The Tavern of Last Times
At Box Hill, Surrey
A modern hour from London (as we spin
Into a silver thread the miles of space
Between us and our goal), there is a place
Apart from city traffic, dust, and din,
Green with great trees, where hides a quiet Inn.
Here Nelson last looked on the lovely face
Which made his world; and by its magic grace
Trailed rosy clouds across each early sin.
And, leaning lawnward, is the room where Keats
Wrote the last one of those immortal songs
(Called by the critics of his day 'mere rhymes').
A lark, high in the boxwood bough repeats
Those lyric strains, to idle passing throngs,
There by the little Tavern-of-Last-Times.
poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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Related quotes
My love story
Wanna listen my story?
Though attempted by many a times
But its charm never declines
So come close and open your hearts
To dropp down my melancholy thoughts
Mind! Not just focus in rhymes
Feels what it reveals on to your soul sublime
I was blessed
In love with a sweet gentle fairy
Well versed to get her merry
Sacred as holy shrine
Ignorant of Valentine
Her rosy lips and dimple bright
Her hazel eyes sparkle as stars at night
Chasing the sun all day long
And were singing a lovely song……
Thus passing days, months and years
Full of love fun and cheers
And then turned Heaven His holy writ
Sad, distress and bereft
Forlorn as Keats*, Romeo* and Tess*
The rainbow of my love got eclipse
Before blossom buried that lovely bride
Sans HER the world looks dull and dried
Nothing seems important to me any more
just Grace my love with rhymes four
poem by Gulsher john
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Spin, Spin, Spin
Spin, spin, spin
Spin around, spin around
The harlequin dances in a costume of green
Spin around
But under his makeup his age can't be seen
Spin around
But where are you spinnin'
When will you know
That life is for livin'
That it isn't a show?
Spin, spin, spin
Spin around, spin around
You look out on the city from your penthouse so high
Spin around
But your pedestal's your prison and so is your high
Spin around
But where are you spinnin'
When will you know
That life is for livin'
That it isn't a show?
Spin, spin, spin
Spin around, spin around
Your pills are you conscience
They make ev'rything seem all right
Spin around
Take a white one go to sleep
Take a red one to stay up all night
To spin around
But where are you spinnin'
When will you know
That life is for livin'
That it isn't a show?
Spin, spin, spin
Spin around, spin around
Spin, spin, spin
Spin away, spin away
Spin, spin, spin
Spin around, spin around
song performed by by Jim Croce
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Sibiu, my love!
Yes yes yes indeed!
Sibiu, my lovely city
It is the One
On which, by taking walks
At quiet times,
It filled my heart with.. Beauty
Yes! ! .. Made me feel apart
Of present's ugly world
Which never stops to grow
On concrete, steel
with complicate design
the darkest glass,
uughhh! yeack! ! the smell
of black asphalt!
Take my hand, come
I'll show you this kind,
soo lovely city
Built on baked clay
painted with love
On light, in many shades
Of warmest red!
See how the chestnut
old romantic trees
Majestically bow to us
And then let's
take our shoes off
To walk or valse
on city's
ancient stones
feel, breathe, smell,
Live its history, let free
our soul, time travel,
dream of other ways
to live again
forgotten ways
of quiet sunny
happy days.
*Sibiu, the city I had seen the light for the first time
the place I had been raised, its in the heart
of one beautiful land called Romania.
poem by Elena Sandu
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Margaritae Sorori
A LATE lark twitters from the quiet skies:
And from the west,
Where the sun, his day's work ended,
Lingers as in content,
There falls on the old, gray city
An influence luminous and serene,
A shining peace.
The smoke ascends
In a rosy-and-golden haze. The spires
Shine and are changed. In the valley
Shadows rise. The lark sings on. The sun,
Closing his benediction,
Sinks, and the darkening air
Thrills with a sense of the triumphing night--
Night with her train of stars
And her great gift of sleep.
So be my passing!
My task accomplish'd and the long day done,
My wages taken, and in my heart
Some late lark singing,
Let me be gather'd to the quiet west,
The sundown splendid and serene,
Death.
poem by William Ernest Henley
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A Well-Worn Story
In April, in April,
My one love came along,
And I ran the slope of my high hill
To follow a thread of song.
His eyes were hard as porphyry
With looking on cruel lands;
His voice went slipping over me
Like terrible silver hands.
Together we trod the secret lane
And walked the muttering town.
I wore my heart like a wet, red stain
On the breast of a velvet gown.
In April, in April,
My love went whistling by,
And I stumbled here to my high hill
Along the way of a lie.
Now what should I do in this place
But sit and count the chimes,
And splash cold water on my face
And spoil a page with rhymes?
poem by Dorothy Parker
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My Safe Place
Drawings of seventy three people,
A map of the place where they all live,
I am amongst these people, and
I can hear them in conversation,
Although nobody who lives outside of this room can-
I have given this place a name- a self-fabricated name-
I have found happiness here
Within this world I call my own.
This is my safe place-
This place where skies are touched with clouds of pink and gray,
This place where all is quiet, except for the rushing sound
Of the clear water in the creek that runs through.
Here in this place where nobody cares
What time of day people go to sleep or what hour that they awaken-
This is the place where nobody ever gets angry or slights one another-
Here where we dance when it rains and
Where we laugh when the sun is shining over that creek,
But the sun never burns us.
I have locked the silver gate that exits to the world outside,
So that untrustworthy and belligerent people cannot enter-
This is what I have called my safe place, although
Some say it is dangerous in some sort of way.
Some say that it is dangerous to deny what is real, and
To live in a self formulated world,
Ignoring the lives of three billion people,
Feeling no empathy for those in pain and those fighting in wars out there-
While listening to voices that only I can hear or those I care to hear.
I feel that that world has not been kind to me and
There is so much out there that I fear and it is with great irony
That people are so fearful of my own unfamiliarity- although
To me people who live in this great earth outside of my safe place
Are just as foreign to me as I am to them- I must say that
If I were to continuously wear the key to that silver gate about my neck-
Keeping myself safe here amongst my made up community, I can
Live in my world and others live in theirs and we won't have to fear one another- as
Unfamiliarity is synonymous with danger to so many people.
The sun shall shine upon both places and everyone shall be safe, and
Nobody- not myself, my own special friends or
Those living in the world outside of here
Shall ever get burned…
poem by Claudia Krizay
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Absence
My shadow --
I woke to a wind swirling the curtains light and dark
and the birds twittering on the roofs, I lay cold
in the early light in my room high over London.
What fear was it that made the wind sound like a fire
so that I got up and looked out half-asleep
at the calm rows of street-lights fading far below?
Without fire
Only the wind blew.
But in the dream I woke from, you
came running through the traffic, tugging me, clinging
to my elbow, your eyes spoke
what I could not grasp --
Nothing, if you were here!
The wind of the early quiet
merges slowly now with a thousand rolling wheels.
The lights are out, the air is loud.
It is an ordinary January day.
My shadow, do you hear the streets?
Are you at my heels? Are you here?
And I throw back the sheets.
Anonymous Submission
poem by Edwin Morgan
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A Late Lark Twitters From The Quiet Skies
the quiet skies:
And from the west,
Where the sun, his day's work ended,
Lingers as in content,
There falls on the old, gray city
An influence luminous and serene,
A shining peace.
The smoke ascends
In a rosy-and-golden haze. The spires
Shine and are changed. In the valley
Shadows rise. The lark sings on. The sun,
Closing his benediction,
Sinks, and the darkening air
Thrills with a sense of the triumphing night-
Night with her train of stars
And her great gift of sleep.
So be my passing!
My task accomplish'd and the long day done,
My wages taken, and in my heart
Some late lark singing,
Let me be gather'd to the quiet west,
The sundown splendid and serene,
Death.
poem by William Ernest Henley
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Pilgrims To The East
This Christmas-time my son will come,
God willing, to the Holy Place
And by the manger's little room
Will bend his knee and bow his face,
Eager, with shepherds and with kings,
For to behold the Holy Things.
The very child I made will see,
God willing, little Bethlehem,
The Garden of the Agony,
Olivet and Jerusalem
And climb to Calvary's sacred hill --
Ah, but the world is Calvary still!
My own son's feet the dust shall press,
God willing, where the Holy Feet
Passed on His Father's business:
And some high room above the street
Shall stir a memory of that Feast
Where He himself was Eucharist.
Yea, by the Gate called Beautiful
My son, my little son, shall go
And bathe in Siloam's healing pool.
Yet if God will not have it so
At least my son, in His high Name,
Has travelled towards Jerusalem.
poem by Katharine Tynan
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Rosey Won't You Please Come Home
Rosy won't you please come home?
Mama don't know where you've been.
Rosy won't you please come home?
Your room's clean and no one's in it.
Oh my Rosy, how I miss you,
You are all the world to me.
Take a look and see if you like it,
If you like it please come back.
Rosy won't you please come home?
Since you've joined the upper classes,
You don't know us anymore.
Live and let your troubles pass.
Rosy, Rosy, will you write and tell me,
If you don't want to come back?
I would sacrifice all I have
To have a happy home once more.
Rosy won't you please come home?
Two long years have passed away.
Since you tried to change your life,
Christmas wasn't quite the same.
Rosy, Rosy, got any answers?
You are miles across the sea,
And I'll bake a cake if you tell me
You are on the first plane home.
Rosy won't you please come home?
Mama don't know where you've been.
Rosy won't you please come home?
Your room's clean and no one's in it.
Oh my Rosy, how I miss you,
You are all the world to me.
Take a look and see if you like it,
If you like it please come back.
Oh Rosy, will you please come back?
song performed by by Kinks
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Waiting
Tonight i'll dream a girl called home
And wake up in tears
All on my own
With the sun coming up
And my head against stone
Balcony dressed and drawn
Tonight i'll dream a room so far away
Frost pale blue
The colour of a perfect day
And then screw up my face
In the mirror
As i wait for the others to call
But if i don't believe in magic
And i don't believe in blood
And i don't believe in miracles
And i don't believe in love
Then how come i believe so soon
In a cherry tree girl
And a dust blue room?
Tonight i'll dream an hour so long
Shadow soft smiles
And everyone loves me
To open my eyes
In a drag myself face undone
Hard back into the world
Tonight i'll dream a dream i dream
Without even trying i'm flying i scream
As i practice the move
I spit at my pillow stained face
And the others all come
But if i don't believe in magic
And i don't believe in blood
And i don't believe in miracles
And i don't believe in love
Then how come i believe it seems
In a girl called home
And a world called dreams?
song performed by by Cure
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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In The Early Day (Roundel)
In the early day there is some beauty
while the breeze in grass and bracken plays,
up high a lark is soaring wild and free.
In the early day
there is something joyful and something gay
with a kind of grace in everything I see
while over the hill a rider gallops away
and it's as if something is calling me
to awaken you, to kiss you if I may,
together to find some serenity
in the early day.
poem by Gert Strydom
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My Message
Words.
I have written
Spin through the air.
Like reddened leaves
From deadened trees
At Autumns' fair.
Rhymes I hung
On bells that rung.
Reverberate
In a lonely soul.
Somewhere.
So late
In a moonlight dance
Stars explode
To then enhance
True romance in silver plume
That drifts away.
Yet my message that wafts across her room
Will kiss her cheek.
A million miles away.
poem by Kevin East
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Fleet Street
BENEATH this narrow jostling street,
Unruffled by the noise of feet,
Like a slow organ-note I hear
The pulses of the great world beat.
Unseen beneath the city’s show
Through this aorta ever flow
The currents of the universe—
A thousand pulses throbbing low!
Unheard beneath the pavement’s din
Unknown magicians sit within
Dim caves, and weave life into words
On patient looms that spin and spin.
There, uninspired, yet with the dower
Of mightier mechanic power,
Some bent, obscure Euripides
Builds the loud drama of the hour!
There, from the gaping presses hurled,
A thousand voices, passion-whirled,
With throats of steel vociferate
The incessant story of the world!
So through this artery from age
To age the tides of passion rage,
The swift historians of each day
Flinging a world upon a page!
And then I pause and gaze my fill
Where cataracts of traffic spill
Their foam into the Circus. Lo!
Look up, the crown on Ludgate Hill!
Remote from all the city’s moods,
In high, untroubled solitudes,
Like an old Buddha swathed in dream,
St. Paul’s above the city broods!
poem by Arthur Henry Adams
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Butterflies
I would spin for you a blanket
Out of gold and silver threads
I would let my gentle bosom
Be a pillow for your head
Id caress your perfect body
On a rosy bed at night
Play you love songs on a golden harp
And sing you butterflies
In a diamond-studded chalice
On an emerald-plated tray
I would bring to you sweet nectar
And gifts of bright array
I would paint for you a castle
In a blue and yellow sky
Paint you happy ever after
And paint you butterflies
Chorus:
Butterflies, my heart flutters with the notion
I get high on the wings of sweet emotion
Darling i, I just think of you and I get butterflies
I get close to you and I get butterflies
If only I were magic
I would make the wishes true
I would wave a magic wand
And be in paradise with you
But Im just a girl that loves you
I will love you all my life
But I do have a magic feeling
And it gives me butterflies
Chorus:
Butterflies, my heart flutters with the notion
I get high on the wings of sweet emotion
Darling i, I just think of you and I get butterflies
We should fly away together, you and i
Off to paradise forever, I get high
I get close to you and I get butterflies
I think of you and I get butterflies
Fade:
I will spin for you a blanket out of gold and silver threads
If only I were magic, I would make the wishes true
I would wave a magic wand and be in paradise with you
song performed by by Dolly Parton
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Butterfly in a jar
How far can a butterfly
fly when a jar surrounds it
and see-through windows
cases it in to a place
that is just an empty space.
Crimson, blue, yellow
and green speckled unfolding wings
have no wind or breeze
to drift on
and no space
to move in.
You look like a butterfly to me
and the green and gold
of your lovely eyes
shines bright at times
and the grace
of every movement
brings dignity where ever
you are.
Still life encases you
in body soul and time
and at times I want
to set you free
and help you make
the whole world your place
to make your own destiny in.
When I see tears
in your eyes
that grows dull at times,
I want to take it all away
and give you the ability
to be really free
from the things that hurt
and help you heal
little by little
and be the person
that you are meant to be
and I truly want to love you
since you are really precious to me.
poem by Gert Strydom
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Captive of the White City, The
Flower of the foam of the waves
Of the beautiful inland sea, -
White as the foam that laves
The ships of the Sea-Kings past, -
Marvel of human hands,
Wonderful, mystical, vast,
The great White City stands;
And the banners of all the lands
Are free on the western breeze,
Free as the West is free.
And the throngs go up and down
In the streets of the wonderful town
In brotherly love and grace, -
Children of every zone
The light of the sun has known:
And there in the Midway Place,
In the House of the Unhewn Trees,
There in the surging crowd,
Silent, and stern, and proud,
Sits Rain-in-the-Face!
Why is the captive here?
Is the hour of the Lord so near
When slayer and slain shall meet
In the place of the Judgment seat
For the word of the last decree?
Ah, what is the word to be?
For the beautiful City stands
On the Red Man’s wrested lands, **
The home of the fated race;
And the ghostly shadow falls
Over the trophied walls ***
Of the House of the Unhewn Tree,
In the pleasant Midway Place.
There is blood on the broken door,
Ther is blood on the broken floor,
Blood on your bronzed hands,
O Rain-in-the-Face.
Shut from the sunlit air,
Like a sun-god overthrown,
The soldier, Custer, lies.
Dust is the sun-kissed hair,
Dust are the dauntless eyes,
Dust and name alone; -
While the wife holds watch with grief
For the never-returning chief.
What if she walked to-day
In the City’s pleasant way,
The beautiful Midway Place,
And there to her sudden gaze,
Dimmed with her widow’s tears,
After the terrible years,
Stood Rain-in-the-Face!
Quench with a dropp of dew
From the morning’s cloudless blue
The prairies’ burning plains-
The seas of seething flame;
Turn from its awful path
The tempest, in its wrath;
Lure from his jungle-lair
The tiger, crouching there
For the leap on his sighted prey:
Then seek as well to tame
The hate in the Red Man’s veins,
His tiger-thirst to cool,
In the hour of the evil day
When his foe before him stands!
From the wrongs of the White Man’s rule
Blood only may wash the trace.
Alas, for the death-heaped slain!
Alas for your blood-stained hands,
O Rain-in-the-Face!
And the throngs go up, go down,
In the streets of the wonderful town;
And jests of the merry tongue,
And the dance, and the glad songs sung,
Ring through the sunlit space.
And there, in the wild, free breeze,
In the House of the Unhewn Trees,
In the beautiful Midway Place,
The captive sits apart,
Silent, and makes no sign.
But what is the word in your heart,
O man of a dying race?
What tale on your lips for mine,
O Rain-in-the-Face?
* “The White City” was the name given to the Columbian Exposition in Chicago,1893. The man who killed General Custer on the Little Bighorn was displayed in the Midway Plaisance of the fair. He sat, under guard, in a log cabin brought from Montana and reportedly owned by Sitting Bull, the same cabin in which that chief and his son had been killed.
** The Indians claim that the Land upon which Chicago is built was never fully paid for.
*** ”The walls were hung with relics of the fight” (Coolbrith’s note)
poem by Ina D. Coolbrith
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Introductory Lines (The Shadowy Waters)
I walked among the seven woods of Coole:
Shan-walla, where a willow-hordered pond
Gathers the wild duck from the winter dawn;
Shady Kyle-dortha; sunnier Kyle-na-no,
Where many hundred squirrels are as happy
As though they had been hidden by green bough's
Where old age cannot find them; Paire-na-lee,
Where hazel and ash and privet blind the paths:
Dim Paire-na-carraig, where the wild bees fling
Their sudden fragrances on the green air;
Dim Paire-na-tarav, where enchanted eyes
Have seen immortal, mild, proud shadows walk;
Dim Inchy wood, that hides badger and fox
And marten-cat, and borders that old wood
Wise Buddy Early called the wicked wood:
Seven odours, seven murmurs, seven woods.
I had not eyes like those enchanted eyes,
Yet dreamed that beings happier than men
Moved round me in the shadows, and at night
My dreams were clown by voices and by fires;
And the images I have woven in this story
Of Forgael and Dectora and the empty waters
Moved round me in the voices and the fires,
And more I may not write of, for they that cleave
The waters of sleep can make a chattering tongue
Heavy like stone, their wisdom being half silence.
How shall I name you, immortal, mild, proud shadows?
I only know that all we know comes from you,
And that you come from Eden on flying feet.
Is Eden far away, or do you hide
From human thought, as hares and mice and coneys
That run before the reaping-hook and lie
In the last ridge of the barley? Do our woods
And winds and ponds cover more quiet woods,
More shining winds, more star-glimmering ponds?
Is Eden out of time and out of space?
And do you gather about us when pale light
Shining on water and fallen among leaves,
And winds blowing from flowers, and whirr of feathers
And the green quiet, have uplifted the heart?
I have made this poem for you, that men may read it
Before they read of Forgael and Dectora,
As men in the old times, before the harps began,
Poured out wine for the high invisible ones.
poem by William Butler Yeats
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All Souls
THERE'S traffic in the worlds immortal,
For many souls are flying home,
Striving and pushing at the portal
For sight of glorious things to come.
What rout of wings against the sunset?
What rosy plumes the dawning bar?
Heaven's stormed with gay and happy onset
Of youngling things home from the War.
Against the inverted cup of azure,
Against the evening, peach and green,
The frolicsome young souls take their pleasure,
Darting the silver stars between.
Though the old nests be sad, forsaken,
The cotes of Heaven are yet unfilled:
In trees of Heaven as yet untaken
The immortal Loves lift hearts and build.
poem by Katharine Tynan
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Green Mansions
Green mansions, high upon a hill
Green mansions, quiet and still
Big wall all around
Its where my baby will be found
Waiting for that day, to come
Green mansions, high upon a hill
In the countryside where the birds begin to sing
Free from the glamour of the world
Where the story does unfurl
Waiting on that day to come
Tried in vain to forget
Just how it ought to be
Over and over and over and over again
'bout what it means to me
Green mansions, I can hear the mocking bird
Birds singing in a melancholy wood
The big wall all around
Where my baby will be found
Waiting for that day to come
Well Ive tried in vain, to forget
Yeah what it ought to be
Over and over, over again
Just what it means to me
Green mansions, high upon a hill
Green mansions, quiet and still
Big wall all around
Where my baby will be found
Waiting for that day to come
Green mansions, high upon a hill
Green mansions, quiet and still
Big wall all around
Where my baby will be found
Waiting for that day to come.
song performed by by Van Morrison
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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