Sonnet XX: Gracious Moonlight
Even as the moon grows queenlier in mid-space
When the sky darkens, and her cloud-rapt car
Thrills with intenser radiance from afar,—
So lambent, lady, beams thy sovereign grace
When the drear soul desires thee. Of that face
What shall be said,—which, like a governing star,
Gathers and garners from all things that are
Their silent penetrative loveliness?
O'er water-daisies and wild waifs of Spring,
There where the iris rears its gold-crowned sheaf
With flowering rush and sceptred arrow-leaf,
So have I marked Queen Dian, in bright ring
Of cloud above and wave below, take wing
And chase night's gloom, as thou the spirit's grief.
poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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Freedom's Star
As I strayed from my cot at the close of the day,
I turned my fond gaze to the sky;
I beheld all the stars as so sweetly they lay,
And but one fixed my heart or my eye.
Shine on, northern star, thou’rt beautiful and bright
To the slave on his journey afar;
For he speeds from his foes in the darkness of night,
Guided on by thy light, freedom’s star.
On thee he depends when he threads the dark woods
Ere the bloodhounds have hunted him back;
Thou leadest him on over mountains and floods,
With thy beams shining full on his track.
Shine on, &c.
Unwelcome to him is the bright orb of day,
As it glides o’er the earth and the sea;
He seeks then to hide like a wild beast of prey,
But with hope, rests his heart upon thee.
Shine on, &c.
May never a cloud overshadow thy face,
While the slave flies before his pursuer;
Gleam steadily on to the end of his race,
Till his body and soul are secure.
Shine on, &c.
poem by Anonymous Americas
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Sonnet XXIX: The Moonstar
Lady, I thank thee for thy loveliness,
Because my lady is more lovely still.
Glorying I gaze, and yield with glad goodwill
To thee thy tribute; by whose sweet-spun dress
Of delicate life Love labours to assess
My lady's absolute queendom; saying, “Lo!
How high this beauty is, which yet doth show
But as that beauty's sovereign votaress.”
Lady, I saw thee with her, side by side;
And as, when night's fair fires their queen surround,
An emulous star too near the moon will ride,—
Even so thy rays within her luminous bound
Were traced no more; and by the light so drown'd,
Lady, not thou but she was glorified.
poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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Pessimism
I
WHILE baby Spring sticks daisies in her hair,
Or Summer laughs with flushed triumphant face
We crush our heart rebellious at earth's grace,
And smile 'How, like the season, life is fair!'
But when the last leaf falls in the dull air,
And skies grow pale, and fields lie lost a space,
Ere their first furrow ploughs begin to trace,
And pastures shiver desolate and bare--
Oh, then one breathes; at last free from the sway
Of selfish spring--from summer's insolent reign,
One dares to speak the truth--how all life's way
Is blank as autumn skies made grey with rain,
Most blank when most the glad year bade forbear
To mar her grace with our unveiled despair.
II
NOT Spring--too lavish of her bud and leaf--
But Autumn, with sad eyes and brow austere,
When fields are bare, and woods are brown and sere,
And leaden skies weep their exhaustless grief.
Spring is so much too bright, since Spring is brief.
And in our hearts is autumn all the year,
Least sad when the wide pastures are most drear,
And fields grieve most robbed of the last gold sheaf.
For when the plough goes down the brown wet field,
A delicate doubtful throb of hope is ours--
What if this coming Spring at last should yield
Joy, with her too profuse unasked-for flowers?
Not all our Springs of commonplace and pain
Have taught us now that autumn hope is vain.
poem by Edith Nesbit
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To The Same Flower (second poem)
With little here to do or see
Of things that in the great world be,
Daisy! again I talk to thee,
For thou art worthy,
Thou unassuming Common-place
Of Nature, with that homely face,
And yet with something of a grace,
Which Love makes for thee!
Oft on the dappled turf at ease
I sit, and play with similies,
Loose types of things through all degrees,
Thoughts of thy raising:
And many a fond and idle name
I give to thee, for praise or blame,
As is the humour of the game,
While I am gazing.
A nun demure of lowly port;
Or sprightly maiden, of Love's court,
In thy simplicity the sport
Of all temptations;
A queen in crown of rubies drest;
A starveling in a scanty vest;
Are all, as seems to suit thee best,
Thy appellations.
A little cyclops, with one eye
Staring to threaten and defy,
That thought comes next--and instantly
The freak is over,
The shape will vanish--and behold
A silver shield with boss of gold,
That spreads itself, some faery bold
In fight to cover!
I see thee glittering from afar--
And then thou art a pretty star;
Not quite so fair as many are
In heaven above thee!
Yet like a star, with glittering crest,
Self-poised in air thou seem'st to rest;--
May peace come never to his nest,
Who shall reprove thee!
Bright 'Flower'! for by that name at last,
When all my reveries are past,
I call thee, and to that cleave fast,
Sweet silent creature!
That breath'st with me in sun and air,
Do thou, as thou art wont, repair
My heart with gladness, and a share
Of thy meek nature!
poem by William Wordsworth
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To Hope
WHEN by my solitary hearth I sit,
And hateful thoughts enwrap my soul in gloom;
When no fair dreams before my "mind's eye" flit,
And the bare heath of life presents no bloom;
Sweet Hope, ethereal balm upon me shed,
And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head!
Whene'er I wander, at the fall of night,
Where woven boughs shut out the moon's bright ray,
Should sad Despondency my musings fright,
And frown, to drive fair Cheerfulness away,
Peep with the moonbeams through the leafy roof,
And keep that fiend Despondence far aloof!
Should Disappointment, parent of Despair,
Strive for her son to seize my careless heart;
When, like a cloud, he sits upon the air,
Preparing on his spell-bound prey to dart:
Chase him away, sweet Hope, with visage bright,
And fright him as the morning frightens night!
Whene'er the fate of those I hold most dear
Tells to my fearful breast a tale of sorrow,
O bright-eyed Hope, my morbidfancy cheer;
Let me awhile thy sweetest comforts borrow:
Thy heaven-born radiance around me shed,
And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head!
Should e'er unhappy love my bosom pain,
From cruel parents, or relentless fair;
O let me think it is not quite in vain
To sigh out sonnets to the midnight air!
Sweet Hope, ethereal balm upon me shed,
And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head!
In the long vista of the years to roll,
Let me not see our country's honour fade:
O let me see our land retain her soul,
Her pride, her freedom; and not freedom's shade.
From thy bright eyes unusual brightness shed---
Beneath thy pinions canopy my head!
Let me not see the patriot's high bequest,
Great Liberty! how great in plain attire!
With the base purple of a court oppress'd,
Bowing her head, and ready to expire:
But let me see thee stoop from heaven on wings
That fill the skies with silver glitterings!
And as, in sparkling majesty, a star
Gilds the bright summit of some gloomy cloud;
Brightening the half veil'd face of heaven afar:
So, when dark thoughts my boding spirit shroud,
Sweet Hope, celestial influence round me shed,
Waving thy silver pinions o'er my head!
poem by John Keats
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Night
Earth! thou art lovely, when the sinking sun
Hath bathed the clouds in his departing flush,
And, with the moon-lit evening, hath begun
The voiceless, and yet spirit-calming hush,
That thrills around the heart, till tear-drops rush,
Unbidden and uncall'd for, to the eye;
When, save the music of the fountain's gush,
Or the far wailing of the night-bird's cry,
Unbroken silence hangs o'er earth, and wave, and sky.
But now the majesty of midnight storm
Is gathering, in its grandeur, o'er the sky;
The deep black clouds in mustering squadrons form,
And the low, fitful blast, that passes by,
Hath a strange fearful thrilling—like the sigh
Of a sick slumberer; even that hath died,
And in their quiet sleep the waters lie,
As though the winds ne'er curl'd them in its pride,
Or shook the still bent leaves that hang above the tide.
How steadily that ebon mass moves on!
Stretching across the sky in one dark line,
Like a huge wall of blackness; there do none
Of the thin silvery vapours hang supine,
Or those bright clouds that sometimes seem to twine
A coronal to grace the brow of night;
Stars in Orion's studded baldric shine,
In all their wonted brightness; and the light
Of an unclouded moon half dims the dazzled sight.
The tempest hurries onward—how the flash
Of the red lightning leaps from cloud to cloud!
The gathering thunder bursts in one wild crash,
And sinks a moment—then, returning loud,
Seems bounding o'er the sky, as if 't were proud
Of its own potency. We need not now,
A sharer in the thoughts that round us crowd;
The soul is its own world, and the deep glow
Of the rapt spirit seeks no fellowship below.
The wildness of the storm hath pass'd; the rain
Drips from the wet leaves only, and the sky,
With its deep azure beauty, gleams again
Through the rent clouds; the sunken wind swells by,
With a low sobbing; and the clouds, heap'd high,
With the rich moonbeams’ streaming flood of light
Pour'd full upon them, swell before the eye
Like distant snow-clad mountains. Night! O night!
Thou art most glorious! most beautifully bright!
poem by Elizabeth Margaret Chandler from Poetical Works (1836)
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Sabrina
Isle of the ocean, say, whence comest thou?
The smoke thy dark throne, and the blaze round thy brow;
The voice of the earthquake proclaims thee abroad,
And the deep, at thy coming, rolls darkly and loud.
From the breast of the ocean, the bed of the wave,
Thou hast burst into being, hast sprung from the grave;
A stranger, wild, gloomy, yet terribly bright,
Thou art clothed with the darkness, yet crowned with the light.
Thou comest in flames, thou hast risen in fire;
The wave is thy pillow, the tempest thy choir;
They will lull thee to sleep on the ocean's broad breast,
A slumb'ring volcano, an earthquake at rest.
Thou hast looked on the isle — thou hast looked on the wave —
Then hie thee again to thy deep, watery grave;
Go, quench thee in ocean, thou dark, nameless thing,
Thou spark from the fallen one's wide flaming wing.
poem by Lucretia Maria Davidson
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The Ideal
"How the shadow the Ideal throws before it darkens the actual." -- Zanoni
"La vie est un sommeil, l'amour en est le rêve;."
A sad, sweet dream; it fell upon my soul
When song and thought first woke their echoes there,
Swaying my spirit to its wild control,
And with the shadow of a fond despair
Darkening the fountain of my young life's stream --
It haunts me still, and yet I know 'tis but a dream.
Whence art thou, shadowy presence, that canst hide
From my charmed sight the glorious things of earth?
A mirage o'er life's desert dost thou glide?
Or, with those glimmerings of a former birth,
A "trailing cloud of glory," hast thou come
From some bright world afar, our unremembered home?
I know thou dwell'st not in this dull cold Real,
I know thy home is in some brighter sphere;
I know I shall not meet thee, my Ideal!
In the dark wanderings that await me here --
Why comes thy gentle image then to me,
Wasting my night of life in one long dream of thee!
The city's peopled solitude, the glare
Of festal halls, moonlight and music's tone,
All breathe the sad refrain thou art not there;
And even with Nature, I am still alone;
With joy I watch her summer bloom depart --
I love drear winter's reign -- 'tis winter in my heart.
And if I sigh upon my brow to see
The deepening shadow of Time's fleeting wing,
'Tis for the youth I might not give to thee, --
The vanished brightness of my first sweet spring;
That I might give thee not the joyous form,
Unsworn by bitter tears, unblighted by the storm.
And when the hearts I should be proud to win,
Breathe, in those tones that woman holds so dear,
Words of impassioned homage unto mine,
Coldly and harsh they fall upon my ear;
And as I listen to the fervent vow,
My weary heart replies, "Alas! it is not thou!"
And when the thoughts within my spirit glow,
That would outpour themselves in words of fire,
If some kind influence bade the music flow,
Like that which woke the notes of Memnon's lyre;
Thou, sunlight of my life! wakest not the lay --
And song within my heart unuttered dies away.
Depart, oh shadow! fatal dream, depart!
Go, I conjure thee; leave me this poor life,
And I will meet with firm, heroic heart,
Its threatening storms and its tumultuous strife,
And with the Poet-Seer will see thee stand,
To welcome my approach to thine own Spirit-land.
poem by Anne Lynch Botta from Poems (1848)
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Hymn to the North Star
The sad and solemn night
Hath yet her multitude of cheerful fires;
The glorious host of light
Walk the dark hemisphere till she retires;
All through her silent watches, gliding slow,
Her constellations come, and climb the heavens, and go.
Day, too, hath many a star
To grace his gorgeous reign, as bright as they:
Through the blue fields afar,
Unseen, they follow in his flaming way:
Many a bright lingerer, as the eve grows dim,
Tells what a radiant troop arose and set with him.
And thou dost see them rise,
Star of the Pole! and thou dost see them set.
Alone, in thy cold skies,
Thou keep'st thy old unmoving station yet,
Nor join'st the dances of that glittering train,
Nor dipp'st thy virgin orb in the blue western main.
There, at morn's rosy birth,
Thou lookest meekly through the kindling air,
And eve, that round the earth
Chases the day, beholds thee watching there;
There noontide finds thee, and the hour that calls
The shapes of polar flame to scale heaven's azure walls.
Alike, beneath thine eye,
The deeds of darkness and of light are done;
High towards the star-lit sky
Towns blaze--the smoke of battle blots the sun--
The night-storm on a thousand hills is loud--
And the strong wind of day doth mingle sea and cloud.
On thy unaltering blaze
The half-wrecked mariner, his compass lost,
Fixes his steady gaze,
And steers, undoubting, to the friendly coast;
And they who stray in perilous wastes, by night,
Are glad when thou dost shine to guide their footsteps right.
And, therefore, bards of old,
Sages, and hermits of the solemn wood,
Did in thy beams behold
A beauteous type of that unchanging good,
That bright eternal beacon, by whose ray
The voyager of time should shape his heedful way.
poem by William Cullen Bryant
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Sonnet LIII: Without Her
What of her glass without her? The blank grey
There where the pool is blind of the moon's face.
Her dress without her? The tossed empty space
Of cloud-rack whence the moon has passed away.
Her paths without her? Day's appointed sway
Usurped by desolate night. Her pillowed place
Without her? Tears, ah me! for love's good grace,
And cold forgetfulness of night or day.
What of the heart without her? Nay, poor heart,
Of thee what word remains ere speech be still?
A wayfarer by barren ways and chill,
Steep ways and weary, without her thou art,
Where the long cloud, the long wood's counterpart,
Sheds doubled darkness up the labouring hill.
poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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Sonnet. The lake and star
The mountain lake, o'ershadowed by the hills,
May still gaze heavenward on the evening star,
Whose distant light its dark recesses fills,
Though boundless distance must divide them far;
Still may the lake the star's bright image bear,
Still may the star, from its blue ether dome,
Shower down its silver beams across the gloom,
And light the wave that wanders darkly there.
Star of my life! thus do I turn to thee
Amid the shadows that above me roll;
Thus from thy distant sphere thou shinest on me;
Thus does thine image float upon my soul,
Through the wide space that must our lives dissever
Far as the lake and star, ah me! forever.
poem by Anne Lynch Botta from Poems (1848)
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The Sun
The sun comes forth; each mountain height
Glows with a tinge of rosy light,
And flowers, that slumbered through the night,
Their dewy leaves unfold;
A flood of splendor bursts on high,
And ocean's breast reflects a sky
Of crimson and of gold.
Oh! thou art glorious, orb of day!
Exulting nations hail thy ray,
Creation swells a choral lay,
To welcome thy return;
From thee all nature draws her hues,
Thy beams the insect's wings suffuse,
And in the diamond burn.
Yet must thou fade; when earth and heaven
By fire and tempest shall be riven,
Thou, from thy sphere of radiance driven,
Oh Sun! must fall at last;
Another heaven, another earth,
Far other glory shall have birth,
When all we see is past.
But He, who gave the word of might,
'Let there be light' and there was light,
Who bade thee chase the gloom of night,
And beam, the world to bless;
For ever bright, for ever pure,
Alone unchanging shall endure,
The Sun of Righteousness!
poem by Felicia Dorothea Hemans
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To Miss Tempe
Bless'd hope, when Tempe takes her last long flight,
And leaves her lass-lorn lover to complain,
Like Luna mantling o'er the brow of night,
Thy glowing wing dispels the gloom of pain.
Yes, wondrous hope, when Tempe sails afar,
Thy vital lamp remains to burn behind,
While by-gone pleasure, like a setting star,
Rejects her glory o'er the twilight mind.
Thy glowing wing was never spread to tire,
Expanded o'er the mansion of the brave,
To fan and set the heaving breast on fire,
That soars in triumph from affliction's wave.
Then, Tempe, dart along the ocean drear,
Hope yet forbids my cheerful soul to weep,
But marks thy passage with affection's tear,
And hails thee on the bosom of the deep.
Farewell, since thou wilt leave thy native shore,
I smile to think I am not left alone;
Auspicious hope shall yet my peace restore,
When thou art from the beach forever gone.
poem by George Moses Horton
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To The Rising Full Moon
Dornburg, 25th August, 1828.
WILT thou suddenly enshroud thee,
Who this moment wert so nigh?
Heavy rising masses cloud thee,
Thou art hidden from mine eye.
Yet my sadness thou well knowest,
Gleaming sweetly as a star!
That I'm loved, 'tis thou that showest,
Though my loved one may be far.
Upward mount then! clearer, milder,
Robed in splendour far more bright!
Though my heart with grief throbs wilder,
Fraught with rapture is the night!
poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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To Time
Time! on whose arbitrary wing
The varying hours must flag or fly,
Whose tardy winter, fleeting spring,
But drag or drive us on to die---
Hail thou! who on my birth bestowed
Those boons to all that know thee known;
Yet better I sustain thy load,
For now I bear the weight alone.
I would not one fond heart should share
The bitter moments thou hast given;
And pardon thee---since thou couldst spare
All that I loved, to peace or Heaven.
To them be joy or rest---on me
Thy future ills shall press in vain;
I nothing owe but years to thee,
A debt already paid in pain.
Yet even that pain was some relief;
It felt, but still forgot thy power:
The active agony of grief
Retards, but never counts the hour.
In joy I've sighed to think thy flight
Would soon subside from swift to slow;
Thy cloud could overcast the light,
But could not add a night to Woe;
For then, however drear and dark,
My soul was suited to thy sky;
One star alone shot forth a spark
To prove thee---not Eternity.
That beam hath sunk---and now thou art
A blank---a thing to count and curse
Through each dull tedious trifling part,
Which all regret, yet all rehearse.
One scene even thou canst not deform---
The limit of thy sloth or speed
When future wanderers bear the storm
Which we shall sleep too sound to heed.
And I can smile to think how weak
Thine efforts shortly shall be shown,
When all the vengeance thou canst wreak
Must fall upon---a nameless stone.
A Souless Singer
Hail! throstle, by thy ringing voice descried,
Not by the wanderings of the tuneless wing!
Now once again where forkëd boughs divide,
Lost in green leafage thou dost perch and sing:
Trilling, shrilling, far and wide,
``It is Spring.''
Thy matins peal long ere the rosy dawn
Unfolds its hull and burgeons into light;
Nor cease thy vespers till from darkling lawn
The silent shadows steal away in flight,
And the star-lit tent is drawn
Round the Night.
Is it in Heaven, or mid-way of the Earth,
Thou learn'st to outvoice, outnumber all the Nine?
What is the secret of thy madcap mirth?
Wilt thou not tell it me, and make it mine?
What is all my singing worth,
Matched with thine?
If heedless mortals only understood
What the prerogatives of real renown,
Hearing thee warble in umbrageous wood,
Or in the dingles of the rolling down,
It is thou, not I, that should
Wear the Crown.
And yet perchance more deep and more divine
The insufficiency of my poor strain.
One single solitary note is thine:
Weak though they haply be, yet I have twain.
Joy is all thy song; of mine
Half is pain.
Thou with thy carol flatterest the Year
But when it frolics into happy bloom:
Only those notes hast thou, wild chanticleer,
That with their thoughtlessness can banish gloom
From its cradle; I, a tear
For its tomb.
Thou with the blossom and bud and baby leaf,
Heartless of woe, dost revel and rejoice,
But for sere sorrow and the pensive sheaf
Lackest, for all thy minstrelsy, the voice:
There are seasons when sweet grief
Is our choice.
So, throstle, be the very voice of Spring,
And bring back rapture to the wrinkled bole!
Of all life's chords joy is the leading string,
And happiness is much, but not the whole.
Leave it then to me to sing
To the soul!
poem by Alfred Austin
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L'Envoi
Thou art the goal for which my spirit longs;
As dove on dove,
Bound for one home, I send thee all my songs
With all my love.
Thou art the haven with fair harbour lights;
Safe locked in thee,
My heart would anchor after stormful nights
Alone at sea.
Thou art the rest of which my life is fain,
The perfect peace;
Absorbed in thee the world, with all its pain
And toil, would cease.
Thou art the heaven to which my soul would go!
O dearest eyes,
Lost in your light you would turn hell below
To Paradise.
Thou all in all for which my heart-blood yearns!
Yea, near or far--
Where the unfathomed ether throbs and burns
With star on star,
Or where, enkindled by the fires of June,
The fresh earth glows,
Blushing beneath the mystical white moon
Through rose on rose--
Thee, thee, I see, thee feel in all live things,
Beloved one;
In the first bird which tremulously sings
Ere peep of sun;
In the last nestling orphaned in the hedge,
Rocked to and fro,
When dying summer shudders in the sedge,
And swallows go;
When roaring snows rush down the mountain-pass,
March floods with rills
Or April lightens through the living grass
In daffodils;
When poppied cornfields simmer in the heat
With tare and thistle,
And, like winged clouds above the mellow wheat,
The starlings whistle;
When stained with sunset the wide moorlands glare
In the wild weather,
And clouds with flaming craters smoke and flare
Red o'er red heather;
When the bent moon, on frostbound midnights waking,
Leans to the snow
Like some world-mother whose deep heart is breaking
O'er human woe.
As the round sun rolls red into the ocean,
Till all the sea
Glows fluid gold, even so life's mazy motion
Is dyed with thee:
For as the wave-like years subside and roll,
O heart's desire,
Thy soul glows interfused within my soul,
A quenchless fire.
Yea, thee I feel, all storms of life above,
Near though afar;
O thou my glorious morning star of love,
And evening star.
poem by Mathilde Blind
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The Revellers
Ring, joyous chords!-ring out again!
A swifter still, and a wilder strain!
They are here-the fair face and the careless heart,
And stars shall wane ere the mirthful part.
-But I met a dimly mournful glance,
In a sudden turn of the flying dance;
I heard the tone of a heavy sigh,
In a pause of the thrilling melody!
And it is not well that woe should breathe
On the bright spring-flowers of the festal wreath!
-Ye that to thought or to grief belong,
Leave, leave the hall of song!
Ring, joyous chords!-but who art thou
With the shadowy locks o'er thy pale young brow,
And the world of dreamy gloom that lies
In the misty depths of thy soft dark eyes?
-Thou hast lov'd, fair girl! thou hast lov'd too well!
Thou art mourning now o'er a broken spell;
Thou hast pour'd thy heart's rich treasures forth,
And art unrepaid for their priceless worth!
Mourn on!-yet come thou not here the while,
It is but a pain to see thee smile!
There is not a tone in our songs for thee-
-Home with thy sorrows flee!
Ring, joyous chords!-ring out again!
-But what dost thou with the Revel's train?
A silvery voice through the soft air floats,
But thou hast no part in the gladdening notes;
There are bright young faces that pass thee by,
But they fix no glance of thy wandering eye!
Away! there's a void in thy yearning breast,
Thou weary man! wilt thou here find rest?
Away! for thy thoughts from the scene have fled,
And the love of thy spirit is with the dead!
Thou art but more lone midst the sounds of mirth-
-Back to thy silent hearth!
Ring, joyous chords!-ring forth again!
A swifter still, and a wilder strain!
-But thou , though a reckless mien be thine,
And thy cup be crown'd with the foaming wine,
By the fitful bursts of thy laughter loud,
By thine eye's quick flash through its troubled cloud,
I know thee!-it is but the wakeful fear
Of a haunted bosom that brings thee here!
I know thee!-thou fearest the solemn night,
With her piercing stars and her deep wind's might!
There's a tone in her voice which thou fain wouldst shun,
For it asks what the secret soul hath done!
And thou-there's a dark weight on thine-away!
-Back to thy home and pray!
Ring, joyous chords!-ring out again!
A swifter still, and a wilder strain!
And bring fresh wreaths!-we will banish all
Save the free in heart from our festive hall.
On through the maze of the fleet dance, on!
-But where are the young and the lovely?-gone!
Where are the brows with the red rose crown'd,
And the floating forms with the bright zone bound?
And the waving locks and the flying feet,
That still should be where the mirthful meet!
-They are gone-they are fled-they are parted all-
-Alas! the forsaken hall!
poem by Felicia Dorothea Hemans
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Spring Star
I.
Over the lamp-lit street,
Trodden by hurrying feet,
Where mostly pulse and beat
Life's throbbing veins,
See where the April star,
Blue-bright as sapphires are,
Hangs in deep heavens far,
Waxes and wanes.
Strangely alive it seems,
Darting keen, dazzling gleams,
Veiling anon its beams,
Large, clear, and pure.
In the broad western sky
No orb may shine anigh,
No lesser radiancy
May there endure.
Spring airs are blowing sweet:
Low in the dusky street
Star-beams and eye-beams meet.
Rapt in his dreams,
All through the crowded mart
Poet with swift-stirred heart,
Passing beneath, must start,
Thrilled by those gleams.
Naught doth he note anear,
Fain through Night's veil to peer,
Reach that resplendent sphere,
Reading her sign.
Where point those sharp, thin rays,
Guiding his weary maze,
Blesseth she or betrays,
Who may divine?
'Guard me, celestial light,
Lofty, serenely bright:
Lead my halt feet aright,'
Prayerful he speaks.
'For a new ray hath shone
Over my spirit lone.
Be this new soul the one
whom my soul seeks.'
II.
Beside her casement oped the maiden sits,
Where the mild evening spirit of the Spring
Gently between the city's homesteads flits
To kiss her brows, and floats on languid wing,
Vague longings in her breast awakening.
While her heart trembles 'neath those dim, deep skies,
As the quick sea that 'neath the globed moon lies.
Where her eyes rest the full-orbed evening star
Burns with white flame: it beckons, shrinks, dilates.
She, dazzled by that shining world afar,
May not withdraw her gaze: breathless she waits.
Some promised joy from Heaven's very gates
Unto her soul seems proffered. When shall be
The bright fulfilment of that star's decree?
Nor glad nor sad is she: she doth not know
That through the city's throng one threads his way,
Thrilled likewise by that planet's mystic glow,
And hastes to seek her. What sweet change shall sway
Her spirit at his coming? What new ray
Upon his shadowy life from her shall fall?
The silent star burns on, and knoweth all.
poem by Emma Lazarus
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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The evening star
Beam of the lonely eve! thou comest forth
Upon thy little cloud of silver hue,
Laughing like mirth, within the welkin blue,
While night sits darkly in the silent north,
Or steals with viewless step around thy charms.
Spirit of twilight! cloudless be thy sway,
Before the warm morn folds thee in his arms;
Sure peace is in thy dwelling far away;
Thou stand'st unshaken by the world's alarms,
As if some angel from thy twinkling ray
Look'd out, to woo the other gems of light,
That brightly sparkle on the veil of day;
Thou walk'st so cloudless with the queen of night,
As if she long'd for aye to have thee in her sight!
poem by Katie Evans
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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