Neo-Calvinism

Cowper and Hogg had a modus vivendi
A frame for it just so –
They missed each other at the crossroads,
though.

I’d prefer to take that assumption
Just a little bit, little bit further,
And closer, the clouds, after all, being clouds,
And the honey an enamel wrecker,
Just so.

I believe that this only world is populated
With base and with noble, distinguished by note.
The base aren’t worth discussion, they only discuss,

(But I know what they dream about, sadly, and dream it,
Somewhere where higher gravities don’t worry
At thoughty sinews, a warm dirty lair
For healthy and furry animals to roll in)

I see them, I walk with the powerful children,
I know they’re possessed of no power to destroy,
They make wonderful transient glory all day,
Might they let me tell them they’ve made it?

Canna say.

Arya Darlings

Well, there were different absences;
Not the bonny Irish (Danish) Swain -
He stood suppressing Sumorsaete - no, not
The snare of her dark hair, which, swaying
Outshone on. These songs
Can illustrate a kind of fitness yet -
That is the absence, and it can't transpire;
The ships are standardised, the tides are gone,
Lanegan keeps the ring and cannot tell
A dance where Calidore gets Pastorell.
Remember always where the sound was lain;
I love to listen where things aren't for long,
There where (big Gothic building at the back)
The Fairy King can ride you to the rack.

Goethe's Erlkonig, translation

Who rides so late through Night, Wind Wild?
It is the Father with his Child;
He has that Fry tucked in his arm,
He keeps him sicker, holds him warm.

‘Why hidest thou, son, thy pretty eyes?’
‘Seest thou not, sire, the Erlking arise?
The Erlking, crowned, amidst his train?’
‘My son, ‘tis fog doth presage rain.’

O Child beloved, follow me!
And sportive oddments shall ye see –
Many and bright be the Blooms of the Shore,
Golden the Garments my Dam hath in store.

‘Papa, o papa, didst thou not attend
To the vows of the Erlking, to make and to mend?’
‘Be of good cheer, staid cheer, my Child,
For Leaves feel wind just so, in Wild.’

Won’t you come, lovely Knave, won’t you come with me now?
My darling girls wait for thee; ask them not how
They be trim in the dance that is danced all the night,
But take their white hands, and rest in their eyes’ light.

‘O daddy, dear daddy, seest thou still but naught?
Not the Erlkonig’s girls in their house grimly wrought?’
‘O dearest, thy fancies! For I see them well,
And marvel you make Willows bevies from Hell.’

I love thee! for the glance in thy pretty eyes:
And if you resist me, well, force I’ll devise…
‘My father! my father! full hard is his grasp!
And hard be the Wound I have borne in his clasp…’

Though Papa be spooked, yet he presses the Horse,
He cradles the Boy with preemptive remorse,
Thus hampered, he wrests them almost to their Home,
But the Child has gone seeking the rest of the Tomb.

Ronsard Amours 74, draft 1

Translated in all, my Circean enchantress
Holds me belayed in her massed irons bound
Not through, though, spiked wine with its spoor or its sound,
Nor yet by some grass aphrodisiac mess.
The sword of revenge - the good Grecian's, none less -
And the tonic the winged doctor found
In the merest of nicks that a chime can resound
Well, it countermands countercharms that she may press
So that national sty at the end of the line
Regain all the stature not granted to kine,
Sagacity, crassly earned pause;
But for myself - that self, soul, this thing - to lodge her
It mightn't avail the signet of Roger
So darkly my reason gropes into my flaws.