment as sifting
shafts of sunlight...sinking.
Meridian's mime ebbing and flowing as an
everlasting kiss...so tender God's heart swelled
seven seas.
Nov 17, 2014
Nov 17, 2014 at 12:12 PM UTC
Dry Well
A Gift from Fort Apache Energy, Inc.
“We will be drilling with a fresh water mud system
which has no environmental impact.”
- Allan P. Bloxsom III, President
As woodland creatures shy until the dark
Drift as a silent blessing through the trees
At dusk some sad folk gather ‘round the wounds
Gored geometrically into the ground
A palisade of wood and water and earth
Now guarding nothing but pale desolation:
A pond of death whose hydrocarbon sheen
In corpselike stillness entertains no life
A sewerage ditch bedecked with human turds
A dumpster skip piled high with promises
Piles of unidentified white powder
An unattended garbage fire, a shirt
Some bolts, planks, screws, sandwich wraps, cigarette butts
A cargo cult of curiosities
Liturgically in statio around The Hole
That venerable new hole, that hole of hope
That fabled argosy laden with dreams
That fell into the depths, and never returned
At dawn a tower stood, adorned with lights
By dusk it was folded, and stolen away
Like the long-storied tents of Araby
Or a Roman camp in the Teutoburg
Abandoned among the darkening woods
For the curious primitives to poke
And **** about, chattering in their tongue
About the marvels of a superior race
Who make no environmental impact.
Oct 27, 2017
Oct 27, 2017 at 3:21 PM UTC
In a sea of liquid gold
Your boats are full
A bounty, an argosy wasted
Adrift with no wind to fill your sails
Anchors aplenty
Weigh you down
Pull at you and slow you
As you eat of yourself
Children on the shore
Beg a piece of bread
Just beyond your hearing
And conscience you have shed
Widows mourn their loss
Their houses you have taken
To the streets they go
Like you they are forsaken
He has rowed away
Beyond you in the sea
Left the dead to bury dead
Set the captives free
Jan 29, 2021
Jan 29, 2021 at 3:06 PM UTC