The Loom of Years
In the light of the silent stars that shine on the struggling sea,
In the weary cry of the wind and the whisper of flower and tree,
Under the breath of laughter, deep in the tide of tears,
I hear the Loom of the Weaver that weaves the Web of Years.
The leaves of the winter wither and sink in the forest mould
To colour the flowers of April with purple and white and gold:
Light and scent and music die and are born again
In the heart of a grey-haired woman who wakes in a world of pain.
The hound, the fawn, and the hawk, and the doves that croon and coo,
We are all one woof of the weaving and the one warp threads us through,
One flying cloud on the shuttle that carries our hopes and fears
As it goes thro’ the Loom of the Weaver that weaves the Web of Years.
The green uncrumpling fern and the rustling dewdrenched rose
Pass with our hearts to the Silence where the wings of music close,
Pass and pass to the Timeless that never a moment mars,
Pass and pass to the Darkness that made the suns and stars.
Has the soul gone out in the Darkness? Is the dust sealed from sight?
Ah, hush, for the woof of the ages returns thro’ the warp of the night!
Never that shuttle loses one thread of our hopes and fears,
As it comes thro’ the Loom of the Weaver that weaves the Web of Years.
O, woven in one wide Loom thro’ the throbbing weft of the whole,
One in spirit and flesh, one in body and soul,
Tho’ the leaf were alone in its falling, the bird in its hour to die,
The heart in its muffled anguish, the sea in its mournful cry,
One with the flower of a day, one with the withered moon
One with the granite mountains that melt into the noon
One with the dream that triumphs beyond the light of the spheres,
We come from the Loom of the Weaver that weaves the Web of Years.
poem by Alfred Noyes
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Related quotes
A Loom of Years
In the light of the silent stars that shine on the struggling sea,
In the weary cry of the wind and the whisper of flower and tree,
Under the breath of laughter, deep in the tide of tears,
I hear the Loom of the Weaver that weaves the Web of Years.
The leaves of the winter wither and sink in the forest mould
To colour the flowers of April with purple and white and gold:
Light and scent and music die and are born again
In the heart of a grey-haired woman who wakes in a world of pain.
The hound, the fawn, and the hawk, and the doves that croon and coo,
We are all one woof of the weaving and the one warp threads us through,
One flying cloud on the shuttle that carries our hopes and fears
As it goes thro’ the Loom of the Weaver that weaves the Web of Years.
The green uncrumpling fern and the rustling dewdrenched rose
Pass with our hearts to the Silence where the wings of music close,
Pass and pass to the Timeless that never a moment mars,
Pass and pass to the Darkness that made the suns and stars.
Has the soul gone out in the Darkness? Is the dust sealed from sight?
Ah, hush, for the woof of the ages returns thro’ the warp of the night!
Never that shuttle loses one thread of our hopes and fears,
As it comes thro’ the Loom of the Weaver that weaves the Web of Years.
O, woven in one wide Loom thro’ the throbbing weft of the whole,
One in spirit and flesh, one in body and soul,
Tho’ the leaf were alone in its falling, the bird in its hour to die,
The heart in its muffled anguish, the sea in its mournful cry,
One with the flower of a day, one with the withered moon
One with the granite mountains that melt into the noon
One with the dream that triumphs beyond the light of the spheres,
We come from the Loom of the Weaver that weaves the Web of Years.
poem by Alfred Noyes
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The Weaver
All day, all day, round the clacking net
The weaver's fingers fly:
Gray dreams like frozen mists are set
In the hush of the weaver's eye;
A voice from the dusk is calling yet,
'Oh, come away, or we die!'
Without is a horror of hosts that fight,
That rest not, and cease not to kill,
The thunder of feet and the cry of the flight,
A slaughter weird and shrill;
Gray dreams are set in the weaver's sight,
The weaver is weaving still.
'Come away, dear soul, come away or we die;
Hear'st thou the moan and the rush! Come away;
The people are slain at the gates, and they fly;
The kind God hath left them this day;
The battle-axes cleaves, and the foemen cry,
And the red swords swing and slay.'
'Nay, wife, what boots to fly from pain,
When pain is wherever we fly?
And death is a sweeter thing than a chain:
'Tis sweeter to sleep than to cry,
The kind God giveth the days that wane;
If the kind God hath said it, I die.'
And the weaver wove, and the good wife fled,
And the city was made a tomb,
And a flame that shook from the rocks overhead
Shone into that silent room,
And touched like a wide red kiss on the dead
Brown weaver slain by his loom.
Yet I think that in some dim shadowy land,
Where no suns rise or set,
Where the ghost of a whilom loom doth stand
Round the dusk of its silken net,
Forever flyeth his shadowy hand,
And the weaver is weaving yet.
poem by Archibald Lampman
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Widow McFarlane
I was the Widow McFarlane,
Weaver of carpets for all the village.
And I pity you still at the loom of life,
You who are singing to the shuttle
And lovingly watching the work of your hands,
If you reach the day of hate, of terrible truth.
For the cloth of life is woven, you know,
To a pattern hidden under the loom i
A pattern you never see!
And you weave high-hearted, singing, singing,
You guard the threads of love and friendship
For noble figures in gold and purple.
And long after other eyes can see
You have woven a moon-white strip of cloth,
You laugh in your strength, for Hope o'erlays it
With shapes of love and beauty.
The loom stops short! The pattern's out!
You're alone in the room! You have woven a shroud!
And hate of it lays you in it!
poem by Edgar Lee Masters
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Dream Weaver
Dream weaver
Ive just closed my eyes again
Climbed aboard the dream weaver train
Driver take away my worries of today
And leave tomorrow behind
Ooh dream weaver
I believe you can get me through the night
Ooh dream weaver
I believe we can reach the morning light
Fly me high through the starry skies
Maybe to an astral plane
Cross the highways of fantasy
Help me to forget todays pain
Ooh dream weaver
I believe you can get me through the night
Ooh dream weaver
I believe we can reach the morning light
Though the dawn may be coming soon
There still may be some time
Fly me away to the bright side of the moon
And meet me on the other side
Ooh dream weaver
I believe you can get me through the night
Ooh dream weaver
I believe we can reach the morning light
Dream weaver
Dream weaver
Dream weaver
- gary wright
song performed by by Reo Speedwagon
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Recollections
I.
Years upon years, as a course of clouds that thicken
Thronging the ways of the wind that shifts and veers,
Pass, and the flames of remembered fires requicken
Years upon years.
Surely the thought in a man's heart hopes or fears
Now that forgetfulness needs must here have stricken
Anguish, and sweetened the sealed-up springs of tears.
Ah, but the strength of regrets that strain and sicken,
Yearning for love that the veil of death endears,
Slackens not wing for the wings of years that quicken -
Years upon years.
II.
Years upon years, and the flame of love's high altar
Trembles and sinks, and the sense of listening ears
Heeds not the sound that it heard of love's blithe psalter
Years upon years.
Only the sense of a heart that hearkens hears,
Louder than dreams that assail and doubts that palter,
Sorrow that slept and that wakes ere sundawn peers.
Wakes, that the heart may behold, and yet not falter,
Faces of children as stars unknown of, spheres
Seen but of love, that endures though all things alter,
Years upon years.
III.
Years upon years, as a watch by night that passes,
Pass, and the light of their eyes is fire that sears
Slowly the hopes of the fruit that life amasses
Years upon years.
Pale as the glimmer of stars on moorland meres
Lighten the shadows reverberate from the glasses
Held in their hands as they pass among their peers.
Lights that are shadows, as ghosts on graveyard grasses,
Moving on paths that the moon of memory cheers,
Shew but as mists over cloudy mountain passes
Years upon years.
poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne
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Mama
Behind every life a Weaver ultimately
stands shrouding His plan for every man.
Dark threads are needful in the Master's
skillful hands for He knows the pattern He has planned.
What tapestry in mama's heart He wove, the
sacrifice self was decomposed. Love was
her goal, to train me up in ways I went with
Mama the time was well spent. His tapestry thread
of gold.
I've learned life's lessons when I've
grieved with lashes wet that God's plans
are right. Each life closes into
night and death has fused out temporal
light that this time is perfectly right.
The Weaver is interweaving the silver in the horizon of night.
The loom of which she's wove can never be diffused by
temporal light, for in thee does she repose. A crown of Glory she holds, she's the lily pure and white that He chose.
poem by Vanita Allgood
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Lady On The Loom!
In the old folk lore, at her loom the old lady in the sky,
Spins dreams and wisps of clouds in the blink of an eye,
One of them could have been mine,
Not to believe in anything is no longer a comfort but a whine.
The warp- the foundation thread stretches, languidly lengthwise on the loom,
While the weft thread entwines in the arms of the warp,
for different types of cloths allowing room,
The trees chastised by the wind gather strength, so is the warp beaten.
To analyze the relation of line to line, that stretches from skyline to horizon
Without considering the texture, is an artistic affection,
Now place line on line braid the textures of the fecund threatening clouds,
Where necessary interlace with the Seraphic cross-sectional symbols,
Brilliant Sun, honeyed Moon, the burst of stars, under it let the flowers assemble,
Kill that moment there & postpone the problem of the next,
Let’s run from tree to tree, till the last hard veer from each other, so dressed.
That step, the binding thread from sensualism to irrevocable cynicism binds us together,
A piece of disjunctivity—where form, matter &texture hadn’t coincided.
Like two trucks entering one lane junction at the same time,
Stakes are high, but never has one collided.
The butterfly shuttle hovers, with it’s colors weft thread rescues, with a purpose
Finally under the blue skies, the cloth is spun; let’s together lie down in it once again,
Thus the old lady shall dispose.
Seema. Joglekar
26September-2009
poem by Seema joglekar
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War
One night a feat was held in the palace, and there came a man and
prostrated himself before the prince, and all the feasters looked
upon him; and they saw that one of his eyes was out and that
the empty socket bled. And the prince inquired of him, 'What has
befallen you?' And the man replied, 'O prince, I am by profession
a thief, and this night, because there was no moon, I went to rob
the money-changer's shop, and as I climbed in through the window
I made a mistake and entered the weaver's shop, and in the dark I
ran into the weaver's loom and my eye was plucked out. And now,
O prince, I ask for justice upon the weaver.'
Then the prince sent for the weaver and he came, and it was decreed
that one of his eyes should be plucked out.
'O prince,' said the weaver, 'the decree is just. It is right that
one of my eyes be taken. And yet, alas! both are necessary to me
in order that I may see the two sides of the cloth that I weave.
But I have a neighbour, a cobbler, who has also two eyes, and in
his trade both eyes are not necessary.'
Then the prince sent for the cobbler. And he came. And they took
out one of the cobbler's two eyes.
And justice was satisfied.
poem by Khalil Gibran
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Sonnet XIII
THE WEAVER.
LITTLE they think, the giddy and the vain,
Wandering at pleasure 'neath the shady trees,
While the light glossy silk or rustling train
Shines in the sun or flutters in the breeze,
How the sick weaver plies the incessant loom,
Crossing in silence the perplexing thread,
Pent in the confines of one narrow room,
Where droops complainingly his cheerless head:--
Little they think with what dull anxious eyes,
Nor by what nerveless, thin, and trembling hands,
The devious mingling of those various dyes
Were wrought to answer Luxury's commands:
But the day cometh when the tired shall rest,--
Where weary Lazarus leans his head on Abraham's breast!
poem by Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton
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Weaver's loom
There is no any special magic.
The weaver used the same thread and the shuttle.
Perhaps the loom is different?
but the usual fading cloth he made.
Life is a jigsaw puzzle
you have to take part
until he prescribes the bitter (sugar-coated) pill.
Dedication to the poetess Adrienne. Alicia. Aversa
theme extracted from your biography..............................
poem by Nimal Dunuhinga
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Crows Calling At Night
Yellow clouds beside the walls; crows near the tower.
Flying back, they caw, caw; calling in the boughs.
In the loom she weaves brocade, the Qin river girl.
Made of emerald yarn like mist, the window hides her words.
She stops the shuttle, sorrowful, and thinks of the distant man.
She stays alone in the lonely room, her tears just like the rain.
The Gallant Weaver
Where Cart rins rowin' to the sea,
By mony a flower and spreading tree,
There lives a lad, the lad for me,
He is a gallant Weaver.
O, I had wooers aught or nine,
They gied me rings and ribbons fine;
And I was fear'd my heart wad tine,
And I gied it to the Weaver.
My daddie sign'd my tocher-band,
To gie the lad that has the land,
But to my heart I'll add my hand,
And give it to the Weaver.
While birds rejoice in leafy bowers,
While bees delight in opening flowers,
While corn grows green in summer showers,
I love my gallant Weaver.
poem by Robert Burns
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Eight Years Old
SUN, whom the faltering snow-cloud fears,
Rise, let the time of year be May,
Speak now the word that April hears,
Let March have all his royal way;
Bid all spring raise in winter’s ears
All tunes her children hear or play,
Because the crown of eight glad years
On one bright head is set to-day.
II.
What matters cloud or sun to-day
To him who wears the wreath of years
So many, and all like flowers at play
With wind and sunshine, while his ears
Hear only song on every way?
More sweet than spring triumphant hears
Ring through the revel-rout of May
Are these, the notes that winter fears.
III.
Strong-hearted winter knows and fears
The music made of love at play,
Or haply loves the tune he hears
From hearts fulfilled with flowering May,
Whose molten music thaws his ears
Late frozen, deaf but yesterday
To sounds of dying and dawning years,
Now quickened on his deathward way.
IV.
For deathward now lies winter’s way
Down the green vestibule of years
That each year brightens day by day
With flower and shower till hope scarce fears
And fear grows wholly hope of May.
But we—the music in our ears
Made of love’s pulses as they play
The heart alone that makes it hears.
V.
The heart it is that plays and hears
High salutation of to-day.
Tongue falters, hand shrinks back, song fears
Its own unworthiness to play
Fit music for those eight sweet years,
Or sing their blithe accomplished way.
No song quite worth a young child’s ears
Broke ever even from birds in May.
VI.
There beats not in the heart of May,
When summer hopes and springtide fears,
There falls not from the height of day,
When sunlight speaks and silence hears,
So sweet a psalm as children play
And sing, each hour of all their years,
Each moment of their lovely way,
And know not how it thrills our ears.
VII.
Ah child, what are we, that our ears
Should hear you singing on your way,
Should have this happiness? The years
Whose hurrying wings about us play
Are not like yours, whose flower-time fears
Nought worse than sunlit showers in May,
Being sinless as the spring, that hears
Her own heart praise her every day.
VIII.
Yet we too triumph in the day
That bare, to entrance our eyes and ears,
To lighten daylight, and to play
Such notes as darkness knows and fears,
The child whose face illumes our way,
Whose voice lifts up the heart that hears,
Whose hand is as the hand of May
To bring us flowers from eight full years.
poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne
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For A Day
The rose now dies
But still lives in my memory
The fragrance flies
And leaves my soul sweet eulogy.
All that is special will pass away
Like the love we shackled
For a day.
My heart now dies
But still beats in a lonely room
Called my life
Where every hurt will loom
Surely bad dreams must pass away
Of losing you
My Princess for a day.
poem by Kevin East
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All My Love
(jones/plant)
Should I fall out of love, my fire in the light
To chase a feather in the wind
Within the glow that weaves a cloak of delight
There moves a thread that has no end.
For many hours and days that pass ever soon
The tides have caused the flame to dim
At last the arm is straight, the hand to the loom
Is this to end or just begin?
* chorus: all of my love, all of my love, all of my love to you. (repeat)
The cup is raised, the toast is made yet again
One voice is clear above the din
Proud aryan one word, my will to sustain
For me, the cloth once more to spin
Chorus
Yours is the cloth, mine is the hand that sews time
His is the force that lies within
Ours is the fire, all the warmth we can find
He is a feather in the wind
Chorus
song performed by by Led Zeppelin
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Introduction
‘Five windows light the cavern’d Man: thro’ one he breathes the air;
Thro’ one hears music of the spheres; thro’ on the eternal vine
Flourished, that he may receive the grapes; thro’ one can look
And see small portions of the eternal world that ever growth;
Thro’ one himself pass out what time he please, but he will not;
For stolen joys are sweet, & bread eaten in secret pleasant.’
So sang a Fairy mocking as he sat on a streak’d Tulip,
Thinking none saw him; when he ceas’d I started from the trees,
And caught him in my hat as boys knock down a butterfly.
‘How know you this,’ said I, ‘small Sir? where did you learn this song?’
seeing himself in my possession, thus he answer’d me:
‘My Master, I am yours; command me, for I must obey.’
‘Then tell me what is the material world, and is it dead?’
He laughing answer’d: ‘I will write a book on leaves of flowers,
If you will feed me on love-thoughts, & give me now and then
A cup of sparkling poetic fancies. So, when I am tipsie,
I’ll sing to you to this soft lute, and shew you all alive
The world, where every particle of dust breathes forth its joy.’
I took him home in my warm bosom. As we went along
Wild flowers I gather’d, & he shew’d me each eternal flower.
He laugh’d aloud to see them whimper because they were pluck’d.
They hover’d round me like a cloud of incense. When I came
Into my parlour and sat down, and took my pen to write,
My Fairy sat upon the table, and dictated ‘EUROPE.’
poem by William Blake from Europe a Prophecy (1794)
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Altiora Peto
O for a vision of the perfect light
To shame the splendour of the morning star!
O for a breath from out the Infinite
Where the great heart of Being throbs afar!
O for that sound, too fine for mortal ears,
The music of the silence of the spheres!
The Masters fathomed not that song sublime,
Tho’ oft on straining ear and brain o’erwrought,
And heart grown faint at heights too sheer to climb,
The roll of some immortal wave of thought
Swept by and left, adown its troubled verge,
The lingering echoes of its mighty surge.
To each there came the passion and the fire,
The breadth of vision and the sudden light,
And for a moment on an earthly lyre
Quivered a tremor of the Infinite;
Yet to each poet of that deep-browed throng
’Twas but the shadow of Immortal Song.
’Twas but the presage of th’ Omniscient Soul
That moves and throbs thro’ all this wondrous plan,
Unseen, unheard, unknown: that is the Whole,
Yet stirs in atoms and the heart of Man;
That thro’ all phase of change, and form, and name
Remains and works eternally the same.
That seems to whisper us:—“All life is one,
Reborn in death it blossoms from decay,
The same when first the fury of the sun
Belched forth his satellites of fiery spray,
The same when he and all his planet train
Shall plough the Ether, cold—to glow again!
“Whither, O whither? Still th’ eternal cry,
That from the ages rolled and yet shall roll!
Who shall declare to man his destiny—
A unit in the Cosmos of the Soul—
A spirit-germ, storm-tossed in doubt and strife,
That feebly dreams of larger light and life?”
Systems and stars their courses onward sweep,
And creeds and nations flower and fade away.
Still Nature worketh out her purpose deep—
New life, new thought for that of yesterday.
Unto the utmost confines of her range
One law abideth of unchanging change.
Around us dwells the secret no man reads!
About us swells the music none can hear!
Behind us lie the ruins of the creeds!
Before us loom the mystery and the fear!
To Love and Hope our souls are clinging fast,
What giveth these, perchance gives Truth at last!
poem by George Essex Evans
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The Star's Song
Flower! Flower, why repine?
God knows each creature's place;
He hides within me when I shine,
And your leaves hide His face.
And you are near as I to Him,
And you reveal as much
Of that eternal soundless hymn
Man's words may never touch.
God sings to man through all my rays
That wreathe the brow of night,
And walks with me thro' all my ways --
The everlasting light.
Flower! Flower, why repine?
He chose on lowly earth,
And not in heaven where I shine,
His Bethlehem and birth.
Flower! Flower, I see Him pass
Each hour of night and day,
Down to an altar and a Mass
Go thou! and fade away.
Fade away upon His shrine!
Thy light is brighter far
Than all the light wherewith I shine
In heaven, as a star.
poem by Abram Joseph Ryan
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21st September 1870
Speak low, speak little; who may sing
While yonder cannon-thunders boom?
Watch, shuddering, what each day may bring:
Nor 'pipe amid the crack of doom.'
And yet-the pines sing overhead,
The robins by the alder-pool,
The bees about the garden-bed,
The children dancing home from school.
And ever at the loom of Birth
The mighty Mother weaves and sings:
She weaves-fresh robes for mangled earth;
She sings-fresh hopes for desperate things.
And thou, too: if through Nature's calm
Some strain of music touch thine ears,
Accept and share that soothing balm,
And sing, though choked with pitying tears.
poem by Charles Kingsley
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A Voyager's Dream Of Land
His very heart athirst
To gaze at nature in her green array,
Upon the ship's tall side he stands, possess'd
With visions prompted by intense desire;
Fair fields appear below, such as he left
Far distant, such as he would die to find:
He seeks them headlong, and is seen no more. ~ Cowper
The hollow dash of waves!–the ceaseless roar!
Silence, ye billows! vex my soul no more.
There's a spring in the woods by my sunny home,
Afar from the dark sea's tossing foam;
Oh! the fall of that fountain is sweet to hear,
As a song from the shore to the sailor's ear!
And the sparkle which up to the sun it throws,
Thro' the feathery fern and the olive boughs,
And the gleam on its path as it steals away
Into deeper shades from the sultry day,
And the large water-lilies that o'er its bed
Their pearly leaves to the soft light spread,
They haunt me! I dream of that bright spring's flow,
I thirst for its rills, like a wounded roe!
Be still, thou sea-bird, with thy clanging cry!
My spirit sickens, as thy wing sweeps by.
Know ye my home, with the lulling sound
Of leaves from the lime and the chestnut round?
Know ye it, brethren! where bower'd it lies,
Under the purple of southern skies?
With the streamy gold of the sun that shines
In thro' the cloud of its clustering vines,
And the summer-breath of the myrtle-flowers,
Borne from the mountain in dewy hours,
And the fire-fly's glance thro' the dark'ning shades,
Like shooting stars in the forest-glades,
And the scent of the citron at eve's dim fall
Speak! have ye known, have ye felt them all?
The heavy rolling surge! the rocking mast!
Hush! give my dream's deep music way, thou blast!
Oh! the glad sounds of the joyous earth!
The notes of the singing cicala's mirth,
The murmurs that live in the mountain pines,
The sighing of reeds as the day declines,
The wings flitting home thro' the crimson glow
That steeps the wood when the sun is low,
The voice of the night-bird that sends a thrill
To the heart of the leaves when the winds are still
I hear them! round me they rise, they swell,
They call back my spirit with Hope to dwell,
They come with a breath from the fresh spring-time,
And waken my youth in its hour of prime.
The white foam dashes high away, away!
Shroud my green land no more, thou blinding spray!
It is there! down the mountains I see the sweep
Of the chestnut forests, the rich and deep,
With the burden and glory of flowers that they bear,
Floating upborne on the blue summer-air,
And the light pouring thro' them in tender gleams,
And the flashing forth of a thousand streams!
Hold me not, brethren! I go, I go,
To the hills of my youth, where the myrtles blow,
To the depths of the woods, where the shadows rest,
Massy and still, on the greensward's breast,
To the rocks that resound with the water's play
I hear the sweet laugh of my fount give way!
Give way! the booming surge, the tempest's roar,
The sea-bird's wail, shall vex my soul no more.
poem by Felicia Dorothea Hemans
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