FEATURES

HIGH GEAR/JULY 1977

PAGE 14

The Marriage of True Minds

Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,

That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wand'ring bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom: If this be error and upon me proved,

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Farewell! Thou Art too Dear

Farewell! Thou art too dear for my possessing, And like enough thou know'st thy estimate: The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing; My bonds in thee are all determinate. For how do I hold thee but by thy granting? And for that riches where is my deserving? The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting, And so my patent back again is swerving.

Thyself thou gav'st, thy own worth then not knowing, Or me, to whom thou gav'st it, else mistaking; So thy great gift, upon misprison growing, Comes home again, on better judgement making. Thus have I had thee, as a dream doth flatter In sleep a king; but waking, no such matter.

-SHAKESPEARE

LORD BYRON

-SHAKESPEARE

Not Marble, nor the Gilded Monuments

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme; But you shall shine more bright in these contents Than unswept stone besmear'd with sluttish time. When wasteful war shall statues overturn, And broils root out the work of masonry,

Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn The living record of your memory.

'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity

Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room Even in the eyes of all posterity

That wears this world out to the ending doom. So, till the judgment that yourself arise, You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes.

-SHAKESPEARE

When in Disgrace with Fortune

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself, and curse my fate. Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possest, Desiring this man's art and that man's scope, With what I most enjoy contended least;

Yet in these thoughts myself almost depising Haply I think on thee: and then my state, Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth, sings hymns at Heaven's gate; For thy sweet love rememb'red such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with kings. -SHAKESPEARE

One of Their Gods

Under the Greenwood Tree

Under the greenwood tree

CONSTANTIN CAVAFY

When one of them passed through the market

Who loves to lie with me

of Seleukeia, at about the hour of dusk, like a tall youth of perfect beauty,

with the joy of the inviolate in his eyes,

with his black and perfumed hair,

the passers-by would gaze at him,

and one would ask the other if he knew him,

and if he were a Greek from Syria, or a stranger. But some who looked with greater care would understand and move to one side; and while he was lost beneath the colonnade, among the shadows and the lights of evening, going towards the quarter that lives only at night, with orgies and debauchery, with every kind of drunkenness and lust,

they would wonder which of Them it could be, and for what suspicious pleasure

he had come down into the streets of Seleukeia from the Venerated, Most-Honoured Mansions.

And turn his merry note

Unto the sweet bird's throat,

Come hither, come hither, come hither:

Here shall he see

No enemy

But winter and rough weather.

Who doth ambition shun,

And loves to live i' the sun,

Seeking the food he eats,

And pleased with what he gets,

Come hither, come hither, come hither:

Here shall he see

No enemy

But winter and rough weather.

FRIEDRICH HOLDERLIN

-SHAKESPEARE

-C.P. CAVAFY

TO ZIMMER

About a man I say, if he's virtuous

And wise, what can he lack? Is

there anything

Could satisfy a soul? Is there a blade of corn, one

Vine grown on earth with a fruit so mellow

That it could nourish him? What I mean is this: A friend quite often is the beloved, and art

Is much. Dear fellow, I'll tell you the

truth now:

Daedalus' spirit is yours, the forest's.

-HOLDERLIN

So, We'll Go No More A-Roving

So, we'll go no more a-roving So late into the night, Though the heart be still as loving, And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath, And the soul wears out the breast, And the heart must pause to breathe, And Love itself have restfi

Though the night was made for loving,

And the day returns too soon, Yet we'll go no more a-roving By the light of the moon.

-BYRON