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Page 277 of 1418

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Page 277 of 1418

A Worn-Out Pencil.

Welladay!
Here I lay
You at rest - all worn away,
O my pencil, to the tip
Of our old companionship!

Memory
Sighs to see
What you are, and used to be,
Looking backward to the time
When you wrote your earliest rhyme! -

When I sat
Filing at
Your first point, and dreaming that
Your initial song should be
Worthy of posterity.

With regret
I forget
If the song be living yet,
Yet remember, vaguely now,
It was honest, anyhow.

You have brought
Me a thought -
Truer yet was never taught, -
That the silent song is best,
And the unsung worthiest.

So if I,
When I die,
May as uncomplainingly
Drop aside as now you do,
Write of me, as I ...

James Whitcomb Riley

Tiare Tahiti (The South Seas)

Mamua, when our laughter ends,
And hearts and bodies, brown as white,
Are dust about the doors of friends,
Or scent ablowing down the night,
Then, oh! then, the wise agree,
Comes our immortality.
Mamua, there waits a land
Hard for us to understand.
Out of time, beyond the sun,
All are one in Paradise,
You and Pupure are one,
And Tau, and the ungainly wise.
There the Eternals are, and there
The Good, the Lovely, and the True,
And Types, whose earthly copies were
The foolish broken things we knew;
There is the Face, whose ghosts we are;
The real, the never-setting Star;
And the Flower, of which we love
Faint and fading shadows here;
Never a tear, but only Grief;
Dance, but not the limbs that move;
Songs in Song shall disappear;

Rupert Brooke

A Ballad Of Kisses.

I.

There are three kisses that I call to mind,
And I will sing their secrets as I go.
The first, a kiss too courteous to be kind,
Was such a kiss as monks and maidens know;
As sharp as frost, as blameless as the snow.


II.

The second kiss, ah God! I feel it yet,
And evermore my soul will loathe the same.
The toys and joys of fate I may forget,
But not the touch of that divided shame:
It clove my lips; it burnt me like a flame.


III.

The third, the final kiss, is one I use
Morning and noon and night; and not amiss.
Sorrow be mine if such I do refuse!
And when I die, be love, enrapt in bliss,
Re-sanctified in Heaven by such a kiss.

Eric Mackay

Confluents

As rivers seek the sea,
Much more deep than they,
So my soul seeks thee
Far away:
As running rivers moan
On their course alone
So I moan
Left alone.

As the delicate rose
To the sun's sweet strength
Doth herself unclose,
Breadth and length:
So spreads my heart to thee
Unveiled utterly,
I to thee
Utterly.

As morning dew exhales
Sunwards pure and free,
So my spirit fails
After thee:
As dew leaves not a trace
On the green earth's face;
I, no trace
On thy face.

Its goal the river knows,
Dewdrops find a way,
Sunlight cheers the rose
In her day:
Shall I, lone sorrow past,
Find thee at the last?
Sorrow past,
Thee at last?

Christina Georgina Rossetti

Pigeon Toes

A dusty clearing in the scrubs
Of barren, western lands,
Where, out of sight, or sign of hope
The wretched school-house stands;
A roof that glares at glaring days,
A bare, unshaded wall,
A fence that guards no blade of green,
A dust-storm over all.
The books and slates are packed away,
The maps are rolled and tied,
And for an hour I breathe, and lay
My ghastly mask aside;
I linger here to save my head
From voices shrill and thin,
That rasp for ever in the shed,
The ‘home’ I’m boarding in.

The heat and dirt and wretchedness
With which their lives began,
Bush mother nagging day and night,
And sullen, brooding man;
The minds that harp on single strings,
And never bright by chance,
The rasping voice of paltry things,
The ho...

Henry Lawson

After This The Judgement

As eager homebound traveller to the goal,
Or steadfast seeker on an unsearched main,
Or martyr panting for an aureole,
My fellow-pilgrims pass me, and attain
That hidden mansion of perpetual peace
Where keen desire and hope dwell free from pain:
That gate stands open of perennial ease;
I view the glory till I partly long,
Yet lack the fire of love which quickens these.
O passing Angel, speed me with a song,
A melody of heaven to reach my heart
And rouse me to the race and make me strong;
Till in such music I take up my part
Swelling those Hallelujahs full of rest,
One, tenfold, hundredfold, with heavenly art,
Fulfilling north and south and east and west,
Thousand, ten thousandfold, innumerable,
All blent in one yet each...

Christina Georgina Rossetti

On Hearing Mrs. Woodhouse Play The Harpsichord

We poets pride ourselves on what
We feel, and not what we achieve;
The world may call our children fools,
Enough for us that we conceive.
A little wren that loves the grass
Can be as proud as any lark
That tumbles in a cloudless sky,
Up near the sun, till he becomes
The apple of that shining eye.

So, lady, I would never dare
To hear your music ev'ry day;
With those great bursts that send my nerves
In waves to pound my heart away;
And those small notes that run like mice
Bewitched by light; else on those keys -
My tombs of song - you should engrave:
'My music, stronger than his own,
Has made this poet my dumb slave.'

William Henry Davies

Queen ov Skircoit Green.

Have yo seen mi bonny Mary,
Shoo lives at Skircoit Green;
An old fowk say a fairer lass
Nor her wor nivver seen.
An th' young ens say shoo's th' sweetest flaar,
'At's bloomin thear to-day;
An one an all are scared to deeath,
Lest shoo should flee away.

Shoo's health an strength an beauty too,
Shoo's grace an style as weel:
An what's moor precious far nor all,
Her heart is true as steel.
Shoo's full ov tenderness an love,
For onny in distress;
Whearivver sorrows heaviest prove,
Shoo's thear to cheer an bless.

Her fayther's growin old an gray,
Her mother's wellny done;
But in ther child they find a stay,
As life's sands quickly run.
Her smilin face like sunshine comes,
To chase away ther cares,
An peeace an comfort allus...

John Hartley

A Hymn To God The Father

Hear me, O God!
A broken heart
Is my best part.
Use still thy rod,
That I may prove
Therein thy Love.

If thou hadst not
Been stern to me,
But left me free,
I had forgot
Myself and thee.

For sin's so sweet,
As minds ill-bent
Rarely repent,
Until they meet
Their punishment.

Who more can crave
Than thou hast done?
That gav'st a Son,
To free a slave,
First made of nought;
With all since bought.

Sin, Death, and Hell
His glorious name
Quite overcame,
Yet I rebel
And slight the same.

But I'll come in
Before my loss
Me farther toss,
As sure to win
Under His cross.

Ben Jonson

An Incident

’Twas on a sunny summer day
I trod a mighty city’s street,
And when I started on my way
My heart was full of fancies sweet;
But soon, as nothing could be seen,
But countenances sharp and keen,
Nought heard or seen around but told
Of something bought or something sold,
And none that seemed to think or care
That any save himself was there,

Full soon my heart began to sink
With a strange shame and inward pain,
For I was sad within to think
Of this absorbing love of gain,
And various thoughts my bosom tost;
When suddenly my path there crossed,
Locked hand in hand with one another,
A little maiden and her brother
A little maiden, and she wore
Around her waist a pinafore.

And hand in hand along the street
This pretty pair did sof...

Arthur Hugh Clough

The Wreck Of The `Derry Castle'

Day of ending for beginnings!
Ocean hath another innings,
Ocean hath another score;
And the surges sing his winnings,
And the surges shout his winnings,
And the surges shriek his winnings,
All along the sullen shore.

Sing another dirge in wailing,
For another vessel sailing
With the shadow-ships at sea;
Shadow-ships for ever sinking,
Shadow-ships whose pumps are clinking,
And whose thirsty holds are drinking
Pledges to Eternity.

Pray for souls of ghastly, sodden
Corpses, floating round untrodden
Cliffs, where nought but sea-drift strays;
Souls of dead men, in whose faces
Of humanity no trace is,
Not a mark to show their races,
Floating round for days and days.

. . . . .

Ocean's salty tongues are...

Henry Lawson

Cleopatra

"Her beauty might outface the jealous hours,
Turn shame to love and pain to a tender sleep,
And the strong nerve of hate to sloth and tears;
Make spring rebellious in the sides of frost,
Thrust out lank winter with hot August growths,
Compel sweet blood into the husks of death,
And from strange beasts enforce harsh courtesy."

T. Hayman, Fall of Antony, 1655.



I
Her mouth is fragrant as a vine,
A vine with birds in all its boughs;
Serpent and scarab for a sign
Between the beauty of her brows
And the amorous deep lids divine.

II
Her great curled hair makes luminous
Her cheeks, her lifted throat and chin
Shall she not have the hearts of us
To shatter, and the loves therein
To shred between her fingers thus?

...

Algernon Charles Swinburne

The Prologue

To sing of Wars, of Captains, and of Kings,
Of Cities founded, Common-wealths begun,
For my mean pen are too superior things:
Or how they all, or each their dates have run
Let Poets and Historians set these forth,
My obscure Lines shall not so dim their worth.

But when my wondring eyes and envious heart
Great Bartas sugar'd lines, do but read o're
Fool I do grudge the Muses did not part
'Twixt him and me that overfluent store,
A Bartas can, do what a Bartas will
But simple I according to my skill.

From school-boyes tongue no rhet'rick we expect
Nor yet a sweet Consort from broken strings,
Nor perfect beauty, where's a main defect:
My foolish, broken blemish'd Muse so sings
And this to mend, alas, no Art is able,
'Cause nature, made it so irrep...

Anne Bradstreet

The Genius Of Harmony. An Irregular Ode.

        Ad harmoniam canere mundum.
CICERO "de Nat. Deor." lib. iii.


There lies a shell beneath the waves,
In many a hollow winding wreathed,
Such as of old
Echoed the breath that warbling sea-maids breathed;
This magic shell,
From the white bosom of a syren fell,
As once she wandered by the tide that laves
Sicilia's sands of gold.
It bears
Upon its shining side the mystic notes
Of those entrancing airs,[1]
The genii of the deep were wont to swell,
When heaven's eternal orbs their midnight music rolled!
Oh! seek it, wheresoe'er it floats;
And, if the power
Of thrilling numbers to thy soul be dear,

Go, ...

Thomas Moore

The Pilgrim

Put by the sun my joyful soul,
We are for darkness that is whole;

Put by the wine, now for long years
We must be thirsty with salt tears;

Put by the rose, bind thou instead
The fiercest thorns about thy head;

Put by the courteous tire, we need
But the poor pilgrim's blackest weed;

Put by - a'beit with tears - thy lute,
Sing but to God or else be mute.

Take leave of friends save such as dare
Thy love with Loneliness to share.

It is full tide. Put by regret.
Turn, turn away. Forget. Forget.

Put by the sun my lightless soul,
We are for darkness that is whole.

Robert Malise Bowyer Nichols

Sonnet. To A Lyre.

Friend of the lonely hour, from thy lov'd strain
The magic pow'r of pleasure have I known:
Awhile I lose remembrance of my pain,
And seem to taste of joys that long had flown.
When o'er my suffering soul reflection casts
The gloom of sorrow's sable-shadowing veil,
Recalling sad misfortunes chilling blasts
How sweet to thee to tell the mournful tale!
And tho' denied to me the strings to move
Like heavenly-gifted bards, to whom belong
The power to melt the yielding soul to love,
Or wake to war, with energetic song.
Yet thou, my Lyre, canst cheer the gloomy hour,
When sullen grief asserts her tyrant pow'r.

Thomas Gent

Quia Multum Amavi

Dear Heart, I think the young impassioned priest
When first he takes from out the hidden shrine
His God imprisoned in the Eucharist,
And eats the bread, and drinks the dreadful wine,

Feels not such awful wonder as I felt
When first my smitten eyes beat full on thee,
And all night long before thy feet I knelt
Till thou wert wearied of Idolatry.

Ah! hadst thou liked me less and loved me more,
Through all those summer days of joy and rain,
I had not now been sorrow's heritor,
Or stood a lackey in the House of Pain.

Yet, though remorse, youth's white-faced seneschal,
Tread on my heels with all his retinue,
I am most glad I loved thee think of all
The suns that go to make one speedwell blue!

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde

Sonnet to Shelley.

    Divinely strong and beautiful in soul!
With more than melody of mortal voice!
The free thy spirit's majesty extol,
When Liberty is made thy Muse's choice.
And then how pure and pleasing is thy song,
When Beauty - goddess of thy mind - its theme!
But most to thee those sweet, sad strains belong,
Where Truth we find through musing's fitful dream:
And trace Uncertainty and how it gropes
Through this and time to come with faltering feet,
And vanity of Pleasure, and the Hopes
Which Fear enfeebles and the Fates defeat:
Strains oft as if at thy once-sung desire
The wild west wind had ta'en thee for its lyre.

W. M. MacKeracher

Page 277 of 1418

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