Music poems
/ page 184 of 253 /Rollicking Hans.
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
If I depart from this sad sphere,
And leave a will behind me here,
A suit at law will be preferr'd,
But as for thanks,--the deuce a word!
So ere I die, I squander all,
And that a proper will I call.
Peter Quince At The Clavier
© Wallace Stevens
Just as my fingers on these keys
Make music, so the self-same sounds
On my spirit make a music, too.
Music is feeling, then, not sound;
And thus it is that what I feel,
Here in this room, desiring you,
Shells
© Kathleen Raine
They sleep on the ocean floor like humming-tops
Whose music is the mother-of-pearl octave of the rainbow,
Harmonious shells that whisper forever in our ears,
The world that you inhabit has not yet been created.
Another Spring
© Christina Georgina Rossetti
If I might see another Spring
I'd not plant summer flowers and wait:
The Two Rivers
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Slowly the hour-hand of the clock moves round;
So slowly that no human eye hath power
The Convent Threshold
© Christina Georgina Rossetti
There's blood between us, love, my love,
There's father's blood, there's brother's blood,
And blood's a bar I cannot pass.
I choose the stairs that mount above,
Homer's Hymn To The Moon
© Percy Bysshe Shelley
The Son of Saturn with this glorious Power
Mingled in love and sleep--to whom she bore
Pandeia, a bright maid of beauty rare
Among the Gods, whose lives eternal are.
The Right Honourable Edmund Burke
© William Lisle Bowles
Why mourns the ingenuous Moralist, whose mind
Science has stored, and Piety refined,
Kretschmann
© John Le Gay Brereton
Love may trace his echoing footsteps, yet we never more shall meet
Rugged Kretschmann, the musician, plodding down a Sydney street,
Never see the low broad figure, massive head and shaggy mane
And the quiet furrowed features, never hear his voice again.
Goblin Market
© Christina Georgina Rossetti
Laura stretched her gleaming neck
Like a rush-imbedded swan,
Like a lily from the beck,
Like a moonlit poplar branch,
Like a vessel at the launch
When its last restraint is gone.
The Robin
© Virna Sheard
Little brown brother, up in the apple tree,
High on its blossom-rimmed branches aswing,
Here where I listen earth-bound, it seems to me
You are the voice of the spring.
The Thread of Life
© Christina Georgina Rossetti
I
The irresponsive silence of the land,
The irresponsive sounding of the sea,
Speak both one message of one sense to me:--
Rest
© Christina Georgina Rossetti
O EARTH, lie heavily upon her eyes;
Seal her sweet eyes weary of watching, Earth;
Lie close around her; leave no room for mirth
With its harsh laughter, nor for sound of sighs.
Reynard the Fox - Part 1
© John Masefield
Poor Polly's dying struck him queer,
He was a darkened man thereafter,
Cowed, silent, he would wince at laughter
And be so gentle it was strange
Even to see. Life loves to change.
Sonnet XII. On Leaving Some Friends At An Early Hour
© John Keats
Give me a golden pen, and let me lean
On heaped-up flowers, in regions clear, and far;
Bring me a tablet whiter than a star,
Or hand of hymning angel, when 'tis seen
The Star of Australasia
© Henry Lawson
We boast no more of our bloodless flag, that rose from a nation's slime;
Better a shred of a deep-dyed rag from the storms of the olden time.
From grander clouds in our `peaceful skies' than ever were there before
I tell you the Star of the South shall rise -- in the lurid clouds of war.
Come, Pretty School-Girl!
© Henry Clay Work
On this rolling planet ever have you seen
A home so like a palace waiting for its queen? -
A dwelling place so fair,
So fill'd with treasures rare,
As the little white cottage on Evergreen Square?
A Poets Daughter
© Fitz-Greene Halleck
"A lady asks the Minstrel's rhyme."
A lady asks? There was a time
When, musical as play-bell's chime
To wearied boy,
That sound would summon dreams sublime
Of pride and joy.