POEMS AND PROSE

I have dreamed of you so much that you are no longer real.
Is there still time for me to reach your breathing body, to kiss your mouth and make
your dear voice come alive again?

I have dreamed of you so much that my arms, grown used to being crossed on my
chest as I hugged your shadow, would perhaps not bend to the shape of your body.
For faced with the real form of what has haunted me and governed me for so many
days and years, I would surely become a shadow.

O scales of feeling.

I have dreamed of you so much that surely there is no more time for me to wake up.
I sleep on my feet prey to all the forms of life and love, and you, the only one who ounts for me today, I can no more touch your face and lips than touch the lips and face of some passerby.

I have dreamed of you so much, have walked so much, talked so much, slept so much
with your phantom, that perhaps the only thing left for me is to become a phantom
among phantoms, a shadow a hundred times more shadow than the shadow the
moves and goes on moving, brightly, over the sundial of your life.

Robert Desnos

Robert Desnos (1900-1945), was a French poet who played a key role in the surrealistic movement of his day.

The last photograph of Robert Desnos, taken shortly before he died in a concentration camp.

Perhaps the poem was written here.

Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is regarded as one of the finest lyric poets in the English language.

It may be a little too sickly for some.

I ARISE FROM DREAMS OF THEE

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 odors fall
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!

O, lift me from the grass!
I die, I faint, I fall!
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!

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Notes: The illustration is a painting by Joseph Severn of Shelley writing "Prometheus Unbound".

Read about Shelley's early death at: http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/shelley.html

SONG OF A DREAM

Once in the dream of a night I stood
Lone in the light of a magical wood,
Soul-deep in visions that poppy-like sprang;
And spirits of Truth were the birds that sang,
And spirits of Love were the stars that glowed,
And spirits of Peace were the streams that flowed
In that magical wood in the land of sleep.

Lone in the light of that magical grove,
I felt the stars of the spirits of Love
Gather and gleam round my delicate youth,
And I heard the song of the spirits of Truth;
To quench my longing I bent me low
By the streams of the spirits of Peace that flow
In that magical wood in the land of sleep.

Sarojini Naidu

"Sarojini Naidu (1879 – 1949), also known by the sobriquet Bharatiya Kokila (The Nightingale of India), was a child prodigy, freedom fighter, and poet.

On August 15, 1947, with the independence of India, Naidu became the Governor of the United Provinces (presently Uttar Pradesh), India's first woman governor and she died in office following a heart attack on March 2, 1949"

This poem, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, is a little too long and over-romantic for my taste, but it is perfectly fittIng to this time of the year.

DREAM-LOVE

Young Love lies sleeping
In May-time of the year,
Among the lilies,
Lapped in the tender light:
White lambs come grazing,
White doves come building there:
And round about him
The May-bushes are white.

Soft moss the pillow
For oh, a softer cheek;
Broad leaves cast shadow
Upon the heavy eyes:
There wind and waters
Grow lulled and scarcely speak;
There twilight lingers
The longest in the skies.

Young Love lies dreaming;
But who shall tell the dream?
A perfect sunlight
On rustling forest tips;
Or perfect moonlight
Upon a rippling stream;
Or perfect silence,
Or song of cherished lips.

Burn odours round him
To fill the drowsy air;
Weave silent dances
Around him to and fro;
For oh, in waking
The sights are no so fair,
And song and silence
Are not like these below.

Young Love lies dreaming
Till summer days are gone, -
Dreaming and drowsing
Away to perfect sleep:
He sees the beauty
Sun hath not looked upon,
And tastes the fountain
Unutterably deep.

Him perfect music
Doth hush unto his rest,
And through the pauses
The perfect silence calms:
Oh, poor the voices
Of earth from east to west,
And poor earth's stillness
Between her stately palms.

Young Love lies drowsing
Away to poppied death;
Cool shadows deepen
Across the sleeping face:
So fails the summer
With warm delicious breath;
And what hath autumn
To give us in its place?

Draw close the curtains
Of branched evergreen;
Change cannot touch them
With fading fingers sere:
Here first the violets
Perhaps with bud unseen,
And a dove, may be,
Return to nestle here.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Another poem about dreaming from Emily Dickinson.

It is often reproduced, but I don't like that punctuation - with dashes - but perhaps it represents 'flashes' of dreams.

We dream -- it is good we are dreaming --
It would hurt us -- were we awake --
But since it is playing -- kill us,
And we are playing -- shriek --

What harm? Men die -- externally --
It is a truth -- of Blood --
But we -- are dying in Drama --
And Drama -- is never dead --

Cautious -- We jar each other --
And either -- open the eyes --
Lest the Phantasm -- prove the Mistake --
And the livid Surprise

Cool us to Shafts of Granite --
With just an Age -- and Name --
And perhaps a phrase in Egyptian --
It's prudenter -- to dream --

Emily Dickinson

I am not sure about "prudenter". Is that a proper word in English? I think not, although I have met it in Latin.

Perhaps I may suggest that that last line should read: "It's prudent perhaps to dream" or "It's better perhaps to dream".

John Henry Newton (1725 – 1807) was an Englishman, Anglican clergyman and former slave-ship captain.

He was the author of many hymns, including "Amazing Grace".

(Read more at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Newton)

ON DREAMING

When slumber seals our weary eyes,
The busy fancy wakeful keeps;
The scenes which then before us rise,
Prove something in us never sleeps.

As in another world we seem,
A new creation of our own,
All appears real, though a dream,
And all familiar, though unknown.

Sometimes the mind beholds again
The past day's business in review,
Resumes the pleasure or the pain;
And sometimes all we meet is new.

What schemes we form, what pains we take!
We fight, we run, we fly, we fall;
But all is ended when we wake,
We scarcely then a trace recall.

But though our dreams are often wild,
Like clouds before the driving storm;
Yet some important may be styl'd,
Sent to admonish or inform.

What mighty agents have access,
What friends from heav'n, or foes from hell,
Our minds to comfort or distress,
When we are sleeping, who can tell?

One thing, at least, and 'tis enough,
We learn from this surprising fact;
Our dreams afford sufficient proof,
The soul, without the flesh, can act.

This life, which mortals so esteem,
That many choose it for their all,
They will confess, was but a dream,
When 'waken'd by death's awful call.

John Newton

Today I am returning to 'real' poetry, with this from Edgar Allan Poe - still on the theme of 'Dreams'.

Virginia Poe

A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

Edgar Allan Poe

Poe married his 13-year old cousin, Virginia Clemm and this poem was inspired by her early death.

The background is best explained by Poe himself in his letter to George Eveleth in January 1848...

'Six years ago a wife, whom I loved as no man ever loved before, ruptured a blood vessel in singing. Her life was despaired of. I took leave of her forever and underwent all the agonies of her death. She recovered partially and I again hoped. At the end of a year the vessel broke again. I went through precisely the same scene....Then again-again-and even once again, at varying intervals. Each time I felt all the agonies of her death-and at each accession of her disorder I loved her more dearly and clung to her life with more desperate pertinacity. But I am constitutionally sensitive-nervous in a very unusual degree. I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity. During these fits of absolute unconsciousness, I drank-God only knows how often or how much. As a matter of course, my enemies referred the insanity to the drink, rather than the drink to the insanity.... It was the horrible never-ending oscillation between hope and despair, which I could _not_ longer have endured without total loss of reason. In the death of what was my life, then, I received a new, but-O God! -how melancholy an existence! '

Actually, she didn't 'burst a blood vessel' technically, but died of TB, which she fought for five years.

(Notes from 'PoemHunter)

P.S. For those of you who love poetry, this BBC website is well worth a visit:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/poetryseason/

Today I am in the mood for music so, instead of a poem, I am posting just the first two verses of a song.

I am leaving someone else to sing the rest to you.

Click on the YouTube link and enjoy.

Stars shining bright above you
Night breezes seem to whisper I love you
Birds singing in the sycamore tree
Dream a little dream of me

Say nighty-night and kiss me
Just hold me tight and tell me you'll miss me
While I'm alone and blue as can be
Dream a little dream of me . . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-xzfwDAn1I

Following yesterday's poem by Charlotte Bronte, I am moving on to her younger sister Anne, who here expresses her longing for a child.

DREAMS

While on my lonely couch I lie,
I seldom feel myself alone,
For fancy fills my dreaming eye
With scenes and pleasures of its own.
Then I may cherish at my breast
An infant's form beloved and fair,
May smile and soothe it into rest
With all a Mother's fondest care.

How sweet to feel its helpless form
Depending thus on me alone!
And while I hold it safe and warm
What bliss to think it is my own!

And glances then may meet my eyes
That daylight never showed to me;
What raptures in my bosom rise,
Those earnest looks of love to see,

To feel my hand so kindly prest,
To know myself beloved at last,
To think my heart has found a rest,
My life of solitude is past!

But then to wake and find it flown,
The dream of happiness destroyed,
To find myself unloved, alone,
What tongue can speak the dreary void?

A heart whence warm affections flow,
Creator, thou hast given to me,
And am I only thus to know
How sweet the joys of love would be?

Anne Bronte

Anne Bronte died, aged 29,
unmarried and childless.

Charlotte Bronte is best known for her novels, particularly "Jane Eyre" but, like her sisters, she also wrote considerable poetry.

Here she tells us how to enjoy life, whatever the setbacks.

LIFE

LIFE, believe, is not a dream
So dark as sages say;
Oft a little morning rain
Foretells a pleasant day.
Sometimes there are clouds of gloom,
But these are transient all;
If the shower will make the roses bloom,
O why lament its fall?
Rapidly, merrily,
Life's sunny hours flit by,
Gratefully, cheerily
Enjoy them as they fly!
What though Death at times steps in,
And calls our Best away?
What though sorrow seems to win,
O'er hope, a heavy sway?
Yet Hope again elastic springs,
Unconquered, though she fell;
Still buoyant are her golden wings,
Still strong to bear us well.
Manfully, fearlessly,
The day of trial bear,
For gloriously, victoriously,
Can courage quell despair!

Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855)

(From "Poems By Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell" 1848. The pseudonyms of Charlotte, Anne, and Emily Bronte.)

DREAMS IN THE DUSK

DREAMS in the dusk,
Only dreams closing the day
And with the day's close going back
To the gray things, the dark things,
The far, deep things of dreamland.

Dreams, only dreams in the dusk,
Only the old remembered pictures
Of lost days when the day's loss
Wrote in tears the heart's loss.

Tears and loss and broken dreams
May find your heart at dusk.

Carl Sandburg

Lawrence

All people dream, but not equally.
Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their mind,
Wake in the morning to find that it was vanity.

But the dreamers of the day are dangerous people,
For they dream their dreams with open eyes,
And make them come true.

D.H. Lawrence

THE DREAM

Love, if I weep it will not matter,
And if you laugh I shall not care;
Foolish am I to think about it,
But it is good to feel you there.

Love, in my sleep I dreamed of waking,—
White and awful the moonlight reached
Over the floor, and somewhere, somewhere,
There was a shutter loose,—it screeched!

Swung in the wind,—and no wind blowing!—
I was afraid, and turned to you,
Put out my hand to you for comfort,—
And you were gone! Cold, cold as dew,

Under my hand the moonlight lay!
Love, if you laugh I shall not care,
But if I weep it will not matter,—
Ah, it is good to feel you there!

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Langston Hughes (1902 - 1967), often referred to as the 'Poet Laureate of the Negro Race', was an American poet, novelist, playwright, short story writer.

He is best-known for his work during the 'Harlem Renaissance' (also known as the 'Black Literary Renaissance' and the 'New Negro Movement') - the flowering of African American cultural and intellectual life during the 1920s and 1930s. He was a foremost figure in the movement for black civil rights and the search for black identity.

In 1926 Hughes published in 'The Nation' what would be considered the manifesto for him and his contemporaries:

"The younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame.

We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain free within ourselves."

DREAM VARIATIONS

To fling my arms wide
In some place of the sun,
To whirl and to dance
Till the white day is done.
Then rest at cool evening
Beneath a tall tree
While night comes on gently,
Dark like me-
That is my dream!

To fling my arms wide
In the face of the sun,
Dance! Whirl! Whirl!
Till the quick day is done.
Rest at pale evening...
A tall, slim tree...
Night coming tenderly
Black like me.

Langston Hughes

Here is a poem from one of my favourite romantic poets, Sara Teasdale. I shall say more about her in a week or so, when I shall begin posting a series of poems on the subject "Who would fardels bear?", which will be the theme of my poetry group presentation next year.

HOUSE OF DREAMS

You took my empty dreams
And filled them every one
With tenderness and nobleness,
April and the sun.

The old empty dreams
Where my thoughts would throng
Are far too full of happiness
To even hold a song.

Oh, the empty dreams were dim
And the empty dreams were wide,
They were sweet and shadowy houses
Where my thoughts could hide.

But you took my dreams away
And you made them all come true --
My thoughts have no place now to play,
And nothing now to do.

Sara Teasdale

VITAE SUMMA BREVIS SPEM NOS VETAT INCOHARE LONGHAM
(The brief sum of life forbids us the hope of enduring long - Horace)

They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
Love and desire and hate:
I think they have no portion in us after
We pass the gate.
They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream.

Ernest Dowson

Langston Hughes (1902 - 1967) was an African-American writer and poet.

I first posted this poem here in January 2006

DREAMS

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

Langston Hughes

NOTE: COMING SOON - THE BBC POETRY SEASON

The BBC Poetry Season celebrates the far-reaching and compelling world of poetry, with a season of content across television, radio and online. Some of the nation's best-loved writers and celebrities, including Simon Schama, Armando Iannucci, Sheila Hancock and Griff Rhys Jones, share their passion for poetry and explore the power of verse and how it is interwoven into the fabric of the nation.

Online you'll be able to discover the world of poetry, explore some of the highlights of 60 years of the BBC's archive and watch brand new films with celebrities from film, TV and music discussing their own passion for poetry. You can also find a poem to suit your mood, watch short films on how to get the most out of reading, writing and performing poetry, as well as find out about live poetry events.

Man Dreaming (Tanya Kozin)

LONGING

Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again!
For then the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.

Come, as thou cam'st a thousand times,
A messenger from radiant climes,
And smile on thy new world, and be
As kind to all the rest as me.

Or, as thou never cam'st in sooth,
Come now, and let me dream it truth;
And part my hair, and kiss my brow,
And say: My love! why suff'rest thou?

Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again!
For then the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.

Matthew Arnold
(From 'Faded Leaves')

Petronius (A.D. 66)

TE uigilans oculis, animo te nocte requiro,
uicta iacent solo cum mea membra toro.
uidi ego me tecum falsa sub imagine somni:
somnia tu uinces si mihi uera uenis.

Picasso

WE ARE THE MUSIC-MAKERS

We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams.
World-losers and world-forsakers,
Upon whom the pale moon gleams;
Yet we are the movers and shakers,
Of the world forever, it seems.

With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world's great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire's glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure
Can trample an empire down.

We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth;
And o'erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world's worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.

Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy

Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy (1844 - 1881) was a British poet, born in London to Irish parents.

I am still at the movies.

During the week I was watching "The Best 100 Musicals Of All Time".

"Grease" was Number One, but in sixth place was "Singin' In The Rain" and for today's 'dream song' I have chosen this from that show::

DREAM OF YOU

All I do the whole night through
Is dream of you
And with the dawn
I still go on dreamin' of you
You're every thought
You're everything
You're every song I ever sing
Summer, winter, autumn and spring.
And were there more
Than twenty-four hours a day,
They'd be spent in sweet content
Dreamin' away
When skies are gray
Skies are blue
Morning, noon and nighttime too
All I do the whole day through
Is dream of you...
All I do is dream of you...
I keep dreamin' of you
You're every thought
You're everything
You're every song I ever sing
Summer, winter, autumn and spring.
And were there more
Than twenty-four hours a day,
They'd be spent in sweet content
Dreamin' away
When skies are gray
Skies are blue
Morning, noon and nighttime too,
All I do the whole day through.

There are several clips from the film on YouTube, but I think you ladies may prefer this gentler interpretation by the young Norwegian performer, Alexander Rybak.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7x2W0MKu-0

Although Ryback, aged 22, is an accomplished violinist, you will note that for that song he only 'plucked' his instrument.

Take a look at him playing in a more traditional manner - the haunting "Song from a Secret Garden" at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LTZdZDEjTs

Incidentally, Alexander is appearing for Norway in the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest next Saturday, performing his own composition "Fairytale" - but I don't particularly like the performance.

It will be interesting to see how he is placed.

A departure today from formal poetry.

Those of you who have looked at my profile will know that I was born in 1933 - a vintage year!

There was some fabulous music around then and into the 40s - and during my search for poems about 'Dreams', I suddenly remembered this song from the film "Sitting Pretty" (1933).

I may have had it on vinyl on my wind-up gramophone when I was a kid and the melody resurfaces from time to time in flashes of nostalgia.

Did you ever see a dream walking?
Well, I did.
Did you ever hear a dream talking?
Well, I did.

Did you see heaven right in your arms,
Saying, "I love you, I do!"
Well, the dream that was walking,
And the dream that was talking,
The heaven in my arms was you.

The song was recorded by many famous artists, including Bing Crosby.

However, the clip below features Nick Lucas. the "Crooning Troubadour" and was made in 1954.

Please play - and enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRD8fdMawwA&feature=related

Today, another of my favourite 'Dream' poems - this time from W.B. Yeats.

CLOTHS OF HEAVEN

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

W.B.Yeats

I am abandoning Carl Sandburg and moving on to a short series of poems about 'Dreams'.

The first is one of my favourite passages from a Shakespeare play.

Prospero:

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

William Shakespeare
(The Tempest Act 4, scene 1)

Something different from Carl Sandburg

SOILED DOVE

Let us be honest; the lady was not a harlot until she married a corporation lawyer who picked her from a Ziegfeld chorus.
Before then she never took anybody's money and paid for her silk stockings out of what she earned singing and dancing.
She loved one man and he loved six women and the game was changing her looks, calling for more and more massage money and high coin for the beauty doctors.
Now she drives a long, underslung motor car all by herself, reads in the day's papers what her husband is doing to the inter-state commerce commission, requires a larger corsage from year to year, and wonders sometimes how one man is coming along with six women.

Carl Sandburg

They all want to play Hamlet.
They have not exactly seen their fathers killed
Nor their mothers in a frame-up to kill,
Nor an Ophelia dying with a dust gagging the heart,
Not exactly the spinning circles of singing golden spiders,
Not exactly this have they got at nor the meaning of flowers--
O flowers, flowers slung by a dancing girl--in the saddest play the inkfish, Shakespeare, ever wrote;
Yet they all want to play Hamlet because it is sad like all actors are sad and to stand by an open grave with a joker's skull in the hand and then to say over slow and say over slow wise, keen, beautiful words masking a heart that's breaking, breaking,
This is something that calls and calls to their blood.
They are acting when they talk about it and they know it is acting to be particular about it and yet: They all want to play Hamlet.

Carl Sandburg

THE RED SON

I love your faces I saw the many years
I drank your milk and filled my mouth
With your home talk, slept in your house
And was one of you.
But a fire burns in my heart.
Under the ribs where pulses thud
And flitting between bones of skull
Is the push, the endless mysterious command,
Saying:
"I leave you behind--
You for the little hills and the years all alike,
You with your patient cows and the old houses
Protected from the rain,
I am going away and I never come back to you;
Crags and high rough places call me,
Great places of death
Where men go empty handed
And pass over smiling
To the star-drift on the horizon rim.
My last whisper shall be alone, unknown;
I shall go to the city and fight against it,
And make it give me passwords
Of luck and love, women worth dying for,
And money.

I go where you wist not of
Nor I nor any man nor woman.
I only know I go to storms
Grappling against things wet and naked."
There is no pity of it and no blame.
None of us is in the wrong.
After all it is only this:
You for the little hills and I go away.

Carl Sandburg

THE ROAD AND THE END

I shall foot it
Down the roadway in the dusk,
Where shapes of hunger wander
And the fugitives of pain go by.
I shall foot it
In the silence of the morning,
See the night slur into dawn,
Hear the slow great winds arise
Where tall trees flank the way
And shoulder toward the sky.

The broken boulders by the road
Shall not commemorate my ruin.
Regret shall be the gravel under foot.
I shall watch for
Slim birds swift of wing
That go where wind and ranks of thunder
Drive the wild processionals of rain.

The dust of the traveled road
Shall touch my hands and face.

Carl Sandburg

MANUFACTURED GODS

They put up big wooden gods.
Then they burned the big wooden gods
And put up brass gods and
Changing their minds suddenly
Knocked down the brass gods and put up
A doughface god with gold earrings.
The poor mutts, the pathetic slant heads,
They didn't know a little tin god
Is as good as anything in the line of gods
Nor how a little tin god answers prayer
And makes rain and brings luck
The same as a big wooden god or a brass
God or a doughface god with golden
Earrings.

Carl Sandburg