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Victor-Marie Hugo | The Poet's Love For Liveliness. | ("Moi, quelque soit le monde.")
[XV., May 11, 1830.]
For me, whate'er my life and lot may show,
Years blank with gloom or cheered by mem'ry's glow,
Turmoil or peace; never be it mine, I pray,
To be a dweller of the peopled earth,
Save 'neath a roof alive with children's mirth | Loud through the livelong day.
So, if my hap it be to see once more
Those scenes my footsteps tottered in before,
An infant follower in Napoleon's train:
Rodrigo's holds, Valencia and Leon,
And both Castiles, and mated Aragon;
Ne'er be it mine, O Spain!
To pass thy plains with cities scant between,
Thy stately arches f... |
Ella Wheeler Wilcox | The Optimist | The fields were bleak and sodden. Not a wing
Or note enlivened the depressing wood,
A soiled and sullen, stubborn snowdrift stood
Beside the roadway. Winds came muttering | Of storms to be, and brought the chilly sting
Of icebergs in their breath. Stalled cattle mooed
Forth plaintive pleadings for the earth's green food.
No gleam, no hint of hope in anything.
The sky was blank and ashen, like the face
Of some poor wretch who drains life's cup too fast.
Yet, swaying to and fro, as if to fl... |
Violet Jacob | The Bird In The Valley | Above the darkened house the night is spread,
The hidden valley holds
Vapour and dew and silence in its folds,
And waters sighing on the river-bed.
No wandering wind there is
To swing the star-wreaths of the clematis
Against the stone;
Out of the hanging woods, above the shores,
One liquid voice of throbbing crystal po... | A stream of magic through the heart of night
Its unseen passage cleaves;
Into the darkened room below the eaves
It falls from out the woods upon the height,
A strain of ecstasy
Wrought on the confines of eternity,
Glamour and pain,
And echoes gathered from a world of years,
Old phantoms, dim like mirage seen through te... |
Robert Burns | My Ain Kind Dearie O. | I.
When o'er the hill the eastern star
Tells bughtin-time is near, my jo;
And owsen frae the furrow'd field
Return sae dowf and weary, O!
Down by the burn, where scented birks[1]
Wi' dew are hanging clear, my jo;
I'll meet thee on the lea-rig,
My ain kind dearie O! | II.
In mirkest glen, at midnight hour,
I'd rove, and ne'er be eerie, O;
If thro' that glen I gaed to thee,
My ain kind dearie O!
Altho' the night were ne'er sae wild,
And I were ne'er sae wearie, O,
I'd meet thee on the lea-rig,
My ain kind dearie O!
III.
The hunter lo'es the morning sun,
To rouse the mountain deer, my... |
Walter De La Mare | The Ruin | When the last colours of the day
Have from their burning ebbed away,
About that ruin, cold and lone, | The cricket shrills from stone to stone;
And scattering o'er its darkened green,
Bands of the fairies may be seen,
Chattering like grasshoppers, their feet
Dancing a thistledown dance round it:
While the great gold of the mild moon
Tinges their tiny acorn shoon. |
Jonathan Swift | On Psyche[1] | At two afternoon for our Psyche inquire,
Her tea-kettle's on, and her smock at the fire:
So loitering, so active; so busy, so idle;
Which has she most need of, a spur or a bridle? | Thus a greyhound outruns the whole pack in a race,
Yet would rather be hang'd than he'd leave a warm place.
She gives you such plenty, it puts you in pain;
But ever with prudence takes care of the main.
To please you, she knows how to choose a nice bit;
For her taste is almost as refined as her wit.
To oblige a good fr... |
Rudyard Kipling | The Way Through The Woods | They shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods
Before they planted the trees.
It is underneath the coppice and heath,
And the thin anemones. | Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods,
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.
Yet, if you enter the woods
Of a summer evening late,
When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools
Where the otter whistles his mate.
(They fear not men in the woods,
Because they see so f... |
Algernon Charles Swinburne | After Sunset - Sonnets | 'Si quis piorum Manibus locus.'
I.
Straight from the sun's grave in the deep clear west
A sweet strong wind blows, glad of life: and I,
Under the soft keen stardawn whence the sky
Takes life renewed, and all night's godlike breast
Palpitates, gradually revealed at rest
By growth and change of ardours felt on high,
Make... | May light or breath at least of hope be born.
II.
The wind was soft before the sunset fled:
Now, while the cloud-enshrouded corpse of day
Is lowered along a red funereal way
Down to the dark that knows not white from red,
A clear sheer breeze against the night makes head,
Serene, but sure of life as ere a ray
Springs, ... |
Madison Julius Cawein | Frogs At Night | I heard the toads and frogs last night
When snug in bed, and all was still;
I lay and listened there until
It seemed a church where one, with might,
Was preaching high and very shrill:
"The will of God!
The will of God!"
To which a voice, below the hill, | Basso-profundo'd deep, "The will!"
"The will of God!
The will of God!"
"The will! The will!"
They croaked and chorused hoarse or shrill.
It made me sleepy; sleepier
Than any sermon ever heard:
And so I turned upon my ear
And went to-sleep and never stirred:
But in my sleep I seemed to hear:
"The word of God!
The word o... |
Thomas Runciman | A Hamadryad Dies. Sonnet | Low mourned the Oread round the Arcadian hills;
The Naiad murmured and the Dryad moaned;
The meadow-maiden left her daffodils
To join the Hamadryades who groaned | Over a sister newly fallen dead.
That Life might perish out of Arcady
From immemorial times was never said;
Yet here one lay dead by her dead oak-tree.
"Who made our Hamadryad cold and mute?"
The others cried in sorrow and in wonder.
"I," answered Death, close by in ashen suit;
"Yet fear not me for this, nor start asun... |
Robert Lee Frost | The Door In The Dark | In going from room to room in the dark,
I reached out blindly to save my face,
But neglected, however lightly, to lace | My fingers and close my arms in an arc.
A slim door got in past my guard,
And hit me a blow in the head so hard
I had my native simile jarred.
So people and things don't pair any more
With what they used to pair with before. |
Jonathan Swift | Fabula Canis Et Umbrae | ORE cibum portans catulus dum spectat in undis,
Apparet liquido praedae melioris imago: | Dum speciosa diu damna admiratur, et alt'
Ad latices inhiat, cadit imo vortice praeceps
Ore cibus, nee non simulacrum corripit una.
Occupat ille avidus deceptis faucibus umbram;
Illudit species, ac dentibus a'ra mordet. |
Robert Herrick | The Bride-Cake | This day, my Julia, thou must make
For Mistress Bride the wedding-cake: | Knead but the dough, and it will be
To paste of almonds turn'd by thee;
Or kiss it thou but once or twice,
And for the bride-cake there'll be spice. |
Clara Doty Bates | Aladdin | Versified by Clara Doty Bates
I see a little group about my chair,
Lovers of stories all!
First, Saxon Edith, of the corn-silk hair,
Growing so strong and tall!
Then little brother, on whose sturdy face
Soft baby dimples fly,
As fear or pleasure give each other place
When wonders multiply;
Then Gold-locks--summers nine... | He had for Aladdin to do,
At the risk of his life, too, he knew.
Far down in the earth's very centre
There burned a strange lamp at a shrine;
Great stones marked the one place to enter;
Down under t'was dark as a mine;
What further--no one could divine!
And that was the treasure Aladdin
Was sent to secure. First he tor... |
Unknown | Nursery Rhyme. DLVI. Natural History. | Pitty Patty Polt, | Shoe the wild colt!
Here a nail;
And there a nail;
Pitty Patty Polt. |
Walter De La Mare | I Saw Three Witches | I saw three witches
That bowed down like barley,
And took to their brooms 'neath a louring sky,
And, mounting a storm-cloud,
Aloft on its margin,
Stood black in the silver as up they did fly.
I saw three witches
That mocked the poor sparrows | They carried in cages of wicker along,
Till a hawk from his eyrie
Swooped down like an arrow,
And smote on the cages, and ended their song.
I saw three witches
That sailed in a shallop,
All turning their heads with a truculent smile,
Till a bank of green osiers
Concealed their grim faces,
Though I heard them lamenting ... |
Thomas Moore | Oh, Days Of Youth. (French Air.) | Oh, days of youth and joy, long clouded,
Why thus for ever haunt my view?
When in the grave your light lay shrouded,
Why did not Memory die there too?
Vainly doth hope her strain now sing me, | Telling of joys that yet remain--
No, never more can this life bring me
One joy that equals youth's sweet pain.
Dim lies the way to death before me,
Cold winds of Time blow round my brow;
Sunshine of youth! that once fell o'er me,
Where is your warmth, your glory now?
'Tis not that then no pain could sting me;
'Tis not... |
Unknown | Nursery Rhyme. DXXXII. Natural History. | Once I saw a little bird,
Come hop, hop, hop; | So I cried, little bird,
Will you stop, stop, stop?
And was going to the window,
To say how do you do?
But he shook his little tail,
And far away he flew. |
Lewis Carroll | Prologue | All in the golden afternoon
Full leisurely we glide;
For both our oars, with little skill,
By little arms are plied,
While little hands make vain pretense
Our wanderings to guide.
Ah, cruel Three! In such an hour
Beneath such dreamy weather,
To beg a tale of breath too weak
To stir the tiniest feather!
Yet what can one... | In gentler tones Secunda hopes
`There will be nonsense in it!'
While Tertia interrupts the tale
Not more than once a minute.
Anon, to sudden silence won,
In fancy they pursue
The dream-child moving through a land
Of wonders wild and new,
In friendly chat with bird or beast,
And half believe it true.
And ever, as the st... |
Walt Whitman | Pioneers! O Pioneers! | Come, my tan-faced children,
Follow well in order, get your weapons ready;
Have you your pistols? have you your sharp edged axes?
Pioneers! O pioneers!
For we cannot tarry here,
We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger,
We, the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
O... | All the hands of comrades clasping, all the Southern, all the Northern,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
O resistless, restless race!
O beloved race in all! O my breast aches with tender love for all!
O I mourn and yet exult I am rapt with love for all,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Raise the mighty mother mistress,
Waving high the delic... |
Alfred Castner King | Life's Mystery | I live, I move, I know not how, nor why, | Float as a transient bubble on the air,
As fades the eventide I, too, must die;
I came, I know not whence; I journey, where? |
Robert Herrick | The Scare-Fire. | Water, water I desire,
Here's a house of flesh on fire; | Ope the fountains and the springs,
And come all to bucketings:
What ye cannot quench pull down;
Spoil a house to save a town:
Better 'tis that one should fall,
Than by one to hazard all. |
Ella Wheeler Wilcox | A Holiday | The Wife
The house is like a garden,
The children are the flowers,
The gardener should come methinks
And walk among his bowers,
Oh! lock the door on worry
And shut your cares away,
Not time of year, but love and cheer,
Will make a holiday.
The Husband
Impossible! You women do not know
The toil it takes to make a bus... | The feast will be like Hamlet
Without a Hamlet part:
The home is but a house, dear,
Till you supply the heart.
The Xmas gift I long for
You need not toil to buy;
Oh! give me back one thing I lack -
The love-light in your eye.
The Husband
Of course I love you, and the children too
Be sensible, my dear, it is for you
I ... |
Alice Christiana Thompson Meynell | Renouncement | I must not think of thee; and, tired yet strong,
I shun the thought that lurks in all delight--
The thought of thee--and in the blue Heaven's height,
And in the sweetest passage of a song. | Oh, just beyond the fairest thoughts that throng
This breast, the thought of thee waits, hidden yet bright;
But it must never, never come in sight;
I must stop short of thee the whole day long.
But when sleep comes to close each difficult day,
When night gives pause to the long watch I keep,
And all my bonds I needs mu... |
Robert William Service | Going Home | I'm goin' 'ome to Blighty - ain't I glad to 'ave the chance!
I'm loaded up wiv fightin', and I've 'ad my fill o' France;
I'm feelin' so excited-like, I want to sing and dance,
For I'm goin' 'ome to Blighty in the mawnin'.
I'm goin' 'ome to Blighty: can you wonder as I'm gay?
I've got a wound I wouldn't sell for 'alf a ... | 'Ow everlastin' keen I was on gettin' to the front!
I'd ginger for a dozen, and I 'elped to bear the brunt;
But Cheese and Crust! I'm crazy, now I've done me little stunt,
To sniff the air of Blighty in the mawnin'.
I've looked upon the wine that's white, and on the wine that's red;
I've looked on cider flowin', till i... |
William Cowper | On A Spaniel, Called Beau, Killing A Young Bird. | A Spaniel, Beau, that fares like you,
Well fed, and at his ease,
Should wiser be than to pursue
Each trifle that he sees.
But you have kill'd a tiny bird,
Which flew not till to-day, | Against my orders, whom you heard
Forbidding you the prey.
Nor did you kill that you might eat
And ease a doggish pain,
For him, though chased with furious heat,
You left where he was slain.
Nor was he of the thievish sort,
Or one whom blood allures,
But innocent was all his sport
Whom you have torn for yours.
My dog! ... |
George MacDonald | A Prayer | Thou who mad'st the mighty clock
Of the great world go;
Mad'st its pendulum swing and rock,
Ceaseless to and fro;
Thou whose will doth push and draw | Every orb in heaven,
Help me move by higher law
In my spirit graven.
Like a planet let me swing--
With intention strong;
In my orbit rushing sing
Jubilant along;
Help me answer in my course
To my seasons due;
Lord of every stayless force,
Make my Willing true. |
Thomas Gent | Epigram. Auri Sacra Fames. | I knew a being once, his peaked head
With a few lank and greasy hairs was spread;
His visage blue, in length was like your own
Seen in the convex of a table-spoon.
His mouth, or rather gash athwart his face,
To stop at either ear had just the grace,
A hideous rift: his teeth were all canine,
And just like Death's (in M... | He had; and they, when meeting at his knees,
An angle formed of ninety-eight degrees.
Nature, in scheming how his back to vary,
A hint had taken from the dromedary:
His eyes an inward, screwing vision threw,
Striving each other through his nose to view.
His intellect was just one ray above
The idiot Cymon's ere he fell... |
Kate Seymour Maclean | Thanksgiving. | The Autumn hills are golden at the top,
And rounded as a poet's silver rhyme;
The mellow days are ruby ripe, that drop
One after one into the lap of time.
Dead leaves are reddening in the woodland copse,
And forest boughs a fading glory wear;
No breath of wind stirs in their hazy tops,
Silence and peace are brooding ev... | And nature in the sunset musing stands,
Gray-robed, and violet-hooded like a nun,
Looking abroad o'er yellow harvest lands:
O'er tents of orchard boughs, and purple vines
With scarlet flecked, flung like broad banners out
Along the field paths where slow-pacing lines
Of meek-eyed kine obey the herdboy's shout;
Where th... |
Mary Hannay Foott | Watch-Night | Midnight, musical and splendid,
And the Old Year's life is ended,
And the New, 'born in the purple,' babe yet crowned, among us dwells;
While Creation's welcome swells,
Starlight all the heavens pervading,
And the whole world serenading
Him, at birth, with all its bells!
Round the cradle of the tender
Flows the music, ... | New Year, if thy youth should blind us
Thy swift feet, perchance, may find us
Sleeping in the dark, unguarded, as the sun-god's herds were found!
Lest, unready, on his round
We be hurried, World, take warning
That already it is morning
And a giant is unbound!
Idle-handed yet, but willing,
Let us ponder ere the filling
... |
William Cowper | Epitaph On A Free But Tame Redbreast, A Favourite Of Miss Sally Hurdis. | These are not dewdrops, these are tears,
And tears by Sally shed
For absent Robin, who she fears,
With too much cause, is dead.
One morn he came not to her hand
As he was wont to come,
And, on her finger perch'd, to stand
Picking his breakfast-crumb. | Alarm'd, she call'd him, and perplex'd,
She sought him, but in vain'
That day he came not , nor the next,
Nor ever came again.
She therefore raised him here a tomb,
Though where he fell, or how,
None knows'so secret was his doom,
Nor where he moulders now.
Had half a score of coxcombs died
In social Robin's stead,
Poor... |
William Butler Yeats | The Rose Tree | "O words are lightly spoken,"
Said Pearse to Connolly,
"Maybe a breath of politic words
Has withered our Rose Tree;
Or maybe but a wind that blows
Across the bitter sea." | "It needs to be but watered,"
James Connolly replied,
"To make the green come out again
And spread on every side,
And shake the blossom from the bud
To be the garden's pride."
"But where can we draw water,"
Said Pearse to Connolly,
"When all the wells are parched away?
O plain as plain can be
There's nothing but our ow... |
Thomas Moore | Love And The Sun-Dial. | Young Love found a Dial once in a dark shade
Where man ne'er had wandered nor sunbeam played;
"Why thus in darkness lie?" whispered young Love,
"Thou, whose gay hours in sunshine should move."
"I ne'er," said the Dial, "have seen the warm sun,
"So noonday and midnight to me, Love, are one." | Then Love took the Dial away from the shade,
And placed her where Heaven's beam warmly played.
There she reclined, beneath Love's gazing eye,
While, marked all with sunshine, her hours flew by.
"Oh, how," said the Dial, "can any fair maid
"That's born to be shone upon rest in the shade?"
But night now comes on and the ... |
George MacDonald | Born Of Water | Methought I stood among the stars alone,
Watching a grey parched orb which onward flew
Half blinded by the dusty winds that blew,
Empty as Death and barren as a stone, | The pleasant sound of water all unknown!
When, as I looked in wonderment, there grew,
High in the air above, a drop of dew,
Which, gathering slowly through long cycles, shone
Like a great tear; and then at last it fell
Clasping the orb, which drank it greedily,
With a delicious noise and upward swell
Of sweet cool joy ... |
John Greenleaf Whittier | Haverhill | O river winding to the sea!
We call the old time back to thee;
From forest paths and water-ways
The century-woven veil we raise.
The voices of to-day are dumb,
Unheard its sounds that go and come;
We listen, through long-lapsing years,
To footsteps of the pioneers.
Gone steepled town and cultured plain,
The wilderness ... | Was lack of sturdy manhood found,
And never failed the kindred good
Of brave and helpful womanhood.
That hamlet now a city is,
Its log-built huts are palaces;
The wood-path of the settler's cow
Is Traffic's crowded highway now.
And far and wide it stretches still,
Along its southward sloping hill,
And overlooks on eith... |
Jean de La Fontaine | The Cat And The Fox. | The cat and fox, when saints were all the rage,
Together went on pilgrimage.
Arch hypocrites and swindlers, they,
By sleight of face and sleight of paw,
Regardless both of right and law,
Contrived expenses to repay,
By eating many a fowl and cheese,
And other tricks as bad as these.
Disputing served them to beguile
The... | Till Renard whisper'd to the cat,
'You think yourself a knowing one:
How many cunning tricks have you?
For I've a hundred, old and new,
All ready in my haversack.'
The cat replied, 'I do not lack,
Though with but one provided;
And, truth to honour, for that matter,
I hold it than a thousand better.'
In fresh dispute th... |
Hilaire Belloc | Lord Lundy | Who was too Freely Moved to Tears, and thereby ruined his Political Career
Lord Lundy from his earliest years
Was far too freely moved to Tears.
For instance if his Mother said,
"Lundy! It's time to go to Bed!"
He bellowed like a Little Turk.
Or if his father Lord Dunquerque
Said "Hi!" in a Commanding Tone,
"Hi, Lundy!... | I can't remember all the Lot!
Said "Oh! That I were Brisk and Spry
To give him that for which to cry!"
(An empty wish, alas! For she
Was Blind and nearly ninety-three).
The Dear Old Butler thought-but there!
I really neither know nor care
For what the Dear Old Butler thought!
In my opinion, Butlers ought
To know their ... |
Abram Joseph Ryan | What Ails the World? | "What ails the world?" the poet cried;
"And why does death walk everywhere?
And why do tears fall anywhere?
And skies have clouds, and souls have care?"
Thus the poet sang, and sighed.
For he would fain have all things glad,
All lives happy, all hearts bright;
Not a day would end in night,
Not a wrong would vex a right... | And no reply to his refrain --
The mystery moved 'round him masked.
"What ails the world?" An echo came --
"Ails the world?" The minstrel bands,
With famous or forgotten hands,
Lift up their lyres in all the lands,
And chant alike, and ask the same
From him whose soul first soared in song,
A thousand, thousand years aw... |
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni | To Vittoria Colonna. A Matchless Courtesy. | Felice spirto.
Blest spirit, who with loving tenderness
Quickenest my heart so old and near to die,
Who mid thy joys on me dost bend an eye
Though many nobler men around thee press! | As thou wert erewhile wont my sight to bless,
So to console my mind thou now dost fly;
Hope therefore stills the pangs of memory,
Which coupled with desire my soul distress.
So finding in thee grace to plead for me--
Thy thoughts for me sunk in so sad a case--
He who now writes, returns thee thanks for these.
Lo, it we... |
Robert Herrick | His Litany, To The Holy Spirit | In the hour of my distress,
When temptations me oppress,
And when I my sins confess,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me!
When I lie within my bed,
Sick in heart, and sick in head,
And with doubts discomforted,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me!
When the house doth sigh and weep,
And the world is drown'd in sleep,
Yet mine eyes the watch ... | When his potion and his pill,
Has, or none, or little skill,
Meet for nothing but to kill,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me!
When the passing-bell doth toll,
And the furies in a shoal
Come to fright a parting soul,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me!
When the tapers now burn blue,
And the comforters are few,
And that number more than tr... |
Rupert Brooke | Wagner | Creeps in half wanton, half asleep,
One with a fat wide hairless face.
He likes love-music that is cheap;
Likes women in a crowded place;
And wants to hear the noise they're making. | His heavy eyelids droop half-over,
Great pouches swing beneath his eyes.
He listens, thinks himself the lover,
Heaves from his stomach wheezy sighs;
He likes to feel his heart's a-breaking.
The music swells. His gross legs quiver.
His little lips are bright with slime.
The music swells. The women shiver.
And all the wh... |
Walt Whitman | Warble Of Lilac-Time | Warble me now, for joy of Lilac-time,
Sort me, O tongue and lips, for Nature's sake, and sweet life's sake, and death's the same as life's,
Souvenirs of earliest summer, birds' eggs, and the first berries;
Gather the welcome signs, (as children, with pebbles, or stringing shells;)
Put in April and May, the hylas croaki... | The maple woods, the crisp February days, and the sugar-making;
The robin, where he hops, bright-eyed, brown-breasted,
With musical clear call at sunrise, and again at sunset,
Or flitting among the trees of the apple-orchard, building the nest of his mate;
The melted snow of March, the willow sending forth its yellow-g... |
Rudyard Kipling | Beast And Man In India | Written for John Lockwood Kipling's
They killed a Child to please the Gods
In Earth's young penitence,
And I have bled in that Babe's stead
Because of innocence.
I bear the sins of sinful men
That have no sin of my own,
They drive me forth to Heaven's wrath
Unpastured and alone.
I am the meat of sacrifice,
The ransom ... | For on its oxen and its husbandmen
An Empire's strength is laid.
The Oxen.
The torn boughs trailing o'er the tusks aslant,
The saplings reeling in the path he trod,
Declare his might--our lord the Elephant,
Chief of the ways of God.
The black bulk heaving where the oxen pant,
The bowed head toiling where the guns care... |
William McKendree Carleton | The Editor's Guests. | The Editor sat in his sanctum, his countenance furrowed with care,
His mind at the bottom of business, his feet at the top of a chair,
His chair-arm an elbow supporting, his right hand upholding his head,
His eyes on his dusty old table, with different documents spread:
There were thirty long pages from Howler, with un... | I'm glad you're to home; for you fellers is al'ays a runnin' away.
Your paper last week wa'n't so spicy nor sharp as the one week before:
But I s'pose when the campaign is opened, you'll be whoopin' it up to 'em more.
That feller that's printin' The Smasher is goin' for you perty smart;
And our folks said this mornin' ... |
Charles Baudelaire | The Ghost | Softly as brown-eyed Angels rove
I will return to thy alcove,
And glide upon the night to thee,
Treading the shadows silently. | And I will give to thee, my own,
Kisses as icy as the moon,
And the caresses of a snake
Cold gliding in the thorny brake.
And when returns the livid morn
Thou shalt find all my place forlorn
And chilly, till the falling night.
Others would rule by tenderness
Over thy life and youthfulness,
But I would conquer thee by f... |
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson | Two Worlds. | It makes no difference abroad,
The seasons fit the same,
The mornings blossom into noons,
And split their pods of flame. | Wild-flowers kindle in the woods,
The brooks brag all the day;
No blackbird bates his jargoning
For passing Calvary.
Auto-da-fe and judgment
Are nothing to the bee;
His separation from his rose
To him seems misery. |
Joseph Victor von Scheffel | The Basalt | Mag der basaltene Mohrenstein
Zum Schreck es erz'hlen im Lande,
Wie er gebrodelt in Flammenschein
Und geschw'rzt entstiegen dem Brande:
Brenn's drunten noch Jahr aus Jahr ein
Beim Wein soll uns nicht bange sein,
Nein, nein!
Soll uns nicht bange sein!
F. v. Kobell. Urzeit der Erde, p. 33.
Es war der Basalt ein j'ngerer ... | You will get but a mitten, and the scorn
Of all the formations together.
'Uncle Rocksalt said to the Lime and smiled,
And the billows sneer it higher,
"How can the Ocean's third-born child
Be a bride to this scum of Fire?"'
What happened next was never known;
But at once into madness crashing,
In a fiery blaze he was u... |
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni | To Pope Julius II. | Signor, se vero '.
My Lord! if ever ancient saw spake sooth,
Hear this which saith: Who can, doth never will.
Lo! thou hast lent thine ear to fables still,
Rewarding those who hate the name of truth. | I am thy drudge and have been from my youth--
Thine, like the rays which the sun's circle fill;
Yet of my dear time's waste thou think'st no ill:
The more I toil, the less I move thy ruth.
Once 'twas my hope to raise me by thy height;
But 'tis the balance and the powerful sword
Of Justice, not false Echo, that we need.... |
Robert William Service | Men of the High North | Men of the High North, the wild sky is blazing;
Islands of opal float on silver seas;
Swift splendors kindle, barbaric, amazing;
Pale ports of amber, golden argosies.
Ringed all around us the proud peaks are glowing;
Fierce chiefs in council, their wigwam the sky;
Far, far below us the big Yukon flowing,
Like threaded ... | You who have made good, you foreign faring;
You money magic to far lands has whirled;
Can you forget those days of vast daring,
There with your soul on the Top o' the World?
Nights when no peril could keep you awake on
Spruce boughs you spread for your couch in the snow;
Taste all your feasts like the beans and the bac... |
Thomas Carew | Ingrateful Beauty Threatened | Know Celia, since thou art so proud,
'Twas I that gave thee thy renown;
Thou hadst, in the forgotten crowd
Of common beauties, liv'd unknown,
Had not my verse exhal'd thy name,
And with it imp'd the wings of fame. | That killing power is none of thine,
I gave it to thy voice, and eyes;
Thy sweets, thy graces, all are mine;
Thou art my star, shin'st in my skies;
Then dart not from thy borrow'd sphere
Lightning on him that fix'd thee there.
Tempt me with such affrights no more,
Lest what I made, I uncreate;
Let fools thy mystic form... |
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson | Drowning Is Not So Pitiful | Drowning is not so pitiful
As the attempt to rise.
Three times, 't is said, a sinking man
Comes up to face the skies, | And then declines forever
To that abhorred abode
Where hope and he part company, --
For he is grasped of God.
The Maker's cordial visage,
However good to see,
Is shunned, we must admit it,
Like an adversity. |
D. H. Lawrence (David Herbert Richards) | Firelight And Nightfall | The darkness steals the forms of all the queens,
But oh, the palms of his two black hands are red,
Inflamed with binding up the sheaves of dead
Hours that were once all glory and all queens. | And I remember all the sunny hours
Of queens in hyacinth and skies of gold,
And morning singing where the woods are scrolled
And diapered above the chaunting flowers.
Here lamps are white like snowdrops in the grass;
The town is like a churchyard, all so still
And grey now night is here; nor will
Another torn red sunse... |
George MacDonald | To The Same (Lady Noel Byron ) | Dead, why defend thee, who in life
For thy worst foe hadst died; | Who, thy own name a word of strife,
Didst silent stand aside?
Grand in forgiveness, what to thee
The big world's puny prate!
Or thy great heart hath ceased to be
Or loveth still its mate! |
Friedrich Schiller | The Impulses. | Fear with his iron staff may urge the slave onward forever; | Rapture, do thou lead me on ever in roseate chains! |
James McIntyre | Captain's Adventure. | Three years ago my vessel lay
In a port of Hudson Bay,
I started off for the trading post,
But on the way back I then got lost.
And the thought soon gave me the blues,
Trudging along on my snow shoes,
Over the wastes of drifting snow,
While the wind it did fiercely blow.
I feared that I would be froze hard,
For it was ... | I heard horrid creature flutter,
As it those strange sounds did utter.
At last I found that all this howl
Was from a noble large white owl,
And a happy apparition,
So runs the Indian tradition.
It guides the lost one in distress
And leads him out of wilderness,
This strange bird I soon follow,
And it still kept up its ... |
Michael Drayton | Amour 43 | Why doe I speake of ioy, or write of loue,
When my hart is the very Den of horror,
And in my soule the paynes of hell I proue,
With all his torments and infernall terror? | Myne eyes want teares thus to bewayle my woe,
My brayne is dry with weeping all too long;
My sighes be spent with griefe and sighing so,
And I want words for to expresse my wrong.
But still, distracted in loues lunacy,
And Bedlam like thus rauing in my griefe,
Now rayle vpon her hayre, now on her eye,
Now call her Godd... |
John Greenleaf Whittier | O. W. Holmes On His Eightieth Birth-Day | Climbing a path which leads back never more
We heard behind his footsteps and his cheer;
Now, face to face, we greet him standing here
Upon the lonely summit of Fourscore | Welcome to us, o'er whom the lengthened day
Is closing and the shadows colder grow,
His genial presence, like an afterglow,
Following the one just vanishing away.
Long be it ere the table shall be set
For the last breakfast of the Autocrat,
And love repeat with smiles and tears thereat
His own sweet songs that time sha... |
Walter Crane | The Man That Pleased None | Through the town this good Man & his Son
Strove to ride as to please everyone: | Self, Son, or both tried,
Then the Ass had a ride;
While the world, at their efforts, poked fun.
You Cannot Hope To Please All--Don't Try |
Archibald Lampman | Solitude. | How still it is here in the woods. The trees
Stand motionless, as if they did not dare
To stir, lest it should break the spell. The air
Hangs quiet as spaces in a marble frieze. | Even this little brook, that runs at ease,
Whispering and gurgling in its knotted bed,
Seems but to deepen with its curling thread
Of sound the shadowy sun-pierced silences.
Sometimes a hawk screams or a woodpecker
Startles the stillness from its fix'd mood
With his loud careless tap. Sometimes I hear
The dreamy white-... |
James Joyce | Tutto ' Sciolto | A birdless heaven, seadusk, one lone star
Piercing the west,
As thou, fond heart, love's time, so faint, so far,
Rememberest. | The clear young eyes' soft look, the candid brow,
The fragrant hair,
Falling as through the silence falleth now
Dusk of the air.
Why then, remembering those shy
Sweet lures, repine
When the dear love she yielded with a sigh
Was all but thine? |
William Wordsworth | Upon Seeing A Coloured Drawing Of The Bird Of Paradise In An Album | Who rashly strove thy Image to portray?
Thou buoyant minion of the tropic air;
How could he think of the live creature gay
With a divinity of colours, drest
In all her brightness, from the dancing crest
Far as the last gleam of the filmy train
Extended and extending to sustain
The motions that it graces and forbear
To ... | Where sea-nymphs might be proud to dwell:
But whose rash hand (again I ask) could dare,
'Mid casual tokens and promiscuous shows,
To circumscribe this Shape in fixed repose;
Could imitate for indolent survey,
Perhaps for touch profane,
Plumes that might catch, but cannot keep, a stain;
And, with cloud-streaks lightest ... |
George Pope Morris | Mary. | One balmy summer night, Mary,
Just as the risen moon
Had thrown aside her fleecy veil,
We left the gay saloon;
And in a green, sequestered spot,
Beneath a drooping tree,
Fond words were breathed, by you forgot,
That still are dear to me, Mary,
That still are dear to me.
Oh, we were happy, then, Mary--
Time lingered on ... | Whole ages in a day!
If star and sun would set and rise
Thus in our after years,
The world would be a paradise,
And not a vale of tears, Mary,
And not a vale of tears.
I live but in the past, Mary--
The glorious day of old!
When love was hoarded in the heart,
As misers hoard their gold:
And often like a bridal train,
T... |
Robert William Service | The Faceless Man | I'm dead.
Officially I'm dead. Their hope is past.
How long I stood as missing! Now, at last
I'm dead.
Look in my face - no likeness can you see,
No tiny trace of him they knew as "me".
How terrible the change!
Even my eyes are strange.
So keyed are they to pain,
That if I chanced to meet
My mother in the street
She'd ... | For you I braved red battle at its worst;
For you I fought and bled and maimed and slew;
For you, for you!
For you I faced hell-fury and despair;
The reeking horror of it all I knew:
I flung myself into the furnace there;
I faced the flame that scorched me with its glare;
I drank unto the dregs the devil's brew -
Look... |
John Clare | Poets Love Nature--A Fragment | Poets love Nature, and themselves are love.
Though scorn of fools, and mock of idle pride.
The vile in nature worthless deeds approve,
They court the vile and spurn all good beside. | Poets love Nature; like the calm of Heaven,
Like Heaven's own love, her gifts spread far and wide:
In all her works there are no signs of leaven
* * * *
Her flowers * * * *
They are her very Scriptures upon earth,
And teach us simple mirth where'er we go.
Even in prison they can solace me,
For where they bloom God is, ... |
William Butler Yeats | All Souls' Night | i(Epilogue to "A Vision')
Midnight has come, and the great Christ Church Bell
And may a lesser bell sound through the room;
And it is All Souls' Night,
And two long glasses brimmed with muscatel
Bubble upon the table. A ghost may come;
For it is a ghost's right,
His element is so fine
Being sharpened by his death,
To d... | But think that his mind's eye,
When upward turned, on one sole image fell;
And that a slight companionable ghost,
Wild with divinity,
Had so lit up the whole
Immense miraculous house
The Bible promised us,
It seemed a gold-fish swimming in a bowl.
On Florence Emery I call the next,
Who finding the first wrinkles on a f... |
Henry Lawson | Our Mistress And Our Queen | We set no right above hers,
No earthly light nor star,
She hath had many lovers,
But not as lovers are:
They all were gallant fellows
And died all deaths for her,
And never one was jealous
But comrades true they were.
Oh! each one is a brother,
Though all the lands they claim,
For her or for each other
They've died all... | She claims the careless girl, and
She claims the master mind;
She whispers to the Earl, and
She whispers to the hind!
No ruler knoweth which man
His sword for her might draw;
Her whisper wakes the rich man,
The peasant on his straw.
She calls us from the prison,
She calls us from the plain,
To towns where men have rise... |
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni | Love's Loadstone. Second Reading. | Non so se s' ' l' immaginata luce.
I know not if it be the fancied light
Which every man or more or less doth feel;
Or if the mind and memory reveal
Some other beauty for the heart's delight; | Or if within the soul the vision bright
Of her celestial home once more doth steal,
Drawing our better thoughts with pure appeal
To the true Good above all mortal sight:
This light I long for and unguided seek;
This fire that burns my heart, I cannot find;
Nor know the way, though some one seems to lead.
This, since I ... |
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni | The Sonnets Of Tommaso Campanella - On The Lord'S Prayer. No. I. | Vilissima progenie.
Ye vile offscourings! with unblushing face
Dare ye claim sonship to our heavenly Sire,
Who serve brute vices, crouching in the mire
To hounds and conies, beasts that ape our race? | Such truckling is called virtue by the base
Hucksters of sophistry, the priest and friar,--
Gilt claws of tyrant brutes,--who lie for hire,
Preaching that God delights in this disgrace.
Look well, ye brainless folk! Do fathers hold
Their children slaves to serfs? Do sheep obey
The witless ram? Why make a beast your kin... |
Richard Le Gallienne | Ah! Did You Ever Hear The Spring | Ah! did you ever hear the Spring
Calling you through the snow,
Or hear the little blackbird sing | Inside its egg - or go
To that green land where grass begins,
Each tiny seed, to grow?
O have you heard what none has heard,
Or seen what none has seen;
O have you been to that strange land
Where no one else has been! |
William Wordsworth | Companion To The Foregoing | Never enlivened with the liveliest ray
That fosters growth or checks or cheers decay,
Nor by the heaviest rain-drops more deprest,
This Flower, that first appeared as summer's guest,
Preserves her beauty 'mid autumnal leaves
And to her mournful habits fondly cleaves.
When files of stateliest plants have ceased to bloom... | What keeps her thus reclined upon her lonesome bed?
The old mythologists, more impressed than we
Of this late day by character in tree
Or herb, that claimed peculiar sympathy,
Or by the silent lapse of fountain clear,
Or with the language of the viewless air
By bird or beast made vocal, sought a cause
To solve the myst... |
John Drinkwater | Olton Pools | Now June walks on the waters,
And the cuckoo's last enchantment
Passes from Olton pools.
Now dawn comes to my window
Breathing midsummer roses, | And scythes are wet with dew.
Is it not strange for ever
That, bowered in this wonder,
Man keeps a jealous heart?...
That June and the June waters,
And birds and dawn-lit roses,
Are gospels in the wind,
Fading upon the deserts,
Poor pilgrim revelations?...
Hist ... over Olton pools! |
William Wordsworth | Ecclesiastical Sonnets - Part III. - XLIV - The Same | What awful perspective! while from our sight
With gradual stealth the lateral windows hide
Their Portraitures, their stone-work glimmers, dyed
In the soft chequerings of a sleepy light. | Martyr, or King, or sainted Eremite,
Whoe'er ye be, that thus, yourselves unseen,
Imbue your prison-bars with solemn sheen,
Shine on, until ye fade with coming Night!
But, from the arms of silence, list! O list!
The music bursteth into second life;
The notes luxuriate, every stone is kissed
By sound, or ghost of sound,... |
Fannie Isabelle Sherrick | Moonlight. | Oh, what so subtle as the spell
The silvery moonlight weaves?
Oh, what so sad and what so glad,
And what so soon deceives.
A vision of the long ago--
Long years of pain between;
A mocking dream of happier days--
A veil of silver sheen.
A passing gleam of falling stars-- | An idle summer's dream;
The sudden waking of a heart--
Things are not as they seem.
Oh, silver moon, indeed you hold
The secrets of the heart;
And none can know and none can guess
The mystery of thy art.
A silver length of rippling waves,
A glance from happy eyes;
A strain of music low and sweet--
The heart in rapture ... |
George Parsons Lathrop | O Wholesome Death | O wholesome Death, thy sombre funeral-car
Looms ever dimly on the lengthening way
Of life; while, lengthening still, in sad array,
My deeds in long procession go, that are | As mourners of the man they helped to mar.
I see it all in dreams, such as waylay
The wandering fancy when the solid day
Has fallen in smoldering ruins, and night's star,
Aloft there, with its steady point of light
Mastering the eye, has wrapped the brain in sleep.
Ah, when I die, and planets hold their flight
Above my... |
Thomas Hardy | Before Knowledge | When I walked roseless tracks and wide,
Ere dawned your date for meeting me,
O why did you not cry Halloo
Across the stretch between, and say:
"We move, while years as yet divide, | On closing lines which - though it be
You know me not nor I know you -
Will intersect and join some day!"
Then well I had borne
Each scraping thorn;
But the winters froze,
And grew no rose;
No bridge bestrode
The gap at all;
No shape you showed,
And I heard no call! |
John Collings Squire, Sir | A Chant | Gently the petals fall as the tree gently sways
That has known many springs and many petals fall
Year after year to strew the green deserted ways
And the statue and the pond and the low, broken wall. | Faded is the memory of old things done,
Peace floats on the ruins of ancient festival;
They lie and forget in the warmth of the sun,
And a sky silver-blue arches over all.
O softly, O tenderly, the heart now stirs
With desires faint and formless; and, seeking not, I find
Quiet thoughts that flash like azure kingfishers... |
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni | The Sonnets Of Tommaso Campanella - The Millennium. | Non piaccia a Dio.
Nay, God forbid that mid these tragic throes
To idle comedy my thought should bend,
When torments dire and warning woes portend
Of this our world the instantaneous close! | The day approaches which shall discompose
All earthly sects, the elements shall blend
In utter ruin, and with joy shall send
Just spirits to their spheres in heaven's repose.
The Highest comes in Holy Land to hold
His sovran court and synod sanctified,
As all the psalms and prophets have foretold:
The riches of his gra... |
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