Colloquium on English - Research Institute for Waldorf Education
Colloquium on English - Research Institute for Waldorf Education
Colloquium on English - Research Institute for Waldorf Education
You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
And here I bloom <strong>for</strong> a short hour unseen,<br />
Drinking my juices up,<br />
With no root in the land<br />
To keep my branches green,<br />
But stand<br />
In a bare cup.<br />
— Henry David Thoreau<br />
I, Being Born a Woman and Distressed<br />
I, being born a woman and distressed<br />
By all the needs and noti<strong>on</strong>s of my kind,<br />
Am urged by your propinquity to find<br />
Your pers<strong>on</strong> fair, and feel a certain zest<br />
To bear your body’s weight up<strong>on</strong> my breast:<br />
So subtly is the fume of life designed,<br />
To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,<br />
And leave me <strong>on</strong>ce again und<strong>on</strong>e, possessed.<br />
Think not <strong>for</strong> this, however, the poor treas<strong>on</strong><br />
Of my stout blood against my staggering brain,<br />
I shall remember you with love, or seas<strong>on</strong><br />
My scorn with pity,—let me make it plain:<br />
I find this frenzy insufficient reas<strong>on</strong><br />
For c<strong>on</strong>versati<strong>on</strong> when we meet again.<br />
— Edna St. Vincent Millay<br />
Mirror<br />
I am silver and exact. I have no prec<strong>on</strong>cepti<strong>on</strong>s.<br />
Whatever I see I swallow immediately<br />
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.<br />
I am not cruel, <strong>on</strong>ly truthful—<br />
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.<br />
Most of the time I meditate <strong>on</strong> the opposite wall.<br />
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so l<strong>on</strong>g<br />
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.<br />
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.<br />
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me.<br />
Searching my reaches <strong>for</strong> what she really is.<br />
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the mo<strong>on</strong>.<br />
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.<br />
She rewards me with tears and an agitati<strong>on</strong> of hands.<br />
I am important to her. She comes and goes.<br />
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.<br />
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman<br />
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.<br />
— Sylvia Plath<br />
83