A Tomb in Tuscany
In Montepulciano fair,—
Long famous for that vintage rare,
Prized by the giver of the vine
Above all wine—
There dwelt a man whose years had taught him
To seek, beyond what wealth had brought him,
Something to give his transient name
A lasting fame.
"For lordly palaces," he said,
"Shall crumble; ay, and bastions dread,
And temples grave and gardens gay
Become as they;
Each vaunted image of my power
Shall perish like a wayside flower,
And like the hawk my hand hath fed
Lie waste and dead.
"Wherefore, ere yet my days be spent,
I will uprear a monument
That 'gainst the envious floods of Time
Shall stand sublime;
My treasures vast shall serve and cherish
An art too heavenly to perish:
A beauty, born of passion pure,
That shall endure!"
So spoke he; and now lies asleep,
While near him forms angelic keep
Unwearied watch, and from decay
Guard him alway:
Rare, sculptured forms that blend his story
With Donatello's deathless glory,
And make mankind his debtors be
Eternally.
For lordly castles, as he said,
Have crumbled; ay, and bastions dread,
And temples grave and gardens gay
Become as they.
Each vaunted image of his power
Has perished like a wayside flower,
But living in the art he fed,
He is not dead!
poem by Florence Earle Coates from Poems (1898)
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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A Beautiful Flower
I have a flower, Yes I have picked a beautiful flower,
One with greatest strength like a tree with mightiness and power,
Power of faith beyond any measure,
Yet precious and few like a beautiful treasure.
How precious its love it shares,
How very precious sweet and rare.
Easily lost as colors are tossed on the tides,
For those who tend to set it aside.
Beauty beyond their eye’s is what I have gained as a prize,
And keeping it, is what makes my heart so wise.
It may seem like neglect on their part,
But neglect has not been the wish of their heart.
Why so often many are in a rush,
The beauty of this flower is often a hush.
I praise my flower for its humbleness,
Staying that way always brings forth its beautifulness.
Yes my flower that I have I would gladly share,
To those who appreciate my gift that is rare.
This flower is a gift and I will tell you why,
Because its known for its beauty that will never die.
For if my flower and me ever depart,
The beauty of it will always be found in my heart.
Yes I have a flower, a beautiful flower to name,
It would have to be beautiful,
it would have to meet its beauty inside and out the same.
For that isn’t hard to do, Why you don’t even need a clue,
For I could have never have picked a better you,
My Dear Friend (put name here)….. Its true.
A name, that’s beautiful as you.
poem by Esther Ayala
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Amaranth
ONCE a poet—long ago—
Wrote a song as void of art
As the songs that children know,
And as pure as a child’s heart.
With a sigh he threw it down,
Saying, “This will never shed
Any glory or renown
On my name when I am dead.
“I will sing a lordly song
Men shall hear, when I am gone,
Through the years sound clear and strong
As a golden clarion.”
So this lordly song he sang
That would gain him deathless fame—
When the death-knell o’er him rang
No man even knew its name.
Ay, and when his way he found
To the place of singing souls,
And beheld their bright heads crowned
With song-woven aureoles,
He stood shame-faced in the throng,
For his brow of wreath was bare,
And, alas! his lordly song
Sere had grown in that sweet air;
Then, all sudden, a divine
Light fell on him from afar,
And he felt the child-song shine
On his forehead like a star.
So for ever. Each and all
Songs of passion or of mirth
That are not heart-pure shall fall
As a sky-lark’s—to the earth;
But the soul’s song has no bounds—
Like the voice of Israfel,
From the heaven of heavens it sounds
To the very hell of hell.
poem by Victor James Daley
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The Flower
When unknown Gods
Planted the seed,
To blossom
In breathtaking colour and scent.
Such beauty we would always need.
But the flower of love
Always came and went.
Don't crush it in your hand
Don't rush it,
Understand.
Every second, every hour
Cherish.
But perish
Will your flower.
Now dried.
And dead in Winter field.
For others
Spring time will be revealed.
As fate does wait
The seeds are cast.
We agonise of Summers past.
To dwell and bathe in sunlit dew.
Where once
Our fragile flower grew.
poem by Kevin East
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Evil will perish,
Evil will perish,
Evil will perish,
The good will be seen by God,
All that man did on earth,
There is the remedy that will make that good occur,
Every mean's that we are alive,
I came to understand life's glory than miseries,
In all that is to be done,
Man is evil minded,
But with God's grace there is the living that will be fair with that Infinite,
I think,
That the evil will perish,
The love of God will let man see the glory coming,
From all the good,
Then evil will perish,
An everlasting covenant with God will not end but Increase.
poem by Maxpoet Beauty
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The Blind Man’s Bride
I.
WHEN first, beloved, in vanish'd hours
The blind man sought thy love to gain,
They said thy cheek was bright as flowers
New freshen'd by the summer rain:
They said thy movements, swift yet soft,
Were such as make the wingéd dove
Seem, as it gently soars aloft,
The image of repose and love.
II.
They told me, too, an eager crowd
Of wooers praised thy beauty rare,
But that thy heart was all too proud
A common love to meet or share.
Ah! thine was neither pride nor scorn,
But in thy coy and virgin breast
Dwelt preference, not of PASSION born,
The love that hath a holier rest!
III.
Days came and went;--thy step I heard
Pause frequent, as it pass'd me by:--
Days came and went;--thy heart was stirr'd,
And answer'd to my stifled sigh!
And thou didst make a humble choice,
Content to be the blind man's bride,
Who loved thee for thy gentle voice,
And own'd no joy on earth beside.
IV.
And well by that sweet voice I knew
(Without the happiness of sight)
Thy years, as yet, were glad and few,--
Thy smile, most innocently bright:
I knew how full of love's own grace
The beauty of thy form must be;
And fancy idolized the face
Whose loveliness I might not see!
V.
Oh! happy were those days, beloved!
I almost ceased for light to pine
When thro' the summer vales we roved,
Thy fond hand gently link'd in mine.
Thy soft, 'Good night' still sweetly cheer'd
The unbroken darkness of my doom;
And thy 'Good morrow, love,' endear'd
Each sunrise that return'd in gloom!
VI.
At length, as years roll'd swiftly on,
They spoke to me of Time's decay--
Of roses from thy smooth cheek gone,
And ebon ringlets turn'd to grey.
Ah! then I bless'd the sightless eyes
Which could not feel the deepening shade,
Nor watch beneath succeeding skies
Thy withering beauty faintly fade.
VII.
I saw no paleness on thy cheek,
No lines upon thy forehead smooth,--
But still the BLIND MAN heard thee speak
In accents made to bless and soothe:
Still he could feel thy guiding hand
As thro' the woodlands wild we ranged,--
Still in the summer light could stand,
And know thy HEART and VOICE unchanged.
VIII.
And still, beloved, till life grows cold,
We'll wander 'neath a genial sky,
And only know that we are old
By counting happy years gone by:
For thou to me art still as fair
As when those happy years began,--
When first thou cam'st to soothe and share
The sorrows of a sightless man!
IX.
Old Time, who changes all below,
To wean men gently for the grave,
Hath brought us no increase of woe,
And leaves us all he ever gave:
For I am still a helpless thing,
Whose darken'd world is cheer'd by thee--
And thou art she whose beauty's spring
The blind man vainly yearn'd to see!
poem by Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton
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I Believe In the Power
I believe in the power of you.
As the rain falls upon us and
everyone else scatters.
I believe in the power of you.
As I look into the shadowy pools
of your mysterious eyes.
I believe in the power of you.
As I fall into your arms always
trusting you to catch me.
I believe in the power of you.
As you listen while I pour my
heart and I cry my eyes out to you.
I believe in the power of you.
As I sit and listen to your
words, your wisdom filtering your deep voice.
I believe in the power of you.
As I lay in your warm embrace
feeling protected and cherished.
I believe in the power of you.
As you turn away and walk out
the door, promising to come back.
I believe in the power of you.
As I sit waiting patiently
for some sign of you to return.
I believe in the power of you.
As even now I doubt all my
faith in the one person I truly love.
I believe in the power of you.
As I sit here crying and swearing
wishing you could hear me.
I believe in the power of you.
As I begin to lose passion for
everything I loved when I was with you.
I believe in the power of you.
As I lay dying in bed suffering
from a broken heart.
I believe in the power of you.
As I close my eyes and an
image of you forms in my mind.
I believe in the power of you.
As I begin to feel a rage that
is red hot and will not go away.
I believe in the power of myself.
As i see your true image; a true
image of who you are inside.
I believe in the power of myself.
As I begin to build my life up and
start doing the things I enjoy.
I believe in the power of myself.
As I understand the things that
were so illusive to me before.
I believe in the power of myself.
As I take back your control over
me and start living my life.
I believe in the power of myself.
As I no longer believe in the
power of you.
I believe in the power of myself.
As you and your power
no longer affects me.
I believe in the power of myself.
As I begin to love the one true
person I've forgotten in all of this
Me.
poem by Cleo A. Fletcher
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Youth And Manhood
Another year! a short one, if it flow
Like that just past,
And I shall stand -- if years can make me so --
A man at last.
Yet, while the hours permit me, I would pause
And contemplate
The lot whereto unalterable laws
Have bound my fate.
Yet, from the starry regions of my youth,
The empyreal height
Where dreams are happiness, and feeling truth,
And life delight --
From that ethereal and serene abode
My soul would gaze
Downward upon the wide and winding road,
Where manhood plays;
Plays with the baubles and the gauds of earth --
Wealth, power, and fame --
Nor knows that in the twelvemonth after birth
He did the same.
Where the descent begins, through long defiles
I see them wind;
And some are looking down with hopeful smiles,
And some are -- blind.
And farther on a gay and glorious green
Dazzles the sight,
While noble forms are moving o'er the scene,
Like things of light.
Towers, temples, domes of perfect symmetry
Rise broad and high,
With pinnacles among the clouds; ah, me!
None touch the sky.
None pierce the pure and lofty atmosphere
Which I breathe now,
And the strong spirits that inhabit there,
Live -- God sees how.
Sick of the very treasure which they heap;
Their tearless eyes
Sealed ever in a heaven-forgetting sleep,
Whose dreams are lies;
And so, a motley, unattractive throng,
They toil and plod,
Dead to the holy ecstasies of song,
To love, and God.
Dear God! if that I may not keep through life
My trust, my truth,
And that I must, in yonder endless strife,
Lose faith with youth;
If the same toil which indurates the hand
Must steel the heart,
Till, in the wonders of the ideal land,
It have no part;
Oh! take me hence! I would no longer stay
Beneath the sky;
Give me to chant one pure and deathless lay,
And let me die!
poem by Henry Timrod
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Love Not Hate Sestina
I'm so glad that I found you my love
You must have been sent to me from above
You have taught me to never hate
Our lives entwined, it must be fate.
You and yours, I'll always cherish
Even after I shall perish
Us not being one, is a thought I perish
The nights are better with you my love
Our days together I will always cherish
My favorite times, watching the stars above
Is this our destiny, or is it just fate
The nights without you, I will always hate
Devotion is so much better than hate
These feelings I have, shall never perish
Our lives together, such a great fate
Shall this diminish, never my love
Only if the moon falls from above
Shall I stop loving the woman that I cherish
To adore, to care, to want and to cherish
These feelings are here to deny that I hate
Anything that lives on the earth or above
My heart sinks, when I see one perish
Your influence is that strong, my love
And from now on you determine our fate
I'm not sure what has decided my fate
But I must accept that fact and cherish
The knowledge that I have been given your love
To keep within my heart and never hate
The others in your life, before they perish
Because they too, were sent from above
Sometimes my heart soars in the clouds above
Never denying this grand glorious fate
Hoping that it will stay and not ever perish
Of this my Lord, I pray you will cherish
Our relationship, and not allow hate
To interrupt this wondrous time, with my love
I beseech the Lord above, to help me to always cherish
Our time, for it taught me, my fate is to adore, and never hate
Even after I do perish, you'll be my very essence, my love
poem by J.B. LeBuert
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A Power-Plant
The Fisk Street turbine power station in Chicago
The invisible wheels go softly round and round—
Light is the tread of brazen-footed Power.
Spirits of air, caged in the iron tower,
Sing as they labor with a purring sound.
The abysmal fires, grated and chained and bound,
Burn white and still, in swift obedience cower;
While far and wide the myriad lamps, aflower,
Glow like star-gardens and the night confound.
This we have done for thee, almighty Lord;
Yea, even as they who built at thy command
The pillared temple, or in marble made
Thine image, or who sang thy deathless word.
We take the weapons of thy dread right hand,
And wield them in thy service unafraid.
poem by Harriet Monroe
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In Memory of John Fairfax
Because this man fulfilled his days,
Like one who walks with steadfast gaze
Averted from forbidden ways
With lures of fair, false flowerage deep,
Behold the Lord whose throne is dim
With fires of flaming seraphim—
The Christ that suffered sent for him:
“He giveth His beloved sleep.”
Think not that souls whose deeds august
Put sin to shame and make men just
Become at last the helpless dust
That wintering winds through waste-lands sweep!
The higher life within us cries,
Like some fine spirit from the skies,
“The Father’s blessing on us lies—
‘He giveth His beloved sleep.’”
Not human sleep—the fitful rest
With evil shapes of dreams distressed,—
But perfect quiet, unexpressed
By any worldly word we keep.
The dim Hereafter framed in creeds
May not be this; but He who reads
Our lives, sets flowers on wayside weeds—
“He giveth His beloved sleep.”
Be sure this hero who has passed
The human space—the outer vast—
Who worked in harness to the last,
Doth now a hallowed harvest reap.
Love sees his grave, nor turns away—
The eyes of faith are like the day,
And grief has not a word to say—
“He giveth His beloved sleep.”
That fair, rare spirit, Honour, throws
A light, which puts to shame the rose,
Across his grave, because she knows
The son whose ashes it doth keep;
And, like far music, this is heard—
“Behold the man who never stirred,
By word of his, an angry word!—
‘He giveth His beloved sleep.’”
He earned his place. Within his hands,
The power which counsels and commands,
And shapes the social life of lands,
Became a blessing pure and deep.
Through thirty years of turbulence
Our thoughts were sweetened with a sense
Of his benignant influence—
“He giveth His beloved sleep.”
No splendid talents, which excite
Like music, songs, or floods of light,
Were his; but, rather, all those bright,
Calm qualities of soul which reap
A mute, but certain, fine respect,
Not only from a source elect,
But from the hearts of every sect—
“He giveth His beloved sleep.”
He giveth His beloved rest!
The faithful soul that onward pressed,
Unswerving, from Life’s east to west,
By paths austere and passes steep,
Is past all toil; and, over Death,
With reverent hands and prayerful breath,
I plant this flower, alive with faith—
“He giveth His beloved sleep.”
poem by Henry Kendall
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Ode XVI: To Caleb Hardinge, M.D.
I.
With sordid floods the wintry Urn
Hath stain'd fair Richmond's level green:
Her naked hill the Dryads mourn,
No longer a poetic scene.
No longer there thy raptur'd eye
The beauteous forms of earth or sky
Surveys as in their Author's mind:
And London shelters from the year
Those whom thy social hours to share
The Attic Muse design'd.
II.
From Hampstead's airy summit me
Her guest the city shall behold,
What day the people's stern decree
To unbelieving kings is told,
When common men (the dread of fame)
Adjudg'd as one of evil name,
Before the sun, the anointed head.
Then seek thou too the pious town,
With no unworthy cares to crown
That evening's awful shade.
III.
Deem not i call thee to deplore
The sacred martyr of the day,
By fast and penitential lore
To purge our ancient guilt away.
For this, on humble faith i rest
That still our advocate, the priest,
From heavenly wrath will save the land;
Nor ask what rites our pardon gain,
Nor how his potent sounds restrain
The thunderer's lifted hand.
IV.
No, Hardinge: peace to church and state!
That evening, let the Muse give law:
While i anew the theme relate
Which my first youth inamor'd saw.
Then will i oft explore thy thought,
What to reject which Locke hath taught,
What to pursue in Virgil's lay:
Till hope ascends to loftiest things,
Nor envies demagogues or kings
Their frail and vulgar sway.
V.
O vers'd in all the human frame,
Lead thou where'er my labor lies,
And English fancy's eager flame
To Grecian purity chastize:
While hand in hand, at wisdom's shrine,
Beauty with truth i strive to join,
And grave assent with glad applause;
To paint the story of the soul,
And Plato's visions to controul
By Verulamian laws.
poem by Mark Akenside
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Song
What shall a man remember
In days when he is old,
And Life is a dying ember,
And Fame a story told?
Power—that came to leave him?
Wealth—to the wild waves blown?
Fame—that came to deceive him?
Ah, no! Sweet Love alone!
Honour, and Wealth, and Power
May all like dreams depart—
But Love is a fadeless flower
Whose roots are in the heart.
poem by Victor James Daley
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Wayside Flowers
Pluck not the wayside flower,
It is the traveller's dower;
A thousand passers-by
Its beauties may espy,
May win a touch of blessing
From Nature's mild caressing.
The sad of heart perceives
A violet under leaves
Like sonic fresh-budding hope;
The primrose on the slope
A spot of sunshine dwells,
And cheerful message tells
Of kind renewing power;
The nodding bluebell's dye
Is drawn from happy sky.
Then spare the wayside flower!
It is the traveller's dower.
poem by William Allingham
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To Thyrza: And Thou Art Dead, As Young And Fair
And thou art dead, as young and fair
As aught of mortal birth;
And form so soft, and charms so rare,
Too soon return'd to Earth!
Though Earth received them in her bed
And o'er the spot the crowd may tread
In carelessness or mirth,
There is an eye which could not brook
A moment on that grave to look.
I will not ask where thou liest low,
Nor gaze upon the spot;
There flowers or weeds at will may grow,
So I behold them not:
It is enough for me to prove
That what I loved, and long must love,
Like common earth can rot;
To me there needs no stone to tell,
'Tis Nothing that I loved so well.
Yet did I love thee to the last
As fervently as thou,
Who didst not change through all the past,
And cans't not alter now.
The love where Death has set his seal,
Nor age can chill, nor rival steal,
Nor falsehood disavow:
And, what were worse, thou canst not see
Or wrong, or change, or fault in me.
The better days of life were ours;
The worst can be but mine:
The sun that cheers, the storm that lowers,
Shall never more be thine.
The silence of that dreamless sleep
I envy now too much to weep;
Nor need I to repine,
That all those charms have pass'd away
I might have watch'd through long decay.
The flower in ripen'd bloom unmatch'd
Must fall the earliest prey;
Though by no hand untimely snatch'd,
The leaves must drop away:
And yet it were a greater grief
To watch it withering, leaf by leaf,
Than see it pluck'd to-day;
Since earthly eye but ill can bear
To trace the change to foul from fair.
I know not if I could have borne
To see thy beauties fade;
The night that followed such a morn
Had worn a deeper shade:
Thy day without a cloud hath passed
And thou wert lovely to the last;
Extinguish'd, not decay'd;
As stars that shoot along the sky
Shine brightest as they fall from high.
As once I wept, if I could weep,
My tears might well be shed,
To think I was not near to keep
One vigil o'er thy bed;
To gaze, how fondly! on thy face,
To fold thee in a faint embrace,
Uphold thy drooping head;
And show that love, however vain,
Nor thou nor I can feel again.
Yet how much less it were to gain,
Though thou hast left me free,
The loveliest things that still remain,
Than thus remember thee!
The all of thine that cannot die
Through dark and dread Eternity
Returns again to me,
And more thy buried love endears
Than aught except its living years.
All Is Vanity, Saith the Preacher
Fame, wisdom, love, and power were mine,
And health and youth possess'd me;
My goblets blush'd from every vine,
And lovely forms caress'd me;
I sunn'd my heart in beauty's eyes,
And felt my soul grow tender;
All earth can give, or mortal prize,
Was mine of regal splendour.
I strive to number o'er what days
Remembrance can discover,
Which all that life or earth displays
Would lure me to live over.
There rose no day, there roll'd no hour
Of pleasure unembitter'd;
And not a trapping deck'd my power
That gall'd not while it glitter'd.
The serpent of the field, by art
And spells, is won from harming;
But that which coils around the heart,
Oh! who hath power of charming?
It will not list to wisdom's lore,
Nor music's voice can lure it;
But there it stings for evermore
The soul that must endure it.
poem by Byron (1815)
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Sîva
Mors Janua Vitae.
I am the God of the sensuous fire
That moulds all Nature in forms divine;
The symbols of death and of man’s desire,
The springs of change in the world, are mine;
The organs of birth and the circlet of bones,
And the light loves carved on the temple stones.
I am the lord of delights and pain,
Of the pest that killeth, of fruitful joys;
I rule the currents of heart and vein;
A touch gives passion, a look destroys;
In the heat and cold of my lightest breath
Is the might incarnate of Lust and Death.
If a thousand altars stream with blood
Of the victims slain by the chanting priest,
Is a great God lured by the savoury food?
I reck not of worship, or song, or feast;
But that millions perish, each hour that flies,
Is the mystic sign of my sacrifice.
Ye may plead and pray for the millions born;
They come like dew on the morning grass;
Your vows and vigils I hold in scorn,
The soul stays never, the stages pass;
All life is the play of the power that stirs
In the dance of my wanton worshippers.
And the strong swift river my shrine below
It runs, like man, its unending course
To the boundless sea from eternal snow;
Mine is the Fountain—and mine the Force
That spurs all nature to ceaseless strife;
And my image is Death at the gates of Life.
In many a legend and many a shape,
In the solemn grove and the crowded street,
I am the Slayer, whom none escape;
I am Death trod under a fair girl’s feet;
I govern the tides of the sentient sea
That ebbs and flows to eternity.
And the sum of the thought and the knowledge of man
Is the secret tale that my emblems tell;
Do ye seek God’s purpose, or trace his plan?
Ye may read your doom in my parable:
For the circle of life in its flower and its fall
Is the writing that runs on my temple wall.…
Let my temples fall, they are dark with age,
Let my idols break, they have stood their day;
On their deep hewn stones the primeval sage
Has figured the spells that endure alway;
My presence may vanish from river and grove,
But I rule for ever in Death and Love.
poem by Alfred Comyn Lyall
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Korner And His Sister
Green wave the oak for ever o'er thy rest,
Thou that beneath its crowning foliage sleepest,
And, in the stillness of thy country's breast,
Thy place of memory, as an altar keepest;
Brightly thy spirit o'er her hills was pour'd,
Thou of the Lyre and Sword!
Rest, bard! rest, soldier! by the father's hand
Here shall the child of after years be led,
With his wreath-offering silently to stand,
In the hush'd presence of the glorious dead.
Soldier and bard! for thou thy path hast trod
With freedom and with God.
The oak wav'd proudly o'er thy burial-rite,
On thy crown'd bier to slumber warriors bore thee,
And with true hearts thy brethren of the fight
Wept as they vail'd their drooping banners o'er thee.
And the deep guns with rolling peal gave token,
That Lyre and Sword were broken.
Thou hast a hero's tomb: a lowlier bed
Is hers, the gentle girl beside thee lying,
The gentle girl, that bow'd her fair, young head
When thou wert gone, in silent sorrow dying.
Brother, true friend! the tender and the brave
She pined to share thy grave.
Fame was thy gift from others; but for her,
To whom the wide world held that only spot,
She loved thee! lovely in your lives ye were,
And in your early deaths divided not.
Thou hast thine oak, thy trophy:–What hath she?
Her own blest place by thee!
It was thy spirit, brother! which had made
The bright earth glorious to her thoughtful eye,
Since first in childhood midst the vines ye play'd,
And sent glad singing thro' the free blue sky.
Ye were but two and when that spirit pass'd,
Wo to the one, the last!
Wo, yet not long! She linger'd but to trace
Thine image from the image in her breast,
Once, once again to see that buried face
But smile upon her, ere she went to rest.
Too sad a smile! its living light was o'er,
It answer'd hers no more.
The earth grew silent when thy voice departed,
The home too lonely whence thy step had fled;
What then was left for her, the faithful-hearted?
Death, death, to still the yearning for the dead!
Softly she perish'd: be the Flower deplor'd
Here with the Lyre and Sword!
Have ye not met ere now? so let those trust
That meet for moments but to part for years,
That weep, watch, pray, to hold back dust from dust,
That love, where love is but a fount of tears.
Brother, sweet sister! peace around ye dwell:
Lyre, Sword, and Flower, farewell!
poem by Felicia Dorothea Hemans
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On Pressing Some Flowers
So, they are dead! Love! when they passed
From thee to me, our fingers met;
O withered darlings of the May!
I feel those fairy fingers yet.
And for the bliss ye brought me then,
Your faded forms are precious things;
No flowers so fair, no buds so sweet
Shall bloom through all my future springs.
And so, pale ones! with hands as soft
As if I closed a baby's eyes,
I'll lay you in some favorite book
Made sacred by a poet's sighs.
Your lips shall press the sweetest song,
The sweetest, saddest song I know,
As ye had perished, in your pride,
Of some lone bard's melodious woe.
Oh, Love! hath love no holier shrine!
Oh, heart! could love but lend the power,
I'd lay thy crimson pages bare,
And every leaf should fold its flower.
poem by Henry Timrod
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A Grave
Though life should come
With all its marshalled honours, trump and drum,
To proffer you the captaincy of some
Resounding exploit, that shall fill
Man’s pulses with commemorative thrill,
And be a banner to far battle days
For truths unrisen upon untrod ways,
What would your answer be,
O heart once brave?
Seek otherwhere; for me,
I watch beside a grave.
Though to some shining festival of thought
The sages call you from steep citadel
Of bastioned argument, whose rampart gained
Yields the pure vision passionately sought,
In dreams known well,
But never yet in wakefulness attained,
How should you answer to their summons, save:
I watch beside a grave?
Though Beauty, from her fane within the soul
Of fire-tongued seers descending,
Or from the dream-lit temples of the past
With feet immortal wending,
Illuminate grief’s antre swart and vast
With half-veiled face that promises the whole
To him who holds her fast,
What answer could you give?
Sight of one face I crave,
One only while I live;
Woo elsewhere; for I watch beside a grave.
Though love of the one heart that loves you best,
A storm-tossed messenger,
Should beat its wings for shelter in your breast,
Where clung its last year’s nest,
The nest you built together and made fast
Lest envious winds should stir,
And winged each delicate thought to minister
With sweetness far-amassed
To the young dreams within—
What answer could it win?
The nest was whelmed in sorrow’s rising wave,
Nor could I reach one drowning dream to save;
I watch beside a grave.
poem by Edith Wharton
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Henry Bartle Edward Frere
Bend down and read-the birth, the death, the name.
Born in the year that Waterloo was won,
And died in this, whose days are not yet run,
But which, because a year conceived in shame,
No noble need will christen or will claim.
And yet this dead man, England, was Thy son,
And at his grave we ask what had he done,
Bred to be famous, to be foiled of Fame.
Be the reply his epitaph: That he,
In years as youth, the unyielding spirit bore
He got from Thee, but Thou hast got no more;
And that it is a bane and bar to be
A child of Thine, now the adventurous sea
All vainly beckons to a shrinking shore.
Therefore, great soul, within your marble bed
Sleep sound, nor hear the useless tears we weep.
Why should you wake, when England is asleep,
Or care to live, since England now is dead?
Forbidden are the steeps where Glory led;
No more from furrowed danger of the deep
We harvest greatness; to our hearths we creep,
Count and recount our coin, and nurse our dread.
The sophist's craft hath grown a prosperous trade,
And womanish Tribunes hush the manly drum:
The very fear of Empire strikes us numb,
Fumbling with pens, who brandished once the blade.
Therefore, great soul, sleep sound where you are laid,
Blest in being deaf when Honour now is dumb.
poem by Alfred Austin
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