author
stringclasses 275
values | title
stringlengths 2
168
| text
stringlengths 59
111k
| poem_start
stringlengths 13
36.6k
| poem_end
stringlengths 43
74.1k
| form
stringclasses 4
values |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Philip Sidney (Sir)
|
Astrophel and Stella - Sonnet XCVIII
|
Ah, bed! the field where Ioyes peace some do see,
The field where all my thoughts to warre be train'd,
How is thy grace by my strange fortune strain'd!
How thy lee-shores by my sighes stormed be!
With sweete soft shades thou oft inuitest me
To steale some rest; but, wretch, I am constrain'd,
Spurd with Loues spur, though gald, and shortly rain'd
With Cares hard hand to turne and tosse in thee,
While the blacke horrors of the silent night
Paint Woes blacke face so liuely to my sight
That tedious leasure markes each wrinkled line:
But when Aurora leades out Phoebus daunce,
Mine eyes then only winke; for spite, perchaunce,
That wormes should haue their sun, & I want mine.
|
Ah, bed! the field where Ioyes peace some do see,
The field where all my thoughts to warre be train'd,
How is thy grace by my strange fortune strain'd!
How thy lee-shores by my sighes stormed be!
|
With sweete soft shades thou oft inuitest me
To steale some rest; but, wretch, I am constrain'd,
Spurd with Loues spur, though gald, and shortly rain'd
With Cares hard hand to turne and tosse in thee,
While the blacke horrors of the silent night
Paint Woes blacke face so liuely to my sight
That tedious leasure markes each wrinkled line:
But when Aurora leades out Phoebus daunce,
Mine eyes then only winke; for spite, perchaunce,
That wormes should haue their sun, & I want mine.
|
sonnet
|
Robert William Service
|
The Twins
|
There were two brothers, John and James,
And when the town went up in flames,
To save the house of James dashed John,
Then turned, and lo! his own was gone.
And when the great World War began,
To volunteer John promptly ran;
And while he learned live bombs to lob,
James stayed at home and - sneaked his job.
John came home with a missing limb;
That didn't seem to worry him;
But oh, it set his brain awhirl
To find that James had - sneaked his girl!
Time passed. John tried his grief to drown;
To-day James owns one-half the town;
His army contracts riches yield;
And John? Well, SEARCH THE POTTER'S FIELD.
|
There were two brothers, John and James,
And when the town went up in flames,
To save the house of James dashed John,
Then turned, and lo! his own was gone.
And when the great World War began,
|
To volunteer John promptly ran;
And while he learned live bombs to lob,
James stayed at home and - sneaked his job.
John came home with a missing limb;
That didn't seem to worry him;
But oh, it set his brain awhirl
To find that James had - sneaked his girl!
Time passed. John tried his grief to drown;
To-day James owns one-half the town;
His army contracts riches yield;
And John? Well, SEARCH THE POTTER'S FIELD.
|
free_verse
|
Helen Hunt Jackson
|
A Calendar Of Sonnets - April
|
No days such honored days as these! When yet
Fair Aphrodite reigned, men seeking wide
For some fair thing which should forever bide
On earth, her beauteous memory to set
In fitting frame that no age could forget,
Her name in lovely April's name did hide,
And leave it there, eternally allied
To all the fairest flowers Spring did beget.
And when fair Aphrodite passed from earth,
Her shrines forgotten and her feasts of mirth,
A holier symbol still in seal and sign,
Sweet April took, of kingdom most divine,
When Christ ascended, in the time of birth
Of spring anemones, in Palestine.
|
No days such honored days as these! When yet
Fair Aphrodite reigned, men seeking wide
For some fair thing which should forever bide
On earth, her beauteous memory to set
|
In fitting frame that no age could forget,
Her name in lovely April's name did hide,
And leave it there, eternally allied
To all the fairest flowers Spring did beget.
And when fair Aphrodite passed from earth,
Her shrines forgotten and her feasts of mirth,
A holier symbol still in seal and sign,
Sweet April took, of kingdom most divine,
When Christ ascended, in the time of birth
Of spring anemones, in Palestine.
|
sonnet
|
George MacDonald
|
The Waesome Carl
|
There cam a man to oor toon-en',
And a waesome carl was he,
Snipie-nebbit, and crookit-mou'd,
And gleyt o' a blinterin ee.
Muckle he spied, and muckle he spak,
But the owercome o' his sang,
Whatever it said, was aye the same:--
There's nane o' ye a' but's wrang!
Ye're a' wrang, and a' wrang,
And a'thegither a' wrang:
There's no a man aboot the toon
But's a'thegither a' wrang.
That's no the gait to fire the breid,
Nor yet to brew the yill;
That's no the gait to haud the pleuch,
Nor yet to ca the mill;
That's no the gait to milk the coo,
Nor yet to spean the calf,
Nor yet to tramp the girnel-meal--
Ye kenna yer wark by half!
Ye're a' wrang, &c.
The minister wasna fit to pray
And lat alane to preach;
He nowther had the gift o' grace
Nor yet the gift o' speech!
He mind't him o' Bala'm's ass,
Wi' a differ we micht ken:
The Lord he opened the ass's mou,
The minister opened's ain!
He was a' wrang, and a' wrang,
And a'thegither a' wrang;
There wasna a man aboot the toon
But was a'thegither a' wrang!
The puir precentor couldna sing,
He gruntit like a swine;
The verra elders couldna pass
The ladles til his min'.
And for the rulin' elder's grace
It wasna worth a horn;
He didna half uncurse the meat,
Nor pray for mair the morn!
He was a' wrang, &c.
And aye he gied his nose a thraw,
And aye he crook't his mou;
And aye he cockit up his ee
And said, Tak tent the noo!
We snichert hint oor loof, my man,
But never said him nay;
As gien he had been a prophet, man,
We loot him say his say:
Ye're a' wrang, &c.
Quo oor gudeman: The crater's daft!
Heard ye ever sic a claik?
Lat's see gien he can turn a ban',
Or only luik and craik!
It's true we maunna lippin til him--
He's fairly crack wi' pride,
But he maun live--we canna kill him!
Gien he can work, he s' bide.
He was a' wrang, and a' wrang,
And a'thegither a' wrang;
There, troth, the gudeman o' the toon
Was a'thegither a' wrang!
Quo he, It's but a laddie's turn,
But best the first be a sma' thing:
There's a' thae weyds to gether and burn,
And he's the man for a' thing!--
We yokit for the far hill-moss,
There was peats to cast and ca;
O' 's company we thoucht na loss,
'Twas peace till gloamin-fa'!
We war a' wrang, and a' wrang,
And a'thegither a' wrang;
There wasna man aboot the toon
But was a'thegither a' wrang!
For, losh, or it was denner-time
The toon was in a low!
The reek rase up as it had been
Frae Sodom-flames, I vow.
We lowst and rade like mad, for byre
And ruck bleezt a' thegither,
As gien the deil had broucht the fire
Frae's hell to mak anither!
'Twas a' wrang, and a' wrang,
And a'thegither a' wrang,
Stick and strae aboot the place
Was a'thegither a' wrang!
And luikin on, ban's neth his tails,
The waesome carl stude;
To see him wagglin at thae tails
'Maist drave 's a' fairly wud.
Ain wite! he cried; I tauld ye sae!
Ye're a' wrang to the last:
What gart ye burn thae deevilich weyds
Whan the win' blew frae the wast!
Ye're a' wrang, and a' wrang,
And a'thegither a' wrang;
There's no a man i' this fule warl
But's a'thegither a' wrang!
|
There cam a man to oor toon-en',
And a waesome carl was he,
Snipie-nebbit, and crookit-mou'd,
And gleyt o' a blinterin ee.
Muckle he spied, and muckle he spak,
But the owercome o' his sang,
Whatever it said, was aye the same:--
There's nane o' ye a' but's wrang!
Ye're a' wrang, and a' wrang,
And a'thegither a' wrang:
There's no a man aboot the toon
But's a'thegither a' wrang.
That's no the gait to fire the breid,
Nor yet to brew the yill;
That's no the gait to haud the pleuch,
Nor yet to ca the mill;
That's no the gait to milk the coo,
Nor yet to spean the calf,
Nor yet to tramp the girnel-meal--
Ye kenna yer wark by half!
Ye're a' wrang, &c.
The minister wasna fit to pray
And lat alane to preach;
He nowther had the gift o' grace
Nor yet the gift o' speech!
He mind't him o' Bala'm's ass,
Wi' a differ we micht ken:
The Lord he opened the ass's mou,
The minister opened's ain!
He was a' wrang, and a' wrang,
And a'thegither a' wrang;
There wasna a man aboot the toon
But was a'thegither a' wrang!
|
The puir precentor couldna sing,
He gruntit like a swine;
The verra elders couldna pass
The ladles til his min'.
And for the rulin' elder's grace
It wasna worth a horn;
He didna half uncurse the meat,
Nor pray for mair the morn!
He was a' wrang, &c.
And aye he gied his nose a thraw,
And aye he crook't his mou;
And aye he cockit up his ee
And said, Tak tent the noo!
We snichert hint oor loof, my man,
But never said him nay;
As gien he had been a prophet, man,
We loot him say his say:
Ye're a' wrang, &c.
Quo oor gudeman: The crater's daft!
Heard ye ever sic a claik?
Lat's see gien he can turn a ban',
Or only luik and craik!
It's true we maunna lippin til him--
He's fairly crack wi' pride,
But he maun live--we canna kill him!
Gien he can work, he s' bide.
He was a' wrang, and a' wrang,
And a'thegither a' wrang;
There, troth, the gudeman o' the toon
Was a'thegither a' wrang!
Quo he, It's but a laddie's turn,
But best the first be a sma' thing:
There's a' thae weyds to gether and burn,
And he's the man for a' thing!--
We yokit for the far hill-moss,
There was peats to cast and ca;
O' 's company we thoucht na loss,
'Twas peace till gloamin-fa'!
We war a' wrang, and a' wrang,
And a'thegither a' wrang;
There wasna man aboot the toon
But was a'thegither a' wrang!
For, losh, or it was denner-time
The toon was in a low!
The reek rase up as it had been
Frae Sodom-flames, I vow.
We lowst and rade like mad, for byre
And ruck bleezt a' thegither,
As gien the deil had broucht the fire
Frae's hell to mak anither!
'Twas a' wrang, and a' wrang,
And a'thegither a' wrang,
Stick and strae aboot the place
Was a'thegither a' wrang!
And luikin on, ban's neth his tails,
The waesome carl stude;
To see him wagglin at thae tails
'Maist drave 's a' fairly wud.
Ain wite! he cried; I tauld ye sae!
Ye're a' wrang to the last:
What gart ye burn thae deevilich weyds
Whan the win' blew frae the wast!
Ye're a' wrang, and a' wrang,
And a'thegither a' wrang;
There's no a man i' this fule warl
But's a'thegither a' wrang!
|
free_verse
|
Percy Bysshe Shelley
|
Fragment: Love The Universe To-Day.
|
And who feels discord now or sorrow?
Love is the universe to-day -
These are the slaves of dim to-morrow,
Darkening Life's labyrinthine way.
|
And who feels discord now or sorrow?
|
Love is the universe to-day -
These are the slaves of dim to-morrow,
Darkening Life's labyrinthine way.
|
quatrain
|
Madison Julius Cawein
|
Minions Of The Moon
|
I.
Through leafy windows of the trees
The full moon shows a wrinkled face,
And, trailing dim her draperies
Of mist from place to place,
The Twilight leads the breeze.
And now, far-off, beside a pool,
Dusk blows a reed, a guttural note;
Then sows the air around her full
Of twinkling disc and mote,
And moth-shapes soft as wool.
And from a glen, where lights glow by,
Through hollowed hands she sends a call,
And Solitude, with owlet cry,
Answers: and Evenfall
Steps swiftly from the sky.
And Mystery, in hodden gray,
Steals forth to meet her: and the Dark
Before him slowly makes to sway
A jack-o'-lantern spark
To light him on his way.
The grasshopper its violin
Tunes up, the katydid its fife;
The beetle drums; the grig makes din,
Informing Elfin life
Night's revels now begin.
And from each side along the way
Old Witchcraft waves a batlike hand,
And summons forth the toadstool gray
To point the path to Faeryland,
Where all man's longings stray.
II.
The snail puts forth two staring horns
And down the toadstool slides;
The wind sits whispering in the thorns
Of one unseen who hides:
Of him, the Sprite,
With glowworm light,
Who watchmans secrets of the Night.
The bee sleeps in the berry-bloom;
The bird dreams on its nest;
The moon-moth swoons through drowsed perfume
Upon a fragrant quest:
It seeks for him,
The Pixy slim,
Who tags with wet each wildflower's rim.
The milkwort leans an ear of pink
And listens for the dew;
The fireflies in the wildrose wink
That seems to listen too:
For her, the Fay,
With sword-like ray,
Who opens buds at close of day.
The moon, that dares not come too near,
Keeps to the highest hill;
The little brook it seems, for fear
Of something strange, is still:
The Mystery,
It well may be,
That talks to it of Faerie.
|
I.
Through leafy windows of the trees
The full moon shows a wrinkled face,
And, trailing dim her draperies
Of mist from place to place,
The Twilight leads the breeze.
And now, far-off, beside a pool,
Dusk blows a reed, a guttural note;
Then sows the air around her full
Of twinkling disc and mote,
And moth-shapes soft as wool.
And from a glen, where lights glow by,
Through hollowed hands she sends a call,
And Solitude, with owlet cry,
Answers: and Evenfall
Steps swiftly from the sky.
And Mystery, in hodden gray,
Steals forth to meet her: and the Dark
Before him slowly makes to sway
A jack-o'-lantern spark
|
To light him on his way.
The grasshopper its violin
Tunes up, the katydid its fife;
The beetle drums; the grig makes din,
Informing Elfin life
Night's revels now begin.
And from each side along the way
Old Witchcraft waves a batlike hand,
And summons forth the toadstool gray
To point the path to Faeryland,
Where all man's longings stray.
II.
The snail puts forth two staring horns
And down the toadstool slides;
The wind sits whispering in the thorns
Of one unseen who hides:
Of him, the Sprite,
With glowworm light,
Who watchmans secrets of the Night.
The bee sleeps in the berry-bloom;
The bird dreams on its nest;
The moon-moth swoons through drowsed perfume
Upon a fragrant quest:
It seeks for him,
The Pixy slim,
Who tags with wet each wildflower's rim.
The milkwort leans an ear of pink
And listens for the dew;
The fireflies in the wildrose wink
That seems to listen too:
For her, the Fay,
With sword-like ray,
Who opens buds at close of day.
The moon, that dares not come too near,
Keeps to the highest hill;
The little brook it seems, for fear
Of something strange, is still:
The Mystery,
It well may be,
That talks to it of Faerie.
|
free_verse
|
Siegfried Loraine Sassoon
|
The Tombstone-Maker
|
He primmed his loose red mouth, and leaned his head
Against a sorrowing angel's breast, and said:
"You'd think so much bereavement would have made
Unusual big demands upon my trade.
The War comes cruel hard on some poor folk -
Unless the fighting stops I'll soon be broke."
He eyed the Cemetery across the road -
"There's scores of bodies out abroad, this while,
That should be here by rights; they little know'd
How they'd get buried in such wretched style."
I told him, with a sympathetic grin,
That Germans boil dead soldiers down for fat;
And he was horrified. "What shameful sin!
O sir, that Christian men should come to that!"
|
He primmed his loose red mouth, and leaned his head
Against a sorrowing angel's breast, and said:
"You'd think so much bereavement would have made
Unusual big demands upon my trade.
|
The War comes cruel hard on some poor folk -
Unless the fighting stops I'll soon be broke."
He eyed the Cemetery across the road -
"There's scores of bodies out abroad, this while,
That should be here by rights; they little know'd
How they'd get buried in such wretched style."
I told him, with a sympathetic grin,
That Germans boil dead soldiers down for fat;
And he was horrified. "What shameful sin!
O sir, that Christian men should come to that!"
|
sonnet
|
William Blake
|
Ah Sunflower
|
Ah Sunflower, weary of time,
Who countest the steps of the sun;
Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the traveller's journey is done;
Where the Youth pined away with desire,
And the pale virgin shrouded in snow,
Arise from their graves, and aspire
Where my Sunflower wishes to go!
|
Ah Sunflower, weary of time,
Who countest the steps of the sun;
|
Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the traveller's journey is done;
Where the Youth pined away with desire,
And the pale virgin shrouded in snow,
Arise from their graves, and aspire
Where my Sunflower wishes to go!
|
octave
|
Francis William Lauderdale Adams
|
Axiom.
|
Let him who toils, enjoy
Fruit of his toiling.
Let him whom sweats annoy,
No more be spoiling.
For we would have it be
That, weak or stronger,
Not he who works, but he
Who works not, hunger!
|
Let him who toils, enjoy
Fruit of his toiling.
|
Let him whom sweats annoy,
No more be spoiling.
For we would have it be
That, weak or stronger,
Not he who works, but he
Who works not, hunger!
|
octave
|
Robert Herrick
|
Virtue Is Sensible Of Suffering.
|
Though a wise man all pressures can sustain,
His virtue still is sensible of pain:
Large shoulders though he has, and well can bear,
He feels when packs do pinch him, and the where.
|
Though a wise man all pressures can sustain,
|
His virtue still is sensible of pain:
Large shoulders though he has, and well can bear,
He feels when packs do pinch him, and the where.
|
quatrain
|
Margaret Steele Anderson
|
Conscience.
|
Wisdom am I when thou art but a fool;
My part the man, when thou hast played the clod;
Hast lost thy garden? When the eve is cool,
Harken!, 'tis I who walk there with thy God!
|
Wisdom am I when thou art but a fool;
|
My part the man, when thou hast played the clod;
Hast lost thy garden? When the eve is cool,
Harken!, 'tis I who walk there with thy God!
|
quatrain
|
A. R. Ammons
|
After Yesterday
|
After yesterday
afternoon's blue
clouds and white rain
the mockingbird
in the backyard
untied the drops from
leaves and twigs
with a long singing.
|
After yesterday
afternoon's blue
|
clouds and white rain
the mockingbird
in the backyard
untied the drops from
leaves and twigs
with a long singing.
|
octave
|
Percy Bysshe Shelley
|
A Dirge.
|
Rough wind, that moanest loud
Grief too sad for song;
Wild wind, when sullen cloud
Knells all the night long;
Sad storm whose tears are vain,
Bare woods, whose branches strain,
Deep caves and dreary main, -
Wail, for the world's wrong!
|
Rough wind, that moanest loud
Grief too sad for song;
|
Wild wind, when sullen cloud
Knells all the night long;
Sad storm whose tears are vain,
Bare woods, whose branches strain,
Deep caves and dreary main, -
Wail, for the world's wrong!
|
octave
|
Arthur Conan Doyle
|
The Song Of The Bow
|
What of the bow?
The bow was made in England:
Of true wood, of yew-wood,
The wood of English bows;
So men who are free
Love the old yew-tree
And the land where the yew-tree grows.
What of the cord?
The cord was made in England:
A rough cord, a tough cord,
A cord that bowmen love;
And so we will sing
Of the hempen string
And the land where the cord was wove.
What of the shaft?
The shaft was cut in England:
A long shaft, a strong shaft,
Barbed and trim and true;
So we'll drink all together
To the grey goose-feather
And the land where the grey goose flew.
What of the mark?
Ah, seek it not in England,
A bold mark, our old mark
Is waiting over-sea.
When the strings harp in chorus,
And the lion flag is o'er us,
It is there that our mark will be.
What of the men?
The men were bred in England:
The bowmen--the yeomen,
The lads of dale and fell.
Here's to you--and to you!
To the hearts that are true
And the land where the true hearts dwell.
|
What of the bow?
The bow was made in England:
Of true wood, of yew-wood,
The wood of English bows;
So men who are free
Love the old yew-tree
And the land where the yew-tree grows.
What of the cord?
The cord was made in England:
A rough cord, a tough cord,
A cord that bowmen love;
|
And so we will sing
Of the hempen string
And the land where the cord was wove.
What of the shaft?
The shaft was cut in England:
A long shaft, a strong shaft,
Barbed and trim and true;
So we'll drink all together
To the grey goose-feather
And the land where the grey goose flew.
What of the mark?
Ah, seek it not in England,
A bold mark, our old mark
Is waiting over-sea.
When the strings harp in chorus,
And the lion flag is o'er us,
It is there that our mark will be.
What of the men?
The men were bred in England:
The bowmen--the yeomen,
The lads of dale and fell.
Here's to you--and to you!
To the hearts that are true
And the land where the true hearts dwell.
|
free_verse
|
Henry Kendall
|
The Maid of Gerringong
|
Rolling through the gloomy gorges, comes the roaring southern blast,
With a sound of torrents flying, like a routed army, past,
And, beneath the shaggy forelands, strange fantastic forms of surf
Fly, like wild hounds, at the darkness, crouching over sea and earth;
Swooping round the sunken caverns, with an aggravated roar;
Falling where the waters tumble foaming on a screaming shore!
In a night like this we parted. Eyes were wet though speech was low,
And our thoughts were all in mourning for the dear, dead Long Ago!
In a night like this we parted. Hearts were sad though they were young,
And you left me very lonely, dark-haired Maid of Gerringong.
Said my darling, looking at me, through the radiance of her tears:
'Many changes, O my loved One, we will meet in after years;
Changes like to sudden sunbursts flashing down a rainy steep
Changes like to swift-winged shadows falling on a moony deep!
And they are so cheerless sometimes, leaving, when they pass us by,
Deepening dolours on the sweet, sad face of our Humanity.
But you'll hope, and fail and faint not, with that heart so warm and true,
Watching for the coming Morning, that will flood the World for you;
Listening through a thirsty silence, till the low winds bear along
Eager footfalls pleasant voices,' said the Maid of Gerringong.
Said my darling, when the wind came sobbing wildly round the eaves:
'Oh, the Purpose scattered from me, like the withered autumn leaves!
Oh, the wreck of Love's ambition! Oh, the fond and full belief
That I yet should hear them hail you in your land a God-made chief!
In the loud day they may slumber, but my thoughts will not be still
When the weary world is sleeping, and the moon is on the hill;
Then your form will bend above me, then your voice will rise and fall,
Though I turn and hide in darkness, with my face against the wall,
And my Soul must rise and listen while those homeless memories throng
Moaning in the night for shelter,' said the Maid of Gerringong.
Ay, she passed away and left me! Rising through the dusk of tears,
Came a vision of that parting every day for many years!
Every day, though she had told me not to court the strange sweet pain,
Something whispered something led me to our olden haunts again:
And I used to wander nightly, by the surges and the ships,
Harping on those last fond accents that had trembled from her lips:
Till a vessel crossed the waters, and I heard a stranger say,
'One you loved has died in silence with her dear face turned away.'
Oh! the eyes that flash upon me, and the voice that comes along
Oh! my light, my life, my darling dark-haired Maid of Gerringong.
. . . . .
Some one saith, 'Oh, you that mock at Passion with a worldly whine,
Would you change the face of Nature would you limit God's design?
Hide for shame from well-raised clamour, moderate fools who would be wise;
Hide for shame the World will hoot you! Love is Love, and never dies'
And another asketh, doubting that my brother speaks the truth,
'Can we love in age as fondly as we did in days of youth?
Will dead faces always haunt us, in the time of faltering breath?
Shall we yearn, and we so feeble?' Ay, for Love is Love in Death.
Oh! the Faith with sure foundation! let the Ages roll along,
You are mine, and mine for ever, dark-haired Maid of Gerringong.
Last night, dear, I dreamt about you, and I thought that far from men
We were walking, both together, in a fragrant seaside glen;
Down where we could hear the surges wailing round the castled cliffs,
Down where we could see the sunset reddening on the distant skiffs;
There a fall of mountain waters tumbled through the knotted bowers
Bright with rainbow colours reeling on the purple forest flowers.
And we rested on the benches of a cavern old and hoar;
And I whispered, 'this is surely her I loved in days of yore!
False he was who brought sad tidings! Why were you away so long,
When you knew who waited for you, dark-haired Maid of Gerringong?
'Did the strangers come around you, in the far-off foreign land?
Did they lead you out of sorrow, with kind face and loving hand?
Had they pleasant ways to court you had they silver words to bind?
Had they souls more fond and loyal than the soul you left behind?
Do not think I blame you, dear one! Ah! my heart is gushing o'er
With the sudden joy and wonder, thus to see your face once more.
Happy is the chance which joins us after long, long years of pain:
And, oh, blessed was whatever sent you back to me again!
Now our pleasure will be real now our hopes again are young:
Now we'll climb Life's brightest summits, dark-haired Maid of Gerringong.
'In the sound of many footfalls, did you falter with regret
For a step which used to gladden in the time so vivid yet?
When they left you in the night-hours, did you lie awake like me,
With the thoughts of what we had been what we never more could be?
Ah! you look but do not answer while I halt and question here,
Wondering why I am so happy, doubting that you are so near.
Sure these eyes with love are blinded, for your form is waxing faint;
And a dreamy splendour crowns it, like the halo round a saint!
When I talk of what we will be, and new aspirations throng,
Why are you so sadly silent, dark-haired Maid of Gerringong?'
But she faded into sunset, and the sunset passed from sight;
And I followed madly after, through the misty, moony night,
Crying, 'Do not leave me lonely! Life has been so cold and drear,
You are all that God has left me, and I want you to be near!
Do not leave me in the darkness! I have walked a weary way,
Listening for your truant footsteps turn and stay, my darling, stay!'
But she came not though I waited, watching through a splendid haze,
Where the lovely Phantom halted ere she vanished from my gaze.
Then I thought that rain was falling, for there rose a stormy song,
And I woke in gloom and tempest, dark-haired Maid of Gerringong!
|
Rolling through the gloomy gorges, comes the roaring southern blast,
With a sound of torrents flying, like a routed army, past,
And, beneath the shaggy forelands, strange fantastic forms of surf
Fly, like wild hounds, at the darkness, crouching over sea and earth;
Swooping round the sunken caverns, with an aggravated roar;
Falling where the waters tumble foaming on a screaming shore!
In a night like this we parted. Eyes were wet though speech was low,
And our thoughts were all in mourning for the dear, dead Long Ago!
In a night like this we parted. Hearts were sad though they were young,
And you left me very lonely, dark-haired Maid of Gerringong.
Said my darling, looking at me, through the radiance of her tears:
'Many changes, O my loved One, we will meet in after years;
Changes like to sudden sunbursts flashing down a rainy steep
Changes like to swift-winged shadows falling on a moony deep!
And they are so cheerless sometimes, leaving, when they pass us by,
Deepening dolours on the sweet, sad face of our Humanity.
But you'll hope, and fail and faint not, with that heart so warm and true,
Watching for the coming Morning, that will flood the World for you;
Listening through a thirsty silence, till the low winds bear along
Eager footfalls pleasant voices,' said the Maid of Gerringong.
Said my darling, when the wind came sobbing wildly round the eaves:
'Oh, the Purpose scattered from me, like the withered autumn leaves!
Oh, the wreck of Love's ambition! Oh, the fond and full belief
That I yet should hear them hail you in your land a God-made chief!
In the loud day they may slumber, but my thoughts will not be still
When the weary world is sleeping, and the moon is on the hill;
Then your form will bend above me, then your voice will rise and fall,
Though I turn and hide in darkness, with my face against the wall,
And my Soul must rise and listen while those homeless memories throng
Moaning in the night for shelter,' said the Maid of Gerringong.
|
Ay, she passed away and left me! Rising through the dusk of tears,
Came a vision of that parting every day for many years!
Every day, though she had told me not to court the strange sweet pain,
Something whispered something led me to our olden haunts again:
And I used to wander nightly, by the surges and the ships,
Harping on those last fond accents that had trembled from her lips:
Till a vessel crossed the waters, and I heard a stranger say,
'One you loved has died in silence with her dear face turned away.'
Oh! the eyes that flash upon me, and the voice that comes along
Oh! my light, my life, my darling dark-haired Maid of Gerringong.
. . . . .
Some one saith, 'Oh, you that mock at Passion with a worldly whine,
Would you change the face of Nature would you limit God's design?
Hide for shame from well-raised clamour, moderate fools who would be wise;
Hide for shame the World will hoot you! Love is Love, and never dies'
And another asketh, doubting that my brother speaks the truth,
'Can we love in age as fondly as we did in days of youth?
Will dead faces always haunt us, in the time of faltering breath?
Shall we yearn, and we so feeble?' Ay, for Love is Love in Death.
Oh! the Faith with sure foundation! let the Ages roll along,
You are mine, and mine for ever, dark-haired Maid of Gerringong.
Last night, dear, I dreamt about you, and I thought that far from men
We were walking, both together, in a fragrant seaside glen;
Down where we could hear the surges wailing round the castled cliffs,
Down where we could see the sunset reddening on the distant skiffs;
There a fall of mountain waters tumbled through the knotted bowers
Bright with rainbow colours reeling on the purple forest flowers.
And we rested on the benches of a cavern old and hoar;
And I whispered, 'this is surely her I loved in days of yore!
False he was who brought sad tidings! Why were you away so long,
When you knew who waited for you, dark-haired Maid of Gerringong?
'Did the strangers come around you, in the far-off foreign land?
Did they lead you out of sorrow, with kind face and loving hand?
Had they pleasant ways to court you had they silver words to bind?
Had they souls more fond and loyal than the soul you left behind?
Do not think I blame you, dear one! Ah! my heart is gushing o'er
With the sudden joy and wonder, thus to see your face once more.
Happy is the chance which joins us after long, long years of pain:
And, oh, blessed was whatever sent you back to me again!
Now our pleasure will be real now our hopes again are young:
Now we'll climb Life's brightest summits, dark-haired Maid of Gerringong.
'In the sound of many footfalls, did you falter with regret
For a step which used to gladden in the time so vivid yet?
When they left you in the night-hours, did you lie awake like me,
With the thoughts of what we had been what we never more could be?
Ah! you look but do not answer while I halt and question here,
Wondering why I am so happy, doubting that you are so near.
Sure these eyes with love are blinded, for your form is waxing faint;
And a dreamy splendour crowns it, like the halo round a saint!
When I talk of what we will be, and new aspirations throng,
Why are you so sadly silent, dark-haired Maid of Gerringong?'
But she faded into sunset, and the sunset passed from sight;
And I followed madly after, through the misty, moony night,
Crying, 'Do not leave me lonely! Life has been so cold and drear,
You are all that God has left me, and I want you to be near!
Do not leave me in the darkness! I have walked a weary way,
Listening for your truant footsteps turn and stay, my darling, stay!'
But she came not though I waited, watching through a splendid haze,
Where the lovely Phantom halted ere she vanished from my gaze.
Then I thought that rain was falling, for there rose a stormy song,
And I woke in gloom and tempest, dark-haired Maid of Gerringong!
|
free_verse
|
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
|
Threnody
|
I
Upon your hearse this flower I lay.
Brief be your sleep! You shall be known
When lesser men have had their day:
Fame blossoms where true seed is sown,
Or soon or late, let Time wrong what it may.
II
Unvext by any dream of fame,
You smiled, and bade the world pass by:
But I--I turned, and saw a name
Shaping itself against the sky--
White star that rose amid the battle's flame!
III
Brief be your sleep, for I would see
Your laurels--ah, how trivial now
To him must earthly laurel be
Who wears the amaranth on his brow!
How vain the voices of mortality!
|
I
Upon your hearse this flower I lay.
Brief be your sleep! You shall be known
When lesser men have had their day:
Fame blossoms where true seed is sown,
Or soon or late, let Time wrong what it may.
|
II
Unvext by any dream of fame,
You smiled, and bade the world pass by:
But I--I turned, and saw a name
Shaping itself against the sky--
White star that rose amid the battle's flame!
III
Brief be your sleep, for I would see
Your laurels--ah, how trivial now
To him must earthly laurel be
Who wears the amaranth on his brow!
How vain the voices of mortality!
|
free_verse
|
John Keats
|
Sonnet IV: How Many Bards Gild The Lapses Of Time!
|
How many bards gild the lapses of time!
A few of them have ever been the food
Of my delighted fancy, I could brood
Over their beauties, earthly, or sublime:
And often, when I sit me down to rhyme,
These will in throngs before my mind intrude:
But no confusion, no disturbance rude
Do they occasion; 'tis a pleasing chime.
So the unnumbered sounds that evening store;
The songs of birds the whispering of the leaves
The voice of waters the great bell that heaves
With solemn sound, and thousand others more,
That distance of recognizance bereaves,
Makes pleasing music, and not wild uproar.
|
How many bards gild the lapses of time!
A few of them have ever been the food
Of my delighted fancy, I could brood
Over their beauties, earthly, or sublime:
|
And often, when I sit me down to rhyme,
These will in throngs before my mind intrude:
But no confusion, no disturbance rude
Do they occasion; 'tis a pleasing chime.
So the unnumbered sounds that evening store;
The songs of birds the whispering of the leaves
The voice of waters the great bell that heaves
With solemn sound, and thousand others more,
That distance of recognizance bereaves,
Makes pleasing music, and not wild uproar.
|
sonnet
|
Hanford Lennox Gordon
|
Charity
|
Bear and forbear, I counsel thee,
Forgive and be forgiven,
For Charity is the golden key
That opens the gate of heaven.
|
Bear and forbear, I counsel thee,
|
Forgive and be forgiven,
For Charity is the golden key
That opens the gate of heaven.
|
quatrain
|
John Greenleaf Whittier
|
To E. C. S.
|
Poet and friend of poets, if thy glass
Detects no flower in winter's tuft of grass,
Let this slight token of the debt I owe
Outlive for thee December's frozen day,
And, like the arbutus budding under snow,
Take bloom and fragrance from some morn of May
When he who gives it shall have gone the way
Where faith shall see and reverent trust shall know.
|
Poet and friend of poets, if thy glass
Detects no flower in winter's tuft of grass,
|
Let this slight token of the debt I owe
Outlive for thee December's frozen day,
And, like the arbutus budding under snow,
Take bloom and fragrance from some morn of May
When he who gives it shall have gone the way
Where faith shall see and reverent trust shall know.
|
octave
|
Matthew Arnold
|
Men Of Genius
|
Silent, the Lord of the world
Eyes from the heavenly height,
Girt by his far-shining train,
Us, who with banners unfurl'd
Fight life's many-chanc'd fight
Madly below, in the plain.
Then saith the Lord to his own:
'See ye the battle below?
Turmoil of death and of birth!
Too long let we them groan.
Haste, arise ye, and go;
Carry my peace upon earth.'
Gladly they rise at his call;
Gladly they take his command;
Gladly descend to the plain.
Alas! How few of them all,
Those willing servants, shall stand
In their Master's presence again!
Some in the tumult are lost
Baffled, bewilder'd, they stray.
Some as prisoners draw breath.
Others, the bravest, are cross'd,
On the height of their bold-follow'd way,
By the swift-rushing missile of Death.
Hardly, hardly shall one
Come, with countenance bright,
O'er the cloud-wrapt, perilous plain:
His Master's errand well done,
Safe through the smoke of the fight,
Back to his Master again.
|
Silent, the Lord of the world
Eyes from the heavenly height,
Girt by his far-shining train,
Us, who with banners unfurl'd
Fight life's many-chanc'd fight
Madly below, in the plain.
Then saith the Lord to his own:
'See ye the battle below?
Turmoil of death and of birth!
Too long let we them groan.
|
Haste, arise ye, and go;
Carry my peace upon earth.'
Gladly they rise at his call;
Gladly they take his command;
Gladly descend to the plain.
Alas! How few of them all,
Those willing servants, shall stand
In their Master's presence again!
Some in the tumult are lost
Baffled, bewilder'd, they stray.
Some as prisoners draw breath.
Others, the bravest, are cross'd,
On the height of their bold-follow'd way,
By the swift-rushing missile of Death.
Hardly, hardly shall one
Come, with countenance bright,
O'er the cloud-wrapt, perilous plain:
His Master's errand well done,
Safe through the smoke of the fight,
Back to his Master again.
|
free_verse
|
Alexander Pope
|
Epigram From The French.
|
Sir, I admit your general rule,
That every poet is a fool:
But you yourself may serve to show it,
That every fool is not a poet.
|
Sir, I admit your general rule,
|
That every poet is a fool:
But you yourself may serve to show it,
That every fool is not a poet.
|
quatrain
|
Robert Lee Frost
|
Devotion
|
The heart can think of no devotion
Greater than being shore to the ocean,
Holding the curve of one position,
Counting an endless repetition.
|
The heart can think of no devotion
|
Greater than being shore to the ocean,
Holding the curve of one position,
Counting an endless repetition.
|
quatrain
|
Edward Shanks
|
A New Song about the Sea.
|
From Amberley to Storrington,
From Storrington to Amberley,
From Amberley to Washington
You cannot see or smell the sea.
But why the devil should you wish
To see the home of silly fish?
Since I prefer the earth and air,
The fish may wallow in the sea
And live the life that they prefer,
If they will leave the land to me,
So wish for each what he may wish,
The earth for me, the sea for fish.
|
From Amberley to Storrington,
From Storrington to Amberley,
From Amberley to Washington
You cannot see or smell the sea.
|
But why the devil should you wish
To see the home of silly fish?
Since I prefer the earth and air,
The fish may wallow in the sea
And live the life that they prefer,
If they will leave the land to me,
So wish for each what he may wish,
The earth for me, the sea for fish.
|
free_verse
|
Henry John Newbolt, Sir
|
The Cicalas: An Idyll
|
Scene: AN ENGLISH GARDEN BY STARLIGHT
Persons: A LADY AND A POET
THE POET
Dimly I see your face: I hear your breath
Sigh faintly, as a flower might sigh in death
And when you whisper, you but stir the air
With a soft hush like summer's own despair.
THE LADY (aloud)
O Night divine, O Darkness ever blest,
Give to our old sad Earth eternal rest.
Since from her heart all beauty ebbs away,
Let her no more endure the shame of day.
THE POET
A thousand ages have not made less bright
The stars that in this fountain shine to-night:
Your eyes in shadow still betray the gleam
That every son of man desires in dream.
THE LADY
Yes, hearts will burn when all the stars are cold;
And Beauty lingers--but her tale is told:
Mankind has left her for a game of toys,
And fleets the golden hour with speed and noise.
THE POET
Think you the human heart no longer feels
Because it loves the swift delight of wheels?
And is not Change our one true guide on earth,
The surest hand that leads us from our birth?
THE LADY
Change were not always loss, if we could keep
Beneath all change a clear and windless deep:
But more and more the tides that through us roll
Disturb the very sea-bed of the soul.
THE POET
The foam of transient passions cannot fret
The sea-bed of the race, profounder yet:
And there, where Greece and her foundations are,
Lies Beauty, built below the tide of war.
THE LADY
So--to the desert, once in fifty years--
Some poor mad poet sings, and no one hears:
But what belated race, in what far clime,
Keeps even a legend of Arcadian time?
THE POET
Not ours perhaps: a nation still so young,
So late in Rome's deserted orchard sprung,
Bears not as yet, but strikes a hopeful root
Till the soil yield its old Hesperian fruit.
THE LADY
Is not the hour gone by? The mystic strain,
Degenerate once, may never spring again.
What long-forsaken gods shall we invoke
To grant such increase to our common oak?
THE POET
Yet may the ilex, of more ancient birth,
More deeply planted in that genial earth,
From her Italian wildwood even now
Revert, and bear once more the golden bough.
THE LADY
A poet's dream was never yet less great
Because it issued through the ivory gate!
Show me one leaf from that old wood divine,
And all your ardour, all your hopes are mine.
THE POET
May Venus bend me to no harder task!
For--Pan be praised!--I hold the gift you ask.
The leaf, the legend, that your wish fulfils,
To-day he brought me from the Umbrian hills.
THE LADY
Your young Italian--yes! I saw you stand
And point his path across our well-walled land:
A sculptor's model, but alas! no god:
These narrow fields the goat-foot never trod!
THE POET
Yet from his eyes the mirth a moment glanced
To which the streams of old Arcadia danced;
And on his tongue still lay the childish lore
Of that lost world for which you hope no more.
THE LADY
Tell me!--from where I watched I saw his face,
And his hands moving with a rustic grace,
Caught too the alien sweetness of his speech,
But sound alone, not sense, my ears could reach.
THE POET
He asked if we in England ever heard
The tiny beasts, half insect and half bird,
That neither eat nor sleep, but die content
When they in endless song their strength have spent.
THE LADY
Cicalas! how the name enchants me back
To the grey olives and the dust-white track!
Was there a story then?--I have forgot,
Or else by chance my Umbrians told it not.
THE POET
Lover of music, you at least should know
That these were men in ages long ago,--
Ere music was,--and then the Muses came,
And love of song took hold on them like flame.
THE LADY
Yes, I remember now the voice that speaks--
Most living still of all the deathless Greeks--
Yet tell me--how they died divinely mad,
And of the Muses what reward they had.
THE POET
They are reborn on earth, and from the first
They know not sleep, they hunger not nor thirst
Summer with glad Cicala's song they fill,
Then die, and go to haunt the Muses' Hill.
THE LADY
They are reborn indeed! and rightly you
The far-heard echo of their music knew!
Pray now to Pan, since you too, it would seem,
Were there with Phaedrus, by Ilissus' stream.
THE POET
Beloved Pan, and all ye gods whose grace
For ever haunts our short life's resting-place,
Outward and inward make me one true whole,
And grant me beauty in the inmost soul!
THE LADY
And thou, O Night, O starry Queen of Air,
Remember not my blind and faithless prayer!
Let me too live, let me too sing again,
Since Beauty wanders still the ways of men.
|
Scene: AN ENGLISH GARDEN BY STARLIGHT
Persons: A LADY AND A POET
THE POET
Dimly I see your face: I hear your breath
Sigh faintly, as a flower might sigh in death
And when you whisper, you but stir the air
With a soft hush like summer's own despair.
THE LADY (aloud)
O Night divine, O Darkness ever blest,
Give to our old sad Earth eternal rest.
Since from her heart all beauty ebbs away,
Let her no more endure the shame of day.
THE POET
A thousand ages have not made less bright
The stars that in this fountain shine to-night:
Your eyes in shadow still betray the gleam
That every son of man desires in dream.
THE LADY
Yes, hearts will burn when all the stars are cold;
And Beauty lingers--but her tale is told:
Mankind has left her for a game of toys,
And fleets the golden hour with speed and noise.
THE POET
Think you the human heart no longer feels
Because it loves the swift delight of wheels?
And is not Change our one true guide on earth,
The surest hand that leads us from our birth?
THE LADY
Change were not always loss, if we could keep
Beneath all change a clear and windless deep:
But more and more the tides that through us roll
Disturb the very sea-bed of the soul.
THE POET
The foam of transient passions cannot fret
The sea-bed of the race, profounder yet:
And there, where Greece and her foundations are,
Lies Beauty, built below the tide of war.
THE LADY
So--to the desert, once in fifty years--
Some poor mad poet sings, and no one hears:
|
But what belated race, in what far clime,
Keeps even a legend of Arcadian time?
THE POET
Not ours perhaps: a nation still so young,
So late in Rome's deserted orchard sprung,
Bears not as yet, but strikes a hopeful root
Till the soil yield its old Hesperian fruit.
THE LADY
Is not the hour gone by? The mystic strain,
Degenerate once, may never spring again.
What long-forsaken gods shall we invoke
To grant such increase to our common oak?
THE POET
Yet may the ilex, of more ancient birth,
More deeply planted in that genial earth,
From her Italian wildwood even now
Revert, and bear once more the golden bough.
THE LADY
A poet's dream was never yet less great
Because it issued through the ivory gate!
Show me one leaf from that old wood divine,
And all your ardour, all your hopes are mine.
THE POET
May Venus bend me to no harder task!
For--Pan be praised!--I hold the gift you ask.
The leaf, the legend, that your wish fulfils,
To-day he brought me from the Umbrian hills.
THE LADY
Your young Italian--yes! I saw you stand
And point his path across our well-walled land:
A sculptor's model, but alas! no god:
These narrow fields the goat-foot never trod!
THE POET
Yet from his eyes the mirth a moment glanced
To which the streams of old Arcadia danced;
And on his tongue still lay the childish lore
Of that lost world for which you hope no more.
THE LADY
Tell me!--from where I watched I saw his face,
And his hands moving with a rustic grace,
Caught too the alien sweetness of his speech,
But sound alone, not sense, my ears could reach.
THE POET
He asked if we in England ever heard
The tiny beasts, half insect and half bird,
That neither eat nor sleep, but die content
When they in endless song their strength have spent.
THE LADY
Cicalas! how the name enchants me back
To the grey olives and the dust-white track!
Was there a story then?--I have forgot,
Or else by chance my Umbrians told it not.
THE POET
Lover of music, you at least should know
That these were men in ages long ago,--
Ere music was,--and then the Muses came,
And love of song took hold on them like flame.
THE LADY
Yes, I remember now the voice that speaks--
Most living still of all the deathless Greeks--
Yet tell me--how they died divinely mad,
And of the Muses what reward they had.
THE POET
They are reborn on earth, and from the first
They know not sleep, they hunger not nor thirst
Summer with glad Cicala's song they fill,
Then die, and go to haunt the Muses' Hill.
THE LADY
They are reborn indeed! and rightly you
The far-heard echo of their music knew!
Pray now to Pan, since you too, it would seem,
Were there with Phaedrus, by Ilissus' stream.
THE POET
Beloved Pan, and all ye gods whose grace
For ever haunts our short life's resting-place,
Outward and inward make me one true whole,
And grant me beauty in the inmost soul!
THE LADY
And thou, O Night, O starry Queen of Air,
Remember not my blind and faithless prayer!
Let me too live, let me too sing again,
Since Beauty wanders still the ways of men.
|
free_verse
|
William Wordsworth
|
Aerial Rock - Whose Solitary Brow
|
Aerial Rock, whose solitary brow
From this low threshold daily meets my sight;
When I step forth to hail the morning light;
Or quit the stars with a lingering farewell, how
Shall Fancy pay to thee a grateful vow?
How, with the Muse's aid, her love attest?
By planting on thy naked head the crest
Of an imperial Castle, which the plough
Of ruin shall not touch. Innocent scheme!
That doth presume no more than to supply
A grace the sinuous vale and roaring stream
Want, through neglect of hoar Antiquity.
Rise, then, ye votive Towers! and catch a gleam
Of golden sunset, ere it fade and die.
|
Aerial Rock, whose solitary brow
From this low threshold daily meets my sight;
When I step forth to hail the morning light;
Or quit the stars with a lingering farewell, how
|
Shall Fancy pay to thee a grateful vow?
How, with the Muse's aid, her love attest?
By planting on thy naked head the crest
Of an imperial Castle, which the plough
Of ruin shall not touch. Innocent scheme!
That doth presume no more than to supply
A grace the sinuous vale and roaring stream
Want, through neglect of hoar Antiquity.
Rise, then, ye votive Towers! and catch a gleam
Of golden sunset, ere it fade and die.
|
sonnet
|
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
|
All Roads That Lead To God Are Good
|
All roads that lead to God are good.
What matters it, your faith, or mine?
Both centre at the goal divine
Of love's eternal Brotherhood.
The kindly life in house or street -
The life of prayer and mystic rite -
The student's search for truth and light -
These paths at one great Junction meet.
Before the oldest book was writ,
Full many a prehistoric soul
Arrived at this unchanging goal,
Through changeless Love, that leads to it.
What matters that one found his Christ
In rising sun, or burning fire?
If faith within him did not tire,
His longing for the Truth sufficed.
Before our modern hell was brought
To edify the modern world,
Full many a hate-filled soul was hurled
In lakes of fire by its own thought.
A thousand creeds have come and gone,
But what is that to you or me?
Creeds are but branches of a tree -
The root of love lives on and on.
Though branch by branch proves withered wood,
The root is warm with precious wine.
Then keep your faith and leave me mine -
All roads that lead to God are good.
|
All roads that lead to God are good.
What matters it, your faith, or mine?
Both centre at the goal divine
Of love's eternal Brotherhood.
The kindly life in house or street -
The life of prayer and mystic rite -
The student's search for truth and light -
These paths at one great Junction meet.
Before the oldest book was writ,
|
Full many a prehistoric soul
Arrived at this unchanging goal,
Through changeless Love, that leads to it.
What matters that one found his Christ
In rising sun, or burning fire?
If faith within him did not tire,
His longing for the Truth sufficed.
Before our modern hell was brought
To edify the modern world,
Full many a hate-filled soul was hurled
In lakes of fire by its own thought.
A thousand creeds have come and gone,
But what is that to you or me?
Creeds are but branches of a tree -
The root of love lives on and on.
Though branch by branch proves withered wood,
The root is warm with precious wine.
Then keep your faith and leave me mine -
All roads that lead to God are good.
|
free_verse
|
Robert Herrick
|
An End Decreed.
|
Let's be jocund while we may,
All things have an ending day;
And when once the work is done,
Fates revolve no flax they've spun.
|
Let's be jocund while we may,
|
All things have an ending day;
And when once the work is done,
Fates revolve no flax they've spun.
|
quatrain
|
Robert Herrick
|
Upon Paul. Epig.
|
Paul's hands do give; what give they, bread or meat,
Or money? no, but only dew and sweat.
As stones and salt gloves use to give, even so
Paul's hands do give, nought else for ought we know.
|
Paul's hands do give; what give they, bread or meat,
|
Or money? no, but only dew and sweat.
As stones and salt gloves use to give, even so
Paul's hands do give, nought else for ought we know.
|
quatrain
|
Alfred Castner King
|
Shall Love, as the Bridal Wreath, Whither and Die?
|
Shall love as the bridal wreath, wither and die?
Or remain ever constant and sure,
As the years of the future pass rapidly by,
And the waves of adversity's tempest roll high,
Ever changeless and fervent endure?
Mistake not the fancy, that lasts but a day,
For the love which eternally thrives;
That sentiment false, is as prone to decay
As the wreath is to fade and to wither away;
And like it, it never revives.
|
Shall love as the bridal wreath, wither and die?
Or remain ever constant and sure,
As the years of the future pass rapidly by,
|
And the waves of adversity's tempest roll high,
Ever changeless and fervent endure?
Mistake not the fancy, that lasts but a day,
For the love which eternally thrives;
That sentiment false, is as prone to decay
As the wreath is to fade and to wither away;
And like it, it never revives.
|
free_verse
|
Robert Herrick
|
Sinners.
|
Sinners confounded are a twofold way,
Either as when, the learned schoolmen say,
Men's sins destroyed are when they repent,
Or when, for sins, men suffer punishment.
|
Sinners confounded are a twofold way,
|
Either as when, the learned schoolmen say,
Men's sins destroyed are when they repent,
Or when, for sins, men suffer punishment.
|
quatrain
|
William Wordsworth
|
Ecclesiastical Sonnets - Part I. - XXII - Continued
|
Methinks that to some vacant hermitage
'My' feet would rather turn to some dry nook
Scooped out of living rock, and near a brook
Hurled down a mountain-cove from stage to stage,
Yet tempering, for my sight, its bustling rage
In the soft heaven of a translucent pool;
Thence creeping under sylvan arches cool,
Fit haunt of shapes whose glorious equipage
Would elevate my dreams. A beechen bowl,
A maple dish, my furniture should be;
Crisp, yellow leaves my bed; the hooting owl
My night-watch: nor should e'er the crested fowl
From thorp or vill his matins sound for me,
Tired of the world and all its industry.
|
Methinks that to some vacant hermitage
'My' feet would rather turn to some dry nook
Scooped out of living rock, and near a brook
Hurled down a mountain-cove from stage to stage,
|
Yet tempering, for my sight, its bustling rage
In the soft heaven of a translucent pool;
Thence creeping under sylvan arches cool,
Fit haunt of shapes whose glorious equipage
Would elevate my dreams. A beechen bowl,
A maple dish, my furniture should be;
Crisp, yellow leaves my bed; the hooting owl
My night-watch: nor should e'er the crested fowl
From thorp or vill his matins sound for me,
Tired of the world and all its industry.
|
sonnet
|
Clark Ashton Smith
|
The Balance
|
The world upheld their pillars for awhile -
Now, where imperial On and Memphis stood,
The hot wind sifts across the solitude
The sand that once was wall and peristyle,
Or furrows like the main each desert mile,
Where ocean-deep above its ancient food
Of cities fame-forgot, the waste is nude,
Traceless as billows of each sunken pile.
Lo! for that wrong shall vengeance come at last,
When the devouring earth, in ruin one
With royal walls and palaces undone,
And sunk within the desolated past,
Shall drift, and winds that wrangle through the vast
Immingle it with ashes of the sun.
|
The world upheld their pillars for awhile -
Now, where imperial On and Memphis stood,
The hot wind sifts across the solitude
The sand that once was wall and peristyle,
|
Or furrows like the main each desert mile,
Where ocean-deep above its ancient food
Of cities fame-forgot, the waste is nude,
Traceless as billows of each sunken pile.
Lo! for that wrong shall vengeance come at last,
When the devouring earth, in ruin one
With royal walls and palaces undone,
And sunk within the desolated past,
Shall drift, and winds that wrangle through the vast
Immingle it with ashes of the sun.
|
sonnet
|
Eugene Field
|
To Leucon'e I
|
What end the gods may have ordained for me,
And what for thee,
Seek not to learn, Leucon'e; we may not know.
Chaldean tables cannot bring us rest.
'T is for the best
To bear in patience what may come, or weal or woe.
If for more winters our poor lot is cast,
Or this the last,
Which on the crumbling rocks has dashed Etruscan seas,
Strain clear the wine; this life is short, at best.
Take hope with zest,
And, trusting not To-morrow, snatch To-day for ease!
|
What end the gods may have ordained for me,
And what for thee,
Seek not to learn, Leucon'e; we may not know.
Chaldean tables cannot bring us rest.
|
'T is for the best
To bear in patience what may come, or weal or woe.
If for more winters our poor lot is cast,
Or this the last,
Which on the crumbling rocks has dashed Etruscan seas,
Strain clear the wine; this life is short, at best.
Take hope with zest,
And, trusting not To-morrow, snatch To-day for ease!
|
free_verse
|
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
|
Rouge Et Noir.
|
Soul, wilt thou toss again?
By just such a hazard
Hundreds have lost, indeed,
But tens have won an all.
Angels' breathless ballot
Lingers to record thee;
Imps in eager caucus
Raffle for my soul.
|
Soul, wilt thou toss again?
By just such a hazard
|
Hundreds have lost, indeed,
But tens have won an all.
Angels' breathless ballot
Lingers to record thee;
Imps in eager caucus
Raffle for my soul.
|
octave
|
Thomas Moore
|
Dick * * * *, A Character.
|
Of various scraps and fragments built,
Borrowed alike from fools and wits,
Dick's mind was like a patchwork quilt,
Made up of new, old, motley bits--
Where, if the Co. called in their shares,
If petticoats their quota got
And gowns were all refunded theirs,
The quilt would look but shy, God wot.
And thus he still, new plagiaries seeking,
Reversed ventriloquism's trick,
For, 'stead of Dick thro' others speaking,
'Twas others we heard speak thro' Dick.
A Tory now, all bounds exceeding,
Now best of Whigs, now worst of rats;
One day with Malthus, foe to breeding,
The next with Sadler, all for brats.
Poor Dick!--and how else could it be?
With notions all at random caught,
A sort of mental fricassee,
Made up of legs and wings of thought--
The leavings of the last Debate, or
A dinner, yesterday, of wits,
Where Dick sate by and, like a waiter,
Had the scraps for perquisites.
|
Of various scraps and fragments built,
Borrowed alike from fools and wits,
Dick's mind was like a patchwork quilt,
Made up of new, old, motley bits--
Where, if the Co. called in their shares,
If petticoats their quota got
And gowns were all refunded theirs,
The quilt would look but shy, God wot.
|
And thus he still, new plagiaries seeking,
Reversed ventriloquism's trick,
For, 'stead of Dick thro' others speaking,
'Twas others we heard speak thro' Dick.
A Tory now, all bounds exceeding,
Now best of Whigs, now worst of rats;
One day with Malthus, foe to breeding,
The next with Sadler, all for brats.
Poor Dick!--and how else could it be?
With notions all at random caught,
A sort of mental fricassee,
Made up of legs and wings of thought--
The leavings of the last Debate, or
A dinner, yesterday, of wits,
Where Dick sate by and, like a waiter,
Had the scraps for perquisites.
|
free_verse
|
Unknown
|
Nursery Rhyme. DCXVIII. Relics.
|
Hannah Bantry in the pantry,
Eating a mutton bone;
How she gnawed it, how she clawed it,
When she found she was alone!
|
Hannah Bantry in the pantry,
|
Eating a mutton bone;
How she gnawed it, how she clawed it,
When she found she was alone!
|
quatrain
|
Robert Fuller Murray
|
Cyclamen
|
I had a plant which would not thrive,
Although I watered it with care,
I could not save the blossoms fair,
Nor even keep the leaves alive.
I strove till it was vain to strive.
I gave it light, I gave it air,
I sought from skill and counsel rare
The means to make it yet survive.
A lady sent it me, to prove
She held my friendship in esteem;
I would not have it as she said,
I wanted it to be for love;
And now not even friends we seem,
And now the cyclamen is dead.
|
I had a plant which would not thrive,
Although I watered it with care,
I could not save the blossoms fair,
Nor even keep the leaves alive.
|
I strove till it was vain to strive.
I gave it light, I gave it air,
I sought from skill and counsel rare
The means to make it yet survive.
A lady sent it me, to prove
She held my friendship in esteem;
I would not have it as she said,
I wanted it to be for love;
And now not even friends we seem,
And now the cyclamen is dead.
|
sonnet
|
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
|
March.
|
We like March, his shoes are purple,
He is new and high;
Makes he mud for dog and peddler,
Makes he forest dry;
Knows the adder's tongue his coming,
And begets her spot.
Stands the sun so close and mighty
That our minds are hot.
News is he of all the others;
Bold it were to die
With the blue-birds buccaneering
On his British sky.
|
We like March, his shoes are purple,
He is new and high;
Makes he mud for dog and peddler,
Makes he forest dry;
|
Knows the adder's tongue his coming,
And begets her spot.
Stands the sun so close and mighty
That our minds are hot.
News is he of all the others;
Bold it were to die
With the blue-birds buccaneering
On his British sky.
|
free_verse
|
John Milton
|
Another on "On the Gunpowder Plot."
|
Quem modo Roma suis devoverat impia diris,
Et Styge damnarat Taenarioque sinu,
Hunc vice mutata jam tollere gestit ad astra,
Et cupit ad superos evehere usque Deos.
|
Quem modo Roma suis devoverat impia diris,
|
Et Styge damnarat Taenarioque sinu,
Hunc vice mutata jam tollere gestit ad astra,
Et cupit ad superos evehere usque Deos.
|
quatrain
|
Henry Kendall
|
Sonnets on the Discovery of Botany Bay by Captain Cook - IV - Sutherland's Grave
|
'Tis holy ground! The silent silver lights
And darks undreamed of, falling year by year
Upon his sleep, in soft Australian nights,
Are joys enough for him who lieth here
So sanctified with Rest. We need not rear
The storied monument o'er such a spot!
That soul, the first for whom the Christian tear
Was shed on Austral soil, hath heritage
Most ample! Let the ages wane with age,
The grass which clothes this grave shall wither not.
See yonder quiet lily! Have the blights
Of many winters left it on a faded tomb?
Oh, peace! Its fellows, glad with green delights,
Shall gather round it deep eternal bloom!
|
'Tis holy ground! The silent silver lights
And darks undreamed of, falling year by year
Upon his sleep, in soft Australian nights,
Are joys enough for him who lieth here
|
So sanctified with Rest. We need not rear
The storied monument o'er such a spot!
That soul, the first for whom the Christian tear
Was shed on Austral soil, hath heritage
Most ample! Let the ages wane with age,
The grass which clothes this grave shall wither not.
See yonder quiet lily! Have the blights
Of many winters left it on a faded tomb?
Oh, peace! Its fellows, glad with green delights,
Shall gather round it deep eternal bloom!
|
sonnet
|
William Cullen Bryant
|
Sonnet To ----.
|
Ay, thou art for the grave; thy glances shine
Too brightly to shine long; another Spring
Shall deck her for men's eyes, but not for thine,
Sealed in a sleep which knows no wakening.
The fields for thee have no medicinal leaf,
And the vexed ore no mineral of power;
And they who love thee wait in anxious grief
Till the slow plague shall bring the fatal hour.
Glide softly to thy rest then; Death should come
Gently, to one of gentle mould like thee,
As light winds wandering through groves of bloom
Detach the delicate blossom from the tree.
Close thy sweet eyes, calmly, and without pain;
And we will trust in God to see thee yet again.
|
Ay, thou art for the grave; thy glances shine
Too brightly to shine long; another Spring
Shall deck her for men's eyes, but not for thine,
Sealed in a sleep which knows no wakening.
|
The fields for thee have no medicinal leaf,
And the vexed ore no mineral of power;
And they who love thee wait in anxious grief
Till the slow plague shall bring the fatal hour.
Glide softly to thy rest then; Death should come
Gently, to one of gentle mould like thee,
As light winds wandering through groves of bloom
Detach the delicate blossom from the tree.
Close thy sweet eyes, calmly, and without pain;
And we will trust in God to see thee yet again.
|
sonnet
|
Walter Savage Landor
|
Ianthe's Troubles
|
Your pleasures spring like daisies in the grass,
Cut down and up again as blithe as ever;
From you, Ianthe, little troubles pass
Like little ripples in a sunny river.
|
Your pleasures spring like daisies in the grass,
|
Cut down and up again as blithe as ever;
From you, Ianthe, little troubles pass
Like little ripples in a sunny river.
|
quatrain
|
Robert Herrick
|
To Perenna.
|
How long, Perenna, wilt thou see
Me languish for the love of thee?
Consent, and play a friendly part
To save, when thou may'st kill a heart.
|
How long, Perenna, wilt thou see
|
Me languish for the love of thee?
Consent, and play a friendly part
To save, when thou may'st kill a heart.
|
quatrain
|
Jean Blewett
|
Her Little Way.
|
'Tis woman rules the whole world still,
Though faults the critics say she has;
She smiles her smile and works her will -
'Tis just a little way she has.
|
'Tis woman rules the whole world still,
|
Though faults the critics say she has;
She smiles her smile and works her will -
'Tis just a little way she has.
|
quatrain
|
William Butler Yeats
|
To A Squirrel At Kyle-na-gno
|
Come play with me;
Why should you run
Through the shaking tree
As though I'd a gun
To strike you dead?
When all I would do
Is to scratch your head
And let you go.
|
Come play with me;
Why should you run
|
Through the shaking tree
As though I'd a gun
To strike you dead?
When all I would do
Is to scratch your head
And let you go.
|
octave
|
Thomas Hardy
|
In The Seventies
|
"Qui deridetur ab amico suo sicut ego." - JOB.
In the seventies I was bearing in my breast,
Penned tight,
Certain starry thoughts that threw a magic light
On the worktimes and the soundless hours of rest
In the seventies; aye, I bore them in my breast
Penned tight.
In the seventies when my neighbours - even my friend -
Saw me pass,
Heads were shaken, and I heard the words, "Alas,
For his onward years and name unless he mend!"
In the seventies, when my neighbours and my friend
Saw me pass.
In the seventies those who met me did not know
Of the vision
That immuned me from the chillings of mis-prision
And the damps that choked my goings to and fro
In the seventies; yea, those nodders did not know
Of the vision.
In the seventies nought could darken or destroy it,
Locked in me,
Though as delicate as lamp-worm's lucency;
Neither mist nor murk could weaken or alloy it
In the seventies! - could not darken or destroy it,
Locked in me.
|
"Qui deridetur ab amico suo sicut ego." - JOB.
In the seventies I was bearing in my breast,
Penned tight,
Certain starry thoughts that threw a magic light
On the worktimes and the soundless hours of rest
In the seventies; aye, I bore them in my breast
Penned tight.
In the seventies when my neighbours - even my friend -
|
Saw me pass,
Heads were shaken, and I heard the words, "Alas,
For his onward years and name unless he mend!"
In the seventies, when my neighbours and my friend
Saw me pass.
In the seventies those who met me did not know
Of the vision
That immuned me from the chillings of mis-prision
And the damps that choked my goings to and fro
In the seventies; yea, those nodders did not know
Of the vision.
In the seventies nought could darken or destroy it,
Locked in me,
Though as delicate as lamp-worm's lucency;
Neither mist nor murk could weaken or alloy it
In the seventies! - could not darken or destroy it,
Locked in me.
|
free_verse
|
Maurice Henry Hewlett
|
Eye-Service
|
Meseems thine eyes are two still-folded lakes
Wherein deep water reflects the guardian sky,
Searching wherein I see how Heaven is nigh
And our broad Earth at peace. So my Love takes
My soul's thin hands and, chafing them, she makes
My life's blood lusty and my life's hope high
For the strong lips and eyes of Poesy,
To hold the world well squandered for their sakes.
I looked thee full this day: thine unveiled eyes
Rayed their swift-searching magic forth; and then
I felt all strength that love can put in men
Whenas they know that loveliness is wise.
For love can be content with no less prize,
To lift us up beyond our mortal ken.
|
Meseems thine eyes are two still-folded lakes
Wherein deep water reflects the guardian sky,
Searching wherein I see how Heaven is nigh
And our broad Earth at peace. So my Love takes
|
My soul's thin hands and, chafing them, she makes
My life's blood lusty and my life's hope high
For the strong lips and eyes of Poesy,
To hold the world well squandered for their sakes.
I looked thee full this day: thine unveiled eyes
Rayed their swift-searching magic forth; and then
I felt all strength that love can put in men
Whenas they know that loveliness is wise.
For love can be content with no less prize,
To lift us up beyond our mortal ken.
|
sonnet
|
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
|
Compensation.
|
For each ecstatic instant
We must an anguish pay
In keen and quivering ratio
To the ecstasy.
For each beloved hour
Sharp pittances of years,
Bitter contested farthings
And coffers heaped with tears.
|
For each ecstatic instant
We must an anguish pay
|
In keen and quivering ratio
To the ecstasy.
For each beloved hour
Sharp pittances of years,
Bitter contested farthings
And coffers heaped with tears.
|
free_verse
|
George MacDonald
|
To The Life Eternal
|
Thou art my thought, my heart, my being's fortune,
The search for thee my growth's first conscious date;
For nought, for everything, I thee importune;
Thou art my all, my origin and fate!
|
Thou art my thought, my heart, my being's fortune,
|
The search for thee my growth's first conscious date;
For nought, for everything, I thee importune;
Thou art my all, my origin and fate!
|
quatrain
|
Ellis Parker Butler
|
Immortality
|
I bowed my head in anguish sore
When Life made Death his bride;
'Soul, we are lost forever more!'
Unto my soul I cried.
'Nay, waste in wailing not thy breath,'
My soul replied to me,
'Behold! The child of Life and Death
Is Immortality!'
|
I bowed my head in anguish sore
When Life made Death his bride;
|
'Soul, we are lost forever more!'
Unto my soul I cried.
'Nay, waste in wailing not thy breath,'
My soul replied to me,
'Behold! The child of Life and Death
Is Immortality!'
|
octave
|
Madison Julius Cawein
|
A Last Word.
|
Not for thyself, but for the sake of Song,
Strive to succeed as others have, who gave
Their lives unto her; shaping sure and strong
Her lovely limbs that made them god and slave.
Not for thyself, but for the sake of Art,
Strive to advance beyond the others' best;
Winning a deeper secret from her heart
To hang it moonlike 'mid the starry rest.
|
Not for thyself, but for the sake of Song,
Strive to succeed as others have, who gave
|
Their lives unto her; shaping sure and strong
Her lovely limbs that made them god and slave.
Not for thyself, but for the sake of Art,
Strive to advance beyond the others' best;
Winning a deeper secret from her heart
To hang it moonlike 'mid the starry rest.
|
octave
|
Madison Julius Cawein
|
The Locust Blossom. A Quatrain.
|
The spirit Spring, in rainy raiment, met
The spirit Summer for a moonlit hour:
Sweet from their greeting kisses, warm and wet,
Earth shaped the fragrant purity of this flower.
|
The spirit Spring, in rainy raiment, met
|
The spirit Summer for a moonlit hour:
Sweet from their greeting kisses, warm and wet,
Earth shaped the fragrant purity of this flower.
|
quatrain
|
Maurice Henry Hewlett
|
Snowy Night
|
The snow lies deep, ice-fringes hem the thatch;
I knock my shoes, my Love lifts me the latch,
Shows me her eyes--O frozen stars, they shine
Kindly! I clasp her. Quick! her lips are mine.
|
The snow lies deep, ice-fringes hem the thatch;
|
I knock my shoes, my Love lifts me the latch,
Shows me her eyes--O frozen stars, they shine
Kindly! I clasp her. Quick! her lips are mine.
|
quatrain
|
George MacDonald
|
A Baby-Sermon
|
The lightning and thunder
They go and they come:
But the stars and the stillness
Are always at home.
|
The lightning and thunder
|
They go and they come:
But the stars and the stillness
Are always at home.
|
quatrain
|
William Wordsworth
|
Ecclesiastical Sonnets - Part III. - XXII - Catechising
|
From Little down to Least, in due degree,
Around the Pastor, each in new-wrought vest,
Each with a vernal posy at his breast,
We stood, a trembling, earnest Company!
With low soft murmur, like a distant bee,
Some spake, by thought-perplexing fears betrayed;
And some a bold unerring answer made:
How fluttered then thy anxious heart for me,
Beloved Mother! Thou whose happy hand
Had bound the flowers I wore, with faithful tie:
Sweet flowers! at whose inaudible command
Her countenance, phantom-like, doth reappear:
O lost too early for the frequent tear,
And ill requited by this heartfelt sigh!
|
From Little down to Least, in due degree,
Around the Pastor, each in new-wrought vest,
Each with a vernal posy at his breast,
We stood, a trembling, earnest Company!
|
With low soft murmur, like a distant bee,
Some spake, by thought-perplexing fears betrayed;
And some a bold unerring answer made:
How fluttered then thy anxious heart for me,
Beloved Mother! Thou whose happy hand
Had bound the flowers I wore, with faithful tie:
Sweet flowers! at whose inaudible command
Her countenance, phantom-like, doth reappear:
O lost too early for the frequent tear,
And ill requited by this heartfelt sigh!
|
sonnet
|
Victor James Daley
|
The Serpent's Legacy.
|
An apple caused man's fall, as some believe;
But that old Snake, malevolently wise,
A deadlier snare set when he left to Eve
His tongue of honey and mesmeric eyes.
|
An apple caused man's fall, as some believe;
|
But that old Snake, malevolently wise,
A deadlier snare set when he left to Eve
His tongue of honey and mesmeric eyes.
|
quatrain
|
James Whitcomb Riley
|
To Annie
|
When the lids of dusk are falling
O'er the dreamy eyes of day,
And the whippoorwills are calling,
And the lesson laid away, -
May Mem'ry soft and tender
As the prelude of the night,
Bend over you and render
As tranquil a delight.
|
When the lids of dusk are falling
O'er the dreamy eyes of day,
|
And the whippoorwills are calling,
And the lesson laid away, -
May Mem'ry soft and tender
As the prelude of the night,
Bend over you and render
As tranquil a delight.
|
octave
|
Robert Herrick
|
Sabbaths.
|
Sabbaths are threefold, as St. Austin says:
The first of time, or Sabbath here of days;
The second is a conscience trespass-free;
The last the Sabbath of Eternity.
|
Sabbaths are threefold, as St. Austin says:
|
The first of time, or Sabbath here of days;
The second is a conscience trespass-free;
The last the Sabbath of Eternity.
|
quatrain
|
John Hartley
|
Tom Grit.
|
He'd a breet ruddy face an a laffin e'e,
An his shoolders wer brooad as brooad need be;
For each one he met he'd a sally o' wit,
For a jovjal soul wor this same Tom Grit.
He climb'd up to his waggon's heigh seeat wi' pride,
For he'd bowt a new horse 'at he'd nivver tried;
But he had noa fear, for he knew he could drive
As weel, if net better, nor th' best man alive.
Soa he sed, as he gethered his reins in his hand,
An prepared to start off on a journey he'd planned;
But some 'at stood by shook ther heeads an lukt grave,
For they'd daats ha that mettlesum horse might behave.
It set off wi' a jerk when Tom touched it wi' th' whip,
But his arms they wor strong, an like iron his grip,
An he sooin browt it daan to a nice steady gait,
But it tax'd all his skill to mak it run straight.
Two miles o' gooid rooad to the next taan led on,
An ov things like to scare it he knew ther wor none;
Soa he slackened his reins just to give it a spin, -
Then he faand 'at he couldn't for th' world hold it in.
It had th' bit in its teeth an its een fairly blazed,
An it plunged an reared madly, - an then as if crazed
It dashed along th' rooad like a fury let lawse,
Woll Tom tried his utmost to steady his course.
Wi' the reins raand his hands, an feet planted tight
He strained ivvery muscle, - but saw wi' affright
'At the street o' the taan 'at he'd entered wor fill'd,
Wi' fowk fleein wildly for fear they'd be kill'd,
"Let it goa! Let it goa!" they cried aght as it pass'd,
An Tom felt his strength givin way varry fast;
His hands wor nah helpless its mad rush to check,
But he duckt daan his heead an lapt th' reins raand his neck.
That jerk caused the horse to loise hold o' the bit,
An new hooap an new strength seem'd to come to Tom Grit,
An tho' blooid throo his ears an his nooas 'gan to spurt,
Th' horse wor browt to a stand, an ther'd nubdy been hurt.
Then chaps went to hold it, an help poor Tom daan,
For Tom's wor a favorite face i' that taan;
"Tha should ha let goa," they all sed, "an jumpt aght,
Thy life's worth a thaasand sich horses baght daat!"
But Tom wiped his face an he sed as he smiled,
"I'th' back o' that waggon yo'll find ther's a child,
An aw couldn't goa back to its mother alooan,
For he's all th' lad we have. Have yo nooan o' yer own?"
|
He'd a breet ruddy face an a laffin e'e,
An his shoolders wer brooad as brooad need be;
For each one he met he'd a sally o' wit,
For a jovjal soul wor this same Tom Grit.
He climb'd up to his waggon's heigh seeat wi' pride,
For he'd bowt a new horse 'at he'd nivver tried;
But he had noa fear, for he knew he could drive
As weel, if net better, nor th' best man alive.
Soa he sed, as he gethered his reins in his hand,
An prepared to start off on a journey he'd planned;
But some 'at stood by shook ther heeads an lukt grave,
For they'd daats ha that mettlesum horse might behave.
It set off wi' a jerk when Tom touched it wi' th' whip,
But his arms they wor strong, an like iron his grip,
|
An he sooin browt it daan to a nice steady gait,
But it tax'd all his skill to mak it run straight.
Two miles o' gooid rooad to the next taan led on,
An ov things like to scare it he knew ther wor none;
Soa he slackened his reins just to give it a spin, -
Then he faand 'at he couldn't for th' world hold it in.
It had th' bit in its teeth an its een fairly blazed,
An it plunged an reared madly, - an then as if crazed
It dashed along th' rooad like a fury let lawse,
Woll Tom tried his utmost to steady his course.
Wi' the reins raand his hands, an feet planted tight
He strained ivvery muscle, - but saw wi' affright
'At the street o' the taan 'at he'd entered wor fill'd,
Wi' fowk fleein wildly for fear they'd be kill'd,
"Let it goa! Let it goa!" they cried aght as it pass'd,
An Tom felt his strength givin way varry fast;
His hands wor nah helpless its mad rush to check,
But he duckt daan his heead an lapt th' reins raand his neck.
That jerk caused the horse to loise hold o' the bit,
An new hooap an new strength seem'd to come to Tom Grit,
An tho' blooid throo his ears an his nooas 'gan to spurt,
Th' horse wor browt to a stand, an ther'd nubdy been hurt.
Then chaps went to hold it, an help poor Tom daan,
For Tom's wor a favorite face i' that taan;
"Tha should ha let goa," they all sed, "an jumpt aght,
Thy life's worth a thaasand sich horses baght daat!"
But Tom wiped his face an he sed as he smiled,
"I'th' back o' that waggon yo'll find ther's a child,
An aw couldn't goa back to its mother alooan,
For he's all th' lad we have. Have yo nooan o' yer own?"
|
free_verse
|
Siegfried Loraine Sassoon
|
Banishment
|
I am banished from the patient men who fight.
They smote my heart to pity, built my pride.
Shoulder to aching shoulder, side by side,
They trudged away from life's broad wealds of light.
Their wrongs were mine; and ever in my sight
They went arrayed in honour. But they died, -
Not one by one: and mutinous I cried
To those who sent them out into the night.
The darkness tells how vainly I have striven
To free them from the pit where they must dwell
In outcast gloom convulsed and jagged and riven
By grappling guns. Love drove me to rebel.
Love drives me back to grope with them through hell;
And in their tortured eyes I stand forgiven.
|
I am banished from the patient men who fight.
They smote my heart to pity, built my pride.
Shoulder to aching shoulder, side by side,
They trudged away from life's broad wealds of light.
|
Their wrongs were mine; and ever in my sight
They went arrayed in honour. But they died, -
Not one by one: and mutinous I cried
To those who sent them out into the night.
The darkness tells how vainly I have striven
To free them from the pit where they must dwell
In outcast gloom convulsed and jagged and riven
By grappling guns. Love drove me to rebel.
Love drives me back to grope with them through hell;
And in their tortured eyes I stand forgiven.
|
sonnet
|
John Le Gay Brereton
|
The Clay
|
When I cast my slough of clay
Put it quietly away.
Let no bloom untimely fade
Where my empty heart is laid.
Ask no folk to crowd around
With an air of woe profound.
Those who love me know that I
Cannot in a coffin lie.
Let them go where'er they will,
Dreaming of me living still.
Let no formal words be said
Customary for the dead.
Plant no stone above the pit:
Let the grass run over it.
|
When I cast my slough of clay
Put it quietly away.
Let no bloom untimely fade
Where my empty heart is laid.
|
Ask no folk to crowd around
With an air of woe profound.
Those who love me know that I
Cannot in a coffin lie.
Let them go where'er they will,
Dreaming of me living still.
Let no formal words be said
Customary for the dead.
Plant no stone above the pit:
Let the grass run over it.
|
sonnet
|
Madison Julius Cawein
|
Music
|
God-born before the Sons of God, she hurled,
With awful symphonies of flood and fire,
God's name on rocking Chaos world by world
Flamed as the universe rolled from her lyre.
|
God-born before the Sons of God, she hurled,
|
With awful symphonies of flood and fire,
God's name on rocking Chaos world by world
Flamed as the universe rolled from her lyre.
|
quatrain
|
William Wordsworth
|
Though The Bold Wings Of Poesy Affect
|
Though the bold wings of Poesy affect
The clouds, and wheel around the mountain tops
Rejoicing, from her loftiest height she drops
Well pleased to skim the plain with wild flowers deckt
Or muse in solemn grove whose shades protect
The lingering dew there steals along, or stops
Watching the least small bird that round her hops,
Or creeping worm, with sensitive respect.
Her functions are they therefore less divine,
Her thoughts less deep, or void of grave intent
Her simplest fancies? Should that fear be thine,
Aspiring Votary, ere thy hand present
One offering, kneel before her modest shrine,
With brow in penitential sorrow bent!
|
Though the bold wings of Poesy affect
The clouds, and wheel around the mountain tops
Rejoicing, from her loftiest height she drops
Well pleased to skim the plain with wild flowers deckt
|
Or muse in solemn grove whose shades protect
The lingering dew there steals along, or stops
Watching the least small bird that round her hops,
Or creeping worm, with sensitive respect.
Her functions are they therefore less divine,
Her thoughts less deep, or void of grave intent
Her simplest fancies? Should that fear be thine,
Aspiring Votary, ere thy hand present
One offering, kneel before her modest shrine,
With brow in penitential sorrow bent!
|
sonnet
|
Walter Savage Landor
|
On His Eightieth Birthday
|
To my ninth decade I have tottered on,
And no soft arm bends now my steps to steady;
She, who once led me where she would, is gone,
So when he calls me, Death shall find me ready.
|
To my ninth decade I have tottered on,
|
And no soft arm bends now my steps to steady;
She, who once led me where she would, is gone,
So when he calls me, Death shall find me ready.
|
quatrain
|
Walter De La Mare
|
The Tailor
|
Few footsteps stray when dusk droops o'er
The tailor's old stone-lintelled door:
There sits he stitching half asleep,
Beside his smoky tallow dip.
'Click, click,' his needle hastes, and shrill
Cries back the cricket 'neath the sill.
Sometimes he stays, and o'er his thread
Leans sidelong his old tousled head;
Or stoops to peer with half-shut eye
When some strange footfall echoes by;
Till clearer gleams his candle's spark
Into the dusty summer dark.
Then from his crosslegs he gets down,
To find how dark the evening's grown;
And hunched-up in his door he'll hear
The cricket whistling crisp and clear;
And so beneath the starry grey
Will mutter half a seam away.
|
Few footsteps stray when dusk droops o'er
The tailor's old stone-lintelled door:
There sits he stitching half asleep,
Beside his smoky tallow dip.
'Click, click,' his needle hastes, and shrill
Cries back the cricket 'neath the sill.
|
Sometimes he stays, and o'er his thread
Leans sidelong his old tousled head;
Or stoops to peer with half-shut eye
When some strange footfall echoes by;
Till clearer gleams his candle's spark
Into the dusty summer dark.
Then from his crosslegs he gets down,
To find how dark the evening's grown;
And hunched-up in his door he'll hear
The cricket whistling crisp and clear;
And so beneath the starry grey
Will mutter half a seam away.
|
free_verse
|
Robert Burns
|
To Dr. Maxwell, On Jessie Staig's Recovery.
|
Maxwell, if merit here you crave
That merit I deny,
You save fair Jessie from the grave,
An angel could not die.
|
Maxwell, if merit here you crave
|
That merit I deny,
You save fair Jessie from the grave,
An angel could not die.
|
quatrain
|
Robert Herrick
|
The Staff And Rod.
|
Two instruments belong unto our God:
The one a staff is and the next a rod;
That if the twig should chance too much to smart,
The staff might come to play the friendly part.
|
Two instruments belong unto our God:
|
The one a staff is and the next a rod;
That if the twig should chance too much to smart,
The staff might come to play the friendly part.
|
quatrain
|
Rupert Brooke
|
The Dead (II)
|
These hearts were woven of human joys and cares,
Washed marvellously with sorrow, swift to mirth.
The years had given them kindness. Dawn was theirs,
And sunset, and the colours of the earth.
These had seen movement, and heard music; known
Slumber and waking; loved; gone proudly friended;
Felt the quick stir of wonder; sat alone;
Touched flowers and furs and cheeks. All this is ended.
There are waters blown by changing winds to laughter
And lit by the rich skies, all day. And after,
Frost, with a gesture, stays the waves that dance
And wandering loveliness. He leaves a white
Unbroken glory, a gathered radiance,
A width, a shining peace, under the night.
|
These hearts were woven of human joys and cares,
Washed marvellously with sorrow, swift to mirth.
The years had given them kindness. Dawn was theirs,
And sunset, and the colours of the earth.
|
These had seen movement, and heard music; known
Slumber and waking; loved; gone proudly friended;
Felt the quick stir of wonder; sat alone;
Touched flowers and furs and cheeks. All this is ended.
There are waters blown by changing winds to laughter
And lit by the rich skies, all day. And after,
Frost, with a gesture, stays the waves that dance
And wandering loveliness. He leaves a white
Unbroken glory, a gathered radiance,
A width, a shining peace, under the night.
|
sonnet
|
Madison Julius Cawein
|
Mnemosyne
|
In classic beauty, cold, immaculate,
A voiceful sculpture, stern and still she stands,
Upon her brow deep-chiselled love and hate,
That sorrow o'er dead roses in her hands.
|
In classic beauty, cold, immaculate,
|
A voiceful sculpture, stern and still she stands,
Upon her brow deep-chiselled love and hate,
That sorrow o'er dead roses in her hands.
|
quatrain
|
Robert William Service
|
Carry On!
|
It's easy to fight when everything's right,
And you're mad with the thrill and the glory;
It's easy to cheer when victory's near,
And wallow in fields that are gory.
It's a different song when everything's wrong,
When you're feeling infernally mortal;
When it's ten against one, and hope there is none,
Buck up, little soldier, and chortle:
Carry on! Carry on!
There isn't much punch in your blow.
You're glaring and staring and hitting out blind;
You're muddy and bloody, but never you mind.
Carry on! Carry on!
You haven't the ghost of a show.
It's looking like death, but while you've a breath,
Carry on, my son! Carry on!
And so in the strife of the battle of life
It's easy to fight when you're winning;
It's easy to slave, and starve and be brave,
When the dawn of success is beginning.
But the man who can meet despair and defeat
With a cheer, there's the man of God's choosing;
The man who can fight to Heaven's own height
Is the man who can fight when he's losing.
Carry on! Carry on!
Things never were looming so black.
But show that you haven't a cowardly streak,
And though you're unlucky you never are weak.
Carry on! Carry on!
Brace up for another attack.
It's looking like hell, but - you never can tell:
Carry on, old man! Carry on!
There are some who drift out in the deserts of doubt,
And some who in brutishness wallow;
There are others, I know, who in piety go
Because of a Heaven to follow.
But to labour with zest, and to give of your best,
For the sweetness and joy of the giving;
To help folks along with a hand and a song;
Why, there's the real sunshine of living.
Carry on! Carry on!
Fight the good fight and true;
Believe in your mission, greet life with a cheer;
There's big work to do, and that's why you are here.
Carry on! Carry on!
Let the world be the better for you;
And at last when you die, let this be your cry:
CARRY ON, MY SOUL! CARRY ON!
|
It's easy to fight when everything's right,
And you're mad with the thrill and the glory;
It's easy to cheer when victory's near,
And wallow in fields that are gory.
It's a different song when everything's wrong,
When you're feeling infernally mortal;
When it's ten against one, and hope there is none,
Buck up, little soldier, and chortle:
Carry on! Carry on!
There isn't much punch in your blow.
You're glaring and staring and hitting out blind;
You're muddy and bloody, but never you mind.
Carry on! Carry on!
You haven't the ghost of a show.
It's looking like death, but while you've a breath,
Carry on, my son! Carry on!
|
And so in the strife of the battle of life
It's easy to fight when you're winning;
It's easy to slave, and starve and be brave,
When the dawn of success is beginning.
But the man who can meet despair and defeat
With a cheer, there's the man of God's choosing;
The man who can fight to Heaven's own height
Is the man who can fight when he's losing.
Carry on! Carry on!
Things never were looming so black.
But show that you haven't a cowardly streak,
And though you're unlucky you never are weak.
Carry on! Carry on!
Brace up for another attack.
It's looking like hell, but - you never can tell:
Carry on, old man! Carry on!
There are some who drift out in the deserts of doubt,
And some who in brutishness wallow;
There are others, I know, who in piety go
Because of a Heaven to follow.
But to labour with zest, and to give of your best,
For the sweetness and joy of the giving;
To help folks along with a hand and a song;
Why, there's the real sunshine of living.
Carry on! Carry on!
Fight the good fight and true;
Believe in your mission, greet life with a cheer;
There's big work to do, and that's why you are here.
Carry on! Carry on!
Let the world be the better for you;
And at last when you die, let this be your cry:
CARRY ON, MY SOUL! CARRY ON!
|
free_verse
|
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
|
The Two Women
|
Lo! very fair is she who knows the ways
Of joy: in pleasure's mocking wisdom old,
The eyes that might be cold to flattery, kind;
The hair that might be grey with knowledge, gold.
But thou art more than these things, O my queen,
For thou art clad in ancient wars and tears.
And looking forth, framed in the crown of thorns,
I saw the youngest face in all the spheres.
|
Lo! very fair is she who knows the ways
Of joy: in pleasure's mocking wisdom old,
|
The eyes that might be cold to flattery, kind;
The hair that might be grey with knowledge, gold.
But thou art more than these things, O my queen,
For thou art clad in ancient wars and tears.
And looking forth, framed in the crown of thorns,
I saw the youngest face in all the spheres.
|
octave
|
Walter Savage Landor
|
Defiance
|
Catch her and hold her if you can,
See, she defies you with her fan,
Shuts, opens, and then holds it spread
In threatening guise over your head.
Ah! why did you not start before
She reached the porch and closed the door?
Simpleton! Will you never learn
That girls and time will not return;
Of each you should have made the most;
Once gone, they are forever lost.
In vain your knuckles knock your brow,
In vain will you remember how
Like a slim brook the gamesome maid
Sparkled, and ran into the shade.
|
Catch her and hold her if you can,
See, she defies you with her fan,
Shuts, opens, and then holds it spread
In threatening guise over your head.
|
Ah! why did you not start before
She reached the porch and closed the door?
Simpleton! Will you never learn
That girls and time will not return;
Of each you should have made the most;
Once gone, they are forever lost.
In vain your knuckles knock your brow,
In vain will you remember how
Like a slim brook the gamesome maid
Sparkled, and ran into the shade.
|
sonnet
|
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
|
The Funeral.
|
That short, potential stir
That each can make but once,
That bustle so illustrious
'T is almost consequence,
Is the eclat of death.
Oh, thou unknown renown
That not a beggar would accept,
Had he the power to spurn!
|
That short, potential stir
That each can make but once,
|
That bustle so illustrious
'T is almost consequence,
Is the eclat of death.
Oh, thou unknown renown
That not a beggar would accept,
Had he the power to spurn!
|
octave
|
Matthew Prior
|
A Song. In Vain You Tell Your Parting Lover
|
In vain you tell your parting lover
You wish fair winds may waft him over
Alas! what winds can happy prove
That bear me far from what I love?
Alas! what dangers on the main
Can equal those that I sustain
From slighted vows and cold disdain?
Be gentle, and in pity choose
To wish the wildest tempests loose,
That thrown again upon the coast
Where first my shipwreck'd heart was lost,
I may once more repeat my pain,
Once more in dying notes complain
Of slighted vows and cold disdain.
|
In vain you tell your parting lover
You wish fair winds may waft him over
Alas! what winds can happy prove
That bear me far from what I love?
|
Alas! what dangers on the main
Can equal those that I sustain
From slighted vows and cold disdain?
Be gentle, and in pity choose
To wish the wildest tempests loose,
That thrown again upon the coast
Where first my shipwreck'd heart was lost,
I may once more repeat my pain,
Once more in dying notes complain
Of slighted vows and cold disdain.
|
sonnet
|
William Wordsworth
|
Memorials Of A Tour On The Continent, 1820 - XI. - On Approaching The Staub-Bach, Lauterbrunnen
|
Uttered by whom, or how inspired designed
For what strange service, does this concert reach
Our ears, and near the dwellings of mankind!
'Mid fields familiarized to human speech?
No Mermaid's warble to allay the wind
Driving some vessel toward a dangerous beach,
More thrilling melodies; Witch answering Witch,
To chant a love-spell, never intertwined
Notes shrill and wild with art more musical:
Alas! that from the lips of abject Want
Or Idleness in tatters mendicant
The strain should flow, free Fancy to enthrall,
And with regret and useless pity haunt
This bold, this bright, this sky-born, waterfall!
|
Uttered by whom, or how inspired designed
For what strange service, does this concert reach
Our ears, and near the dwellings of mankind!
'Mid fields familiarized to human speech?
|
No Mermaid's warble to allay the wind
Driving some vessel toward a dangerous beach,
More thrilling melodies; Witch answering Witch,
To chant a love-spell, never intertwined
Notes shrill and wild with art more musical:
Alas! that from the lips of abject Want
Or Idleness in tatters mendicant
The strain should flow, free Fancy to enthrall,
And with regret and useless pity haunt
This bold, this bright, this sky-born, waterfall!
|
sonnet
|
Ellis Parker Butler
|
Bird Nesting
|
O wonderful! In sport we climbed the tree,
Eager and laughing, as in all our play,
To see the eggs where, in the nest, they lay,
But silent fell before the mystery.
For, one brief moment there, we understood
By sudden sympathy too fine for words
That we were sisters to the brooding birds
And part, with them, in God's great motherhood.
|
O wonderful! In sport we climbed the tree,
Eager and laughing, as in all our play,
|
To see the eggs where, in the nest, they lay,
But silent fell before the mystery.
For, one brief moment there, we understood
By sudden sympathy too fine for words
That we were sisters to the brooding birds
And part, with them, in God's great motherhood.
|
octave
|
Washington Irving
|
London Antiques - Prose
|
I do walk
Methinks like Guide Vaux, with my dark lanthorn,
Stealing to set the town o' fire; i' th' country
I should be taken for William o' the Wisp,
Or Robin Goodfellow.
- FLETCHER.
I am somewhat of an antiquity-hunter, and am fond of exploring London in quest of the relics of old times. These are principally to be found in the depths of the city, swallowed up and almost lost in a wilderness of brick and mortar, but deriving poetical and romantic interest from the commonplace, prosaic world around them. I was struck with an instance of the kind in the course of a recent summer ramble into the city; for the city is only to be explored to advantage in summer-time, when free from the smoke and fog and rain and mud of winter. I had been buffeting for some time against the current of population setting through Fleet Street. The warm weather had unstrung my nerves and made me sensitive to every jar and jostle and discordant sound. The flesh was weary, the spirit faint, and I was getting out of humor with the bustling busy throng through which I had to struggle, when in a fit of desperation I tore my way through the crowd, plunged into a by-lane, and, after passing through several obscure nooks and angles, emerged into a quaint and quiet court with a grassplot in the centre overhung by elms, and kept perpetually fresh and green by a fountain with its sparkling jet of water. A student with book in hand was seated on a stone bench, partly reading, partly meditating on the movements of two or three trim nursery-maids with their infant charges.
I was like an Arab who had suddenly come upon an oasis amid the panting sterility of the desert. By degrees the quiet and coolness of the place soothed my nerves and refreshed my spirit. I pursued my walk, and came, hard by, to a very ancient chapel with a low-browed Saxon portal of massive and rich architecture. The interior was circular and lofty and lighted from above. Around were monumental tombs of ancient date on which were extended the marble effigies of warriors in armor. Some had the hands devoutly crossed upon the breast; others grasped the pommel of the sword, menacing hostility even in the tomb, while the crossed legs of several indicated soldiers of the Faith who had been on crusades to the Holy Land.
I was, in fact, in the chapel of the Knights Templars, strangely situated in the very centre of sordid traffic; and I do not know a more impressive lesson for the many of the world than thus suddenly to turn aside from the highway of busy money-seeking life, and sit down among these shadowy sepulchres, where all is twilight, dust, and forget-fullness.
In a subsequent tour of observation I encountered another of these relics of a 'foregone world' locked up in the heart of the city. I had been wandering for some time through dull monotonous streets, destitute of anything to strike the eye or excite the imagination, when I beheld before me a Gothic gateway of mouldering antiquity. It opened into a spacious quadrangle forming the courtyard of a stately Gothic pile, the portal of which stood invitingly open.
It was apparently a public edifice, and, as I was antiquity-hunting, I ventured in, though with dubious steps. Meeting no one either to oppose or rebuke my intrusion, I continued on until I found myself in a great hall with a lofty arched roof and oaken gallery, all of Gothic architecture. At one end of the hall was an enormous fireplace, with wooden settles on each side; at the other end was a raised platform, or dais, the seat of state, above which was the portrait of a man in antique garb with a long robe, a ruff, and a venerable gray beard.
The whole establishment had an air of monastic quiet and seclusion, and what gave it a mysterious charm was, that I had not met with a human being since I had passed the threshold.
Encouraged by this loneliness, I seated myself in a recess of a large bow window, which admitted a broad flood of yellow sunshine, checkered here and there by tints from panes of colored glass, while an open casement let in the soft summer air. Here, leaning my head on my hand and my arm on an old oaken table, I indulged in a sort of reverie about what might have been the ancient uses of this edifice. It had evidently been of monastic origin; perhaps one of those collegiate establishments built of yore for the promotion of learning, where the patient monk, in the ample solitude of the cloister, added page to page and volume to volume, emulating in the productions of his brain the magnitude of the pile he inhabited.
As I was seated in this musing mood a small panelled door in an arch at the upper end of the hall was opened, and a number of gray-headed old men, clad in long black cloaks, came forth one by one, proceeding in that manner through the hall, without uttering a word, each turning a pale face on me as he passed, and disappearing through a door at the lower end.
I was singularly struck with their appearance; their black cloaks and antiquated air comported with the style of this most venerable and mysterious pile. It was as if the ghosts of the departed years, about which I had been musing, were passing in review before me. Pleasing myself with such fancies, I set out, in the spirit of romance, to explore what I pictured to myself a realm of shadows existing in the very centre of substantial realities.
My ramble led me through a labyrinth of interior courts and corridors and dilapidated cloisters, for the main edifice had many additions and dependencies, built at various times and in various styles. In one open space a number of boys, who evidently belonged to the establishment, were at their sports, but everywhere I observed those mysterious old gray men in black mantles, sometimes sauntering alone, sometimes conversing in groups; they appeared to be the pervading genii of the place. I now called to mind what I had read of certain colleges in old times, where judicial astrology, geomancy, necromancy, and other forbidden and magical sciences were taught. Was this an establishment of the kind, and were these black-cloaked old men really professors of the black art?
These surmises were passing through my mind as my eye glanced into a chamber hung round with all kinds of strange and uncouth objects, implements of savage warfare, strange idols and stuffed alligators; bottled serpents and monsters decorated the mantelpiece; while on the high tester of an old-fashioned bedstead grinned a human skull, flanked on each side by a dried cat.
I approached to regard more narrowly this mystic chamber, which seemed a fitting laboratory for a necromancer, when I was startled at beholding a human countenance staring at me from a dusky corner. It was that of a small, shrivelled old man with thin cheeks, bright eyes, and gray, wiry, projecting eyebrows. I at first doubted whether it were not a mummy curiously preserved, but it moved, and I saw that it was alive. It was another of these black-cloaked old men, and, as I regarded his quaint physiognomy, his obsolete garb, and the hideous and sinister objects by which he was surrounded, I began to persuade myself that I had come upon the arch-mago who ruled over this magical fraternity.
Seeing me pausing before the door, he rose and invited me to enter. I obeyed with singular hardihood, for how did I know whether a wave of his wand might not metamorphose me into some strange monster or conjure me into one of the bottles on his mantelpiece? He proved, however, to be anything but a conjurer, and his simple garrulity soon dispelled all the magic and mystery with which I had enveloped this antiquated pile and its no less antiquated inhabitants.
It appeared that I had made my way into the centre of an ancient asylum for superannuated tradesmen and decayed householders, with which was connected a school for a limited number of boys. It was founded upwards of two centuries since on an old monastic establishment, and retained somewhat of the conventual air and character. The shadowy line of old men in black mantles who had passed before me in the hall, and whom I had elevated into magi, turned out to be the pensioners returning from morning, service in the chapel.
John Hallum, the little collector of curiosities whom I had made the arch magician, had been for six years a resident of the place, and had decorated this final nestling-place of his old age with relics and rarities picked up in the course of his life. According to his own account, he had been somewhat of a traveller, having been once in France, and very near making a visit to Holland. He regretted not having visited the latter country, 'as then he might have said he had been there.' He was evidently a traveller of the simple kind.
He was aristocratical too in his notions, keeping aloof, as I found, from the ordinary run of pensioners. His chief associates were a blind man who spoke Latin and Greek, of both which languages Hallum was profoundly ignorant, and a broken-down gentleman who had run through a fortune of forty thousand pounds left him by his father, and ten thousand pounds, the marriage portion of his wife. Little Hallum seemed to consider it an indubitable sign of gentle blood as well as of lofty spirit to be able to squander such enormous sums.
P.S. The picturesque remnant of old times into which I have thus beguiled the reader is what is called the Charter House, originally the Chartreuse. It was founded in 1611, on the remains of an ancient convent, by Sir Thomas Sutton, being one of those noble charities set on foot by individual munificence, and kept up with the quaintness and sanctity of ancient times amidst the modern changes and innovations of London. Here eighty broken-down men, who have seen better days, are provided in their old age with food, clothing, fuel, and a yearly allowance for private expenses. They dine together, as did the monks of old, in the hall which had been the refectory of the original convent. Attached to the establishment is a school for forty-four boys.
Stow, whose work I have consulted on the subject, speaking of the obligations of the gray-headed pensioners, says, 'They are not to intermeddle with any business touching the affairs of the hospital, but to attend only to the service of God, and take thankfully what is provided for them, without muttering, murmuring, or grudging. None to wear weapon, long hair, colored boots, spurs, or colored shoes, feathers in their hats, or any ruffian-like or unseemly apparel, but such as becomes hospital-men to wear.' 'And in truth,' adds Stow, 'happy are they that are so taken from the cares and sorrows of the world, and fixed in so good a place as these old men are; having nothing to care for but the good of their souls, to serve God, and to live in brotherly love.'
For the amusement of such as have been interested by the preceding sketch, taken down from my own observation, and who may wish to know a little more about the mysteries of London, I subjoin a modicum of local history put into my hands by an odd-looking old gentleman, in a small brown wig and a snuff-colored coat, with whom I became acquainted shortly after my visit to the Charter House. I confess I was a little dubious at first whether it was not one of those apocryphal tales often passed off upon inquiring travellers like myself, and which have brought our general character for veracity into such unmerited reproach. On making proper inquiries, however, I have received the most satisfactory assurances of the author's probity, and indeed have been told that he is actually engaged in a full and particular account of the very interesting region in which he resides, of which the following may be considered merely as a foretaste.
|
I do walk
Methinks like Guide Vaux, with my dark lanthorn,
Stealing to set the town o' fire; i' th' country
I should be taken for William o' the Wisp,
Or Robin Goodfellow.
- FLETCHER.
I am somewhat of an antiquity-hunter, and am fond of exploring London in quest of the relics of old times. These are principally to be found in the depths of the city, swallowed up and almost lost in a wilderness of brick and mortar, but deriving poetical and romantic interest from the commonplace, prosaic world around them. I was struck with an instance of the kind in the course of a recent summer ramble into the city; for the city is only to be explored to advantage in summer-time, when free from the smoke and fog and rain and mud of winter. I had been buffeting for some time against the current of population setting through Fleet Street. The warm weather had unstrung my nerves and made me sensitive to every jar and jostle and discordant sound. The flesh was weary, the spirit faint, and I was getting out of humor with the bustling busy throng through which I had to struggle, when in a fit of desperation I tore my way through the crowd, plunged into a by-lane, and, after passing through several obscure nooks and angles, emerged into a quaint and quiet court with a grassplot in the centre overhung by elms, and kept perpetually fresh and green by a fountain with its sparkling jet of water. A student with book in hand was seated on a stone bench, partly reading, partly meditating on the movements of two or three trim nursery-maids with their infant charges.
I was like an Arab who had suddenly come upon an oasis amid the panting sterility of the desert. By degrees the quiet and coolness of the place soothed my nerves and refreshed my spirit. I pursued my walk, and came, hard by, to a very ancient chapel with a low-browed Saxon portal of massive and rich architecture. The interior was circular and lofty and lighted from above. Around were monumental tombs of ancient date on which were extended the marble effigies of warriors in armor. Some had the hands devoutly crossed upon the breast; others grasped the pommel of the sword, menacing hostility even in the tomb, while the crossed legs of several indicated soldiers of the Faith who had been on crusades to the Holy Land.
|
I was, in fact, in the chapel of the Knights Templars, strangely situated in the very centre of sordid traffic; and I do not know a more impressive lesson for the many of the world than thus suddenly to turn aside from the highway of busy money-seeking life, and sit down among these shadowy sepulchres, where all is twilight, dust, and forget-fullness.
In a subsequent tour of observation I encountered another of these relics of a 'foregone world' locked up in the heart of the city. I had been wandering for some time through dull monotonous streets, destitute of anything to strike the eye or excite the imagination, when I beheld before me a Gothic gateway of mouldering antiquity. It opened into a spacious quadrangle forming the courtyard of a stately Gothic pile, the portal of which stood invitingly open.
It was apparently a public edifice, and, as I was antiquity-hunting, I ventured in, though with dubious steps. Meeting no one either to oppose or rebuke my intrusion, I continued on until I found myself in a great hall with a lofty arched roof and oaken gallery, all of Gothic architecture. At one end of the hall was an enormous fireplace, with wooden settles on each side; at the other end was a raised platform, or dais, the seat of state, above which was the portrait of a man in antique garb with a long robe, a ruff, and a venerable gray beard.
The whole establishment had an air of monastic quiet and seclusion, and what gave it a mysterious charm was, that I had not met with a human being since I had passed the threshold.
Encouraged by this loneliness, I seated myself in a recess of a large bow window, which admitted a broad flood of yellow sunshine, checkered here and there by tints from panes of colored glass, while an open casement let in the soft summer air. Here, leaning my head on my hand and my arm on an old oaken table, I indulged in a sort of reverie about what might have been the ancient uses of this edifice. It had evidently been of monastic origin; perhaps one of those collegiate establishments built of yore for the promotion of learning, where the patient monk, in the ample solitude of the cloister, added page to page and volume to volume, emulating in the productions of his brain the magnitude of the pile he inhabited.
As I was seated in this musing mood a small panelled door in an arch at the upper end of the hall was opened, and a number of gray-headed old men, clad in long black cloaks, came forth one by one, proceeding in that manner through the hall, without uttering a word, each turning a pale face on me as he passed, and disappearing through a door at the lower end.
I was singularly struck with their appearance; their black cloaks and antiquated air comported with the style of this most venerable and mysterious pile. It was as if the ghosts of the departed years, about which I had been musing, were passing in review before me. Pleasing myself with such fancies, I set out, in the spirit of romance, to explore what I pictured to myself a realm of shadows existing in the very centre of substantial realities.
My ramble led me through a labyrinth of interior courts and corridors and dilapidated cloisters, for the main edifice had many additions and dependencies, built at various times and in various styles. In one open space a number of boys, who evidently belonged to the establishment, were at their sports, but everywhere I observed those mysterious old gray men in black mantles, sometimes sauntering alone, sometimes conversing in groups; they appeared to be the pervading genii of the place. I now called to mind what I had read of certain colleges in old times, where judicial astrology, geomancy, necromancy, and other forbidden and magical sciences were taught. Was this an establishment of the kind, and were these black-cloaked old men really professors of the black art?
These surmises were passing through my mind as my eye glanced into a chamber hung round with all kinds of strange and uncouth objects, implements of savage warfare, strange idols and stuffed alligators; bottled serpents and monsters decorated the mantelpiece; while on the high tester of an old-fashioned bedstead grinned a human skull, flanked on each side by a dried cat.
I approached to regard more narrowly this mystic chamber, which seemed a fitting laboratory for a necromancer, when I was startled at beholding a human countenance staring at me from a dusky corner. It was that of a small, shrivelled old man with thin cheeks, bright eyes, and gray, wiry, projecting eyebrows. I at first doubted whether it were not a mummy curiously preserved, but it moved, and I saw that it was alive. It was another of these black-cloaked old men, and, as I regarded his quaint physiognomy, his obsolete garb, and the hideous and sinister objects by which he was surrounded, I began to persuade myself that I had come upon the arch-mago who ruled over this magical fraternity.
Seeing me pausing before the door, he rose and invited me to enter. I obeyed with singular hardihood, for how did I know whether a wave of his wand might not metamorphose me into some strange monster or conjure me into one of the bottles on his mantelpiece? He proved, however, to be anything but a conjurer, and his simple garrulity soon dispelled all the magic and mystery with which I had enveloped this antiquated pile and its no less antiquated inhabitants.
It appeared that I had made my way into the centre of an ancient asylum for superannuated tradesmen and decayed householders, with which was connected a school for a limited number of boys. It was founded upwards of two centuries since on an old monastic establishment, and retained somewhat of the conventual air and character. The shadowy line of old men in black mantles who had passed before me in the hall, and whom I had elevated into magi, turned out to be the pensioners returning from morning, service in the chapel.
John Hallum, the little collector of curiosities whom I had made the arch magician, had been for six years a resident of the place, and had decorated this final nestling-place of his old age with relics and rarities picked up in the course of his life. According to his own account, he had been somewhat of a traveller, having been once in France, and very near making a visit to Holland. He regretted not having visited the latter country, 'as then he might have said he had been there.' He was evidently a traveller of the simple kind.
He was aristocratical too in his notions, keeping aloof, as I found, from the ordinary run of pensioners. His chief associates were a blind man who spoke Latin and Greek, of both which languages Hallum was profoundly ignorant, and a broken-down gentleman who had run through a fortune of forty thousand pounds left him by his father, and ten thousand pounds, the marriage portion of his wife. Little Hallum seemed to consider it an indubitable sign of gentle blood as well as of lofty spirit to be able to squander such enormous sums.
P.S. The picturesque remnant of old times into which I have thus beguiled the reader is what is called the Charter House, originally the Chartreuse. It was founded in 1611, on the remains of an ancient convent, by Sir Thomas Sutton, being one of those noble charities set on foot by individual munificence, and kept up with the quaintness and sanctity of ancient times amidst the modern changes and innovations of London. Here eighty broken-down men, who have seen better days, are provided in their old age with food, clothing, fuel, and a yearly allowance for private expenses. They dine together, as did the monks of old, in the hall which had been the refectory of the original convent. Attached to the establishment is a school for forty-four boys.
Stow, whose work I have consulted on the subject, speaking of the obligations of the gray-headed pensioners, says, 'They are not to intermeddle with any business touching the affairs of the hospital, but to attend only to the service of God, and take thankfully what is provided for them, without muttering, murmuring, or grudging. None to wear weapon, long hair, colored boots, spurs, or colored shoes, feathers in their hats, or any ruffian-like or unseemly apparel, but such as becomes hospital-men to wear.' 'And in truth,' adds Stow, 'happy are they that are so taken from the cares and sorrows of the world, and fixed in so good a place as these old men are; having nothing to care for but the good of their souls, to serve God, and to live in brotherly love.'
For the amusement of such as have been interested by the preceding sketch, taken down from my own observation, and who may wish to know a little more about the mysteries of London, I subjoin a modicum of local history put into my hands by an odd-looking old gentleman, in a small brown wig and a snuff-colored coat, with whom I became acquainted shortly after my visit to the Charter House. I confess I was a little dubious at first whether it was not one of those apocryphal tales often passed off upon inquiring travellers like myself, and which have brought our general character for veracity into such unmerited reproach. On making proper inquiries, however, I have received the most satisfactory assurances of the author's probity, and indeed have been told that he is actually engaged in a full and particular account of the very interesting region in which he resides, of which the following may be considered merely as a foretaste.
|
free_verse
|
Unknown
|
Nursery Rhyme. DCLI. Relics.
|
Around the green gravel the grass grows green,
And all the pretty maids are plain to be seen;
Wash them with milk, and clothe them with silk,
And write their names with a pen and ink.
|
Around the green gravel the grass grows green,
|
And all the pretty maids are plain to be seen;
Wash them with milk, and clothe them with silk,
And write their names with a pen and ink.
|
quatrain
|
Eugene Field
|
Envoy
|
So, come! though favors I bestow
Cannot be called extensive,
Who better than my friend should know
That they're at least expensive?
|
So, come! though favors I bestow
|
Cannot be called extensive,
Who better than my friend should know
That they're at least expensive?
|
quatrain
|
Robert Herrick
|
To His Worthy Friend, M. John Hall, Student Of Gray's Inn.
|
Tell me, young man, or did the Muses bring
Thee less to taste than to drink up their spring,
That none hereafter should be thought, or be
A poet, or a poet-like but thee?
What was thy birth, thy star that makes thee known,
At twice ten years, a prime and public one?
Tell us thy nation, kindred, or the whence
Thou had'st and hast thy mighty influence,
That makes thee lov'd, and of the men desir'd,
And no less prais'd than of the maids admired.
Put on thy laurel then; and in that trim
Be thou Apollo or the type of him:
Or let the unshorn god lend thee his lyre,
And next to him be master of the choir.
|
Tell me, young man, or did the Muses bring
Thee less to taste than to drink up their spring,
That none hereafter should be thought, or be
A poet, or a poet-like but thee?
|
What was thy birth, thy star that makes thee known,
At twice ten years, a prime and public one?
Tell us thy nation, kindred, or the whence
Thou had'st and hast thy mighty influence,
That makes thee lov'd, and of the men desir'd,
And no less prais'd than of the maids admired.
Put on thy laurel then; and in that trim
Be thou Apollo or the type of him:
Or let the unshorn god lend thee his lyre,
And next to him be master of the choir.
|
sonnet
|
Robert Herrick
|
To Vulcan.
|
Thy sooty godhead I desire
Still to be ready with thy fire;
That should my book despised be,
Acceptance it might find of thee.
|
Thy sooty godhead I desire
|
Still to be ready with thy fire;
That should my book despised be,
Acceptance it might find of thee.
|
quatrain
|
Unknown
|
Degrees
|
A young theologian named Fiddle
Refused to accept his degree;
"For," said he, "'tis enough to be Fiddle,
Without being Fiddle D.D."
|
A young theologian named Fiddle
|
Refused to accept his degree;
"For," said he, "'tis enough to be Fiddle,
Without being Fiddle D.D."
|
quatrain
|
Vachel Lindsay
|
The Prairie Battlements
|
(To Edgar Lee Masters, with great respect.)
Here upon the prairie
Is our ancestral hall.
Agate is the dome,
Cornelian the wall.
Ghouls are in the cellar,
But fays upon the stairs.
And here lived old King Silver Dreams,
Always at his prayers.
Here lived grey Queen Silver Dreams,
Always singing psalms,
And haughty Grandma Silver Dreams,
Throned with folded palms.
Here played cousin Alice.
Her soul was best of all.
And every fairy loved her,
In our ancestral hall.
Alice has a prairie grave.
The King and Queen lie low,
And aged Grandma Silver Dreams,
Four tombstones in a row.
But still in snow and sunshine
Stands our ancestral hall.
Agate is the dome,
Cornelian the wall.
And legends walk about,
And proverbs, with proud airs.
Ghouls are in the cellar,
But fays upon the stairs.
|
(To Edgar Lee Masters, with great respect.)
Here upon the prairie
Is our ancestral hall.
Agate is the dome,
Cornelian the wall.
Ghouls are in the cellar,
But fays upon the stairs.
And here lived old King Silver Dreams,
Always at his prayers.
|
Here lived grey Queen Silver Dreams,
Always singing psalms,
And haughty Grandma Silver Dreams,
Throned with folded palms.
Here played cousin Alice.
Her soul was best of all.
And every fairy loved her,
In our ancestral hall.
Alice has a prairie grave.
The King and Queen lie low,
And aged Grandma Silver Dreams,
Four tombstones in a row.
But still in snow and sunshine
Stands our ancestral hall.
Agate is the dome,
Cornelian the wall.
And legends walk about,
And proverbs, with proud airs.
Ghouls are in the cellar,
But fays upon the stairs.
|
free_verse
|
Walter De La Mare
|
A-Tishoo
|
"Sneeze, Pretty, sneeze, Dainty,
Else the Elves will have you sure,
Sneeze, Light-of-Seven-Bright-Candles,
See they're tippeting at the door;
Their wee feet in measure falling,
All their little voices calling,
Calling, calling, calling, calling -
Sneeze, or never come no more!"
"A-tishoo!"
|
"Sneeze, Pretty, sneeze, Dainty,
Else the Elves will have you sure,
Sneeze, Light-of-Seven-Bright-Candles,
|
See they're tippeting at the door;
Their wee feet in measure falling,
All their little voices calling,
Calling, calling, calling, calling -
Sneeze, or never come no more!"
"A-tishoo!"
|
free_verse
|
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
|
From Iphigenia In Tauris.
|
ACT IV. SCENE 5.
SONG OF THE FATES.
Ye children of mortals
The deities dread!
The mastery hold they
In hands all-eternal,
And use them, unquestioned,
What manner they like.
Let him fear them doubly,
Whom they have uplifted!
On cliffs and on clouds, oh,
Round tables all-golden,
he seats are made ready.
When rises contention,
The guests are humid downwards
With shame and dishonor
To deep depths of midnight,
And vainly await they,
Bound fast in the darkness,
A just condemnation.
But they remain ever
In firmness unshaken
Round tables all-golden.
On stride they from mountain
To mountain far distant:
From out the abysses'
Dark jaws, the breath rises
Of torment-choked Titans
Up tow'rds them, like incense
In light clouds ascending.
The rulers immortal
Avert from whole peoples
Their blessing-fraught glances,
And shun, in the children,
To trace the once cherish'd,
Still, eloquent features
Their ancestors wore.
Thus chanted the Parae;
The old man, the banish'd,
In gloomy vault lying,
Their song overheareth,
Sons, grandsons remembereth,
And shaketh his head.
|
ACT IV. SCENE 5.
SONG OF THE FATES.
Ye children of mortals
The deities dread!
The mastery hold they
In hands all-eternal,
And use them, unquestioned,
What manner they like.
Let him fear them doubly,
Whom they have uplifted!
On cliffs and on clouds, oh,
Round tables all-golden,
he seats are made ready.
When rises contention,
|
The guests are humid downwards
With shame and dishonor
To deep depths of midnight,
And vainly await they,
Bound fast in the darkness,
A just condemnation.
But they remain ever
In firmness unshaken
Round tables all-golden.
On stride they from mountain
To mountain far distant:
From out the abysses'
Dark jaws, the breath rises
Of torment-choked Titans
Up tow'rds them, like incense
In light clouds ascending.
The rulers immortal
Avert from whole peoples
Their blessing-fraught glances,
And shun, in the children,
To trace the once cherish'd,
Still, eloquent features
Their ancestors wore.
Thus chanted the Parae;
The old man, the banish'd,
In gloomy vault lying,
Their song overheareth,
Sons, grandsons remembereth,
And shaketh his head.
|
free_verse
|
Matthew Prior
|
To The Lady Elizabeth Harley, Since Marchioness Of Carmarthen, On A Column Of Her Drawing
|
When future ages shall with wonder view
These glorious lines which Harley's daughter drew,
They shall confess that Britain could not raise
A fairer column to the father's praise.
|
When future ages shall with wonder view
|
These glorious lines which Harley's daughter drew,
They shall confess that Britain could not raise
A fairer column to the father's praise.
|
quatrain
|
Ben Jonson
|
For A Girl In A Book
|
Kim, composite of all my loves,
less real than most, more real than all;
of my making, all the good and
some of the bad, yet of yourself;
sole, unique, strong, alone,
whole, independent, one: yet mine
in that you cannot be unfaithful.
|
Kim, composite of all my loves,
less real than most, more real than all;
|
of my making, all the good and
some of the bad, yet of yourself;
sole, unique, strong, alone,
whole, independent, one: yet mine
in that you cannot be unfaithful.
|
free_verse
|
Percy Bysshe Shelley
|
Fiordispina.
|
The season was the childhood of sweet June,
Whose sunny hours from morning until noon
Went creeping through the day with silent feet,
Each with its load of pleasure; slow yet sweet;
Like the long years of blest Eternity
Never to be developed. Joy to thee,
Fiordispina and thy Cosimo,
For thou the wonders of the depth canst know
Of this unfathomable flood of hours,
Sparkling beneath the heaven which embowers -
...
They were two cousins, almost like to twins,
Except that from the catalogue of sins
Nature had rased their love - which could not be
But by dissevering their nativity.
And so they grew together like two flowers
Upon one stem, which the same beams and showers
Lull or awaken in their purple prime,
Which the same hand will gather - the same clime
Shake with decay. This fair day smiles to see
All those who love - and who e'er loved like thee,
Fiordispina? Scarcely Cosimo,
Within whose bosom and whose brain now glow
The ardours of a vision which obscure
The very idol of its portraiture.
He faints, dissolved into a sea of love;
But thou art as a planet sphered above;
But thou art Love itself - ruling the motion
Of his subjected spirit: such emotion
Must end in sin and sorrow, if sweet May
Had not brought forth this morn - your wedding-day.
...
'Lie there; sleep awhile in your own dew,
Ye faint-eyed children of the ... Hours,'
Fiordispina said, and threw the flowers
Which she had from the breathing -
...
A table near of polished porphyry.
They seemed to wear a beauty from the eye
That looked on them - a fragrance from the touch
Whose warmth ... checked their life; a light such
As sleepers wear, lulled by the voice they love, which did reprove
The childish pity that she felt for them,
And a ... remorse that from their stem
She had divided such fair shapes ... made
A feeling in the ... which was a shade
Of gentle beauty on the flowers: there lay
All gems that make the earth's dark bosom gay.
... rods of myrtle-buds and lemon-blooms,
And that leaf tinted lightly which assumes
The livery of unremembered snow -
Violets whose eyes have drunk -
...
Fiordispina and her nurse are now
Upon the steps of the high portico,
Under the withered arm of Media
She flings her glowing arm
...
... step by step and stair by stair,
That withered woman, gray and white and brown -
More like a trunk by lichens overgrown
Than anything which once could have been human.
And ever as she goes the palsied woman
...
'How slow and painfully you seem to walk,
Poor Media! you tire yourself with talk.'
'And well it may,
Fiordispina, dearest - well-a-day!
You are hastening to a marriage-bed;
I to the grave!' - 'And if my love were dead,
Unless my heart deceives me, I would lie
Beside him in my shroud as willingly
As now in the gay night-dress Lilla wrought.'
'Fie, child! Let that unseasonable thought
Not be remembered till it snows in June;
Such fancies are a music out of tune
With the sweet dance your heart must keep to-night.
What! would you take all beauty and delight
Back to the Paradise from which you sprung,
And leave to grosser mortals? -
And say, sweet lamb, would you not learn the sweet
And subtle mystery by which spirits meet?
Who knows whether the loving game is played,
When, once of mortal [vesture] disarrayed,
The naked soul goes wandering here and there
Through the wide deserts of Elysian air?
The violet dies not till it' -
|
The season was the childhood of sweet June,
Whose sunny hours from morning until noon
Went creeping through the day with silent feet,
Each with its load of pleasure; slow yet sweet;
Like the long years of blest Eternity
Never to be developed. Joy to thee,
Fiordispina and thy Cosimo,
For thou the wonders of the depth canst know
Of this unfathomable flood of hours,
Sparkling beneath the heaven which embowers -
...
They were two cousins, almost like to twins,
Except that from the catalogue of sins
Nature had rased their love - which could not be
But by dissevering their nativity.
And so they grew together like two flowers
Upon one stem, which the same beams and showers
Lull or awaken in their purple prime,
Which the same hand will gather - the same clime
Shake with decay. This fair day smiles to see
All those who love - and who e'er loved like thee,
Fiordispina? Scarcely Cosimo,
Within whose bosom and whose brain now glow
The ardours of a vision which obscure
The very idol of its portraiture.
He faints, dissolved into a sea of love;
But thou art as a planet sphered above;
But thou art Love itself - ruling the motion
Of his subjected spirit: such emotion
|
Must end in sin and sorrow, if sweet May
Had not brought forth this morn - your wedding-day.
...
'Lie there; sleep awhile in your own dew,
Ye faint-eyed children of the ... Hours,'
Fiordispina said, and threw the flowers
Which she had from the breathing -
...
A table near of polished porphyry.
They seemed to wear a beauty from the eye
That looked on them - a fragrance from the touch
Whose warmth ... checked their life; a light such
As sleepers wear, lulled by the voice they love, which did reprove
The childish pity that she felt for them,
And a ... remorse that from their stem
She had divided such fair shapes ... made
A feeling in the ... which was a shade
Of gentle beauty on the flowers: there lay
All gems that make the earth's dark bosom gay.
... rods of myrtle-buds and lemon-blooms,
And that leaf tinted lightly which assumes
The livery of unremembered snow -
Violets whose eyes have drunk -
...
Fiordispina and her nurse are now
Upon the steps of the high portico,
Under the withered arm of Media
She flings her glowing arm
...
... step by step and stair by stair,
That withered woman, gray and white and brown -
More like a trunk by lichens overgrown
Than anything which once could have been human.
And ever as she goes the palsied woman
...
'How slow and painfully you seem to walk,
Poor Media! you tire yourself with talk.'
'And well it may,
Fiordispina, dearest - well-a-day!
You are hastening to a marriage-bed;
I to the grave!' - 'And if my love were dead,
Unless my heart deceives me, I would lie
Beside him in my shroud as willingly
As now in the gay night-dress Lilla wrought.'
'Fie, child! Let that unseasonable thought
Not be remembered till it snows in June;
Such fancies are a music out of tune
With the sweet dance your heart must keep to-night.
What! would you take all beauty and delight
Back to the Paradise from which you sprung,
And leave to grosser mortals? -
And say, sweet lamb, would you not learn the sweet
And subtle mystery by which spirits meet?
Who knows whether the loving game is played,
When, once of mortal [vesture] disarrayed,
The naked soul goes wandering here and there
Through the wide deserts of Elysian air?
The violet dies not till it' -
|
free_verse
|
Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)
|
Sonnet XCIV.
|
Se 'l sasso ond' ' pi' chiusa questa valle.
COULD HE BUT SEE THE HOUSE OF LAURA, HIS SIGHS MIGHT REACH HER MORE QUICKLY.
If, which our valley bars, this wall of stone,
From which its present name we closely trace,
Were by disdainful nature rased, and thrown
Its back to Babel and to Rome its face;
Then had my sighs a better pathway known
To where their hope is yet in life and grace:
They now go singly, yet my voice all own;
And, where I send, not one but finds its place.
There too, as I perceive, such welcome sweet
They ever find, that none returns again,
But still delightedly with her remain.
My grief is from the eyes, each morn to meet--
Not the fair scenes my soul so long'd to see--
Toil for my weary limbs and tears for me.
MACGREGOR.
|
Se 'l sasso ond' ' pi' chiusa questa valle.
COULD HE BUT SEE THE HOUSE OF LAURA, HIS SIGHS MIGHT REACH HER MORE QUICKLY.
If, which our valley bars, this wall of stone,
From which its present name we closely trace,
Were by disdainful nature rased, and thrown
|
Its back to Babel and to Rome its face;
Then had my sighs a better pathway known
To where their hope is yet in life and grace:
They now go singly, yet my voice all own;
And, where I send, not one but finds its place.
There too, as I perceive, such welcome sweet
They ever find, that none returns again,
But still delightedly with her remain.
My grief is from the eyes, each morn to meet--
Not the fair scenes my soul so long'd to see--
Toil for my weary limbs and tears for me.
MACGREGOR.
|
free_verse
|
Jean Ingelow
|
Above The Clouds.
|
And can this be my own world?
'Tis all gold and snow,
Save where scarlet waves are hurled
Down yon gulf below.
'Tis thy world, 'tis my world,
City, mead, and shore,
For he that hath his own world
Hath many worlds more.
|
And can this be my own world?
'Tis all gold and snow,
|
Save where scarlet waves are hurled
Down yon gulf below.
'Tis thy world, 'tis my world,
City, mead, and shore,
For he that hath his own world
Hath many worlds more.
|
octave
|
George MacDonald
|
Sonnet. To A.M.D.
|
Methinks I see thee, lying calm and low,
Silent and dark within thy earthy bed;
Thy mighty hands, in which I trusted, dead,
Resting, with thy long arms, from work or blow;
And the night-robe, around thy tall form, flow
Down from the kingly face, and from the head,
Save by its thick dark curls, uncovered--
My brother, dear from childhood, lying so!
Not often since thou went'st, I think of thee,
(With inward cares and questionings oppressed);
And yet, ere long, I seek thee in thy rest,
And bring thee home my heart, as full, as free,
As sure that thou wilt take me tenderly,
As then when youth and nature made us blest.
|
Methinks I see thee, lying calm and low,
Silent and dark within thy earthy bed;
Thy mighty hands, in which I trusted, dead,
Resting, with thy long arms, from work or blow;
|
And the night-robe, around thy tall form, flow
Down from the kingly face, and from the head,
Save by its thick dark curls, uncovered--
My brother, dear from childhood, lying so!
Not often since thou went'st, I think of thee,
(With inward cares and questionings oppressed);
And yet, ere long, I seek thee in thy rest,
And bring thee home my heart, as full, as free,
As sure that thou wilt take me tenderly,
As then when youth and nature made us blest.
|
sonnet
|
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
|
I Many Times Thought Peace Had Come,
|
I many times thought peace had come,
When peace was far away;
As wrecked men deem they sight the land
At centre of the sea,
And struggle slacker, but to prove,
As hopelessly as I,
How many the fictitious shores
Before the harbor lie.
|
I many times thought peace had come,
When peace was far away;
|
As wrecked men deem they sight the land
At centre of the sea,
And struggle slacker, but to prove,
As hopelessly as I,
How many the fictitious shores
Before the harbor lie.
|
octave
|
Walter Savage Landor
|
The Appeal
|
Remain, ah not in youth alone,
Though youth, where you are, long will stay,
But when my summer days are gone,
And my autumnal haste away.
"Can I be always by your side?"
No; but the hours you can, you must,
Nor rise at Death's approaching stride,
Nor go when dust is gone to dust.
|
Remain, ah not in youth alone,
Though youth, where you are, long will stay,
|
But when my summer days are gone,
And my autumnal haste away.
"Can I be always by your side?"
No; but the hours you can, you must,
Nor rise at Death's approaching stride,
Nor go when dust is gone to dust.
|
octave
|
Robert Burns
|
The Invitation.
|
The King's most humble servant I,
Can scarcely spare a minute;
But I am yours at dinner-time,
Or else the devil's in it.
|
The King's most humble servant I,
|
Can scarcely spare a minute;
But I am yours at dinner-time,
Or else the devil's in it.
|
quatrain
|
Madison Julius Cawein
|
The Rag-Picker
|
A pond of filth a sewer flows into,
Around whose edge the evil ragweeds crowd,
Poison in every breath; and, cloud on cloud,
Insects that sing and sting, the pool's fierce spew:
All hideousness, from every street and stew,
And every stench weaves for the place a shroud;
And in its midst a figure, bent and bowed,
A woman who no girlhood ever knew.
Some offal of humanity she seems;
One with the rags she picks and scrapes among;
More soiled, in soul: the veriest rag
Of womankind, whose squalor looks and dreams
Of nothing higher than the cart that flung
Its last load here from which she crams her bag.
|
A pond of filth a sewer flows into,
Around whose edge the evil ragweeds crowd,
Poison in every breath; and, cloud on cloud,
Insects that sing and sting, the pool's fierce spew:
|
All hideousness, from every street and stew,
And every stench weaves for the place a shroud;
And in its midst a figure, bent and bowed,
A woman who no girlhood ever knew.
Some offal of humanity she seems;
One with the rags she picks and scrapes among;
More soiled, in soul: the veriest rag
Of womankind, whose squalor looks and dreams
Of nothing higher than the cart that flung
Its last load here from which she crams her bag.
|
sonnet
|
Robert Herrick
|
The Ass.
|
God did forbid the Israelites to bring
An ass unto Him for an offering,
Only, by this dull creature, to express
His detestation to all slothfulness.
|
God did forbid the Israelites to bring
|
An ass unto Him for an offering,
Only, by this dull creature, to express
His detestation to all slothfulness.
|
quatrain
|
Charles Sangster
|
Sonnet: - I.
|
My soul goes out to meet her, and my heart
Flings wide the portals of its love, and yearns
To have her enter its serene retreat.
A poor stray lamb, not wand'ring from the fold,
But all unstudied in the worldling's art,
Turning life's mintage into seeming gold,
Wherewith to purchase love and love's returns;
Unknowing that love's waters, though so sweet,
Lead to some bitter Marah. So my soul
Goes out to meet her, and it clasps her home,
And seeks to bear her upward to the goal
At which the righteous enter. From the dome
Of starriest Night two blest Immortals come,
To bear us spheral-ward to God's own mercy-seat.
|
My soul goes out to meet her, and my heart
Flings wide the portals of its love, and yearns
To have her enter its serene retreat.
A poor stray lamb, not wand'ring from the fold,
|
But all unstudied in the worldling's art,
Turning life's mintage into seeming gold,
Wherewith to purchase love and love's returns;
Unknowing that love's waters, though so sweet,
Lead to some bitter Marah. So my soul
Goes out to meet her, and it clasps her home,
And seeks to bear her upward to the goal
At which the righteous enter. From the dome
Of starriest Night two blest Immortals come,
To bear us spheral-ward to God's own mercy-seat.
|
sonnet
|
Margaret Steele Anderson
|
Imagination.
|
With the old gods thou walkest, 'mid the leaf
And bloom of ancient morning and of light;
Thou die'st with Christ, and with the nailed thief
That dies upon his left hand and his right.
Yea, thou descendest into hell, and then
To the last heaven dost take thy road sublime;
Thine hostelries the secret souls of men,
Thy servants all the fleeting things of time!
|
With the old gods thou walkest, 'mid the leaf
And bloom of ancient morning and of light;
|
Thou die'st with Christ, and with the nailed thief
That dies upon his left hand and his right.
Yea, thou descendest into hell, and then
To the last heaven dost take thy road sublime;
Thine hostelries the secret souls of men,
Thy servants all the fleeting things of time!
|
octave
|
Robert Burns
|
The Selkirk Grace.
|
Some hae meat and canna eat,
And some wad eat that want it;
But we hae meat and we can eat,
And sae the Lord be thanket.
|
Some hae meat and canna eat,
|
And some wad eat that want it;
But we hae meat and we can eat,
And sae the Lord be thanket.
|
quatrain
|
William Wordsworth
|
Upon The Same Event
|
When, far and wide, swift as the beams of morn
The tidings past of servitude repealed,
And of that joy which shook the Isthmian Field,
The rough Aetolians smiled with bitter scorn.
"'Tis known," cried they, "that he, who would adorn
His envied temples with the Isthmian crown,
Must either win, through effort of his own,
The prize, or be content to see it worn
By more deserving brows. Yet so ye prop,
Sons of the brave who fought at Marathon,
Your feeble spirits! Greece her head hath bowed,
As if the wreath of liberty thereon
Would fix itself as smoothly as a cloud,
Which, at Jove's will, descends on Pelion's top."
|
When, far and wide, swift as the beams of morn
The tidings past of servitude repealed,
And of that joy which shook the Isthmian Field,
The rough Aetolians smiled with bitter scorn.
|
"'Tis known," cried they, "that he, who would adorn
His envied temples with the Isthmian crown,
Must either win, through effort of his own,
The prize, or be content to see it worn
By more deserving brows. Yet so ye prop,
Sons of the brave who fought at Marathon,
Your feeble spirits! Greece her head hath bowed,
As if the wreath of liberty thereon
Would fix itself as smoothly as a cloud,
Which, at Jove's will, descends on Pelion's top."
|
sonnet
|
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.