Music poems
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Wanting The Moon
© Denise Levertov
Not the moon. A flower
on the other side of the water.The water sweeps past in flood,
dragging a whole tree by the hair,a barn, a bridge. The flower
sings on the far bank.Not a flower, a bird calling
The World is with Me
© Thomas Hood
The world is with me, and its many cares,
Its woes--its wants--the anxious hopes and fears
That wait on all terrestrial affairs--
The shades of former and of future years--
Sonnet Of Motherhood XXIX
© Zora Bernice May Cross
O Love, I fear the loneness of my limbs
Leaning to nothing to their solitude.
Draw up the blinds and let the stars rush in,
The mournful moon and all the air she swims.
I would not languish in my mother-mood
While just without earth makes her old, mad din.
The City Of The Dead XX
© Khalil Gibran
Yesterday I drew myself from the noisome throngs and proceeded into the field until I reached a knoll upon which Nature had spread her comely garments. Now I could breathe.
I looked back, and the city appeared with its magnificent mosques and stately residences veiled by the smoke of the shops.
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.
A Glee For Winter
© Alfred Domett
HENCE, rude Winter! crabbed old fellow,
Never merry, never mellow!
Turns And Movies: The Cornet
© Conrad Aiken
When she came out, that white little Russian dancer,
With her bright hair, and her eyes, so young, so young,
He suddenly lost his leader, and all the players,
And only heard an immortal music sung,
Turns And Movies: Rose And Murray
© Conrad Aiken
After the movie, when the lights come up,
He takes her powdered hand behind the wings;
She, all in yellow, like a buttercup,
Lifts her white face, yearns up to him, and clings;
The House Of Dust: Part 04: 07: The sun goes down in a cold pale flare of light
© Conrad Aiken
The sun goes down in a cold pale flare of light.
The trees grow dark: the shadows lean to the east:
And lights wink out through the windows, one by one.
A clamor of frosty sirens mourns at the night.
Pale slate-grey clouds whirl up from the sunken sun.
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 House Of Dust: Part 04: 05: The Bitter Love-Song
© Conrad Aiken
Sharp shafts of music dazzled my eyes and pierced me.
I ran and turned and spun and danced in the sunlight,
Shrank, sometimes, from the freezing silence of beauty,
Or crept once more to the warm white cave of sleep.
The House Of Dust: Part 04: 04: Counterpoint: Two Rooms
© Conrad Aiken
He, in the room above, grown old and tired,
She, in the room belowhis floor her ceiling
Pursue their separate dreams. He turns his light,
And throws himself on the bed, face down, in laughter. . . .
She, by the window, smiles at a starlight night,
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 House Of Dust: Part 03: 13: The half-shut doors through which we heard that music
© Conrad Aiken
The half-shut doors through which we heard that music
Are softly closed. Horns mutter down to silence.
The stars whirl out, the night grows deep.
Darkness settles upon us. A vague refrain
Drowsily teases at the drowsy brain.
In numberless rooms we stretch ourselves and sleep.
The House Of Dust: Part 03: 12: Witches' Sabbath
© Conrad Aiken
The walls and roofs, the scarlet towers,
Sank down behind a rushing sky.
He heard a sweet song just begun
Abruptly shatter in tones and die.
It whirled away. Cold silence fell.
And again came tollings of a bell.
The House Of Dust: Part 03: 11: Conversation: Undertones
© Conrad Aiken
What shall we talk of? Li Po? Hokusai?
You narrow your long dark eyes to fascinate me;
You smile a little. . . .Outside, the night goes by.
I walk alone in a forest of ghostly trees . . .
Your pale hands rest palm downwards on your knees.
The Warning
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
PATIENCE! I yet may pierce the rind
Wherewith are shrewdly girded round
The subtle secrets of his mind:
A dark, unwholesome core is bound
Perchance within it! Sir, you see,
Men are not what they seem to be!
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.
