Within the Swamp, a Seer is Watching
Within the Swamp, a Seer is Waiting

Step Forward...

I'm Nobody!    Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us -- don't tell!
They 'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

- Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

I am a pool in a peaceful place,
I greet the great sky face to face,
I know the stars and the stately moon
And the wind that runs with rippling shoon
But why does it always bring to me
The far-off, beautiful sound of the sea?

The marsh-grass weaves me a wall of green,
But the wind comes whispering in between,
In the dead of night when the sky is deep
The wind comes waking me out of sleep
Why does it always bring to me
The far-off, terrible call of the sea?

- Sara Teasdale

How beautiful a new sun is when it rises,
flashing out its greeting, like an explosion!
Happy, whoever hails with sweet emotion
its descent, nobler than a dream, to our eyes!

I remember! I've seen all, flower, furrow, fountain,
swoon beneath its look, like a throbbing heart
Let's run quickly, it's late, towards the horizon,
to catch at least one slanting ray as it departs!

But I pursue the vanishing God in vain:
irresistible Night establishes its sway,
full of shudders, black, dismal, cold:

an odour of the tomb floats in the shadow,
at the swamp's edge, feet faltering I go,
bruising damp slugs, and unexpected toads.

- Charles Baudelaire

 Nymph, nymph, what are your beads?

Green glass, goblin. Why do you stare at them?

Give them me.

                 No.

Give them me. Give them me.

                                No.

Then I will howl all night in the reeds,
Lie in the mud and howl for them.

Goblin, why do you love them so?

They are better than stars or water,
Better than voices of winds that sing,
Better than any man's fair daughter,
Your green glass beads on a silver ring.

Hush, I stole them out of the moon.

Give me your beads, I want them.

                                     No.

I will howl in a deep lagoon
For your green glass beads, I love them so.
Give them me. Give them.

                             No.

- Harold Edward Monro