 Blueberries, by Robert Frost, recorded for LibriVox.org by Carolyn Francis. You ought to have seen what I saw on my way to the village through Mortensen's pasture today. Blueberries, as big as the end of your thumb, real sky blue and heavy and ready to drum in the cavernous pail of the first one to come, and all ripe together, not some of them green and some of them ripe, you ought to have seen. I don't know what part of the pasture you mean. You know, where they cut off the woods, let me see, it was two years ago, or no, can it be no longer than that? And the following fall the fire ran and burned it all up but the wall? Why, there hasn't been time for the bushes to grow. That's always the way with the blueberries, though. There may not have been the ghost of a sign of them anywhere under the shade of the pine. But get the pine out of the way, you may burn the pasture all over until not a fern or grass blade is left, not to mention a stick. And presto, they're up all around you as thick and hard to explain as a contours trick. It must be on charcoal they fatten their fruit, I taste in them sometimes the flavour of soot, and after all really their ebony skinned, the blues but a mist from the breath of the wind, a tarnish that goes at a touch of the hand, and less than the tan with which pickers are tanned. Does Mortensen know what he has, do you think? He may and not care and so leave the chawink to gather them for him. You know what he is. He won't make the fact that they're rightfully his an excuse for keeping us otherfolk out. I wonder you didn't see Lauren about. The best of it was that I did. Do you know I was just getting through what the field had to show, and over the wall and into the road, when who should come by with the democrat load of all the young chattering Lauren's alive, but Lauren, the fatherly, out for a drive. He saw you then. What did he do? Did he frown? He just kept nodding his head up and down. You know how politely he always goes by. But he thought a big thought, I could tell by his eye, which being expressed might be this in effect. I have left those their berries I shrewdly suspect to ripen too long. I am greatly to blame. He's a thriftier person than some I could name. He seems to be thrifty, and hasn't he need, with the mouths of all those young Lauren's to feed. He has brought them all up on wild berries, they say, like birds. They store a great many away. They eat them the year round, and those they don't eat they sell in the store and buy shoes for their feet. Who cares what they say? It's a nice way to live, just taking what nature is willing to give, not forcing her hand with harrow and plough. I wish you had seen his perpetual bow, and the air of the youngsters, not one of them turned, and they looked so solemn, absurdly concerned. I wish I knew half what the flock of them know of where all the berries and other things grow, cranberries and bogs, and raspberries on top of the boulder-strewn mountain, and when they will crop. I met them one day, and each had a flower stuck into his berries as fresh as a shower. Some strange kind, they told me it had in the name. I've told you how once not long after we came, I almost provoked poor Lauren to mirth by going to him of all people on earth, to ask if he knew any fruit to be had for the picking. The rascal, he said he'd be glad to tell if he knew, but the year had been bad. There had been some berries, but those were all gone. He didn't say where they had been. He went on, I'm sure, I'm sure, as polite as could be. He spoke to his wife in the door, let me see, maim, we don't know any good burying place. It was all he could do to keep a straight face. If he thinks all the fruit that grows wild is for him, he'll find he's mistaken. See here, for a whim we'll pick in the Mortensen's pasture this year. We'll go in the morning, that is, if it's clear, and the sun shines out warm, the vines must be wet. It's so long since I picked, I almost forget how we used to pick berries. We took one long round, then sank out of sight like trolls underground, and saw nothing more of each other, or heard, unless when you said I was keeping a bird away from its nest, and I said it was you, well, one of us is. For complaining it flew around and around us, and then for a while we picked, till I feared you had wandered a mile, and I thought I had lost you. I lifted a shout too loud for the distance you were, it turned out, for when you made answer your voice was as low as talking, you stood up beside me, you know. We shan't have the place to ourselves to enjoy, not likely when all the young Lawrence deploy. They'll be there tomorrow, or even tonight. They won't be too friendly, they may be polite, to people they look on as having no right to pick where they're picking. But we won't complain, you ought to have seen how it looked in the rain, the fruit mixed with water in layers of leaves, like two kinds of jewels, a vision for thieves. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Bright Star Would I Worse Tad Fast as Thou Art by John Keats, read philibrevox.org by Ray, July 2008. Bright Star Would I Worse Tad Fast as Thou Art Not in lone splendor hung aloft the night, and watching with eternal lids apart, like nature's patient sleepless eromite, the moving waters at their priestlike task of pure ablution round earth's human shores, or gazing on the new soft fallen mask of snow upon the mountains and the moors. No, yet still steadfast, still unchangeable, pillowed upon my fair love's ripening breast, to feel for ever its soft fall and swell, awake for ever in a sweet unrest, still, still to hear her tender taken breath, and so live ever, or else swoon to death. End of poem. This reading is in the public domain. A Description of the Morning by Jonathan Swift, read for librevox.org by Ross Clement. A Description of the Morning. Now hardly here and there a hackney-coach, appearing, showed the ruddy mourn's approach. Now Betty from her master's bed had flown, and softly stole to discompose her own. The sip-shod apprentice from his master's door had powered the dirt, and sprinkled round the floor. Now Mole had whirled her mott with dexterous airs, prepared to scrub the entry and the stairs. The youth with broomy stumps began to trace, the kennel edge where wheels had worn the place. The small coalman was heard with cadence deep, till drowned in shriller notes of chimney sweep. Done to the lordship gate began to meet, and brick-dust Mole had screamed through half a street. The turnkey now, his flock returning seas, duly let out a night's to steal for fees. The watchful bailiffs take their silent stands, and schoolboys lag with satchels in their hands. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold Red for librevox.org by Ernst Patinama. The sea is calm tonight, the tide is full, the moon lies fair upon the straits, on the French coast the light gleams and is gone. The clings of England stand, glimmering and vast, out in a tranquil bay. Come to the window, sweet is the night air. Only from the long line of spray where the air meets the moon-blanched sand, listen, you hear the grating roar of pebbles which the waves suck back, and fling at their return up the high strand begin and seize, and then again begin with tremulous cadence slow, and bring the eternal note of sadness in. Sophocles long ago heard it on the Aegean, and it brought into his mind the turbid ebb and flow of human misery. We find also in the sound a thought, hearing it by this distant northern sea. The sea of faith was once too at the full, and round earth's shore lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. But now I only hear its melancholy long withdrawing roar, retreating to the breath of the night wind down the vast edges drear and naked shingles of the world. Our love, let us be true to one another, for the world which seems to lie before us like a land of dreams, so various, so beautiful, so new, hath really neither joy nor love nor light nor certitude nor peace nor help for pain. And we are here as on a darkling plain, swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, where ignorant armies clash by night. But what she meets and what she fears are less than are the downward years, drawn slowly to the foamless wears of age, were she to lose him. Between a blurred sagacity that once had power to sound him, and love that will not let him be the Judas that she found him, her pride assuages her almost, as if it were alone the cost. He sees that he will not be lost and waits and looks around him. A sense of ocean and old trees envelops and allures him, tradition touching all he sees beguiles and reassures him, and all her doubts of what he says are dimmed with what she knows of days, till even prejudice delays and fades, and she secures him. The falling leaf inaugurates the rain of her confusion, the pounding wave reverberates the dirge of her illusion, and home, where passion lived and died, becomes a place where she can hide, while all the town and harborside vibrate with her seclusion. We tell you tapping on our brows the story as it should be, as if the story of a house were told or ever could be. We'll have no kindly veil between her visions and those we have seen, as if we guessed what hers have been, or what they are or would be. Meanwhile we do no harm, for they that with a God have striven, not hearing much of what we say take what the God has given. Though like waves breaking it may be, or like a changed familiar tree, or like a stairway to the sea where down the blind are driven. End of poem, this LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The river's tent is broken, the last fingers of leaf clutch and sink into the wet bank, the wind crosses the brown land unheard, the nymphs are departed, sweet thames are unsophally till I end my song. The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers, silk handkerchiefs, codbled boxes, cigarette ends, or other testimony of summer nights, the nymphs are departed, and their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors, departed have left no addresses. By the waters of lemon I sat down and wept. Sweet thames run softly till I end my song, sweet thames run softly, for I speak not loud or long. But at my back in a cold blast I hear a rattle of the bones and chuckled spread from ear to ear. A rat crept softly through the vegetation, dragging its slimy belly on the bank, while I was fishing in the dull canal on a winter evening round behind the gas-house, musing upon the king my brother's wreck, and on the king my father's death before him. White bodies naked on the low-damp ground, and bones cast in a little low dry garret, rattled by the rats foot only ear to ear. But at my back from time to time I hear the sound of horns and motors which shall bring Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring, or the moonshine bright on Mrs. Porter, and on her daughter, they wash their feet in soda water. Et oh, c'est voir d'enfant chantant dans la coubeule. Tweet, tweet, tweet, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug. So rudely forced, terru, unreal city. Under the brown fog of a winter noon Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant, unshaven with a pocket full of currants, CIF London documents at sight, asked me in Demotic French to luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel, followed by a weekend at the Metropole. At the violet hour, when the eyes and back turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits, like a taxi, throbbing, waiting, I, Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives, old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see, at the violet hour, the evening hour that strives homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea. The typist home at tea-time clears her breakfast, lights her stove, and lays out food in tins. Out of the window, perilously spread, her drying combinations touched by the sun's last rays. On the divan are piled, at night her bed, stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays. I, Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs, perceived the scene, and foretold the rest. I too awaited the expected guest. He, the young man, carbuncular, arrives. A small house agent's clerk, with one bold stare, one of the low on whom assurance sits, as a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire. The time is now propitious, as he guesses. The meal is ended, she is bored and tired, endeavours to engage her in caresses, which are still unreproved if undesired, flushed and decided, he assaults at once. Exploring hands, encounter no defence. His vanity requires no response, and makes a welcome of indifference. And I, Tiresias, who foresuffered all, enacted on this same divan or bed. I, who has sat by thebes below the wall, and walked among the lowest of the dead. Bestows one final patronising kiss, and gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit. She turns and looks a moment in the glass. Hardly aware of her departed lover, her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass. Well, now that's Dan, and I'm glad it's over. Her unlovely woman stoopes to folly, and paces about her room again alone. She smooths her hair with automatic hand, and puts a record on the gramophone. This music crept by me upon the waters, and along the strand, up Queen Victoria Street. O city, city, I can sometimes hear, beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street, the pleasant whining of a mandolin, and a clatter, and a chatter from within, where fishmen lounge at noon, where the walls of magna-smarter hold, inexplicable splendour of vionian white and gold. The river sweats, oil and tar, the barges drift, with the turning tide, red sails white, to leeward swing on the heavy spar, the barges wash, drifting logs, down Greenwich reach past the isle of dogs, walla-la-la, liar, walla-la-la, liar-la-la. Elizabeth and Lester, beating oars, the stone was formed, a gilded shell, red and gold, the brisks swell, ripple both shores, south-west wind, carrying downstream, the peal of bells, white towers, walla-la-la, liar, walla-la-la, liar-la-la. Trams and dusty trees, ivory bore me, Richmond in queue, undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees, supine, on the floor of a narrow canoe. My feet are at Moorgate, and my heart, under my feet. After the event he wept, he promised a new start. I made no comment, what should I resent? On Margate's hands I can connect nothing with nothing, broken fingernails of dirty hands, my people, humble people, who expect nothing, lala. To Carthage then I came, burning, burning, burning, burning, O Lord, thou pluckest me out, O Lord, thou pluckest me out, burning. A game of chess, from the wasteland, by T. S. Eliot, read for LibriVox.org, by Michael Dalling. The chair she sat in, like a burnish throne, glowed on the marble, where the glass, held up by standards, wrought with fruited vines, from which a golden cupidon peeped out. After he'd his eyes behind his wing, doubled the flames of seven-branched candelabra, reflecting light upon the table, as the glitter of her jewels rose to meet it, from satin cases poured in rich profusion, and vials of ivory and coloured glass, unstoppable, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes, unwind, powdered, or liquid, troubled, confused, and drowned as the scents in odours, stirred by the air that freshened from the window, these ascended in fattening the prolonged candle-flames, flung their smoke into the lakwy area, staring the pattern on the coffered ceiling. Huge seaward fed with copper, burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone, in which sad light a carved dolphin swam. Of the antique mantel was displayed, as though a window gave upon the silven scene the change of Philomel, by the barbarous king so rudely forced, yet there the nightingale filled all the desert with inviolable voice, and still she cried, and still the world pursues, jug-jug, the dirty ears. And other withered stumps of time were told upon the walls, staring forms, gleamed out, gleaning, hushing the room enclosed, footsteps shuffled on the stair, under the fire-light, under the brush, a hair spread out in fiery points, glowed into words, and would be savagely still. My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad! Stay with me! Speak to me! Why do you never speak? Speak! What are you thinking of? What thinking? What? I never know what you are thinking. Think! I think we are in rat's alley, where the dead men lost their bones. What is that noise? The wind under the door. What is that noise now? What is the wind doing? Nothing. Again, nothing. Do you know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember nothing? I remember that those are pearls that were his eyes. Are you alive or not? Is there nothing in your head? Oh, oh, oh, that shakes me hearing and rag. It's so elegant, so intelligent. What shall I do now? What shall I do? I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street with my hair down, so what shall we do tomorrow? What shall we ever do? The hot water at ten? And if it rains, a closed car at four, and we shall play a game of chess, pressing littler's eyes, and waiting for a knock upon the door. When Lill's husband got demobbed, I said, I didn't mince my words, I said to him himself, Hurry up, please, it's time. Now Albert's coming back, make yourself a bit smile. You'll want to know what you've done with that money, he came for you, to get herself some teeth. He did. I was there. You have them all out, Lill, and get an eye set, he said. I swear I can't bear to look at you. And no more can't I, I said, and think of poor Albert. He's been in the army for four years, he wants a good time, and if you don't give it to him, there's others will, I said. I was there, she said, sunning her out, I said, then I'll know who to thank, she said, and give me a straight look. Hurry up, please, it's time. If you don't like it, you can get on with it, I said, others can pick and choose if you can't. But if Albert makes all of it, won't be for lack of telling. You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique, and her only thirty-one. I can't help it, she said, pulling a long face. He sent pills I took, to bring it off, she said. She's at five already, and nearly died of young George. The chemist said it would be all right, but I've never been the same. You are a proper fool, I said. With Albert won't leave you alone, there it is, I said. What you get married for, if you don't want children? Hurry up, please, it's time. Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a hot gammon, and they asked me into dinner to get the beauty of it hot. Hurry up, please, it's time. Hurry up, please, it's time. Good night, Bill, good night, Lou, good night, May, good night. Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night, end of poem. This recording is in the public domain. The Lockless Door by Robert Frost Read for LibriVox.org by Carolyn Francis It went many years, but at last came a knock, and I thought of the door with no lock to lock. I blew out the light, I tiptoed the floor, and raised both hands in prayer to the door. But the knock came again, my window was wide, I climbed on the sill and descended outside. Back over the sill I bade a come in to whoever the knock at the door may have been. So at a knock I emptied my cage, to hide in the world and alter with age. End of Poem This recording is in the public domain. The March into Virginia, ending in the 1st Manassas, July 1861 Read for LibriVox.org by Alan Mayers July 4, 2008, Silver Spring, Maryland Did all the lets and bars appear to every just or larger end, whence should come the trust and cheer? Both must its ignorant impulse lend. Age finds place in the rear. All wars are boyish, and are fought by boys, the champions and enthusiasts of the state. Turbid ardors and vain joys not barrenly abate stimulants to the power mature, preparatives of fate. Who here forecasteth the event, what heart but spurns at precedent and warnings of the wise, contempt for closures of surprise? The banners play, the bugles call, the air is blue and prodigal. No burying party, pleasure, wood, no picnic party in the may ever went less loath than they into that leafy neighborhood. In Bacchic glee they file toward fate, mollocks uninitiate, expectancy and glad surmise of battle's unknown mysteries. All they feel is this, it is glory, a rapture sharp, though transitory, yet lasting in beloraled story. So they gaily go to fight, chatting left and laughing right. But some who this blithe mood present, as on in lightsome files they fare, shall die, experienced ere three days are spent, perish, enlightened by the volleyed glare, or shame survive, and like to adamant the throw of Second Manassas share. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. The Meadows in Spring by Edward Fitzgerald. Read for LibriVox.org by Ross Clement. The Meadows in Spring. Which is a dull sight to see the year dying, when winter winds set the yellow wood sighing, sighing, o sighing. When such a time cometh, I do retire, into an old room beside a bright fire, o pile a bright fire. And there I sit, reading old things, of knights and lawn damsels, while the wind sings, o drearily sings. I never look out, nor attend to the blast, for all to be seen is the leaves falling fast, falling, falling. But close at the hearth, like a cricket said I, reading of summer and chivalry, gallant chivalry. Then with an old friend I talk of our youth, how it was gladsome but often foolish pursuit, but gladsome, gladsome. Or to get merry we sing some old rhyme, that made the wood ring again, in summertime, then go we to smoking, silent and snug, nor to pass us between us, save a brown jug, sometimes. And sometimes a tear will rise in each eye, seeing the two old friends, so merrily, so merrily. And out to bed, go we, go we, down on the ashes we kneel on the knee, praying together. Thus then live I, till middle the gloom, by heaven the bold sun is with me in the room, shining, shining. Then the clouds part, swallows soaring between, the spring is alive and the meadows are green. I jump up like mad, break the old pipe and twain, and away to the meadows, the meadows again. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. The Message by John Dunne, read for LibriVox.org by David Barnes. Send home my long strayed eyes to me, which, oh, too long have dwelt on thee. Yet since there they have learned such ill, such forced fashions and false passions, that they be made by thee fit for no good sight, keep them still. And home my harmless heart again, which no unworthy thought could stain. But if it be taught by thine to make gestings of protestings, and cross both word and oath, keep it, for then't is none of mine. Yet send me back my heart and eyes, that I may know and see thy lies, and may laugh and joy, when thou art in anguish and dust languish, for some one that will none, or prove as false as thou art now. End of poem. Half of my life is gone, and I have let the years slip from me and have not fulfilled the aspiration of my youth to build some tower of song with lofty parapet, not indolence, nor pleasure, nor the fret of restless passions that would not be stilled, but sorrow, and a care that almost killed kept me from what I may accomplish yet, though halfway up the hill I see the past lying beneath me with its sounds and sights, a city in the twilight dim and vast, with smoking roofs, soft bells, and gleaming lights, and here above me on the autumnal blast the cataract of death far thundering from the heights end of recording. This recording is in the public domain. Mr. Flood's Party by Edwin Arlington Robinson Read for LibriVox.org by Shona Brogdon-Stervel Old even flood, climbing alone one night over the hill between the town below, and the forsaken upland hermitage, that held as much as he should ever know of earth again of home, paused warily. The road was his with not a native near, and even, having leisure, said aloud, for no man else in Tilburytown to hear. Well, Mr. Flood, we have the harvest moon again, and we may not have many more. The bird is on the wing, the poet says, and you and I have said it here before. Drink to the bird. He raised up to the light the jug that he had gone so far to fill, and answered huskily. Well, Mr. Flood, since you propose it, I believe I will. Then, as if enduring to the end a valiant armor of scarred hopes outworn, he stood there in the middle of the road like Roland's ghost, winding a silent horn. Below him, in the town among the trees, where friends of other days had honored him, a phantom salutation of the dead rang thinly till old Eben's eyes were dim. Then, as the mother lays her sleeping child down tindily, fearing it may awake, he set the jug down slowly at his feet with trembling care, knowing that most things break. And only when assured that on firm earth it stood, as the uncertain lives of men assuredly did not, he based away, and with his hand extended paused again. Well, Mr. Flood, we have not met like this in a long time, and many a change has come to both of us, I fear. Since last it was we had a drop together, welcome home, convivially returning with himself, again he raised the jug up to the light, and with an acquiescent quaver said, well, Mr. Flood, if you insist, I might, only a very little Mr. Flood for old Langzine, no more, sir, that will do. So for the time, apparently, it did, and Eben evidently thought so too, for soon amid the silver loneliness of night, he lifted up his voice and sang, secure, with only two moons listening, until the whole harmonious landscape rang for all Langzine. So weary throat gave out, the last word wavered, and the song was done. He raised again the jug regretfully, and shook his head, and was again alone. There was not much that was ahead of him, and there was nothing in the town below, where strangers would have shut the many doors that many friends had opened long ago. End of poem. This poem is in the public domain. Rendue by Nathaniel West, read for LibriVox.org by David Starner on July 2, 2008. My ladies' eyes appear to be like brimming pools of ecstasy, deep wells from which the twinkles flow, unceasingly as on they go, to charm me with their witchery. They have an easy prey they see, enmeshed by their dexterity. I can't protest, they thrill me so, by ladies' eyes. Although they gaze alluringly, appealing with such potency, off-times in them I see a glow, which warns me that I should go slow, for then, you know, I really see my lady lies. A Song by Ben Johnson, read for LibriVox.org by David Barnes. Oh, do not wanton with those eyes, lest I be sick with seeing, nor cast them down, but let them rise, lest shame destroy their being. Oh, be not angry with those fires, for then their threats will kill me, nor look too kind on my desires, for then my hopes will spill me. Oh, do not steep them in thy tears, for so will sorrow slay me, nor spread them as distract with fears. My known enough betray me. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Song of Myself, section 28 by Walt Whitman, read for LibriVox.org by Alan Davis Drake. Is this, then, a touch, quivering me to a new identity, flames and ether making a rush for my veins, treacherous tip of me reaching and crowding to help them, my flesh and blood playing out lightning to strike what is hardly different from myself? On all sides, prairie and provokers stiffening my limbs, straining the utter of my heart for its withheld drip, behaving licentious towards me, taking no denial, depriving me of my best as for a purpose, unbuttoning my clothes, holding me by the bare waist, deluding my confusion with the calm of the sunlight and the pasture fields, immodestly sliding the fellow's senses away. They bribed to swap off with touch and go and graze at the edges of me, no consideration nor regard for my draining strength or my anger, fetching the rest of the herd around to enjoy them for a while, then all uniting to stand on a headland and worry me. To centuries desert every other part of me. They have left me helpless to a red marauder. They all come to the headland to witness and assist against me. I am given up by traitors. I talked wildly. I have lost my wits. I and nobody else am the greatest traitor. I went myself first to the headland. My own hands carried me there. You, villain touch, what are you doing? My breath is tight in its throat. Unclench your floodgates. You are too much for me. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. There Will Come Soft Rain by Sarah T. Stale, read for LibriVox.org by Ernst Patinama, July 18, 2008, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. There Will Come Soft Rain. There Will Come Soft Rain and the smell of the ground and swallows circling with the shimmering sound, and frocks in the pools singing at night, and wild plum trees in tremulous white. Robins will wear their feathery fire, whistling their whims on a low fence wire, and not one will know of the war, not one will care at last when it is done. Not one would mind, now the bird nor tree, if mankind perished utterly, and spring herself when she woke at dawn would scarcely know that we were gone. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. The Voice of the Rain by Walt Whitman, read for LibriVox.org by Alan Davis Drake. And who art thou, said I, to the soft falling shower? Which, strange to tell, gave me an answer, as here translated. I am the poem of the earth, said the Voice of the Rain. Eternal I rise impalpable out of the land and the bottomless sea. Upward to heaven, whence vaguely formed, altogether changed, and yet the same. I descend to lave the droughts, atomies, dust layers of the globe, and all that in them without me were seeds only, latent unborn, and for ever, by day and night, I give back life to my own origin, and make pure and beautify it. For song, issuing from its birthplace, after fulfillment, wandering, wrecked or unrecked, duly with love returns. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. The Waste Land by T. S. Elliott, read for LibriVox by Greg Bathon. Epilogue. I saw with my own eyes the symbol at Cume hanging in a jar. And when those boys asked her, Sibyl, what do you want? She would answer, I want to die. Nam Sibylam quirem Cumeis, ego ipsi oculus meis vidi in ampulo pendere, et cum ili puere disierent. Sibyla, titales, responde Bathilla, apolfanien Thelo. Part 1. The Burial of the Dead. April is the cruelest month, breeding lilocks out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering earth in forgetful snow, feeding a little life with dried tubers. Summer surprised us, coming over the St. Bergersee with a shower of rain. We stopped in the colonnade and went on in sunlight into the half-garten, and drank coffee and talks for an hour. Bin gar keine Hursin, Stamm aus Litauen, eckt Deutsch. And when we were children, staying at the Archdukes, my cousins, he took me out on a sled, and I was frightened. He said, Marie, Marie, hold on tight, and down we went. In the mountains there you feel free. I read much of the night, and go south in the winter. What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, you cannot say or guess, for you know only a heap of broken images, where the sun beats and the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, and the dry stone no sound of water. Only there is shadow under this red rock. Come in under the shadow of this red rock, and I will show you something different from either your shadow at morning striding behind you, or your shadow at evening rising to meet you. I will show you fear in a handful of dust. Frischwet der Wind, der Heimat zu, mein Irischkind wo weilest du. You gave me hyacinths first a year ago. They called me the hyacinth girl. But when we came back late from the hyacinth garden, your arms full and your hair wet. I could not speak, and my eyes failed. I was neither living nor dead, and I knew nothing, looking into the heart of light. The silence. Öd und leer das Meer. Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyant, had a bad cold. Nevertheless is known to be the wisest woman in Europe with a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she, is your card, the drowned Phoenician sailor. Those are pearls that were his eyes, look. Here is Beladonna, the lady of the rocks, the lady of situations. Here is the man with three staves, and here the wheel, and here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card, which is blank, is something he carries on his back, which I am forbidden to see. I do not find the hanged man, fear death by water. I see crowds of people walking round in a ring. Thank you. If you see, dear Mrs. Equitone, tell her I bring the horoscope myself. One must be so careful these days. One real city. Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, a crowd flowed over London Bridge. So many I had not thought death had undone so many. Size, short, and infrequent were exhaled. And each man fixed his eyes before his feet, flowed up the hill, and down King William Street to where St. Mary Wolnoth kept the hours with a dead sound on the final stroke of nine. There I saw what I knew, and stopped him crying, Stetson, you who were with me in the ships at Miley. That corpse you planted last year in your garden, has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year? Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed? Oh, keep the dog far hence, that's friend to men, or with his nails he'll dig it up again. You hypocrite lecteur, mon semblable, mon frère. Part II A Game of Chess The chair she sat in, like a burnished throne, glowed on the marble, where the glass held up by standards wrought with fruited vines, from which a golden cubaton peeped out, another hid his eyes behind his wing, doubled the flames of seven-branched candelabra. Reflecting light upon the table as the glitter of her jewels rose to meet it, from satin cases poured in rich profusion. In vials of ivory and coloured glass unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes, unguent, powdered, or liquid, troubled, confused, and drowned the scents in odours. Stirred by the air that freshened from the window, these ascended in fattening the prolonged candle-flames, flung their smoke into the Laquiaria, stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling. Huge sea-wood fed with copper burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone in which sad light a carved dolphin swam. Above the antique mantel was displayed as though a window gave upon the sylvan scene the change of filimel by the barbarous king so rudely forced. Yet there the nightingale filled all the desert with inviolable voice, and still she cried, and still the world pursues jug jug to dirty ears. And other withered stumps of time were told upon the walls, staring forms leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed. Footsteps shuffled on the stair. Under the fire-light, under the brush her hair spread out in fiery points, glowed into words, then would be savagely still. "'My nerves are bad tonight. Yes, bad. Stay with me. Speak to me. Why do you never speak? Speak! What are you thinking of? What thinking? What? I never know what you are thinking. Think!' I think we are in Rat's Alley where the dead men lost their bones. What is that noise? The wind under the door. What is that noise now? What is the wind doing? Nothing again, nothing. Do you know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember nothing? I remember those are pearls that were his eyes. Are you alive or not? Is there nothing in your head? But oh, oh, oh, oh, that Shakespearean rag. It's so elegant, so intelligent. What shall I do now? What shall I do? I shall rush out as I am and walk the street with my hair down. So what shall we do tomorrow? What shall we ever do? The hot water at ten, and if it rains a closed car at four, and we shall play a game of chess, pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door. When Lill's husband got demobbed, I said, I didn't mince my words. I said to her myself, hurry up, please, it's time. Now Albert's coming back. Make yourself a bit smart. You want to know what you've done with that money he gave you to get yourself some teeth? He did. I was there. You have them all out, Lill, and get a nice set. He said, I swear I can't bear to look at you. And no more can't I, I said. You think of poor Albert. He's been in the army for four years. He wants a good time. And if you don't give it him there's others well, I said. Oh, is there, she said. Something of that, I said. Then I'll know who to thank, she said, and give me a straight look. Hurry up, please, it's time. If you don't like it, you can get on with it, I said. Others can pick and choose if you can't. But if Albert makes off, it won't be for lack of telling. You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique. And her only thirty-one. I can't help it, she said, pulling a long face. It's them pills I took to bring it off, she said. She's had five already and nearly died a young George. The chemist said it would be all right, but I've never been the same. You are a proper fool, I said. Well, if Albert won't leave you alone there it is, I said. What you get married for if you don't want children? Hurry up, please, it's time. Well, that Sunday Albert was old, and they had a hot gammon, and they asked me into dinner to get the beauty of it hot. Hurry up, please, it's time. Hurry up, please, it's time. Good night, Bill. Good night, Lou. Good night, May. Good night. Ta-ta. Good night. Good night, ladies. Good night, sweet ladies. Good night. Good night. Part three. The fire sermon. The river's tent is broken. The last fingers of leaf clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind crosses the brown land unheard. The nymphs are departed. Sweet Thames run softly till I end my song. The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers, silk hackerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends, or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed, and their friends. The loitering airs of city directors departed. Have left no addresses. By the waters of liman I sat down and wept. Sweet Thames run softly till I end my song. Sweet Thames run softly, for I speak not loud or long. But at my back in a cold blast I hear the rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear. A rat crept softly through the vegetation, striking its slimy belly on the bank, while I was fishing in the dull canal on a winter evening round behind the gas-house, musing upon the king my brother's wreck, and on the king my father's death before him. White bodies naked on the low damp ground, and bones cast in a little low dry garret, rattled by the rat's foot only, ear to ear. But at my back from time to time I hear the sound of horns and motors, which shall bring Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring. O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter, and on her daughter. They washed their feet in soda water, et d'osebois d'enfant chantant dans le coup-polle. Twit, twit, twit, jog, jog, jog, jog, jog, jog, so rudely forced, terreux. Unreal City. Under the brown fog of a winter noon, Mr. Eugenides, the smirner-merchant, unshaven, with a pocket full of currants, CIF London, documents at sight, asked me in Demotic French to luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel, followed by a weekend at the Metropole. At the violet hour, when the eyes and back turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits like a taxi, throbbing, waiting. Aye, Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives, old man with wrinkled female breasts, can't see at the violet hour, the evening hour that strives homeward and brings the sailor home from sea, the typist, home at tea-time, clears her breakfast, lights her stove, and lays out food in tins. Out of the window, perilously spread, heard drying combinations touched by the sun's last rays. On the divan are piled, at night her bed, stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays. Aye, Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs, perceived the scene and foretold the rest. Aye, too, awaited the expected guest. He, the young man carbuncular, arrives, a small house agent's clerk with one bold stare, one of the low on whom assurance sits as a silk hat on a Bradford billionaire. The time is now propitious, as he guesses. The meal is ended. She is bored and tired, endeavors to engage her in caresses, which are still unreproved if undesired. Flushed and decided, he assaults at once, exploring hands and counter no defense. His vanity requires no response and makes a welcome of indifference. And aye, Tiresias have foresuffered all and acted on this same divan or bed. Aye, who have sat by thieves below the wall and walked among the lowest of the dead, bestows one final patronizing kiss and gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit. She turns and looks a moment in the glass, hardly aware of her departed lover. Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass. Well, now that's done, and I'm glad it's over. When lovely woman stoops to folly, and paces about her room again alone, she smooths her hair with automatic hand and puts a record on the gramophone. This music crept by me upon the waters, and along the strand up Queen Victoria Street. Oh, city, city, I can sometimes hear beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street, the pleasant winding of a mandolin, and a clatter and a chatter from within where fishmen lounge at noon, where the walls of Magnus Martyr hold inexplicable splendor of Ionian white and gold. The river sweats oil and tar. The barges drift with the turning tide. Red sails wide to lured swing on the heavy spar. The barges wash drifting logs down Greenwich reach past the isle of dogs. Vea-la-la-lay-ah, pa-la-la-lay-ah-la-la. Elizabeth and Lester beating oars. The stern was formed. A gilded shell red in gold. The brisk swell rippled both shores. Southwest wind carried downstream the peel of bells, white towers. Vea-la-la-lay-ah, pa-la-la-lay-ah-la. Trams and dusty trees. Highbury bore me, Richmond and Q undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees supine on the floor of a narrow canoe. My feet are at mortgage in my heart under my feet. After the event he wept he promised a new start. I made no comment. What should I resent? On market sands I can connect nothing with nothing. The broken fingernails of dirty hands. My people humble people who expect nothing. La-la-la. To Carthage then I came, burning, burning, burning, burning. O Lord, thou pluckest me out. O Lord, thou pluckest. Burning. Park Four. Death by water. Fleabest definition of fortnight dead. Forgot the cry of gulls and the deep sea swell and the prophet in loss. A current under sea picked his bones and whispers. As he rose and fell he passes the stage of his age and youth entering the whirlpool. Gentile or Jew, O you who turn the wheel and look windward, consider Fleabest, who was once handsome and tall as you. Part Five. What the thunder said. After the torchlight red on sweaty faces. After the frosty silence in the gardens. After the agony in stony places, the shouting and the crying. Prison and palace and reverberation of thunder of spring over distant mountains. He who was living is now dead. We who were living are now dying. With a little patience. Here is no water but only rock. Rock and no water and the sandy road, the road winding above among the mountains. Which are mountains of rock without water. If there were water we should stop and drink. Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think. Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand. If there were only water amongst the rock. Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit. Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit. There is not even silence in the mountains. But dry sterile thunder without rain. There is not even solitude in the mountains but red, sullen faces sneer and snarl from doors of mud-cracked houses. If there were water and no rock. If there were rock and also water, and water, a spring. A pool among the rock. If there were the sound of water only, not the cicada and dry grass singing, but sound of water over a rock, where the hermitthrush sings in the pine trees, drip drop, drip drop, drop, drop, drop. But there is no water. Who is the third who walks always beside you? When I count there are only you and I together, but when I look ahead up the white road there is always another one walking beside you, gliding, wrapped in a brown mantle, hooded. I do not know whether a man or woman. But who is that on the other side of you? What is that sound high in the air, murmur of maternal lamentation? Who are those hooded hordes, swarming over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth, ringed by the flat horizon only? What is the city over the mountains, cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air, falling towers, Jerusalem, Athens, Alexandria, Vienna, London, unreal? A woman drew her long black hair out tight and fiddled whisper music on those strings, and bats with baby faces in the violet light whistled and beat their wings and crawled head downward down a blackened wall, and upside down in air were towers tolling reminiscent bells that kept the hours and voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells. In this decayed hole among the mountains, in the faint moonlight, the grass is singing over the tumbled graves about the chapel. There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home. It has no windows, and the door swings. Dry bones can harm no one. Only a cock stood on the roof-tree, co-corico, co-corico, in a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust bringing rain. Gungo was sunken, and the limp leaves waited for rain while the black clouds gathered far distant over Himavant. The jungle crouched, humped in silence. Then spoke the thunder, da, data. What have we given? My friend, blood shaking my heart, the awful daring of a moment's surrender, which an age of prudence can never retract. By this and this only we have existed, which is not to be found in our obituaries, or in memories draped by the beneficent spider, or under seals broken by the lean solicitor in our empty rooms. Da. Da adham. I have heard the key turn in the door once and turn once only. We think of the key, each in his prison, thinking of the key. Each confirms a prison. Only at nightfall ethereal rumors revive for a moment a broken choreolainus. Da. Damjata. The boat responded gaily to the hand expert with sail and ore. The sea was calm. Your heart would have responded gaily when invited beating, obedient to controlling hands. I sat upon the shore fishing, with the arid plain behind me. Shall I at least set my lands in order? London bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down. I was shot in the head when I heard the key turn in the door once and turn once only. Oh Swallow, Swallow. The prince who is in the tower, Bully. These fragments I have shored against my ruins. Why then, I'll fight you. Hieronymus mad again. Da. Da adham. Damjata. Shanti. Shanti. Damjata. This recording is in the public domain. When my beer moves by July Udeen Rumi. Read for LibriVox.org by Caitlin Cooper. When my beer moves on the day of death, think not my heart is in this world. Do not weep for me and cry, woe, woe. You will fall in the devil's snare, that is woe. When you see my hearse, cry not, parted, parted, Union and meeting are mine in that hour. If you commit me to the grave, say not, farewell, farewell, for the grave is a curtain hiding the communion of paradise. After beholding descent consider resurrection. Why should setting be injurious to the sun and moon? To you it seems a setting, but tis a rising. So the vault seems a prison, tis the release of the soul. What seed went down into the earth but it grew? Why the doubt of yours is regards a seed of man? What bucket was lowered but it came out brimful? Why should the Joseph of the Spirit complain of the well? Shut your mouth on this side and open it beyond. In placeless air will be your triumphful soul.