Time poems
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Robert Parkes
© Henry Kendall
High travelling winds by royal hill
Their awful anthem sing,
And songs exalted flow and fill
The caverns of the spring.
San Lorenzo Giustiniani's Mother
© Alice Meynell
I had not seen my son's dear face
(He chose the cloister by God's grace)
Since it had come to full flower-time.
I hardly guessed at its perfect prime,
That folded flower of his dear face.
Songs Set To Music: 14. Set By Mr. Smith
© Matthew Prior
Once I was unconfined and free,
Would I had been so still!
Enjoying sweetest liberty,
And roving at my will.
Conscience And Remorse
© Paul Laurence Dunbar
"GOOD-BYE," I said to my conscience
"Good-bye for aye and aye,"
Ballade Of Cleopatra's Needle
© Andrew Lang
Prince, the stone's shade on your divan
Falls; it is longer than ye wist:
It preaches, as Time's gnomon can,
This monument in London mist!
Granny
© Ada Cambridge
Here, in her elbow chair, she sits
A soul alert, alive,
A poor old body shrunk and bent-
The queen-bee of the hive.
Masnawi
© Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi
In the prologue to the Masnavi Rumi hailed Love and its sweet madness that heals all infirmities, and he exhorted the reader to burst the bonds to silver and gold to be free. The Beloved is all in all and is only veiled by the lover. Rumi identified the first cause of all things as God and considered all second causes subordinate to that. Human minds recognize the second causes, but only prophets perceive the action of the first cause. One story tells of a clever rabbit who warned the lion about another lion and showed the lion his own image in a well, causing him to attack it and drown. After delivering his companions from the tyrannical lion, the rabbit urges them to engage in the more difficult warfare against their own inward lusts. In a debate between trusting God and human exertion, Rumi quoted the prophet Muhammad as saying, "Trust in God, yet tie the camel's leg."8 He also mentioned the adage that the worker is the friend of God; so in trusting in providence one need not neglect to use means. Exerting oneself can be giving thanks for God's blessings; but he asked if fatalism shows gratitude.
God is hidden and has no opposite, not seen by us yet seeing us. Form is born of the formless but ultimately returns to the formless. An arrow shot by God cannot remain in the air but must return to God. Rumi reconciled God's agency with human free will and found the divine voice in the inward voice. Those in close communion with God are free, but the one who does not love is fettered by compulsion. God is the agency and first cause of our actions, but human will as the second cause finds recompense in hell or with the Friend. God is like the soul, and the world is like the body. The good and evil of bodies comes from souls. When the sanctuary of true prayer is revealed to one, it is shameful to turn back to mere formal religion. Rumi confirmed Muhammad's view that women hold dominion over the wise and men of heart; but violent fools, lacking tenderness, gentleness, and friendship, try to hold the upper hand over women, because they are swayed by their animal nature. The human qualities of love and tenderness can control the animal passions. Rumi concluded that woman is a ray of God and the Creator's self.
The Son
© Jones Very
Father, I wait thy word. The sun doth stand
Beneath the mingling line of night and day,
Obituary
© Allen Tate
... so what the lame four-poster gathered here
Between the lips of stale and seasoned sheets
Startles a memory sunlit upon the wall
(Motors and urchins contest the city streets)
Wishes
© Sara Teasdale
I wish for such a lot of things
That never will come true
And yet I want them all so much
I think they might, don't you?
Farewell To The Muse
© George Gordon Byron
Thou Power! who hast ruled me through Infancy's days,
Young offspring of Fancy, 'tis time we should part;
Then rise on the gale this the last of my lays,
The coldest effusion which springs from my heart.
Childhood
© William Barnes
Aye, at that time our days wer but vew,
An' our lim's wer but small, an' a-growèn;
Heine In Paris
© Kenneth Slessor
LATE: a cold smear of sunlight bathes the room;
The gilt lime of winter, a sun grown melancholy old,
Streams in the glass. Outside, ten thousand chimneys fume,
Looping the weather-birds with rings of gold;
The Starling
© Steen Steensen Blicher
Ah starling! Most welcome, you bird of good cheer!
Are we to have all your pranks again here?
The Triumph of Dead : Chap. 2
© Mary Sidney Herbert
That night, which did the dreadful hap ensue
That quite eclips'd, nay, rather did replace
The Burial in the Snow
© Julia A Moore
The people of that party
Lay scattered all around,
Some were frightened, others laughed,
To think it happened so,
That the end of their sleigh ride
Was a burial in the snow.
Widow
© Sylvia Plath
Widow. The word consumes itself --
Body, a sheet of newsprint on the fire
Levitating a numb minute in the updraft
Over the scalding, red topography
That will put her heart out like an only eye.
The Old Mans Dream After He Died
© Robinson Jeffers
from CAWDOR
Gently with delicate mindless fingers
Cromwell
© Albert Durrant Watson
This too remember well
I learned it late: None but a tyrant makes
That good prevail that is not in men's hearts,
And tyranny is questionable good.
Therefore must all men learn by liberty,
And with what pain their doings on them bring.
