Beauty poems
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The House Of Dust: Part 03: 08: Coffins: Interlude
© Conrad Aiken
Wind blows. Snow falls. The great clock in its tower
Ticks with reverberant coil and tolls the hour:
At the deep sudden stroke the pigeons fly . . .
The fine snow flutes the cracks between the flagstones.
We close our coats, and hurry, and search the sky.
The House Of Dust: Part 03: 06: Portrait Of One Dead
© Conrad Aiken
Here is the roomwith ghostly walls dissolving
The twilight room in which she called you 'lover';
And the floorless room in which she called you 'friend.'
So many times, in doubt, she ran between them!
Through windy corridors of darkening end.
Sonnet 100: Oh Tears, No Tears
© Sir Philip Sidney
Oh tears, no tears, but rain from Beauty's skies,
Making those lilies and those roses grow,
Which aye most fair, now more than most fair show,
While graceful Pity Beauty beautifies.
The House Of Dust: Part 02: 09: Interlude
© Conrad Aiken
The days, the nights, flow one by one above us,
The hours go silently over our lifted faces,
We are like dreamers who walk beneath a sea.
Beneath high walls we flow in the sun together.
We sleep, we wake, we laugh, we pursue, we flee.
The House Of Dust: Part 02: 07: Two Lovers: Overtones
© Conrad Aiken
'One white rose . . . or is it pink, to-day?'
They pause and smile, not caring what they say,
If only they may talk.
The crowd flows past them like dividing waters.
Dreaming they stand, dreaming they walk.
The Passing
© Arthur Symons
Weep not at all: crocuses in the grass,
Like little flames of gold, flicker and pass;
The House Of Dust: Part 02: 05: Retrospect
© Conrad Aiken
Round white clouds roll slowly above the housetops,
Over the clear red roofs they flow and pass.
A flock of pigeons rises with blue wings flashing,
Rises with whistle of wings, hovers an instant,
And settles slowly again on the tarnished grass.
The House Of Dust: Part 02: 03: Interlude
© Conrad Aiken
The warm sun dreams in the dust, the warm sun falls
On bright red roofs and walls;
The trees in the park exhale a ghost of rain;
We go from door to door in the streets again,
The House Of Dust: Part 01: 05: The snow floats down upon us, mingled with rain
© Conrad Aiken
The snow floats down upon us, we turn, we turn,
Through gorges filled with light we sound and flow . . .
One is struck down and hurt, we crowd about him,
We bear him away, gaze after his listless body;
But whether he lives or dies we do not know.
The House Of Dust: Complete (Long)
© Conrad Aiken
. . . Parts of this poem have been printed in "The North American
Review, Others, Poetry, Youth, Coterie, The Yale Review". . . . I am
indebted to Lafcadio Hearn for the episode called "The Screen Maiden"
in Part II.
The Carver
© Conrad Aiken
See, as the carver carves a rose,
A wing, a toad, a serpent's eye,
In cruel granite, to disclose
The soft things that in hardness lie,
Senlin: His Futile Preoccupations
© Conrad Aiken
Vine leaves tap my window,
Dew-drops sing to the garden stones,
The robin chips in the chinaberry tree
Repeating three clear tones.
The Deserted Palace
© Robert Laurence Binyon
``My feet are dead, the cold rain beats my face!''
``Courage, sweet love, this tempest is our friend!''
``Yet oh, shall we not rest a little space?
This city sleeps; some corner may defend
Senlin: His Dark Origins
© Conrad Aiken
He lights his pipe with a pointed flame.
'Yet, there were many autumns before I came,
And many springs. And more will come, long after
There is no horn for me, or song, or laughter.
The Last Blossom
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
THOUGH young no more, we still would dream
Of beauty's dear deluding wiles;
The leagues of life to graybeards seem
Shorter than boyhood's lingering miles.
Chiarascuro: Rose
© Conrad Aiken
Fill your bowl with roses: the bowl, too, have of crystal.
Sit at the western window. Take the sun
Between your hands like a ball of flaming crystal,
Poise it to let it fall, but hold it still,
And meditate on the beauty of your existence;
The beauty of this, that you exist at all.
The Enthusiast, or the Lover of Nature
© Joseph Warton
Ye green-rob'd Dryads, oft' at dusky Eve
By wondering Shepherds seen, to Forests brown,
The Brewing Of Soma
© John Greenleaf Whittier
The fagots blazed, the caldron's smoke
Up through the green wood curled;
"Bring honey from the hollow oak,
Bring milky sap," the brewers spoke,
In the childhood of the world.
The Pleasures of Melancholy
© Thomas Warton
Mother of musings, Contemplation sage,
Whose grotto stands upon the topmost rock
Of Teneriffe; 'mid the tempestuous night,
On which, in calmest meditation held,
