August
LEAVE me alone, for August's sleepy charm
Is on me, and I will not break the spell;
My head is on the mighty Mother's arm:
I will not ask if life goes ill or well.
There is no world!--I do not care to know
Whence aught has come, nor whither it shall go.
I want to wander over pastures still,
Where sheared white sheep and mild-eyed cattle graze;
To climb the thymy, clover-covered hill,
To look down on the valley's hot blue haze;
And on the short brown turf for hours to lie
Gazing straight up into the clear, deep sky,
I want to walk through crisp gold harvest fields,
Through meadows yellowed by the August heat;
To loiter through the cool dim wood, that yields
Such perfect flowers and quiet so complete--
The happy woods, where every bud and leaf
Is full of dreams as life is full of grief.
I want to think no more of all the pain
That in the city thrives, a poison flower--
The eternal loss, the never-coming gain,
The lifelong woe--the joy that lives an hour,
Bright, evanescent as the dew that dawn
Shows on this silent, wood-encircled lawn.
I want to pull the honey-bud that twines
About the blackberries and gold-leaf sloes;
To part the boughs where the rare water shines,
Tread the soft bank whereby the bulrush grows--
I want to be no more myself, but be
Made one with all the beauty that I see.
Oh, happy country, myriad voiced and dear,
I have no heart, no eyes, except for you;
Yours are the only voices I will hear,
Yours is the only bidding I will do:
You bid me be at peace, and let alone
That loud, rough world where peace is never known.
Yet through your voices comes a sterner cry,
A voice I cannot silence if I would;
It mars the song the lark sings to the sky,
It breaks the changeful music of the wood.
'Back to your post--a charge you have to keep--
Freedom is bleeding while her soldiers sleep.'
Oh, heart of mine I have to carry here,
Will you not let me rest a little while?--
A space 'mid doubtful fight and doubtful fear--
A little space to see the Mother's smile,
To stretch my hands out to her, and possess
No sense of aught but of her loveliness?
Ah, just this power to feel how she is fair
Means just the power to see how foul life is.
How can I linger in the sacred air
And taste the pure wine of the dear sun's kiss
When in the outer dark my brothers moan,
Nor even guess the joys that I have known?
Back the least soldier goes! To jar and fret,
To hope uncrowned--faith tried--love wounded sore--
To prayers that never have been answered yet,
To dreams that must be dreams for evermore;
To all that, after all, is far more dear
Than all the joys of all the changing year.
poem by Edith Nesbit
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Related quotes
The Sleep Of Spring
O for that sweet, untroubled rest
That poets oft have sung!--
The babe upon its mother's breast,
The bird upon its young,
The heart asleep without a pain--
When shall I know that sleep again?
When shall I be as I have been
Upon my mother's breast
Sweet Nature's garb of verdant green
To woo to perfect rest--
Love in the meadow, field, and glen,
And in my native wilds again?
The sheep within the fallow field,
The herd upon the green,
The larks that in the thistle shield,
And pipe from morn to e'en--
O for the pasture, fields, and fen!
When shall I see such rest again?
I love the weeds along the fen,
More sweet than garden flowers,
For freedom haunts the humble glen
That blest my happiest hours.
Here prison injures health and me:
I love sweet freedom and the free.
The crows upon the swelling hills,
The cows upon the lea,
Sheep feeding by the pasture rills,
Are ever dear to me,
Because sweet freedom is their mate,
While I am lone and desolate.
I loved the winds when I was young,
When life was dear to me;
I loved the song which Nature sung,
Endearing liberty;
I loved the wood, the vale, the stream,
For there my boyhood used to dream.
There even toil itself was play;
Twas pleasure een to weep;
Twas joy to think of dreams by day,
The beautiful of sleep.
When shall I see the wood and plain,
And dream those happy dreams again?
poem by John Clare
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The Dead To The Living
Work while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.
IN the childhood of April, while purple woods
With the young year's blood in them smiled,
I passed through the lanes and the wakened fields,
And stood by the grave of the child.
And the pain awoke that is never dead
Though it sometimes sleeps, and again
It set its teeth in this heart of mine,
And fastened its claws in my brain:
For it seemed so hard that the little hands
And the little well-loved head
Should be out of reach of my living lips,
And be side by side with the dead--
Not side by side with us who had loved,
But with these who had never seen
The grace of the smile, the gold of the hair,
And the eyes of my baby-queen.
Yet with trees about where the brown birds build,
And with long green grass above,
She lies in the cold sweet breast of earth
Beyond the reach of our love;
Whatever befalls in the coarse loud world,
We know she will never wake.
When I thought of the sorrow she might have known,
I was almost glad for her sake. . . .
Tears might have tired those kiss-closed eyes,
Grief hardened the mouth I kissed;
I was almost glad that my dear was dead
Because of the pain she had missed.
Oh, if I could but have died a child
With a white child-soul like hers,
As pure as the wind-flowers down in the copse,
Where the soul of the spring's self stirs;
Or if I had only done with it all,
And might lie by her side unmoved!
I envied the very clods of earth
Their place near the child I loved!
And my soul rose up in revolt at life,
As I stood dry-eyed by her grave,
When sudden the grass of the churchyard sod
Rolled back like a green smooth wave;
The brown earth looked like the brown sea rocks,
The tombstones were white like spray,
And white like surf were the curling folds
Of the shrouds where the dead men lay;
For each in his place with his quiet face
I saw the dead lie low,
Who had worked and suffered and found life sad,
So many sad years ago.
Unchanged by time I saw them lie
As when first they were laid to rest,
The tired eyes closed, the sad lips still,
And the work-worn hands on the breast.
There were some who had found the green world so grey,
They had left it before their time,
And some were little ones like my dear,
And some had died in their prime;
And some were old, they had had their fill
Of bitter unfruitful hours,
And knew that none of them, none, had known
A flower of a hope like ours!
Through their shut eyelids the dead looked up,
And without a voice they said:
'We lived without hope, without hope we died,
And hopeless we lie here dead;
And death is better than life that draws
Pain in, as it draws in breath,
If life never dreams of a coming day
When life shall not envy death.
Through the dark of our hours and our times we lived,
Uncheered by a single ray
Of such hope as lightens the lives of you
Who are finding life hard to-day;
With our little lanterns of human love
We lighted our dark warm night--
But you in the chill of the dawn are set
With your face to the eastern light.
Freedom is waiting with hands held out
Till you tear the veil from her face--
And when once men have seen the light of her eyes,
And felt her divine embrace,
The light of the world will be risen indeed,
And will shine in the eyes of men,
And those who come after will find life fair,
And their lives worth living then!
Will you strive to the light in your loud rough world,
That these things may come to pass,
Or lie in the shadow beside the child,
And strive to the sun through the grass?'
'My world while I may,' I cried; 'but you
Whose lives were as dark as your grave?'
'We too are a part of the coming light,'
They called through the smooth green wave.
Their white shrouds gleamed as the flood of green
Rolled over and hid them from me--
Hid all but the little hands and the hair,
And the face that I always see.
poem by Edith Nesbit
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Second Best
Here in the dark, O heart;
Alone with the enduring Earth, and Night,
And Silence, and the warm strange smell of clover;
Clear-visioned, though it break you; far apart
From the dead best, the dear and old delight;
Throw down your dreams of immortality,
O faithful, O foolish lover!
Here's peace for you, and surety; here the one
Wisdom - the truth! - 'All day the good glad sun
Showers love and labour on you, wine and song;
The greenwood laughs, the wind blows, all day long
Till night.' And night ends all things.
Then shall be
No lamp relumed in heaven, no voices crying,
Or changing lights, or dreams and forms that hover!
(And, heart, for all your sighing,
That gladness and those tears are over, over. . . .)
And has the truth brought no new hope at all,
Heart, that you're weeping yet for Paradise?
Do they still whisper, the old weary cries?
‘’Mid youth and song, feasting and carnival,
Through laughter, through the roses,as of old
Comes Death, on shadowy and relentless feet,
Death, unappeaseable by prayer or gold;
Death is the end, the end!’
Proud, then, clear-eyed and laughing, go to greet
Death as a friend!
Exile of immortality, strongly wise,
Strain through the dark with undesirous eyes
To what may lie beyond it. Sets your star,
O heart, for ever! Yet, behind the night,
Waits for the great unborn, somewhere afar,
Some white tremendous daybreak. And the light,
Returning, shall give back the golden hours,
Ocean a windless level, Earth a lawn
Spacious and full of sunlit dancing-places,
And laughter, and music, and, among the flowers,
The gay child-hearts of men, and the child-faces
O heart, in the great dawn!
poem by Rupert Brooke (1908)
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Sadness
1
Dear ghosts, dear presences, O my dear parents,
Why were you so sad on porches, whispering?
What great melancholies were loosed among our swings!
As before a storm one hears the leaves whispering
And marks each small change in the atmosphere,
So was it then to overhear and to fear.
2
But all things then were oracle and secret.
Remember the night when, lost, returning, we turned back
Confused, and our headlights singled out the fox?
Our thoughts went with it then, turning and turning back
With the same terror, into the deep thicket
Beside the highway, at home in the dark thicket.
3
I say the wood within is the dark wood,
Or wound no torn shirt can entirely bandage,
But the sad hand returns to it in secret
Repeatedly, encouraging the bandage
To speak of that other world we might have borne,
The lost world buried before it could be born.
4
Burchfield describes the pinched white souls of violets
Frothing the mouth of a derelict old mine
Just as an evil August night comes down,
All umber, but for one smudge of dusky carmine.
It is the sky of a peculiar sadness—
The other side perhaps of some rare gladness.
5
What is it to be happy, after all? Think
Of the first small joys. Think of how our parents
Would whistle as they packed for the long summers,
Or, busy about the usual tasks of parents,
Smile down at us suddenly for some secret reason,
Or simply smile, not needing any reason.
6
But even in the summers we remember
The forest had its eyes, the sea its voices,
And there were roads no map would ever master,
Lost roads and moonless nights and ancient voices—
And night crept down with an awful slowness toward the water;
And there were lanterns once, doubled in the water.
7
Sadness has its own beauty, of course. Toward dusk,
Let us say, the river darkens and look bruised,
And we stand looking out at it through rain.
It is as if life itself were somehow bruised
And tender at this hour; and a few tears commence.
Not that they are but that they feel immense.
poem by Donald Justice
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The House In The Woods
At the back of the houses there is the wood.
While there is a leaf of summer left, the wood
Makes sounds I can put somewhere in my song,
Has paths I can walk, when I wake, to good
Or evil: to the cage, to the oven, to the House
In the Wood. It is a part of life, or of the story
We make of life. But after the last leaf,
The last light--for each year is leafless,
Each day lightless, at the last--the wood begins
Its serious existence: it has no path,
No house, no story; it resists comparison...
One clear, repeated, lapping gurgle, like a spoon
Or a glass breathing, is the brook,
The wood's fouled midnight water. If I walk into the wood
As far as I can walk, I come to my own door,
The door of the House in the Wood. It opens silently:
On the bed is something covered, something humped
Asleep there, awake there--but what? I do not know.
I look, I lie there, and yet I do not know.
How far out my great echoing clumsy limbs
Stretch, surrounded only by space! For time has struck,
All the clocks are stuck now, for how many lives,
On the same second. Numbed, wooden, motionless,
We are far under the surface of the night.
Nothing comes down so deep but sound: a car, freight cars,
A high soft droning, drawn out like a wire
Forever and ever--is this the sound that Bunyan heard
So that he thought his bowels would burst within him?--
Drift on, on, into nothing. Then someone screams
A scream like an old knife sharpened into nothing.
It is only a nightmare. No one wakes up, nothing happens,
Except there is gooseflesh over my whole body--
And that too, after a little while, is gone.
I lie here like a cut-off limb, the stump the limb has left...
Here at the bottom of the world, what was before the world
And will be after, holds me to its back
Breasts and rocks me: the oven is cold, the cage is empty,
In the House in the Wood, the witch and her child sleep.
poem by Randall Jarrell
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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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Through The Wood
THROUGH the wood, the green wood, the wet wood, the light wood,
Love and I went maying a thousand lives ago;
Shafts of golden sunlight had made a golden bright wood
In my heart reflected, because I loved you so.
Through the wood, the chill wood, the brown wood, the bare wood,
I alone went lonely no later than last year,
What had thinned the branches, and wrecked my dear and fair wood,
Killed the pale wild roses and left the rose-thorns sere?
Through the wood, the dead wood, the sad wood, the lone wood,
Winds of winter shiver through lichens old and grey,
You ride past forgetting the wood that was our own wood
All our own--and withered as ever a flower of May.
poem by Edith Nesbit
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Out Of The Fulness Of The Heart The Mouth Speaketh
In answer to those who have said that English Poets
give no personal love to their country.
ENGLAND, my country, austere in the clamorous council of nations,
Set in the seat of the mighty, wielding the sword of the strong,
Have we but sung of your glory, firm in eternal foundations?
Are not your woods and your meadows the core of our heart and our song?
O dear fields of my country, grass growing green, glowing golden,
Green in the patience of winter, gold in the pageant of spring,
Oaks and young larches awaking, wind-flowers and violets blowing,
What, if God sets us to singing, what save you shall we sing?
Who but our England is fair through the veil of her poets' praises,
What but the pastoral face, the fruitful, beautiful breast?
Are not your poets' meadows starred with the English daisies?
Were not the wings of their song-birds fledged in an English nest?
Songs of the leaves in the sunlight, songs of the fern-brake in shadow,
Songs of the world of the woods and songs of the marsh and the mere,
Are they not English woods, dear English marshland and meadow?
Have not your poets loved you? England, are you not dear?
Shoulders of upland brown laid dark to the sunset's bosom,
Living amber of wheat, and copper of new-ploughed loam,
Downs where the white sheep wander, little gardens in blossom,
Roads that wind through the twilight up to the lights of home.
Lanes that are white with hawthorn, dykes where the sedges shiver,
Hollows where caged winds slumber, moorlands where winds wake free,
Sowing and reaping and gleaning, spring and torrent and river,
Are they not more, by worlds, than the whole of the world can be?
Is there a corner of land, a furze-fringed rag of a by-way,
Coign of your foam-white cliffs or swirl of your grass-green waves,
Leaf of your peaceful copse, or dust of your strenuous highway,
But in our hearts is sacred, dear as our cradles, our graves?
Is not each bough in your orchards, each cloud in the skies above you,
Is not each byre or homestead, furrow or farm or fold,
Dear as the last dear drops of the blood in the hearts that love you,
Filling those hearts till the love is more than the heart can hold?
Therefore the song breaks forth from the depths of the hidden fountain
Singing your least frail flower, your raiment of seas and skies,
Singing your pasture and cornfield, fen and valley and mountain,
England, desire of my heart, England, delight of mine eyes!
Take my song too, my country: many a son and debtor
Pays you in praise and homage out of your gifts' full store;
Life of my life, my England, many will praise you better,
None, by the God that made you, ever can love you more!
poem by Edith Nesbit
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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
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Cheer
It's a mighty good world, so it is, dear lass,
When even the worst is said.
There's a smile and a tear, a sigh and a cheer,
But better be living than dead;
A joy and a pain, a loss and a gain;
There's honey and may be some gall:
Yet still I declare, foul weather or fair,
It's a mighty good world after all.
For look, lass! at night when I break from the fight,
My Kingdom's awaiting for me;
There's comfort and rest, and the warmth of your breast,
And little ones climbing my knee.
There's fire-light and song -- Oh, the world may be wrong!
Its empires may topple and fall:
My home is my care -- if gladness be there,
It's a mighty good world after all.
O heart of pure gold! I have made you a fold,
It's sheltered, sun-fondled and warm.
O little ones, rest! I have fashioned a nest;
Sleep on! you are safe from the storm.
For there's no foe like fear, and there's no friend like cheer,
And sunshine will flash at our call;
So crown Love as King, and let us all sing --
"It's a mighty good world after all."
poem by Robert William Service
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Every Soldier Has A Dream
After a war a soldier sometimes has to cry as dreams of those memories waters in the eye.
It's very sad when this world of ours goes to war.
Peace is the thing that soldiers have fought and died for.
With hands held in the air a soldier cries a bit but people are blind to dreams that do not fit.
Some people abuse this world but one day they'll find that they've lost their battlefields and they are unklind.
Lost battlefields and dreams with no victories won, following the forgotten hero.
Here they come.
They bury the dream because they cannot recall what it was that made the Soldier stand proud and tall.
Soldiers come from all walks of life.
Sisters.
Brothers.
Soldiers with many dreams seldom shared with others.
Soldiers who had loved ones and families back home.
Some soldiers are just children
and still on their own.
Honoured I feel to remember soldiers this way.
I salute them have I your attention I say.
Stand at ease,
fall out.
Sir nobody knew his name.
Dear God you know who he was our dream was the same.
Undaunted was the soldier in the face of fear.
No turning back.
Each soldier shed a silent tear.
But I wonder why no one hears the soldiers cry.
Listen today as soldiers go to fight and die .
Try to imagine the soldiers forgotten dream.
Keep the memory of what the Soldier
had been.
It haunts us today and remains here in our time.
Ghosts with forgotten dreams remain.
Its such a crime.
What the soldier fought for is what we must redeem,
as we look back and try to recapture the dream.
The ship's sunk and they say,
we're glad we missed the cruise.
Don't take for granted things in life we shouldn't loose.
When the battle is over and the dreams don't sit.
Every soldier must cry just a little bit.
By Paul McCann
poem by Paul McCann
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A Birthday Trifle
Here in this gold-green evening end,
While air is soft and sky is clear,
What tender message shall I send
To her I hold so dear?
What rose of song with breath like myrrh,
And leaf of dew and fair pure beams
Shall I select and give to her—
The lady of my dreams?
Alas! the blossom I would take,
The song as sweet as Persian speech,
And carry for my lady’s sake,
Is not within my reach.
I have no perfect gift of words,
Or I would hasten now to send
A ballad full of tunes of birds
To please my lovely friend.
But this pure pleasure is my own,
That I have power to waft away
A hope as bright as heaven’s zone
On this her natal day.
May all her life be like the light
That softens down in spheres divine,
“As lovely as a Lapland night,”
All grace and chastened shine!
poem by Henry Kendall
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A Brown Study
LET them sing of their primrose and cowslip,
Their daffodil-gold-coloured hair,
Their bluebells, blue eyes, and white violets,
All the pale dreamy things they find fair;
Give me stir of brown leaves in the sunshine,
The whir of brown wings through the wheat,
The rush of brown hares through the clover,
And the light in brown eyes of my sweet!
Gold hair? Well, I never could love it,
Yet gold, I suppose, has its worth;
The head that I love is as dusky
As the breast of our mother, the earth;
With a gleam like the shine of wet seaweed,
Round pools that the tide has left clear,
And warm like the breast of a linnet,
And as brown, is the hair of my dear.
From the edge of the cliff we look downwards
On the shore, and the bay, and the town,
And brown is the short turf we lean on,
The fishing-boats' sails are all brown:
The sky may be blue--that's the background,--
But the picture itself, to be fair,
However it's shaded and varied,
Should be brown as the dress that you wear.
A lark bursts to sudden sweet singing--
That tuft of brown grass is his home--
And now, a brown speck, he is rising
Against the clear windy sky-dome;
And he sings--how I know? Love instructs me
To know all his notes, what they mean--
That it isn't the colour I care for,
But yourself, oh, my gipsy, my queen!
Ah! the lark knows my heart--I his language;
It's my heart he sings out to the skies;
It is you that I love, and what matter
The colour of hair or of eyes?
No doubt I should love you as dearly
Were your hair like an apricot's down,
And your eyes like the grey of the morning;
But I'm glad, all the same, that they're brown.
poem by Edith Nesbit
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The Singing Of The Magnificat
A LEGEND
IN midst of wide green pasture-lands, cut through
By lines of alders bordering deep-banked streams,
Where bulrushes and yellow iris grew,
And rest and peace, and all the flowers of dreams,
The Abbey stood--so still, it seemed a part
Of the marsh-country's almost pulseless heart.
Where grey-green willows fringed the stream and pool,
The lazy meek-faced cattle strayed to graze,
Sheep in the meadows cropped the grasses cool,
And silver fish shone through the watery ways,
And many a load of fruit and load of corn
Into the Abbey storehouses was borne.
Yet though so much they had of life's good things,
The monks but held them as a sacred trust,
Lent from the storehouse of the King of kings
Till they, His stewards, should crumble back to dust.
'Not as our own,' they said, 'but as the Lord's,
All that the stream yields, or the land affords.'
And all the villages and hamlets near
Knew the monks' wealth, and how their wealth was spent.
In tribulation, sickness, want, or fear,
First to the Abbey all the peasants went,
Certain to find a welcome, and to be
Helped in the hour of their extremity.
When plague or sickness smote the people sore,
The Brothers prayed beside the dying bed,
And nursed the sick back into health once more,
And through the horror and the danger said:
'How good is God, Who has such love for us,
He lets us tend His suffering children thus!'
They in their simple ways and works were glad:
Yet all men must have sorrows of their own.
And so a bitter grief the Brothers had,
Nor mourned for others' heaviness alone.
This was the secret of their sorrowing,
That not a monk in all the house could sing!
Was it the damp air from the lovely marsh,
Or strain of scarcely intermitted prayer,
That made their voices, when they sang, as harsh
As any frog's that croaks in evening air--
That made less music in their hymns to lie
Than in the hoarsest wild-fowl's hoarsest cry?
If love could sweeten voice to sing a song,
Theirs had been sweetest song was ever sung:
But their hearts' music reached their lips all wrong,
The soul's intent foiled by the traitorous tongue
That marred the chapel's peace, and seemed to scare
The rapt devotion lingering in the air.
The birds that in the chapel built their nests,
And in the stone-work found their small lives fair,
Flew thence with hurled wings and fluttering breasts
When rang the bell to call the monks to prayer.
'Why will they sing,' they twittered, 'why at all?
In heaven their silence must be festival!'
The brothers prayed with penance and with tears
That God would let them give some little part
Out for the solace of their own sad ears
Of all the music crowded in their heart.
Their nature and the marsh-air had their way,
And still they sang more vilely every day.
And all their prayers and fasts availing not
To give them voices sweet, their souls' desire,
The Abbot said, 'Gifts He did not allot
God at our hands will not again require;
The love He gives us He will ask again
In love to Him and to our fellow-men.
'Praise Him we must, and since we cannot praise
As we would choose, we praise Him as we can.
In heaven we shall be taught the angels' ways
Of singing--we afford to wait a span.
In singing, as in toil, do ye your best;
God will adjust the balance--do the rest!'
But one good Brother, anxious to remove
This, the reproach now laid on them so long,
Rejected counsel, and for very love
Besought a Brother, skilled in art of song,
To come to them--his cloister far to leave--
And sing Magnificat on Christmas Eve.
So when each brown monk duly sought his place,
By two and two, slow pacing to the choir,
Shrined in his dark oak stall, the strange monk's face
Shone with a light as of devotion's fire,
Good, young and fair, his seemed a form wherein
Pure beauty left no room at all for sin.
And when the time for singing it had come,
'Magnificat,' face raised, and voice, he sang:
Each in his stall the monks stood glad and dumb,
As through the chancel's dusk his voice outrang,
Pure, clear, and perfect--as the thrushes sing
Their first impulsive welcome of the spring.
At the first notes the Abbot's heart spoke low:
'Oh God, accept this singing, seeing we,
Had we the power, would ever praise Thee so--
Would ever, Lord, Thou know'st, sing thus for Thee;
Thus in our hearts Thy hymns are ever sung,
As he Thou blessest sings them with his tongue.'
But as the voice rose higher, and more sweet,
The Abbot's heart said, 'Thou hast heard us grieve,
And sent an angel from beside Thy feet,
To sing Magnificat on Christmas Eve;
To ease our ache of soul, and let us see
How we some day in heaven shall sing to Thee.'
Through the cold Christmas night the hymn rang out,
In perfect cadence, clear as sunlit rain--
Such heavenly music that the birds without
Beat their warm wings against the window pane,
Scattering the frosted crystal snow outspread
Upon the stone-lace and the window-lead.
The white moon through the window seemed to gaze
On the pure face and eyes the singer raised;
The storm-wind hushed the clamour of its ways,
God seemed to stoop to hear Himself thus praised,
And breathless all the Brothers stood, and still
Reached longing souls out to the music's thrill.
Old years came back, and half-remembered hours,
Dreams of delight that never was to be,
Mothers' remembered kiss, the funeral flowers
Laid on the grave of life's felicity;
An infinite dear passion of regret
Swept through their hearts, and left their eyelids wet.
The birds beat ever at the window, till
They broke the pane, and so could entrance win;
Their slender feet clung to the window-sill,
And though with them the bitter air came in,
The monks were glad that the birds too should hear,
Since to God's creatures all, His praise is dear.
The lovely music waxed and waned, and sank,
And brought less conscious sadness in its train,
Unrecognised despair that thinks to thank
God for a joy renounced, a chosen pain--
And deems that peace which is but stifled life
Dulled by a too-prolonged unfruitful strife.
When, service done, the Brothers gathered round
To thank the singer--modest-eyed, said he:
'Not mine the grace, if grace indeed abound;
God gave the power, if any power there be;
If I in hymn or psalm clear voice can raise,
As His the gift, so His be all the praise!'
That night--the Abbot lying on his bed--
A sudden flood of radiance on him fell,
Poured from the crucifix above his head,
And cast a stream of light across his cell--
And in the fullest fervour of the light
An Angel stood, glittering, and great, and white.
His wings of thousand rainbow clouds seemed made,
A thousand lamps of love shone in his eyes,
The light of dawn upon his brows was laid,
Odours of thousand flowers of Paradise
Filled all the cell, and through the heart there stirred
A sense of music that could not be heard.
The Angel spoke--his voice was low and sweet
As the sea's murmur on low-lying shore--
Or whisper of the wind in ripened wheat:
'Brother,' he said, 'the God we both adore
Has sent me down to ask, is all not right?--
Why was Magnificat not sung to-night?'
Tranced in the joy the Angel's presence brought,
The Abbot answered: 'All these weary years
We have sung our best--but always have we thought
Our voices were unworthy heavenly ears;
And so to-night we found a clearer tongue,
And by it the Magnificat was sung.'
The Angel answered, 'All these happy years
In heaven has your Magnificat been heard;
This night alone, the angels' listening ears
Of all its music caught no single word.
Say, who is he whose goodness is not strong
Enough to bear the burden of his song?'
The Abbot named his name. 'Ah, why,' he cried,
'Have angels heard not what we found so dear?'
'Only pure hearts,' the Angel's voice replied,
'Can carry human songs up to God's ear;
To-night in heaven was missed the sweetest praise
That ever rises from earth's mud-stained maze.
'The monk who sang Magnificat is filled
With lust of praise, and with hypocrisy;
He sings for earth--in heaven his notes are stilled
By muffling weight of deadening vanity;
His heart is chained to earth, and cannot bear
His singing higher than the listening air!
'From purest hearts most perfect music springs,
And while you mourned your voices were not sweet,
Marred by the accident of earthly things,--
In heaven, God, listening, judged your song complete.
The sweetest of earth's music came from you,
The music of a noble life and true!'
poem by Edith Nesbit
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A December Day
Blue, blue is the sea to-day,
Warmly the light
Sleeps on St. Andrews Bay --
Blue, fringed with white.
That's no December sky!
Surely 'tis June
Holds now her state on high,
Queen of the noon.
Only the tree-tops bare
Crowning the hill,
Clear-cut in perfect air,
Warn us that still
Winter, the aged chief,
Mighty in power,
Exiles the tender leaf,
Exiles the flower.
Is there a heart to-day,
A heart that grieves
For flowers that fade away,
For fallen leaves?
Oh, not in leaves or flowers
Endures the charm
That clothes those naked towers
With love-light warm.
O dear St. Andrews Bay,
Winter or Spring
Gives not nor takes away
Memories that cling
All round thy girdling reefs,
That walk thy shore,
Memories of joys and griefs
Ours evermore.
poem by Robert Fuller Murray
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In Summer
Oh, summer has clothed the earth
In a cloak from the loom of the sun!
And a mantle, too, of the skies' soft blue,
And a belt where the rivers run.
And now for the kiss of the wind,
And the touch of the air's soft hands,
With the rest from strife and the heat of life,
With the freedom of lakes and lands.
I envy the farmer's boy
Who sings as he follows the plow;
While the shining green of the young blades lean
To the breezes that cool his brow.
He sings to the dewy morn,
No thought of another's ear;
But the song he sings is a chant for kings
And the whole wide world to hear.
He sings of the joys of life,
Of the pleasures of work and rest,
From an o'erfull heart, without aim or art;
'T is a song of the merriest.
O ye who toil in the town,
And ye who moil in the mart,
Hear the artless song, and your faith made strong
Shall renew your joy of heart.
Oh, poor were the worth of the world
If never a song were heard,--
If the sting of grief had no relief,
And never a heart were stirred.
So, long as the streams run down,
And as long as the robins trill,
Let us taunt old Care with a merry air,
And sing in the face of ill.
poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar
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If
Dear love, if you and I could sail away,
With snowy pennons to the wind unfurled,
Across the waters of some unknown bay,
And find some island far from all the world;
If we could dwell there, ever more alone,
While unrecorded years slip by apace,
Forgetting and forgotten and unknown
By aught save native song-birds of the place;
If Winter never visited that land,
And Summer's lap spilled o'er with fruits and flowers,
And tropic trees cast shade on every hand,
And twinèd boughs formed sleep-inviting bowers;
If from the fashions of the world set free,
And hid away from all its jealous strife,
I lived alone for you, and you for me--
Ah! then, dear love, how sweet were wedded life.
But since we dwell here in the crowded way,
Where hurrying throungs rush by to seek for gold,
And all is common-place and work-a-day,
As soon as love's young honeymoon grows old:
Since fashion rules and nature yields to art,
And life is hurt by daily jar and fret,
'T is best to shut such dreams down in the heart
And go our ways alone, love, and forget.
poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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Can I Be With You, O' Love?
dear love, o' love, love
can i be with you, o' love?
can i stay with you, o' dear love?
o' love, love, love
you are the perfect key to every heart
((o' love!))
you are the string to every heart
((dear love!))
you are the peace to my heart
((love, o' love!))
your mood is so emotional
but your love is so natural
you are the wood to my art
to carry me by the walls of my heart
can i be with you?
o' love,
wont you leave and gone?
dear love,
can i talk with you?
pure love,
can i walk with you?
soul love,
you are the need to my wish,
(that is love)
you are the feed to my dish,
(such is love)
you are the strength to the weak,
(o' love)
you are the length to the thick,
(endless love)
can i be with you?
o' love
wondering not but,
is my heart there?
or has it faded?
is it beating?
or has it deflated?
o' how i wish love you were
so close to mine and there
to stone me a love with care
yes, i stare
with eyes of love and share
love with her that dare
to share,
i ask with no one...
can i fall in love
with you, o' dear love?
wont you escape my heart?
wont you run away from love?
wont you fade away from love?
come stay with me, o' dear love
come lay with me, not tear love
some blame with you, but care love
come wave with me, share love
you are the perfect key to every heart
((o' love!))
you are the string to every heart
((dear love!))
you are the peace to my heart
((love, o' love!))
come be with me
((o' dear love))
opn02122012/0345
poem: can i be with you?
book: the melody of my heart
book no.14 of 2012
december 2012
email: [email protected]
[email protected]
facebook: opnmambo
twitter: @opnmambo
poem by Onalethuso Petruss Ntema
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Love, Grief, Death, Peace and Life Make War
Love, grief, death, peace, and life make war.
Within the grasps of victory, here lies grief.
Striving to keep a soul alive, thriving for life
whispers of sanity fade from the sight of death.
An outstretched limb pleading for a touch of peace
as a memory of happiness fills the heart with love.
Controlling senses fester upon a long lost love,
breathing in deep, it’s the smell of a war.
Muffled cries creep into your soul, pleading for peace.
You lick your blood stained lips, tasting the bitter grief.
piercing voices thunder upon the ground, accepting death
as a memory of loneliness fills their heart with an absence of life.
Tears of blood come forth into a dimension of twisted life.
The air, heavy and hot, hover over you ridding the land of any former love.
A chorus of saints and sinners sing to you, singing the song of death,
”O come ye child, come into my arms and rid yourself of this war.
Gather your mind and venture to the morrow, leaving behind this haunting grief,
for it is not your fault that this world does not know peace.”
You close your eyes, feeling the sensation of eternal peace.
You can not move any aching limb, within an inch of life
you follow the scent of reigning mud, caking itself to the world’s own grief.
Wandering past the forgotten lives to seek the one true love
that carries upon it’s shoulders, a burden of war.
This land can no longer hold itself with peace as all the peace has turned to death.
Forging itself upon your spirit, the lies no longer live, now it is only death
that caresses your body like a mother so tender, illuminating the one and only peace.
Taunting you to go and be afraid no more, taunting and taunting, this is war.
With one last plea, you beg and cry for the voices to take your life
as you know that the searching prisms of hope will find your love
and they will abolish the need of any misery and any grief.
Once more do the saints and sinners sing of your grief
only this time, there is no mourning of war and death.
They’ve come to pour into your heart, a sound so divine. It is love.
”Dear child, dear child, no more shall you weep, we are here, we’re your peace.
Come with us to a land so pure, where love is eternal and death is not near. We will give you life.
With a trust so deep, take our hands and no more, no more, shall this be your burden of war.”
In times of sorrow and fear, lost is the value of love and peace.
All is forgotten while caged by grief and watching the slaughter of life.
You watch your fallen brothers, reaching for help, you hear the despair in all their voices.
You’re the saint and sinner, giving them hope.
You cease your thoughts, you must fight on.
You aim your gun, praying for death. This is war.
poem by Mason Letoto
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Two Voices
COUNTRY
'SWEET are the lanes and the hedges, the fields made red with the clover,
With tall field-sorrel, and daisies, and golden buttercups glowing;
Sweet is the way through the woods, where at sundown maiden and lover
Linger by stile or by bank where wild clematis is growing.
Fair is our world when the dew and the dawn thrill the half-wakened roses,
Fair when the corn-fields grow warm with poppies in noonlight gleaming,
Fair through the long afternoon, when hedges and hay-fields lie dreaming,
Fair as in lessening light the last convolvulus closes
'Scent of geranium and musk that in cottage windows run riot,
Breath from the grass that is down in the meadows each side the highway,
Slumberous hush of the churchyard where we one day may lie quiet,
Murmuring wind through the leaves bent over the meadow byway,
Deeps of cool shadow, and gleams of light on high elm-tops shining,
Such peace in the dim green brake as the town, save in dreams, knows never,
But in, through, under it all, the old pain follows us ever--
Ever the old despair, the old unrest and repining.
'Dark is the City's face; but her children who know her find her
Mother to them who are brothers, mindful of brotherhood's duty;
To each of us, lonely, unhelped, the grave would be warmer, kinder,
Than the cold unloving face of our world of blossom and beauty.
Poverty deep and dark cowers under the thatch with the swallows,
Cruel disease lies hid in the changeful breast of the waters,
Drink sets snares for our sons, and shame digs graves for our daughters,
Want and care crush the flower of a youth that no life-fruit follows.
'What are the woodland sweets--the meadow's fair flowery treasure--
When we are hungry and sad, and stupid with work and with sorrows?
Leisure for nothing but sleep, and with heart but for sleep in our leisure;
The work of to-day still the same as yesterday's work, and to-morrow's.
Ever the weary round--the treadmill of innocent lives--
Hopeless and helpless, and bowing our backs like a hound's to the lashes;
What can seem fair to the eyes that are smarting and sore with the ashes
Blown from the fires that consume the souls of our children and wives?
'Dreams sometimes we have had of an hour when we might speak plainly,
Raise the mantle and show how the iron eats into our bosom,
The rotting root of the Nation, the worm at the heart of its blossom,
Dreaming we said, 'We will speak, when the time for it comes, not vainly.'
Ah--but the time comes never--Life, we are used to bear it,
Starved are our brains and grow not, our hands are fit but for toiling,
If we stretched them out their touch to our masters' hand would be soiling;
Weak is our voice with disuse--too weak for our lords to hear it!'
CITY
'So has the spark died out that the torch of hope dropped among you?
So is the burden bound more fast to the shrinking shoulder?
Far too faint are your cries to be heard by the men who wrong you?
And if they heard they are high, and the air as men rise grows colder!
Yet you are men though so weak, and in mine and workshop your brothers,
Stronger in head, and in heart not less sad, for deliverance are striving;
These will stand fast, and will face the cruel unjust and ungiving,
And you in our ranks shall be 'listed, our hands fast clasped in each other's!
'For in the night of our sorrow cold lights are breaking and brightening
Out in the eastern sky; through the drifting clouds, wind-driven,
Over the earth new gleams and glories are laughing and lightening,
Clearer the air grows each moment, brighter the face of the heaven.
Turn we our face to the east--oh, wind of the dawn, blow to us
Freshness and strength and resolve! The star of old faith grows paler
Before the eyes of our Freedom, though still wrath's red mists veil her,
For this is our battle day; revenge, like our blood, runs through us.
'This is our vengeance day. Our masters, made fat with our fasting,
Shall fall before us like corn when the sickle for harvest is strong:
Old wrong shall give might to our arm--remembrance of wrong shall make lasting
The graves we will dig for the tyrants we bore with too much and too long.
The sobs of our starving children, the tears of our heart-sick mothers,
The moan of your murdered manhood crushed out by their wanton pressure,
The wail of the life-long anguish that paid the price of their pleasure,
These will make funeral music to speed the lost souls of them, brothers!
'Shoulder to shoulder we march, and for those who go down mid the fighting
With rifles in hand and pikes, and the red flag over them flying,
Glad shall our hearts be for them--who die when our sun is lighting
The warm, wide heavens, and sheds its lovely light on their dying.
Fight, though we lose our dearest--fight, though the battle rages
Fiercer and hotter than ever was fight in the world before:
We must fight--how can men do less? If we die, what can men do more?
And the sun of Freedom shall shine across our graves to the ages!'
poem by Edith Nesbit
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