Music poems
/ page 217 of 253 /
Hard Times
© Rabindranath Tagore
Music is silenced, the dark descending slowly
Has stripped unending skies of all companions.
Weariness grips your limbs and within the locked horizons
Dumbly ring the bells of hugely gathering fears.
Still, O bird, O sightless bird,
Not yet, not yet the time to furl your wings.
Hymn to God, My God, in my Sickness
© John Donne
Since I am coming to that holy room,
Where, with thy choir of saints for evermore,
I shall be made thy music; as I come
I tune the instrument here at the door,
And what I must do then, think here before.
from Jubilate Agno, Fragment B, lines 695-768
© Christopher Smart
For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.
For he is the servant of the Living God, duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For is this done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.
Jubilate Agno: Fragment B, Part 4
© Christopher Smart
Tho' toad I am the object of man's hate.
Yet better am I than a reprobate. who has the worst of prospects.
For there are stones, whose constituent particles are little toads.
Jubilate Agno: Fragment B, Part 3
© Christopher Smart
For a Man is to be looked upon in that which he excells as on a prospect.
Jubilate Agno: Fragment D
© Christopher Smart
Let Dew, house of Dew rejoice with Xanthenes a precious stone of an amber colour.
Jubilate Agno: Fragment A
© Christopher Smart
Rejoice in God, O ye Tongues; give the glory to the Lord, and the Lamb.
For I Will Consider My Cat Jeoffry (excerpt, Jubilate Agno)
© Christopher Smart
For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.
For he is the servant of the Living God duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For this is done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.
A Song to David (excerpt)
© Christopher Smart
Sweet is the dew that falls betimes,
And drops upon the leafy limes;
Sweet Hermon's fragrant air:
Sweet is the lily's silver bell,
And sweet the wakeful tapers smell
That watch for early pray'r.
Jubilate Agno: Fragment B, Part 1
© Christopher Smart
Let Elizur rejoice with the Partridge, who is a prisoner of state and is proud of his keepers.
The Sweets of Evening
© Christopher Smart
The sweets of evening charm the mind,
Sick of the sultry day;
The body then no more confin'd,
But exercise with freedom join'd,
When Phoebus sheathes his ray.
A Song To David
© Christopher Smart
I
O THOU, that sit'st upon a throne,
With harp of high majestic tone,
To praise the King of kings;
Lord William
© Robert Southey
No eye beheld when William plunged
Young Edmund in the stream,
No human ear but William's heard
Young Edmund's drowning scream.
The Sea-Child
© Eliza Cook
HE crawls to the cliff and plays on a brink
Where every eye but his own would shrink;
No music he hears but the billows noise,
And shells and weeds are his only toys.
The First Flowers
© John Greenleaf Whittier
For ages on our river borders,
These tassels in their tawny bloom,
And willowy studs of downy silver,
Have prophesied of Spring to come.
The Waggoner - Canto Fourth
© William Wordsworth
THUS they, with freaks of proud delight,
Beguile the remnant of the night;
And many a snatch of jovial song
Regales them as they wind along;
Visions for the Entertainment and Instruction of Younger Minds: Happiness
© Nathaniel Cotton
Ye ductile youths, whose rising sun
Hath many circles still to run;
Daughter
© Gertrude Stein
Why is the world at peace.
This may astonish you a little but when you realise how
easily Mrs. Charles Bianco sells the work of American
painters to American millionaires you will recognize that
It Is Not Beauty I Demand
© George Darley
It is not Beauty I demand,
A crystal brow, the moon's despair,
Nor the snow's daughter, a white hand,
Nor mermaid's yellow pride of hair.
