I am reading Childe Harold's Pilgrimage by Lord Byron for the first time. I know Shelley well, and Keats, and some of Coleridge and Wordsworth. But all I knew of Byron was the poem She Walks in Beauty like the Night. Byron was a great traveler and the poem is more travelogue than narrative, but full of passages that speak to me, which is all I ask of a poem. Here is one:

But I have lived, and have not lived in vain:
   My mind may lose its force, my blood its fire,
   And my frame perish even in conquering pain,
   But there is that within me which shall tire
   Torture and Time, and breathe when I expire:
   Something unearthly, which they deem not of,
   Like the remembered tone of a mute lyre,
   Shall on their softened spirits sink, and move
In hearts all rocky now the late remorse of love.

The second edition of Sonets from the Chesapeke is available today, with additional sonets (the sonets have two five line stanzas with a concluding couplet).

Here are a couple:  

  His Joy

Toss a coin into a lake. Go ahead.

Just please be sure to miss the (friendly) fish.

They were there first. If you wish to wait

until the wave is gone, get comfortable.

It’s never gone, just beyond your vision.

His joy was like a wave,

Splash like laughter, washing wavering

Flowing out in all directions

Was all we saw, all we could see.

But I’ll tell you—this I know.

Such joy in life could never dissipate.

Touch the water. Hear it laugh.

  Night of the Harvest

Night of the harvest I dive in,

swimming toward the bay.

The moon rented the creek for the night

But didn’t mind our play

Or wouldn’t say

If it did. The water warm

from the day, still, still

in the breathless calm, the stars shuttered

at the moon’s will,

and ours, until

you. We float, touch, hold, part,

Within, the gravity of absent stars.

This is something called Watchathon week on cable here, where they give free access to various channels. One was a classical music channel and I listened to two Ascension Oratorios, one by CPE Bach and one by his father JS Bach.

CPE was first and was wonderful, a joyful musical experience. But when the first phrases of the JS rang out, you knew you knew you were listening to something more. I tried to classify the difference, since the instruments and singers were all the same. It's like JS gives you access to another musical plane, that few others have access to. He opens a door that others have no key to. You have musically ascended.

"Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile,

Hath not old custom made this life more sweet

Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods

More free from peril than the envious court?

Here feel we but the penalty of Adam,

The seasons' difference, as the icy fang

And churlish chiding of the winter's wind,

Which, when it bites and blows upon my body,

Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and say

'This is no flattery: these are counsellors

That feelingly persuade me what I am.'

Sweet are the uses of adversity,

Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,

Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;

And this our life exempt from public haunt

Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,

Sermons in stones and good in every thing.

I would not change it."

William Shakespeare

As You Like It