Music poems
/ page 210 of 253 /
Joseph Dixon
© Edgar Lee Masters
Who carved this shattered harp on my stone?
I died to you, no doubt. But how many harps and pianos
Wired I and tightened and disentangled for you,
Making them sweet again -- with tuning fork or without?
The Swallows
© John Jay Chapman
THE hills of Camden mile on mile
Fling their green mantle o'er the bay;
The dark waves dance about the isle
Where we have nested many a day.
The shadows mount; the air is chill;
Away!
The Lovers Colloquy
© Victor Marie Hugo
DONNA SOL. Night is too silent, darkness too profound
Oh, for a star to shine, a voice to sound--
To raise some sudden note of music now
Suited to night.
Elijah Browning
© Edgar Lee Masters
I was among multitudes of children
Dancing at the foot of a mountain.
A breeze blew out of the east and swept them as leaves,
Driving some up the slopes.... All was changed.
The Hartley Calamity
© Joseph Skipsey
The Hartley men are noble, and
Ye'll hear a tale of woe;
I'll tell the doom of the Hartley men -
The year of sixty two.
Caroline Branson
© Edgar Lee Masters
With our hearts like drifting suns, had we but walked,
As often before, the April fields till star-light
Silkened over with viewless gauze the darkness
Under the cliff, our trysting place in the wood,
Ariel And Caliban
© Christopher Pearse Cranch
I.
Before PROSPERO'S cell. Moonlight.
ARIEL.
So Prospero is gone and I am free
The Shepheardes Calender: Januarie
© Edmund Spenser
A Shepeheards boye (no better doe him call)
when Winters wastful spight was almost spent,
All in a sunneshine day, as did befall,
Led forth his flock, that had been long ypent.
So faynt they woxe, and feeble in the folde,
That now vnnethes their feete could them vphold.
The Spooniad
© Edgar Lee Masters
[The late Mr. Jonathan Swift Somers, laureate of Spoon River, planned The Spooniad as an epic in twenty-four books, but unfortunately did not live to complete even the first book. The fragment was found among his papers by William Marion Reedy and was for the first time published in Reedy's Mirror of December 18th, 1914.]
Of John Cabanis' wrath and of the strife
Of hostile parties, and his dire defeat
Who led the common people in the cause
The Evening Company
© James Whitcomb Riley
Within the sitting-room, the company
Had been increased in number. Two or three
Young couples had been added: Emma King,
Ella and Mary Mathers--all could sing
Like veritable angels--Lydia Martin, too,
And Nelly Millikan.--What songs they knew!--
The Love Sonnets Of Proteus. Part II: To Juliet: XXXIV
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
THE SAME CONTINUED
Yes, Spring is come, but joy alas is gone,--
Gone ere we knew it, while our foolish eyes,
Which should have watched its motions every one
Broadway
© Sara Teasdale
Beneath the liquid splendor of the lights
We live a little ere the charm is spent;
This night is ours, of all the golden nights,
The pavement an enchanted palace floor,
And Youth the player on the viol, who sent
A strain of music through an open door.
The Two Trees
© William Butler Yeats
BELOVED, gaze in thine own heart,
The holy tree is growing there;
Polyphemus
© Alfred Austin
ACIS ``You are brighter than either. I cannot descry you
From radiant ripple until I come nigh you.
I lose you, I find you, again you grow dimmer,
Till round me seems nothing but shadow and shimmer.
'Tis your golden-rayed ringlets that baffle and blind me.''
Dora Williams
© Edgar Lee Masters
When Reuben Pantier ran away and threw me
I went to Springfield. There I met a lush,
Whose father just deceased left him a fortune.
He married me when drunk. My life was wretched.
Chords
© Madison Julius Cawein
When love delays, when love delays and Joy
Steals a strange shadow o'er the happy hills,
And Hope smiles from To-morrow, nor fulfills
One promise of To-day, thy sight would cloy
This soul with loved despair
By seeing thee so fair.
Anne Rutledge
© Edgar Lee Masters
Out of me unworthy and unknown
The vibrations of deathless music;
'With malice toward none, with charity for all.'
Out of me the forgiveness of millions toward millions,
Blind Jack
© Edgar Lee Masters
I had fiddled all day at the county fair.
But driving home "Butch" Weldy and Jack McGuire,
Who were roaring full, made me fiddle and fiddle
To the song of Susie Skinner, while whipping the horses
Many Soldiers
© Edgar Lee Masters
The idea danced before us as a flag;
The sound of martial music;
The thrill of carrying a gun;
Advancement in the world on coming home;
