Color song by Josephine Jacobsen

Poems

May 2007

Color song

Burke

was right!

from The Queen’s Songs

God gave us different colors, she said,
That burn in the world alway,
And some, she said, show best by night,
And some by day.

White lieth the dust upon the road
And moons, when they are new,
Be white, and the shroud that a woman sewed
May well be, too.

Red is the tip of the sharp green bud
Where the small bright roses grow
In the August sun, and fresh-spilled blood
Is red also.

In the new-come dawn a pallid blue
Be skies above the ships
Of the fishing folk, and the same is true
Of a dead man’s lips.

Green be the eyes of beasts by dark,
And bits of broken glass,
Green grows the moss on the forest-bark,
But greenest is grave-grass.

Josephine Jacobsen

Events

July 16 2009

OPEN CHICAGO EVENT

more details

Webcasts

"Taking the Occasion," poems by Daniel Brown
The eighth annual New Criterion Poetry Prize winner reads selections from his book at an evening with the Friends of The New Criterion.

Jay Nordlinger on the future of classical music, from an evening with the Friends of The New Criterion.

A profile of the abstract painter Thornton WIllis
Directed by Michael Feldman. Featuring Thornton Willis and commentary by James Panero. Produced in coordination with Willis's March 2009 exhibition at Elizabeth Harris Gallery, New York

Weblog

Sarah Palin, a modern Cincinnatus?

by Roger Kimball

Jul 05, 2009 01:17 PM

The Washington Post: was anyone really surprised?

by Roger Kimball

Jul 02, 2009 10:31 PM

See Me Gloat

by James Bowman

Jul 02, 2009 05:01 PM

The New Criterion

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