Music poems
/ page 216 of 253 /The Deserted Palace
© Robert Laurence Binyon
``My feet are dead, the cold rain beats my face!''
``Courage, sweet love, this tempest is our friend!''
``Yet oh, shall we not rest a little space?
This city sleeps; some corner may defend
Senlin: His Dark Origins
© Conrad Aiken
He lights his pipe with a pointed flame.
'Yet, there were many autumns before I came,
And many springs. And more will come, long after
There is no horn for me, or song, or laughter.
Senlin: His Cloudy Destiny
© Conrad Aiken
Yet, we would say, this is no shore at all,
But a small bright room with lamplight on the wall;
And the familiar chair
Where Senlin sat, with lamplight on his hair.
Nocturne Of Remembered Spring
© Conrad Aiken
I. Moonlight silvers the tops of trees,
Moonlight whitens the lilac shadowed wall
And through the evening fall,
Clearly, as if through enchanted seas,
Music I Heard
© Conrad Aiken
Music I heard with you was more than music,
And bread I broke with you was more than bread;
Now that I am without you, all is desolate;
All that was once so beautiful is dead.
Improvisations: Light And Snow
© Conrad Aiken
How many times have I sat here,
How many times will I sit here again,
Thinking these same things over and over in solitude
As a child says over and over
The first word he has learned to say.
Hatteras Calling
© Conrad Aiken
Southeast, and storm, and every weathervane
shivers and moans upon its dripping pin,
ragged on chimneys the cloud whips, the rain
howls at the flues and windows to get in,
Discordants
© Conrad Aiken
Music I heard with you was more than music,
And bread I broke with you was more than bread;
Now that I am without you, all is desolate;
All that was once so beautiful is dead.
A Letter From Li Po
© Conrad Aiken
Fanfare of northwest wind, a bluejay wind
announces autumn, and the equinox
rolls back blue bays to a far afternoon.
Somewhere beyond the Gorge Li Po is gone,
A Fit of Rhyme against Rhyme
© Benjamin Jonson
Rhyme, the rack of finest wits,
That expresseth but by fits
The Works of God
© George Sandys
Great God! how manifold, how infinite
Are all Thy works! with what a clear foresight
The Harp Of The Minstrel
© James Whitcomb Riley
The harp of the minstrel has never a tone
As sad as the song in his bosom to-night,
The Enthusiast, or the Lover of Nature
© Joseph Warton
Ye green-rob'd Dryads, oft' at dusky Eve
By wondering Shepherds seen, to Forests brown,
The Brewing Of Soma
© John Greenleaf Whittier
The fagots blazed, the caldron's smoke
Up through the green wood curled;
"Bring honey from the hollow oak,
Bring milky sap," the brewers spoke,
In the childhood of the world.
The Sword Of The Tomb : A Northern Legend
© Felicia Dorothea Hemans
"Voice of the gifted elder time!
Voice of the charm and the Runic rhyme!
Speak! from the shades and the depths disclose,
How Sigurd may vanquish his mortal foes;
Voice of the buried past!
The Worship of Nature
© John Greenleaf Whittier
The harp at Nature's advent strung
Has never ceased to play;
The song the stars of morning sung
Has never died away.
The Sycamores
© John Greenleaf Whittier
In the outskirts of the village
On the river's winding shores
Stand the Occidental plane-trees,
Stand the ancient sycamores.
The Pipes At Lucknow
© John Greenleaf Whittier
Pipes of the misty moorlands,
Voice of the glens and hills;
The droning of the torrents,
The treble of the rills!
The Barefoot Boy
© John Greenleaf Whittier
Blessings on thee, little man,
Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan!
With thy turned-up pantaloons,
And thy merry whistled tunes;
Snowbound, a Winter Idyl
© John Greenleaf Whittier
To the Memory of the Household It DescribesThis Poem is Dedicated by the Author"As the Spirit of Darkness be stronger in the dark, so Good Spirits, which be Angels of Light, are augmented not only by the Divine light of the Sun, but also by our common Wood Fire: and as the Celestial Fire drives away dark spirits, so also this our fire of Wood doth the same."
Cor. Agrippa, Occult Philosophy, Book I, ch. v.
"Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,