Second Philosopher's Song

By Aldous Huxley

If, O my Lesbia, I should commit,
Not fornication, dear, but suicide,
My Thames-blown body (Pliny vouches it)
Would drift face upwards on the oily tide
With the other garbage, till it putrefied.

But you, if all your lovers’ frozen hearts
Conspired to send you, desperate, to drown –
Your maiden modesty would float face down,
And men would weep upon your hinder parts.

‘Tis the Lord’s doing. Marvellous is the plan
By which this best of worlds is wisely planned.
One law he made for women, one for man :
We bow the head and do not understand.

Comments : Nose-thumbing undergraduate wit; though ribald, a neat dig at womanly modesty. :-)

Living

By Harold Monro

Slow bleak awakening from the morning dream
Brings me in contact with the sudden day.
I am alive – this I.
I let my fingers move along my body.
Realization warns them, and my nerves
Prepare their rapid messages and signals.
While Memory begins recording, coding,
Repeating; all the time Imagination
Mutters: You'll only die.

Here's a new day. O Pendulum move slowly!
My usual clothes are waiting on their peg.
I am alive – this I.
And in a moment Habit, like a crane,
Will bow its neck and dip its pulleyed cable,
Gathering me, my body, and our garment,
And swing me forth, oblivious of my question,
Into the daylight – why?

I think of all the others who awaken,
And wonder if they go to meet the morning
More valiantly than I;
Nor asking of this Day they will be living:
What have I done that I should be alive?
O, can I not forget that I am living?
How shall I reconcile the two conditions:
Living, and yet – to die?

Between the curtains the autumnal sunlight
With lean and yellow finger points me out;
The clock moans: Why? Why? Why?
But suddenly, as if without a reason,
Heart, Brain, and Body, and Imagination
All gather in tumultuous joy together,
Running like children down the path of morning
To fields where they can play without a quarrel:
A country I'd forgotten, but remember,
And welcome with a cry.

O cool glad pasture; living tree, tall corn,
Great cliff, or languid sloping sand, cold sea,
Waves; rivers curving; you, eternal flowers,
Give me content, while I can think of you:
Give me your living breath!
Back to your rampart, Death.

Comments : I liked this poem for the vivid and imaginative way in which it describes the process of waking up. And the way in which it expresses the (often unconscious) optimism and belief involved in the decision of going on living, ‘Heart, Brain and Body, and Imagination, All gather in tumultuous joy together’. – Zen

p.s. According to Mrs. Monro, this was one of the poet’s favourite poems.

For a more popular poem by the same poet, check this link. (http://wonderingminstrels.blogspot.com/2000/11/overheard-on-salmarsh-harold-monro