Time poems
/ page 543 of 792 /The Spring In Ireland: 1916
© James Brunton Stephens
In other lands they may,
With public joy or dole along the way,
With pomp and pageantry and loud lament
Of drums and trumpets, and with merriment
Of grateful hearts, lead into rest and sted
The nation's dead.
Written A Year After The Events
© Charles Lamb
Alas! how am I chang'd! Where be the tears,
The sobs, and forc'd suspensions of the breath,
The Passing Strange
© John Masefield
Out of the earth to rest or range
Perpetual in perpetual change,
The unknown passing through the strange.
The Monks of St. Mark
© Thomas Love Peacock
'Tis midnight: the sky is with clouds overcast;
The forest-trees bend in the loud-rushing blast;
The rain strongly beats on these time-hallow'd spires;
The lightning pours swiftly its blue-pointed fires;
Triumphant the tempest-fiend rides in the dark,
And howls round the old abbey-walls of St. Mark!
The Yarn of the Loch Achray
© John Masefield
Her crew were shipped and they said 'Farewell,
So-long, my Tottie, my lovely gell;
We sail to-day if we fetch to hell,
It's time we tackled the wheel a spell.'
Hear the yarn of a sailor,
An old yarn learned at sea.
The Happiest Girl in the World
© Augusta Davies Webster
A week ago; only a little week:
it seems so much much longer, though that day
is every morning still my yesterday;
as all my life 'twill be my yesterday,
for all my life is morrow to my love.
Oh fortunate morrow! Oh sweet happy love!
A Creed
© John Masefield
I HOLD that when a person dies
His soul returns again to earth;
Arrayed in some new flesh-disguise
Another mother gives him birth.
With sturdier limbs and brighter brain
The old soul takes the road again.
The Wanderer
© John Masefield
ALL day they loitered by the resting ships,
Telling their beauties over, taking stock;
At night the verdict left my messmate's lips,
"The Wanderer is the finest ship in dock."
The Everlasting Mercy
© John Masefield
Thy place is biggyd above the sterrys cleer,
Noon erthely paleys wrouhte in so statly wyse,
Com on my freend, my brothir moost enteer,
For the I offryd my blood in sacrifise.
John Lydgate.
On Growing Old
© John Masefield
Be with me, Beauty, for the fire is dying;
My dog and I are old, too old for roving.
Man, whose young passion sets the spindrift flying,
Is soon too lame to march, too cold for loving.
The West Wind
© John Masefield
IT'S a warm wind, the west wind, full of birds' cries;
I never hear the west wind but tears are in my eyes.
For it comes from the west lands, the old brown hills.
And April's in the west wind, and daffodils.
Specula
© Edward Thomas
When He appoints to meet thee, go thou forth
It matters not
If south or north,
Bleak waste or sunny plot.
Reply To Some Verses Of J.M.B. Pigot, Esq. On The Cruelty Of His Mistress
© George Gordon Byron
Why, Pigot, complain of this damsel's disdain,
Why thus in despair do you fret?
For months you may try, yet, believe me, a sigh
Will never obtain a coquette.
Stellas Birth-Day: A Great Bottle Of Wine, Long Buried, Being That Day Dug Up. 1722-3
© Jonathan Swift
Resolv'd my annual verse to pay,
By duty bound, on Stella's day,
Furnish'd with paper, pens, and ink,
I gravely sat me down to think:
The Terrestrial
© Vlanes (Vladislav Nekliaev)
The air heaving like a wounded fish,
breathing through its purplish sandy gills,
letting in the salty gale, fluttering its
violet fan-like tail, vast, culminating in the distant mesh
of mist completely ripped by the piercing starving eyes
of planets sitting in their cosmic pits
Exchange
© Vlanes (Vladislav Nekliaev)
Today your things depart. Your faience cup
fell off the table at sunrise and cracked.
Your old grey dog did not come up
the stairs. I went to look for him, he had died
in the long grass, near your library,
under your favourite mango-tree.
Sonnets To Europa
© Vlanes (Vladislav Nekliaev)
Frost apple on a knotted whirling bough
of dark becoming where it cannot be.
So much both for the soil and for the tree,
so much for things that are becoming now.
Broken Clavecin
© Vlanes (Vladislav Nekliaev)
for every wind?s emotionless blast
brings shreds of feathers with their dance of loss
rotating leaves of faded rainbow-trees
and bitter tide of petals outcast
Propertius
© Vlanes (Vladislav Nekliaev)
The dead dont know how to cry, they dont
have any hopes to lose, any illusions
to bargain for. Theyre lost
like limpid feathers of a slow bird,
too slow to make it to the other shore.
Captain Who Voyages No More
© Vlanes (Vladislav Nekliaev)
Troubled slumbering of things, the curtain blown aside
by the gush of the salty wind, the advent of the tide
mixing grains of dry sand, the disjoined palimpsest,
the thin wing beating under the chest, restlessly,
the splinters of far-off vessels stuck in the sea,
not entering the harbour, as if they have something to hide.