The Mermaidens' Vesper Hymn

Sir Edward Coley Burne Jones

The Depths

The Mermaidens' Vesper Hymn

Troop home to silent grots and caves!
Troop home! and mimic as you go
The mournful windings of the waves
Which to their dark abysses flow.

At this sweet hour, all things beside
In amorous pairs to covert creep;
The swans that brush the evening tide
Homeward in snowy couples keep.

In his green den the murmuring seal
Close by his sleek companion lies;
While singly we to bedward steal,
And close in fruitless sleep our eyes.

In bowers of love men take their rest,
In loveless bowers we sigh alone,
With bosom friends are others blest--
But we have none! but we have none!

~ George Darley ~

How to Eat Alone

Andy Warhol

Cambell’s Soup Cans

How to Eat Alone

While it's still light out

set the table for one:

a red linen tablecloth,

one white plate, a bowl

for the salad

and the proper silverware.

Take out a three-pound leg of lamb,

rub it with salt, pepper and cumin,

then push in two cloves

of garlic splinters.

Place it in a 325-degree oven

and set the timer for an hour.

Put freshly cut vegetables

into a pot with some herbs

and the crudest olive oil

you can find.

Heat on a low flame.

Clean the salad.

Be sure the dressing is made

with fresh dill, mustard

and the juice of hard lemons.

Open a bottle of good late harvest zinfandel

and let it breathe on the table.

Pour yourself a glass

of cold California chardonnay

and go to your study and read.

As the story unfolds

you will smell the lamb

and the vegetables.

This is the best part of the evening:

the food cooking, the armchair,

the book and bright flavorof the chilled wine.

When the timer goes off

toss the salad

and prepare the vegetables

and the lamb. Bring them out

to the table. Light the candles

and pour the red wine

into your glass.

Before you begin to eat,

raise your glass in honor

of yourself.

The company is the best you'll ever have.

~ Daniel Halpern ~

Pity Me Not Because the Light of Day

Pytor Konchalovsky

Girl Without Suitors

Pity Me Not Because the Light of Day

Pity me not because the light of day

At close of day no longer walks the sky;

Pity me not for beauties passed away

From field and thicket as the year goes by.

Pity me not the waning of the moon,

Or that the ebbing tide goes out to sea,

Or that a man's desire is hushed so soon,

And you no longer look with love on me.

This have I always known: Love is no more

Than the wide blossom which the wind assails,

Than the great tide that treads the shifting shore,

Strewing fresh wreckage gathered in the gales.

Pity me that the heart is slow to learn

What the swift mind beholds at every turn.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay ~

Unwanted

Lucian Freud
John Minton

Unwanted

The poster with my picture on it
Is hanging on the bulletin board in the Post Office.

I stand by it hoping to be recognized
Posing first full face and then profile

But everybody passes by and I have to admit
The photograph was taken some years ago.

I was unwanted then and I'm unwanted now
Ah guess ah'll go up echo mountain and crah.

I wish someone would find my fingerprints somewhere
Maybe on a corpse and say, You're it.

Description: Male, or reasonably so
White, but not lily-white and usually deep-red

Thirty-fivish, and looks it lately
Five-feet-nine and one-hundred-thirty pounds: no physique

Black hair going gray, hairline receding fast
What used to be curly, now fuzzy

Brown eyes starey under beetling brow
Mole on chin, probably will become a wen

It is perfectly obvious that he was not popular at school
No good at baseball, and wet his bed.

His aliases tell his history: Dumbell, Good-for-nothing,
Jewboy, Fieldinsky, Skinny, Fierce Face, Greaseball, Sissy.

Warning: This man is not dangerous, answers to any name
Responds to love, don't call him or he will come.

~ Edward Field ~

Twilight

Amedeo Modigliani

Landscape

Twilight

Dreamily over the roofs
The cold spring rain is falling;
Out in the lonely tree
A bird is calling, calling.

Slowly over the earth
The wings of night are falling;
My heart like the bird in the tree
Is calling, calling, calling.

~ Sara Teasdale ~