Sad poems
/ page 79 of 140 /Cold Calls: War Music, Continued
© Christopher Logue
Take Quinamid
The son of a Dardanian astrologer
Who disregarded what his father said
And came to Troy in a taxi.
On Parting
© Hristo Botev
1868
Don't cry, mother, don't grieve
that I grew up as an outlaw,
an outlaw, mother, a rebel,
The Golden Mile-Stone. (Birds Of Passage. Flight The First)
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Leafless are the trees; their purple branches
Spread themselves abroad, like reefs of coral,
Rising silent
In the Red Sea of the winter sunset.
The Kaiser's Feast
© Felicia Dorothea Hemans
Why fell there silence on the chord
Beneath the harper's hand?
And suddenly, from that rich board,
Why rose the wassail-band?
Drought And Doctrine.
© James Brunton Stephens
COME, take the tenner, doctor . . . yes, I know the bill says "five,"
But it ain't as if you'd merely kep' our little 'un alive;
Do Not!
© Stevie Smith
Do not despair of man, and do not scold him,
Who are you that you should so lightly hold him?
E'en As A lovely Flower
© Heinrich Heine
E'en as a lovely flower,
So fair, so pure thou art;
I gaze on thee, and sadness
Comes stealing o'er my heart.
The Child Of The Islands - Summer
© Caroline Norton
I.
FOR Summer followeth with its store of joy;
That, too, can bring thee only new delight;
Its sultry hours can work thee no annoy,
Calm
© Charles Baudelaire
Have patience, O my sorrow, and be still.
You asked for night: it falls: it is here.
A shadowy atmosphere enshrouds the hill,
to some men bringing peace, to others care.
Dover Beach
© Matthew Arnold
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Knight Of Toggenburg
© Johann Christoph Friedrich Von Schiller
. "I Can love thee well, believe me,
As a sister true;
On Mother’s Day
© Grace Paley
Look! more trees on the block
forget-me-nots all around them
ivy lantana shining
and geraniums in the window
Lancelot And Elaine
© Alfred Tennyson
How came the lily maid by that good shield
Of Lancelot, she that knew not even his name?
He left it with her, when he rode to tilt
For the great diamond in the diamond jousts,
Which Arthur had ordained, and by that name
Had named them, since a diamond was the prize.
Book Of Suleika - Suleika 03
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
ZEPHYR, for thy humid wing,
Oh, how much I envy thee!
The Exiles Secret
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
Why tell each idle guess, each whisper vain?
Enough: the scorched and cindered beams remain.
He came, a silent pilgrim to the West,
Some old-world mystery throbbing in his breast;
Close to the thronging mart he dwelt alone;
He lived; he died. The rest is all unknown.
Hudibras: Part 3 - Canto III
© Samuel Butler
What made thee, when they all were gone,
And none but thou and I alone,
To act the Devil, and forbear
To rid me of my hellish fear?