The Fleming Foundation

Category: Poetry

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Poetry

7 Feb, 2021

Poem: Now Winter Nights Enlarge by Thomas Campion

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Thomas Campion was a great song-writer of the 16th and 17th centuries. Now winter nights enlarge The number of their hours; And clouds their storms discharge Upon the airy towers. Let now the chimneys blaze And cups o’erflow with wine, Let well-turned words amaze With harmony divine. Now yellow waxen lights Shall wait on honey love While youthful revels, masques, and courtly sights Sleep’s leaden spells remove. This time doth well dispense With lovers’ long discourse; Much speech hath some defense, Though beauty no remorse. All do not all things well; Some measures comely tread, Some knotted riddles tell, Some...

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Feature / Poetry

19 Jan, 2021

Poems: Jessica Powers

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Jessica Powers was born less than three hours from our house, in Mauston, Wisconsin, in 1905.  In 1941 she entered a Carmelite convent in Pewaukee, where she received the name Sister Miriam of the Holy Spirit.

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Feature / Poetry

10 Jan, 2021

Poetry: Browning at his Best

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Oh Galuppi, Baldassaro, this is very sad to find!
I can hardly misconceive you; it would prove me deaf and blind;
But although I take your meaning, ’tis with such a heavy mind!

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Brownlow / Poetry

25 Dec, 2020

Poetry: Four Christmas Poems by St. Robert Southwell

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St. Robert Southwell (1561–95) was born to a well-to-do Norfolk family.  At fourteen he was sent out of England to receive a Catholic education at the new English school founded by William Allen at Douai in Flanders.  He soon made his way to Rome, where he became a Jesuit and a teacher at the English College.  In 1586 his superiors sent him to back to England, where a new statute made it treason to be a priest.  Waiting to take ship, he wrote that he was “on the threshold of death.”  He survived for six years before he was captured, interrogated, tortured, imprisoned, tried, convicted for being a priest “against the statute,” and executed the next day, 21 February 1595.   The Church canonized him in 1970.

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Poetry

21 Dec, 2020

Poetry: “Noel”

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I received from Robert Peters this Christmas gift:  a newly discovered Christmas poem by J.R.R. Tolkien, which I am sharing with our readers.