Prosodia

With Music by Helen Hay Whitney

Dear, did we meet in some dim yesterday?

I half remember how the birds were mute

Among green leaves and tulip-tinted fruit,

And on the grass, beside a stream, we lay

In early twilight; faintly, far away,

Came lovely sounds adrift from silver lute,

With answered echoes of an airy flute,

While Twilight waited tiptoe, fain to stay.

Her violet eyes were sweet with mystery.

You looked in mine, the music rose and fell

Like little, lisping laughter of the sea;

Our souls were barks, wind-wafted from the shore—

Gold cup, a rose, a ruby, who can tell?

Soft—music ceases—I recall no more.

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Prosodia is a daily podcast dedicated to historical notes and poems, hosted by Karim El Azhari. Welcome!

All show notes are heavily recycled from old The Writer’s Almanac archives. May that podcast rest in peace (it was Karim’s favorite).

All poems are public domain or submitted by the author for use on the show.

Intro and outro music by Chillhop Records. They are amazing!

The Passing of the Hours by Ella Higginson

The hours steal by with still, unasking lips—

So lightly that I cannot hear their tread;

And softly touch me with their finger-tips

To find if I be dreaming, or be dead.

And yet however still their flight may be,

Their ceaseless going weights my heart with tears;

These touches will have wrought deep scars on me—

When the light hours have worn to heavy years.

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Prosodia is a daily podcast dedicated to historical notes and poems, hosted by Karim El Azhari. Welcome!

All show notes are heavily recycled from old The Writer’s Almanac archives. May that podcast rest in peace (it was Karim’s favorite).

All poems are public domain or submitted by the author for use on the show.

Intro and outro music by Chillhop Records. They are amazing!

Spirits of the Dead by Edgar Allan Poe

Thy soul shall find itself alone

‘Mid dark thoughts of the grey tomb-stone;

Not one, of all the crowd, to pry

Into thine hour of secrecy.

Be silent in that solitude,

Which is not loneliness — for then

The spirits of the dead, who stood

In life before thee, are again

In death around thee, and their will

Shall overshadow thee; be still.

The night, though clear, shall frown,

And the stars shall not look down

From their high thrones in the Heaven

With light like hope to mortals given,

But their red orbs, without beam,

To thy weariness shall seem

As a burning and a fever

Which would cling to thee for ever.

Now are thoughts thou shalt not banish,

Now are visions ne’er to vanish;

From thy spirit shall they pass

No more, like dew-drop from the grass.

The breeze, the breath of God, is still,

And the mist upon the hill

Shadowy, shadowy, yet unbroken,

Is a symbol and a token.

How it hangs upon the trees,

A mystery of mysteries!

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Prosodia is a daily podcast dedicated to historical notes and poems, hosted by Karim El Azhari. Welcome!

All show notes are heavily recycled from old The Writer’s Almanac archives. May that podcast rest in peace (it was Karim’s favorite).

All poems are public domain or submitted by the author for use on the show.

Intro and outro music by Chillhop Records. They are amazing!

Rates of Change by Quinn Elliot Dresdahl

It's all relative.

Let me summarize.

The scientists all agree,

It's so imperative

That you realize

Your frame of reference is key.

And the vectors,

Take their summations.

Note directions and the size.

And the origins'

Coordinate transformations

Allow for mathematic compromise.

But then distances will lengthen.

Observe that seconds dilate.

You're either moving at twice the speed,

Or standing still... Wait...

The whole thing makes a paradox!

Heartache takes eons.

Joys pass like a blur.

If you're not who you were supposed to be,

When they become whoever they were.

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Prosodia is a daily podcast dedicated to historical notes and poems, hosted by Karim El Azhari. Welcome!

All show notes are heavily recycled from old The Writer’s Almanac archives. May that podcast rest in peace (it was Karim’s favorite).

All poems are public domain or submitted by the author for use on the show.

Intro and outro music by Chillhop Records. They are amazing!

Moonrise by Gerard Manly Hopkins

I awoke in the Midsummer not to call night, in the white and the walk of the morning:

The moon, dwindled and thinned to the fringe of a finger-nail held to the candle,

Or paring of paradisaïcal fruit, lovely in waning but lustreless,

Stepped from the stool, drew back from the barrow, of dark Maenefa the mountain;

A cusp still clasped him, a fluke yet fanged him, entangled him, not quit utterly.

This was the prized, the desirable sight, unsought, presented so easily,

Parted me leaf and leaf, divided me, eyelid and eyelid of slumber.

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Prosodia is a daily podcast dedicated to historical notes and poems, hosted by Karim El Azhari. Welcome!

All show notes are heavily recycled from old The Writer’s Almanac archives. May that podcast rest in peace (it was Karim’s favorite).

All poems are public domain or submitted by the author for use on the show.

Intro and outro music by Chillhop Records. They are amazing!

Night Fell by Florence Ripley Mastin

Night fell one year ago, like this.

He had been writing steadily.

Among these dusky walls of books,

How bright he looked, intense as flame!

Suddenly he paused,

The firelight in his hair,

And said, “The time has come to go.”

I took his hand;

We watched the logs burn out;

The apple boughs fingered the window;

Down the cool, spring night

A slim, white moon leaned to the hill.

To-night the trees are budded white,

And the same pale moon slips through the dusk.

O little buds, tap-tapping on the pane,

O white moon,

I wonder if he sleeps in woods

Where there are leaves?

Or if he lies in some black trench,

His hands, his kind hands, kindling flame that kills?

Or if, or if...

He is here now, to bid me last good-night?

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Prosodia is a daily podcast dedicated to historical notes and poems, hosted by Karim El Azhari. Welcome!

All show notes are heavily recycled from old The Writer’s Almanac archives. May that podcast rest in peace (it was Karim’s favorite).

All poems are public domain or submitted by the author for use on the show.

Intro and outro music by Chillhop Records. They are amazing!

When You Are Old by W.B. Yeats

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true,

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

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Prosodia is a daily podcast dedicated to historical notes and poems, hosted by Karim El Azhari. Welcome!

All show notes are heavily recycled from old The Writer’s Almanac archives. May that podcast rest in peace (it was Karim’s favorite).

All poems are public domain or submitted by the author for use on the show.

Intro and outro music by Chillhop Records. They are amazing!

A January Dandelion by George Marion McClellan

All Nashville is a chill. And everywhere

Like desert sand, when the winds blow,

There is each moment sifted through the air,

A powdered blast of January snow.

O! thoughtless Dandelion, to be misled

By a few warm days to leave thy natural bed,

Was folly growth and blooming over soon.

And yet, thou blasted yellow-coated gem,

Full many a heart has but a common boon

With thee, now freezing on thy slender stem.

When the heart has bloomed by the touch of love’s warm breath

Then left and chilling snow is sifted in,

It still may beat but there is blast and death

To all that blooming life that might have been.

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Prosodia is a daily podcast dedicated to historical notes and poems, hosted by Karim El Azhari. Welcome!

All show notes are heavily recycled from old The Writer’s Almanac archives. May that podcast rest in peace (it was Karim’s favorite).

All poems are public domain or submitted by the author for use on the show.

Intro and outro music by Chillhop Records. They are amazing!

Sonnet to Winter by Emily Chubbuck Judson

Thy brow is girt, thy robe with gems inwove;

And palaces of frost-work, on the eye,

Flash out, and gleam in every gorgeous dye,

The pencil, dipped in glorious things above,

Can bring to earth. Oh, thou art passing fair!

But cold and cheerless as the heart of death,

Without one warm, free pulse, one softening breath,

One soothing whisper for the ear of Care.

Fortune too has her Winter. In the Spring,

We watch the bud of promise; and the flower

Looks out upon us at the Summer hour;

And Autumn days the blessed harvest bring;

Then comes the reign of jewels rare, and gold,

When brows flash light, but hearts grow strangely cold.

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Prosodia is a daily podcast dedicated to historical notes and poems, hosted by Karim El Azhari. Welcome!

All show notes are heavily recycled from old The Writer's Almanac archives. May that podcast rest in peace (it was Karim's favorite).

All poems are public domain or submitted by the author for use on the show.

Intro and outro music by Chillhop Records. They are amazing!

Dawn by John Gould Fletcher

Above the east horizon,

The great red flower of the dawn

Opens slowly, petal by petal;

The trees emerge from darkness

With ghostly silver leaves,

Dew powdered.

Now consciousness emerges

Reluctantly out of tides of sleep;

Finding with cold surprise

No strange new thing to match its dreams,

But merely the familiar shapes

Of bedpost, window-pane, and wall.

Within the city,

The streets which were the last to fall to sleep,

Hold yet stale fragments of the night.

Sleep oozes out of stagnant ash-barrels,

Sleep drowses over litter in the streets.

Sleep nods upon the milkcans by back doors.

And, in shut rooms,

Behind the lowered window-blinds,

Drawn white faces unwittingly flout the day.

But, at the edges of the city,

Sleep is already washed away;

Light filters through the moist green leaves,

It runs into the cups of flowers,

It leaps in sparks through drops of dew,

It whirls against the window-panes

With waking birds;

Blinds are rolled up and chimneys smoke,

Feet clatter past in silent paths,

And down white vanishing ways of steel,

A dozen railway trains converge

Upon night’s stronghold.

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Prosodia is a daily podcast dedicated to historical notes and poems, hosted by Karim El Azhari. Welcome!

All show notes are heavily recycled from old The Writer's Almanac archives. May that podcast rest in peace (it was Karim's favorite).

All poems are public domain or submitted by the author for use on the show.

Intro and outro music by Chillhop Records. They are amazing!