The Chained Muse

I know the day comes when my eyes close,
when my sight fails,
when life takes its leave in silence
and the last curtain veils my vision.
Yet the stars will still watch by night;
the sun will still rise like before;
the hours will still heave like sea waves
casting up p...

It was upon a quiet night

As graying clouds raced past the moon,

A sage and pupil made their way

Through a deep and darkened wood.

Among  the thicket and the pines,

They traveled the uncertain trail,

But after wandering the night,

They finally settled for rest....

The villa of Petrarch sits on a hill
Above the rapids tumbling through the rocks.
It's ruins now--the broken stones are clocks
That tick much faster than his poems will.
We fabricate his home to hold it still
While his verse blossoms like deep purple stocks
And his rhy...

Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias” is one of his shortest works, but also one of his best known, anthologized to the point of ubiquity. But it deserves every bit of the reputation it has gained. Short, yet powerful and descriptive, it illustrates the sonnet at its bes...

The lavender fields are dotted

with white boxes squat as houses.

In his mesh veil, smoker handy,

hands gloved, he slowly removes

the upright tray patterned in perfect

hexagons of wax, lifting it gently

with a swarm on it as if a painting

come to life to speak of life.

He calls...

Cicada 

There is, I know, some benefit in this,
this cycle of emerging, breeding, dying-
so brief a time for knowing any bliss,
or making friends, or new endeavors trying –

only to bring forth offspring which will know
a dark, damp, subterranean home for years,
preservin...

Holy night, descending softly,

Descending, too, are our dreams,

Like moonlight through a darkened room,

Through the depths of a man`s breast.

He listens with elation;

When Night starts to fade, he cries:

Come back, holy night,

Return, sweetest dreams, return!

Translation © Dav...

The first true norther came today,
With raging gusts of wind and rain,
And blew the Summer heat away,
And with it all of passion’s pain.

Though others think that sudden chill
A harbinger of loss and death,
I feel a wild, soul-stirring thrill
In bleak November’s first c...