JunoMagic ~ satismagic

XIX.

The imps of the river yell and rave;
They had no power above the wave,
But they heaved the billow before the prow,
And they dashed the surge against her side,
And they struck her keel with jerk and blow,
Till the gunwale bent to the rocking tide.
She wimpled about in the pale moonbeam,
Like a feather that floats on a wind tossed-stream;
And momently athwart her track
The quarl upreared his island back,
And the fluttering scallop behind would float,
And patter the water about the boat;
But he bailed her out with his colen-bell,
And he kept her trimmed with a wary tread,
While on every side like lightening fell
The heavy strokes of his bootle-blade.

– from “The Culprit Fay” by Joseph Rodman Drake

Overview: (Inter-)National Poetry Month 2008 »

  Yet Gentle Will the Griffin Be

(What Grandpa told the Children)

The moon? It is a griffin’s egg,
Hatching to-morrow night.
And how the little boys will watch
With shouting and delight
To see him break the shell and stretch
And creep across the sky.
The boys will laugh. The little girls,
I fear, may hide and cry.
Yet gentle will the griffin be,
Most decorous and fat,
And walk up to the milky way
And lap it like a cat.

– Nicholas Vachel Lindsay

And when I was browsing the interweb, searching for griffin poems, I found something really awesome: an school project about griffins! With itty bitty poems and tales and paintings!

Here are my favourites:

GRIFFIN

Jet black wings glistening the in the moon light
Golden eye shimmering in the night sky
Claws scratching the night sky like shooting stars
Flying like a thunder cloud
He strikes like lightning.

– Karrie Childs

GRIFFIN

Griffin is fierce and beautiful
Bigger than me
Brave sometimes sad sometimes
Eagles wings
He is fiercer than me
He is horrid sometimes
He flies to a high place to watch

– Sarah Smith

But they are really all quite wonderful. Go and read, NOW: Griffin Poems

Overview: (Inter-)National Poetry Month 2008 »

  The Dragon & The Undying

All night the flares go up; the Dragon sings
And beats upon the dark with furious wings;
And, stung to rage by his own darting fires,
Reaches with grappling coils from town to town;
He lusts to break the loveliness of spires,
And hurls their martyred music toppling down.
Yet, though the slain are homeless as the breeze,

Vocal are they, like storm-bewilder’d seas.
Their faces are the fair, unshrouded night,
And planets are their eyes, their ageless dreams.
Tenderly stooping earthward from their height,
They wander in the dusk with chanting streams,
And they are dawn-lit trees, with arms up-flung,
To hail the burning heavens they left unsung.

– Siegfried Sassoon

Overview: (Inter-)National Poetry Month 2008 »

Brownie

In a corner of the bedroom is a great big curtain,
Someone lives behind it, but I don’t know who;
I think it is a Brownie, but I’m not quite certain.
(Nanny isn’t certain, too.)

I looked behind the curtain, but he went so quickly –
Brownies never wait to say, “How do you do?”
They wriggle off at once because they’re all so tickly
(Nanny says they’re tickly too.)

– Alan Alexander Milne

Overview: (Inter-)National Poetry Month 2008 »

  On A Picture Of A Black Centaur By Edmund Dulac

Your hooves have stamped at the black margin of the wood,
Even where horrible green parrots call and swing.
My works are all stamped down into the sultry mud.
I knew that horse-play, knew it for a murderous thing.
What wholesome sun has ripened is wholesome food to eat,
And that alone; yet I, being driven half insane
Because of some green wing, gathered old mummy wheat
In the mad abstract dark and ground it grain by grain
And after baked it slowly in an oven; but now
I bring full-flavoured wine out of a barrel found
Where seven Ephesian topers slept and never knew
When Alexander’s empire passed, they slept so sound.
Stretch out your limbs and sleep a long Saturnian sleep;
I have loved you better than my soul for all my words,
And there is none so fit to keep a watch and keep
Unwearied eyes upon those horrible green birds.

– William Butler Yeats

If I am not mistaken, you can see the picture this poem is about at the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive, “Dulac’s Tanglewood Tales” (it’s the second picture from the bottom).

Overview: (Inter-)National Poetry Month 2008 »

  The Elves

Elves are no smaller
than men, and walk
as men do, in this world,
but with more grace than most,
and are not immortal.

Their beauty sets them aside
from other men and from women
unless a woman has that cold fire in her
called poet: with that

she may see them and by its light
they know her and are not afraid
and silver tongues of love
flicker between them.

– Denise Levertov

Overview: (Inter-)National Poetry Month 2008 »

  I Am Unicorn

All that lives of legendry,
Beauty, magic, mystery,
Gentleness and purity,
Dwells in me.

I no mate, no kin, have known;
None may claim me as his own;
One is one, and all alone,
It must be.

Through their weariness and woe
Men have sometimes seen me go,
Felt a wind from Eden blow
Suddenly:

Though they hunt with spear and horn,
Knowing life cannot be borne
If they have no unicorn-
I am free.

Though they kill, and weep to see
Beauty’s symbol ended be-
One is one and lives in me
To eternity.

– Nicholas Stuart Gray

Overview: (Inter-)National Poetry Month 2008 »