Life poems
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Rockall
© Sargent Epes
Pale ocean rock! that, like a phantom shape,Or some mysterious spirit's tenement,Risest amid this weltering waste of waves,Lonely and desolate, thy spreading baseIs planted in the sea's unmeasured depths,Where rolls the huge leviathan o'er sandsGlistening with shipwrecked treasures
A Life on the Ocean Wave
© Sargent Epes
A life on the ocean wave, A home on the rolling deep;Where the scattered waters rave, And the winds their revels keep!Like an eagle caged, I pine On this dull, unchanging shore:O! give me the flashing brine
The Old Sampler
© Margaret Elizabeth Sangster
Out of the way, in a corner Of our dear old attic room,Where bunches of herbs from the hillside Shake ever a faint perfume,An oaken chest is standing, With hasp and padlock and key,Strong as the hands that made it On the other side of the sea
Lines Written in Kensington Gardens
© Matthew Arnold
In this lone, open glade I lie,
Screen'd by deep boughs on either hand;
And at its end, to stay the eye,
Those black-crown'd, red-boled pine-trees stand!
The Mirror for Magistrates: The Induction
© Thomas Sackville
The wrathful winter, 'proaching on apace,With blustering blasts had all ybar'd the treen,And old Saturnus, with his frosty face,With chilling cold had pierc'd the tender green;The mantles rent, wherein enwrapped been The gladsome groves that now lay overthrown, The tapets torn, and every bloom down blown
Buried Life, The
© Matthew Arnold
Ah! well for us, if even we,
Even for a moment, can get free
Our heart, and have our lips unchain'd;
For that which seals them hath been deep-ordain'd!
Flight into Reality
© Rowley Rosemarie
Dedicated to the memory of my best friend Georgina, (1942-74)and to her husband Alex Burns and their childrenNulles laides amours ne belles prison -Lord Herbert of Cherbury
Beauty's Helicon
© Rowley Rosemarie
I've had practice with sleeping with those who do not please me,I've had oceans of despair in my cup of pain,I do not try to please who do not please me,They cause storms, and trigger fissures in the brain,
So when I know my true love by his hand,I'll set in stone my long list of his beauty,Release into the air the demons of that bandWho say the ugly are forgetful of their duty,
To live a life of honour, but not lust,To be the clerk of passion, and its ways,To write the bibliographies in dust,To caption beauty in the prison of their days,
As my true love and I practice the rationOf beauty, that makes fidelity a passion
The House of Life: The Sonnet
© Dante Gabriel Rossetti
A Sonnet is a moment's monument, Memorial from the Soul's eternity To one dead deathless hour
His Mother's Service to Our Lady
© Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Lady of Heaven and earth, and therewithalCrowned Empress of the nether clefts of Hell,I, thy poor Christian, on thy name do call,Commending me to thee, with thee to dwell,Albeit in nought I be commendable
Tristesse
© Robertson James
Lost is my strength, my mirth, the joy intense Of very life, the comrades and the zest; -- All, even to my pride, that unsuppressedHad wrought my spirit to self-confidence
Emeritus
© Robertson James
Crumpled and bowed, Lone in the crowd,Let him clear out for his betters! What doth it serve Once he had nerve,Once too a tincture of letters: --
The Blind Sailor
© Roberts Theodore Goodridge
."Strike me blind!." we swore. God! And I was stricken! I have seen the morning fade And noonday thicken.
The Iceberg
© Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
I was spawned from the glacier,A thousand miles due northBeyond Cape Chidley;And the spawning,When my vast, wallowing bulk went under,Emerged and heaved aloft,Shaking down cataracts from its rocking sides,With mountainous surge and thunderOutraged the silence of the Arctic sea
Ave! (An Ode for the Shelley Centenary, 1892)
© Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
I Wide marshes ever washed in clearest air,Whether beneath the sole and spectral star The dear severity of dawn you wear,Or whether in the joy of ample day And speechless ecstasy of growing JuneYou lie and dream the long blue hours away Till nightfall comes too soon,Or whether, naked to the unstarred night,You strike with wondering awe my inward sight, --
II Go forth to you with longing, though the yearsThat turn not back like your returning streams And fain would mist the memory with tears,Though the inexorable years deny My feet the fellowship of your deep grass,O'er which, as o'er another, tenderer sky, Cloud phantoms drift and pass, --You know my confident love, since first, a child,Amid your wastes of green I wandered wild
