En.Citatepedia^®.ro

The Broken Circle

I STOOD On Sarum's treeless plain,
The waste that careless Nature owns;
Lone tenants of her bleak domain,
Loomed huge and gray the Druid stones.

Upheaved in many a billowy mound
The sea-like, naked turf arose,
Where wandering flocks went nibbling round
The mingled graves of friends and foes.

The Briton, Roman, Saxon, Dane,
This windy desert roamed in turn;
Unmoved these mighty blocks remain
Whose story none that lives may learn.

Erect, half buried, slant or prone,
These awful listeners, blind and dumb,
Hear the strange tongues of tribes unknown,
As wave on wave they go and come.

'Who are you, giants, whence and why?'
I stand and ask in blank amaze;
My soul accepts their mute reply
'A mystery, as are you that gaze.

'A silent Orpheus wrought the charm
From riven rocks their spoils to bring;
A nameless Titan lent his arm
To range us in our magic ring.

'But Time with still and stealthy stride,
That climbs and treads and levels all,
That bids the loosening keystone slide,
And topples down the crumbling wall,--

'Time, that unbuilds the quarried past,
Leans on these wrecks that press the sod;
They slant, they stoop, they fall at last,
And strew the turf their priests have trod.

'No more our altar's wreath of smoke
Floats up with morning's fragrant dew;
The fires are dead, the ring is broke,
Where stood the many stand the few.'

My thoughts had wandered far away,
Borne off on Memory's outspread wing,
To where in deepening twilight lay
The wrecks of friendship's broken ring.

Ah me! of all our goodly train
How few will find our banquet hall!
Yet why with coward lips complain
That this must lean, and that must fall?

Cold is the Druid's altar-stone,
Its vanished flame no more returns;
But ours no chilling damp has known,--
Unchanged, unchanging, still it burns.

So let our broken circle stand
A wreck, a remnant, yet the same,
While one last, loving, faithful hand
Still lives to feed its altar-flame!

poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Webster

"When I and all those that hear me shall have gone to our last home, and when the mould may have gathered on our memories, as it will on our tombs:" -- Webster's Speech in the Senate, July, 1850.

The mould upon thy memory! -- No,
Not while one note is rung,
Of those divine, immortal songs
Milton and Shakespeare sung; --
Not till the night of years enshrouds
The Anglo-Saxon tongue.

No! let the flood of Time roll on,
And men and empires die; --
Genius enthroned on lofty heights
Can its dread course defy,
And here on earth, can claim the gift
Of immortality:

Can save from that Lethean tide
That sweeps so dark along,
A people's name; -- a people's fame
To future time prolong,
As Troy still lives and only lives
In Homer's deathless song.

What though to buried Nineveh
The traveller may come,
And roll away the stone that hides
That long forgotten tomb; --
He questions its mute past in vain,
Its oracles are dumb.

What though he stand where Balbec stood
Gigantic in its pride;
No voice comes o'er that silent waste,
Lone, desolate and wide; --
They had no bard, no orator,
No statesman, -- and they died.

They lived their little span of life,
They lived and died in vain; --
They sank ingloriously beneath
Oblivion's silent reign,
As sank beneath the Dead Sea wave
The Cities of the Plain.

But for those famed, immortal lands,
Greece and imperial Rome,
Where Genius left its shining mark,
And found its chosen home,
All eloquent with mind they speak,
Wood, wave and crumbling dome.

The honeyed words of Plato still
Float on the echoing air,
The thunders of Demosthenes
AEgean waters bear,
And the pilgrim to the Forum hears
The voice of Tully there.

And thus thy memory shall live,
And thus thy fame resound,
While far-off future ages roll
Their solemn cycles round,
And make this wide, this fair New World
An ancient, classic ground.

Then with our Country's glorious name
Thine own shall be entwined;
Within the Senate's pillared hall
Thine image shall be shrined;
And on the nation's Law shall gleam
Light from thy giant mind.

Our proudest monuments no more
May rise to meet the sky,
The stately Capitol o'erthrown,
Low in the dust may lie;
But mind, sublime above the wreck,
Immortal -- cannot die.

poem by Anne Lynch Botta from Poems (1848)
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Lords Of The Ring

Written by dennis deyoung
Lead vocals by james young
All hail to the lords of the ring
To the magic and mystery they bring
To the music in their story
All hail to the lords of the ring
To the magic and mystery they bring
To the lands of ancient glory
In the year of the lords
The message came from above
The heavens opened with their mighty sound
That shook the people in the town
And so we came from everywhere
The young and old the rich and poor
To hear the legend of the magic ring
And of the powers it could bring, they sing
All hail to the lords of the ring
To the magic and mystery they bring
To the music in their story
All hail to the lords of the ring
To the magic and mystery it brings
May we someday wear its glory
And now the message is clear
For I became a lord this year
And though the legend was pure fantasy
We still need the hope it brings, so lets sing
All hail to the lords of the ring
To believe is a wonderous thing
May we always sing their glory
All hail to the lords of the ring
To the magic and mystery they bring
To the promise of their story

song performed by by Styx
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The Cambridge Churchyard

Our ancient church! its lowly tower,
Beneath the loftier spire,
Is shadowed when the sunset hour
Clothes the tall shaft in fire;
It sinks beyond the distant eye
Long ere the glittering vane,
High wheeling in the western sky,
Has faded o’er the plain.

Like Sentinel and Nun, they keep
Their vigil on the green;
One seems to guard, and one to weep,
The dead that lie between;
And both roll out, so full and near,
Their music’s mingling waves,
They shake the grass, whose pennoned spear
Leans on the narrow graves.

The stranger parts the flaunting weeds,
Whose seeds the winds have strown
So thick, beneath the line he reads,
They shade the sculptured stone;
The child unveils his clustered brow,
And ponders for a while
The graven willow’s pendent bough,
Or rudest cherub’s smile.

But what to them the dirge, the knell?
These were the mourner’s share,—­
The sullen clang, whose heavy swell
Throbbed through the beating air;
The rattling cord, the rolling stone,
The shelving sand that slid,
And, far beneath, with hollow tone
Rung on the coffin’s lid.

The slumberer’s mound grows fresh and green,
Then slowly disappears;
The mosses creep, the gray stones lean,
Earth hides his date and years;
But, long before the once-loved name
Is sunk or worn away,
No lip the silent dust may claim,
That pressed the breathing clay.

Go where the ancient pathway guides,
See where our sires laid down
Their smiling babes, their cherished brides,
The patriarchs of the town;
Hast thou a tear for buried love?
A sigh for transient power?
All that a century left above,
Go, read it in an hour!

The Indian’s shaft, the Briton’s ball,
The sabre’s thirsting edge,
The hot shell, shattering in its fall,
The bayonet’s rending wedge,—­
Here scattered death; yet, seek the spot,
No trace thine eye can see,
No altar,—­and they need it not
Who leave their children free!

Look where the turbid rain-drops stand
In many a chiselled square;
The knightly crest, the shield, the brand
Of honored names were there;—­
Alas! for every tear is dried
Those blazoned tablets knew,
Save when the icy marble’s side
Drips with the evening dew.

Or gaze upon yon pillared stone,
The empty urn of pride;
There stand the Goblet and the Sun,—­
What need of more beside?
Where lives the memory of the dead,
Who made their tomb a toy?
Whose ashes press that nameless bed?
Go, ask the village boy!

Lean o’er the slender western wall,
Ye ever-roaming girls;
The breath that bids the blossom fall
May lift your floating curls,
To sweep the simple lines that tell
An exile’s date and doom;
And sigh, for where his daughters dwell,
They wreathe the stranger’s tomb.

And one amid these shades was born,
Beneath this turf who lies,
Once beaming as the summer’s morn,
That closed her gentle eyes;
If sinless angels love as we,
Who stood thy grave beside,
Three seraph welcomes waited thee,
The daughter, sister, bride.

I wandered to thy buried mound
When earth was hid below
The level of the glaring ground,
Choked to its gates with snow,
And when with summer’s flowery waves
The lake of verdure rolled,
As if a Sultan’s white-robed slaves
Had scattered pearls and gold.

Nay, the soft pinions of the air,
That lift this trembling tone,
Its breath of love may almost bear
To kiss thy funeral stone;
And, now thy smiles have passed away,
For all the joy they gave,
May sweetest dews and warmest ray
Lie on thine early grave!

When damps beneath and storms above
Have bowed these fragile towers,
Still o’er the graves yon locust grove
Shall swing its Orient flowers;
And I would ask no mouldering bust,
If e’er this humble line,
Which breathed a sigh o’er other’s dust,
Might call a tear on mine.

poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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A Forsaken Garden

IN a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland,
At the sea-down's edge between windward and lee,
Walled round with rocks as an inland island,
The ghost of a garden fronts the sea.
A girdle of brushwood and thorn encloses
The steep square slope of the blossomless bed
Where the weeds that grew green from the graves of its roses
Now lie dead.

The fields fall southward, abrupt and broken,
To the low last edge of the long lone land.
If a step should sound or a word be spoken,
Would a ghost not rise at the strange guest's hand?
So long have the grey bare walks lain guestless,
Through branches and briars if a man make way,
He shall find no life but the sea-wind's, restless
Night and day.

The dense hard passage is blind and stifled
That crawls by a track none turn to climb
To the strait waste place that the years have rifled
Of all but the thorns that are touched not of time.
The thorns he spares when the rose is taken;
The rocks are left when he wastes the plain.
The wind that wanders, the weeds wind-shaken,
These remain.

Not a flower to be pressed of the foot that falls not;
As the heart of a dead man the seed-plots are dry;
From the thicket of thorns whence the nightingale calls not,
Could she call, there were never a rose to reply.
Over the meadows that blossom and wither
Rings but the note of a sea-bird's song;
Only the sun and the rain come hither
All year long.

The sun burns sere and the rain dishevels
One gaunt bleak blossom of scentless breath.
Only the wind here hovers and revels
In a round where life seems barren as death.
Here there was laughing of old, there was weeping,
Haply, of lovers none ever will know,
Whose eyes went seaward a hundred sleeping
Years ago.

Heart handfast in heart as they stood, "Look thither,"
Did he whisper? "look forth from the flowers to the sea;
For the foam-flowers endure when the rose-blossoms wither,
And men that love lightly may die---but we?"
And the same wind sang and the same waves whitened,
And or ever the garden's last petals were shed,
In the lips that had whispered, the eyes that had lightened,
Love was dead.

Or they loved their life through, and then went whither?
And were one to the endÑbut what end who knows?
Love deep as the sea as a rose must wither,
As the rose-red seaweed that mocks the rose.
Shall the dead take thought for the dead to love them ?
What love was ever as deep as a grave ?
They are loveless now as the grass above them
Or the wave.

All are at one now, roses and lovers,
Not known of the cliffs and the fields and the sea.
Not a breath of the time that has been hovers
In the air now soft with a summer to be.
Not a breath shall there sweeten the seasons hereafter
Of the flowers or the lovers that laugh now or weep,
When as they that are free now of weeping and laughter
We shall sleep.

Here death may deal not again for ever;
Here change may come not till all change end.
From the graves they have made they shall rise up never,
Who have left nought living to ravage and rend.
Earth, stones, and thorns of the wild ground growing,
While the sun and the rain live, these shall be;
Till a last wind's breath upon all these blowing
Roll the sea.

Till the slow sea rise and the sheer cliff crumble,
Till terrace and meadow the deep gulfs drink,
Till the strength of the waves of the high tides humble
The fields that lessen, the rocks that shrink,
Here now in his triumph where all things falter,
Stretched out on the spoils that his own hand spread,
As a god self-slain on his own strange altar,
Death lies dead.

poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Ossian’s Grave

PREHISTORIC MONUMENT NEAR CUSHENDALL
IN ANTRIM
Steep up in Lubitavish townland stands
A ring of great stones like fangs, the shafts of the stones
Grown up with thousands of years of gradual turf,
The fangs of the stones still biting skyward; and hard
Against the stone ring, the oblong enclosure
Of an old grave guarded with erect slabs; gray rocks
Backed by broken thorn-trees, over the gorge of Glenaan;
It is called Ossian's Grave. Ossian rests high then,
Haughtily alone.
If there were any fame or burial or monument
For me to envy,
Warrior and poet they should be yours and yours.
For this is the pure fame, not caged in a poem,
Fabulous, a glory untroubled with works, a name in the north
Like a mountain in the mist, like Aura
Heavy with heather and the dark gray rocks, or Trostan
Dark purple in the cloud: happier than what the wings
And imperfections of work hover like vultures
Above the carcass.
I also make a remembered name;
And I shall return home to the granite stones
On my cliff over the greatest ocean
To be blind ashes under the butts of the stones:
As you here under the fanged limestone columns
Are said to lie, over the narrow north straits
Toward Scotland, and the quick-tempered Moyle. But written
reminders
Will blot for too long a year the bare sunlight
Above my rock lair, heavy black birds
Over the field and the blood of the lost battle.
Oh but we lived splendidly
In the brief light of day
Who now twist in our graves.
You in the guard of the fanged
Erect stones; and the man-slayer
Shane O'Neill dreams yonder at Cushendun
Crushed under his cairn;
And Hugh McQuillan under his cairn
By his lost field in the bog on Aura;
And I a foreigner, one who has come to the country of the dead
Before I was called,
To eat the bitter dust of my ancestors;
And thousands on tens of thousands in the thronged earth
Under the rotting freestone tablets
At the bases of broken round towers;
And the great Connaught queen on her mountain-summit
The high cloud hoods, it creeps through the eyes of the cairn,

We dead have our peculiar pleasures, of not
Doing, of not feeling, of not being.
Enough has been felt, enough done, Oh and surely
Enough of humanity has been. We lie under stones
Or drift through the endless northern twilights
And draw over our pale survivors the net of our dream.
All their lives are less
Substantial than one of our deaths, and they cut turf
Or stoop in the steep
Short furrows, or drive the red carts, like weeds waving
Under the glass of water in a locked bay,
Which neither the wind nor the wave nor their own will
Moves; when they seem to awake
It is only to madden in their dog-days for memories of dreams
That lost all meaning many centuries ago.

Oh but we lived splendidly
In the brief light of day,
You with hounds on the mountain
And princes in palaces,
I on the western cliff
In the rages of the sun:
Now you lie grandly under your stones
But I in a peasant's hut
Eat bread bitter with the dust of dead men;
The water I draw at the spring has been shed for tears
Ten thousand times,
Or wander through the endless northern twilights
From the rath to the cairn, through fields
Where every field-stone's been handled
Ten thousand times,
In a uterine country, soft
And wet and worn out, like an old womb
That I have returned to, being dead.

Oh but we lived splendidly
Who now twist in our graves.
The mountains are alive;
Tievebuilleagh lives, Trostan lives,
Lurigethan lives;
And Aura, the black-faced sheep in the belled heather;
And the swan-haunted loughs; but also a few of us dead
A life as inhuman and cold as those.

poem by Robinson Jeffers
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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The Demon under the Altar Stone

As a boy in a ruff and a surplice, gown,
I sang in the choir of a country town,
Under the eye of the Reverend Burr
In a church that had stood for a thousand years.

A church so old that it reeked of damp
From the days of an Anglo-Saxon camp,
They'd built their Church on a Druid site
To banish the wailing ghosts at night!

The Romans had slaughtered the Druid priests
In a river of blood at a Druid Feast,
And still their cries could be heard on nights
When the moon gleamed red by the altar lights.

The beams streamed in through the leadlight glass
With an eerie glow that was overcast,
Illumined the ancient altar stone
That covered the Bishop of Cædmon's bones.

The slab that lay on the floor was lipp'd
As it covered the age-old church's crypt,
And there was a crack, an inch around
Through to the crypt there, under the ground.

From where I sat in the old oak pew
I could see the back of the altar, too,
And through a gap where the floor was bare
Were moving shadows that shouldn't be there!

The crypt had been sealed, eight hundred years
Since the Normans had taken the Saxon Reeves,
Imprisoned them down in the crypt for good
Then walled them in - (so I understood!)

And there they suffered and there they died
The Shire Reeves of the countryside,
And no-one had ever been down there since,
Or disturbed their bones... for the merest glimpse.

The Reverend Burr was hellfire bent,
His sermons called to the sinners, 'Repent! '
He ranted and raved of a jealous God,
And asked why nobody reck'd his rod.

The smell of sulphur hung in the air
After a sermon by Reverend Burr,
And brimstone caught in my nostrils so
That I almost gagged at the horror below.

One Sunday, kneeling at evensong
I stared at the ancient altar stone,
And there I saw, and to my surprise,
A glow that appeared to be two red eyes!

They glowed bright red, and they stared at me
As if I were alone in the gallery,
My mind was full of the vicar's gall,
And I felt that a demon had pawned my soul.

The eyes dropped down in the crypt instead
And shadows moved, to my mounting dread,
So after the service I hurried on home,
As far as I could from that altar stone!

A week went by, and I thought of things,
Convinced they must be imaginings,
So off I went to the choir again,
But just to be safe, I whispered, 'Ben! '

'You see the crack in the altar stone,
Just tell me if I'm the only one,
I saw two eyes in that crack last week,
They scared me so much that I couldn't speak! '

The vicar stood by the altar there
With his bulging eyes and his crazy hair
And he roared and he pounded his fist on down
'Til it shook and it rattled the altar stone.

He spoke of torment and endless grief,
For the sin of pride, and the skulking thief,
For the lover of all material things,
The women who covered their hands with rings!

Adulterers were the scourge of God
And would fall in the cracks of the earth, he said,
While those who harboured an impure thought,
Their hopes of heaven were set at naught.

(But all the while it was widely known
That the vicar had been with the widow Rowan,
She'd visited him at the rectory,
And breakfasted in the Refectory) .

His voice rose up and the altar stone
Began to rumble and then to groan,
I felt Ben tense at the side of me
As the eyes rose up, as red as could be!

The eyes rose up and peered from the gloom
Of the crypt, long cursed by a Druid Moon,
The more the vicar harangued and roared,
The more that it rumbled under the floor.

The doors blew open, the wind blew in
Like a storm raised up from the depths of sin,
The people ran for the path outside,
'You've raised the devil, ' the people cried.

And then the floor it had opened up
Where the vicar stood, he had said enough!
Just for a moment we caught a glimpse
Of the thing in the crypt that we've not seen since!

An evil demon with blood-red eyes,
With hands like hooks of a monstrous size,
And teeth that grinned in the fading gloom,
The vicar fell into that terrible room.

We heard him scream just once down there
The sound of a sinner beyond despair,
And then the demon went down with a drone,
Covered the hole with the altar stone!

That church stood empty, unused for years,
They said that it carried a Druid curse,
But who would go down to the crypt alone,
Or think to disturb the altar stone?

29 June 2009

poem by David Lewis Paget
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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King’s Chapel

READ AT THE TWO HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY

Is it a weanling's weakness for the past
That in the stormy, rebel-breeding town,
Swept clean of relics by the levelling blast,

Still keeps our gray old chapel's name of 'King's,'
Still to its outworn symbols fondly clings,--
Its unchurched mitres and its empty crown?

Poor harmless emblems! All has shrunk away
That made them gorgons in the patriot's eyes;
The priestly plaything harms us not to-day;
The gilded crown is but a pleasing show,
An old-world heirloom, left from long ago,
Wreck of the past that memory bids us prize,

Lightly we glance the fresh-cut marbles o'er;
Those two of earlier date our eyes enthrall:
The proud old Briton's by the western door,
And hers, the Lady of Colonial days,
Whose virtues live in long-drawn classic phrase,--
The fair Francesca of the southern wall.

Ay! those were goodly men that Reynolds drew,
And stately dames our Copley's canvas holds,
To their old Church, their Royal Master, true,
Proud of the claim their valiant sires had earned,
That 'gentle blood,' not lightly to be spurned,
Save by the churl ungenerous Nature moulds.

All vanished! It were idle to complain
That ere the fruits shall come the flowers must fall;
Yet somewhat we have lost amidst our gain,
Some rare ideals time may not restore,--
The charm of courtly breeding, seen no more,
And reverence, dearest ornament of all.

Thus musing, to the western wall I came,
Departing: lo! a tablet fresh and fair,
Where glistened many a youth's remembered name
In golden letters on the snow-white stone,--
Young lives these aisles and arches once have known,
Their country's bleeding altar might not spare.

These died that we might claim a soil unstained,
Save by the blood of heroes; their bequests
A realm unsevered and a race unchained.
Has purer blood through Norman veins come down
From the rough knights that clutched the Saxon's crown
Than warmed the pulses in these faithful breasts?

These, too, shall live in history's deathless page,
High on the slow-wrought pedestals of fame,
Ranged with the heroes of remoter age;
They could not die who left their nation free,
Firm as the rock, unfettered as the sea,
Its heaven unshadowed by the cloud of shame.

While on the storied past our memory dwells,
Our grateful tribute shall not be denied,--
The wreath, the cross of rustling immortelles;
And willing hands shall clear each darkening bust,
As year by year sifts down the clinging dust
On Shirley's beauty and on Vassall's pride.

But for our own, our loved and lost, we bring
With throbbing hearts and tears that still must flow,
In full-heaped hands, the opening flowers of spring,
Lilies half-blown, and budding roses, red
As their young cheeks, before the blood was shed
That lent their morning bloom its generous glow.

Ah, who shall count a rescued nation's debt,
Or sum in words our martyrs' silent claims?
Who shall our heroes' dread exchange forget,--
All life, youth, hope, could promise to allure
For all that soul could brave or flesh endure?
They shaped our future; we but carve their names.

poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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The Ring

Lead vocal: eric stewart
Round your finger
Token of the love we give one another
Music of the future that well discover
Promises to keep more than any other
Symbolising all that we share
The ring is magic
The ring is power
Like a candle in the dark for everyone to see
The ring is madness
The ring is fire
And it burns with all the brightness of the sun
In a circle
Living in a world of perpetual motion
Turning with the tide of a restless ocean
Spinning on the wheel of your own emotion
Ridin on a wild carrousel
Youll be turning round and round
Round and round we go
Promises, promises, promises, promises
Round your finger
After all the years weve been together
Walking in the sun and stormy weather
Sharing in a moment to last forever
Memories and dreams without end
The ring is magic
The ring is power
And it finds you in the darkness of the night
The ring is madness
The ring is fire
And it guides you when youre blinded by the light
The ring is magic
The ring is power
Like a candle in the dark for all to see
The ring is madness
The ring is fire
And it burns with all the brightness of the sun
The ring is magic, magic, fire, fire
The ring is mine

song performed by by Alan Parsons Project
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The Silent Melody

"BRING me my broken harp," he said;
"We both are wrecks,-- but as ye will,--
Though all its ringing tones have fled,
Their echoes linger round it still;
It had some golden strings, I know,
But that was long-- how long!-- ago.

"I cannot see its tarnished gold,
I cannot hear its vanished tone,
Scarce can my trembling fingers hold
The pillared frame so long their own;
We both are wrecks,-- awhile ago
It had some silver strings, I know,

"But on them Time too long has played
The solemn strain that knows no change,
And where of old my fingers strayed
The chords they find are new and strange,--
Yes! iron strings,-- I know,-- I know,--
We both are wrecks of long ago.

"We both are wrecks,-- a shattered pair,
Strange to ourselves in time's disguise
What say ye to the lovesick air
That brought the tears from Marian's eyes?
Ay! trust me,-- under breasts of snow
Hearts could be melted long ago!

"Or will ye hear the storm-song's crash
That from his dreams the soldier woke,
And bade him face the lightning flash
When battle's cloud in thunder broke?
Wrecks,-- nought but wrecks!-- the time was when
We two were worth a thousand men!"

And so the broken harp they bring
With pitying smiles that none could blame;
Alas there's not a single string
Of all that filled the tarnished frame!
But see! like children overjoyed,
His fingers rambling through the void!

"I clasp thee! Ay . . . mine ancient lyre. . .
Nay, guide my wandering fingers. . . There!
They love to dally with the wire
As Isaac played with Esan's hair. . . .
Hush! ye shall hear the famous tune
That Marina called the Breath of June!"

And so they softly gather round:
Rapt in his tuneful trance he seems:
His fingers move: but not a sound!
A silence like the song of dreams. . . .
"There! ye have heard the air," he cries,
"That brought the tears from Marina's eyes!"

Ah, smile not at his fond conceit,
Nor deem his fancy wrought in vain;
To him the unreal sounds are sweet,--
No discord mars the silent strain
Scored on life's latest, starlit page--
The voiceless melody of age.

Sweet are the lips of all that sing,
When Nature's music breathes unsought,
But never yet could voice or string
So truly shape our tenderest thought
As when by life's decaying fire
Our fingers sweep the stringless lyre!

poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes
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Sun-Dial, In The Churchyard Of Bremhill

So passes silent o'er the dead thy shade,
Brief Time; and hour by hour, and day by day,
The pleasing pictures of the present fade,
And like a summer vapour steal away!

And have not they, who here forgotten lie
(Say, hoary chronicler of ages past!)
Once marked thy shadow with delighted eye,
Nor thought it fled, how certain, and how fast!

Since thou hast stood, and thus thy vigil kept,
Noting each hour, o'er mouldering stones beneath;
The pastor and his flock alike have slept,
And dust to dust proclaimed the stride of death.

Another race succeeds, and counts the hour,
Careless alike; the hour still seems to smile,
As hope, and youth, and life, were in our power;
So smiling and so perishing the while.

I heard the village bells, with gladsome sound,
When to these scenes a stranger I drew near,
Proclaim the tidings to the village round,
While memory wept upon the good man's bier.

Even so, when I am dead, shall the same bells
Ring merrily, when my brief days are gone;
While still the lapse of time thy shadow tells,
And strangers gaze upon my humble stone!

Enough, if we may wait in calm content,
The hour that bears us to the silent sod;
Blameless improve the time that heaven has lent,
And leave the issue to thy will, O God!

poem by William Lisle Bowles
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Candlelight

So many bees, who know so much
that only bees can tell,
gave their life’s devotion
to this single source of light;
silent whisper for your attention
to what it has to tell your sight,

before its substance burns, returns
into the upper air…

gently burns on altar, or scented in the bathroom’s grace;
or here in front of you, gentle hypnotist
for the wandering mind;
to which it has so much to tell..

tells of humility; gently burning
in a stable, before a birth;

tells of loving-kindness; gives itself,
yet asks for nothing but to be itself;

tells of worship: worship, first, of what the bees are;
and here in this honey-coloured form
is their own worship;
waxing silent in murmured devotion;

warming miraculously, into liquid wax;
only love can be so liquid;
only love can reach so far;

liquid, warmed into this present light:
the candle’s flame you know so well
yet cannot shape or hold;

already, candle hints to you
that there is that beyond all sense:

for round its light, air’s gently warmed:
drawing the flame itself into the invisible above
like the soul that’s yearning for its homeland;

and beyond, within, that air you cannot see
unless it moves some other thing,
it lights the space – space which is not
bathroom, altar; but all space;

candle tells you of all that;
draws the mind with steady, silent truth
to all creation in a single flame;

flame that asks for naught of you
but your attention; which it will reward
by telling you in stillness,
what you worship in yourself;

the light of self, that shines before all men
and glorifies its maker
like a gentle flame that cannot be put out.

poem by Michael Shepherd
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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If The Phone Doesnt Ring Its Me

If the phone doesnt ring its me
1985
The time spent writing about the intensity involved in trying to
Keep love together is short; but the endless research can kill you.
There are oceans of feelings between us
Currents that take us and sweep us away
Thats why we seldom have seen us
In the light of a cold hard day
Lots of new friends with the same old answers
Open your eyes
You might see
If our lives were that simple
Wed live in the past
If the phone doesnt ring
Its me
If the phone doesnt ring
Youll know that its me
Ill be out in the eye of the storm
If the phone doesnt ring
You know that Ill be
Where someone can make me feel warm
Its too bad we cant turn
And live in the past
If the phone doesnt ring
Its me
Ive had good days and bad days
And goin half mad days
I try to let go but youre still on my mind
Ive lost all the old ways
Im searchin for new plays
Puttin it all on the line
Lots of new friends with the same old problems
Open your eyes you might see
If our lives were that simple
Wed live in the past
If the phone doesnt ring
Its me
If the phone doesnt ring
Youll know that its me
Ill be out in the eye of the storm
If the phone doesnt ring
You know that Ill be
Where someone can make me feel warm
Its too bad we cant turn
And live in the past
If the phone doesnt ring
Its me
Its me, its me
Its me, its me
Its me, its me
Its me, its me
If it takes all the future
Well live through the past
If the phone doesnt ring
Its me
- notes:
Background vocals: glenn frey, timothy b. schmit

song performed by by Jimmy Buffett
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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At Thurgarton Church

To the memory of my father

At Thurgarton Church the sun
burns the winter clouds over
the gaunt Danish stone
and thatched reeds that cover
the barest chapel I know.

I could compare it with
the Norse longboats that bore
burning the body forth
in honour from the shore
of great fjords long ago.

The sky is red and cold
overhead, and three small
sturdy trees keep a hold
on the world and the stone wall
that encloses the dead below.

I enter and find I stand
in a great barn, bleak and bare.
Like ice the winter ghosts and
the white walls gleam and flare
and flame as the sun drops low.

And I see, then, that slowly
the December day has gone.
I stand in the silence, not wholly
believing I am alone.
Somehow I cannot go.

Then a small wind rose, and the trees
began to crackle and stir
and I watched the moon by degrees
ascend in the window till her
light cut a wing in the shadow.

I thought: the House of the Dead.
The dead moon inherits it.
And I seem in a sense to have died
as I rise from where I sit
and out into darkness go.

I know as I leave I shall pass
where Thurgarton’s dead lie
at those old stones in the grass
under the cold moon’s eye.
I see the old bones glow.

No, they do not sleep here
in the long holy night of
the serene soul, but keep here
a dark tenancy and the right of
rising up to go.

Here the owl and soul shriek with
the voice of the dead as they turn
on the polar spit and burn
without hope and seek with
out hope the holy home below.

Yet to them the mole and
mouse bring a wreath and a breath
of the flowering leaves of the soul, and
it is from the Tree of Death
the leaves of life grow.

The rain, the sometime summer
rain on a memory of roses
will fall lightly and come a-
mong them as it erases
summers so long ago.

And the voices of those
once so much loved will flitter
over the nettled rows
of graves, and the holly tree twitter
like friends they used to know.

And not far away the
icy and paralysed stream
has found it also, that day the
flesh became glass and a dream
with no where to go.

Haunting the December
fields their bitter lives
entreat us to remember
the lost spirit that grieves
over these fields like a scarecrow.

That grieves over all it ever
did and all, all not
done, that grieves over
its crosspurposed lot:
to know and not to know.

The masterless dog sits
outside the church door
with dereliction haunting its
heart that hankers for
the hand that loved it so.

Not in a small grave
outside the stone wall
will the love that it gave
ever be returned, not for all
time or tracks in the snow.

More mourned the death of the dog
than our bones ever shall
receive from the hand of god
this bone again, or all
that high hand could bestow.

As I stand by the porch
I believe that no one has heard
here in Thurgarton Church
a single veritable word
save the unspoken No.

The godfathered negative
that responds to our mistaken
incredulous and heartbroken
desire above all to live
as though things were not so.

Desire to live as though the
two-footed clay stood up
proud never to know the
tempests that rage in the cup
under a rainbow.

Desire above all to live
as though the soul was stone,
believing we cannot give
or love since we are alone
and always will be so.

That heartbroken desire
to live as though no light
ever set the seas on fire
and no sun burned at night
or Mercy walked to and fro.

The proud flesh cries: I am not
caught up in the great cloud
of my unknowing. But that
proud flesh had endowed
us with the cloud we know.

To this the unspoken No
of the dead god responds
and then the whirlwinds blow
over all the things and beyond
and the dead mop and mow.

And there in the livid dust
and bones of death we search
until we find as we must
outside Thurgarton Church
only wild grasses blow.

I hear the old bone in me cry
and the dying spirit call:
I have forfeited all
and once and for all must die
and this is all that I know.

For now in a wild way we
know that justice is served
and that we die in the clay we
dread, desired, and deserved,
awaiting no Judgement Day.

poem by George Barker
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Stand Up and Bless the Lord

Stand up and bless the Lord
Ye people of His choice;
Stand up and bless the Lord your God
With heart and soul and voice.

Though high above all praise,
Above all blessing high,
Who would not fear His holy Name,
And laud and magnify?

O for the living flame
From His own altar brought,
To touch our lips, our minds inspire,
And wing to heaven our thought!

There, with benign regard,
Our hymns He deigns to hear;
Though unrevealed to mortal sense,
Our spirits feel Him near.

God is our Strength and Song,
And His salvation ours;
Then be His love in Christ proclaimed
With all our ransomed powers.

Stand up and bless the Lord;
The Lord your God adore;
Stand up and bless His glorious Name;
Henceforth forevermore.

poem by James Montgomery
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Sheep

From where I stand the sheep stand still
As stones against the stony hill.

The stones are gray
And so are they.

And both are weatherworn and round,
Leading the eye back to the ground.

Two mingled flocks -
The sheep, the rocks.

And still no sheep stirs from its place
Or lifts its Babylonian face.

poem by Robert Francis
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The Captive Pirate

THE captive pirate sate alone,
Musing over triumphs gone,
Gazing on the clear blue sky
From his dungeon window high.
Dreamingly he sate, and thought
Of battles he had seen and fought;
And fancy o'er him threw her spell.
He deemed he had not bid farewell
To the friends who loved him best:
O'er the white wave's snowy crest
Seems he now once more to sail,
Borne by the triumphant gale:
Cheerily the light bark bounds,
In his ears the music sounds
Of hoarsely mingling waves and voices,
And his inmost soul rejoices!

He gives the signal of command,
He waves-he drops-the lifted hand!
It was a sound of clashing steel-
Why starts he thus? what doth he feel?
The clanking of his iron chain
Hath made him prisoner again!
He groans, as memory round him brings
The shades of half-forgotten things.
His friends! his faithful friends!-a sigh
Bursts from that bosom swelling high.
His bark! his gallant bark!-a tear
Darkens the eye that knew not fear.
And another meaner name
Must lead his men to death or fame!
And another form must stand
(Captain of his mourning band)
On the deck he trod so well,
While his bark o'er ocean's swell
Is sailing far, far out at sea,
Where he never more may be!
Oh! to be away once more
From the dark and loathsome shore!
Oh! again the sound to hear
Of his ship's crew's hearty cheer!
Souls who by his side have stood,
Careless of their ebbing blood,

Wiped the death-dew from their brow,
And feebly smiled their truth to show!
Little does the Pirate deem
Freedom now were but a dream;
Little does the chieftain think
That his lost companions drink
Strugglingly by the salt sea wave,
Once their home, and now their grave!
And the bark from which they part,
(While his sad and heavy heart
Yearns to tread her gallant deck,)
Helpless lies, a heaving wreck!

And little will they deem, who roam
Hereafter in their floating home,
While their sunlit sail is spread,
That it gleams above the dead-
That the faithless wave rolls on
Calmly, as they were not gone,
While its depths warm hearts doth cover,
Whose beatings were untimely over!
And little will they deem, who stand
Safe upon the sea-girt land,
That to the stranger all it gave
Was-a prison and a grave!

That the ruin'd fortress towers
Number'd his despairing hours,
And beneath their careless tread,
Sleeps-the broken-hearted dead!

poem by Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Rubber Ring

A sad fact widely known
The most impassionate song
To a lonely soul
Is so easily outgrown
But dont forget the songs
That made you smile
And the songs that made you cry
When you lay in awe
On the bedroom floor
And said : oh, oh, smother me mother...
No ...
Rubber ring, rubber ring, rubber ring, rubber ring
La ...
The passing of time
And all of its crimes
Is making me sad again
The passing of time
And all of its sickening crimes
Is making me sad again
But dont forget the songs
That made you cry
And the songs that saved your life
Yes, youre older now
And youre a clever swine
But they were the only ones who ever stood by you
The passing of time leaves empty lives
Waiting to be filled (the passing ...)
The passing of time
Leaves empty lives
Waiting to be filled
Im here with the cause
Im holding the torch
In the corner of your room
Can you hear me ?
And when youre dancing and laughing
And finally living
Hear my voice in your head
And think of me kindly
No ...
Rubber ring, rubber ring, rubber ring, rubber ring
La ...
No ...
Rubber ring, rubber ring, rubber ring, rubber ring
Do you
Love me like you used to ?
Oh ...
Rubber ring, rubber ring, rubber ring, rubber ring
La ...
Youre clever
Everybodys clever nowadays
Youre clever
Everybodys clever nowadays
You are sleeping
You do not want to believe
You are sleeping
You do not want to believe
You are sleeping
You do not want to believe
You are sleeping

song performed by by Smiths
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Off Rough Point

We sat at twilight nigh the sea,
The fog hung gray and weird.
Through the thick film uncannily
The broken moon appeared.

We heard the billows crack and plunge,
We saw nor waves nor ships.
Earth sucked the vapors like a sponge,
The salt spray wet our lips.

Closer the woof of white mist drew,
Before, behind, beside.
How could that phantom moon break through,
Above that shrouded tide?

The roaring waters filled the ear,
A white blank foiled the sight.
Close-gathering shadows near, more near,
Brought the blind, awful night.

O friends who passed unseen, unknown!
O dashing, troubled sea!
Still stand we on a rock alone,
Walled round by mystery.

poem by Emma Lazarus
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King Shall Hold Kingdom. (Anglo-Saxon Chronicles)

King shall hold kingdom. A castle is seen from afar,
artful work of giants yet on earth
wonderful wall-stone work. Wind is swiftest in sky,
thunder betimes most loud. Many are Christ's powers.
Wyrd is strongest. Winter is coldest,
Lent frostiest and longest cold,
summer sun-brightest, when sky is hottest,
and autumn most glorious, giving to men
the year's fruits which God sends.
Truth is clearest, treasure dearest,
gold to each man. The greyhair is wisest,
ancient in years, who has much endured.
Grief clings; clouds glide.
Young chief shall encourage good companions
in grim war and ring-giving.
Courage shall be in eorl, edge shall in battle
meet helm. Hawk shall on glove
stay wild. Wolf shall on hill
be lone. Boar shall dwell in holt
with great tusks. Good man shall in homeland
work judgement. Spear shall in hand
be gold-adorned. Gem shall in ring
stand broad and brilliant. Brook shall in wave
mingle with sea-flood. Mast shall in ship
swing sailyard. Sword shall lie on breast,
lordly iron. Dragon shall in barrow dwell
old, proud of his treasure. Fish shall in water
beget his kind. King shall bright ring
give in hall. Bear shall on heath
dwell old and dangerous, river come down
from hill flood-grey, armed force together
stand firm, victorious, good faith in eorl
and wisdom in man. Woods shall on earth
bloom with flowers, hill on plain
stand green. God shall be in heaven
the judge of deeds. Door shall on hall
be house's wide mouth. Boss on buckler
shall shield the fingers. Flying bird
shall soar in sky, salmon in pool
slide swiftly. Shower in heaven
mingled with wind shall come in this world.
Thief shall go in dark weather. Demon shall in fen
live alone inland. A lady shall with secret arts
seek her friend, if she would not be fulfilled
and brought in marriage with rings. Sea shall well with brine,
circling sky and wave be round all land,
mountain-streams course. Cattle shall on earth
conceive and bring forth. Star shall with dark,
army with army, enemy with another,
injury with injury oppose round the land,
accuse of wrong. Always the wise man
shall think on this world's contention, the criminal hang,
fairly repaid for wrongdoing
against mankind. The Maker alone knows
where the soul shall afterwards shift,
and all the ghosts who turned to God
after their deathday, awaiting their doom
in the Father's lap. The future
is locked and lightless. The Lord alone knows it,
saving Father. No one steps back
hither under roof who could reveal
truly to men the Maker's design,
the home of the triumphant, where He himself dwells.

poem by Anonymous Olde English
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Indian Summer

A soft veil dims the tender skies,
And half conceals from pensive eyes
The bronzing tokens of the fall;
A calmness broods upon the hills,
And summer's parting dream distills
A charm of silence over all.

The stacks of corn, in brown array,
Stand waiting through the placid day,
Like tattered wigwams on the plain;
The tribes that find a shelter there
Are phantom peoples, forms of air,
And ghosts of vanished joy and pain.

At evening when the crimson crest
Of sunset passes down the West,
I hear the whispering host returning;
On far-off fields, by elm and oak,
I see the lights, I smell the smoke,--
The Camp-fires of the Past are burning.

poem by Henry Van Dyke
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