Home poems
/ page 117 of 465 /
Pretence. Part II - The Library
© John Kenyon
From such a world, all touch, all ear, all eye,
What marvel, then, if proud Abstraction fly;
Amid Hercynian shades pursue his theme,
And leave the land of Locke to gold and steam?
Ode To A Mountain-Torrent (From The German Of Stolberg)
© George Borrow
How lovely art thou in thy tresses of foam,
And yet the warm blood in my bosom grows chill,
When yelling thou rollest thee down from thy home,
Mid the boom of the echoing forest and hill.
The Lament For Shuil Donalds Daughter
© Caroline Norton
I.
IN old Shuil Donald's cottage there are many voices weeping,
And stifled sobs, and murmurings of sorrow wild and vain,
For the old man's cherish'd blessing on her bed of death lies sleeping,--
I Am With Terrorism
© Nizar Qabbani
We are accused of terrorism:
if we wrote about the ruins of a homeland
torn, weak...
a homeland with no address
and an nation with no names
The four Monarchyes, the Assyrian being the first, beginning under Nimrod, 131. Years after the Floo
© Anne Bradstreet
When time was young, & World in Infancy,
Man did not proudly strive for Soveraignty:
Somewhere Up In Queensland
© Henry Lawson
He's somewhere up in Queensland,
The old folks used to say;
From "Hugh Selwyn Mauberley" (June 1920)
© Ezra Pound
IV
These fought in any case,
and some believing,
pro domo, in any case
Seasons Of The Soul
© Allen Tate
Attor porsi la mano un poco avante,
e colsi un ramicel da un gran pruno;
e U tronco suo gridd: Perchd mi schiante?
Cousin Robert
© Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
O COUSIN Robert, far away
Among the lands of gold,
How many years since we two met?--
You would not like it told.
The Task : Complete
© William Cowper
In man or woman, but far most in man,
And most of all in man that ministers
And serves the altar, in my soul I loathe
All affectation. 'Tis my perfect scorn;
Object of my implacable disgust.
From: Dedicatory Ode
© Hilaire Belloc
I mean to write with all my strength
(It lately has been sadly waning)
A ballad of enormous length -
Some parts of which will need explaining. 1
Because (unlike the bulk of men
Who write for fame or public ends)
I turn a lax and fluent pen
To talking of my private friends. 2
For no one, in our long decline,
So dusty, spiteful and divided,
Had quite such pleasant friends as mine,
Or loved them half as much as I did.
[1 But do not think I shall explain
To any great extent. Believe me,
I partly write to give you pain,
And if you do not like me, leave me.]
[2 And least of all can you complain,
Reviewers, whose unholy trade is,
To puff with all your might and main
Biographers of single ladies.]
. . .
The Freshman ambles down the High,
In love with everything he sees,
He notes the very Midland sky,
He sniffs a more than Midland breeze.
"Can this be Oxford? This the place
(He cries) "of which my father said
The tutoring was a damned disgrace,
The creed a mummery, stuffed and dead?
"Can it be here that Uncle Paul
Was driven by excessive gloom,
To drink and debt, and, last of all,
To smoking opium in his room?
"Is it from here the people come,
Who talk so loud, and roll their eyes,
And stammer? How extremely rum!
How curious! What a great surprise!
"Some influence of a nobler day
Than theirs (I mean than Uncle Paul's)
Has roused the sleep of their decay,
And flecked with light their ancient walls.
"O! dear undaunted boys of old,
Would that your names were carven here,
For all the world in stamps of gold,
That I might read them and revere.
"Who wrought and handed down for me
This Oxford of the larger air,
Laughing, and full of faith, and free,
With youth resplendent everywhere?"
Then learn: thou ill-instructed, blind,
Young, callow, and untutored man,
Their private names were . . .3
Their club was called REPUBLICAN.
[3 Never mind.]
. . .
Where on their banks of light they lie,
The happy hills of Heaven between,
The Gods that rule the morning sky
Are not more young, nor more serene
Than were the intrepid Four that stand,
The first who dared to live their dream.
And on this uncongenial land
To found the Abbey of Theleme.
We kept the Rabelaisian plan: 4
We dignified the dainty cloisters
With Natural Law, the Rights of Man,
Song, Stoicism, Wine and Oysters.
The library was most inviting:
The books upon the crowded shelves
Were mainly of our private writing:
We kept a school and taught ourselves.
We taught the art of writing things
On men we still should like to throttle:
And where to get the Blood of Kings
At only half a crown a bottle.
[4 The plan forgot (I know not how,
Perhaps the Refectory filled it),
To put a chapel in; and now
We're mortgaging the rest to build it.]
. . .
Eheu Fugaces! Postume!
(An old quotation out of mode);
My coat of dreams is stolen away
My youth is passing down the road.
The wealth of youth, we spent it well
And decently, as very few can.
And is it lost? I cannot tell:
And what is more, I doubt if you can.
The question's very much too wide,
And much too deep, and much too hollow,
And learned men on either side
Use arguments I cannot follow.
They say that in the unchanging place,
Where all we loved is always dear,
We meet our morning face to face
And find at last our twentieth year...
They say (and I am glad they say)
It is so ; and it may be so:
It may be just the other way,
I cannot tell. But this I know:
From quiet homes and first beginning,
Out to the undiscovered ends,
There's nothing worth the wear of winning,
But laughter and the love of friends.
. . .
But something dwindles, oh! my peers,
And something cheats the heart and passes,
And Tom that meant to shake the years
Has come to merely rattling glasses.
And He, the Father of the Flock,
Is keeping Burmesans in order,
An exile on a lonely rock
That overlooks the Chinese border.
And One (Myself I mean no less),
Ah! will Posterity believe it
Not only don't deserve success,
But hasn't managed to achieve it.
Not even this peculiar town
Has ever fixed a friendship firmer,
But - one is married, one's gone down,
And one's a Don, and one's in Burmah.
. . .
And oh ! the days, the days, the days,
When all the four were off together:
The infinite deep of summer haze,
The roaring charge of autumn weather!
. . .
I will not try the reach again,
I will not set my sail alone,
To moor a boat bereft of men
At Yarnton's tiny docks of stone.
Paracelsus: Part I: Paracelsus Aspires
© Robert Browning
Scene.- Würzburg; a garden in the environs. 1512.
Festus, Paracelsus, Michal.
The Deceived Merman (From The Old Danish)
© George Borrow
Fair Agnes alone on the sea-shore stood,
Then rose a Merman from out the flood:
Love at Sea
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
Land me, she says, where love
Shows but one shaft, one dove,
One heart, one hand.
A shore like that, my dear,
Lies where no man will steer,
No maiden land.
Pigeon Toes
© Henry Lawson
A dust cloud on the lonely road,
And I am here alone;
I lock the door till it be past,
For I have nervous grown.
From Perugia
© John Greenleaf Whittier
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE'S Letters from Italy.
THE tall, sallow guardsmen their horsetails have spread,
Flaming out in their violet, yellow, and red;
And behind go the lackeys in crimson and buff,
Going To Sleep
© George MacDonald
Little one, you must not fret
That I take your clothes away;
Better sleep you so will get,
And at morning wake more gay-
Saith the children's mother.
Olney Hymn 34: The Waiting Soul
© William Cowper
Breathe from the gentle south, O Lord,
And cheer me from the north;
Blow on the treasures of thy word,
And call the spices forth!
The Sunbeam
© Felicia Dorothea Hemans
Thou art no lingerer in monarch's hall,
A joy thou art, and a wealth to all!
A bearer of hope unto land and sea:â
Sunbeam! what gift hath the world like thee?
