Carl Sandburg - Joy

If you've ever thought about fog as coming in on "little cat feet," chances are, you've read Carl Sandburg's poetry. He won two Pulitzer prizes, and lived in Michigan for a short time with his wife and three children.

Joy

Let a joy keep you.
Reach out your hands
And take it when it runs by,
As the Apache dancer
Clutches his woman.
I have seen them
Live long and laugh loud,
Sent on singing, singing,
Smashed to the heart
Under the ribs
With a terrible love.
Joy always,
Joy everywhere—
Let joy kill you!
Keep away from the little deaths.

William Shakespeare - Sonnet CI

For the last day of National Poetry Month, we give you a sonnet by one of the world's most famous poets and playwrights, William Shakespeare.

Sonnet CI

O truant Muse what shall be thy amends
For thy neglect of truth in beauty dy'd?
Both truth and beauty on my love depends;
So dost thou too, and therein dignified.
Make answer Muse: wilt thou not haply say,
"Truth needs no colour, with his colour fix'd;
Beauty no pencil, beauty's truth to lay;
But best is best, if never intermix'd"?
Because he needs no praise, wilt thou be dumb?
Excuse not silence so, for't lies in thee
To make him much outlive a gilded tomb
And to be prais'd of ages yet to be.
Then do thy office, Muse; I teach thee how
To make him seem long hence as he shows now.

Henry Lawson - The Things We Dare Not Tell

Henry Lawson is an Australian poet, writer, and balladist, often called Australia's best.

The Things We Dare Not Tell

The fields are fair in autumn yet, and the sun's still shining there,
But we bow our heads and we brood and fret, because of the masks we wear;
Or we nod and smile the social while, and we say we're doing well,
But we break our hearts, oh, we break our hearts! for the things we must not tell.

There's the old love wronged ere the new was won, there's the light of long ago;
There's the cruel lie that we suffer for, and the public must not know.
So we go through life with a ghastly mask, and we're doing fairly well,
While they break our hearts, oh, they kill our hearts! do the things we must not tell.

We see but pride in a selfish breast, while a heart is breaking there;
Oh, the world would be such a kindly world if all men's hearts lay bare!
We live and share the living lie, we are doing very well,
While they eat our hearts as the years go by, do the things we dare not tell.

We bow us down to a dusty shrine, or a temple in the East,
Or we stand and drink to the world-old creed, with the coffins at the feast;
We fight it down, and we live it down, or we bear it bravely well,
But the best men die of a broken heart for the things they cannot tell.

Outside of a Dog, #44

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read." - Groucho Marx.

Last week, we looked at some great titles about faeries for young adults. This week, we’ll take a peek into some kids’ books about the fanciful flying fae.

The Spiderwick Chronicles: The Field Guide – Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi

A series of five short books for younger readers, The Spiderwick Chronicles follow twin boys Jared and Simon, and their older sister Mallory as they move to a new house after their parents divorce. They find their ancestors’ house to be filled with fairies of all shapes, sizes, and stories, and the woods beyond, as well. There’s an element of danger, though, because there’s a reason why the fairies are tailing the Grace children…

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The Fairy Painting – Stacey DuFord

An easy-reader book with hand-painted pictures by local writer DuFord, inspired in part by the Flat Stanley books.

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The Fairy Rebel – Lynne Reid Banks

While Lynne Reid Banks is more well-known for her “Indian in the Cupboard” trilogy, this is a childhood favorite. Jan and Charlie, a young married couple, wish for a child, and fairy Tiki makes it happen; unfortunately, helping out humans with fairy magic is against the rules of the cruel Fairy Queen. Find out what happens to Jan, Charlie, Tiki, and the Queen when rules are broken.

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The Moorchild – Eloise McGraw

Changelings are children who are “swapped” with fairies and taken away to live among the “Folk.” This story tells of a young girl discovering she’s a changeling, and how she tries to find the human child she was switched with.

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There’s also the Fairy Realm series, the Disney Fairies series, and the Rainbow Magic series.

Next week: Faerie books for adults!

George Santayana - O World, Thou Choosest Not

Whether you know it or not, you've probably heard of George Santayana - or at least, one of his often-misquoted aphorisms: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

He was a Spanish citizen and American man of letters, as well as a poet and essayist.

O World, thou choosest not

O world, thou choosest not the better part!

It is not wisdom to be only wise,

And on the inward vision close the eyes,

But it is wisdom to believe the heart.

Columbus found a world, and had no chart,

Save one that faith deciphered in the skies;

To trust the soul’s invincible surmise

Was all his science and his only art.

Our knowledge is a torch of smoky pine

That lights the pathway but one step ahead

Across a void of mystery and dread.

Bid, then, the tender light of faith to shine

By which alone the mortal heart is led

Unto the thinking of the thought divine.

Percy Bysshe Shelley - Love's Philosophy

A Romantic-era poet and playwright, Percy Bysshe Shelley took Mary Shelley (of Frankenstein fame) as his second wife, after leaving his first wife and child.

Love's Philosophy

The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single,
All things by a law divine
In one another's being mingle—
Why not I with thine?

See the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdain'd its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea—
What are all these kissings worth,
If thou kiss not me?

Oscar Wilde - Italia

Author of plays and poems both sensational and devotional, Oscar Wilde is likely best-known for his novel "The Picture of Dorian Gray," about a vain young man and the lengths he goes to to enjoy the hedonist's life. Dorian Gray is the only published novel by Wilde.

Italia

Italia! thou art fallen, though with sheen

Of battle-spears thy clamorous armies stride

From the north Alps to the Sicilian tide!

Ay! fallen, though the nations hail thee Queen

Because rich gold in every town is seen,

And on thy sapphire lake in tossing pride

Of wind-filled vans thy myriad galleys ride

Beneath one flag of red and white and green.

O Fair and Strong! O Strong and Fair in vain!

Look southward where Rome’s desecrated town

Lies mourning for her God-anointed King!

Look heaven-ward! shall God allow this thing?

Nay! but some flame-girt Raphael shall come down,

And smite the Spoiler with the sword of pain.

VENICE.

The Picture of Dorian Gray
Fic Wilde WCV

The works; including poems, novels, plays, essays, fairy tales and dialogues
820.8 W WAM

Poems and fairy tales of Oscar Wilde
820.8 W WDB

Happy Prince; the complete fairy stories of Oscar Wilde
JFic Wilde WMB

Christina Rossetti - Song

Yesterday we featured pre-Raphaelite artist and poet Dante Rossetti. Today, we're looking at a poem from his sister, Christina Rossetti, known for her love poems and often quoted (in episodes of Doctor Who, the Alfred Hitchcock Hour, and Dark Shadows).

Song

When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.

I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain;
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.

Dante Rossetti - The Sea-Limits

A painter, poet, and illustrator born in London, Dante Gabriel Rossetti is known for his portraits and his famous sister - poet Christina Rossetti.

The Sea-Limits

Consider the sea’s listless chime:
Time’s self it is, made audible,—
The murmur of the earth’s own shell.
Secret continuance sublime
Is the sea’s end: our sight may pass
No furlong farther. Since time was,
This sound hath told the lapse of time.

No quiet, which is death’s,—it hath
The mournfulness of ancient life,
Enduring always at dull strife.
As the world’s heart of rest and wrath,
Its painful pulse is in the sands.
Last utterly, the whole sky stands,
Grey and not known, along its path.

Listen alone beside the sea,
Listen alone among the woods;
Those voices of twin solitudes
Shall have one sound alike to thee:
Hark where the murmurs of thronged men
Surge and sink back and surge again,—
Still the one voice of wave and tree.

Gather a shell from the strown beach
And listen at its lips: they sigh
The same desire and mystery,
The echo of the whole sea’s speech
And all mankind is thus at heart
Not anything but what thou art:
And Earth, Sea, Man, are all in each.

Rudyard Kipling - Mowgli's Brothers

Author of famous stories like The Jungle Book and Just So Stories. Here's a poem from the original Jungle Book, where you'll also find the classic story of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi.

Mowgli's Brothers

Now Chil the Kite brings home the night
That Mang the Bat sets free,
The herds are shut in byre and hut,
For loosed till dawn are we.
This is the hour of pride and power,
Talon and tush and claw.
Oh, hear the call! Good hunting all
That keep the Jungle Law!


Kipling: A selection of his stories and poems 820.8 K WCV WMB WDB WAM

The Jungle Book JFic Kipling WMB WAM

Robert Browning - Meeting at Night

While we presented this poet's wife - Elizabeth Barrett Browning - earlier this month, we now offer one of Robert Browning's love poems. Known more for dramatic monologues than for poetry during his life, we now know him as being partially responsible for/the subject of his wife's sonnet number 43, included in the "Sonnets from the Portuguese" collection.

Meeting at Night

I

The grey sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed in the slushy sand.

II

Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, thro' its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!

Outside of a Dog, #43

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read." - Groucho Marx.

We featured realistic YA fiction last week, and this week, we’re making quite a jump – to YA books about the fabled creatures called faeries (or fairies, or fey.)

Few fantastical beings are so good at being heroes and villains – sometimes even at the same time. Here are a few of our favorites:

Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale – Holly Black

The first in a loosely-related trilogy, Tithe introduces the reader to Kaye, a 16-year old girl who travels with her mother’s rock band. Until, of course, Kaye discovers that she’s a pixie, and a pawn in between the two faerie Courts, one of which holds control of the Knight Roiben, with whom Kaye has a connection with. There are two other novels in the Modern Faerie Tales set – Valiant, and Ironside. Check out the author’s website, and see some fan art of Kaye, Roiben, and others.

YA Fic Black WCV WAM

The Blue Girl – Charles de Lint

Another novel about growing up and away from your past is The Blue Girl, by Great Lakes Great Books Award winner Charles de Lint. Imogene has just moved the to town of Newford, hoping to escape and reinvent herself from the gang girl to someone who gets into a little less trouble, and maybe tries a little harder at school. She makes friends – and enemies – both real and incorporeal (the school’s resident ghost has a crush on her), all while the faeries of the shadow world are trying to rebel. De Lint has written over 60 books, many of them from his Newford series. Check out his website for more information.

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Wicked Lovely – Melissa Marr

We’ve profiled this book before – the story of Aislinn, who can see faeries, and her entrance into the fight between the winter and summer courts of Faerie. There’s also a sequel – Ink Exchange – and an upcoming third book about Aislinn, called Fragile Eternity, which just came out today.

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(Also available in downloadable e-audiobook format)

Wintersmith – Terry Pratchett

Pratchett, who writes about Discworld and the Wee Free Men, revisits witch-in-training Tiffany Aching in this novel. Tiffany, unfortunately, interrupts the Dance of the Seasons, and finds herself a target of the elemental spirit of Winter. She’ll need all the help she can get in this third story.

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Artemis Fowl – Eoin Colfer

Now numbering six books (the sixth is The Time Paradox, released last year), the adventures of boy-genius and millionaire Artemis Fowl, started here, in 2001. The boy has lost his father, and his mother stays in bed all day, paying no mind to little “Arty.” So what else should an heir to a fortune with time to spare and a personal bodyguard do? Travel the world looking for the secrets of the fairies, of course! This book has also been made into a graphic novel, with plans for the other books to follow.

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Join us next week when we profile fairy books for children!

Elizabeth Stoddard - A Summer Night

A poet, writer, and something of freedom fighter, Elizabeth Stoddard was certainly prolific. While her novels tended to mesh romance with the quest for equality between a woman's needs, desires, and social standing and taboos, her poetry was almost always lyrical.

A Summer Night

I FEEL the breath of the summer night,
Aromatic fire:
The trees, the vines, the flowers are astir
With tender desire.

The white moths flutter about the lamp,
Enamoured with light;
And a thousand creatures softly sing
A song to the night!

But I am alone, and how can I sing
Praises to thee?
Come, Night! unveil the beautiful soul
That waiteth for me.

Anne Brontë /Acton Bell - A Reminiscence

Finally, a poem by the youngest of least known of the Brontë sisters, Anne, who wrote poetry under the pen name "Acton Bell."

A Reminiscence

Yes, thou art gone ! and never more
Thy sunny smile shall gladden me ;
But I may pass the old church door,
And pace the floor that covers thee.

May stand upon the cold, damp stone,
And think that, frozen, lies below
The lightest heart that I have known,
The kindest I shall ever know.

Yet, though I cannot see thee more,
'Tis still a comfort to have seen ;
And though thy transient life is o'er,
'Tis sweet to think that thou hast been ;

To think a soul so near divine,
Within a form so angel fair,
United to a heart like thine,
Has gladdened once our humble sphere.

Charlotte Brontë - Speak of the North!

Continuing from Saturday's poem by Emily Brontë, here is a selection by her sister, Charlotte.

Speak of the North!

Speak of the North! A lonely moor
Silent and dark and tractless swells,
The waves of some wild streamlet pour
Hurriedly through its ferny dells.

Profoundly still the twilight air,
Lifeless the landscape; so we deem
Till like a phantom gliding near
A stag bends down to drink the stream.

And far away a mountain zone,
A cold, white waste of snow-drifts lies,
And one star, large and soft and lone,
Silently lights the unclouded skies.

Emily Brontë - 'Tis Moonlight

The Brontë sisters are best known for their now-classic novels, like Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. All three sisters wrote as poets first, but found little success writing under pseudonyms, and so, returned to prose.

'Tis Moonlight

'Tis moonlight, summer moonlight,
All soft and still and fair;
The solemn hour of midnight
Breathes sweet thoughts everywhere,

But most where trees are sending
Their breezy boughs on high,
Or stooping low are lending
A shelter from the sky.

And there in those wild bowers
A lovely form is laid;
Green grass and dew-steeped flowers
Wave gently round her head.

Author Profile: Jim Butcher

Writer of the gritty and fantastic wizard-noir novels The Dresden Files, author Jim Butcher is currently on tour to promote the eleventh book in the series – Turn Coat. Also upcoming is the sixth (and final) Codex Alera novel, First Lord’s Fury, a series he wrote after being inspired by high-fantasy greats like J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. If you enjoy humor, hard-boiled noir mystery, (modern) damsels in distress, and settings both familiar and bizarre, try one of these novels!

Storm Front: A Novel of the Dresden Files

Harry Dresden, Wizard. The only wizard in the Chicago phone books, in fact. No love potions, endless purses, or other entertainments. The first book in the series, this novel throws the reader into the adventure of a wizard-for-hire, who crosses paths with beasts human and not-so-human on a nightly basis.

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Turn Coat: A Novel of the Dresden Files

Just released is this 11^th novel in the Dresden Files series. Harry, no longer the single, sort of anarchic wizard of Chicago, is actually in a position of power – both for the White Council and for his own Paranet group of the magically gifted. Of course, in Dresden’s life, nothing stays calm and in control for very long. If you’ve never read the Dresden Files, this can be a great book to throw you head over heels into the series – though you should read the other ten first.

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Mean Streets

Several of the books that Butcher is credited with writing are because he’s written a short story included in the anthology. All of these short stories, so far, are about Harry Dresden, and while some, like “The Warrior” in 2009’s Mean Streets, have a place in between the books, many can be read out of order and out of context, to give you an idea of the style of writing. Mean Streets features short stories by other noir writers, like Thomas Sniegoski, author of the Remy Chandler series.

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Furies of Calderon

Spies, legions of soldiers, and elemental spirits of magic add flavor to the first of six Codex Alera novels. Butcher builds an unknown world with some hints of ancient Rome, and pulls the reader in with him, with intrigues, politics, and mystical mysteries. If you’ve read the Dresden books and want more, or if you’re a fan of high fantasy, try this series.

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Welcome to the Jungle

A Dresden prequel of sorts, “Welcome to the Jungle” features the wizard in a short graphic novel that comes before the events of “Storm Front.” With art by newcomer Ardian Syaf, this gives a face to Harry and his cohorts.

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Amy Lowell - Solitaire

Amy Lowell was an Imagist poet of the late 19th century, and the early 1900s. A socialite who was not permitted to attend college, she read, wrote, and collected books to make up for her lack of formal education.

Solitaire

WHEN night drifts along the streets of the city,
And sifts down between the uneven roofs,
My mind begins to peek and peer.
It plays at ball in old, blue Chinese gardens,
And shakes wrought dice-cups in Pagan temples,
Amid the broken flutings of white pillars.
It dances with purple and yellow crocuses in its hair,
And its feet shine as they flutter over drenched grasses.
How light and laughing my mind is,
When all the good folk have put out their bed-room candles,
And the city is still!

Langston Hughes - The Weary Blues

There are very few Langston Hughes poems in the public domain, as the poet only passed away in 1967. This is one of the few - written during the Harlem Renaissance. Try listening to some jazz music in the background while you read - After all, it's also Jazz Appreciation Month!

The Weary Blues

Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,
Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,
I heard a Negro play.
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night
By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light
He did a lazy sway...
He did a lazy sway...
To the tune o’ those Weary Blues.
With his ebony hands on each ivory key
He made that poor piano moan with melody.
O Blues!
Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool
He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool.
Sweet Blues!
Coming from a black man’s soul.
O Blues!
In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone
I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan—
"Ain’t got nobody in all this world,
Ain’t got nobody but ma self.
I’s gwine to quit ma frownin’
And put ma troubles on the shelf."

Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor.
He played a few chords then he sang some more—
"I got the Weary Blues
And I can’t be satisfied.
Got the Weary Blues
And can’t be satisfied—
I ain’t happy no mo’
And I wish that I had died."
And far into the night he crooned that tune.
The stars went out and so did the moon.
The singer stopped playing and went to bed
While the Weary Blues echoed through his head.
He slept like a rock or a man that’s dead.

More Langston Hughes poetry is available:
An African Treasury: articles, essays, stories, poems
896 H WCV WAM

The dream keeper and other poems
Juv 811.52 H WDB

The poems, 1921-1940
811 H WMB

And on CD audio, try "Rhapsodies in Black: music and words from the Harlem Renaissance"
CD Voc-Pop: Rhapsodies (4-disc set) WCV

Ambrose Bierce - The Bride

Ambrose Bierce is best known for his short stories, nearly all of which took place during the American Civil War.
He was also given the nickname "Bitter Bierce" due to his biting, critical wit and satirical sense of humor that led to the publication of "The Devil's Dictionary," featuring definitions like: "ADDER, n. A species of snake. So called from its habit of adding funeral outlays to the other expenses of living."

The Bride

“YOU know, my friends, with what a brave carouse
I made a second marriage in my house,—
Divorced old barren Reason from my bed
And took the Daughter of the Vine to spouse.”

So sang the Lord of Poets. In a gleam
Of light that made her like an angel seem,
The Daughter of the Vine said: “I myself
Am Reason, and the Other was a Dream.”