En.Citatepedia^®.ro

Adrift: A Brisbane River Reverie

An amphitheatre of purple hills
And emerald slopes where nestling villas gleam,
Flooded with golden light that crowns and fills
Height, vale, and stream.
The clouds float motionless like isles of snow
Set in the sapphire of the summer sky,
The river, like a ribbon, far below
Winds rippling by;

As, like a creeping snake, with curve and sweep
The languid current steals past mead and scar,
To the dark mangrove fringing on the deep
Abreast the bar.

Slow drifts the boat past homestead, town, and lea;
The waters laugh and sob against the side
As down the murmuring river to the sea,
Dreaming, I glide.

Past meadowy marshland and gray limestone bluff,
Low mangrove fens and waste lantana heights,
Long reaches where the tides and winds are rough,
And sheltered bights.

Now wider spread the waters to the eyes;
Now sparser grow the homesteads, scarcely seen,
Save where some roof or gaunt gray trunk may rise
Against the green.

And salter on the cheek the breezes blow;
And in a deeper key the river sings;
And from the viewless sea move to and fro
Swift snow-like wings.

These are the harbingers from voyaged seas
Who knows what seas of thought man yet may sail
As science slowly sifts Life’s mysteries—
And lifts the veil?

poem by George Essex Evans
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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The Happy Islands

O FAR away, and far away,
The Happy Islands lie;
In bluer seas of calm than these,
Beneath a bluer sky.

The sea, a shining girdle, winds
Round cliff and cape and bay,
With flash and gleam, and there they dream,
O far and far away!

Upon a rim of sapphire sea,
As some sweet girl might lean
Her breast of snow, my Islands glow,
All exquisite and green.

The cliffs like shining ramparts rise,
The golden beaches gleam;
And thro' the hills sing silver rills,
And cataract and stream.

Bright in a mist of leaves, on height
And headland, waving high,
The flame-flowers lean, and burn between
Splendours of sea and sky.

The still, bright forests, massed and green,
Like painted woodlands glow
In shade and shine; and belts of pine
Climb up to meet the snow.

No burning drought with fevered breath,
Nor blight of bitter hail,
Blackens the yield of fruitful field,
Nor sears the flowery vale.

Ah me! my Isles! my Happy Isles!
The Isles that nurtured me;
My heart is fain to cross again
Those leagues of purple sea,—

To watch at sunset from the hills
The headlands fade in mist,
'Mid changing glows, of gold and rose
And Bloom-of-Amethyst.

I tread to-day a sunless strand
Under sad skies of grey,
But summer smiles in my fair Isles
So far and far away.

poem by Inez Isabel Maud Peacocke
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In November (1)

The leafless forests slowly yield
To the thick-driving snow. A little while
And night shall darken down. In shouting file
The woodmen's carts go by me homeward-wheeled,
Past the thin fading stubbles, half concealed,
Now golden-gray, sowed softly through with snow,
Where the last ploughman follows still his row,
Turning black furrows through the whitening field.
Far off the village lamps begin to gleam,
Fast drives the snow, and no man comes this way;
The hills grow wintry white, and bleak winds moan
About the naked uplands. I alone
Am neither sad, nor shelterless, nor gray,
Wrapped round with thought, content to watch and dream.

poem by Archibald Lampman
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The Land Of The Dawning

Darkrose her shore in seas of amethyst
By tropic breezes kissed,
A summer land in watery wastes forlorn,
Her ranges floating in the snow-white mist
And gold of early morn.
The tides of Empire ebbed and flowed afar;
The thrones of nations in the dust were hurled,
Silent she slept beneath the morning star,
A virgin world.
Love, Birth, and Death, the stress of Age and Race,
Changed not her maiden face—
Unstocked her pastures and untilled her soil—
She who for labour builds a throne apace
Saw not her people toil;
Down the low valleys, up the stormy steeps,
Careless they roamed at will: the land was free
From desert stark to where the mangrove sleeps
Upon the sea.

There dropped no anchor at her river bars
Beneath the quiet stars;
No wandering sail her silent waters swept;
By waste and scrub, o’er plain and rocky scars
No alien footstep crept;
In feathery billows of her grassy seas
Some lonely mountain stretched its capes of blue;
Only the heavens above her and the breeze
Her secrets knew.

Where the wild grass grew rank on slopes forlorn
Rise fields of yellow corn,
And purple lucerne-bloom makes sweet the air;
The sullen mountain, lost in mists of morn,
Its golden heart lays bare.
Spoils of her pastures crowd full many a mart;
Her glittering treasure calls to many a land;
She has no secrets for the daring heart
And strong brown hand.

The smoke and thunder of her cities rise
To the same careless skies;
Her arteries thread the same wide sunlit leas,
Her fleets stretch forth their wings of enterprise
O’er the same summer seas.
She to the Nations cries: “No Past, no Fame,
No Memories quicken round my flag unfurled;
The mightier, therefore, shall I carve my name
Upon the World.”

poem by George Essex Evans
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The Silent Muse

``Why have you silent been so long?''
In tones of mild rebuke you ask.
Know you not, kindly friend, that Song
Is the ``Gay Science,'' not a task?

It is but when it pleaseth God
The blackthorn blows, the acorns fall;
The Muse ignores a mortal's nod,
And will not come to beck and call.

If I, to catch the ear of men,
Should go on singing day by day,
What other, better, were I then,
Than screeching chough or scolding jay?

But save the unseen source be stirred,
The happy numbers will not flow:
Then one is like a songless bird
That crouches in the drifted snow.

Say, did you ever sit and dream,
When summer clouds are white and still,
Beside a slow unsounding stream
That winds below some rustic mill?

The languid current scarcely moves;
At times you almost doubt it flows;
Loitering in shallow sandy grooves,
It makes no music as it goes.

The sluice is down, the mill-race still,
Nor in mid-stream nor water's edge
Comes faintest ripple, tiniest rill,
To stir the flag, or sway the sedge.

Beside the dozing stream you doze,
For nothing wakes in air or sky:
It feels as if Time's eyelids close,
And 'tis the same to live or die;

To be a passive part of all
That rounds Heaven's universal plan,
Of things that soar, of things that crawl,
Of mindless matter, as of man.

When slowly through the noonday sleep
A phantom something seems to stir,
Like waves of dewy light that creep
Along gray chords of gossamer.

At first it is nor sight nor sound,
But feeling only, inward sense
Of motion slowly rising round,
You know not where, you know not whence.

Then, noiseless still, but plain to see,
The languid waters wake and wind;
The wave before now fears to be
O'ertaken by the wave behind.

The race, long pent, from out the mill
Comes rushing, rippling, gleam on gleam;
The runnels rise, the shallows fill,
And deep and happy flows the stream.

The lazy sedges sway and swerve,
The reedmace rocks its heavy head;
Past many a bend, and bay, and curve,
The river revels through its bed.

And as it twists, and curls, and sweels,
From out its leaping heart there come
Sounds sweet as far-off village bells,
Or swarming bee-hive's honeyed hum.

Through quaking grass and waving weed
Rises and falls the river-theme;
Vibrating rush and trembling reed
Are but the harpstrings of the stream.

Once more the gold-ribbed gravel trills
With quavering trebles clear and cool,
Blent with the deeper note that fills
The plunging weir and swirling pool.

Bed, bank and channel, chant and chime,
And fall and freshet, as they run,
Though ignorant of tune and time,
Sing in melodious unison.

And so, if I be shaped to sing
What kindly hearts are pleased to hear,
And blissful were did Nature bring
A rush of music all the year;

Seasons there are it doth not flow,
When Fancy's freshets will not come,
The springs of song seem shrunk and low,
And all my being dry and dumb.

When suddenly from far-off source,
Unseen, unsounding, deep, immense,
Something, with swift resistless force,
Flushes the heart and floods the sense;

And as though Heaven and Earth did drain
Into that deep mysterious spring,
Brims all the windings of the brain;
Then like replenished stream I sing.

The will can not the stream control,
Its currents are divinely sent,
And thought and feeling, mind and soul,
Are rapt in rhythmic ravishment.

And on they flow, when once they start,
To some ordained but unguessed goal,
Through all the channels of the heart,
And all the reaches of the soul.

Then come the wingëd words that skim
The surface of earth's discontent
To soar up to the ether dim,
Faint heard from far-off firmament.

But, till the music stirs and swells
Within my breast, forbearing be;
Nor lightly waken slumbering bells
Above a silent sanctuary!

poem by Alfred Austin
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A River For Him

(emmylou harris)
I crossed on the river
Therell be no returning
I crossed all the bridges
I watched them all burning
And now Im a stranger
To a strange land Im driven
Where all is forgotten
And nothings forgiven
But I cried a river
A river for him
Thats deeper and wider
Than Ill ever swim
The heart it will harden
The sorrow will dim
But I cried a river
A river for him
I think of him now
On the road I am taking
And wonder how long
His heart will be breaking
But hell never hear when
The teardrops are falling
Or the sound of my voice
And the name Im calling
But I cried a river
A river for him
Thats deeper and wider
Than Ill ever swim
The heart it will harden
The sorrow will dim
But I cried a river
A river for him
So sweep for the sons
And the dear darling daughters
For the passing of time
And the parting of waters
For all who have passed through
This world long before me
To a far distant shore line
Where no one waits for me
But I cried a river
A river for him
Thats deeper and wider
Than Ill ever swim
The heart it will harden
The sorrow will dim
But I cried a river
A river for him

song performed by by Emmylou Harris
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Sunset On The Bearcamp

A gold fringe on the purpling hem
Of hills the river runs,
As down its long, green valley falls
The last of summer's suns.

Along its tawny gravel-bed
Broad-flowing, swift, and still,
As if its meadow levels felt
The hurry of the hill,
Noiseless between its banks of green
From curve to curve it slips;
The drowsy maple-shadows rest
Like fingers on its lips.

A waif from Carroll's wildest hills,
Unstoried and unknown;
The ursine legend of its name
Prowls on its banks alone.
Yet flowers as fair its slopes adorn
As ever Yarrow knew,
Or, under rainy Irish skies,
By Spenser's Mulla grew;
And through the gaps of leaning trees
Its mountain cradle shows
The gold against the amethyst,
The green against the rose.

Touched by a light that hath no name,
A glory never sung,
Aloft on sky and mountain wall
Are God's great pictures hung.
How changed the summits vast and old!
No longer granite-browed,
They melt in rosy mist; the rock
Is softer than the cloud;
The valley holds its breath; no leaf
Of all its elms is twirled
The silence of eternity
Seems falling on the world.

The pause before the breaking seals
Of mystery is this;
Yon miracle-play of night and day
Makes dumb its witnesses.
What unseen altar crowns the hills
That reach up stair on stair?
What eyes look through, what white wings fan
These purple veils of air?
What Presence from the heavenly heights
To those of earth stoops down?
Not vainly Hellas dreamed of gods
On Ida's snowy crown!

Slow fades the vision of the sky,
The golden water pales,
And over all the valley-land
A gray-winged vapor sails.
I go the common way of all;
The sunset fires will burn,
The flowers will blow, the river flow,
When I no more return.
No whisper from the mountain pine
Nor lapsing stream shall tell
The stranger, treading where I tread,
Of him who loved them well.

But beauty seen is never lost,
God's colors all are fast;
The glory of this sunset heaven
Into my soul has passed,
A sense of gladness unconfined
To mortal date or clime;
As the soul liveth, it shall live
Beyond the years of time.
Beside the mystic asphodels
Shall bloom the home-born flowers,
And new horizons flush and glow
With sunset hues of ours.

Farewell! these smiling hills must wear
Too soon their wintry frown,
And snow-cold winds from off them shake
The maple's red leaves down.
But I shall see a summer sun
Still setting broad and low;
The mountain slopes shall blush and bloom,
The golden water flow.
A lover's claim is mine on all
I see to have and hold,--
The rose-light of perpetual hills,
And sunsets never cold!

poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
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Leda

Where the slow river
meets the tide,
a red swan lifts red wings
and darker beak,
and underneath the purple down
of his soft breast
uncurls his coral feet.

Through the deep purple
of the dying heat
of sun and mist,
the level ray of sun-beam
has caressed
the lily with dark breast,
and flecked with richer gold
its golden crest.

Where the slow lifting
of the tide,
floats into the river
and slowly drifts
among the reeds,
and lifts the yellow flags,
he floats
where tide and river meet.

Ah kingly kiss --
no more regret
nor old deep memories
to mar the bliss;
where the low sedge is thick,
the gold day-lily
outspreads and rests
beneath soft fluttering
of red swan wings
and the warm quivering
of the red swan's breast.

poem by Hilda Doolittle
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Boat On The River (Frankfurt 2000)

Take me back to my boat on the river
I need to go down, I need to come down
Take me back to my boat on the river
And I won't cry out anymore
Time stands still as I gaze in her waters
She eases me down, touching me gently
With the waters that flow past my boat on the river
So I don't cry out anymore
Oh the river is wide
The river it touches my life like the waves on the sand
And all roads lead to Tranquillity Base
Where the frown on my face disappears
Take me down to my boat on the river
And I won't cry out anymore
Oh the river is deep
The river it touches my life like the waves on the sand
And all roads lead to Tranquillity Base
Where the frown on my face disappears
Take me down to my boat on the river
I need to go down, won't you let me go down
Take me back to my boat on the river
And I won't cry out anymore
And I won't cry out anymore
And I won't cry out anymore

song performed by by Styx
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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A Tall Story part two

There is a bridge that crosses over a river
A river that is eerie and makes you quiver
With the light of the moon the river will gleam
and a boat will go sailing, on its own down
stream. The mist will come from out of the trees
and horrible sounds can be heard in the breeze.
It sounded like cats caught up in a fight a claim
for territory in the dead of night, but cats never fight
on the waters edge just in case they fall over the ledge.
A river bank full of matted reeds where plants had died
without dispersing their seeds.A man dressed in green
who paddles the stream who can be seen clear in the
moonlit beam.Sometimes you hear him digging on
the side of the river bank, could this be true or is it
some sort of a prank
A river full of alge green and that's how it had
always been. No carp, no bream no fish to fish not
even a place for a secret wish.
No river bank wildlife to give it grace, just run over the
bridge and get out of this place.
The story tells of a robber who stood about three feet
tall and because of his height he couldent climbe over
the wall. Now behind the wall was the river which spread
down far and wide and the man in green had a problem
because he could'nt get to the other side.So he hid the
loot inside his boot and started to dig under the wall
but as he dug the water flooded in and he sank to
the bottom of the pool.
Apart from one thing he could not swim and the weight
of the loot that was in his boot no doubt made him take
root.If you go to the river and see the man in green, then
please come back and tell us what you have seen.
This is a tall story one with a short tale, I am sorry it
didn't excit you, but my next one wont fail.

poem by Sylvia Spencer
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Boat On The River

Take me back to my boat on the river
I need to go down, I need to come down
Take me back to my boat on the river
And I wont cry out any more
Time stands still as I gaze in her waters
She eases me down, touching me gently
With the waters that flow past my boat on the river
So I dont cry out anymore
Oh the river is wide
The river it touches my life like the waves on the sand
And all roads lead to tranquillity base
Where the frown on my face disappears
Take me down to my boat on the river
And I wont cry out anymore
Oh the river is deep
The river it touches my life like the waves on the sand
And all roads lead to tranquillity base
Where the frown on my face disappears
Take me down to my boat on the river
I need to go down, with you let me go down
Take me back to my boat on the river
And I wont cry out anymore
And I wont cry out anymore
And I wont cry out anymore

song performed by by Styx
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Spring On The River

O sun, shine hot on the river;
For the ice is turning an ashen hue,
And the still bright water is looking through,
And the myriad streams are greeting you
With a ballad of life to the giver,
From forest and field and sunny town,
Meeting and running and tripping down,
With laughter and song to the river.

Oh! the din on the boats by the river;
The barges are ringing while day avails,
With sound of hewing and hammering nails,
Planing and painting and swinging pails,
All day in their shrill endeavor;
For the waters brim over their wintry cup,
And the grinding ice is breaking up,
And we must away down the river.

Oh! the hum and the toil of the river;
The ridge of the rapid sprays and skips:
Loud and low by the water's lips,
Tearing the wet pines into strips,
The saw mill is moaning ever.
The little grey sparrow skips and calls
On the rocks in the rain of the water falls,
And the logs are adrift in the river.

Oh! restlessly whirls the river;
The rivulets run and the cataract drones:
The spiders are flitting over the stones:
Summer winds float and the cedar moans;
And the eddies gleam and quiver.
O sun; shine hot, shine long and abide
In the glory and power of the summer tide
On the swift longing face of the river.

poem by Archibald Lampman
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The Song my Paddle Sings

West wind, blow from your prairie nest,
Blow from the mountains, blow from the west
The sail is idle, the sailor too ;
O! wind of the west, we wait for you.
Blow, blow!
I have wooed you so,
But never a favour you bestow.
You rock your cradle the hills between,
But scorn to notice my white lateen.
I stow the sail, unship the mast :
I wooed you long but my wooing's past ;
My paddle will lull you into rest.
O! drowsy wind of the drowsy west,
Sleep, sleep,
By your mountain steep,
Or down where the prairie grasses sweep!
Now fold in slumber your laggard wings,
For soft is the song my paddle sings.
August is laughing across the sky,
Laughing while paddle, canoe and I,
Drift, drift,
Where the hills uplift
On either side of the current swift.
The river rolls in its rocky bed ;
My paddle is plying its way ahead ;
Dip, dip,
While the water flip
In foam as over their breast we slip.
And oh, the river runs swifter now ;
The eddies circle about my bow.
Swirl, swirl!
How the ripples curl
In many a dangerous pool awhirl!
And forward far the rapids roar,
Fretting their margin for evermore.
Dash, dash,
With a mighty crash,
They seethe, and boil, and bound, and splash.
Be strong, O paddle! be brave, canoe!
The reckless waves you must plunge into.
Reel, reel.
On your trembling keel,
But never a fear my craft will feel.
We've raced the rapid, we're far ahead!
The river slips through its silent bed.
Sway, sway,
As the bubbles spray
And fall in tinkling tunes away.
And up on the hills against the sky,
A fir tree rocking its lullaby,
Swings, swings,
Its emerald wings,
Swelling the song that my paddle sings.

poem by Emily Pauline Johnson
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Two Weeks Into September

Two weeks into September the leaves begin to brown
In the groves and in the Town Park of in and near Millstreet Town
And soon the redwing thrushes in the old fields will be seen
When the gray frost of the cold morning does temporarily cloak the green,
Two weeks into September by the mountains far away
Few singing birds at daybreak do sing to greet the day
Yet in my flights of fancy i hear the jackdaws call
And i hear the robin singing in the cool days of the Fall
With a tongue that can't stop babbling every night and every day
The old stream from the mountains to the river winds it's way
And on a rock in the river around where the rapid waters flow
The dark brown dipper is singing the one with breast as white as snow
And on the second week of September by the mountains far north of here
The shortening days are getting cooler in the Autumn of the year.

poem by Francis Duggan
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A Picture

The Sun burns fiercely down the skies;
The sea is full of flashing eyes;
The waves glide shoreward serpentwise
And fawn with foamy tongues on stark
Gray rocks, each sharp-toothed as a shark,
And hiss in clefts and channels dark.

Blood-purple soon the waters grow,
As though drowned sea-kings fought below
Forgotten fights of long ago.

The gray owl Dusk its wings has spread;
The sun sinks in a blossom-bed
Of poppy-clouds; the day is dead.

poem by Victor James Daley
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The Rising Of The Storm

THE lake's dark breast
Is all unrest,
It heaves with a sob and a sigh.
Like a tremulous bird,
From its slumber stirred,
The moon is a-tilt in the sky.
From the silent deep
The waters sweep,
But faint on the cold white stones,
And the wavelets fly
With a plaintive cry
O'er the old earth's bare, bleak bones.
And the spray upsprings
On its ghost-white wings,
And tosses a kiss at the stars;
While a water-sprite,
In sea-pearls dight,
Hums a sea-hymn's solemn bars.
Far out in the night,
On the wavering sight
I see a dark hull loom;
And its light on high,
Like a Cyclops' eye,
Shines out through the mist and gloom.
Now the winds well up
From the earth's deep cup,
And fall on the sea and shore,
And against the pier
The waters rear
And break with a sullen roar.
Up comes the gale,
And the mist-wrought veil
Gives way to the lightning's glare,
And the cloud-drifts fall,
A sombre pall,
O'er water, earth, and air.
The storm-king flies,
His whip he plies,
And bellows down the wind.
The lightning rash
With blinding flash
Comes pricking on behind.
Rise, waters, rise,
And taunt the skies
With your swift-flitting form.
Sweep, wild winds, sweep,
And tear the deep
To atoms in the storm.
And the waters leapt,
And the wild winds swept,
And blew out the moon in the sky,
And I laughed with glee,
It was joy to me
As the storm went raging by!

poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar
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The Isles Of Sleep.

The opiate isles upon time's sea
In the dream-dark
Rise with their harbours silently
Before each day-abandoned bark,
And the worn mariner anchors there
Till thought, new-waked in the dewy air,
Sings like a lark.
The silent isles with their dream-shores
On the waves float,
Whereto the faint-eyed mariner oars
Within the dusk his eerie boat;
All care put by, like one who knows
No tide there turns and no wind blows,
Near or remote!
From day to day upon time's main
We sail on so,
Sure every night some port to gain
In the dream-dark where no winds blow;
Until we too this sea have cross'd
E'en like the galleons that were tost
Here long ago.
Some seem each day to sail so far,
They reach that shore
So very soon where all things are
As they will be for evermore;
Some for so many a night and day
Have to drift on their lonely way
Ere all is o'er.
But all sails touch the land at last:
The slowest come
As in a mist out of the past —
The last dream-isle fades on the foam,
The last stars rise, the last stars set,
And there is but the last day yet
'Tween them and home.

poem by Robert Crawford
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Twilight In The North

O THE long northern twilight between the day and the night,
When the heat and the weariness of the world are ended quite:
When the hills grow dim as dreams, and the crystal river seems
Like that River of Life from out the Throne where the blessèd walk in white.

O the weird northern twilight, which is neither night nor day,
When the amber wake of the long-set sun still marks his western way:
And but one great golden star in the deep blue east afar
Warns of sleep, and dark, and midnight--of oblivion and decay.

O the calm northern twilight, when labor is all done,
And the birds in drowsy twitter have dropped silent one by one:
And nothing stirs or sighs in mountains, waters, skies,--
Earth sleeps--but her heart waketh, till the rising of the sun.

O the sweet, sweet twilight, just before the time of rest,
When the black clouds are driven away, and the stormy winds suppressed:
And the dead day smiles so bright, filling earth and heaven with light,--
You would think 't was dawn come back again--but the light is in the west.

O the grand solemn twilight, spreading peace from pole to pole!--
Ere the rains sweep o'er the hillsides, and the waters rise and roll,
In the lull and the calm, come, O angel with the palm--
In the still norther twilight, Azrael, take my soul.

poem by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
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To the River Charles

River! that in silence windest
Through the meadows, bright and free,
Till at length thy rest thou findest
In the bosom of the sea!

Four long years of mingled feeling,
Half in rest, and half in strife,
I have seen thy waters stealing
Onward, like the stream of life.

Thou hast taught me, Silent River!
Many a lesson, deep and long;
Thou hast been a generous giver;
I can give thee but a song.

Oft in sadness and in illness,
I have watched thy current glide,
Till the beauty of its stillness
Overflowed me, like a tide.

And in better hours and brighter,
When I saw thy waters gleam,
I have felt my heart beat lighter,
And leap onward with thy stream.

Not for this alone I love thee,
Nor because thy waves of blue
From celestial seas above thee
Take their own celestial hue.

Where yon shadowy woodlands hide thee,
And thy waters disappear,
Friends I love have dwelt beside thee,
And have made thy margin dear.

More than this;--thy name reminds me
Of three friends, all true and tried;
And that name, like magic, binds me
Closer, closer to thy side.

Friends my soul with joy remembers!
How like quivering flames they start,
When I fan the living embers
On the hearth-stone of my heart!

'T is for this, thou Silent River!
That my spirit leans to thee;
Thou hast been a generous giver,
Take this idle song from me.

poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Richness through the Storm of life

Richness through the Storm of life

An unknown traveler, conquered, fallen, wrestling a deep pain,
Touched the skied mountains, and distant of white waterfalls unstained.
The morning breaks, with the unspeakable beauty of a glassy stream.
She lifts her pale eyes, to the imprisoned river that quivers a gleam.
The fluttering ever green dancing, to the music of the breeze,
Where the creeping waters ooze through the marshy fallen leaves.
The bickering waters flooding along the fast growing damp banks
With borders where ecstasy plays, leaving unexplainable marks
The rolling heavy logs shattered, trembles and hastily swim along.
Wonders of the waters, its rivers, streams, oceans and its wide seas.
Discloses a view, starry, enriched with expressions; bounties.
Our beautiful Lanka, with its enclosing mountain watery flow,
Fills echoing passions, a vision of heavenly bliss, and more.
Tranquility emerges into the heart with the delicacy of air
As the lonely wanderer rejoices, the foamy waters, with lessening despair!

poem by Shirani Ibrahim
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Leudeman's-on-the-River

Toward even when the day leans down,
To kiss the upturned face of night,
Out just beyond the loud-voiced town
I know a spot of calm delight.
Like crimson arrows from a quiver
The red rays pierce the water flowing,
While we go dreaming, singing, rowing,
To Leudeman's-on-the-River.

The hills, like some glad mocking-bird,
Send back our laughter and our singing,
While faint--and yet more faint is heard
The steeple bells all sweetly ringing.
Some message did the winds deliver
To each glad heart that August night,
All heard, but all heard not aright;
By Leudeman's-on-the-River.

Night falls as in some foreign clime,
Between the hills that slope and rise.
So dusk the shades at landing time,
We could not see each other's eyes.
We only saw the moonbeams quiver
Far down upon the stream! that night
The new moon gave but little light
By Leudeman's-on-the-River.

How dusky were those paths that led
Up from the river to the hall.
The tall trees branching overhead
Invite the early shades that fall.
In all the glad blithe world, oh, never
Were hearts more free from care than when
We wandered through those walks, we ten,
By Leudeman's-on-the-River.

So soon, so soon, the changes came.
This August day we two alone,
On that same river, not the same,
Dream of a night forever flown.
Strange distances have come to sever
The hearts that gayly beat in pleasure,
Long miles we cannot cross or measure--
From Leudeman's-on-the-River.

We'll pluck two leaves, dear friend, to-day.
The green, the russet! seems it strange
So soon, so soon, the leaves can change!
Ah, me! so runs all night away
This night wind chills me, and I shiver;
The summer time is almost past.
One more good-bye--perhaps the last
To Leudeman's-on-the-River.

poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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