In Memoriam: Adelaide Crapsey (September 9, 1878–October 8, 1914)

In memory of Adelaide Crapsey, I present four of her poems below from her book entitled Verse. I have also included a poem (which is a tribute to Adelaide) written by Carl Sandburg from his book Cornhuskers . Finally, there is a tribute poem by myself.

Paul

~~~

Moon Shadows

Still as
On windless nights
The moon-cast shadows are,
So still will be my heart when I
Am dead.

~ Adelaide Crapsey

~~

Dirge

Never the nightingale,
Oh, my dear,
Never again the lark
Thou wilt hear;
Though dusk and the morning still
Tap at thy window-sill,
Though ever love call and call
Thou wilt not hear at all,
My dear, my dear.

~ Adelaide Crapsey

~~

On Seeing Weather Beaten Trees

Is it as plainly in our living shown,
By slant and twist, which way the wind has blown?

~ Adelaide Crapsey

~~

The Immortal Residue
Inscription for my verse

Wouldst thou find my ashes? Look
In the pages of my book;
And as these thy hand doth turn,
Know here is my funeral urn.

~ Adelaide Crapsey

~~~

Adelaide Crapsey

AMONG the bumble-bees in red-top hay, a freckled field of brown-eyed Susans dripping yellow leaves in July,
I read your heart in a book.

And your mouth of blue pansy—I know somewhere I have seen it rain-shattered.

And I have seen a woman with her head flung between her naked knees, and her head held there listening to the sea, the great naked sea shouldering a load of salt.

And the blue pansy mouth sang to the sea:
Mother of God, I’m so little a thing,
Let me sing longer,
Only a little longer.

And the sea shouldered its salt in long gray combers hauling new shapes on the beach sand.

~ Carl Sandburg

~~

Adelaide Crapsey

Whisper
of flame at dusk
twinkles on the lake's edge,
shadow-shrouded, frail - eternal
echoes.

~ Paul Ingrassia

(First Published in Amaze: The Cinquain Journal, Spring 2006 Issue. Awarded 4th place in first annual Adelaide Award, nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2006. I was inspired by the photo at the top of this post.)

OZYMANDIAS

OZYMANDIAS

Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

~ ~ ~

OZYMANDIAS

or

On A Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below

Horace Smith

In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows:
"I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone,
"The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
"The wonders of my hand." The City's gone,
Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.
We wonder, and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragments huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

~ ~ ~

for info about these poems visit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias