Sestina Example Page
Sestina
by Dante Alighieri I have come, alas, to the great circle of shadow, to the short day and to the whitening hills, when the colour is all lost from the grass, though my desire will not lose its green, so rooted is it in this hardest stone, that speaks and feels as though it were a woman. And likewise this heaven-born woman stays frozen, like the snow in shadow, and is unmoved, or moved like a stone, by the sweet season that warms all the hills, and makes them alter from pure white to green, so as to clothe them with the flowers and grass. When her head wears a crown of grass she draws the mind from any other woman, because she blends her gold hair with the green so well that Amor lingers in their shadow, he who fastens me in these low hills, more certainly than lime fastens stone. Her beauty has more virtue than rare stone. The wound she gives cannot be healed with grass, since I have travelled, through the plains and hills, to find my release from such a woman, yet from her light had never a shadow thrown on me, by hill, wall, or leaves’ green. I have seen her walk all dressed in green, so formed she would have sparked love in a stone, that love I bear for her very shadow, so that I wished her, in those fields of grass, as much in love as ever yet was woman, closed around by all the highest hills. The rivers will flow upwards to the hills before this wood, that is so soft and green, takes fire, as might ever lovely woman, for me, who would choose to sleep on stone, all my life, and go eating grass, only to gaze at where her clothes cast shadow. Whenever the hills cast blackest shadow, with her sweet green, the lovely woman hides it, as a man hides stone in grass. |
A Miracle for Breakfast
by Elizabeth Bishop At six o’clock we were waiting for coffee, waiting for coffee and the charitable crumb that was going to be served from a certain balcony —like kings of old, or like a miracle. It was still dark. One foot of the sun steadied itself on a long ripple in the river. The first ferry of the day had just crossed the river. It was so cold we hoped that the coffee would be very hot, seeing that the sun was not going to warm us; and that the crumb would be a loaf each, buttered, by a miracle. At seven a man stepped out on the balcony. He stood for a minute alone on the balcony looking over our heads toward the river. A servant handed him the makings of a miracle, consisting of one lone cup of coffee and one roll, which he proceeded to crumb, his head, so to speak, in the clouds—along with the sun. Was the man crazy? What under the sun was he trying to do, up there on his balcony! Each man received one rather hard crumb, which some flicked scornfully into the river, and, in a cup, one drop of the coffee. Some of us stood around, waiting for the miracle. I can tell what I saw next; it was not a miracle. A beautiful villa stood in the sun and from its doors came the smell of hot coffee. In front, a baroque white plaster balcony added by birds, who nest along the river, —I saw it with one eye close to the crumb-- and galleries and marble chambers. My crumb my mansion, made for me by a miracle, through ages, by insects, birds, and the river working the stone. Every day, in the sun, at breakfast time I sit on my balcony with my feet up, and drink gallons of coffee. We licked up the crumb and swallowed the coffee. A window across the river caught the sun as if the miracle were working, on the wrong balcony. |