Music poems
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To Winter
© Claude McKay
Stay, season of calm love and soulful snows!
There is a subtle sweetness in the sun,
The ripples on the stream's breast gaily run,
The wind more boisterously by me blows,
To a Poet
© Claude McKay
There is a lovely noise about your name,
Above the shoutings of the city clear,
More than a moment's merriment, whose claim
Will greater grow with every mellowed year.
When Someone Says:
© Mikhail Alekseevich Kuzmin
When someone says: "Alexandria,"
I see the white walls of a house,
a small garden row of gillyflowers,
an autumn evening's pale sunlight
and hear the music of distant flutes.
Pan at Lane Cove
© Kenneth Slessor
SCALY with poison, bright with flame,
Great fungi steam beside the gate,
Run tentacles through flagstone cracks,
Or claw beyond, where meditate
Romance
© Claude McKay
To clasp you now and feel your head close-pressed,
Scented and warm against my beating breast;To whisper soft and quivering your name,
And drink the passion burning in your frame;To lie at full length, taut, with cheek to cheek,
And tease your mouth with kisses till you speakLove words, mad words, dream words, sweet senseless words,
The Harps of Heaven
© Sydney Thompson Dobell
On a solemn day
I clomb the shining bulwark of the skies:
Heritage
© Claude McKay
I know the magic word, the graceful thought,
The song that fills me in my lucid hours,
The spirit's wine that thrills my body through,
And makes me music-drunk, are yours, all yours.
The Trumpet Call
© Alfred Noyes
Trumpeter, sound for the last Crusade!
Sound for the fire of the red-cross kings,
Sound for the passion, the splendour, the pity
That swept the world for a dead Man's sake,
Flower of Love
© Claude McKay
The perfume of your body dulls my sense.
I want nor wine nor weed; your breath alone
Suffices. In this moment rare and tense
I worship at your breast. The flower is blown,
Reed Call For April
© Madison Julius Cawein
When April comes, and pelts with buds
And apple-blooms each orchard space,
And takes the dog-wood-whitened woods
With rain and sunshine of her moods,
Like your fair face, like your fair face:
Alfonso, Dressing to Wait at Table
© Claude McKay
Alfonso is a handsome bronze-hued lad
Of subtly-changing and surprising parts;
His moods are storms that frighten and make glad,
His eyes were made to capture women's hearts.
A Red Flower
© Claude McKay
Your lips are like a southern lily red,
Wet with the soft rain-kisses of the night,
In which the brown bee buries deep its head,
When still the dawn's a silver sea of light.
Where is the grave of Sir Arthur O'Kellyn?
© Samuel Taylor Coleridge
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
In Commendation Of Musick
© William Strode
When whispering straynes doe softly steale
With creeping passion through the hart,
The Improvisatore
© Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Eliza. Ask our friend, the Improvisatore ; here he comes. Kate has a favour
to ask of you, Sir ; it is that you will repeat the ballad [Believe me if
all those endearing young charms.--EHC's ? note] that Mr. ____ sang so
sweetly.
In Praise of Mandragora
© Muriel Stuart
O, MANDRAGORA, many sing in praise
Of life, and death, and immortality,-
Of passion, that goes famished all her days,-
Of Faith, or fantasy;
Thou, all unpraised, unsung, I make this rhyme to thee.
To William Wordsworth
© Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Friend of the Wise ! and Teacher of the Good !
Into my heart have I received that Lay
More than historic, that prophetic Lay
Wherein (high theme by thee first sung aright)
The Storm
© Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore
Within the pale blue haze above,
Some pitchy shreds took size and form,
