The Voiceless
WE count the broken lyres that rest
Where the sweet wailing singers slumber,
But o'er their silent sister's breast
The wild-flowers who will stoop to number?
A few can touch the magic string,
And noisy Fame is proud to win them:--
Alas for those that never sing,
But die with all their music in them!
Nay, grieve not for the dead alone
Whose song has told their hearts' sad story,--
Weep for the voiceless, who have known
The cross without the crown of glory!
Not where Leucadian breezes sweep
O'er Sappho's memory-haunted billow,
But where the glistening night-dews weep
On nameless sorrow's churchyard pillow.
O hearts that break and give no sign
Save whitening lip and fading tresses,
Till Death pours out his longed-for wine
Slow-dropped from Misery's crushing presses,--
If singing breath or echoing chord
To every hidden pang were given,
What endless melodies were poured,
As sad as earth, as sweet as heaven!
poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes
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Related quotes
A few can touch the magic string, and noisy fame is proud to win them: Alas for those that never sing, but die with all their music in them!
quote by Oliver Wendell Holmes
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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John Mitchel
I.
DEAD, with his harness on him:
Rigid and cold and white,
Marking the place of the vanguard
Still in the ancient fight.
The climber dead on the hill-side,
Before the height is won:
The workman dead on the building,
Before the work is done!
O, for a tongue to utter
The words that should be said—
Of his worth that was silver, living,
That is gold and jasper, dead!
Dead—but the death was fitting:
His life, to the latest breath,
Was poured like wax on the chart of right,
And is sealed by the stamp of Death!
Dead—but the end was fitting:
First in the ranks he led;
And he marks the height of his nation's gain,
As he lies in his harness—dead!
II.
Weep for him, Ireland—mother lonely;
Weep for the son w'ho died for thee.
Wayward he was, but he loved thee only,
Loyal and fearless as son could be.
Weep for him, Ireland—sorrowing nation
Faithful to all who are true to thee:
Never a son in thy desolation
Had holier love for thy cause than he.
Sons of the Old Land, mark the story—
Mother and son in the final test:
Weeping she sits in her darkened glory,
Holding her dead to her stricken breast.
Only the dead on her knees are lying—
Ah, poor mother beneath the cross!
Strength is won by the constant trying,
Crowns are gemmed by the tears of loss!
Sons of the Old Land, mark the story—
Mother and son to each other true:
She called, and he answered, old and hoary,
And gave her his life as a man should do.
She may weep—but for us no weeping:
Tears are vain till the work is done;
Tears for her—but for us the keeping
Our hearts as true as her faithful son.
poem by John Boyle O'Reilly
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Oh! weep for those
I
Oh! Weep for those that wept by Babel's stream,
Whose shrines are desolate, whose land a dream,
Weep for the harp of Judah's broken shell—
Mourn—where their God hath dwelt—the Godless dwell!
II
And where shall Israel lave her bleeding feet?
And when shall Zion's songs again seem sweet?
And Judah's melody once more rejoice
The hearts that leap'd before its heavenly voice?
III
Tribes of the wandering foot and weary breast,
How shall ye flee away and be at rest!
The wild-dove hath her nest—the fox his cave—
Mankind their Country—Israel but the grave!
poem by Byron from The Hebrew Melodies (1815)
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Men With Broken Hearts
You'll meet many just like me upon life's busy street
With shoulders stooped and heads bowed low and eyes that stare in defeat
Or souls that live within the past where sorrow plays all parts
Where a living death is all that's left for men with broken hearts
You have no right to be the judge to criticize and condemn
Just think but for the grace of God it would be you instead of him
One careless step a thoughtless deed and then the misery starts
And to those who weep death comes cheap these men with broken hearts
Oh so humble you should be when they come passing by
For it's written that the greatest men never get too big to cry
Some lose faith in love and life when sorrow shoots her darts
And with hope all gone they walk alone these men with broken hearts
You've never walked in that man's shoes or saw things through his eyes
Or stood and watched with helpless hands while the heart inside you dies
Some were propers some were kings and some were masters of the arts
But in their shame they're all the same these men with broken hearts
Life sometimes can be so cruel that a heart will pray for death
God why must these living dead know pain with every breath
So help your brother along the road no matter where he starts
For the God that made you made them too these men with broken hearts
song performed by by Hank Williams
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Spell this for us... W.E L.O.V.E Y.O.U J.E.M.U.E.L
We remember our little Jemuel
Even as in our heart you shall dwell
A small bubble of light: A ceaseless flame,
Sparked, and left to burn in our hearts
For you:
Sweet melodies are being sung in heaven
On the arrival of the newest angel,
Born of Kay and Clarence - Your name Jemuel
Hearts are stolen by you, on earth and in Heaven
Jesus’ little brother, born of a loving mother
Up in heaven, sitting with Emanuel -
Sweet melodies are being sung in heaven
On the arrival of the newest angel:
Jesus loves you, am sure you could tell
Even as with him your spirit dwell.
“Boy” you’re with our sweet Jesus, up in heaven’s glory
So enjoy the gold and save us some castles,
Like those in mommy's bible story.
You can walk and you know how to spell
So spell this for us…
W.E L.O.V.E Y.O.U J.E.M.U.E.L.
Copyright © 2008 Leslie Alexis
poem by Leslie Alexis
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As long as its music
Please play me a symphony
Make a simple cheerful harmony
Please play me a chord from a guitar
For me, it does not matter
If I’m the only audience of your theatre
Give me some instrumental vibes
All rhythms and tunes are musically ripe
There is no need to take precaution
While playing the Banjo or flamenco percussion
As long as its music
We can all heal
As long as its music
We can all feel
We can sing out our hearts and soul
We can let this music take control
Please play me the drums
We can sing or we can hum
Please play me a CD or a hit record
We could sing to the tunes of an ipod
With the sounds of music we can compose a song
Maybe sing to the town’s bells chiming ding-dong
Please play me the sweet keys of a piano
Hit a sweet note that is a major or minor
As long as its music
We can all heal or cry
As long as its music
We can all feel or fly high
And I will be lost in your voice and eyes
Holding on to each minute that flies
Whatever sounds or instruments
I shall feel good in the moment
Please play me a note from a flute
Those peaceful sounds tend to soothe
I want to hear sweet, sweet music
Choose your lyrics, take your pick
My heart will dance, till she is weak
Get out that guitar, acoustic or electric
Please play me the violins of an orchestra night
String me some melodies in broad daylight
And we can rap to melodious sense or crap
While our feet’s playfully tap, tap and tap
As long as its music
We can dance along the shore
As long as its music
We can all take to the dance floor
And I say once more, once more!
As long as its music, I will only ask for more
poem by Sylvia Chidi
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The Dead Moment
THE world is changed between us, never more
Shall the dawn rise and seek another mate
Over the hill-tops; never can the shore
Spread out her ragged tresses to the roar
Of the sea passionate,
Moon-chained, and for a season love-forbid;
Never shall shift the sullen thunder's lid
At lightning-lash, and never shall the night
Throw the wild stars about,
Nor the day flicker out
Against the evening's breath; but this shall creep--
This moment on us, to make different
The face of every day's intent,
And change the brow of sleep.
What can we name it? Oh, the whitest word
Would leave a stain upon that moment's mouth!
The sweetest piping heard
By wearying birds a-South
Would shake its silence, let no word be said;
What need of name or music hath the dead?
Too far for call, too faint for song it is,
This ghost of ours, that you have buried deep;
Less earth than any violet nourishes
Its fragile stem would keep;
And we could lose it in the frailest shell,
Or lily's wannest bell;
In any rose's urn that dust might dwell.
Oh! to forsake it thus,
Our only one, our starveling piteous!
Even as men who garner and lock up
Gold chasuble and cup,--
Their alabaster and their tourmaline,--
Their sandal-wood and wine,
Will give their dearest to the earth to keep,
Housed among strangers, and will let the clay
Or oozing river-bed
Rot all their wealth away,
While they go home to sleep!
Will let the wild roots of the bramble clutch,
And see the careless sod
Trample it down, and bruise with common touch
All that they knew of glory and of God!
(Who would not house a thief so house their dead!)
In the blind dark with wolf-winds overhead.
When night sucks honey from the hive of day
They lie, while April, with her merry clout,
Flings the white dust about;
When the swift silences that ride the Spring
Whip on their misty chariots, and wring
Foam from the bridled lips of May;
What time the sick moon looks up yellowly
Out of the pillowed sky,
Or when doth sing
Some crazy bird, aslant upon a bough
A song that makes him, just this time of year,
A poet, and can never sing again;
When the pale lips of rain
Tremble above the eyelids of the plain.
Ah! would you hide our one dead moment, now,
Even as they, my dear?
Who into one grave hurdle grace and mirth,
Beating down Beauty with a noisy spade,
Nor dream that 'neath the stunned and senseless earth
Are all their riches laid;--
Such gold as they shall never see again,
Such wine as shall not stain
Their shallow cups! All beauty, all delight,
Treasure, unbarterable and bright,
All lie there in the cold, and in the night.
Nay, you will have it so?
Let all its sweetness go,
Brief, exquisite?
Then take it hence; but make a wreath for it
And let us sing for it a requiem,
Not the few strangled words above the dead
That those, whose hearts condemn,
Mutter, for having left so long unsaid,
Pity or praise, to ears desiring them.
Bury it not as something sick and shamed,
Unfathered and unnamed.
Nay, break sweet spices, myrrh and cedar bring,
Bury it as a king,
Or some belovèd child that lies beneath
The rose whose name he knew not, wondering
Why his young mother wove it in a wreath.
For, look you, and remember what it gave,--
Those gifts, that naught and none can take away!
How it makes red as rose each pallid day,
Each coward moment, brave;
And how each wingless heel of Misery
It sandals with a hope, and sends a-sky!
While we await the hour that somewhere goes
Unmatched, unmated . . . it shall not be yet:
Night's heavy eyelids close
On tears; and leave the Morning's pillow wet.
Weep not, though said the requiem, flung the wreath;
Only when you forget, and I forget,
Weep for that moment's death.
poem by Muriel Stuart
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Cora
Of Cora, once so dearly ours,
Would mournful memory sing;
Of how she came when came the flowers,
To leave us with the spring.
That day (returned) which gave her breath
Was that whereon she died,
And o’er the pangs of birth and death
Passed blooming as a bride.
The spring it came, with never a storm,
And nine times came and went,
Till its whole spirit with her form
In budding beauty blent.
Yea, till its sentiment was wreathed
About her eye it came,
And all its foregone influence breathed
At mention of her name.
And aye her soul, her inward worth,
Flushed out in subtle glows,
As from its heart come mantling forth
The ardours of a rose.
It was a glory from within
That made her face so fair,
A radiant spirit void of sin
Was working outward there.
Her locks as they were burnished shone
In many a massy fold,
Or fell in their profusion down
Like bursting sheaves of gold.
Bright garments of a spirit bright,
That even in the shroud
Were like the sunset’s aureate light
Within a lifeless cloud.
When she, our angel of the sun,
Had spread her wings in flight,
Ah, still would mournful memory sing
Of her, our lost delight!
Child with full orbs of heaven-deep blue
Illumined violet,
So richly gentle—touched with dew,
Befringed with glossy jet.
When with the spring we saw depart
Those eyes, those tresses curled,
Then summer dying in love’s heart,
To winger left the world.
Ah, soul that wore the snowy brow,
And gentle shining eyes,
Our song hath aye this burden now
Beneath the vernal skies.
In vain the dews of heaven are shed
Where blight hath been before;
So vainly weep we o’er the dead,
But only weep the more.
Yet from the bright time of her birth
And death, does faith construe
How, like the spring, though not on earth,
Our joy shall bloom anew.
poem by Charles Harpur
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The Flowers
Ye offspring of the morning sun,
Ye flowers that deck the smiling plain,
Your lives, in joy and bliss begun,
In Nature's love unchanged remain.
With hues of bright and godlike splendor
Sweet Flora graced your forms so tender,
And clothed ye in a garb of light;
Spring's lovely children weep forever,
For living souls she gave ye never,
And ye must dwell in endless night?
The nightingale and lark still sing
In your tranced ears the bliss of love;
The toying sylphs, on airy wing,
Around your fragrant bosoms rove,
Of yore, Dione's daughter [6] twining
In garlands sweet your cup-so shining,
A pillow formed where love might rest!
Spring's gentle children, mourn forever,
The joys of love she gave ye never,
Ne'er let ye know that feeling blest!
But when ye're gathered by my hand,
A token of my love to be,
Now that her mother's harsh command
From Nanny's [7] sight has banished me--
E'en from that passing touch ye borrow
Those heralds mute of pleasing sorrow,
Life, language, hearts and souls divine;
And to your silent leaves 'tis given,
By Him who mightiest is in heaven,
His glorious Godhead to enshrine.
poem by Friedrich Schiller
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Korner And His Sister
Green wave the oak for ever o'er thy rest,
Thou that beneath its crowning foliage sleepest,
And, in the stillness of thy country's breast,
Thy place of memory, as an altar keepest;
Brightly thy spirit o'er her hills was pour'd,
Thou of the Lyre and Sword!
Rest, bard! rest, soldier! by the father's hand
Here shall the child of after years be led,
With his wreath-offering silently to stand,
In the hush'd presence of the glorious dead.
Soldier and bard! for thou thy path hast trod
With freedom and with God.
The oak wav'd proudly o'er thy burial-rite,
On thy crown'd bier to slumber warriors bore thee,
And with true hearts thy brethren of the fight
Wept as they vail'd their drooping banners o'er thee.
And the deep guns with rolling peal gave token,
That Lyre and Sword were broken.
Thou hast a hero's tomb: a lowlier bed
Is hers, the gentle girl beside thee lying,
The gentle girl, that bow'd her fair, young head
When thou wert gone, in silent sorrow dying.
Brother, true friend! the tender and the brave
She pined to share thy grave.
Fame was thy gift from others; but for her,
To whom the wide world held that only spot,
She loved thee! lovely in your lives ye were,
And in your early deaths divided not.
Thou hast thine oak, thy trophy:–What hath she?
Her own blest place by thee!
It was thy spirit, brother! which had made
The bright earth glorious to her thoughtful eye,
Since first in childhood midst the vines ye play'd,
And sent glad singing thro' the free blue sky.
Ye were but two and when that spirit pass'd,
Wo to the one, the last!
Wo, yet not long! She linger'd but to trace
Thine image from the image in her breast,
Once, once again to see that buried face
But smile upon her, ere she went to rest.
Too sad a smile! its living light was o'er,
It answer'd hers no more.
The earth grew silent when thy voice departed,
The home too lonely whence thy step had fled;
What then was left for her, the faithful-hearted?
Death, death, to still the yearning for the dead!
Softly she perish'd: be the Flower deplor'd
Here with the Lyre and Sword!
Have ye not met ere now? so let those trust
That meet for moments but to part for years,
That weep, watch, pray, to hold back dust from dust,
That love, where love is but a fount of tears.
Brother, sweet sister! peace around ye dwell:
Lyre, Sword, and Flower, farewell!
poem by Felicia Dorothea Hemans
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A Lullaby
The stars are twinkling in the skies,
The earth is lost in slumbers deep;
So hush, my sweet, and close thine eyes,
And let me lull thy soul to sleep.
Compose thy dimpled hands to rest,
And like a little birdling lie
Secure within thy cozy nest
Upon my loving mother breast,
And slumber to my lullaby,
So hushaby--O hushaby.
The moon is singing to a star
The little song I sing to you;
The father sun has strayed afar,
As baby's sire is straying too.
And so the loving mother moon
Sings to the little star on high;
And as she sings, her gentle tune
Is borne to me, and thus I croon
For thee, my sweet, that lullaby
Of hushaby--O hushaby.
There is a little one asleep
That does not hear his mother's song;
But angel watchers--as I weep--
Surround his grave the night-tide long.
And as I sing, my sweet, to you,
Oh, would the lullaby I sing--
The same sweet lullaby he knew
While slumb'ring on this bosom too--
Were borne to him on angel's wing!
So hushaby--O hushaby.
poem by Eugene Field
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Palm Sunday
Ye whose hearts are beating high
With the pulse of Poesy,
Heirs of more than royal race,
Fram’d by Heaven’s peculiar grace,
God’s own work to do on earth,
(If the word be not too bold,)
Giving virtue a new birth,
And a life that ne’er grows old—
Sovereign masters of all hearts!
Know ye, who hath set your parts?
He who gave you breath to sing,
By whose strength ye sweep the string,
He hath chosen you, to lead
His Hosannas here below;—
Mount, and claim your glorious meed;
Linger not with sin and woe.
But if ye should hold your peace,
Deem not that the song would cease—
Angels round his glory-throne,
Stars, His guiding hand that own,
Flowers, that grow beneath our feet,
Stones in earth’s dark womb that rest,
High and low in choir shall meet,
Ere His Name shall be unblest.
Lord, by every minstrel tongue
Be thy praise so duly sung,
That thine angels’ harps may ne’er
Fail to find fit echoing here:
We the while, of meaner birth,
Who in that divinest spell
Dare not hope to join on earth,
Give us grace to listen well.
But should thankless silence seal
Lips, that might half Heaven reveal,
Should bards in idol-hymns profane
The sacred soul-enthralling strain,
(As in this bad world below
Nobles things find vilest using,)
Then, thy power and mercy shew,
In vile things noble breath infusing;
Then waken into sound divine
The very pavement of thy shrine,
Till we, like Heaven’s star-sprinkled floor,
Faintly give back what we adore.
Childlike though the voices be,
And untunable the parts,
Thou wilt own the minstrelsy,
If it flow from childlike hearts.
poem by John Keble
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At The Last.
The sky grows white with the moon,
And the sea yearns up to the night
As the soul to an unknown height,
Drawn thence by a starry rune.
Only a lost wind strays,
Like the breath of Passion blown
In the vault of the night unknown;
And the heart in me sobs and says:
'After a while we, too,
Shall rest as the stars above,
When we have no more to do
With the dream of life and love.'
O Time! thy feet that run
Over the hills and waves,
Over the cradles and graves,
From the first to the final sun!
Some day thou too shalt cease —
Some way there'll come to thee
Death's white tranquility,
The boon of an awful peace —
When the latest grief shall flow
With the surge that drifts away,
And the Night shall no more go
In her endless chase of Day.
Then shall the worn heart rest,
Then shall the sad Sea yearn
No more for the Moon's return,
Like a bird on its frozen nest
Dead, with her young ones dead
Under her breast on the bough,
Where nothing can wake them now —
Not the Dawn with its golden tread:
Where Death has been good to all,
Good to the mother and young,
And the dreams are beyond recall,
And the songs have all been sung.
So, at the last, to sleep!
So, at the last, to be
Still as the dead still sea!
Never to wake and weep,
Never to know Love's pain,
Never to yearn on for
What is gone for evermore;
To be as we were again
Ere we came o'er the bourne of birth,
Ere we knew of the fading flowers,
Of love and of life on Earth
And the hearts that were not ours!
poem by Robert Crawford
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In Memoriam
GROWING to full manhood now,
With the care-lines on our brow,
We, the youngest of the nations,
With no childish lamentations,
Weep, as only strong weep,
5
For the noble hearts that sleep,
Pillowed where they fought and bled,
The loved and lost, our glorious dead!
Toil and sorrow come with age,
Manhood's rightful heritage;
10
Toil our arms more strong shall render,
Sorrow make our hearts more tender,
In the heartlessness of time;
Honour lays a wreath sublime—
Deathless glory—where they bled,
15
Our loved and lost, with glorious dead!
Wild the prairie's grasses wave
O'er each hero's new-made grave;
Time shall write such wrinkles o'er us,
But the future spreads before us
20
Glorious in that sunset land—
Nerving every heart and hand,
Comes a brightness none can shed,
But the dead, the glorious dead!
Lay them where they fought and fell;
25
Every heart shall ring their knell,
For the lessons they have taught us,
For the glory they have brought us.
Tho' our hearts are sad and bowed,
Nobleness still makes us proud—
30
Proud of light their names shall shed
In the roll-call of our dead!
Growing to full manhood now,
With the care-lines on our brow,
We, the youngest of the nations,
35
With no childish lamentations,
Weep, as only strong men weep,
For the noble hearts that sleep
Where the call of duty led,
Where the lonely prairies spread,
40
Where for us they fought and bled,
Our loved, our lost, our glorious dead!
poem by Frederick George Scott
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Twas One of Those Dreams
'TWAS one of those dreams, that by music are brought,
Like a bright summer haze, o'er the poet's warm thought --
When, lost in the future, his soul wanders on,
And all of this life, but its sweetness, is gone.
The wild notes he heard o'er the water were those
He had taught to sing Erin's dark bondage and woes,
And the breath of the bugle now wafted them o'er
From Dinis' green isle, to Glena's wooded shore.
He listen'd -- while, high o'er the eagle's rude nest,
The lingering sounds on their way loved to rest;
And the echoes sung back from their full mountain quire,
As if loath to let song to enchanting expire.
It seem'd as if every sweet note that died here
Was again brought to life in some airier sphere,
Some heaven in those hills, where the soul of the strain
That had ceased upon earth was awaking again!
Oh forgive, if, while listening to music, whose breath
Seem'd to circle his name with a charm against death,
He should feel a proud spirit within him proclaim,
"Even so shalt thou live in the echoes of Fame:
"Even so, though thy memory should now die away,
'Twill be caught up again in some happier day,
And the hearts and the voices of Erin prolong,
Through the answering Future, thy name and thy song."
poem by Thomas Moore
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The Saddest Fate
To touch a broken lute,
To strike a jangled string,
To strive with tones forever mute
The dear old tunes to sing--
What sadder fate could any heart befall?
Alas! dear child, never to sing at all.
To sigh for pleasures flown,
To weep for withered flowers,
To count the blessings we have known,
Lost with the vanished hours--
What sadder fate could any heart befall?
Alas! dear child, ne'er to have known them at all.
To dream of love and rest,
To know the dream has past,
To bear within an aching breast
Only a void at last--
What sadder fate could any heart befall?
Alas! dear child, ne'er to have loved at all.
To trust an unknown good,
To hope, but all in vain,
Over a far-off bliss to brood,
Only to find it pain--
What sadder fate could any soul befall?
Alas! dear child, never to hope at all.
poem by Anonymous Americas
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A Lost Love
I meet thy pensive, moonlight face;
Thy thrilling voice I hear;
And former hours and scenes retrace,
Too fleeting, and too dear!
Then sighs and tears flow fast and free,
Though none is nigh to share;
And life has nought beside for me
So sweet as this despair.
There are crush'd hearts that will not break;
And mine, methinks, is one;
Or thus I should not weep and wake,
And thou to slumber gone.
I little thought it thus could be
In days more sad and fair
That earth could have a place for me,
And thou no longer there.
Yet death cannot our hearts divide,
Or make thee less my own:
Twere sweeter sleeping at thy side
Than watching here alone.
Yet never, never can we part,
While Memory holds her reign:
Thine, thine is still this wither'd heart,
Till we shall meet again.
poem by Henry Francis Lyte
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Our Hills
Dear Mother-Earth
Of Titan birth,
Yon hills are your large breasts, and often I
Have climbed to their top-nipples, fain and dry
To drink my mother's-milk so near the sky.
O ye hill-stains,
Red, for all rains!
The blood that made you has all bled for us,
The hearts that paid you are all dead for us,
The trees that shade you groan with lead, for us!
And O, hill-sides,
Like giants' brides
Ye sleep in ravine-rumpled draperies,
And weep your springs in tearful memories
Of days that stained your robes with stains like these!
Sleep on, ye hills!
Weep on, ye rills!
The stainers have decreed the stains shall stay.
They chain the hands might wash the stains away.
They wait with cold hearts till we "rue the day".
O Mother-Earth
Of Titan birth,
Thy mother's-milk is curdled with aloe.
-- Like hills, Men, lift calm heads through any woe,
And weep, but bow not an inch, for any foe!
Thou Sorrow-height
We climb by night,
Thou hast no hell-deep chasm save Disgrace.
To stoop, will fling us down its fouled space:
Stand proud! The Dawn will meet us, face to face,
For down steep hills the Dawn loves best to race!
poem by Sidney Lanier
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The Wayfarers
Still the white stars burn overhead,
The green earth swings upon her way:
Where are the voices of the dead,
The hearts of Yesterday?
Drawn by what strange, mysterious power,
From what dream world and magic sky
Came they to laugh on earth an hour,
To weep, to toil, to die?
And whither gone? On what wild flight
By planet pale and sceptred star?
What realms of sorrow or delight
Now wander they afar?
Pale Wayfarers, whose noiseless tread
Is near me as I seem to see
The mighty generations dead,
And all that yet shall be!
Are Past and Future, then, a breath
That one vast Present makes its own?
The Angel, Birth, the Shadow, Death,
Each guards a world unknown.
Wayfarers all, we know not whence
We came, nor whitherwards we go.
Deep in our hearts a haunting sense
That somewhere we shall know.
Still the white stars burn overhead,
The green earth swings upon her way:
Where are the voices of the dead,
The hearts of yesterday?
poem by George Essex Evans
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Alas! So All Things Now Do Hold Their Peace
Alas! so all things now do hold their peace,
Heaven and earth disturbed in nothing.
The beasts, the air, the birds their song do cease,
The night{:e}s chare the stars about doth bring.
Calm is the sea, the waves work less and less:
So am not I, whom love, alas, doth wring,
Bringing before my face the great increase
Of my desires, whereat I weep and sing
In joy and woe, as in a doubtful ease.
For my sweet thoughts sometime do pleasure bring,
But by and by the cause of my disease
Gives me a pang that inwardly doth sting,
When that I think what grief it is again
To live and lack the thing should rid my pain.
poem by Henry Howard
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