untelling and unfindable

The plane of the water is like the page on which
Phrases and even sentences are written,
But because of the breeze, and the turning of the year,
And the sense that this lake water, as it is being
Experienced on a particular day, comes from
Some source somewhere, beneath, within, itself,
Or from somewhere else, nearby, a spring, a brook,
Its pure origination somewhere else
It is like an idea for a poem not yet written
And maybe never to be completed, because
The surface of the page is like lake water,
That takes back what is written on its surface,
And all my language about the lake and its
Emotions or its sweet obliviousness,
Or even its being like an origination,
Is all erased with the changing of the breeze
Or because of the heedless passing of a cloud.
When, moments after she died, I looked into her face,
It was as untelling as something natural,
A lake, say, the surface of it unreadable,
Its sources of meaning unfindable anymore.
Her mouth was open as if she had something to say;
But maybe my saying so is a figure of speech.


David Ferry, "Lake Water"

sonnet

An old, mad, blind, despis'd, and dying king, -
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn - mud from a muddy spring, -
Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,
But leech-like to their fainting country cling,
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow, -
A people starv'd and stabb'd in the untill'd field -
An army, which liberticide and prey
Makes as two-edg'd sword to all who wield, -
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
Religion Christless, Godless - a book seal'd;
A Senate, - Time's worst statute, unrepeal'd, -
Are graves, from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst, to illumine our tempestuous days.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, "England in 1819"