Life poems
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Owl Against Robin
© Sidney Lanier
Frowning, the owl in the oak complained him
Sore, that the song of the robin restrained him
Wrongly of slumber, rudely of rest.
"From the north, from the east, from the south and the west,
Opposition
© Sidney Lanier
Of fret, of dark, of thorn, of chill,
Complain no more; for these, O heart,
Direct the random of the will
As rhymes direct the rage of art.
The Forest Sanctuary - Part I.
© Felicia Dorothea Hemans
I.
The voices of my home!-I hear them still!
Nirvana
© Sidney Lanier
Through seas of dreams and seas of phantasies,
Through seas of solitudes and vacancies,
And through my Self, the deepest of the seas,
I strive to thee, Nirvana.
Nilsson
© Sidney Lanier
A rose of perfect red, embossed
With silver sheens of crystal frost,
Yet warm, nor life nor fragrance lost.
Napoleon
© George Meredith
Alive in marble, she conceived in soul,
With barren eyes and mouth, the mother's loss;
The bolt from her abandoned heaven sped;
The snowy army rolling knoll on knoll
Beyond horizon, under no blest Cross:
By the vulture dotted and engarlanded.
Night
© Sidney Lanier
Fair is the wedded reign of Night and Day.
Each rules a half of earth with different sway,
Exchanging kingdoms, East and West, alway.
My Springs
© Sidney Lanier
In the heart of the Hills of Life, I know
Two springs that with unbroken flow
Forever pour their lucent streams
Into my soul's far Lake of Dreams.
Once More I Put My Bonnet On
© Joseph Howe
A finer form, a fairer face
Ne'er bent before the stole,
With more restraint, no spotless lace
Did firmer orbs control,
I shine, the Beauty of the place,
And yet I look all soul.
Sad Song
© Rahel Bluwstein
Do you hear me, you who are
So far away from me, my dear?
Do you hear me crying aloud,
Wishing you were well, wishing you were near?
In The Foam.
© Sidney Lanier
Life swelleth in a whitening wave,
And dasheth thee and me apart.
I sweep out seaward: -- be thou brave.
And reach the shore, Sweetheart.
In Absence.
© Sidney Lanier
I.The storm that snapped our fate's one ship in twain
Hath blown my half o' the wreck from thine apart.
O Love! O Love! across the gray-waved main
To thee-ward strain my eyes, my arms, my heart.
Hymns Of The Marshes.
© Sidney Lanier
I have waked, I have come, my beloved! I might not abide:
I have come ere the dawn, O beloved, my live-oaks, to hide
In your gospelling glooms, -- to be
As a lover in heaven, the marsh my marsh and the sea my sea.
Corn
© Sidney Lanier
I wander to the zigzag-cornered fence
Where sassafras, intrenched in brambles dense,
Contests with stolid vehemence
The march of culture, setting limb and thorn
As pikes against the army of the corn.
Baby Charley.
© Sidney Lanier
He's fast asleep. See how, O Wife,
Night's finger on the lip of life
Bids whist the tongue, so prattle-rife,
Of busy Baby Charley.
At First. To Charlotte Cushman.
© Sidney Lanier
My crippled sense fares bow'd along
His uncompanioned way,
And wronged by death pays life with wrong
And I wake by night and dream by day.
London, 1802
© William Wordsworth
Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Acknowledgment.
© Sidney Lanier
I.O Age that half believ'st thou half believ'st,
Half doubt'st the substance of thine own half doubt,
And, half perceiving that thou half perceiv'st,
Stand'st at thy temple door, heart in, head out!
