The Unloved
These are the women whom no man has loved.
Year after year, day after day has moved.
These hearts with many longings, and with tears,
And with content; they have received the years
With empty hands, expecting no good thing;
Life has passed by their doors, not entering.
In solitude, and without vain desire,
They have warmed themselves beside a lonely fire;
And, without scorn, beheld as in a glass
The blown and painted leaves of Beauty pass.
Their souls have been made fragrant with the spice
Of costly virtues lit for sacrifice;
They have accepted life, the unpaid debt,
And looked for no vain day of reckoning. Yet
They too in certain windless summer hours
Have felt the stir of dreams, and dreamed the powers
And the exemptions and the miracles
And the cruelty of Beauty. Citadels
Of many-walled and deeply-moated hearts
Have suddenly surrendered to the arts
Of so compelling magic; entering,
They have esteemed it but a little thing
To have won so great a conquest; and with haste
They have cast down, and utterly laid waste,
Tower upon tower, and sapped their roots with flame;
And passed on that eternity of shame
Which is the way of Beauty on the earth.
And they have shaken laughter from its mirth,
To be a sound of trumpets and of horns
Crying the battle-cry of those red morns
Against a sky of triumph. On some nights
Of delicate Springtide, when the hesitant lights
Begin to fade, and glimmer, and grow warm,
And all the softening air is quick with storm,
And the ardours of the young year, entering in,
Flush the grey earth with buds; when trees begin
To feel a trouble mounting from their roots,
And all their green life blossoming into shoots,
They too, in some obscure, unblossoming strife,
Have felt the stirring of the sap of life.
And they have wept, with bowed heads; in the street
They hear the twittering of little feet,
The rocking of the cradles in their hearts.
This is a mood, and, as a mood, departs
With the dried tears; and they resume the tale
Of the dropt stitches; these must never fail
For a dream's sake; nor, for a memory,
The telling of a patient rosary.
poem by Arthur Symons
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Related quotes
Children's Playground In The City
THIS is a place where men laid their dead,
Each with his life-tale of good or ill;
Here prayers were murmured and hot tears shed,
And passionate anguish moaned its fill.
Silent now is each voice that cried,
And the tears that were wept have all been dried
In the dust; and dust are the hearts that bled
With hopeless longing for hearts grown still.
Dead and forgotten! for Death, requiter
Of love, taught Memory how to forget!
The love that remembered them died. Grow brighter,
Oh, dim grave-garden, with dead hearts set!
Room for the small flying feet to pass,
The feet of the children over the grass!
The dead, if they knew it, would feel them lighter
Than the weight of a stone that no tears make wet.
We must die too, and the grief that will live
Must die as surely--death comes to all;
But you who come after--let Nature give
To our graves her tears, to our dust her pall:
Let her hide us away in her cold broad breast,
Let us be forgotten, and be at rest,
And over our heads let the great world strive,
And the children's voices carol and call.
If your heart on the flower of remembrance is set,
There is one way to pluck it--and only one:
Dare you ask your country not to forget
A name that needs to be graved on stone?
By grief, strife, sacrifice, scorn of fame,
You may grave on the people's hearts your name,
Or your name may die, and your soul live yet
In the cause you died for--the work you have done.
poem by Edith Nesbit
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Beauty, Beautious, Beautiful
Beauty is not a superficial form
Each has their own in essential nature
And in the actions they perform
Until the dissolution of their life
To leave beauty’s impressions in our hearts
Yesterdays beauty never leaves or departs.
Beauty is all around
Each and every place it may be found
As you look with open eyes
Upon the forms that nature makes
Then man seeks to imitate
Yearning to match that beauty all around.
Beauty if you cannot find
Beauty must be in mind
Beauty is in purity
Beauty of simplicity
Beauty runs right through and through
Beauty in me, and them, and you.
Beauty, beauteous, beautiful
Beauty in heaven
Beauty in fire
Beauty in earth
And finally beauty in a simple verse.
poem by David Taylor
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Eden Resort, Talomo, Davao
there is beauty
in the trees that tower
to let you feel
how it touches the sky
there is coolness in green
waters
where you begin to catch
fish and feel
the slime on its scales
there is something about
serenity
something about your
solitude
there is something about
your silence with the grasses
the blue clouds above you
they all give the message of
the song of mother earth
that life is beautiful
that living each moment
with your beloved is as amazing
as the miracle of the
moving hours
slowly you become as small as
a mole
in the vast wonders of this
earth
your hands become to tiny
to clasp
the hugeness of happiness
you break like a glass bowl
unable to contain
what God has to offer
shattered you look at yourself
with all understanding
nothing is repaired
upon a brokenness
but the amazement at beauty
continues
and it has overcome you
into a wholeness
that until now you still
cannot say
tongue tied you shall soar
and fly away.....,
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Denny Rose Fragile
Fragile petals buds
Buds play roots
Roots betray the earth
Earth spoken hearts
Too deep for a rose
Smash an already broken
Denny Rose Fragile
Strength forgiven life
Some place else you’ll grow
Loved by the heart of all the hearts
poem by Miroslava Odalovic
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Anzac
Anzac! And war's grim storm . . .
The scream of a pass'ng shell
Torn earth, and - a quiet form . . .
'Pass, comrades. All is well.'
Nay, but his spirit lives; be very sure.
Year follows year, and earthly things depart;
But what he dying, gave us shall endure
Now and for ever in the nation's heart.
Now and for ever; tho' the flesh be gone,
Still shall that Spirit bid us, 'Carry on!'
Anzac! The mounds increase;
Marking where soldiers fell . . . .
Earth's healing scars; and peace.
'Sleep, comrades. All is well.'
And be full certain that they do but sleep,
Who, falling, yet were well content to find
Fit sanctuary in the hearts that keep
That spirit and that memory enshrined.
High on Gallipoli, lights that once shone,
Again flame o'er the ocean: 'Carry on!'
Anzac! The tramp of marching feet . . . .
The toll of a passing-bell.
Bowed heads along a city street . . . .
'Pass, soldier. All is well.'
Pass, soldier. When your dwindling ranks grow small;
When, one by one, old comrades you shall greet;
When the last, lonely veteran's footfall
Goes echoing adown this city street,
Still may that Spirit, tho' all else be gone,
Cry to our sons: 'Australia! Carry on!'
poem by Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
A Farewell
Good-bye, old year, good-bye!
Gentle you were to many as to me,
And so we, meditating, sigh,
Since what hath been will be,
That you must die.
Hark! In the crumbling grey church tower,
Tolls the recording bell
The deeply-sounding solemnising knell
For your last hour.
How quietly you die!
No canonisëd Saint
E'er put life by
With less of struggle or complaint.
You seem to feel nor grief nor pain,
No retrospection vain,
As if, departing, you would have us know
It is not hard to go,
Since pang is none, but only peace, in Death,
And Life it is that suffereth.
Closer and clearer comes the last slow knell,
And on my lip for you awaits
That final formula of Fate's,
The low, lamenting, lingering word, Farewell!
For you the curved-backed sexton need not stir
The mould, for there is nothing to inter,
No worn integument to doff,
No bodily corruption to put off;
Begotten of the earth and sun,
And ending spirit-wise as you begun,
You pass, a mere memento of the mind,
Leaving no lees behind.
Hark! What is that we hear?
A quick-jerked, jocund peal,
Making the fretted church tower reel,
Telling the wakeful of a young New Year,
Young, but of lusty birth,
To face the masked vicissitudes of earth.
Let us, then, look not back,
Though smooth and partial was the track
Of the receding Past,
But through the vista vast
Of unknown Future wend intrepid way,
Framed to contend and cope
With perils new by vanished yesterday,
Whose last bequests to Man are Love, and
Faith, and Hope.
poem by Alfred Austin
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
The Golden Yesterday
AFTER a spell of chill, grey weather,
(Green, O green, are the feet of Spring!)
The heaven is here of flower and feather,
Of wild red blossom and flashing wing.
Hither of old queer flotsam drifted,
Borne on the breast of an age-old stream —
Men and women, with hope uplifted,
Spurred and stirred by a splendid dream.
Hither they quested, the young and eager,
The social misfit, the aged, the banned;
Friends were lacking and fortune meagre,
And here was promise — the Promised Land.
Each had a goal, a star, a beacon —
A good-bye smile, or a soft love-trees —
To urge his feet lest his feet should weaken,
Drag and falter with weariness.
Love and honour, and mirth and pity —
The joy that brightens, the gloom that chills —
Dwelt at once in the tented city,
Set of old in these watching hills.
The birds aroused them with matin numbers;
The air was scented with waking flowers;
They woke renewed from their starlit slumbers,
They toiled, dream-warmed, through the sunlit hours.
They had their triumphs, their gains, their losses,
Their noons of laughter, their nights of care.
Back on the hills are some rough crosses —
A name . . .a date . . .and, perchance, a prayer.
It seems like a dream that flashed and flitted,
That reigned a moment and passed away,
And only the earth — its kind face pitted —
Tells the tale of that old, dead day.
They dug the clay, and they broke the boulders;
They turned the creek, and they washed the mould;
But vain as makers, and vain as moulders,
They lived and wrought in the age of Gold.
They worked and worried, their labour blotching
The land's green surface with scar and pit;
Yet, all around them the hills were watching
Flower-crowned, tree-crested and glory-lit.
Like time-worn sages the green hills waited —
Clouds round their foreheads, their hips in grass;
They knew that the man at their feet was fated,
That he and the work of his hands would pass.
A breeze comes down from the highlands, smoothing
The green young wheat, and a bird makes mirth,
And Spring is here, with her soft hands soothing
The ruined rocks and the wounded earth.
The diggers passed: and the last red embers
Of their night-fires they are ashen grey;
But, while hearts beat and the mind remembers,
They shall not fade as a dream away.
poem by Roderic Quinn
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Beauty Is The Beast
beauty is the beast
upon our souls and hearts it feasts
it makes us blind to itself
behind innocent smiles it hides in stealth
yet in every place where beauty lies
the angels breath out their gentle sighs
its iron strength conquers our hearts by storm
transforming our very souls into their darkest form
to beauty does our money go, to beauty does our hearts
oh beauty it does cast its spell and triumphs over smarts
for beauty's thirst is unquenchable with habits most costly to sustain
it is beauty that calls to us and causes all our pain
and those who do escape beauty’s graceful wrath
yearn for its cursed gifts with envy doubled rather than halved
for beauty is the ugliest and foulest creature of them all
and in the end it is beauty that everything must fall
for beauty is the beast that we fight within
hence if beauty is the beast one can never win...
People Who Died
Oak trees are tall and
Reach for the sky,
Blossoming dogwood
Can be pink or white and irises, yellow
Evergreens gently sway in a summer breeze,
As I look towards the sky, cloud covered or
Sometimes a deep shade of blue-
I feel alive and lost inside a world of my imaginings-
I am alone in a world where many loved ones have passed-
My father, warm, and strong and had a zest for life,
My mother sometimes happy, more often sad,
My grandmother, eccentric and funny and my aunt-
In my eyes, special and like a mother to me-
Oak trees are tall and reach for the sky,
Blossoming dogwood and irises, yellow-
It is the springtime of the year and I wonder
Where to have my loved ones departed?
Beneath the ground, near the roots of blossoming flowers, or
Up in the sky, towards where tall oak trees are reaching?
I see a rainbow on the horizon, and
The sun, golden, rising above the mountains-
Clouds giving way to a sky, cobalt blue in its hue-
Where and if people have souls or spirits,
Some do not know for certain, but I know, I am never alone,
Although my loved ones are amongst the departed-
Oak trees, tall, dogwoods blossoming in the early spring this year and
Evergreens shall be present for always-
Inside of my mind, my loved ones have never died,
I can still hear their voices in deep conversation-
I can almost feel their warm embraces- I am never alone-
I am never alone because I believe in spirits and carry them inside
My heart and my mind everywhere I go-
I see their faces in every blossoming flower,
Their voices echoing in every breeze-and one day
We shall dance together on the horizon, because I believe that
People really do not die as fond memories shall carry their spirits home-
And home is wherever I walk, what I see and in the beauty of nature, while
The rainbow on the horizon reflects that everlasting love in our souls…
poem by Claudia Krizay
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Spring In Canada
SEASON of life's renewal, love's rebirth,
And all hope's young espousals; in your dream,
I feel once more the ancient stirrings of Earth.
Now in your moods benign of sun and wind,
The worn and aged, winter-wrinkled Earth,
Forgetting sorrow, sleep and iced snows,
Turns joyful to the glad sun bland and kind,
And in his kiss forgets her ancient woes.
Men scorn thy name in song in these late days
When life is sordid, crude, material, grim,
And love a laughter unto brutish minds,
Song a weariness or an idle whim,
The scoff of herds of this world's soulless hinds,
Deaf to the melody of your brooks and winds,
Blind to the beauty of your splendid dream.
Because earth's hounds and jackals bay the moon,
Must then poor Philomel forbear to sing,
Or that life's barn fowl croak in dismal tune,
Love's lark in heaven fail to lift her wing.
And even I, who feel thine ancient dreams,
Do hail thee, wondrous Spring,
Love's rare magician of this waking world,
Who turnest to melody all Earth's harshest themes,
And buildest beauty out of each bleak thing
In being, where thy roseate dreams are furled.
In thee, old age once more renews his youth,
And turns him kindling to his memoried past,
Reviving golden moments now no more,
By blossoming wood and wide sun-winnowed shore;
While youth by some supreme, divine intent,
Some spirit beneath all moods that breathe and move,
Builds o'er all earth a luminous, tremulous tent
In which to dream and love.
All elements and spirits stir and wake
From haunts of dream and death.
Loosened the waters from their iced chains
Go roaring by loud ways from fen and lake,
While all the world is filled with voice of rains,
And tender droppings toward the unborn flowers,
And rosy shoots in sunward blossoming bowers.
Loosened, the snows of Winter, cerements
From off the corpse of Autumn, waste and flee;
Loosened the gyves of slumber, plain and stream,
And all the spirits of life who build and dream
Enfranchised, glad and free.
Far out around the world by woods and meres,
Rises, like morn from night, a magic haze,
Filled with dim pearly hints of unborn days,
Of April's smiles and tears.
Far in the misty woodlands, myriad buds,
Shut leaves and petals, peeping one by one,
As in a night, leafy infinitudes,
By some kind inward magic of the sun,
Where yestereve the sad-voiced lonesome wind
Wailed a wild melody of mad Winter's mind,
Now clothed with tremulous glories of the Spring.
Or in low meadow lands some chattering brook
But last eve silent, or in slumbrous tune
Whispering hushed melodies to the wan-faced moon,
Like life slow ebbing; now with all life's dowers,
Goes loudly shouting down the joyous hours.
Wan weeds and clovers, tiny spires of green,
Rising from myriad meadows and far fields,
Drinking within the warm rains sweet and clear;
Put on the infinite glory of the year.
After long months of waiting, months of woe,
Months of withered age and sleep and death,
Months of bleak cerements of iced snow,
After dim shrunken days and long-drawn nights
Of pallid storm and haunted northern lights,
Wakens the song, the bud, the brook, the thrill,
The glory of being and the petalled breath,—
The newer wakening of a magic will,
Of life re-stirring to its infinite deeps,
By wave and shore and hooded mere and hill;—
And I, too, blind and dumb, and filled with fear,
Life-gyved and frozen, like a prisoned thing,
Feel all this glory of the waking year,
And my heart fluttering like a young bird's wing,
Doth tune itself in joyful guise to sing
The splendour and hope of all the splendid year,
The magic dream of Spring !
poem by William Wilfred Campbell
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
I have witness many great things in this world, in this life
I have witness many great things in this world, in this life. The greatest ones by far where when my children were born. They both entered this world differently. The oldest entered calm, he entered this new world with a gentle easy calmness, an alert curiosity, not certain as to where he landed yet trusting, ready to face this new world. Seeing this new life entering the world, I saw myself entering life, all life entering life, all humanity entering life. My second child entered the world, yelling; to me his cries could have been heard all around the world, he announced himself, to the world, to life, with power, with intensity, with certainty 'I am here. '
As a preteen, as a teenager, as a young man, I had many peek experiences while playing sports. Other types of experiences as well, Creative flashes of inspiration that moved me to the core.
I have witnessed the love of the human soul, the tenderness, of the human soul, the strength, endurance, the depths, I have seen, listen to, was moved by all of the Gods of the pantheon of life, the incarnations of being. I seem them go on past endurance, yet still loving, making miracles, finding hope, making ways where there where none, for their children, for loved ones for them selves for life.
poem by Michael Kavuoti
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
I Have Witness Many Great Things In This World
I have witness many great things in this world, in this life. The greatest ones by far where when my children were born. They both entered this world differently. The oldest entered calm, he entered this new world with a gentle easy calmness, an alert curiosity, not certain as to where he landed yet trusting, ready to face this new world. Seeing this new life entering the world, I saw myself entering life, all life entering life, all humanity entering life. My second child entered the world, yelling; to me his cries could have been heard all around the world, he announced himself, to the world, to life, with power, with intensity, with certainty 'I am here. '
As a preteen, as a teenager, as a young man, I had many peek experiences while playing sports. Other types of experiences as well, Creative flashes of inspiration that moved me to the core.
I have witnessed the love of the human soul, the tenderness, of the human soul, the strength, endurance, the depths, I have seen, listen to, was moved by all of the Gods of the pantheon of life, the incarnations of being. I seem them go on past endurance, yet still loving, making miracles, finding hope, making ways where there where none, for their children, for loved ones for them selves for life.
poem by Michael Kavuoti
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
The Ringlet
OH! treasured thus by passion's slave,
Dear relic of the bygone year;
Say, what remains of her who gave?
The vain regret--the useless tear.
The clasping hands--the throbbing brow--
The murmuring of that shadowy word,
To which had answered once--oh! now,
Why is that light quick step unheard?
What in those syllables is found,
That such a start of woe can claim?
A word is but an empty sound,--
Alas! it is--it was--her name!
It was--yes, she was once! as gay,
As full of life, as aught that lives;
The breath--the life--hath passed away,
But not the pang her memory gives.
Bright tress! thy beauty bringeth now
A thousand dreams of rapture gone;
Her sunny eyes, her radiant brow,
The low, light laughter of her tone.
Gazing on thee, again she stands
Before me, as in days of old;
With all her young head's shining bands,
And all its wavy curls of gold.
Till as I view thee, silken tress,
I feel within my suffering heart,--
'Tis all which now my sight can bless,
All that of her will not depart.
Oh! thou that wert life's dearest prize,
That now art but a thought of pain;
Why do thy tones--thy laughing eyes--
Rise up to wring my soul again?
I roam in vain:--the sun that beams
Is still the sun we looked upon;
My hand, my lonely hand, in dreams,
Seeks still for thine to clasp its own.
My heart resists all time--all change,
And finds no other form so dear.
My memory, wheresoe'er I range,
Clings to the spot where thou wert near.
Change!--thou wert all life's scenery:
To me, the billowy, bounding wave--
The wide green earth--the far blue sky,
Form but the landscape of thy grave!
Oh! bitter is their boon of life
Who cannot hope--who may not die--
I linger in a world of strife,
Whilst thou art in the happy sky!
I envy thee the peace thou hast,
And, but 'tis sin, the knee would bow,
That He who made thee all thou wast,
Would make me all--that thou art now!
poem by Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
In Verona.
Juliet will never rise
In her passion's paradise;
Dust is in her ears and eyes.
And time too, as all men know,
Has put by, with beauty's woe,
What remains of Romeo.
In that grave within the green
Since the dawn of death was seen
Nothing has been changed, I ween;
Nor shall their praise be unsown,
Like a bud each year new-blown
While Verona's name is known;
And the hearts of men shall come
To where Love has made his home
In their beauty's martyrdom.
Ah! the two that are so one
Since the dream of life was done: —
Would another life begun
With its dream for them too be
Mid the world's humanity
Like this in Love's history?
poem by Robert Crawford
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
In Verona.
Juliet will never rise
In her passion's paradise;
Dust is in her ears and eyes.
And time too, as all men know,
Has put by, with beauty's woe,
What remains of Romeo.
In that grave within the green
Since the dawn of death was seen
Nothing has been changed, I ween;
Nor shall their praise be unsown,
Like a bud each year new-blown
While Verona's name is known;
And the hearts of men shall come
To where Love has made his home
In their beauty's martyrdom.
Ah! the two that are so one
Since the dream of life was done: —
Would another life begun
With its dream for them too be
Mid the world's humanity
Like this in Love's history?
poem by Robert Crawford
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Mater Dolorosa
Who is this that sits by the way, by the wild wayside,
In a rent stained raiment, the robe of a cast-off bride,
In the dust, in the rainfall sitting, with soiled feet bare,
With the night for a garment upon her, with torn wet hair?
She is fairer of face than the daughters of men, and her eyes,
Worn through with her tears, are deep as the depth of skies.
This is she for whose sake being fallen, for whose abject sake,
Earth groans in the blackness of darkness, and men's hearts break.
This is she for whose love, having seen her, the men that were
Poured life out as water, and shed their souls upon air.
This is she for whose glory their years were counted as foam;
Whose face was a light upon Greece, was a fire upon Rome.
Is it now not surely a vain thing, a foolish and vain,
To sit down by her, mourn to her, serve her, partake in the pain?
She is grey with the dust of time on his manifold ways,
Where her faint feet stumble and falter through year-long days.
Shall she help us at all, O fools, give fruit or give fame,
Who herself is a name despised, a rejected name?
We have not served her for guerdon. If any do so,
That his mouth may be sweet with such honey, we care not to know.
We have drunk from a wine-unsweetened, a perilous cup,
A draught very bitter. The kings of the earth stood up,
And the rulers took counsel together, to smite her and slay;
And the blood of her wounds is given us to drink today.
Can these bones live? or the leaves that are dead leaves bud?
Or the dead blood drawn from her veins be in your veins blood?
Will ye gather up water again that was drawn and shed?
In the blood is the life of the veins, and her veins are dead.
For the lives that are over are over, and past things past;
She had her day, and it is not; was first, and is last.
Is it nothing unto you then, all ye that pass by,
If her breath be left in her lips, if she live now or die?
Behold now, O people, and say if she be not fair,
Whom your fathers followed to find her, with praise and prayer,
And rejoiced, having found her, though roof they had none nor bread;
But ye care not; what is it to you if her day be dead?
It was well with our fathers; their sound was in all men's lands;
There was fire in their hearts, and the hunger of fight in their
hands.
Naked and strong they went forth in her strength like flame,
For her love's and her name's sake of old, her republican name.
But their children, by kings made quiet, by priests made wise,
Love better the heat of their hearths than the light of her eyes.
Are they children of these thy children indeed, who have sold,
O golden goddess, the light of thy face for gold?
Are they sons indeed of the sons of thy dayspring of hope,
Whose lives are in fief of an emperor, whose souls of a Pope?
Hide then thine head, O beloved; thy time is done;
Thy kingdom is broken in heaven, and blind thy sun.
What sleep is upon you, to dream she indeed shall rise,
When the hopes are dead in her heart as the tears in her eyes?
If ye sing of her dead, will she stir? if ye weep for her, weep?
Come away now, leave her; what hath she to do but sleep?
But ye that mourn are alive, and have years to be;
And life is good, and the world is wiser than we.
Yea, wise is the world and mighty, with years to give,
And years to promise; but how long now shall it live?
And foolish and poor is faith, and her ways are bare,
Till she find the way of the sun, and the morning air.
In that hour shall this dead face shine as the face of the sun,
And the soul of man and her soul and the world's be one.
poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
One Of Us Two
The day will dawn when one of us shall hearken
In vain to hear a voice that has grown dumb.
And morns will fade, noons pale, and shadows darken,
While sad eyes watch for feet that never come.
One of us two must sometime face existence
Alone with the memories that but sharpen pain.
And these sweet days shall shine back in the distance,
Like dreams of summer dawns, in nights of rain.
One of us two, with tortured heart half broken,
Shall read long-treasured letters through salt tears,
Shall kiss with anguished lips each cherished token,
That speaks of these love-crowned, delicious years.
One of us two shall find all light, all beauty,
All joy on earth, a tale for ever done;
Shall know henceforth that life means only duty.
O God! O God! have pity on that one.
poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Error And Loss
Upon an eve I sat me down and wept,
Because the world to me seemed nowise good;
Still autumn was it, & the meadows slept,
The misty hills dreamed, and the silent wood
Seemed listening to the sorrow of my mood:
I knew not if the earth with me did grieve,
Or if it mocked my grief that bitter eve.
Then ’twixt my tears a maiden did I see,
Who drew anigh me on the leaf-strewn grass,
Then stood and gazed upon me pitifully
With grief-worn eyes, until my woe did pass
From me to her, and tearless now I was,
And she mid tears was asking me of one
She long had sought unaided and alone.
I knew not of him, and she turned away
Into the dark wood, and my own great pain
Still held me there, till dark had slain the day,
And perished at the grey dawn’s hand again;
Then from the wood a voice cried: “Ah, in vain,
In vain I seek thee, O thou bitter-sweet!
In what lone land are set thy longed-for feet?”
Then I looked up, and lo, a man there came
From midst the trees, and stood regarding me
Until my tears were dried for very shame;
Then he cried out: “O mourner, where is she
Whom I have sought o’er every land and sea?
I love her and she loveth me, and still
We meet no more than green hill meeteth hill.”
With that he passed on sadly, and I knew
That these had met and missed in the dark night,
Blinded by blindness of the world untrue,
That hideth love and maketh wrong of right.
Then midst my pity for their lost delight,
Yet more with barren longing I grew weak,
Yet more I mourned that I had none to seek.
poem by William Morris
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
The dying sycamores
A beauty like young womanhood's
Upon the green earth lies,
And June's sweet smile hath waked again
All summer's harmonies.
The insects hum their dreamy song,
The trees their honors wear,
And languid with its perfume spoils
Sighs the voluptuous air.
A gorgeous wealth of leaf and bloom
Enchants the dazzled sight;
And over earth and sky there smiles
A Presence of delight.
From yon sad dying Sycamores,
Alone a shadow falls, --
As from the ghastly form of Death,
In Egypt's banquet-halls.
Against the soft blue sky they stand,
Their naked limbs outspread,
And to the throbbing life around,
They murmur of the dead.
Spring, with her soft and odorous breath,
Hath sighed o'er them in vain,
Nor sun, nor dew, nor summer shower,
Awakes their bloom again.
Oh stately monarchs of the wood,
What blight hath o'er ye passed?
What kanker wastes your noble hearts?
What spell is on ye cast?
I watch ye where a thousand forms
With life and beauty glow,
Till half I deem that on ye lies
Some weight of human woe.
Sad emblems are ye of those hearts
In this fair world of ours,
Who live unloving and unloved,
Oh dying Sycamores.
poem by Anne Lynch Botta from Poems (1848)
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
Vote! | Copy!
An Evening Walk in Spring
IT was but some few nights ago
I wandered down this quiet lane;
I pray that I may never know
The feelings then I felt, again.
The leaves were shining all about,
You might almost have seen them springing;
I heard the cuckoo’s simple shout,
And all the little birds were singing.
It was not dull, the air was clear,
All lovely sights and sounds to deal,
My eyes could see, my ears could hear,
Only my heart, it would not feel;
And yet that it should not be so,
My mind kept telling me within;
Though nought was wrong that I did know,
I thought I must have done some sin.
For I am sure as I can be,
That they who have been wont to look
On all in Nature’s face they see,
Even as in the Holy Book;
They who with pure and humble eyes
Have gazed and read her lessons high,
And taught their spirits to be wise
In love and human sympathy,—
That they can soon and surely tell
When aught has gone amiss within,
When the mind is not sound and well,
Nor the soul free from taint of sin.
For as God’s Spirit from above,
So Beauty is to them below,
And when they slight that holy love,
Their hearts that presence may not know.
So I turned home the way I came,
With downcast looks and heavy heart,
A guilty thing and full of shame,
With a dull grief that had no smart.
It chanced when I was nearly there
That all at once I raised my eyes—
Was it a dream, or vision rare,
That then they saw before them rise?
I see it now, before me here,
As often, often I have done,
As bright as it could then appear,
All shining in the setting sun.
Elms, with their mantling foliage spread,
And tall dark poplars rising out,
And blossomed orchards, white and red,
Cast, like a long low fence, about;
And in the midst the grey church-tower,
With one slight turret at its side,
Bringing to mind with silent power
Those thousand homes the elm-trees hide.
And then there came the thought of one
Who on his bed of sickness lay,
Whilst I beneath the setting sun
Was dreaming this sweet hour away.
I thought of hearts for him that beat,
Of aching eyes their watch that kept;
The sister’s and the mother’s seat—
And oh! I thought I should have wept.
And oh, my spirit melted then,
The weight fell off me that I bore,
And now I felt in truth again
The lovely things that stood before.
O blessed, blessed scene, to thee,
For that thy sweet and softening power,
I could have fallen upon my knee,
Thy stately elms, thy grey church-tower.
So then I took my homeward way,
My heart in sweet and holy frame,
With spirit, I may dare to say,
More good and soft than when I came.
poem by Arthur Hugh Clough
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
Vote! | Copy!