En.Citatepedia^®.ro

Mangroves

These black bush-waters, heavy with crusted boughs
Like plumes above dead captains, wake the mind....
Uncounted kissing, unremembered vows,
Nights long forgotten, moons too dark to find,
Or stars too cold...all quick things that have fled
Whilst these old bubbles uprise in older stone,
Return like pale dead faces of children dead,
Staring unfelt through doors for ever unknown.

O silent ones that drink these timeless pools,
Eternal brothers, bending so deeply over,
Your branches tremble above my tears again...
And even my songs are stolen from some old lover
Who cried beneath your leaves like other fools,
While still they whisper "in vain...in vain...in vain..."

poem by Kenneth Slessor
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The Maiden's Lament

The clouds fast gather,
The forest-oaks roar--
A maiden is sitting
Beside the green shore,--
The billows are breaking with might, with might,
And she sighs aloud in the darkling night,
Her eyelid heavy with weeping.

"My heart's dead within me,
The world is a void;
To the wish it gives nothing,
Each hope is destroyed.
I have tasted the fulness of bliss below
I have lived, I have loved,--Thy child, oh take now,
Thou Holy One, into Thy keeping!"

"In vain is thy sorrow,
In vain thy tears fall,
For the dead from their slumbers
They ne'er can recall;
Yet if aught can pour comfort and balm in thy heart,
Now that love its sweet pleasures no more can impart,
Speak thy wish, and thou granted shalt find it!"

"Though in vain is my sorrow,
Though in vain my tears fall,--
Though the dead from their slumbers
They ne'er can recall,
Yet no balm is so sweet to the desolate heart,
When love its soft pleasures no more can impart,
As the torments that love leaves behind it!"

poem by Friedrich Schiller
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The Despair

Beneath this gloomy shade,
By Nature only for my sorrows made,
I'll spend this voyce in crys,
In tears I'll waste these eyes

By Love so vainly fed;
So Lust of old the Deluge punished.
Ah wretched youth! said I,
'Ah, wretched youth!' twice did I sadly cry:
'Ah, wretched youth!' the fields and floods reply.

When thoughts of Love I entertain,
I meet no words but 'Never,' and 'In vain.'
'Never' alas that dreadful name
Which fuels the infernal flame:

'Never,' My time to come must waste;
'In vain,' torments the present and the past.
'In vain, in vain!' said I;
'In vain, in vain!' twice did I sadly cry;
'In vain, in vain!' the fields and floods reply.

No more shall fields or floods do so;
For I to shades more dark and silent go:
All this world's noise appears to me
A dull ill-acted comedy:

No comfort to my wounded sight,
In the suns busy and imperti'nent Light.
Then down I laid my head;
Down on cold earth; and for a while was dead,
And my freed soul to a strange somewhere fled.

'Ah, sottish Soul' said I,
When back to its cage again I saw it fly;
'Fool to resume her broken chain!
And row her galley here again!'

'Fool, to that body to return
Where it condemn'd and destin'd is to burn!
Once dead, how can it be,
Death should a thing so pleasant seem to thee,
That thou should'st come to live it o're again in me?'

poem by Abraham Cowley
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I have lived with Shades

I

I have lived with Shades so long,
So long have talked to them,
I sped to street and throng,
That sometimes they
In their dim style
Will pause awhile
To hear my say;

II

And take me by the hand,
And lead me through their rooms
In the To-Be, where Dooms
Half-wove and shapeless stand:
And show from there
The dwindled dust
And rot and rust
Of things that were.

III

"Now turn," they said to me
One day: "Look whence we came,
And signify his name
Who gazes thence at thee" --
-- "Nor name nor race
Know I, or can,"
I said, "Of man
So commonplace."

IV

"He moves me not at all:
I note no ray or jot
Of rareness in his lot,
Or star exceptional.
Into the dim
Dead throngs around
He'll sink, nor sound
Be left of him."

V

"Yet," said they, "his frail speech,
Hath accents pitched like thine --
Thy mould and his define
A likeness each to each --
But go! Deep pain
Alas, would be
His name to thee,
And told in vain!"

poem by Thomas Hardy
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The True Lover

The lad came to the door at night,
When lovers crown their vows,
And whistled soft and out of sight
In shadow of the boughs.

"I shall not vex you with my face
Henceforth, my love, for aye;
So take me in your arms a space
Before the cast is grey.

"When I from hence away am past
I shall not find a bride,
And you shall be the first and last
I ever lay beside."

She heard and went and knew not why;
Her heart to his she laid;
Light was the air beneath the sky
But dark under the shade.

"Oh do you breathe, lad, that your breast
Seems not to rise and fall,
And here upon my bosom prest
There beats no heart at all?"

"Oh loud, my girl, it once would knock,
You should have felt it then;
But since for you I stopped the clock
It never goes again."

"Oh lad, what is it, lad, that drips
Wet from your neck on mine?
What is it falling on my lips,
My lad, that tastes of brine?"

"Oh like enough 'tis blood, my dear,
For when the knife was slit,
The throat across from ear to ear
'Twill bleed because of it."

Under the stars the air was light
But dark below the boughs,
The still air of the speechless night,
When lovers crown their vows.

poem by Alfred Edward Housman
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On The Night Train

Have you seen the bush by moonlight, from the train, go running by?
Blackened log and stump and sapling, ghostly trees all dead and dry;
Here a patch of glassy water; there a glimpse of mystic sky?
Have you heard the still voice calling – yet so warm, and yet so cold:
"I'm the Mother-Bush that bore you! Come to me when you are old"?

Did you see the Bush below you sweeping darkly to the Range,
All unchanged and all unchanging, yet so very old and strange!
While you thought in softened anger of the things that did estrange?
(Did you hear the Bush a-calling, when your heart was young and bold:
"I'm the Mother-bush that nursed you; Come to me when you are old"?)

In the cutting or the tunnel, out of sight of stock or shed,
Did you hear the grey Bush calling from the pine-ridge overhead:
"You have seen the seas and cities – all is cold to you, or dead –
All seems done and all seems told, but the grey-light turns to gold!
I'm the Mother-Bush that loves you – come to me now you are old"?

poem by Henry Lawson
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Wake Up Dead

I sneak in my own house
Its four in the morning
I had too much to drink
Said I was out with the boys
I creep in my bedroom
I slip into bed,
I know if I wake her,
Ill wake up dead
Chorus:
I wonder, will she find out,
About the other, other lover.
Diana.
Wake up dead, you die
Wake up dead, and buried.
Wake up dead, you die
Wake up dead.

song performed by by Megadeth
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Mariana

WITH BLACKEST moss the flower-plots
Were thickly crusted, one and all:
The rusted nails fell from the knots
That held the pear to the gable-wall.
The broken sheds look'd sad and strange:
Unlifted was the clinking latch;
Weeded and worn the ancient thatch
Upon the lonely moated grange.
She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"

Her tears fell with the dews at even;
Her tears fell ere the dews were dried;
She could not look on the sweet heaven,
Either at morn or eventide.
After the flitting of the bats,
When thickest dark did trance the sky,
She drew her casement-curtain by,
And glanced athwart the glooming flats.
She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"

Upon the middle of the night,
Waking she heard the night-fowl crow:
The cock sung out an hour ere light:
From the dark fen the oxen's low
Came to her: without hope of change,
In sleep she seem'd to walk forlorn,
Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn
About the lonely moated grange.
She only said, "The day is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"

About a stone-cast from the wall
A sluice with blacken'd waters slept,
And o'er it many, round and small,
The cluster'd marish-mosses crept.
Hard by a poplar shook alway,
All silver-green with gnarled bark:
For leagues no other tree did mark
The level waste, the rounding gray.
She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"

And ever when the moon was low,
And the shrill winds were up and away
In the white curtain, to and fro,
She saw the gusty shadow sway.
But when the moon was very low,
And wild winds bound within their cell,
The shadow of the poplar fell
Upon her bed, across her brow.
She only said, "The night is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"

All day within the dreamy house,
The doors upon their hinges creak'd;
The blue fly sung in the pane; the mouse
Behind the mouldering wainscot shriek'd,
Or from the crevice peer'd about.
Old faces glimmer'd thro' the doors,
Old footsteps trod the upper floors,
Old voices call'd her from without.
She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"

The sparrow's chirrup on the roof,
The slow clock ticking, and the sound
Which to the wooing wind aloof
The poplar made, did all confound
Her sense; but most she loath'd the hour
When the thick-moted sunbeam lay
Athwart the chambers, and the day
Was sloping toward his western bower.
Then, said she, "I am very dreary,
He will not come," she said;
She wept, "I am aweary, aweary,
O God, that I were dead!"
.

poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson
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When You See Millions of the Mouthless Dead

When you see millions of the mouthless dead
Across your dreams in pale battalions go,
Say not soft things as other men have said,
That you'll remember. For you need not so.
Give them not praise. For, deaf, how should they know
It is not curses heaped on each gashed head?
Nor tears. Their blind eyes see not your tears flow.
Nor honour. It is easy to be dead.
Say only this, "They are dead." Then add thereto,
"Yet many a better one has died before."
Then, scanning all the o'ercrowded mass, should you
Perceive one face that you loved heretofore,
It is a spook. None wears the face you knew.
Great death has made all his for evermore.

poem by Charles Hamilton Sorley
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The Locket

From out her shabby rain-coat pocket
The little Jew girl in the train
Produced a dinted silver locket
With pasted in it portraits twain.
"These are my parents, sir" she said;
"Or were, for now I fear they're dead.

"I know to Belsen they were sent;
I never heard of them again.
So many were like that - they went,
Our woeful quest was all in vain.
I was in London with a friend,
Or I, too, would have shared their end.

"They could have got away, I'm told,
And joined me here in Marylebne,
But Grannie was so sick and old,
They could not leave her there alone.
When they were seized she cried and cried:
Thank God! 'Twas in her bed she died.

"How did they die? I cannot bear
To think of that - it crazes me.
My mother was so sweet, so fair;
My father handsome as you see . . .
I'm sure no daughter ever had
More lovely parents . . . Yes, it's sad.

"But for their loss I shall not grieve;
I'll hug the hope they still survive;
Oh, I must make myself believe
Somehow, somewhere they're still alive. . . .

"Well, that's my only souvenir,
A locket stained with many a tear."

poem by Robert William Service
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A Meeting in A Part

In a dream I meet
my dead friend. He has,
I know, gone long and far,
and yet he is the same
for the dead are changeless.
They grow no older.
It is I who have changed,
grown strange to what I was.
Yet I, the changed one,
ask: "How you been?"
He grins and looks at me.
"I been eating peaches
off some mighty fine trees."

poem by Wendell Berry
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In Vain

The stars in the sky
In vain
The tragedy of Hamlet
In vain
The key in the lock
In vain
The sleeping mother
In vain
The lamp in the corner
In vain
The lamp in the corner unlit
In vain
Abraham Lincoln
In vain
The Aztec empire
In vain
The writing hand: in vain
(The shoetrees in the shoes
In vain
The windowshade string upon
the hand bible
In vain—
The glitter of the greenglass
ashtray
In vain
The bear in the woods
In vain
The Life of Buddha
In vain)

poem by Jack Kerouac
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Anna

The pale discrowned stacks of maize,
   Like spectres in the sun,
Stand shivering nigh Avonaise,
   Where all is dead and gone.

The sere leaves make a music vain,
   With melancholy chords;
Like cries from some old battle-plain,
   Like clash of phantom swords.

But when the maize was lush and green
   With musical green waves,
She went, its plumed ranks between,
   Unto the hill of graves.

There you may see sweet flowers set
   O'er damsels and o'er dames --
Rose, Ellen, Mary, Margaret --
   The sweet old quiet names.

The gravestones show in long array,
   Though white or green with moss,
How linked in Life and Death are they --
   The Shamrock and the Cross.

The gravestones face the Golden East,
   And in the morn they take
The blessing of the Great High Priest,
   Before the living wake.

Who was she? Never ask her name,
   Her beauty and her grace
Have passed, with her poor little shame,
   Into the Silent Place.

In Avonaise, in Avonaise,
   Where all is dead and done,
The folk who rest there all their days
   Care not for moon or sun.

They care not, when the living pass,
   Whether they sigh or smile;
They hear above their graves the grass
   That sighs -- "A little while!"

A white stone marks her small green bed
   With "Anna" and "Adieu".
Madonna Mary, rest her head
   On your dear lap of blue!

poem by Victor James Daley
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Little Popeet - the Lost Child

Near by the silent waters of the Mediterranean,
And at the door of an old hut stood a coloured man,
Whose dress was oriental in style and poor with wear,
While adown his furrowed cheeks ran many a tear.

And the poor coloured man seemed very discontent,
And his grief overcame him at this moment;
And he wrung his hands in agony wild,
And he cried, "Oh! help me, great God, to find my child."

"And Ada, my dear wife, but now she is dead,
Which fills my poor heart with sorrow and dread;
She was a very loving wife, but of her I'm bereft,
And I and my lost child are only left.

And, alas! I know not where to find my boy,
Who is dear to me and my only joy;
But with the help of God I will find him,
And this day in search of him I will begin."

So Medoo leaves Turkey and goes to France,
Expecting to find his boy there perhaps by chance;
And while there in Paris he was told
His boy by an Arab had been sold

To a company of French players that performed in the street,
Which was sad news to hear about his boy Popeet;
And while searching for him and making great moan,
He was told he was ill and in Madame Mercy's Home.

Then away went Medoo with his heart full of joy,
To gaze upon the face of his long-lost boy;
Who had been treated by the players mercilessly,
But was taken to the home of Madame Celeste.

She was a member of the players and the leader's wife,
And she loved the boy Popeet as dear as her life,
Because she had no children of her own;
And for the poor ill-treated boy often she did moan.

And when Popeet's father visited the Home,
He was shown into a room where Popeet lay alone,
Pale and emaciated, in his little bed;
And when his father saw him he thought he was dead.

And when Popeet saw his father he lept out of bed,
And only that his father caught him he'd been killed dead;
And his father cried, " Popeet, my own darling boy,
Thank God I've found you, and my heart's full of joy."

Then Madame Mercy's tears fell thick and fast,
When she saw that Popeet had found his father at last;
Then poor Popeet was taken home without delay,
And lived happy with his father for many a day.

poem by William Topaz McGonagall
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Ambition

They brought the mighty chief to town;
They showed him strange, unwonted sights;
Yet as he wandered up and down,
He seemed to scorn their vain delights.
His face was grim, his eye lacked fire,
As one who mourns a glory dead;
And when they sought his heart's desire:
"Me like'um tooth same gold," he said.

A dental place they quickly found.
He neither moaned nor moved his head.
They pulled his teeth so white and sound;
They put in teeth of gold instead.
Oh, never saw I man so gay!
His very being seemed to swell:
"Ha! ha!" he cried, "Now Injun say
Me heap big chief, me look like hell."

poem by Robert William Service
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Amoretti LXXV: One Day I Wrote Her Name

One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washed it away:
Again I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.
"Vain man," said she, "that dost in vain assay,
A mortal thing so to immortalize;
For I myself shall like to this decay,
And eke my name be wiped out likewise."
"Not so," (quod I) "let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:
My verse your vertues rare shall eternize,
And in the heavens write your glorious name:
Where whenas death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew."

poem by Edmund Spenser
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The Ballad of the Thoughtless Waiter

I saw him lying cold and dead
Who yesterday was whole.
"Why," I inquired, "hath he expired?
And why hath fled his soul?

"but yesterday," his comrade said,
"All health was his, and strength;
And this is why he came to die--
If I may speak at length.

"But yesternight at dinnertime
At a not unknown café,
He had a frugal meal as you
Might purchase any day.

"The check for his so simple fare
Was only eighty cents,
And a dollar bill with a right good will
Came from his opulence.

"The waiter brought him twenty cents.
'Twas only yesternight
That he softly said who now is dead
'Oh, keep it. 'Ats a' right.'

"And the waiter plainly uttered 'Thanks,'
With no hint of scorn or pride;
And my comrade's heart gave a sudden start
And my comrade up and died."

Now waiters overthwart this land,
In tearooms and in dives,
Mute be your lips whatever the tips,
And save your customers' lives.

poem by Franklin P. Adams
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The Cloud Confines

The day is dark and the night
To him that would search their heart;
No lips of cloud that will part
Nor morning song in the light:
Only, gazing alone,
To him wild shadows are shown,
Deep under deep unknown
And height above unknown height.
Still we say as we go,--
"Strange to think by the way,
Whatever there is to know,
That shall we know one day."

The Past is over and fled;
Nam'd new, we name it the old;
Thereof some tale hath been told,
But no word comes from the dead;
Whether at all they be,
Or whether as bond or free,
Or whether they too were we,
Or by what spell they have sped.
Still we say as we go,--
"Strange to think by the way,
Whatever there is to know,
That shall we know one day."

What of the heart of hate
That beats in thy breast, O Time?--
Red strife from the furthest prime,
And anguish of fierce debate;
War that shatters her slain,
And peace that grinds them as grain,
And eyes fix'd ever in vain
On the pitiless eyes of Fate.
Still we say as we go,--
"Strange to think by the way,
Whatever there is to know,
That shall we know one day."

What of the heart of love
That bleeds in thy breast, O Man?--
Thy kisses snatch'd 'neath the ban
Of fangs that mock them above;
Thy bells prolong'd unto knells,
Thy hope that a breath dispels,
Thy bitter forlorn farewells
And the empty echoes thereof?
Still we say as we go,--
"Strange to think by the way,
Whatever there is to know,
That shall we know one day."

The sky leans dumb on the sea,
Aweary with all its wings;
And oh! the song the sea sings
Is dark everlastingly.
Our past is clean forgot,
Our present is and is not,
Our future's a seal'd seedplot,
And what betwixt them are we?--
We who say as we go,--
"Strange to think by the way,
Whatever there is to know,
That shall we know one day."

poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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A Dream

I dreamed that I ws dead and crossed the heavens,--
Heavens after heavens with burning feet and swift,--
And cried: "O God, where art Thou?" I left one
On earth, whose burden I would pray Thee lift."

I was so dead I wondered at no thing,--
Not even that the angels slowly turned
Their faces, speechless, as I hurried by
(Beneath my feet the golden pavements burned);

Nor, at the first, that I could not find God,
Because the heavens stretched endlessly like space.
At last a terror siezed my very soul;
I seemed alone in all the crowded place.

Then, sudden, one compassionate cried out,
Though like the rest his face from me he turned,
As I were one no angel might regard
(Beneath my feet the golden pavements burned):

"No moew in heaven than earth will he find God
Who does not know his loving mercy swift
But waits the moment consummate and ripe,
Each burden, from each human soul to lift."

Though I was dead, I died again for shame;
Lonely, to flee from heaven again I turned;
The ranks of angels looked away from me
(Beneath my feet the golden pavements burned).

poem by Helen Hunt Jackson
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As Vanquish'd Erin

As vanquish'd Erin wept beside
The Boyne's ill-fated river,
She saw where Discord, in the tide,
Had dropp'd his loaded quiver.
"Lie hid," she cried, "ye venom'd darts,
Where mortal eye may shun you;
Lie hid -- the stain of manly hearts,
That bled for me, is on you."

But vain her wish, her weeping vain --
As Time too well hath taught her --
Each year the Fiend returns again,
And dives into that water;
And brings, triumphant, from beneath
His shafts of desolation,
And sends them, wing'd with worse than death,
Through all her maddening nation.

Alas for her who sits and mourns,
Even now, beside that river --
Unwearied still the Fiend returns,
And stored is still his quiver.
"When will this end, ye Powers of Good?"
She weeping asks for ever;
But only hears, from out that flood,
The Demon answer, "Never!"

poem by Thomas Moore
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Dead In The Wombs

those same children
who died in the waters
that swallowed Atlantis....

those same children,
starving 'neath Africa's sun....
dead from the bombings

in Iraq, Afghanistan, and soon Iran....
their bodies thrown into dumpsters
here in the United States....

dead on the borders,
dead in the oil filled waters,
dead on the cocaine streets,

dead in the prisons...
dead in the colleges,
dead in the unemployment lines....

dead on the picket lines,
dead, handcuffed, and beaten....
dying, and dead, world crazy spinning...

as the 'light of the world'
sputters, and goes out....
dead in the wombs of the

homeless, hopeless, and forgotten...
dead by our hands!

poem by Eric Cockrell
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