March Madness Poetry Tournament!

English 9

Ms. Regales

2011Room 208

Let the Games Begin!

What does March Madness have to do with poetry, you might be thinking?

I have chosen 32 poems, which appear in this booklet, and made a bracket for each of my classes. At the beginning of each class, beginning March 1st, we will hear two students reading a pair of poems, in their best dramatic interpretation, as we read along in our booklets and I project the poem. After a moment to let the poem sink in, we will all vote in a secret ballot, and one poem will advance to the next round, keeping the same student reader. Due to spring break, our tournament may stretch into April, but April is National Poetry Month, so that is actually perfect timing!

At the end of the tournament, each of my three sections will have chosen a winner. These three poems will advance to a SUDDEN DEATH MATCH, held during the next Morning Meeting, when the entire Upper School will vote for the best poem!

We will discuss in class how to read a poem effectively, and I will be watching to make sure each poem gets well represented in its reading. Find some good advice from former Poet Laureate Billy Collins here: http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/p180-howtoread.html

Good luck, and may the best poem win!

Ms. Regales

March Madness Contestants:

1. A Blessing, James Wright2. A Red, Red Rose, Robert Burns3. To Dorothy, Marvin Bell 4. The Kiss, Stephen Dunn 5. San Antonio, Naomi Shihab Nye 6. Dawn Revisited, Rita Dove7. Still I Rise, Maya Angelou8. homage to my hips, Lucille Clifton 9. Introduction to Poetry, Billy Collins 10. Eating Poetry, Mark Strand11. Do not go gentle into that good night, Dylan Thomas12. Let Evening Come, Jane Kenyon 13. The Tyger, William Blake 14. Wild Geese, Mary Oliver15. Ode to my Socks, Pablo Neruda16. Ode To Tomatoes, Pablo Neruda17. One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII, Pablo Neruda 18. The Summer Day, Mary Oliver19. Crossing the Bar, Alfred Lord Tennyson20. When I heard the Learn’d Astronomer, Walt Whitman21. The Sound of the Sea, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow22. Dover Beach, Matthew Arnold23. Mid-Term Break, Seamus Heaney24. Funeral Blues , W.H. Auden25. somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond,ee cummings26. carry your heart with me(i carry it in], ee cummings 27. Praise Song, Lucille Clifton28. Woman, Nikki Giovanni29. Oranges, Gary Soto30. The Girl Who Loved the Sky, Anita Endrezze 31. Beware: Do Not Read This Poem, Ishmael Reed 32. The Mewlips, J.R.R. Tolkien

A BlessingJames Wright

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.And the eyes of those two Indian poniesDarken with kindness.They have come gladly out of the willowsTo welcome my friend and me.We step over the barbed wire into the pastureWhere they have been grazing all day, alone.They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happinessThat we have come.They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.There is no loneliness like theirs.At home once more,They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,For she has walked over to meAnd nuzzled my left hand.She is black and white,Her mane falls wild on her forehead,And the light breeze moves me to caress her long earThat is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist.Suddenly I realizeThat if I stepped out of my body I would breakInto blossom.

A Red, Red RoseRobert Burns

O my luve's like a red, red rose, That's newly sprung in June;O my luve's like the melodie That's sweetly played in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonnie lass, So deep in luve am I;And I will luve thee still, my dear,Till a' the seas gang dry.

Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear, And the rocks melt wi' the sun:O I will love thee still, my dear, While the sands o' life shall run.

And fare thee weel, my only luve, And fare thee weel awhile!And I will come again, my luve, Though it were ten thousand mile.

To Dorothy   Marvin Bell

You are not beautiful, exactly.You are beautiful, inexactly.You let a weed grow by the mulberryand a mulberry grow by the house.So close, in the personal quietof a windy night, it brushes the walland sweeps away the day till we sleep.

A child said it, and it seemed true:"Things that are lost are all equal."But it isn't true. If I lost you,the air wouldn't move, nor the tree grow.Someone would pull the weed, my flower.The quiet wouldn't be yours. If I lost you,I'd have to ask the grass to let me sleep.

The Kiss   Stephen Dunn

She pressed her lips to mind.—a typo

How many years I must have yearnedfor someone’s lips against mind.Pheromones, newly born, were floatingbetween us. There was hardly any air.

She kissed me again, reaching that placethat sends messages to toes and fingertips,then all the way to something like home.Some music was playing on its own.

Nothing like a woman who knowsto kiss the right thing at the right time,then kisses the things she’s missed.How had I ever settled for less?

I was thinking this is intelligence,this is the wisest tonguesince the Oracle got into a Greek’s ear,speaking sense. It’s the Good,

defining itself. I was out of my mind.She was in. We married as soon as we could.

San Antonio   Naomi Shihab Nye

Tonight I lingered over your name,the delicate assembly of vowelsa voice inside my head.You were sleeping when I arrived.I stood by your bedand watched the sheets rise gently.I knew what slant of lightwould make you turn over.It was then I felt the highways slide out of my hands.I remembered the old menin the west side cafe,dealing dominoes like magical charms.It was then I knew,like a woman looking backward,I could not leave you,or find anyone I loved more.

Dawn RevisitedRita Dove Imagine you wake upwith a second chance: The blue jayhawks his pretty waresand the oak still stands, spreadingglorious shade. If you don't look back,  the future never happens. How good to rise in sunlight, in the prodigal smell of biscuits -eggs and sausage on the grill. The whole sky is yours to write on, blown open to a blank page. Come on, shake a leg! You'll never knowwho's down there, frying those eggs, if you don't get up and see.

Still I Rise   Maya Angelou

You may write me down in historyWith your bitter, twisted lies,You may trod me in the very dirtBut still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?Why are you beset with gloom?'Cause I walk like I've got oil wellsPumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,With the certainty of tides,Just like hopes springing high,Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?Bowed head and lowered eyes?Shoulders falling down like teardrops,Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?Don't you take it awful hard'Cause I laugh like I've got gold minesDiggin' in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,You may cut me with your eyes,You may kill me with your hatefulness,But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?Does it come as a surpriseThat I dance like I've got diamondsAt the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shameI riseUp from a past that's rooted in painI riseI'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fearI riseInto a daybreak that's wondrously clearI riseBringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,I am the dream and the hope of the slave.I riseI riseI rise.

homage to my hipsLucille Clifton

these hips are big hips they need space to move around in. they don't fit into little petty places. these hips are free hips. they don't like to be held back. these hips have never been enslaved,   they go where they want to go they do what they want to do. these hips are mighty hips. these hips are magic hips. i have known them to put a spell on a man and spin him like a top!

Introduction to Poetry  Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poemand hold it up to the lightlike a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poemand watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's roomand feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterskiacross the surface of a poemwaving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to dois tie the poem to a chair with ropeand torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hoseto find out what it really means.

Eating Poetry   Mark Strand

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth. There is no happiness like mine. I have been eating poetry.

The librarian does not believe what she sees. Her eyes are sad and she walks with her hands in her dress.

The poems are gone. The light is dim. The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.

Their eyeballs roll, their blond legs burn like brush. The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep. She does not understand. When I get on my knees and lick her hand, she screams.

I am a new man. I snarl at her and bark. I romp with joy in the bookish dark.

Do not go gentle into that good night   Dylan Thomas Do not go gentle into that good night,Old age should burn and rave at close of day;Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,Because their words had forked no lightning theyDo not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how brightTheir frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sightBlind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.Do not go gentle into that good night.Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Let Evening Come   Jane Kenyon

Let the light of late afternoonshine through chinks in the barn, movingup the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafingas a woman takes up her needles and her yarn. Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandonedin long grass. Let the stars appearand the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.Let the wind die down. Let the shedgo black inside. Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoopin the oats, to air in the lunglet evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don'tbe afraid. God does not leave uscomfortless, so let evening come.

The Tyger  William Blake

Tyger! Tyger! burning brightIn the forests of the night,What immortal hand or eyeCould frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skiesBurnt the fire of thine eyes?On what wings dare he aspire?What the hand, dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,Could twist the sinews of thy heart?And when thy heart began to beat,What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?In what furnace was thy brain?What the anvil? what dread graspDare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,And water'd heaven with their tears,Did he smile his work to see?Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning brightIn the forests of the night,What immortal hand or eyeDare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Wild GeeseMary Oliver

You do not have to be good.You do not have to walk on your kneesFor a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.You only have to let the soft animal of your bodylove what it loves.Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.Meanwhile the world goes on.Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rainare moving across the landscapes,over the prairies and the deep trees,the mountains and the rivers.Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,are heading home again.Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,the world offers itself to your imagination,calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --over and over announcing your placein the family of things.

Ode to My Socks

Pablo Neruda

Mara Mori brought mea pair of sockswhich she knitted herselfwith her sheepherder's hands,two socks as soft as rabbits.I slipped my feet into themas if they were two casesknitted with threads of twilight and goatskin,Violent socks,my feet were two fish made of wool,two long sharkssea blue, shot throughby one golden thread,two immense blackbirds,two cannons,my feet were honored in this wayby these heavenly socks.They were so handsome for the first timemy feet seemed to me unacceptablelike two decrepit firemen,firemen unworthy of that woven fire,of those glowing socks.

Nevertheless, I resisted the sharp temptationto save them somewhere as schoolboyskeep fireflies,as learned men collectsacred texts,I resisted the mad impulse to put themin a golden cage and each day give thembirdseed and pieces of pink melon.Like explorers in the junglewho hand over the very rare green deerto the spit and eat it with remorse,I stretched out my feet and pulled on

the magnificent socks and then my shoes.

The moral of my ode is this:beauty is twice beautyand what is good is doubly goodwhen it is a matter of two socksmade of wool in winter.

Ode To TomatoesPablo Neruda

The streetfilled with tomatoes,midday,summer,light ishalvedlikeatomato,its juicerunsthrough the streets.In December,unabated,the tomatoinvadesthe kitchen,it enters at lunchtime,takesits easeon countertops,among glasses,butter dishes,blue saltcellars.It shedsits own light,benign majesty.Unfortunately, we mustmurder it:the knifesinksinto living flesh,redvisceraa cool

sun,profound,inexhaustible,populates the saladsof Chile,happily, it is wedto the clear onion,and to celebrate the unionwepouroil,essentialchild of the olive,onto its halved hemispheres,pepperaddsits fragrance,salt, its magnetism;it is the weddingof the day,parsleyhoistsits flag,potatoesbubble vigorously,the aromaof the roastknocksat the door,it's time!come on!and, onthe table, at the midpointof summer,the tomato,star of earth, recurrentand fertilestar,displays

its convolutions,its canals,its remarkable amplitudeand abundance,no pit,no husk,no leaves or thorns,the tomato offersits giftof fiery colorand cool completeness.

One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVIIPablo Neruda

I don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz,   or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:   I love you as one loves certain obscure things,   secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries   the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself,   and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose   from the earth lives dimly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,   I love you directly without problems or pride: I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love, except in this form in which I am not nor are you,   so close that your hand upon my chest is mine,   so close that your eyes close with my dreams.

The Summer DayMary Oliver

Who made the world?Who made the swan, and the black bear?Who made the grasshopper?This grasshopper, I mean-the one who has flung herself out of the grass,the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.I don't know exactly what a prayer is.I do know how to pay attention, how to fall downinto the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,which is what I have been doing all day.Tell me, what else should I have done?Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?Tell me, what is it you plan to dowith your one wild and precious life?

Crossing the BarAlfred Lord Tennyson

Sunset and evening star, And one clear call for me!And may there be no moaning of the bar, When I put out to sea.

But such a tide as moving seems asleep, Too full for sound and foam,When that which drew from out the boundless deep Turns again home!

Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark!And may there be no sadness of farewell, When I embark;

For though from out our bourn of Time and Place The flood may bear me far,I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have crost the bar.

When I heard the Learn’d Astronomer Walt Whitman

WHEN I heard the learn’d astronomer;

When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;

When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;

When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,

How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;         5

Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,

In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,

Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

The Sound of the SeaHenry Wadsworth Longfellow

The sea awoke at midnight from its sleep,And round the pebbly beaches far and wideI heard the first wave of the rising tideRush onward with uninterrupted sweep;A voice out of the silence of the deep,A sound mysteriously multipliedAs of a cataract from the mountain's side,Or roar of winds upon a wooded steep.So comes to us at times, from the unknownAnd inaccessible solitudes of being,The rushing of the sea-tides of the soul;And inspirations, that we deem our own,Are some divine foreshadowing and foreseeingOf things beyond our reason or control.

Dover BeachMatthew Arnold

The sea is calm to-night.The tide is full, the moon lies fairUpon the straits; on the French coast the lightGleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!Only, from the long line of sprayWhere the sea meets the moon-blanched land,Listen! you hear the grating roarOf pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,At their return, up the high strand,Begin, and cease, and then again begin,With tremulous cadence slow, and bringThe eternal note of sadness in.Sophocles long agoHeard it on the A gaean, and it broughtInto his mind the turbid ebb and flowOf human misery; weFind also in the sound a thought,Hearing it by this distant northern sea.The Sea of FaithWas once, too, at the full, and round earth's shoreLay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.But now I only hearIts melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,Retreating, to the breath

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drearAnd naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be trueTo one another! for the world, which seemsTo lie before us like a land of dreams,So various, so beautiful, so new,Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;And we are here as on a darkling plainSwept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Funeral BluesW.H. Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead. Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves, Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one, Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun, Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods; For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Mid-Term BreakSeamus Heaney

I sat all morning in the college sick bayCounting bells knelling classes to a close.At two o'clock our neighbors drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying--He had always taken funerals in his stride--And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pramWhen I came in, and I was embarrassedBy old men standing up to shake my hand

And tell me they were "sorry for my trouble,"Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,Away at school, as my mother held my hand

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.At ten o'clock the ambulance arrivedWith the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

Next morning I went up into the room. SnowdropsAnd candles soothed the bedside; I saw himFor the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,He lay in the four foot box as in his cot.No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four foot box, a foot for every year.

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond   ee cummings

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyondany experience,your eyes have their silence:in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose methough i have closed myself as fingers,you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i andmy life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,as when the heart of this flower imaginesthe snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equalsthe power of your intense fragility:whose texturecompels me with the color of its countries,rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closesand opens;only something in me understandsthe voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

carry your heart with me(i carry it in]ee cummings

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)i am never without it(anywhere i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling)                                                       i fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true) and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

Praise Song

Lucille Clifton

to my aunt blanchewho rolled from grass to drivewayinto the street one sunday morning.i was ten. i had never seena human woman hurl her basketballof a body into the traffic of the world.Praise to the drivers who stopped in time.Praise to the faith with which she roseafter some moments then slowly walkedsighing back to her family.Praise to the arms which understoodlittle or nothing of what it meantbut welcomed her in without judgment,accepting it all like children might,like God.

womanNikki Giovanni

she wanted to be a bladeof grass amid the fieldsbut he wouldn't agreeto be the dandelion

she wanted to be a robin singingthrough the leavesbut he refused to beher tree

she spun herself into a weband looking for a place to restturned to himbut he stood straightdeclining to be her corner

she tried to be a bookbut he wouldn't read

she turned herself into a bulbbut he wouldn't let her grow

she decided to become

a womanand though he still refusedto be a manshe decided it was allright

OrangesGary Soto

The first time I walkedWith a girl, I was twelve,Cold, and weighted downWith two oranges in my jacket.December. Frost crackingBeneath my steps, my breathBefore me, then gone,As I walked towardHer house, the one whosePorch light burned yellowNight and day, in any weather.A dog barked at me, untilShe came out pullingAt her gloves, face brightWith rouge. I smiled,Touched her shoulder, and ledHer down the street, acrossA used car lot and a lineOf newly planted trees,Until we were breathingBefore a drugstore. WeEntered, the tiny bellBringing a saleslady

Down a narrow aisle of goods.I turned to the candiesTiered like bleachers,And asked what she wanted -Light in her eyes, a smileStarting at the cornersOf her mouth. I fingeredA nickle in my pocket,And when she lifted a chocolateThat cost a dime,I didn’t say anything.I took the nickle fromMy pocket, then an orange,And set them quietly onThe counter. When I looked up,The lady’s eyes met mine,And held them, knowingVery well what it was allAbout.Outside,A few cars hissing past,Fog hanging like oldCoats between the trees.I took my girl’s handIn mine for two blocks,Then released it to letHer unwrap the chocolate.I peeled my orangeThat was so bright againstThe gray of DecemberThat, from some distance,Someone might have thoughtI was making a fire in my hands.

The Girl Who Loved the SkyAnita Endrezze

Outside the second grade room,the jacaranda tree blossomedinto purple lanterns, the papery petalsdrifted, darkening the windows.Inside, the room smelled like glue.The desks were made of yellowed wood,the tops littered with eraser rubbings,rulers, and big fat pencils.Colored chalk meant special days.The walls were covered with precisebright tulips and charts with shiny starsby certain names. There, I learnedhow to make butter by shaking a jaruntil the pale cream clottedinto one sweet mass. There, I learnedthat numbers were fractious beastswith dens like dim zeros. And there,I met a blind girl who thought the skytasted like cold metal when it rainedand whose eyes were always coveredwith the bruised petals of her lids. She loved the formless sky, definedonly by sounds, or the cool umbrellas

of clouds. On hot, still dayswe listened to the sky fallinglike chalk dust. We heard the noonwhistle of the pig-mash factory,smelled the sourness of home-bound men. I had no father; she had no eyes;we were best friends. The other girlsdrew shaky hopscotch squareson the dusty asphalt, talked aboutpajama parties, weekend cookouts,and parents who bought sleek-finned carsAlone, we sat in the canvas swings,our shoes digging into the sand, then pushing,until we flew high over their heads,our hands streaked with red rustfrom the chains that kept us safe. I was born blind, she said, an act of nature.Sure, I thought, like birds bornwithout wings, trees without roots.I didn't understand. The day she movedI saw the world clearly: the skybacked away from me like a departing father.I sat under the jacaranda, catchingthe petals in my palm, enclosing themuntil my fist was another lanternhiding a small and bitter flame.

Beware : Do Not Read This PoemIshmael Reed

tonite, thriller was abt an ol woman , so vain she surrounded herself w/           many mirrors it got so bad that finally she locked herself indoors & her whole life became the           mirrors one day the villagers broke into her house , but she was too swift for them . she disappeared           into a mirror each tenant who bought the house after that , lost a loved one to           the ol woman in the mirror :           first a little girl           then a young woman           then the young woman/s husband the hunger of this poem is legendary it has taken in many victims back off from this poem it has drawn in yr feet

back off from this poem it has drawn in yr legs back off from this poem it is a greedy mirror you are into the poem . from          the waist down nobody can hear you can they ? this poem has had you up to here           belch this poem aint got no manners you cant call out frm this poem relax now & go w/ this poem move & roll on to this poem do not resist this poem this poem has yr eyes this poem has his head this poem has his arms this poem has his fingers this poem has his fingertips this poem is the reader & the reader this poem statistic : the us bureau of missing persons re-          ports that in 1968 over 100,000 people           disappeared leaving no solid clues           nor trace     only a space     in the lives of their friends

The MewlipsJ.R.R. Tolkien

The Shadows where the Mewlips dwellAre dark and wet as ink,And slow and softly rings their bell,As in the slime you sink.

You sink into the slime, who dareTo knock upon their door,While down the grinning gargoyles stareAnd noisome waters pour.

Beside the rotting river-strandThe drooping willows weep,And gloomily the gorcrows standCroaking in their sleep.

Over the Merlock Mountains a long and weary way,In a mouldy valley where the trees are grey,By a dark pool´s borders without wind or tide,Moonless and sunless, the Mewlips hide.

The cellars where the Mewlips sitAre deep and dank and coldWith single sickly candle lit;And there they count their gold.

Their walls are wet, their ceilings drip;Their feet upon the floorGo softly with a squish-flap-flip,As they sidle to the door.

They peep out slyly; through a crackTheir feeling fingers creep,And when they´ve finished, in a sackYour bones they take to keep.

Beyond the Merlock Mountains, a long and lonely road,Through the spider-shadows and the marsh of Tode,And through the wood of hanging trees and gallows-weed,You go to find the Mewlips - and the Mewlips feed.