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Retrospect: The Jests Of The Clock.
He had met hours of the clock he never guessed before,Dumb, dragging, mirthless hours confused with dreams and fear,Bone-chilling, hungry hours when the gods sleep and snore,Bequeathing earth and heaven to ghosts, and will not hear,And will not hear man groan chained to the sodden ground,Rotting alive; in feather beds they slumbered sound.When noisome smells of day were sicklied by cold night,When sentries froze and muttered; when beyond the wireBlank shadows crawled and tumbled, shaking, tricking the sight,When impotent hatred of Life stifled desire,Then soared the sudden rocket, broke in blanching showers.O lagging watch! O dawn! O hope-forsaken hours!How often with numbed heart, stale lips, venting his rageHe swore he'd be a dolt, a trait...
Robert von Ranke Graves
A Mystery Play
CHARACTERSThe Father. The Child. Death. Angels. Two Travellers. * * * * *The even settles still and deep,In the cold sky the last gold burns,Across the colour snow flakes creep.Each one from grey to glory turnsThen flutters into nothingness;The frost down falls with mighty stressThrough the swift cloud that parts on high;The great stars shrivel into lessIn the hard depth of the iron sky. * * * * *The Child:What is that light, dear father,That light in the dark, dark sky?The Father:Those are the lights of the cityAnd the villages thereby.The Child:There must be fire in the city
Duncan Campbell Scott
On R.A., Esq.
Know thou, O stranger to the fame Of this much lov'd, much honour'd name! (For none that knew him need be told) A warmer heart death ne'er made cold.
Robert Burns
The Poet Care
Care is a Poet fine:He works in shade or shine,And leaves, you know his sign!No day without its line.He writes with iron penUpon the brows of men;Faint lines at first, and thenHe scores them in again.His touch at first is lightOn Beautys brow of white;The old churl loves to writeOn foreheads broad and bright.A line for young love crossed,A line for fair hopes lostIn an untimely frost,A line that means Thou Wast.Then deeper script appears:The furrows of dim fears,The traces of old tears,The tide-marks of the years.To him with sight made strongBy suffering and wrong,The brows of all the throngAre eloquent with song.
Victor James Daley
Alexander Crummell--Dead
Back to the breast of thy mother,Child of the earth!E'en her caress can not smotherWhat thou hast done.Follow the trail of the westering sunOver the earth.Thy light and his were as one--Sun, in thy worth.Unto a nation whose sky was as night,Camest thou, holily, bearing thy light:And the dawn came,In it thy fameFlashed up in a flame.Back to the breast of thy mother--To rest.Long hast thou striven;Dared where the hills by the lightning of heaven were riven;Go now, pure shriven.Who shall come after thee, out of the clay--Learned one and leader to show us the way?Who shall rise up when the world gives the test?Think thou no more of this--Rest!
Paul Laurence Dunbar
To Some Birds Flown Away.
("Enfants! Oh! revenez!")[XXII, April, 1837]Children, come back - come back, I say -You whom my folly chased awayA moment since, from this my room,With bristling wrath and words of doom!What had you done, you bandits small,With lips as red as roses all?What crime? - what wild and hapless deed?What porcelain vase by you was splitTo thousand pieces? Did you needFor pastime, as you handled it,Some Gothic missal to enrichWith your designs fantastical?Or did your tearing fingers fallOn some old picture? Which, oh, whichYour dreadful fault? Not one of these;Only when left yourselves to pleaseThis morning but a moment here'Mid papers tinted by my mindYou took some embryo verses near -Half formed, ...
Victor-Marie Hugo
Simon Lee: The Old Huntsman
With an incident in which he was concernedIn the sweet shire of Cardigan,Not far from pleasant Ivor-hall,An old Man dwells, a little man,'Tis said he once was tall.For five-and-thirty years he livedA running huntsman merry;And still the centre of his cheekIs red as a ripe cherry.No man like him the horn could sound,And hill and valley rang with gleeWhen Echo bandied, round and roundThe halloo of Simon Lee.In those proud days, he little caredFor husbandry or tillage;To blither tasks did Simon rouseThe sleepers of the village.He all the country could outrun,Could leave both man and horse behind;And often, ere the chase was done,He reeled, and was stone-blind.And still there's something in the worldAt whic...
William Wordsworth
Peggy.
I.Now westlin winds and slaughtering guns Bring autumn's pleasant weather;The moor-cock springs, on whirring wings, Amang the blooming heather:Now waving grain, wide o'er the plain, Delights the weary farmer;And the moon shines bright, when I rove at night To muse upon my charmer.II.The partridge loves the fruitful fells; The plover loves the mountains;The woodcock haunts the lonely dells; The soaring hern the fountains;Thro' lofty groves the cushat roves The path of man to shun it;The hazel bush o'erhangs the thrush, The spreading thorn the linnet.III.Thus ev'ry kind their pleasure find, The savage and the tender;Some social join, and leagues combine; ...
In a London Square
Put forth thy leaf, thou lofty plane,East wind and frost are safely gone;With zephyr mild and balmy rainThe summer comes serenely on;Earth, air, and sun and skies combineTo promise all thats kind and fair:But thou, O human heart of mine,Be still, contain thyself, and bear.December days were brief and chill,The winds of March were wild and drear,And, nearing and receding still,Spring never would, we thought, be here.The leaves that burst, the suns that shine,Had, not the less, their certain date:And thou, O human heart of mine,Be still, refrain thyself, and wait.
Arthur Hugh Clough
Farmer's Boy
He waits all day beside his little flockAnd asks the passing stranger what's o'clock,But those who often pass his daily tasksLook at their watch and tell before he asks.He mutters stories to himself and liesWhere the thick hedge the warmest house supplies,And when he hears the hunters far and wideHe climbs the highest tree to see them ride--He climbs till all the fields are blea and bareAnd makes the old crow's nest an easy chair.And soon his sheep are got in other grounds--He hastens down and fears his master come,He stops the gap and keeps them all in boundsAnd tends them closely till it's time for home.
John Clare
My Masterpiece
It's slim and trim and bound in blue;Its leaves are crisp and edged with gold;Its words are simple, stalwart too;Its thoughts are tender, wise and bold.Its pages scintillate with wit;Its pathos clutches at my throat:Oh, how I love each line of it!That Little Book I Never Wrote.In dreams I see it praised and prizedBy all, from plowman unto peer;It's pencil-marked and memorized,It's loaned (and not returned, I fear);It's worn and torn and travel-tossed,And even dusky natives quoteThat classic that the world has lost,The Little Book I Never Wrote.Poor ghost! For homes you've failed to cheer,For grieving hearts uncomforted,Don't haunt me now. . . . Alas! I fearThe fire of Inspiration's dead.A humdrum way I go to-...
Robert William Service
The Hermit
Now the quietude of earthNestles deep my heart within;Friendships new and strange have birthSince I left the city's din.Here the tempest stays its guile,Like a big kind brother plays,Romps and pauses here awhileFrom its immemorial ways.Now the silver light of dawnSlipping through the leaves that fleckMy one window, hurries on,Throws its arms around my neck.Darkness to my doorway hies,Lays her chin upon the roof,And her burning seraph eyesNow no longer keep aloof.Here the ancient mysteryHolds its hands out day by day,Takes a chair and croons with meBy my cabin built of clay.When the dusky shadow flits,By the chimney nook I seeWhere the old enchanter sits,Smiles, and waves, a...
George William Russell
His Loss
All has been plunder'd from me but my wit:Fortune herself can lay no claim to it.
Robert Herrick
To - - .
The Day was dying; his breathWavered away in a hectic gleam;And I said, if Life's a dream, and DeathAnd Love and all are dreams - I'll dream.A mist came over the bayLike as a dream would over an eye.The mist was white and the dream was greyAnd both contained a human cry,The burthen whereof was "Love",And it filled both mist and dream with pain,And the hills below and the skies aboveWere touched and uttered it back again.The mist broke: down the riftA kind ray shot from a holy star.Then my dream did waver and break and lift -Through it, O Love, shone thy face, afar.So Boyhood sets: comes Youth,A painful night of mists and dreams;That broods till Love's exquisite truth,The star of a morn-clear manhood, be...
Sidney Lanier
Apparent Failure
We shall soon lose a celebrated building.- Paris Newspaper.I.No, for I ll save it! Seven years since,I passed through Paris, stopped a dayTo see the baptism of your Prince;Saw, made my bow, and went my wayWalking the heat and headache off,I took the Seine-side, you surmise,Thought of the Congress, Gortschakoff,Cavours appeal and Buols replies,So sauntered till what met my eyes?II.Only the Doric little Morgue!The dead-house where you show your drownedPetrarchs Vaucluse makes proud the Sorgue,Your Morgue has made the Seine renowned.One pays ones debt in such a case;I plucked up heart and entered, stalked,Keeping a tolerable faceCompared with some whose cheeks were chalked
Robert Browning
The Bare Trees (The Rocky Road To Dublin)
Unfortunates, on the bare tree! I mourn for ye That have no place to house, But on those winter-white cold boughs To sit, (How far apart ye sit) And brood In this wide, wintry solitude That has no song at all to hearten it. Fly away, little birds! Fly away to Spain, Stay there all the winter Then come back again; Come back in the summer When the leaves are thick; Little weeny cold birds Fly away quick.
James Stephens
A Poet's Epitaph
Art thou a Statist in the vanOf public conflicts trained and bred?First learn to love one living man;'Then' may'st thou think upon the dead.A Lawyer art thou? draw not nigh!Go, carry to some fitter placeThe keenness of that practised eye,The hardness of that sallow face.Art thou a Man of purple cheer?A rosy Man, right plump to see?Approach; yet, Doctor, not too near,This grave no cushion is for thee.Or art thou one of gallant pride,A Soldier and no man of chaff?Welcome! but lay thy sword aside,And lean upon a peasant's staff.Physician art thou? one, all eyes,Philosopher! a fingering slave,One that would peep and botaniseUpon his mother's grave?Wrapt closely in thy sensual fleece,O turn...
Lines To A Stupid Picture.
"--the music of the moonSleeps in the plain eggs of the nightingale."Aylmer's Field.Five geese,--a landscape damp and wild,--A stunted, not too pretty, child,Beneath a battered gingham;Such things, to say the least, requireA Muse of more-than-average FireEffectively to sing 'em.And yet--Why should they? Souls of markHave sprung from such;--e'en Joan of ArcHad scarce a grander duty;Not always ('tis a maxim trite)From righteous sources comes the right,--From beautiful, the beauty.Who shall decide where seed is sown?Maybe some priceless germ was blownTo this unwholesome marish;(And what must grow will still increase,Though cackled round by half the geeseAnd ganders in the parish.)Maybe th...
Henry Austin Dobson