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Page 301 of 1418

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Page 301 of 1418

The Watches Of The Night.

    O the waiting in the watches of the night!
In the darkness, desolation, and contrition and affright;
The awful hush that holds us shut away from all delight:
The ever weary memory that ever weary goes
Recounting ever over every aching loss it knows -
The ever weary eyelids gasping ever for repose -
In the dreary, weary watches of the night!

Dark - stifling dark - the watches of the night!
With tingling nerves at tension, how the blackness flashes white
With spectral visitations smitten past the inner sight! -
What shuddering sense of wrongs we've wrought that may not be redressed -
Of tears we did not brush away - of lips we left unpressed,
And hands that we let fall, with all their loyalty unguessed!
Ah! the empt...

James Whitcomb Riley

The Lost Path.

Air--Grádh mo chroidhe.


I.

Sweet thoughts, bright dreams, my comfort be,
All comfort else has flown;
For every hope was false to me,
And here I am, alone.
What thoughts were mine in early youth!
Like some old Irish song,
Brimful of love, and life, and truth,
My spirit gushed along.


II.

I hoped to right my native isle,
I hoped a soldier's fame,
I hoped to rest in woman's smile
And win a minstrel's name--
Oh! little have I served my land,
No laurels press my brow,
I have no woman's heart or hand,
Nor minstrel honours now.


III.

But fancy has a magic power,
It brings me wreath and crown,
And woman's love, the self-same hour
It smites oppression down.
Sweet thoughts...

Thomas Osborne Davis

Mater Dolorosa

Citoyen, lui dit Enjoiras, ma mère, c’est la République.
- Les Misérables.



Who is this that sits by the way, by the wild wayside,
In a rent stained raiment, the robe of a cast-off bride,
In the dust, in the rainfall sitting, with soiled feet bare,
With the night for a garment upon her, with torn wet hair?
She is fairer of face than the daughters of men, and her eyes,
Worn through with her tears, are deep as the depth of skies.

This is she for whose sake being fallen, for whose abject sake,
Earth groans in the blackness of darkness, and men’s hearts break.
This is she for whose love, having seen her, the men that were
Poured life out as water, and shed their souls upon air.
This is she for whose glory their years were counted as foam;
Whose face was a...

Algernon Charles Swinburne

The Ivy-Wife

I longed to love a full-boughed beech
And be as high as he:
I stretched an arm within his reach,
And signalled unity.
But with his drip he forced a breach,
And tried to poison me.

I gave the grasp of partnership
To one of other race
A plane: he barked him strip by strip
From upper bough to base;
And me therewith; for gone my grip,
My arms could not enlace.

In new affection next I strove
To coll an ash I saw,
And he in trust received my love;
Till with my soft green claw
I cramped and bound him as I wove . . .
Such was my love: ha-ha!

By this I gained his strength and height
Without his rivalry.
But in my triumph I lost sight
Of afterhaps. Soon he,
Being bark-bound, flagged, snapped, fell outright,
And in his...

Thomas Hardy

Sonnet XCIX.

Amor, Fortuna, e la mia mente schiva.

THE CAUSES OF HIS WOE.


Love, Fortune, and my melancholy mind,
Sick of the present, lingering on the past,
Afflict me so, that envious thoughts I cast
On those who life's dark shore have left behind.
Love racks my bosom: Fortune's wintry wind
Kills every comfort: my weak mind at last
Is chafed and pines, so many ills and vast
Expose its peace to constant strifes unkind.
Nor hope I better days shall turn again;
But what is left from bad to worse may pass:
For ah! already life is on the wane.
Not now of adamant, but frail as glass,
I see my best hopes fall from me or fade,
And low in dust my fond thoughts broken laid.

MACGREGOR.


Love, Fortune, and my ever-faithful mind,<...

Francesco Petrarca

To A Castillan Song

We held the book together timidly,
Whose antique music in an alien tongue
Once rose among the dew-drenched vines that hung
Beneath a high Castilian balcony.
I felt the lute strings' ancient ecstasy,
And while he read, my love-filled heart was stung,
And throbbed, as where an ardent bird has clung
The branches tremble on a blossomed tree.
Oh lady for whose sake the song was made,
Laid long ago in some still cypress shade,
Divided from the man who longed for thee,
Here in a land whose name he never heard,
His song brought love as April brings the bird,
And not a breath divides my love from me!

Sara Teasdale

A Quarrel with Love

Oh that I could write a story
Of love's dealing with affection!
How he makes the spirit sorry
That is touch'd with his infection.

But he doth so closely wind him,
In the plaits of will ill-pleased,
That the heart can never find him
Till it be too much diseased.

'Tis a subtle kind or spirit
Of a venom-kind of nature,
That can, like a coney-ferret,
Creep unawares upon a creature.

Never eye that can behold it,
Though it worketh first by seeing;
Nor conceit that can unfold it,
Though in thoughts be all its being.

Oh! it maketh old men witty,
Young men wanton, women idle,
While that patience weeps, for pity
Reason bite not nature's bridle.

What it is, in conjecture;
S...

Nicholas Breton

Tears.

The tears of saints more sweet by far
Than all the songs of sinners are.

Robert Herrick

Easter Eve.

Hear me, Brother, gently met;
Just a little, turn not yet,
Thou shalt laugh, and soon forget:
Now the midnight draweth near.
I have little more to tell;
Soon with hollow stroke and knell,
Thou shalt count the palace bell,
Calling that the hour is here.

Burdens black and strange to bear,
I must tell, and thou must share,
Listening with that stony stare,
Even as many a man before.
Years have lightly come and gone
In their jocund unison.
But the tides of life roll on - -
They remember now no more.

Once upon a night of glee,
In an hour of revelry,
As I wandered restlessly,
I beheld with burning eye,
How a pale procession rolled
Through a quarter quaint and old,
With its banners and its gold,
And the crucifix went b...

Archibald Lampman

Caelia -Sonnet - 4

Were't not for you, here should my pen have rest
And take a long leave of sweet poesy;
Britannia's swains, and rivers far by west,
Should hear no more mine oaten melody;
Yet shall the song I sung of them awhile
Unperfect lie, and make no further known
The happy loves of this our pleasant Isle;
Till I have left some record of mine own.
You are the subject now, and, writing you,
I well may versify, not poetize:
Here needs no fiction: for the graces true
And virtues clip not with base flatteries.
Here could I write what you deserve of praise,
Others might wear, but I should win the bays.

William Browne

Age

This ugly old crone -
Every beauty she had
When a maid, when a maid.
Her beautiful eyes,
Too youthful, too wise,
Seemed ever to come
To so lightless a home,
Cold and dull as a stone.
And her cheeks - who would guess
Cheeks cadaverous as this
Once with colours were gay
As the flower on its spray?
Who would ever believe
Aught could bring one to grieve
So much as to make
Lips bent for love's sake
So thin and so grey?
O Youth, come away!
As she asks in her lone,
This old, desolate crone.
She loves us no more;
She is too old to care
For the charms that of yore
Made her body so fair.
Past repining, past care,
She lives but to bear
One or two fleeting years
Earth's indifference: her tears
Have lost now their...

Walter De La Mare

Genieve To Her Lover.

I turn the key in this idle hour
Of an ivory box, and looking, lo -
See only dust - the dust of a flower;
The waters will ebb, the waters will flow,
And dreams will come, and dreams will go,
Forever.

Oh, friend, if you and I should meet
Beneath the boughs of the bending lime,
Should you in the same low voice repeat
The tender words of the old love rhyme,
It could not bring back the same old time,
Never.

When you laid this rose against my brow,
I was quite unused to the ways of men,
With my trusting heart; I am wiser now,
So I smile, remembering my heart-throbs then,
The dust of a rose cannot blossom again,
Never.

The brow that you praised has colder grown,
And hearts will change, I suppose they must,
A rose to ...

Marietta Holley

The Friend’s Burial

My thoughts are all in yonder town,
Where, wept by many tears,
To-day my mother's friend lays down
The burden of her years.

True as in life, no poor disguise
Of death with her is seen,
And on her simple casket lies
No wreath of bloom and green.

Oh, not for her the florist's art,
The mocking weeds of woe;
Dear memories in each mourner's heart
Like heaven's white lilies blow.

And all about the softening air
Of new-born sweetness tells,
And the ungathered May-flowers wear
The tints of ocean shells.

The old, assuring miracle
Is fresh as heretofore;
And earth takes up its parable
Of life from death once more.

Here organ-swell and church-bell toll
Methinks but discord were;
The prayerful silence of the soul...

John Greenleaf Whittier

The Water Lady.[1]

Alas, the moon should ever beam
To show what man should never see! -
I saw a maiden on a stream,
And fair was she!

I staid awhile, to see her throw
Her tresses black, that all beset
The fair horizon of her brow
With clouds of jet.

I staid a little while to view
Her cheek, that wore in place of red
The bloom of water, tender blue,
Daintily spread.

I staid to watch, a little space,
Her parted lips if she would sing;
The waters closed above her face
With many a ring.

And still I staid a little more,
Alas! she never comes again!
I throw my flowers from the shore,
And watch in vain.

I know my life will fade away,
I know that I must vainly pine,
For I am made of mortal clay,
But she's divine!

Thomas Hood

The Romany Girl

The sun goes down, and with him takes
The coarseness of my poor attire;
The fair moon mounts, and aye the flame
Of Gypsy beauty blazes higher.

Pale Northern girls! you scorn our race;
You captives of your air-tight halls,
Wear out indoors your sickly days,
But leave us the horizon walls.

And if I take you, dames, to task,
And say it frankly without guile,
Then you are Gypsies in a mask,
And I the lady all the while.

If on the heath, below the moon,
I court and play with paler blood,
Me false to mine dare whisper none,--
One sallow horseman knows me good.

Go, keep your cheek's rose from the rain,
For teeth and hair with shopmen deal;
My swarthy tint is in the grain,
The rocks and forest know it real.

The wild ai...

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Geraldine

My head is filled with olden rhymes beside this moaning sea,
But many and many a day has gone since I was dear to thee!
I know my passion fades away, and therefore oft regret
That some who love indeed can part and in the years forget.
Ah! through the twilights when we stood the wattle trees between,
We did not dream of such a time as this, fair Geraldine.

I do not say that all has gone of passion and of pain;
I yearn for many happy thoughts I shall not think again!
And often when the wind is up, and wailing round the eaves,
You sigh for withered Purpose shred and scattered like the leaves,
The Purpose blooming when we met each other on the green;
The sunset heavy in your curls, my golden Geraldine.

I think we lived a loftier life through hours of Long Ago,
For in...

Henry Kendall

We Must Get Home

We must get home! How could we stray like this? -
So far from home, we know not where it is, -
Only in some fair, apple-blossomy place
Of children's faces - and the mother's face -
We dimly dream it, till the vision clears
Even in the eyes of fancy, glad with tears.

We must get home - for we have been away
So long, it seems forever and a day!
And O so very homesick we have grown,
The laughter of the world is like a moan
In our tired hearing, and its song as vain, -
We must get home - we must get home again!

We must get home! With heart and soul we yearn
To find the long-lost pathway, and return!...
The child's shout lifted from the questing band
Of old folk, faring weary, hand in hand,
But faces brightening, as if clouds at last
Were showering...

James Whitcomb Riley

Student-Song.

When Youth's warm heart beats high, my friend,
And Youth's blue sky is bright,
And shines in Youth's clear eye, my friend,
Love's early dawning light,
Let the free soul spurn care's control,
And while the glad days shine,
We'll use their beams for Youth's gay dreams
Of Love and Song and Wine.

Let not the bigot's frown, my friend,
O'ercast thy brow with gloom,
For Autumn's sober brown, my friend,
Shall follow Summer's bloom.
Let smiles and sighs and loving eyes
In changeful beauty shine,
And shed their beams on Youth's gay dreams
Of Love and Song and Wine.

For in the weary years, my friend,
That stretched before us lie,
There'll be enough of tears, my friend,
To dim the brightest eye.
So le...

John Hay

Page 301 of 1418

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