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1. The Mountain Village Solitude
2. If I Had Made Thy Proffered Arm
3. Sea Fever
4. The Ballad of Reading Gaol
5. oh, to live unremarkably
6. Portuguese Sea
7. Intimate Verses

The Mountain Village Solitude

THE MINISTER MUNE-YUKI MINAMOTO

THE mountain village solitude
In winter time I dread;
It seems as if, when friends are gone,
And trees their leaves have shed,
All men and plants are dead.

The poet was a grandson of the Emperor Kwōkō, and died A.D. 940. The Minamoto family, who sprang from the Emperor Seiwa, who reigned 856–877, was at one time very powerful, and produced many famous men, including Yoritomo, the great founder of the Shōgunate. The Taira family and the Minamotos were the Yorks and Lancasters of mediaeval Japan; but, after thirty years of warfare, Yoritomo finally defeated his rivals in a great battle fought at Dan-no-ura, in the Straits of Shimonoseki, in 1185; the entire Taira family was exterminated, including women and children, and the infant Emperor Antoku. The Minamoto clan themselves became extinct in 1219, when Sanetomo was murdered at Kamakura, as related in the note to verse No. 93.

A Hundred Verses From Old Japan.

If I Had Made Thy Proffered Arm ⁠

THE LADY-IN-WAITING SUWO

IF I had made thy proffered arm
A pillow for my head
For but the moment’s time, in which
A summer’s dream had fled,
What would the world have said?

The authoress was the daughter of Tsugunaka Taira, the Governor of the Province of Suwo, and a lady-in-waiting at the Court of the Emperor Goreizei, who reigned A.D. 1046–1068. She was present one day at a long and tedious court function, and, feeling very tired and sleepy, she called to a servant for a pillow; a nobleman on the other side of the screen, the First Adviser of State Tadaie, gallantly offered her his arm, with a request that she would rest her head there, and she replied with this verse. She intended him to understand that, though she was willing to accept him as her husband for life, she feared that his attachment would last no longer than a fleeting summer-night’s dream.

A Hundred Verses From Old Japan.

Sea Fever

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.

- John Masefield

Analysis

The Ballad Of The Reading Gaol

[...]

Dear Christ! the very prison walls
Suddenly seemed to reel,
And the sky above my head became
Like a casque of scorching steel;
And, though I was a soul in pain,
My pain I could not feel.

I only knew what hunted thought
Quickened his step, and why
He looked upon the garish day
With such a wistful eye;
The man had killed the thing he loved
And so he had to die.

Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!

. Some kill their love when they are young,
And some when they are old;
Some strangle with the hands of Lust,
Some with the hands of Gold:
The kindest use a knife, because
The dead so soon grow cold.

Some love too little, some too long,
Some sell, and others buy;
Some do the deed with many tears,
And some without a sigh:
For each man kills the thing he loves,
Yet each man does not die.

[...]

- Oscar Wilde

full version

oh, to live unremarkably

if I have childen,
I hope they live quiet lives.
no fires for them.
no sickness.
no breaking new stories.
I hope they die of old age.
far from the pages of history books.

- Trista Mateer

Portuguese Sea

O salty sea, so much of whose salt
Is Portugal’s tears! All the mothers
Who had to weep for us to cross you!
All the sons who prayed in vain!
All the brides-to-be who never
Married for you to be ours, O sea!

Was it worth doing? Everything’s worth doing
If the soul of the doer isn’t small.
Whoever would go beyond the Cape
Must go beyond sorrow.
God placed danger and the abyss in the sea,
But he also made it heaven’s mirror.

- Fernando Pessoa, "The Message"

Intimate Verses

See! No one watched the formidable
Burial of your last chimera.
Only Ingratitude - such a panther -
Was your inseparable company!

Get used to the mud that awaits!
The Man that, on this miserable land,
Lives, among beasts, feel an inevitable
Crave of also being a beast.

Take a match. Light up your cigarette!
A kiss, my friend, precedes the spit,
The hand that caresses - before the stick.

If someone saves you from hell,
Stone the hand that treats you well,
Spit on this mouth that kisses you!

- Augusto dos Anjos


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