The Banshee
Green, in the wizard arms
Of the foam-bearded Atlantic,
An isle of old enchantment,
A melancholy isle,
Enchanted and dreaming lies;
And there, by Shannon's flowing,
In the moonlight, spectre-thin,
The spectre Erin sits.
An aged desolation,
She sits by old Shannon's flowing,
A mother of many children,
Of children exiled and dead,
In her home, with bent head, homeless,
Clasping her knees she sits,
Keening, keening!
And at her keen the fairy-grass
Trembles on dun and barrow;
Around the foot of her ancient crosses
The grave-grass shakes and the nettle swings;
In haunted glens the meadow-sweet
Flings to the night wind
Her mystic mournful perfume;
The sad spearmint by holy wells
Breathes melancholy balm.
Sometimes she lifts her head,
With blue eyes tearless,
And gazes athwart the reek of night
Upon things long past,
Upon things to come.
And sometimes, when the moon
Brings tempest upon the deep,
The roused Atlantic thunders from his caverns in the west,
The wolfhound at her feet
Springs up with a mighty bay,
And chords of mystery sound from the wild harp at her side,
Strung from the hearts of poets;
And she flies on the wings of tempest
With grey hair streaming:
A meteor of evil omen,
The spectre of hope forlorn,
Keening, keening!
She keens, and the strings of her wild harp shiver
On the gusts of night:
O'er the four waters she keens--over Moyle she keens,
O'er the Sea of Milith, and the Strait of Strongbow,
And the Ocean of Columbus.
And the Fianna hear, and the ghosts of her cloudy hovering heroes;
And the swan, Fianoula, wails o'er the waters of Inisfail,
Chanting her song of destiny,
The rune of weaving Fates.
And the nations hear in the void and quaking time of night,
Sad unto dawning, dirges,
Solemn dirges,
And snatches of bardic song;
Their souls quake in the void and quaking time of night,
And they dream of the weird of kings,
And tyrannies moulting, sick,
In the dreadful wind of change.
Wail no more, lonely one, mother of exiles, wail no more,
Banshee of the world--no more!
The sorrows are the world's, though art no more alone;
Thy wrongs, the world's.
poem by John Todhunter
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The Song of Arda: (From “Annatanam”.)
LOW as a lute, my love, beneath the call
Of storm, I hear a melancholy wind;
The memorably mournful wind of yore
Which is the very brother of the one
That wanders, like a hermit, by the mound
Of Death, in lone Annatanam. A song
Was shaped for this, what time we heard outside
The gentle falling of the faded leaf
In quiet noons: a song whose theme doth turn
On gaps of Ruin and the gay-green clifts
Beneath the summits haunted by the moon.
Yea, much it travels to the dens of dole;
And in the midst of this strange rhyme, my lords,
Our Desolation like a phantom sits
With wasted cheeks and eyes that cannot weep
And fastened lips crampt up in marvellous pain.
A song in whose voice is the voice of the foam
And the rhyme of the wintering wave,
And the tongue of the things that eternally roam
In forest, in fell or in cave;
But mostly ’tis like to the Wind without home
In the glen of a desolate grave—
Of a deep and desolate grave.
The torrent flies over the thunder-struck clift
With many and many a call;
The leaves are swept down, and a dolorous drift
Is hurried away with the fall.
But mostly ’tis like the Wind without home
In the glen of a desolate grave—
Of a deep and desolate grave.
Whoever goes thither by night or by day
Must mutter, O Father, to Thee,
For the shadows that startle, the sounds that waylay
Are heavy to hear and to see;
And a step and a moan and a whisper for aye
Have made it a sorrow to be—
A sorrow of sorrows to be.
Oh! cover your faces and shudder, and turn
And hide in the dark of your hair,
Nor look to the Glen in the Mountains, to learn
Of the mystery mouldering there;
But rather sit low in the ashes and urn
Dead hopes in your mighty despair—
In the depths of your mighty despair.
poem by Henry Kendall
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The Four Places Of Sorrow
There is sorrow for me in the North, where the black wind blows,
(Hush, O Wind of the dirges, O Voice of the restless dead!)
The ache of its cruel keening thro' my heart like an arrow goes,
I see in the tossing waters the sheen of a dear bright head.
There is sorrow for me in the South, where the white wind sings,
(Hush, O Wind of all lovers, crooning a laugh and a cry!)
On the pain of a dream love-haunted breaks the music of wings,
Seagulls, sweeping and swaying, saw ye my dead drift by?
There is sorrow for me in the East, where the red wind burns,
(Hush, O Wind of remorse, O Wind of the scourging flame!)
Under its slow cold dawning the soul of the drowned returns
And wan, in the startled daybreak, a ghost from the sea he came.
There is sorrow for me in the West, where the brown wind raves,
(Hush, O Wind from the bogs, O memory-freighted Wind!)
He is spindrift hither and thither, sport of unweary waves:
Would that my heart were close on his heart, my eyes on his eyes were blind!
poem by Anna Johnston MacManus
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A Voice On The Wind
I
She walks with the wind on the windy height
When the rocks are loud and the waves are white,
And all night long she calls through the night,
'O my children, come home!'
Her bleak gown, torn as a tattered cloud,
Tosses around her like a shroud,
While over the deep her voice rings loud,-
'O my children, come home, come home!
O my children, come home!'
II
Who is she who wanders alone,
When the wind drives sheer and the rain is blown?
Who walks all night and makes her moan,
'O my children, come home!'
Whose face is raised to the blinding gale;
Whose hair blows black and whose eyes are pale,
While over the world goes by her wail,-
'O my children, come home, come home!
O my children, come home!'
III
She walks with the wind in the windy wood;
The dark rain drips from her hair and hood,
And her cry sobs by, like a ghost pursued,
'O my children, come home!'
Where the trees loom gaunt and the rocks stretch drear,
The owl and the fox crouch back with fear,
As wild through the wood her voice they hear,-
'O my children, come home, come home!
O my children, come home!'
IV
Who is she who shudders by
When the boughs blow bare and the dead leaves fly?
Who walks all night with her wailing cry,
'O my children, come home!'
Who, strange of look, and wild of tongue,
With wan feet wounded and hands wild-wrung,
Sweeps on and on with her cry, far-flung,-
'O my children, come home, come home!
O my children, come home!'
V
'Tis the Spirit of Autumn, no man sees,
The mother of Death and of Mysteries,
Who cries on the wind all night to these,
'O my children, come home!'
The Spirit of Autumn, pierced with pain,
Calling her children home again,
Death and Dreams, through ruin and rain,-
'O my children, come home, come home!
O my children, come home!'
poem by Madison Julius Cawein
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The Ballad Of Father O'Hart
GOOD Father John O'Hart
In penal days rode out
To a Shoneen who had free lands
And his own snipe and trout.
In trust took he John's lands;
Sleiveens were all his race;
And he gave them as dowers to his daughters.
And they married beyond their place.
But Father John went up,
And Father John went down;
And he wore small holes in his Shoes,
And he wore large holes in his gown.
All loved him, only the shoneen,
Whom the devils have by the hair,
From the wives, and the cats, and the children,
To the birds in the white of the air.
The birds, for he opened their cages
As he went up and down;
And he said with a smile, 'Have peace now';
And he went his way with a frown.
But if when anyone died
Came keeners hoarser than rooks,
He bade them give over their keening;
For he was a man of books.
And these were the works of John,
When, weeping score by score,
People came into Colooney;
For he'd died at ninety-four.
There was no human keening;
The birds from Knocknarea
And the world round Knocknashee
Came keening in that day.
The young birds and old birds
Came flying, heavy and sad;
Keening in from Tiraragh,
Keening from Ballinafad;
Keening from Inishmurray.
Nor stayed for bite or sup;
This way were all reproved
Who dig old customs up.
poem by William Butler Yeats
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The Children Of The Foam
OUT forever and forever,
Where our tresses glint and shiver
On the icy moonlit air;
Come we from a land of gloaming,
Children lost, forever homing,
Never, never reaching there;
Ride we, ride we, ever faster,
Driven by our demon master,
The wild wind in his despair.
Ride we, ride we, ever home,
Wan, white children of the foam.
In the wild October dawning,
When the heaven's angry awning
Leans to lakeward, bleak and drear;
And along the black, wet ledges,
Under icy, caverned edges,
Breaks the lake in maddened fear;
And the woods in shore are moaning;
Then you hear our weird intoning,
Mad, late children of the year;
Ride we, ride we, ever home,
Lost, white children of the foam.
All grey day, the black sky under,
Where the beaches moan and thunder,
Where the breakers spume and comb,
You may hear our riding, riding,
You may hear our voices chiding,
Under glimmer, under gloam;
Like a far-off infant wailing,
You may hear our hailing, hailing,
For the voices of our home;
Ride we, ride we, ever home,
Haunted children of the foam.
And at midnight, when the glimmer
Of the moon grows dank and dimmer,
Then we lift our gleaming eyes;
Then you see our white arms tossing,
Our wan breasts the moon embossing,
Under gloom of lake and skies;
You may hear our mournful chanting,
And our voices haunting, haunting,
Through the night's mad melodies;
Riding, riding, ever home,
Wild, white children of the foam.
There, forever and forever,
Will no demon-hate dissever
Peace and sleep and rest and dream:
There is neither fear nor fret there
When the tired children get there,
Only dews and pallid beam
Fall in gentle peace and sadness
Over long surcease of madness,
From hushed skies that gleam and gleam,
In the longed-for, sought-for home
Of the children of the foam.
There the streets are hushed and restful,
And of dreams is every breast full,
With the sleep that tired eyes wear;
There the city hath long quiet
From the madness and the riot,
From the failing hearts of care;
Balm of peacefulness ingliding,
Dream we through our riding, riding,
As we homeward, homeward fare;
Riding, riding, ever home,
Wild, white children of the foam.
Under pallid moonlight beaming,
Under stars of midnight gleaming,
And the ebon arch of night;
Round the rosy edge of morning,
You may hear our distant horning,
You may mark our phantom flight;
Riding, riding, ever faster,
Driven by our demon master,
Under darkness, under light;
Ride we, ride we, ever home,
Wild, white children of the foam.
poem by William Wilfred Campbell
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Before Storm
There's a grayness over the harbor like fear on the face of a woman,
The sob of the waves has a sound akin to a woman's cry,
And the deeps beyond the bar are moaning with evil presage
Of a storm that will leap from its lair in that dour north-eastern sky.
Slowly the pale mists rise, like ghosts of the sea, in the offing,
Creeping all wan and chilly by headland and sunken reef,
And a wind is wailing and keening like a lost thing 'mid the islands,
Boding of wreck and tempest, plaining of dolor and grief.
Swiftly the boats come homeward, over the grim bar crowding,
Like birds that flee to their shelter in hurry and affright,
Only the wild grey gulls that love the cloud and the clamor
Will dare to tempt the ways of the ravining sea to-night.
But the ship that sailed at the dawning, manned by the lads who love us
God help and pity her when the storm is loosed on her track!
O women, we pray to-night and keep a vigil of sorrow
For those we speed at the dawning and may never welcome back!
poem by Lucy Maud Montgomery
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The night wind
Have you ever heard the wind go "Yooooo"?
'T is a pitiful sound to hear!
It seems to chill you through and through
With a strange and speechless fear.
'T is the voice of the night that broods outside
When folk should be asleep,
And many and many's the time I've cried
To the darkness brooding far and wide
Over the land and the deep:
Whom do you want, O lonely night,
That you wail the long hours through?"
And the night would say in its ghostly way:
"Yoooooooo!
Yoooooooo!
Yoooooooo!"
My mother told me long ago
(When I was a little tad)
That when the night went wailing so,
Somebody had been bad;
And then, when I was snug in bed,
Whither I had been sent,
With the blankets pulled up round my head,
I'd think of what my mother'd said,
And wonder what boy she meant!
And "Who's been bad to-day?" I'd ask
Of the wind that hoarsely blew,
And the voice would say in its meaningful way:
"Yoooooooo!
Yoooooooo!
Yoooooooo!"
That this was true I must allow -
You'll not believe it, though!
Yes, though I'm quite a model now,
I was not always so.
And if you doubt what things I say,
Suppose you make the test;
Suppose, when you've been bad some day
And up to bed are sent away
From mother and the rest -
Suppose you ask, "Who has been bad?"
And then you'll hear what's true;
For the wind will moan in its ruefulest tone:
"Yoooooooo!
Yoooooooo!
Yoooooooo!"
poem by Eugene Field
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Under The Moon
I HAVE no happiness in dreaming of Brycelinde,
Nor Avalon the grass-green hollow, nor Joyous Isle,
Where one found Lancelot crazed and hid him for a while;
Nor Uladh, when Naoise had thrown a sail upon the wind;
Nor lands that seem too dim to be burdens on the heart:
Land-under-Wave, where out of the moon's light and the sun's
Seven old sisters wind the threads of the long-lived ones,
Land-of-the-Tower, where Aengus has thrown the gates apart,
And Wood-of-Wonders, where one kills an ox at dawn,
To find it when night falls laid on a golden bier.
Therein are many queens like Branwen and Guinevere;
And Niamh and Laban and Fand, who could change to an otter or fawn,
And the wood-woman, whose lover was changed to a blue-eyed hawk;
And whether I go in my dreams by woodland, or dun, or shore,
Or on the unpeopled waves with kings to pull at the oar,
I hear the harp-string praise them, or hear their mournful talk.
Because of something told under the famished horn
Of the hunter's moon, that hung between the night and the day,
To dream of women whose beauty was folded in dis may,
Even in an old story, is a burden not to be borne.
poem by William Butler Yeats
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Hagar
SHE went along the road,
Her baby in her arms,
The night and its alarms
Made deadlier her load.
Her shrunken breasts were dry;
She felt the hunger bite.
She lay down in the night,
She and the child, to die.
But it would wail, and wail,
And wail. She crept away.
She had no word to say,
Yet still she heard it wail.
She took a jagged stone;
She wished it to be dead.
She beat it on the head;
It only gave one moan.
She has no word to say;
She sits there in the night.
The east sky glints with light,
And it is Christmas Day!
poem by Francis William Lauderdale Adams
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Daniel Henry Deniehy
TAKE the harp, but very softly for our brother touch the strings:
Wind and wood shall help to wail him, waves and mournful mountain-springs.
Take the harp, but very softly, for the friend who grew so old
Through the hours we would not hear of—nights we would not fain behold!
Other voices, sweeter voices, shall lament him year by year,
Though the morning finds us lonely, though we sit and marvel here:
Marvel much while Summer cometh, trammelled with November wheat,
Gold about her forehead gleaming, green and gold about her feet;
Yea, and while the land is dark with plover, gull, and gloomy glede,
Where the cold, swift songs of Winter fill the interlucent reed.
Yet, my harp—and oh, my fathers! never look for Sorrow’s lay,
Making life a mighty darkness in the patient noon of day;
Since he resteth whom we loved so, out beyond these fleeting seas,
Blowing clouds and restless regions paved with old perplexities,
In a land where thunder breaks not, in a place unknown of snow,
Where the rain is mute for ever, where the wild winds never go:
Home of far-forgotten phantoms—genii of our peaceful prime,
Shining by perpetual waters past the ways of Change and Time:
Haven of the harried spirit, where it folds its wearied wings,
Turns its face and sleeps a sleep with deep forgetfulness of things.
His should be a grave by mountains, in a cool and thick-mossed lea,
With the lone creek falling past it—falling ever to the sea.
His should be a grave by waters, by a bright and broad lagoon,
Making steadfast splendours hallowed of the quiet, shining moon.
There the elves of many forests—wandering winds and flying lights—
Born of green, of happy mornings, dear to yellow summer nights,
Full of dole for him that loved them, then might halt and then might go,
Finding fathers of the people to their children speaking low—
Speaking low of one who, failing, suffered all the poet’s pain,
Dying with the dead leaves round him—hopes which never grow again.
poem by Henry Kendall
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Hoop Dance
_____ For Kevin Locke, Hoop Dancer
July,1989
The sun is a painted pony on the
runaway hoop of the sky.
Grounded at last. Golden
As old grass headed out in the heat,
The pale skull of Yellow Hair is balding
on the bosom of the earth.
Hear that squaw sound keening
along the telegraph wires?
“Custer died. STOP. All divisions massacred. STOP.”
Blue seeps into the dawn like cavalry coats.
Drum sound. Pierced with stars
Bright arrows in the coulees.
Under a moon cut like a
Bloody saber sliding over the thin glitter of water
Soldiers hoped to ford. Greasy Grass. Cemetery of poles
Like buffalo bones.
Three thousand tepees, ringing the night,
Cones on a jingle dancer’s dress.
A thousand feathers rampant and bending under
The hooves of the wind.
Bell song. Dirge. Hoops red and white.
All will dance.
poem by Val Morehouse
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Ghosts Of The Sea
Calyx of forgotten souls
Crushed in the labyrinth
The sea whispers with ghosts
Cold night of the mariner
I hear the sigh of time
Every cry a breath of starlight
These dreams wash ashore
All your shelter leaves you
She fades like a winters day
No footprints along the tide
Seagulls circle golden history
Baroque poetry elegant as blue
Royal blue filled with radiant love
Ambiguous as the free will
Hard like diamond sextant notions
Under the sea my heart shines
Do we belong too one another?
Will the eastern sun bring us home?
I seek your values
I seek everyman free
I am the poor and frightened
You are the vulnerable
You are the divorced and hurting
We are the ghosts of the living sea
No epithet on the mystic waters
Names in ancient mystery
Caverns deep with leviathan
Wedding rings of the four winds
Empires rage tossed in the waves
Our ship joins mighty Neptune
Mountain villages with lanterns
Kelp and seaweed by our grave
Icy waters of the gracious Irish Sea
Crypts of the dusky Black Sea
For the sea shall give up its dead
A thousand tongues of the wind
We are beneath the pirate ships
Let the tides sing of love
Stars over the mighty Atlantic
Gales howl and we are at peace
Snowmelts like icy rivers of joy
Blending takes brave trust
Closer and wet with volcanoes
Islands swept with hurricanes
We were here and still are
Our candles join the tides
Moonlight eyes stare at me
The wind has called us
Whispering ghosts of the sea
poem by Joseph Narusiewicz
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Summer Nears
As summer neared pouncing on the young,
We are yet to hear the whole irony of a gun.
This gun is near called the summer and wind,
I call a plain honour the height of vigour.
Watchful fields encompass the clouds,
With grass green, grass not grey until night.
The lights of night are near like the Sunday,
When the hours of lightning are astray.
Inside the eyes of my head brings a sight
Of the wild variety, a worrisome smile is about.
Within the minds and hearts there is abolition
Of the summers and winters of ancient nature.
poem by Naveed Akram
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Melancholy Song
-believing that humans are made in the image of God
has its implications;
living life here, while looking There
brings about the most precarious, melancholy situations-
There's a sad song singing
In the soul of the wind,
And yet a joyful wind blowing
Through every soul's song.
It never stays
And it never goes,
Calling our hearts onward
To wherever it flows.
It's a song of sadness
And of good cheer,
A song of great warmth
And no small fear.
The song of the masses
And the song of one,
The sound of breaking darkness in the night
And the music of the rising sun.
It's the melancholy in me
And great joy,
It's the deep desire to stay
And yet homeward go.
I know this song
And the tears it brings,
I hear this song
Within my heart, where it sings.
It leaves me lonely
But, never alone,
For it's ever with me
Singing of a place, called Home.
poem by Smoky Hoss
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Burial Of A Fairy Queen
On a verdant summer islet
I beheld a wondrous scene,
In a trance of dreamy waking-
Burial of a Fairy Queen!
First I heard some small pipes playing,
Like faint night-winds on the breeze,
Or the sound of distant rain-drops,
As they fall among the trees.
Floating softly o'er the waters,
And from every bell of foam,
The fairy anthem echoed sweetly,
Sad as thoughts of distant home.
Next the sound, as if of footsteps,
O'er the grass plot mov'd along;
And distinctly came the accents
Of the solemn funeral song.
Like the melting of the dew-drops,
Without words of grief or death,
Was the soul-enthralling music,
Scarcely louder than a breath.
Then my dreaming eyes were opened,
And in wonder I espied
Thousands of the fairy creatures
In a circle, side by side.
Scarcely taller than the leaflets
Of the herbage on the plain,
While their heads were bowed with anguish,
And their tear-drops fell like rain.
In the middle of the circle,
On a plat of grass most green,
Stood a bier of unknown flowers,
Whereon lay the Fairy Queen.
Ah, she was pale as any lily,
Cold and motionless as snow!
Fainter grew their solemn dirges,
And still deeper grew their wo!
Two sisters of the queenly fairy,
Stood at her feet and head,
And sang heart-broken measures,
Their requiems o'er the dead.
Scarcely louder than the twittering
Of the wood-lark's dewy breath-
But too full of desolation,
And the dark despair of death!
Then the flower-bier sank gently,
At the spot whereon it lay;
And the magic turf clos'd o'er it-
Thus the dead queen pass'd away!
Bright dew-drops glittered on the sward-
One fleet moment more, and then
The mystic troop sailed duskily,
And far from mortal ken.
The silence of the still midnight
The murmuring waters broke;
The moon, emerging from a cloud,
Shone on me, and I woke.
poem by Mary Eliza Perine Tucker Lambert
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Neverending Song (The Song Of A mournful Heart)
Hear the child’s song,
As he sings his mournful cry to the skies above his head.
The only music in his words is the rain drops on the roof.
He watches with tears flowing down his cheeks,
He watches the wind blow the branches that scape against the walls.
Hear his song as he longs for a loving touch,
A mother’s hug.
In his own silent afterlife he watches,
As the world carries on around him.
His arms wrapped tight around his legs,
His hair uncut and knotted,
As tears stain his cheeks with salt water so rich,
Hear his silent song as he sings to those few who see him,
In his solitary windowsill in the house that was once his home he sits and Sings.
Nothing mattering to him but that that has past,
Nothing breaking his everlasting chorus,
But be careful do not listen for to long or his sorrow shall become your own,
You shall fall into rhythm with his voice,
And you will not leave,
But stay and melt into the stars that he rests his feet apon.
His prison will become your sanctuary,
His tomb, your grave,
His song, shall be your own form of reality.
In the dark stairwell you will stay with him.
Watching the endless lightnight lighting the sky,
The endless thunder the keeping time with the wind which is the music to his song.
You will fade to nothing at his feet, and he won’t even pause.
He will continue his cry to the god he once knew,
Crying for salvation for forgiveness, for the one thing that he can never have again.
And his tears will flow on running down his face to his tattered clothing,
His eyes ever fixed on the dark sky outside that expresses his pain, his agony,
His heart still in a ody somewhere, never to beat the beat of life again,
And still he will sing his mournful cry.
Listen to the child’s cry, but don’t stay long,
Or you will become the rain that beats down on the fortress around him,
Your own sorrowful tears that you shed for him, shall become the music,
To the child’s mournful cry.
poem by Bethany Maxwell
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Change
Change
Said the sun to the moon,
You cannot stay.
Change
Says the moon to the waters,
All is flowing.
Change
Says the fields to the grass,
Seed-time and harvest,
Chaff and grain.
You must change said,
Said the worm to the bud,
Though not to a rose,
Petals fade
That wings may rise
Borne on the wind.
You are changing
said death to the maiden, your wan face
To memory, to beauty.
Are you ready to change?
Says the thought to the heart, to let her pass
All your life long
For the unknown, the unborn
In the alchemy
Of the world's dream?
You will change,
says the stars to the sun,
Says the night to the stars.
poem by Kathleen Jessie Raine
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Night--A Phantasy
Night! the horrible wizard Night!
The dumb and terrible Night
Hath drawn his circle of magic, round
Over the sky, and over the ground,
Without a sound.
Ah me, what woeful phantoms rise,
With ice-cold hands and pitiless eyes,
As stars grow out of the summer skies,
Tangible things to mortal sight,
Under the hands of the wizard Night!
Night! the mystical prophet, Night!
The haunted and awful Night!
With the trail of his garment's shadowy fall,
Soundless and black as a funeral pall,
Now enters his dread laboratory.
A wan, and faint, and wavering glory
Shines from a veiled lamp somewhere hidden.
Like a lily in a grave:
And things unholy, and things forbidden,-
Hands that have long been the earth-worm's prey,
And shrouded faces out of the clay.
Rise and fill the enchanted cave
With a pale and deathly light,-
The haunted and awful Night!
Night! the abhorred magician Night!
The black astrologer Night!
Night is the world!-I shiver with fright:-
The air is full of evil things,
The coil and glitter of snaky rings,
And, the tremor of vast invisible wings,
That are not heard but felt:
They touch my hair, my hand, my cheek,
They mope and mouth, but they never speak
To utter their awful history.
Oh, when will the darkness break and melt,
Like blocks of ice on a golden reef,
And little by little, as leaf by leaf,
In light and color and form increased,
The rose of morning blooms in the east,-
The old yet ever new mystery!
And I fall on my knees to worship the light
That casts out the evil demon of Night,
And hallows with blossoms, like prayers, the way
Of another new day.
poem by Kate Seymour Maclean
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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A Girl's Song
The Meuse and Marne have little waves;
The slender poplars o'er them lean.
One day they will forget the graves
That give the grass its living green.
Some brown French girl the rose will wear
That springs above his comely head;
Will twine it in her russet hair,
Nor wonder why it is so red.
His blood is in the rose's veins,
His hair is in the yellow corn.
My grief is in the weeping rains
And in the keening wind forlorn.
Flow softly, softly, Marne and Meuse;
Tread lightly all ye browsing sheep;
Fall tenderly, O silver dews,
For here my dear Love lies asleep.
The earth is on his sealèd eyes,
The beauty marred that was my pride;
Would I were lying where he lies,
And sleeping sweetly by his side!
The Spring will come by Meuse and Marne,
The birds be blithesome in the tree.
I heap the stones to make his cairn
Where many sleep as sound as he.
poem by Katharine Tynan
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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The Voyagers
We shall launch our shallop on waters blue from some dim primrose shore,
We shall sail with the magic of dusk behind and enchanted coasts before,
Over oceans that stretch to the sunset land where lost Atlantis lies,
And our pilot shall be the vesper star that shines in the amber skies.
The sirens will call to us again, all sweet and demon-fair,
And a pale mermaiden will beckon us, with mist on her night-black hair;
We shall see the flash of her ivory arms, her mocking and luring face,
And her guiling laughter will echo through the great, wind-winnowed space.
But we shall not linger for woven spell, or sea-nymph's sorceries,
It is ours to seek for the fount of youth, and the gold of Hesperides,
Till the harp of the waves in its rhythmic beat keeps time to our pulses' swing,
And the orient welkin is smit to flame with auroral crimsoning.
And at last, on some white and wondrous dawn, we shall reach the fairy isle
Where our hope and our dream are waiting us, and the to-morrows smile;
With song on our lips and faith in our hearts we sail on our ancient quest,
And each man shall find, at the end of the voyage, the thing he loves the best.
poem by Lucy Maud Montgomery
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