What Follows is a collection of poetry that I enjoy, by poets living and poets dead.
I hope that they do bring you some joy, however fleeting.
INDEX
Love in the Asylum
A stranger has come, to share my room
In the house not right in the head
A girl as mad as birds
Bolting the door of the night
With her arm, her plume
She deludes the heaven proof house
With entering clouds
Yet she deludes with walking the nightmarish room
As large as the dead
Or riding the imagined oceans of the male wards
She has come possessed
Who admits delusive light through bouncing walls
Possessed by the skies
She sleeps in a narrow trough
Yet walks the dust
Yet raves at her will on the madhouse boards
Worn thin with her walking tears
And taken by light in her arms
At long and dear last
I may without fail
Suffer the first vision that set fire to the stars.
- Dylan Thomas
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To Night
Swiftly walk o'er the western wave,
Spirit of Night!
Out of the misty eastern cave
Where,all the long and lone daylight
Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear
Which make thee terrible and dear
Swift be thy flight!
Wrap thy form in a mantle grey,
Star-inwrought!
Blind with thine hair the eyes of Day,
Kiss her until she be wearied out-
Then wander o'er city and sea and land,
Touching all with thine opiate wand-
Come, long-sought!
When I arose and saw the dawn
I sighed for thee;
When light rode high, and the dew was gone,
And noon lay heavy on the flower and tree
And the weary day turned to his rest
Lingering like an unloved guest
I sighed for thee
Thy brother Death came, and cried,
`Wouldst thou me?'
Thy sweet child sleep, the filmy-eyed,
Murmered like a noontide bee,
`Shall I nestle near thy side?
Wouldst thou me?' and I replied,
`No not thee!'
Death will come when thou art dead,
Soon, too soon-
Sleep will come when thou art fled,
Of neither would I ask thee boon
I ask of thee, beloved Night-
Swift be thine approaching flight,
Come soon, soon!
-Shelley
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Ozymandias
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
A wrnkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on those lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.'
-Shelley
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She Walks in Beauty
She Walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies,
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One Shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress
Or softly lightens o'er her face,
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.
And on that cheek and o'er that brow
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent.
-Lord Byron
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Bridal Ballad
The ring is on my hand,
And the wreath is on my brow;
Satins and jewels grand
Are all at my command
And I am happy now
And my lord he loves me well
But, when first he breathed his vow
I felt my bosom swell-
For the words rang as a knell,
And the voice seemed his who fell
In the battle down the dell,
And who is happy now.
But he spoke to reassure me,
And he kissed my pallid brow,
While a reverie came o'er me,
And to the churchyard bore me,
And I sighed to him before me,
Thinking him dead D'Elormie,
"Oh, I am happy now!"
And thus the words were spoken,
And this the plighted vow,
And, though my faith be broken,
And, though my heart be broken,
Behold the golden token
That proves me happy now!
Would God I could awaken!
For I dream I know not how,
And my soul is sorely shaken
Lest an evil step be taken, -
Lest the dead who is forsaken
May not be happy now.
-Edgar Allen Poe
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A Dream within a Dream
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow -
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand -
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep - while I weep!
O God! Can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! Can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
-Edgar Allen Poe
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Watching the Moon Rise
I rise and dress and wait to greet the moon,
A waning moon, that rises late to-night.
Slowly she creeps above the rugged hill,
And touches first the treetops with her light;
Then golden wavelets shiver in their sleep;
Faint and more tenuous flows heaven's silver stream
I linger till Orion's stars have set,
Then sleep again, and see it still, in dream.
-Anon (from `The Dragon Book')
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The Moon in the Mountains
Here in the mountains the moon I love,
Hanging alight in a distant grove;
Pitying me in my loneliness,
She reaches a finger and touches my dress.
To the Index
Lines on a girl in the Palace School of Music
When the moon lights the trees in the courtyard
Her bright eyes discover a bird on its nest
Leaning forward from the shadows, with her jade hairpin
She rescues a moth from the flame.
-Chang Hu
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Midnight Thoughts
Midnight? - And still I cannot sleep!
I rise and walk, I know not where,
Then back again, to shut the door,
And light the lamp my watch to share.
Chirping within the hollow wall,
What makes the cricket's note so sad?
It seems to say its life, like mine,
Is robbed of all that made it glad.
Lonely?-No loneliness like this!
The soldier, held by foreign war
A thousand leagues beyond the pass,
The Buddhist monk, whose vows debar
From ever knowing how they fare,
Think in the night of absent friends,
And see life stretch out through weary years
Of wretchedness that never ends.
- Anon. (From `The Dragon Book')
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The Lost Love
She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove;
A maid whom there were none to praise,
And very few to love.
A violet by a mossy stone
Half-hidden from the eye!
- Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.
She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and O!
The difference to me!
-Wordsworth
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The Death Bed
We watch'd her breathing thro' the night,
Her breathing soft and low,
As in her breast the wave of life
Kept heaving to and fro.
But when the morn came dim and sad
And chill with early showers,
Her quiet eyelids closed - she had
Another morn than ours.
-T.Hood
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Antigonish
As I was going up the stair
I met a man who wasn't there!
He wasn't there again today!
I wish, I wish he'd stay away!
-Hughes Mearns
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Death is in my eyes today
Death is in my eyes today
As when a sick man becomes whole,
As when one walketh abroad after sickness.
Death is in my eyes today
Like the scent of myrrh,
As when one sitteth under the boats sail on a windy day.
Death is in my eyes today
Like the smell of water lillies,
As when one sitteth on the bank of drunkeness
Death is in my eyes today
Like a well trodden road,
As when one returneth from the war into his home.
Death is in my eyes today,
Like the unveiling of heaven,
As when one attaineth to that which he knew not.
Death is in my eyes today,
As when one longeth to see his house again
after he has spent many years in captivity.
- an unknown ancient Egyptian poet
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Quicksilver
Poor pathetic people ...
Old memories are all that are left of love and hate.
Lowly is the human body and mighty is the existential will.
Apocalyptic skies of metallic red and omens of mystical proportions.
Raise your heads to the heavens and let the tears flow.
Bear the pain and scars and feel your soul be rent asunder.
Eternal is the struggle between good and evil, order and chaos.
All those skeletons in your closets will come back.
Reality has been shattered, beware!
- Ulysse Legare Oghiguian
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Epitaph
(Placed on the tomb of his daughter by Mark Twain)
Warm summer sun shine kindly here;
Warm southern wind blow softly here;
Green sod above lie light, lie light -
Goodnight, dear heart, goodnight, goodnight.
-Robert Richardson
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Time
Unfathomable Sea! whose waves are years,
Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe
Are brackish with the salt of human tears!
Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow
Claspest the limits of mortality,
And sick of prey, yet howling on for more,
Vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore;
Treacherous in calm, and terrible in storm,
Who shall put forth on thee,
Unfathomable Sea?
-Percy Bysshe Shelley
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My November Guest
My Sorrow when she's here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.
Her pleasure will not let me stay.
She talks and I am fain to list:
She's glad the birds are gone away,
She's glad her simple worsted grey
Is silver now with clinging mist.
The desolate, deserted trees,
The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eyes for these,
And vexes me for reason why.
Not yesterday I learned to know
The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
And they are better for her praise.
- Robert Frost
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La Belle Dame Sans Merci
`O What can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has wither'd from the lake,
And no birds sing.
`O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms!
So haggard and so woebegone?
The squirrel's granary is full,
And the harvest's done.
`I see a lily on thy brow
With anguish moist and fever-dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.'
`I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful-a fairy's child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.
`I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She look'd at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.
`I set her on my pacing steed
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A fairy's song.
`She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild and manna-dew,
And sure in language strange she said
"I love thee true."
`She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she wept, and sigh'd full sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.
`And there she lulléd me asleep,
And there I dream'd-Ah! woe betide!
The latest dream I ever dream'd
On the cold hill's side.
`I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried - "La belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!"
`I saw their starved lips in the gloam
With horrid warning gapéd wide,
And I awoke and found me here
On the cold hill's side
`And this is why I sojourn here
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is wither'd from the lake
And no birds sing.'
-John Keats
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Song
How sweet I roamed from field to field
And tasted all the summer's pride,
Till I the prince of love beheld
Who in the Sunny Beams did glide!
He showed me lilies for my hair,
And blushing roses for my brow;
He led me through his gardens fair
Where all his golden pleasures grow.
With sweet Maydews my wings were wet,
And Phoebus fired my vocal rage;
He caught me in his silken net,
And shut me in his golden cage.
He loves to sit and hear me sing,
He, laughing, sports and plays with me;
Then stretches out my golden wing,
And mocks my loss of liberty.
- William Blake
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The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
- Robert Frost
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On the Elgin Marbles
My spirit is too weak; mortality
Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,
And each imagined pinnacle and steep
Of godlike hardship tells me I must die
Like a sick eagle looking at the sky.
Yet 'tis a gentle luxury to weep
That I have not the cloudy winds to keep
Fresh for the opening of the morning's eye.
Such dim-conceived glories of the brain,
Bring round the heart an indescribable feud,
So do these wonders a most dizzy pain,
That mingles Grecian grandeur with the rude
Wasting of old Time - with a billowy main -
A sun, a shadow of magnitude.
- John Keats
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The Desire of the Moth
One word is too often profaned
For me to profane it,
One feeling too falsely disdained
For thee to disdain it;
One hope is too like despair
For prudence to smother,
And pity from thee more dear
Than that from another.
I can give not what men call love;
But wilt thou accept not
The worship the heart lifts above
And the heavens reject not:
The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow?
-Percy Bysshe Shelley
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Leaden West
So leaden skies hang o'er the west,
There fell-men stalk the roads and rails;
The mother of us all cries out,
As machinery of greed and doubt,
Tears at her heart's fresh vales.
Yet I have stood at creations crest,
And stared into its swirling gale.
Lo my sister the world spins fast-
Faster, looping, spinning rather;
Like a horse ridden to a post-
Paler, panting, racing lather.
Look towards the bright-burning east,
Where flaming birds climb out of lava;
From hills and valleys of a molten feast,
The living creatures of a wilder beast,
Shout the thrill of creations laughter.
Know I have stood at creations crest,
And rejoiced at its blossoming power.
Lo my sister the world spins fast-
A Faster, looping, spinning trist;
While those of us who live the earth,
Gather the strong, spiritual harvest.
- Raven Ghostroo
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Annabel Lee
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;-
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
She was a child and I was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love-
I and my Annabel Lee-
With a love that the winged seraphs of Heaven
Coveted her and me.
And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud by night
Chilling my Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.
The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,
Went envying her and me:-
Yes! that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of a cloud, chilling
And killing my Annabel Lee.
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we-
Of many far wiser than we-
And neither the angels in Heaven above
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee:-
For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I see the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea-
In her tomb by the side of the sea.
- Edgar Allen Poe
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The Background Image on this page is from `Vampire Hunter D'
The Bars are of my own devising.
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