En.Citatepedia^®.ro

The Tryst

I raised the veil, I loosed the bands,
I took the dead thing from its place.
Like a warm stream in frozen lands
My lips went wandering on her face,
My hands burnt in her hands.

She could not stay me, being dead;
Her body here was mine to hold.
What if her lips had lost their red?
To me they always tasted cold
With the cold words she said.

Did my breath run along her hair,
And free the pulse, and fire the brain,
My wild blood wake her wild blood there?
Here eyelids lifted wide again
In a blue, sudden stare.

Beneath my fierce, profane caress
The whole white length of body moved;
The drowsy bosom seemed to press
As if against a breast beloved,
Then fail for weariness.

No, not that anguish! Christ forbid
That I should raise such dead! I rose,
Stifled the mouth with lilies, hid
Those eyes, And drew the long hair close,
And shut the coffin lid.

My cold brow on the cold wood laid,
Quiet and close to-night we lie.
No cruel words her lips have said.
I shall not take nor she deny.
The dead is with the dead.

poem by Muriel Stuart
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Villanelle

We said farewell, my youth and I,
When all fair dreams were gone or going,
And Love’s red lips were cold and dry.
When white blooms fell from tree-tops high—
Our Austral winter’s way of snowing—
We said farewell, my youth and I.

We did not sigh—what use to sigh
When Death passed as a mower mowing,
And Love’s red lips were cold and dry?

But hearing Life’s stream thunder by,
That sang of old through flowers flowing,
We said farewell, my youth and I.

There was no hope in the blue sky,
No music in the low winds blowing,
And Love’s red lips were cold and dry.

My hair is black as yet, then why
So sad! I know not, only knowing
We said farewell, my youth and I.

All are not buried when they die;
Dead souls there are through live eyes showing
When Love’s red lips are cold and dry.

So, seeing where the dead men lie,
Out of their hearts the grave-flowers growing,
We said farewell, my youth and I,
When Love’s red lips were cold and dry.

poem by Victor James Daley
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All Souls

I

A THIN moon faints in the sky o'erhead,
And dumb in the churchyard lie the dead.
Walk we not, Sweet, by garden ways,
Where the late rose hangs and the phlox delays,
But forth of the gate and down the road,
Past the church and the yews, to their dim abode.
For it's turn of the year and All Souls' night,
When the dead can hear and the dead have sight.

II

Fear not that sound like wind in the trees:
It is only their call that comes on the breeze;
Fear not the shudder that seems to pass:
It is only the tread of their feet on the grass;
Fear not the drip of the bough as you stoop:
It is only the touch of their hands that grope -
For the year's on the turn, and it's All Souls' night,
When the dead can yearn and the dead can smite.

III

And where should a man bring his sweet to woo
But here, where such hundreds were lovers too?
Where lie the dead lips that thirst to kiss,
The empty hands that their fellows miss,
Where the maid and her lover, from sere to green,
Sleep bed by bed, with the worm between?
For it's turn of the year and All Souls' night,
When the dead can hear and the dead have sight.

IV

And now that they rise and walk in the cold,
Let us warm their blood and give youth to the old.
Let them see us and hear us, and say: 'Ah, thus
In the prime of the year it went with us!'
Till their lips drawn close, and so long unkist,
Forget they are mist that mingles with mist!
For the year's on the turn, and it's All Souls' night,
When the dead can burn and the dead can smite.

V

Till they say, as they hear us - poor dead, poor dead! -
'Just an hour of this, and our age-long bed -
Just a thrill of the old remembered pains
To kindle a flame in our frozen veins,
Just a touch, and a sight, and a floating apart,
As the chill of dawn strikes each phantom heart -
For it's turn of the year and All Souls' night,
When the dead can hear, and the dead have sight.'

VI

And where should the living feel alive
But here in this wan white humming hive,
As the moon wastes down, and the dawn turns cold,
And one by one they creep back to the fold?
And where should a man hold his mate and say:
'One more, one more, ere we go their way'?
For the year's on the turn, and it's All Souls' night,
When the living can learn by the churchyard light.

VII

And how should we break faith who have seen
Those dead lips plight with the mist between,
And how forget, who have seen how soon
They lie thus chambered and cold to the moon?
How scorn, how hate, how strive, we too,
Who must do so soon as those others do?
For it's All Souls' night, and break of the day,
And behold, with the light the dead are away. . . .

poem by Edith Wharton
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If I Should Die Tonight

If I should die to-night,
My friends would look upon my quiet face
Before they laid it in its resting-place,
And deem that death had left it almost fair;
And, laying snow-white flowers against my hair,
Would smooth it down with tearful tenderness,
And fold my hands with lingering caress, --
Poor hands, so empty and so cold to-night!

If I should die to-night,
My friends would call to mind with loving thought
Some kindly deed the icy hands had wrought,
Some gentle word the frozen lips had said,
Errands on which the willing feet had sped;
The memory of my selfishness and pride,
My hasty words would all be put aside,
And so I should be loved and mourned to-night.

If I should die to-night,
Even hearts estranged would turn once more to me,
Recalling other days remorsefully;
The eyes that chill me with averted glance
Would look upon me as of yore, perchance,
And soften in the old familiar way,
For who could war with dumb, unconscious clay?
So I might rest, forgiven of all to-night.

Oh, friends! I pray to-night,
Keep not your kisses for my dead, cold brow:
The way is lonely, let me feel them now.
Think gently of me; I am travelworn;
My faltering feet are pierced with many a thorn.
Forgive, oh, hearts estranged, forgive, I plead!
When dreamless rest is mine I shall not need
The tenderness for which I long to-night.

poem by Arabella Eugenia Smith
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Thou Art a Flower

Thou art a flower, dear heart, a fragrant flower
And I, the wandering, hair-clad, amorous bee.
’Mongst all the regal beauties of the bower,
I seek but thee.

I feel the ivory of thy petals fair
Brush lightly on my belly as I woo
And I would sting thee, if I did but dare,
So sweet are you.

I suck the honey from your dewy bowl
And drunken mad, with wild, delirious bliss,
Within your cup, I yield to you my soul
And drink your kiss.

Oh! petals sweet, close in and crush me dead.
I am consumed in flames of passion’s fire.
What else is left, when this dear hour hath fled.
But dead desire?

The juice of poppy flowers and breath of rose,
Wistaria’s purple, blood-flecked lilies white,
I pilfer and when, soft, your petals close,
When comes the night.

I pour the passions of the world of flowers
Deep in beyond the lips of quivering red.
Your life is mine to craze the trembling hours,
All else is dead.

poem by from The Point of View
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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The Dead To The Living

Work while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.

IN the childhood of April, while purple woods
With the young year's blood in them smiled,
I passed through the lanes and the wakened fields,
And stood by the grave of the child.
And the pain awoke that is never dead
Though it sometimes sleeps, and again
It set its teeth in this heart of mine,
And fastened its claws in my brain:
For it seemed so hard that the little hands
And the little well-loved head
Should be out of reach of my living lips,
And be side by side with the dead--
Not side by side with us who had loved,
But with these who had never seen
The grace of the smile, the gold of the hair,
And the eyes of my baby-queen.
Yet with trees about where the brown birds build,
And with long green grass above,

She lies in the cold sweet breast of earth
Beyond the reach of our love;
Whatever befalls in the coarse loud world,
We know she will never wake.
When I thought of the sorrow she might have known,
I was almost glad for her sake. . . .
Tears might have tired those kiss-closed eyes,
Grief hardened the mouth I kissed;
I was almost glad that my dear was dead
Because of the pain she had missed.
Oh, if I could but have died a child
With a white child-soul like hers,
As pure as the wind-flowers down in the copse,
Where the soul of the spring's self stirs;
Or if I had only done with it all,
And might lie by her side unmoved!
I envied the very clods of earth
Their place near the child I loved!

And my soul rose up in revolt at life,
As I stood dry-eyed by her grave,
When sudden the grass of the churchyard sod
Rolled back like a green smooth wave;
The brown earth looked like the brown sea rocks,
The tombstones were white like spray,
And white like surf were the curling folds
Of the shrouds where the dead men lay;
For each in his place with his quiet face
I saw the dead lie low,
Who had worked and suffered and found life sad,
So many sad years ago.
Unchanged by time I saw them lie
As when first they were laid to rest,
The tired eyes closed, the sad lips still,
And the work-worn hands on the breast.
There were some who had found the green world so grey,
They had left it before their time,
And some were little ones like my dear,
And some had died in their prime;
And some were old, they had had their fill
Of bitter unfruitful hours,
And knew that none of them, none, had known
A flower of a hope like ours!

Through their shut eyelids the dead looked up,
And without a voice they said:
'We lived without hope, without hope we died,
And hopeless we lie here dead;
And death is better than life that draws
Pain in, as it draws in breath,
If life never dreams of a coming day
When life shall not envy death.
Through the dark of our hours and our times we lived,
Uncheered by a single ray
Of such hope as lightens the lives of you
Who are finding life hard to-day;
With our little lanterns of human love
We lighted our dark warm night--
But you in the chill of the dawn are set
With your face to the eastern light.
Freedom is waiting with hands held out
Till you tear the veil from her face--
And when once men have seen the light of her eyes,
And felt her divine embrace,
The light of the world will be risen indeed,
And will shine in the eyes of men,
And those who come after will find life fair,
And their lives worth living then!
Will you strive to the light in your loud rough world,
That these things may come to pass,
Or lie in the shadow beside the child,
And strive to the sun through the grass?'

'My world while I may,' I cried; 'but you
Whose lives were as dark as your grave?'
'We too are a part of the coming light,'
They called through the smooth green wave.
Their white shrouds gleamed as the flood of green
Rolled over and hid them from me--
Hid all but the little hands and the hair,
And the face that I always see.

poem by Edith Nesbit
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Mummia

As those of old drank mummia
To fire their limbs of lead,
Making dead kings from Africa
Stand pandar to their bed;

Drunk on the dead, and medicined
With spiced imperial dust,
In a short night they reeled to find
Ten centuries of lust.

So I, from paint, stone, tale, and rhyme,
Stuffed love's infinity,
And sucked all lovers of all time
To rarify ecstasy.

Helen's the hair shuts out from me
Verona's livid skies;
Gypsy the lips I press; and see
Two Antonys in your eyes.

The unheard invisible lovely dead
Lie with us in this place,
And ghostly hands above my head
Close face to straining face;

Their blood is wine along our limbs;
Their whispering voices wreathe
Savage forgotten drowsy hymns
Under the names we breathe;

Woven from their tomb, and one with it,
The night wherein we press;
Their thousand pitchy pyres have lit
Your flaming nakedness.

For the uttermost years have cried and clung
To kiss your mouth to mine;
And hair long dust was caught, was flung,
Hand shaken to hand divine,

And Life has fired, and Death not shaded,
All Time's uncounted bliss,
And the height o' the world has flamed and faded,
Love, that our love be this!

poem by Rupert Brooke
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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The Duel

Oh many a duel the world has seen
That was bitter with hate, that was red with gore.
But I sing of a duel by far more cruel
Than ever a poet was sung before.
It was waged by night, yea by day and by night,
With never a pause or halt or rest,
And the curious spot where this battle was fought
Was the throbbing heart in a woman’s breast.

There met two rivals in deadly strife,
And they fought for this woman so pale and proud.
One was a man in the prime of his life,
And one was a corpse in a moldy shroud;
One wrapped in a sheet from his head to his feet,
The other one clothed in worldly fashion;
But a rival to dread is a man who is dead,
If he has been loved in life with passion.

The living lover he battled with sighs,
He strove for the woman with words that burned,
While stiff and stark lay the corpse in the dark,
And silently yearned and yearned and yearned.
One spoke of the rapture that life still held
For hearts that yielded to love’s desire,
And one through the cold grave’s earthly mold
Sent thoughts of a past that were fraught with fire.

The living lover seized hold of her hands –
“You are mine, ” he cried, “and we will not part! ”
But she felt the clutch of the dead man’s touch
On the tense-drawn strings of her aching heart.
Yet the touch was of ice, and she shrank with fear –
Oh! the hands of the dead are cold, so cold –
And warm were the arms that waited near
To gather her close in their clinging fold.

And warm was the light in the living eyes,
But the eyes of the dead, how they stare and stare!
With sudden surrender she turned to the tender
And passionate lover who wooed her there.
Farewell to sorrow, hail, sweet to-morrow!
The battle was over, the duel was done.
They swooned in the blisses of love’s fond kisses,
And the dead man stared on in the dark alone.

poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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* * *

I walk alone and cry out under the stars.
As one in a desert I hunger for refreshment.
I have need of the coolness of some azure pool.
O, I would anoint my bosom with the clear water!
O, I would immerse myself in the emulous depths!
O, I would drink of ineffable dreams.
You, Beloved, are the silvery lake shimmering in the desert of my youth.
You only can allay the fever of my spirit!
On your lips I should drain the fountain of life.
On your white breast I shall breath the perfume of numberless lilies.
Therein I shall die a thousand deaths and arise reborn in the awful splendor of your love….
* * * * *
Lay your hands,—softer than dove’s wings,—in my hands so I may feel your young life flowing into mine thro’ your finger-tips.
Lay your eyes upon my eyes that I may grow tremulous beneath the flutter of your eyelids.
Lay your heart against my heart that I may hear your love summoning me to forgetfulness.
Lay your tresses about me that I may feel their warm sun streaming thro’ my veins.
Lay your mouth on my mouth until all dissolves in mist about me….
(Is it life? Is it death?)
* * * * *
You are as a million birds that sing unto my heart, O, Beloved.
Thro’ the long nights I hear the chanting of blithe voices.
What divine minstrelsy! what ravishment….
Is this multitudinous melody the rapture of your kiss?
Come to me, press upon my brow the coolness of your young lips that I may hear the thunder of your love in the night….
* * * * *
When will it end, the long vigil….
What dawn will bring you forever unto me, O, my Beloved?
Life is but shadow.
Only you, my Beloved, are more real than shadow.
Beneath your caresses I am as one awakened unto life.
Your finger-tips bear presage of divinity. Your heart-beats are a threnody sublime.
O, Beloved, you are as a white nenuphar lifting its snowy breast on a stream. In your bosom are all the treasures of Elysium. The scent of your skin is like jasmine and honeysuckle.
Why is such loveliness withheld from me, O, Beloved?
When can I look upon you and say: “Beloved! all this beauty is mine forever.”
When will it end, the long vigil….
* * * * *
O, miracle of love!
You whom I adore unto delirium,
Your arms are white lilies upon my bosom.
Stars encircle me when your lips lean down to mine. There is the sound of many waters falling. There is the murmur of a million nightingales,—and the flash of brilliant lightning.
Caress celestial!
Moon-path of my dreams!
O, miracle of Love—my divinity and my crucifixion….
* * * * *
When the young moon silvers the sky, the earth is ours,
We shall go into the forest and wander in the shadow of the pines.
I shall cover you with leaves, and we shall lie on the soft moss entwined like sisters.
And all the while I will know that the fragrance of your skin is sweeter to me than the perfumes of a million roses….
* * * * *
Let me enfold you in my hair.
Let me wind you as in a golden skein.
Give me the curve of your throat, milky white and rose, that I may place about it the glossy fillets of my hair.
Don it as a shining mantilla….
Let my hair shower about you until you are radiant with perfume;
Let it ripple over you like the wind on summer wheat.
Then give me your lips that we may stand united beneath the downpour of its sunlight.
Let us be intermingled as two trees that have bent one single root….
* * * * *
It rains, Beloved….
The dripping of the rain is like the cool kisses of your mouth….
I faint beneath the rapture of your lips.
Be no longer tender.
Cover me with frenzied kisses,—even as I would drench my body in the cruel torrents of the rain.
Envelop me from throat to ankle in delirium intolerable….
* * * * *
To love you like the midnight storm!
To take you swooning unto death as the wind sweeps the waves in tempest!
To transport you unto delirium!
To hear the wild beating of your veins; to feel flame shuddering your blood and to agonize you with my ardor.
To crush you as a flower upon my breast,
To bear you away to some secret valley where I would love you unto insensibility….
* * * * *
If I think of you, I quiver from head to foot.
If I think of you tears flood my eyes.
If I pass you my heart quickens to suffocation and the blood seems to leave my body.
If I look into your eyes a sudden fire burns in my veins.
If I touch you I am as one possessed with madness; my arms tremble and my limbs totter beneath me.
To love you is to suffer the pangs of an intolerable agony.
* * * * *
I see you coming toward me….
Silently you take me in your arms.
Our lips meet and our eyes close.
I feel the shuddering of your breast and the beating of your throat against mine.
We are enveloped in darkness.
We know nothing but the thunder of our veins….
We are swept out into a sea of infinite oblivion.

poem by Blanche Shoemaker Wagstaff from The Book of Love (1917)
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Natalia’s Resurrection: Sonnet XXVI

Yet so it was. Adrian had hardly set
His lips to those cold lips where death had been,
His eyes those clammy eyelids scarce had wet
With his warm tears and poured his soul between,
Nor yet with eager hands had he undone
That bosom's fastness of its snowy fold,
Ere, lo, on his rapt ear there fell a moan
As of one waking in the night grown cold.
And, even as he held her in his arms,
And gazed into her face by the dim light,
He saw her blue eyes open in alarms,
As wondering who was with her in the night,
And a long shudder pass through all her frame,
And her lips move as half she breathed his name.

poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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The Dead Singer

'SHE is dead!' they say; 'she is robed for the grave; O there are lilies upon her breast;
Her mother has kissed her clay-cold lips, and folded her hands to rest;
Her blue eyes show through the waxen lids: they have hidden her hair's gold crown;
Her grave is dug, and its heap of earth is waiting to press her down.'

'She is dead!' they say to the people, her people, for whom she sung;
Whose hearts she touched with sorrow and love, like a harp with life-chords strung.
And the people hear—but behind their tear they smile as though they heard
Another voice, like a mystery, proclaim another word.

'She is not dead.' it says to their hearts; 'true Singers can never die;
Their life is a voice of higher things, unseen to the common eye;
The truths and the beauties are clear to them, God's right and the human wrong,
The heroes who die unknown, and the weak who are chained and scourged by the strong.'
And the people smile at the death-word, for the mystic voice is clear:
'THE SINGER WHO LIVED IS ALWAYS ALIVE: WE HEARKEN AND ALWAYS HEAR!'

And they raise her body with tender hands, and bear her down to the main,
They lay her in state on the mourning ship, like the lily-maid Elaine;
And they sail to her isle across the sea, where the people wait on the shore
To lift her in silence with heads all bare to her home forevermore,
Her home in the heart of her country; oh, a grave among our own
Is warmer and dearer than living on in the stranger lands alone.

No need of a tomb for the Singer! Her fair hair's pillow now
Is the sacred clay of her country, and the sky above her brow
Is the same that smiled and wept on her youth, and the grass around is deep
With the clinging leaves of the shamrock that cover her peaceful sleep.

Undreaming there she will rest and wait, in the tomb her people make,
Till she hears men's hearts, like the seeds in Spring, all stirring to be awake,
Till she feels the moving of souls that strain till the bands around them break;
And then, I think, her dead lips will smile and her eyes be oped to see,
When the cry goes out to the Nations that the Singer's land is free!

poem by John Boyle O'Reilly
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An Open Boat

O, what is that whimpering there in the darkness?

'Let him lie in my arms. He is breathing, I know.
Look. I'll wrap all my hair round his neck' - 'The sea's rising,
The boat must be lightened. He's dead. He must go.'

See - quick - by that flash, where the bitter foam tosses,
The cloud of white faces, in the black open boat,
And the wild pleading woman that clasps her dead lover
And wraps her loose hair round his breast and his throat.

'Come, lady, he's dead.' - 'No, I feel his heart beating,
He's living, I know. But he's numbed with the cold.
See, I'm wrapping my hair all around him to warm him.' -
- 'No. We can't keep the dead, dear. Come, loosen your hold.

'Come. Loosen your fingers.' - ' O God, let me keep him!' -

O, hide it, black night! Let the winds have their way!
And there are no voices or ghosts from that darkness,
To fret the bare seas at the breaking of day.

poem by Alfred Noyes
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After Death

IF we must part, this parting is the best:
How would you bear to lay
Your head on some warm pillow far away--
Your head, so used to lying on my breast?

But now your pillow is cold;
Your hands have flowers, and not my hands, to hold;
Upon our bed the worn bride-linen lies.
I have put the death-money upon your eyes,
So that you should not wake up in the night.
I have bound your face with white;
I have washed you, yes, with water and not with tears,--
Those arms wherein I have slept so many years,
Those feet that hastened when they came to me,
And all your body that belonged to me.
I have smoothed your dear dull hair,
And there is nothing left to say for you
And nothing left to fear or pray for you;
And I have got the rest of life to bear:
Thank God it is you, not I, who are lying there.

If I had died
And you had stood beside
This still white bed
Where the white, scented, horrible flowers are spread,--
I know the thing it is,
And I thank God that He has spared you this.
If one must bear it, thank God it was I
Who had to live and bear to see you die,
Who have to live, and bear to see you dead.

You will have nothing of it all to bear:
You will not even know that in your bed
You lie alone. You will not miss my head
Beside you on the pillow: you will rest
So soft in the grave you will not miss my breast.
But I--but I--Your pillow and your place--
And only the darkness laid against my face,
And only my anguish pressed against my side--
Thank God, thank God, that it was you who died!

poem by Edith Nesbit
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Natalia’s Resurrection: Sonnet XXII

The thought of night consoled him. To his vision
Natalia was dead only in false death,
The sleeping treason of some false misprision,
Some silent mystery of shortened breath,
Not dead in truth for ever and to him,
Or to that other life his dream foretold:--
Her murderers these. And in his heart the whim
Rose he should draw her from her cincture cold,
And set his lips upon her lips once more,
And free her spirit thus from its dull trance,
And all should be between them as before,
Only more dear for her deliverance.
And darkly there he smiled as, their work done,
The mourners left him with their dead alone.

poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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Fragoletta

O LOVE! what shall be said of thee?
The son of grief begot by joy?
Being sightless, wilt thou see?
Being sexless, wilt thou be
Maiden or boy?

I dreamed of strange lips yesterday
And cheeks wherein the ambiguous blood
Was like a rose’s—yea,
A rose’s when it lay
Within the bud.

What fields have bred thee, or what groves
Concealed thee, O mysterious flower,
O double rose of Love’s,
With leaves that lure the doves
From bud to bower?

I dare not kiss it, lest my lip
Press harder than an indrawn breath,
And all the sweet life slip
Forth, and the sweet leaves drip,
Bloodlike, in death.

O sole desire of my delight!
O sole delight of my desire!
Mine eyelids and eyesight
Feed on thee day and night
Like lips of fire.

Lean back thy throat of carven pearl,
Let thy mouth murmur like the dove’s;
Say, Venus hath no girl,
No front of female curl,
Among her Loves.

Thy sweet low bosom, thy close hair,
Thy strait soft flanks and slenderer feet,
Thy virginal strange air,
Are these not over fair
For Love to greet?

How should he greet thee? what new name,
Fit to move all men’s hearts, could move
Thee, deaf to love or shame,
Love’s sister, by the same
Mother as Love?

Ah sweet, the maiden’s mouth is cold,
Her breast-blossoms are simply red,
Her hair mere brown or gold,
Fold over simple fold
Binding her head.

Thy mouth is made of fire and wine,
Thy barren bosom takes my kiss
And turns my soul to thine
And turns thy lip to mine,
And mine it is.

Thou hast a serpent in thine hair,
In all the curls that close and cling;
And ah, thy breast-flower!
Ah love, thy mouth too fair
To kiss and sting!

Cleave to me, love me, kiss mine eyes,
Satiate thy lips with loving me;
Nay, for thou shalt not rise;
Lie still as Love that dies
For love of thee.

Mine arms are close about thine head,
My lips are fervent on thy face,
And where my kiss hath fed
Thy flower-like blood leaps red
To the kissed place.

O bitterness of things too sweet!
O broken singing of the dove!
Love’s wings are over fleet,
And like the panther’s feet
The feet of Love.

poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Dawn

O tender first cold flush of rose,
O budded dawn, wake dreamily ;
Your dim lips as your lids unclose
Murmur your own sad threnody.
0 as the soft and frail lights break
Upon your eyelids, and your eyes
Wider and wider grow and wake,
The old pale glory dies.

And then, as sleep lies down to sleep
And all her dreams lie somewhere dead,
The iron shepherd leads his sheep
To pastures parched whose green is shed.
Still, 0 frail dawn, still in your hair
And your cold eyes and sad sweet lips,
The ghosts of all the dreams are them,
To fade like passing ships.

poem by Isaac Rosenberg
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Bianca

Her cheeks are hot, her cheeks are white;
The white girl hardly breathes to-night,
So faint the pulses come and go,
That waken to a smouldering glow
The morbid faintness of her white.

What drowsing heats of sense, desire
Longing and languorous, the fire
Of what white ashes, subtly mesh
The fascination of her flesh
Into a breathing web of fire?

Only her eyes, only her mouth,
Live, in the agony of drouth,
Athirst for that which may not be:
The desert of virginity
Aches in the hotness of her mouth.

I take her hands into my hands,
Silently, and she understands;
I set my lips upon her lips;
Shuddering to her finger-tips
She strains my hands within her hands.

I set my lips on hers; they close
Into a false and phantom rose;
Upon her thirsting lips I rain
A flood of kisses, and in vain;
Her lips inexorably close.

Through her closed lips that cling to mine,
Her hands that hold me and entwine,
Her body that abondoned lies,
Rigid with sterile ecstasies,
A shiver knits her flesh to mine.

Life sucks into a mist remote
Her fainting lips, her throbbing throat;
Her lips that open to my lips,
And, hot against her finger-tips,
The pulses leaping in her throat.

poem by Arthur Symons
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Leda

Do you remember, Leda?

There are those who love, to whom Love brings
Great gladness: such things have not I.
Love looks and has no mercy, brings
Long doom to others. Such was I.
Heart breaking hand upon the lute
Long last made musical by you?
Sharp bird-beak in the swelling fruit,
Or raise the eyelids of these flowers?

I dare not watch that hidden pool,
Nor see the wild bird's sudden wing
Lifting the wide, brown shaken pool,
But round me falls that secret wing,
And in that sharp, perverse, sweet pain
That is half-terror and half-bliss
My withered hands are curled on pain
That were so wide once, after bliss.
And gold is springing in my hair
As my thought spring and flower with it,
Though I sit hid in my grey hair,
Without love or the pain of it.

Yet, oh my Swan, if love have wings,
As the gods tell us, you were love
Who took and broke me with those wings.
I, weak, and being far gone in love
Let blushless things be breathed and done-
Things flowered out now in bitter fruit
That once done are no more undone
Than last year's frost and last year's fruit.

For what has come of love and me
Who knew the first joy that loving is?
Where has love led and beckoned me
But to the end where nothing is?
I have seen my blood beat out again
Red in the hands of all my line,
My sin has swelled and flowered again
Corrupt and fierce through Sparta's line.
Bred through me-bred through delicate hands
And wandering eyes and wanton lips,
Sighing after strange flesh as sighed these lips,

Straying after new sin as strayed these hands.
Mother of Helen! She whose breasts
To new desires unshaped the world;
Above Troy's summit towered these breasts
Helen who wantoned with the world!
Helen is dead (she had love enough
To mock at doom and laugh at shrine)
And Clytemnestra, quiet enough
To-night beneath Apollo's shrine.
And I am left, the source, the spring
Of all their madness. They are dead
While I still sit here, the old spring
That fouled them flows above the dead.

But I have paid. I have borne enough.
I am very old in love and woe.
For all souls these things are enough-
Who have known love are the friends of woe.
There those who love, and who escape,
There are those who love and do not die.
I loved, and there was no escape,
Long since I died and daily die.
And death alone makes hate and love
Friends with each other and with sleep . . .
All's quiet here that once was love,
This that is left belongs to sleep.

poem by Muriel Stuart
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Love is Dead

Artistic brain-drain
occurring after loss-
when words fail and wither
on parched, broken lips.
Not knowing self from Self,
bouncing from warm bed to warm body-
Loss of identity and direction.
Wandering, wondering-
wishing on a shooting star, but
the stars above are ghosts long dead.

Artistic suffocation
occurring during rapture-
two bodies entwined;
legs, arms, hearts, all broken and
remade, though easily broken again.
Lost in a kiss, embrace; drowning in
raw lust, all stale and purple-
writhing under the dead dead stars.

poem by Brian Hinckley
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Out In The Cold

The day fell down, the air got cold
I walked out in the street
Daydreamed for a mil e or two
Staring at my feet
Like a workin boy, out of luck
Fallin through the cracks
Night rolled in, I turned back home
A hard wind at my back
Im out in the cold (out in the cold)
Body and soul (out in the cold)
Th eres nowhere to go (out in the cold)
Im out in the cold (out in the cold)
Well I woke up
My brain was stunned
I could come around
I reached out to grab my keys
Tumbled to the ground
I thought of you
Starry eyed
I wondered where we stand
Did I just fall from your arms
Down into your hands
Im out in the cold (out in the cold)
Body and soul (out in the cold)
Theres nowhere to go (out in the cold)
Im out in the cold (out in the cold)
Im out
Standin in a doorway
Im out
Walkin around
Hands in my pockets
Im out in the cold (out in the cold)
Body and soul (out in the cold)
Theres nowhere to go (out in the cold)
Im out in the cold (o ut in the cold)

song performed by by Tom Petty
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Buried Alive

[Venom cover]
I'm alive but dead, awake but asleep
As friend gather round and mourners they weep
My mind thinks of all the things I have done
My body is cold but my heart beat goes on
And on................and on
As they lower me down into that hole in the ground
I scream out for help but they hear not a sound
I fear at the lid, my fingers they bleed
Is this happening to me or is it just a dream
Summon the dead..........
Baphomets call...........
Blood on my hands........
"Let me out of here"
My bones are decayed, my flesh it doth rot
I'm lying in silk, take the lid off this box
My lungs gasp for air, my eyes scream for sight
I promise the rise of my body this night
Summon the dead..........
Baphomets call...........
Blood on my hands........
Screaming in torment.....
I'm felling you all......
Take heed of my plea.....
Answer my call...........
I'm gonna be free........

song performed by by Obituary
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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