Great poems
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Modern Love XVII: At Dinner She Is Hostess
© George Meredith
At dinner, she is hostess, I am host.
Went the feast ever cheerfuller? She keeps
The Topic over intellectual deeps
In buoyancy afloat. They see no ghost.
Modern Love XIX: No State Is Enviable
© George Meredith
No state is enviable. To the luck alone
Of some few favoured men I would put claim.
I bleed, but her who wounds I will not blame.
Have I not felt her heart as 'twere my own
Modern Love XIII: I Play for Seasons, Not Eternities
© George Meredith
'I play for Seasons; not Eternities!'
Says Nature, laughing on her way. 'So must
All those whose stake is nothing more than dust!'
And lo, she wins, and of her harmonies
Modern Love VII: She Issues Radiant
© George Meredith
She issues radiant from her dressing-room,
Like one prepared to scale an upper sphere:
--By stirring up a lower, much I fear
How deftly that oiled barber lays his bloom
Modern Love V: A Message from Her
© George Meredith
A message from her set his brain aflame.
A world of household matters filled her mind,
Wherein he saw hypocrisy designed:
She treated him as something that is tame,
Modern Love IV: All Other Joys of Life
© George Meredith
All other joys of life he strove to warm,
And magnify, and catch them to his lip:
But they had suffered shipwreck with the ship,
And gazed upon him sallow from the storm.
Meditation under Stars
© George Meredith
What links are ours with orbs that are
So resolutely far:
The solitary asks, and they
Give radiance as from a shield:
Words In The Shadow
© Victor Marie Hugo
She said, "I am wrong to want something more, it's true.
The hours go by very quietly just so.
You are there. I never takes my eyes off you.
In your eyes I see your thoughts as they come and go.
Juggling Jerry
© George Meredith
Pitch here the tent, while the old horse grazes:
By the old hedge-side we'll halt a stage.
It's nigh my last above the daisies:
My next leaf'll be man's blank page.
In the Holy Nativity of our Lord
© Richard Crashaw
CHORUS
Come we shepherds whose blest sight
Hath met love's noon in nature's night;
Come lift we up our loftier song
And wake the sun that lies too long.
A Hymn to the Name and Honour of the Admirable Saint Teresa
© Richard Crashaw
Farewell then, all the world, adieu!
Teresa is no more for you.
Farewell all pleasures, sports, and joys,
Never till now esteemed toys!
The Flaming Heart
© Richard Crashaw
O heart, the equal poise of love's both parts,
Big alike with wounds and darts,
Live in these conquering leaves; live all the same,
And walk through all tongues one triumphant flame;
Prayer
© Richard Crashaw
LO here a little volume, but great Book
A nest of new-born sweets;
Whose native fires disdaining
To ly thus folded, and complaining
To the Name above every Name, the Name of Jesus
© Richard Crashaw
I sing the Name which None can say
But toucht with An interiour Ray:
The Name of our New Peace; our Good:
Our Blisse: and Supernaturall Blood:
Ode On The Insurrection In Candia
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
Had I words of fire,
Whose words are weak as snow;
Were my heart a lyre
Whence all its love might flow
In the mighty modulations of desire,
In the notes wherewith man's passion worships woe;
The Halt Before Rome--September 1867
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
Is it so, that the sword is broken,
Our sword, that was halfway drawn?
Is it so, that the light was a spark,
That the bird we hailed as the lark
In San Lorenzo
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
Is thine hour come to wake, O slumbering Night?
Hath not the Dawn a message in thine ear?
Though thou be stone and sleep, yet shalt thou hear
When the word falls from heaven--Let there be light.
Discord
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
Unreconciled by life's fleet years, that fled
With changeful clang of pinions wide and wild,
Though two great spirits had lived, and hence had sped
Unreconciled;
Monotones
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
Because there is but one truth;
Because there is but one banner;
Because there is but one light;
Because we have with us our youth
Once, and one chance and one manner
Of service, and then the night;
Quia Multum Amavit
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
Am I not he that hath made thee and begotten thee,
I, God, the spirit of man?
Wherefore now these eighteen years hast thou forgotten me,
From whom thy life began?
