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Death And Birth
'Tis the midnight hour; I heardThe Abbey-bell give out the word.Seldom is the lamp-ray shedOn some dwarfed foot-farer's headIn the deep and narrow streetLying ditch-like at my feetWhere I stand at lattice highDownward gazing listlesslyFrom my house upon the rock,Peak of earth's foundation-block. There her windows, every story,Shine with far-off nebulous glory!Round her in that luminous cloudStars obedient press and crowd,She the centre of all gazing,She the sun her planets dazing!In her eyes' victorious lightningSome are paling, some are brightening:Those on which they gracious turn,Stars combust, all tenfold burn;Those from which they look awayListless roam in twilight gray!When on her my looks I be...
George MacDonald
God's Education
I saw him steal the light awayThat haunted in her eye:It went so gently none could sayMore than that it was there one dayAnd missing by-and-by.I watched her longer, and he stoleHer lily tincts and rose;All her young sprightliness of soulNext fell beneath his cold control,And disappeared like those.I asked: "Why do you serve her so?Do you, for some glad day,Hoard these her sweets - ?" He said, "O no,They charm not me; I bid Time throwThem carelessly away."Said I: "We call that cruelty -We, your poor mortal kind."He mused. "The thought is new to me.Forsooth, though I men's master be,Theirs is the teaching mind!"
Thomas Hardy
The Poor And Honest Sodger.
Air - "The Mill, Mill, O."I. When wild war's deadly blast was blawn And gentle peace returning, Wi' mony a sweet babe fatherless, And mony a widow mourning; I left the lines and tented field, Where lang I'd been a lodger, My humble knapsack a' my wealth, A poor and honest sodger.II. A leal, light heart was in my breast, My hand unstain'd wi' plunder; And for fair Scotia, hame again, I cheery on did wander. I thought upon the banks o' Coil, I thought upon my Nancy, I thought upon the witching smile That caught my youthful fancy.III. At length I reach'd the bonny glen, Where ear...
Robert Burns
O Sun Of Real Peace
O sun of real peace! O hastening light!O free and extatic! O what I here, preparing, warble for!O the sun of the world will ascend, dazzling, and take his height - and you too, O my Ideal, will surely ascend!O so amazing and broad - up there resplendent, darting and burning!O vision prophetic, stagger'd with weight of light! with pouring glories!O lips of my soul, already becoming powerless!O ample and grand Presidentiads! Now the war, the war is over!New history! new heroes! I project you!Visions of poets! only you really last! sweep on! sweep on!O heights too swift and dizzy yet!O purged and luminous! you threaten me more than I can stand!(I must not venture - the ground under my feet menaces me - it will not support me:O future too immense,) - O present, I return, ...
Walt Whitman
Poem: [Greek Title]
Sweet, I blame you not, for mine the faultwas, had I not been made of common clayI had climbed the higher heights unclimbedyet, seen the fuller air, the larger day.From the wildness of my wasted passion I hadstruck a better, clearer song,Lit some lighter light of freer freedom, battledwith some Hydra-headed wrong.Had my lips been smitten into music by thekisses that but made them bleed,You had walked with Bice and the angels onthat verdant and enamelled mead.I had trod the road which Dante treading sawthe suns of seven circles shine,Ay! perchance had seen the heavens opening,as they opened to the Florentine.And the mighty nations would have crownedme, who am crownless now and without name,And some orient dawn...
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde
Thesis and Antithesis
If that we thus are guilty doth appear,Ah, guilty tho we are, grave judges, hear!Ah, yes; if ever you in your sweet youthMidst pleasures borders missed the track of truth,Made love on benches underneath green trees,Stuffed tender rhymes with old new similes,Whispered soft anythings, and in the bloodFelt all you said not most was understoodAh, if you have, as which of you has not?Nor what you were have utterly forgot,Then be not stern to faults yourselves have known,To others harsh, kind to yourselves alone.That we, young sir, beneath our youths green treesOnce did, not what should profit, but should please,In foolish longing and in love-sick playForgot the truth and lost the flying day,That we went wrong we say not is not true,B...
Arthur Hugh Clough
The Lonely Sparrow.
Thou from the top of yonder antique tower, O lonely sparrow, wandering, hast gone, Thy song repeating till the day is done, And through this valley strays the harmony. How Spring rejoices in the fields around, And fills the air with light, So that the heart is melted at the sight! Hark to the bleating flocks, the lowing herds! In sweet content, the other birds Through the free sky in emulous circles wheel, In pure enjoyment of their happy time: Thou, pensive, gazest on the scene apart, Nor wilt thou join them in the merry round; Shy playmate, thou for mirth hast little heart; And with thy plaintive music, dost consume Both of the year, and of thy life, the bloom. Alas, how much my ways
Giacomo Leopardi
From A Saxon Legend.
Within a vale in distant Saxony, In time uncertain, though 'twas long ago.There dwelt a woman, most unhappily, From borrowed trouble, and imagined woe.Hers was a husband generous, and kind, Her children, three, were not of uncouth mold;Hers was a thatch which mocked at rain and wind; Within her secret purse were coins of gold.The drouth had ne'er descended on her field, Nor had distemper sore distressed her kine;The vine had given its accustomed yield, So that her casks were filled with ruddy wine.Her sheep and goats waxed fat, and ample fleece Rewarded every harvest of the shear;Her lambs all bleated in sequestered peace, Nor prowling wolf occasioned nightly fear.With all she fretted, pined, and ...
Alfred Castner King
Threnodia Augustalis:
SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF HER LATE ROYAL HIGHNESS THE PRINCESS DOWAGER OF WALES.OVERTURE A SOLEMN DIRGE. AIR TRIO.Arise, ye sons of worth, arise,And waken every note of woe;When truth and virtue reach the skies,'Tis ours to weep the want below!CHORUS.When truth and virtue, etc.MAN SPEAKER.The praise attending pomp and power,The incense given to kings,Are but the trappings of an hourMere transitory things!The base bestow them: but the good agreeTo spurn the venal gifts as flattery.But when to pomp and power are join'dAn equal dignity of mindWhen titles are the smallest claimWhen wealth and rank and noble blood,But aid the power of doing goodThen all their trophies last; and flattery turns to fame.
Oliver Goldsmith
Evening.
What time the cricket unmolested sings,And blundering beetles try their clumsy wings,Leave me to meet the sweets of Even's hourBy hawthorn hedges when the May's in flower,With light enough to guard my cautious tread,As not to trample on the daisy's head,Down beaten pathways of a wish'd extent,Ev'n unimpeded by the bending bentThat, night and morning, bowing down with dew,Sullies the brightness of the maiden's shoe.There leave me musing 'neath the bow'ring ash,Counting the knoll of bells, or spurting dashOf muttering fountain-fall, with wild delight,Till Even lose In the blank of Night.
John Clare
To The Honourable Admiral Lord Radstock.
'Tis sweet to recollect life's past controls,And turn to days of sorrow when they're bye,And think of gentle friends and feeling soulsThat offered shelter when the storm was high,--It thrills one's heart:--As mariners have turn'd,When 'scap'd from shipwreck 'mid the billows' roar,To look on fragments that the tempest spurn'd,On which they clung, and struggled to the shore,So sweet it is to turn.--And, hour by hour,Reflection muses on the good and great,That lent a portion of their wealthy power,And sav'd a wormling from destruction's fate.Oft to the patron of her first essaysThe rural muse, O Radstock, turns her eye,Not with the fulsome noise of fawning praise,But soul's deep gushings in a silent sigh;As drooping blossoms, dwindling deep ...
The Poetry Pond
Everyone is a poet, or so the philosopher said. The world teems with poetry in much the sense the universe teems with life. A poet or two is squirrelled away in every major office. Boiler rooms hum with the tooth and nail, robust imagery of working class poets. The neurological desire to express oneself transcends even social barriers. Be creative, like a brain surgeon. My scalpel runneth over amongst all those cerebral ganglia. The mind washed clean, scrubbed down. Words burn holes on the paper. Firemen disguised as poets douse the heroic flames. Sherpas tightly drawn amidst depths of a Himalayan winter weather a torrent of words. Groggy, I search for breath, am given oxygen but see writing materials. In the future,...
Paul Cameron Brown
To A Well-Named Dwelling
Glad old house of lichened stonework,What I owed you in my lone work,Noon and night!Whensoever faint or ailing,Letting go my grasp and failing,You lent light.How by that fair title came you?Did some forward eye so name youKnowing that one,Sauntering down his century blindly,Would remark your sound, so kindly,And be won?Smile in sunlight, sleep in moonlight,Bask in April, May, and June-light,Zephyr-fanned;Let your chambers show no sorrow,Blanching day, or stuporing morrow,While they stand.
'Twas Na Her Bonnie Blue Een.
Tune - *Laddie, lie near me.* I. 'Twas na her bonnie blue een was my ruin; Fair tho' she be, that was ne'er my undoing: 'Twas the dear smile when naebody did mind us, 'Twas the bewitching, sweet stown glance o' kindness. II. Sair do I fear that to hope is denied me, Sair do I fear that despair maun abide me! But tho' fell fortune should fate us to sever, Queen shall she be in my bosom for ever. III. Mary, I'm thine wi' a passion sincerest, And thou hast plighted me love o' the dearest! And thou'rt the angel that never can alter - Sooner the sun in his motion would falter.
His Desire
Give me a man that is not dull,When all the world with rifts is full;But unamazed dares clearly sing,When as the roof's a-tottering;And though it falls, continues stillTickling the Cittern with his quill.
Robert Herrick
Songs Of Shattering III
All the dog-wood blossoms are underneath the tree! Ere spring was going--ah, spring is gone! And there comes no summer to the like of you and me,-- Blossom time is early, but no fruit sets on. All the dog-wood blossoms are underneath the tree, Browned at the edges, turned in a day; And I would with all my heart they trimmed a mound for me, And weeds were tall on all the paths that led that way!
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Birds in Alarm
The firetail tells the boys when nests are nighAnd tweets and flies from every passer-bye.The yellowhammer never makes a noiseBut flies in silence from the noisy boys;The boys will come and take them every day,And still she lays as none were ta'en away.The nightingale keeps tweeting-churring roundBut leaves in silence when the nest is found.The pewit hollos "chewrit" as she fliesAnd flops about the shepherd where he lies;But when her nest is found she stops her songAnd cocks [her] coppled crown and runs along.Wrens cock their tails and chitter loud and play,And robins hollo "tut" and fly away.
Mr. Philosopher
Old Mr. PhilosopherComes for Ben and Claire,An ugly man, a tall man,With bright-red hair.The books that he's writtenNo one can read."In fifty years they'll understand:Now there's no need."All that matters nowIs getting the fun.Come along, Ben and Claire;Plenty to be done."Then old Philosopher,Wisest man alive,Plays at Lions and TigersDown along the drive,Gambolling fiercelyThrough bushes and grass,Making monstrous mouths,Braying like an ass,Twisting buttercupsIn his orange hair,Hopping like a kangaroo,Growling like a bear.Right up to tea-timeThey frolic there."My legs are wingle,"Says Ben to Claire.
Robert von Ranke Graves