Life poems
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Death
© Thomas Hood
It is not death, that sometime in a sigh
This eloquent breath shall take its speechless flight;
That sometime these bright stars, that now reply
In sunlight to the sun, shall set in night;
The Golden Legend: VI. The School Of Salerno
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
_Doctor Serafino._ I, with the Doctor Seraphic, maintain,
That a word which is only conceived in the brain
Is a type of eternal Generation;
The spoken word is the Incarnation.
Turns And Movies: Dancing Adairs
© Conrad Aiken
Behold me, in my chiffon, gauze, and tinsel,
Flitting out of the shadow into the spotlight,
And into the shadow again, without a whisper!
Firefly's my name, I am evanescent.
The House Of Dust: Part 04: 06: Cinema
© Conrad Aiken
The music ends. The screen grows dark. We hurry
To go our devious secret ways, forgetting
Those many lives . . . We loved, we laughed, we killed,
We danced in fire, we drowned in a whirl of sea-waves.
The flutes are stilled, and a thousand dreams are stilled.
The Banks Of Wye - Book I
© Robert Bloomfield
No butler's proxies snore supine,
Where the old monarch kept his wine;
No Welch ox roasting, horns and all,
Adorns his throng'd and laughing hall;
But where he pray'd, and told his beads,
A thriving ash luxuriant spreads.
The House Of Dust: Part 04: 03: Palimpsest: A Deceitful Portrait
© Conrad Aiken
Or 'one day dies eventless as another,
Leaving the seeker still unsatisfied,
And more convinced life yields no satisfaction'?
Or 'seek too hard, the sight at length grows callous,
And beauty shines in vain'?
The Lunatic Girl
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Three long and weary months -- yet not a whisper
Of stern reproach for that cold parting! Then
She sat no longer by her favorite fountain!--
She was at rest forever.
The House Of Dust: Part 03: 10: Letter
© Conrad Aiken
From time to time, lifting his eyes, he sees
The soft blue starlight through the one small window,
The moon above black trees, and clouds, and Venus,
And turns to write . . . The clock, behind ticks softly.
The House Of Dust: Part 03: 07: Porcelain
© Conrad Aiken
Study them . . . you will see there, in the porcelain,
If you stare hard enough, a sort of swimming
Of lights and shadows, ghosts within a crystal
My brain unfolding! There you'll see me sitting
Day after day, close to a certain window,
Looking down, sometimes, to see the people . . .
Dream Song 136: While his wife earned the living, Rabbi Henry
© John Berryman
While his wife earned the living, Rabbi Henry
studied the Torah, writing commentaries
more likely to be burnt than printed.
It was rumoured that they needed revision.
Smiling, kissing, he bent his head not with 'Please'
but with austere requests barely hinted,
Moods
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Oh that a Song would sing itself to me
Out of the heart of Nature, or the heart
The Indian Gypsy
© Sarojini Naidu
IN tattered robes that hoard a glittering trace
Of bygone colours, broidered to the knee,
Behold her, daughter of a wandering race,
Tameless, with the bold falcon's agile grace,
And the lithe tiger's sinuous majesty.
The House Of Dust: Part 01: 07: Midnight; bells toll, and along the cloud-high towers
© Conrad Aiken
'The bells have just struck twelve: I should be sleeping.
But I cannot delay any longer to write and tell you.
The woman is dead.
She diedyou know the way. Just as we planned.
Smiling, with open sunlit eyes.
Smiling upon the outstretched fatal hand . . .'
A Widow's Hymn
© George Wither
How near me came the hand of Death,
When at my side he struck my dear,
The House Of Dust: Part 01: 06: Over the darkened city, the city of towers
© Conrad Aiken
The fisherman draws his streaming net from the sea
And sails toward the far-off city, that seems
Like one vague tower.
The dark bow plunges to foam on blue-black waves,
And shrill rain seethes like a ghostly music about him
In a quiet shower.
Barn Owl
© Gwen Harwood
Daybreak: the household slept.
I rose, blessed by the sun.
A horny fiend, I crept
out with my father's gun.
Let him dream of a child
obedient, angel-mind-
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.
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.
