Reconciliation by Else Lasker-Schüler

(To My Mother)

A great star will fall into my lap. . .
We would hold vigil tonight,

Praying in languages
That are carven like harps.

We would be reconciled tonight—
So fully God overwhelms us.

Our hearts are only children,
Eager for weary-sweet slumber.

And our lips would kiss each other,
Why are you fearful?

Does not your heart border upon mine—
Your blood always dyes my cheeks red.

We would be reconciled tonight,
If we clasp each other, we shall not perish.

A great star will fall into my lap.

From: https://poets.org/poem/reconciliation

Date: 1911 (original in German); 1923 (translation in English)

By: Else Lasker-Schüler (1869-1945)

Translated by: Babette Deutsch (1895-1982) and Avrahm Yarmolinsky (1890-1975)

The New Decalogue by Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce

Have but one God: thy knees were sore
If bent in prayer to three or four.
Adore no images save those
The coinage of thy country shows.

Take not the Name in vain. Direct
Thy swearing unto some effect.

Thy hand from Sunday work be held –
Work not at all unless compelled.

Honor thy parents, and perchance
Their wills thy fortunes may advance.

Kill not—death liberates thy foe
From persecution’s constant woe.

Kiss not thy neighbor’s wife. Of course
There’s no objection to divorce.

To steal were folly, for ’tis plain
In cheating there is greater pain.

Bear not false witness. Shake your head
And say that you have “heard it said.”

Who stays to covet ne’er will catch
An opportunity to snatch.

From: https://www.blueridgejournal.com/poems/ab-deca.htm

Date: 1911

By: Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (1842-?1914)

Life Inviolate by Edmund Beale Sargant

Seek not that part of me
Where access should be none;
For if thou hadst the key,
Then were I all undone.

Love that would all things own
Is close akin to hate;
God walks with each alone
And is inviolate.

From: Sargant, E.B., The Casket Songs and Other Poems, 1911, Longmans, Green, and Co: London, p. 84.
(https://archive.org/details/casketsongsother00sargiala/)

Date: 1911

By: Edmund Beale Sargant (1855-1938)

Love Keeps Me Pondering How I May Best by Guillem de Cabestany

Love keeps me pondering how I may best
Compose for my belov’d a joyous song,
For her to whom my heart and soul belong,
Whom Love made me to choose from all the rest,
And whom he hath ordained I must adore
And serve and honour faithfully and purely;
And I do, my love for her full surely
From day to day grows better and grows more.

Full well has Love cured me of the despair
Which long he made me suffer, and the woe;
Unjust it was of him to treat me so,
For almost I was forced to turn elsewhere.
If he is wise, now let him bear in mind
That in a little while luck often changes;
He who ill-treats his subjects oft estranges
Others who’d serve him well if he were kind.

For you must know, my lords, I have heard tell
How once a powerful Emperor of yore
Oppressed his barons grievously, wherefore
His pride was humbled and his power fell.
And so I pray my noble beauteous one
Not to ill-treat her lover too extremely,
For gentleness in everything is seemly,
And one repents too late when harm is done.

Dear lady, best of all the best that can be,
In whom all charm and all delight do meet,
Love for your sake holds me in prison sweet;
I tell you this that it may profit me.
God grant me life until the day is past
When I shall lie within your arms’ embraces,
For unto me than this no greater grace is
In all the world, and while the world shall last.

And lady, since of treasure you’ve great store
—For the world holds none nobler or more fair—
Let not, I pray, my true love and my care
Be vain; the richer a man is, the more
Should he reward good service which men do,
For it is just and right, I tell you truly,
Evil should be repaid by evil duly
And good by good—nought else I ask of you.

My tears and sighs have been a thousand quite,
Also, so fear I nought to gain of worth
When I reflect upon your noble birth
And how you are of all the flower and light,
And how I know you precious, sweet and fair,
And how you are true, pure, in faith unbroken,
And how by all men it is sworn and spoken
That never woman like you breathed the air.

Take pity of your goodness on my plight,
Heed not your greatness, lady, but have care
For the true love that in my heart you’ve woken,
And for my faith that never will be broken,
Since all my love for you alone I bear.

From: Smythe, Barbara (ed. and transl.), Trobador Poets: Selections from the Poems of Eight Trobadors, 2000, In parentheses Publications: Cambridge, Ontario, pp. 167-168.
(https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Trobador_Poets.html?id=JxUxG4yHh-4C)

Date: c1200 (original in Occitan); 1911 (translation in English)

By: Guillem de Cabestany (1162-1212)

Translated by: Barbara Smythe (1882-19??)

The Hosts of Faery by Anonymous

White shields they carry in their hands,
With emblems of pale silver;
With glittering blue swords,
With mighty stout horns.

In well-devised battle array,
Ahead of their fair chieftain
They march amid blue spears,
Pale-visaged, curly-headed bands.

They scatter the battalions of the foe,
They ravage every land they attack,
Splendidly they march to combat,
A swift, distinguished, avenging host!

No wonder though their strength be great:
Sons of queens and kings are one and all;
On their heads are
Beautiful golden-yellow manes.

With smooth comely bodies,
With bright blue-starred eyes,
With pure crystal teeth,
With thin red lips.

Good they are at man-slaying,
Melodious in the ale-house,
Masterly at making songs,
Skilled at playing fidchell.

From: Meyer, Kuno (ed. and transl.), Selections from Ancient Irish Poetry, 1911, Constable & Company: London, p. 20.
(https://www.gutenberg.org/files/32030/32030-h/32030-h.htm)

Date: 12^th century (original in Gaelic); 1911 (translation in English)

By: Anonymous

Translated by: Kuno Meyer (1858-1919)

My Poems by Shō Hō (Yosano Akiko)

Because my songs are brief,
People think I hoarded words.
I have spared nothing in my songs,
There is nothing I can add.
Unlike a fish, my soul swims without gills.
I sing on one breath.

From: http://www.tankaonline.com/About%20Tanka%20and%20Its%20History.htm

Date: 1911 (original in Japanese); 1956 (translation in English)

By: Shō Hō (Yosano Akiko) (1878-1942)

Translated by: Sakanishi Shiho (1896-1976)

Lines by Samuel E. Loveman

I know no light beyond the night,
I see no star to pierce the star,
But still ‘d and windless in my sight,
There pass the dreams that once were fair.

Oh! to have known and lost all this,
The brimming youth, the joy to reap,
And in its stead a transient bliss,
To drift in unforgetting sleep.

April 20, 1911.

From: Loveman, Samuel, Poems, 1911, Self-Published: Cleveland, Ohio, p.13.
(https://archive.org/stream/poemssam00loverich#page/12/mode/2up)

Date: 1911

By: Samuel E. Loveman (1887-1976)

Paid to Doodlekine, W.A. by Alfred George Stephens

Roll a red tongue that riots in the pride
Of vowels strong, sonorous as the sea;
Gorge a rich ear that will not be denied
Its ravishment of royal melody;
Yet Aspromont and Montalban no more
Vie with Morocco or with Trebizond,
And Charlemagne on Fontarabia’s shore
Shall know his syllables no longer conned:
Their glory and their majesty are thine,
And thou art ours, heroic Doodlekine!

That blessed word Mesopotamia,
In Whitfield’s mouth, made even butchers weep;
Atchafalaya has been murmured far
And wide by devotees in poppied sleep;
But what avails the immemorial noise
And outcry of Castile and Aragon?
Can Connemara give us former joys?
Can Oonalaska still demand the bun?
As stars before the Day their light resign,
These yield and worship thee, O Doodlekine!

Many go hence upon a glittering quest,
Leaving the cherished girls, the friendly home;
Their hearts beat high with Youth (young men go West)
And sickly they affront the roaring foam;
They pass the Lioness, Rottnest they spurn,
Then vanish down the vista of the years . . . .
We mourn in vain: they never may return;
For thou hast poured thy spelling in their ears.
The magic of that spell is like strong wine—
Would thou wert East, delirious Doodlekine!

From: Stephens, A. G, The Pearl and the Octopus and Other Exercises in Prose and Verse, 2003, University of Sydney Library: Sydney, p. 55.
(http://adc.library.usyd.edu.au/data-2/stepear.pdf)

Date: 1911

By: Alfred George Stephens (1865-1933)

Epitaph by Eden Phillpotts

When the dust of the workshop is still,
The dust of the workman at rest,
May some generous heart find a will
To seek and to treasure his best.

From the splendour of hopes that deceived;
From the wonders he planned to do;
From the glories so nearly achieved;
From dreams that so nearly came true;

From his struggle to rise above earth
On the pinions that could not fly;
From his sorrows; oh, seek for some worth
To remember the workman by.

If in vain; if Time sweeps all away,
And no laurel from that dust springs;
‘Tis enough that a loyal heart say,
“He tried to make beautiful things.”

From: Phillpotts, Eden, Wild Fruit, 1911, John Lane The Bodley Head: London, p. 66.
(https://archive.org/stream/wildfruit00philiala#page/66/mode/2up)

Date: 1911

By: Eden Phillpotts (1862-1960)

The Sorrowful Fate of Bartholomew Jones by William Gay

Bartholomew Jones made his money in mines,
And although he has left us his fame still shines
As a man who was knowing in various lines.

It wasn’t his line to write or to spell,
To teach or to preach, to dig or to fell,
But to handle his shares, and to keep out of hell.

He knelt every day at the foot of the Throne
(To use his own words), yet he wore (it was known)
His garments of grace o’er a heart made of stone.

And when Death would no longer concede a respite,
He hied straight away to the regions of light,
As a man of whom no one could question the right.

He wandered for long o’er the pavements of gold,
Saw wonders and glories around him unfold,
But somehow all seemed to him dismal and cold.

He tired of the sun’s everlasting rays,
Grew sick of the harps and the hymns and the praise,
And drooped in the glare of the glittering ways.

“If this be the heaven I laboured to win,
I’d better have taken full measure of sin,”
He moaned to the angel who first let him in.

Said the angel, while looking to bolt and to bar,
“I fear, sir, you’re somewhat mistaken so far,
But this is the hell where the hypocrites are.”

From: http://adc.library.usyd.edu.au/data-2/gaycomp.pdf

Date: 1911 (published)

By: William Gay (1865-1897)