"odours" poems
Nan,
being slightly Victorian and
very old
would decant a bottle of Mackeson
into a teapot and
pretend to us children that she
was having her
daily cuppa.
We knew though,
could smell the sweetness
of the alcohol even through
the odours of Number 3 ***** and
macassar oil which seemed to
be an integral part of
Nan
and her Lodge street home.
Mar 10, 2015
Mar 10, 2015 at 5:13 AM UTC
There is no smell in all the world,
None in the North or South,
None in the East or West,
None in the lowest places,
None on the highest peaks,
Like that smell filling the air,
Filling the house,
Filling my senses,
That smell of spaghetti frying,
Frying in the morning light,
The smell so different from when it was first cooked,
Moving the senses,
Moving the mind,
Anticipation in scent,
The sauce sizzling,
Changing,
Changing in the frying pan,
As the noodles turn crisper,
Crisper,
Crisp,
With that crispness like no other,
The noodles,
No longer white,
Made yellow,
Yellow from the sauce,
Fried onto them,
One with them,
Flavours seeping in,
And the sauce,
Orange now,
Red orange but clearly orange,
No longer the bright red it was when it entered the pan,
And as the sauce and noodles change,
Reach that perfect point,
The smell just right,
The colour just right,
The texture just right,
The sizzling reaching the perfect crescendo,
Then, and only then,
The spaghetti no longer stirring,
Evened out,
Temperature lowered,
And carefully,
Slowly,
To keep them on the top,
The eggs break,
White running among the noodles,
Filling the gaps,
Turning from clear to white as they hit the hot pan,
Yolks floating on top where they should be,
The perfect drop,
And the odours as the white changes,
Filling the air with new scents,
Mingling with the ones already present,
And then the salt, disappearing on the surface,
The black pepper,
Black flects,
Scattered evenly,
Perfectly,
The smell of pepper joining the egg and spaghetti,
And a splash of Tobacco Sauce across the whole,
That hot smell,
That bright red colour,
And the silver lid slips on,
Over the top,
Hiding,
Protecting,
Cooking the whole,
Until it is done,
And the lid set aside,
The whole onto a plate,
Perfect to the senses,
The smell,
The colours,
The texture,
Perfect,
And the first bight,
Heavenly,
Like nothing else on earth,
Almost sweet,
But still savoury,
Strange to those knowing bowled pasta,
Strange to those knowing simmered sauce,
Strange to those knowing fried eggs,
But the tastes,
Perfect,
Blended,
Strange but familiar,
Many memories,
Images,
Experiences,
All coming together like the different parts of the fried spaghetti,
And the fork through the yoke,
As it runs down,
Bright yellow into orange and red and black and white,
Perfect,
Amazing,
Done.
~The Smell of Fried Spaghetti by Bethany Davis, June 19, 2015
Jul 19, 2015
Jul 19, 2015 at 12:40 PM UTC
Lays of Mystery,
Imagination, and Humor
Number 1
I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls,
And each damp thing that creeps and crawls
Went wobble-wobble on the walls.
Faint odours of departed cheese,
Blown on the dank, unwholesome breeze,
Awoke the never ending sneeze.
Strange pictures decked the arras drear,
Strange characters of woe and fear,
The humbugs of the social sphere.
One showed a vain and noisy ****
That shouted empty words and big
At him that nodded in a wig.
And one, a dotard grim and gray,
Who wasteth childhood's happy day
In work more profitless than play.
Whose icy breast no pity warms,
Whose little victims sit in swarms,
And slowly sob on lower forms.
And one, a green thyme-honoured Bank,
Where flowers are growing wild and rank,
Like weeds that fringe a poisoned tank.
All birds of evil omen there
Flood with rich Notes the tainted air,
The witless wanderer to snare.
The fatal Notes neglected fall,
No creature heeds the treacherous call,
For all those goodly Strawn Baits Pall.
The wandering phantom broke and fled,
Straightway I saw within my head
A vision of a ghostly bed,
Where lay two worn decrepit men,
The fictions of a lawyer's pen,
Who never more might breathe again.
The serving-man of Richard Roe
Wept, inarticulate with woe:
She wept, that waiting on John Doe.
"Oh rouse", I urged, "the waning sense
With tales of tangled evidence,
Of suit, demurrer, and defence."
"Vain", she replied, "such mockeries:
For morbid fancies, such as these,
No suits can suit, no plea can please."
And bending o'er that man of straw,
She cried in grief and sudden awe,
Not inappropriately, "Law!"
The well-remembered voice he knew,
He smiled, he faintly muttered "Sue!"
(Her very name was legal too.)
The night was fled, the dawn was nigh:
A hurricane went raving by,
And swept the Vision from mine eye.
Vanished that dim and ghostly bed,
(The hangings, tape; the tape was red happy
'Tis o'er, and Doe and Roe are dead!
Oh, yet my spirit inly crawls,
What time it shudderingly recalls
That horrid dream of marble halls!
5.5k
I arise from dreams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low,
And the stars are shining bright.
I arise from dreams of thee,
And a spirit in my feet
Has led me -who knows how?
To thy chamber-window, Sweet!
The wandering airs they faint
On the dark, the silent stream—
The champak odours fail
Like sweet thoughts in a dream;
The nightingale’s complaint,
It dies upon her heart,
As I must die on thine,
O beloved as thou art!
Oh lift me from the grass!
I die! I faint! I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain
On my lips and eyelids pale.
My cheek is cold and white, alas!
My heart beats loud and fast;
Oh press it close to thine again,
Where it will break at last!
3.9k
In department store foyers, free samples sprayed,
A collision of cosmetics muddle the air.
The olfactory overpowered by such obvious odours,
Why do natural notes disconcert you?
Not the gym heavy sodden or overworked,
Recognition of an individual, whilst eyes remain shut.
Faint trace of the familiar or frenzied pheromones,
A headiness misplaced by the cologne wearing clones
Preference for the perfumed, the artificial sweetener.
Marketed meticulously
Musk manufactured yet not made by man
Of flowers dear, of oils and compounds.
Fresh, fruity, citrus or spiced
Artificial aromas keep your own scent disguised
Society simulates this sophistication of the senses,
Masking yourself from me as you are wooed,
Accustomed to this attraction, till you let down your defences
How shall I know you when you are ****
Oct 30, 2012
Oct 30, 2012 at 6:10 PM UTC
I dreamed that, as I wandered by the way,
Bare Winter suddenly was changed to Spring,
And gentle odours led my steps astray,
Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring
Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay
Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling
Its green arms round the ***** of the stream,
But kissed it and then fled, as thou mightest in dream.
There grew pied wind-flowers and violets,
Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth,
The constellated flower that never sets;
Faint oxlips; tender bluebells, at whose birth
The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets—
Like a child, half in tenderness and mirth—
Its mother’s face with Heaven’s collected tears,
When the low wind, its playmate’s voice, it hears.
And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine,
Green cowbind and the moonlight-coloured may,
And cherry-blossoms, and white cups, whose wine
Was the bright dew, yet drained not by the day;
And wild roses, and ivy serpentine,
With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray;
And flowers azure, black, and streaked with gold,
Fairer than any wakened eyes behold.
And nearer to the river’s trembling edge
There grew broad flag-flowers, purple pranked with white,
And starry river buds among the sedge,
And floating water-lilies, broad and bright,
Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge
With moonlight beams of their own watery light;
And bulrushes, and reeds of such deep green
As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen.
Methought that of these visionary flowers
I made a nosegay, bound in such a way
That the same hues, which in their natural bowers
Were mingled or opposed, the like array
Kept these imprisoned children of the Hours
Within my hand,—and then, elate and gay,
I hastened to the spot whence I had come,
That I might there present it!—Oh! to whom?
3.3k
Urns and odours bring away!
Vapours, sighs, darken the day!
Our dole more deadly looks than dying;
Balms and gums and heavy cheers,
Sacred vials fill’d with tears,
And clamours through the wild air flying!
Come, all sad and solemn shows,
That are quick-eyed Pleasure’s foes!
We convènt naught else but woes.
3.3k
The dead see darkness only
"Darkness"
Decomposing teeth taste stale air
Acrid,
Rotten,
Pungent
Odours of parts decayed
The dead never die
They are inanimate, like a ornament
Still,
Frozen,
Angelic
Peace forever frozen on their face
They sleep on a bed of maggots
Digesting them over time,
The screams never heard
But they reverberate through
Oak,
Earth,
Grass
Above saturated with their terror
Slowly dies,
The eyes closed shut,
Darkness is the keep sake,
That hides the horror in there still formed
eyes, but everything decays over time
Flesh,
Muscle,
Brain
Turns to dust, that which was there,
Still lives on in a vacant skull
The horror lives on energy
Of life, trapped in
A void,
A prison,
With no bars, never to be free
The dead don't die, the torture in death lives on inside..
Nov 9, 2014
Nov 9, 2014 at 4:12 PM UTC
Spirit that breathest through my lattice, thou
That cool'st the twilight of the sultry day,
Gratefully flows thy freshness round my brow:
Thou hast been out upon the deep at play,
Riding all day the wild blue waves till now,
Roughening their crests, and scattering high their spray
And swelling the white sail. I welcome thee
To the scorched land, thou wanderer of the sea!
Nor I alone--a thousand bosoms round
Inhale thee in the fulness of delight;
And languid forms rise up, and pulses bound
Livelier, at coming of the wind of night;
And, languishing to hear thy grateful sound,
Lies the vast inland stretched beyond the sight.
Go forth into the gathering shade; go forth,
God's blessing breathed upon the fainting earth!
Go, rock the little wood-bird in his nest,
Curl the still waters, bright with stars, and rouse
The wide old wood from his majestic rest,
Summoning from the innumerable boughs
The strange, deep harmonies that haunt his breast:
Pleasant shall be thy way where meekly bows
The shutting flower, and darkling waters pass,
And where the o'ershadowing branches sweep the grass.
The faint old man shall lean his silver head
To feel thee; thou shalt kiss the child asleep,
And dry the moistened curls that overspread
His temples, while his breathing grows more deep:
And they who stand about the sick man's bed,
Shall joy to listen to thy distant sweep,
And softly part his curtains to allow
Thy visit, grateful to his burning brow.
Go--but the circle of eternal change,
Which is the life of nature, shall restore,
With sounds and scents from all thy mighty range
Thee to thy birthplace of the deep once more;
Sweet odours in the sea-air, sweet and strange,
Shall tell the home-sick mariner of the shore;
And, listening to thy murmur, he shall deem
He hears the rustling leaf and running stream.
3k
Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory—
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.
Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the beloved’s bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.
2.8k
"Beauty just is."
I have an 80's wooden plaque with a picture of an ocean somewhere and waves crashing on the rocks, written on the sky in the photo is the quote, "Beauty just is."
I believe it. So should you. Whoever you are.
I could pick apart the picture. But I won't.
Don't look for ugly.
The quote was given credit to anonymous. Deservedly so.
Anyone anywhere at anytime can recognize beauty.
This is not a duty, choose to be dutiful in all things beautiful.
There is lacquer over the picture to protect it. The lacquer makes it shine.
I find that part ironic, protecting the beauty from spills, unkind graffiti,
from any ugly thing that might happen to it.
That might mar the beauty.
It is not an easily recognizable coastline,
not a celebrity coastline
or a model coastline
or a physically outstanding coastline,
no archways of rocks
or large rocks
that have stood the test of time and erosion and wind and well, pollution.
"Beauty just is" so accept your beauty.
I am not talking to your cat or my dog, the aquarium or the stable full of horses, all those animals do not measure life in terms of beauty, only we, humans do. Animals do not judge anything on the basis of beauty, smell maybe, not necessarily good smells but strong smells, even odours.
Only we humans; also decry, put down,
use the word ugly
and write each other
off,
for not being beautiful.
But "beauty just is", beauty just is. Period.
If you are talking about a piece d'art and
you are going to shell out cash, from your stash,
make sure you buy something significantly important to you and beautiful.
As for another human being...
You have not the right or responsibility to say that someone is not beautiful.
I do not think there is
one person with the wisdom,
alive to recognize what makes
each of us beautiful.
Beauty just is, no parts, no assembly required, accept it, accept one another.
I know there are those that already get it.
I don't want them to read this and sweat it.
They don't need to. I want the bully to read this, out loud.
Beauty JUST IS. You might not get it, yet.
Keep rolling it thru your mind, a beautiful surprise awaits you.
Meditate on it.
Meditate on not the author of the quote, he is anonymous, but the Creator of beauty is not.
Be surprised, as this revelation once understood, will change your perspective on life, after all you're beautiful too.
Originally done by © DWE 2011-5-11
Apr 25, 2013
Apr 25, 2013 at 12:39 AM UTC
fascinating, like the aroma of tea,
pleasing moon to have a drink.
like the liquor, it brings the glee,
overfill my cup but not to drunk.
tonight, let's paint the town red,
there in my throat the odours overspread.
under the moonlight, I dance with my shadow,
holding a wine, too fine to swallow.
I'm not drunk and it might be true,
stumbling and murmuring on the way back home.
my life is not utterly dark nor blue,
I'm just missing him and the dawn.
Jul 24, 2021
Jul 24, 2021 at 5:30 AM UTC
Has your soul sipped
Of the sweetness of all sweets?
Has it well supped
But yet hungers and sweats?
I have been witness
Of a strange sweetness,
All fancy surpassing
Past all supposing.
Passing the rays
Of the rubies of morning,
Or the soft rise
Of the moon; or the meaning
Known to the rose
Of her mystery and mourning.
Sweeter than nocturnes
Of the wild nightingale
Or than love's nectar
After life's gall.
Sweeter than odours
Of living leaves,
Sweeter than ardours
Of dying loves.
Sweeter than death
And dreams hereafter
To one in dearth
Or life and its laughter.
Or the proud wound
The victor wears
Or the last end
Of all wars.
Or the sweet ******
After long guard
Unto the martyr
Smiling at God;
To me was that smile,
Faint as a wan, worn myth,
Faint and exceeding small,
On a boy's murdered mouth.
Though from his throat
The life-tide leaps
There was no threat
On his lips.
But with the bitter blood
And the death-smell
All his life's sweetness bled
Into a smile.
2.3k
Quis multa gracilis te puer in Rosa
Rendred almost word for word without Rhyme according to the
Latin Measure, as near as the Language permit.
What slender Youth bedew’d with liquid odours
Courts thee on Roses in some pleasant Cave,
Pyrrha for whom bind’st thou
In wreaths thy golden Hair,
Plain in thy neatness; O how oft shall he
On Faith and changed Gods complain: and Seas
Rough with black winds and storms
Unwonted shall admire:
Who now enjoyes thee credulous, all Gold,
Who alwayes vacant, alwayes amiable
Hopes thee; of flattering gales
Unmindfull. Hapless they
To whom thou untry’d seem’st fair. Me in my vow’d
Picture the sacred wall declares t’ have hung
My dank and dropping weeds
To the stern God of Sea.
2.3k
I walked among the seven woods of Coole:
Shan-walla, where a willow-hordered pond
Gathers the wild duck from the winter dawn;
Shady Kyle-dortha; sunnier Kyle-na-no,
Where many hundred squirrels are as happy
As though they had been hidden hy green houghs
Where old age cannot find them; Paire-na-lee,
Where hazel and ash and privet hlind the paths:
Dim Pairc-na-carraig, where the wild bees fling
Their sudden fragrances on the green air;
Dim Pairc-na-tarav, where enchanted eyes
Have seen immortal, mild, proud shadows walk;
Dim Inchy wood, that hides badger and fox
And marten-cat, and borders that old wood
Wise Buddy Early called the wicked wood:
Seven odours, seven murmurs, seven woods.
I had not eyes like those enchanted eyes,
Yet dreamed that beings happier than men
Moved round me in the shadows, and at night
My dreams were clown hy voices and by fires;
And the images I have woven in this story
Of Forgael and Dectora and the empty waters
Moved round me in the voices and the fires,
And more I may not write of, for they that cleave
The waters of sleep can make a chattering tongue
Heavy like stone, their wisdom being half silence.
How shall I name you, immortal, mild, proud shadows?
I only know that all we know comes from you,
And that you come from Eden on flying feet.
Is Eden far away, or do you hide
From human thought, as hares and mice and coneys
That run before the reaping-hook and lie
In the last ridge of the barley? Do our woods
And winds and ponds cover more quiet woods,
More shining winds, more star-glimmering ponds?
Is Eden out of time and out of space?
And do you gather about us when pale light
Shining on water and fallen among leaves,
And winds blowing from flowers, and whirr of feathers
And the green quiet, have uplifted the heart?
I have made this poem for you, that men may read it
Before they read of Forgael and Dectora,
As men in the old times, before the harps began,
Poured out wine for the high invisible ones.
2.2k
The acrid smell of darkness
"Permeates me"
I am surrounded by the skies
Of hell fire,
Brimstone,
Sulphuric,
Odours
Breathed as if air
Burning with each inhale,
This is a place of eternal penance
Why do I sit on a thrown of spines
Those around grovel
Hungry as if to taste my milk,
I look down, hot coals are under foot
My thrown room blacker than sin,
I am jested towards the window,
Torture,
Screams,
Souls
Bound to instruments, some scream in
Redemption, why'll others ask for more,
Broken, crazy lost souls that once
Screamed as the souls now bound to
"Smouldering coals"
I glance as heavy doors open,
Skin,
Bone,
Muscles
Entwined with black stitch
No words permitted,
As stich tightly woven
Upon blooded lips
I felt enticed at her vulgerness
She approached as if to touch my Hand, I
Repelled,
Declined,
Opposed
Her advances, I cut in to her muscle
she moaned as if ecstasy,
As black droplets burnt upon the floor
"She again ushered towards my hand"
I let her grip as she cut the
Stitches
From her bleeding lips,
"I smelt her breath"
A thousand souls decaying within her,
Breath
Exhaled,
Putrid,
Odour that was irresistible,
Lips meet, flesh burnt and the
Mists of what was clarity was ushered away,
My reaper of souls beauty of the underworld
I tasted with that kiss corruption, hatred
"He who shall never be named"
"At his tricks once again"
"I sit o my throne of spines"
My horns ignite once more
The light that shined briefly now
Extinguished,
Smothered,
Obsolete
Feelings from a place one stood upon,
"I am that which others need to fear"
As all will pay for this
"Moment of Clarity"
As I engulf souls, redemption
Is for above, below there is just hatred and misery
Dec 17, 2014
Dec 17, 2014 at 9:47 AM UTC
Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory—
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.
Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the beloved’s bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.
2k
My living disposition leads me to assert that I am not dead!
Yet, my silence screams ancient transcriptions across geographical contour lines which are considered to be far removed from the metaphorical grid of contemporary societal norms, where the seductions of the vampyre and her haunting dynamics cast their eerie spells within this captivating fishbowl of galloping horses.
The Prince of Wallachia is able to explain.
Let us converse with The Count.
Whenever there is emphasis upon specific detail in this age of certain vanity, I find that, in 1456, I am truly bereft of valedictorian and flamenco odours, because this royal prince of acoustic arrangement has generated a harmonious expression which humbly corrects my intrapersonal assumptions across the mountainous regions of Transylvania.
Conflict resolution is therefore a mere figment of sociological and anthropological constructs, which fornicate with the façade of egocentrism and fabricates vain attempts to maintain social elitism within a blanket of darkness.
How do we find ourselves in the position of being so diametrically opposed to reality?
Dec 11, 2015
Dec 11, 2015 at 12:47 AM UTC
4 am child awakened from sleep
By my father gently shaking my shoulder
It did not matter that my sisters
Had declined first
I, the youngest, was about
To inherit an honor
To go alone in the boat, just dad and I
To Little Swan Lake, about 3 miles from home
A familiar place very different in this light
Night sounds and odours distilled
He lowered the boat into the water
And extended his hand to help me climb inside
Looking around me, this darkness was new
Enchanted silence was new and
It did not take long to recognize
That I liked it that way
Soft rowing carried us
To the center of the lake
Where quietly drifting
He introduced me
To the space
Where humans were asleep
And nature claimed you as her own
Smoothing words with his hand
He implored me to be still
As he gave me the gift
of Solitude
An hour passed as we listened
To the rhythm of water
The voices of fish
And the depths of our thoughts
Our eyes exchanged sadness
When other boats crept in
Knowing soon, daylight would waken
The sleeping dogs and invaders
And we would no longer be alone
In our nest of idealists
Did he know
How I worshipped his every action?
That every word he spoke has molded my character?
His humility would never have boasted of such
Which is all the more reason to want to be like him
Sep 23, 2013
Sep 23, 2013 at 6:03 PM UTC
My companion has no clothes to speak of -
no odours, no form, only shape from being
born from flat ground - transparent in the round;
an open guide that pulls you from the inside
to a new plane not seen before - straight
thro' any solid door; where is this place
I've been escorted to? Encouraged and
gently led a long way above my head
seems familiar a a long time ago - the pace
of life here is very slow, timeless
airless, a pale hue - my Fair Isle pullover
must be a clue; seem smaller now
everyone taller just as ghostly friends dance
It appears that I've been given a second chance
Apr 17, 2016
Apr 17, 2016 at 3:07 PM UTC
"the photographer, as well as the horrors of the warzone, also captured those brief moments of humanity."
"air freshener naturalizes the air by eliminating unwanted odours"
Oct 15, 2014
Oct 15, 2014 at 8:50 AM UTC
Where were you, you little *******
Where were you hiding
As I turned out the lights last night?
Were you in the closet as I came into the bedroom?
Did you seep like a flood
Across the floor in the darkness
Rising up the leg of the bed
And into my ears like liquid toxic waste?
Were you under the pillow
And as my fingers slid under there
Between the crisp, smooth layers of white cotton?
Did you coil about my fingers
And up my arm
To spread over my scalp
All fuming-acid corrosive?
Were you in under the folds
Of the welcoming, white-striped comforter
As we turned in after a perfectly pleasant day?
Waiting, still, in the dark
As I pulled the blankets up taught?
And just below my chin
As the cold sheets around me warmed
To stop the just-into-bed shivers?
Did you crawl up then as I dozed
And twist around my throat
To tighten slowly until I awoke in your grip?
Where ever you were hiding,
You got the drop on me.
You turned the tiny dim lights
That peek into the room at night
Into piercing lasers.
You amplified the tiniest odours
Into dizzying, eye-watering stenches.
You traded the rising-sun's rays
As they finally pierced the curtains
After my hours of sleepless discomfort
For a blasts of neutron-bomb radiation.
Worst of all
You stole the cool, soothing side of the pillow
Every time I managed to find it
Giving me instead a sickly, warm bundle of gorse.
Where were you, you little *******
Where were you hiding?
Apr 7, 2015
Apr 7, 2015 at 11:01 PM UTC
O, how much more doth beauty beauteous seem
By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!
The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
For that sweet odour which doth in it live.
The canker blooms have full as deep a dye
As the perfumèd tincture of the roses,
Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly
When summer’s breath their maskèd buds discloses;
But, for their virtue only is their show,
They live unwooed and unrespected fade,
Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so;
Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made.
And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,
When that shall vade, by verse distills your truth.
1.7k
Poem Number Three from Edna's alter ego, Count ORLOK
O how the lust for virgins' blood rages through my veins,
My thirst for the wondrous elixir of human gore is all-engulfing!
I rise at dusk from my noisome grave, drooling with anticipation
And I soar upwards into the night sky like a bat out of Hell
(which is what I am, so it's no ******* exaggeration is it?).
I go to search out new victims in a new place as my old haunts
Are rather depleted following my ravages on their inhabitants,
But the foul miasma emanating from Wolverhampton's suburbs
Is enough to make me throw up last night's supper on my tuxedo,
And it totally kills my ******* appetite stone ******* dead.
With a shrieked *"The West Midlands Conurbation ***** big time!"*
I fly off in disgust, a steam of diarrheoa trailing after me,
Like brown stardust.
Jan 20, 2015
Jan 20, 2015 at 10:34 AM UTC
I
This is the Month, and this the happy morn
Wherin the Son of Heav’ns eternal King,
Of wedded Maid, and ****** Mother born,
Our great redemption from above did bring;
For so the holy sages once did sing,
That he our deadly forfeit should release,
And with his Father work us a perpetual peace.
II
That glorious Form, that Light unsufferable,
And that far-beaming blaze of Majesty,
Wherwith he wont at Heav’ns high Councel-Table,
To sit the midst of Trinal Unity,
He laid aside; and here with us to be,
Forsook the Courts of everlasting Day,
And chose with us a darksom House of mortal Clay.
III
Say Heav’nly Muse, shall not thy sacred vein
Afford a present to the Infant God?
Hast thou no vers, no hymn, or solemn strein,
To welcom him to this his new abode,
Now while the Heav’n by the Suns team untrod,
Hath took no print of the approching light,
And all the spangled host keep watch in squadrons bright?
IV
See how from far upon the Eastern rode
The Star-led Wisards haste with odours sweet,
O run, prevent them with thy humble ode,
And lay it lowly at his blessed feet;
Have thou the honour first, thy Lord to greet,
And joyn thy voice unto the Angel Quire,
From out his secret Altar toucht with hallow’d fire.
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