Chorus from Hellas
The world`s great age begins anew,
The golden years return,
The earth doth like a snake renew
Her winter weeds outworn:
Heaven smiles, and faith and empires gleam,
Like a wrecks of a dissolving dream.
A brighter Hellas rears its mountains
From waves serener far;
A new Peneus rolls his fountains
Against the morning star.
Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep
Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep.
A loftier Argo cleaves the main,
Fraught with a later prize;
Another Orpheus sings again,
And loves, and weeps, and dies.
A new Ulyssses leaves once more
Calypso for his native shore...
poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley
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Hellas
THE world's great age begins anew,
The golden years return,
The earth doth like a snake renew
Her winter weeds outworn;
Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam
Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.
A brighter Hellas rears its mountains
From waves serener far;
A new Peneus rolls his fountains
Against the morning star;
Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep
Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep.
A loftier Argo cleaves the main,
Fraught with a later prize;
Another Orpheus sings again,
And loves, and weeps, and dies;
A new Ulysses leaves once more
Calypso for his native shore.
O write no more the tale of Troy,
If earth Death's scroll must be--
Nor mix with Laian rage the joy
Which dawns upon the free,
Although a subtler Sphinx renew
Riddles of death Thebes never knew.
Another Athens shall arise,
And to remoter time
Bequeath, like sunset to the skies,
The splendour of its prime;
And leave, if naught so bright may live,
All earth can take or Heaven can give.
Saturn and Love their long repose
Shall burst, more bright and good
Than all who fell, than One who rose,
Than many unsubdued:
Not gold, not blood, their altar dowers,
But votive tears and symbol flowers.
O cease! must hate and death return?
Cease! must men kill and die?
Cease! drain not to its dregs the urn
Of bitter prophecy!
The world is weary of the past--
O might it die or rest at last!
poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley
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At The Unitarian Festival
MARCH 8, 1882
THE waves unbuild the wasting shore;
Where mountains towered the billows sweep,
Yet still their borrowed spoils restore,
And build new empires from the deep.
So while the floods of thought lay waste
The proud domain of priestly creeds,
Its heaven-appointed tides will haste
To plant new homes for human needs.
Be ours to mark with hearts unchilled
The change an outworn church deplores;
The legend sinks, but Faith shall build
A fairer throne on new-found shores.
poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes
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Burnt Ships
TO skies that were brighter
Turned he his prows;
To gods that were lighter
Made he his vows.
The snow-land's mountains
Sank in the deep;
Sunnier fountains
Lulled him to sleep.
He burns his vessels,
The smoke flung forth
On blue cloud-trestles
A bridge to the north.
From the sun-warmed lowland
Each night that betides,
To the huts of the snow-land
A horseman rides.
poem by Henrik Johan Ibsen
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Poems On The Slave Trade - Sonnet IV
'Tis night; the mercenary tyrants sleep
As undisturb'd as Justice! but no more
The wretched Slave, as on his native shore,
Rests on his reedy couch: he wakes to weep!
Tho' thro' the toil and anguish of the day
No tear escap'd him, not one suffering groan
Beneath the twisted thong, he weeps alone
In bitterness; thinking that far away
Tho' the gay negroes join the midnight song,
Tho' merriment resounds on Niger's shore,
She whom he loves far from the chearful throng
Stands sad, and gazes from her lowly door
With dim grown eye, silent and woe-begone,
And weeps for him who will return no more.
poem by Robert Southey
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Youth
WHY linger round the sunken wrecks
Where old Armadas found their graves?
Why slumber on the sleepy decks
While foam and clash the angry waves?
Up! when the storm-blast rends the clouds,
And winged with ruin sweeps the gale,
Young feet must climb the quivering shrouds,
Young hands must reef the bursting sail!
Leave us to fight the tyrant creeds
Who felt their shackles, feel their scars;
The cheerful sunlight little heeds
The brutes that prowled beneath the stars;
The dawn is here, the day star shows
The spoils of many a battle won,
But sin and sorrow still are foes
That face us in the morning sun.
Who sleeps beneath yon bannered mound
The proudly sorrowing mourner seeks,
The garland-bearing crowd surrounds?
A light-haired boy with beardless cheeks!
'T is time this 'fallen world' should rise;
Let youth the sacred work begin!
What nobler task, what fairer prize
Than earth to save and Heaven to win?
poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes
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Earth and Sky
As the earth begins to die
The sky watches
As the earth dies
The sky saddens
As the earth lay dead
The sky weeps
As the earth remains lifeless
The sky floods it with tears
As the flowers begin to blossom
The sky smiles bright
poem by Nathanial Pagan
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Dancing Dream
If you are weary-
If you are weak-
Sleep, sleep, sleep, my darling child, sleep.
If you are lonesome-
If you are sad-
Dream, dream, dream, my darling child, dream.
Dream of waters, unending like a mother's love.
Dream of a sky, colored like a painter's canvas.
Dream of green grass, reaching up to touch you.
Dream of a great oak, standing tall above you.
Dream of a waterfall, its call echoing all around.
Dream of a breeze, whispering in your ear.
Dream of a star, shining brighter than any other.
Dream of a friend, sticking closer than any brother.
Dream of a love, burning brighter than a sun.
Dream of a trust, holding harder than a rock.
Dream a dancing dream, a dancing dream, a dancing dream.
Dream a dancing dream, my darling child.
Sleep and dream.
A dancing dream.
poem by Stephen Carey
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A Dream Of Death
WHERE shall we sail to-day?'--Thus said, methought,
A voice that only could be heard in dreams:
And on we glided without mast or oar,
A wondrous boat upon a wondrous sea.
Sudden, the shore curved inward to a bay,
Broad, calm, with gorgeous sea-weeds waving slow
Beneath the water, like rich thoughts that stir
In the mysterious deep of poets' hearts.
So still, so fair, so rosy in the dawn
Lay that bright bay: yet something seemed to breath,
Or in the air, or from the whispering waves,
Or from that voice, as near as one's own soul,
'There was a wreck last night.' A wreck? then where
The ship, the crew?--The all-entombing sea
On which is writ nor name nor chronicle
Laid itself o'er them with smooth crystal smile.
'Yet was the wreck last night.'. And gazing down
Deep down below the surface, we were ware
Of ghastly faces with their open eyes
Uplooking to the dawn they could not see.
One moved with moving sea-weeds: one lay prone,
The tinted fishes gliding o'er his breast;
One, caught by floating hair, rocked quietly
Upon his reedy cradle, like a child.
'The wreck has been'--said the melodious voice,
'Yet all is peace. The dead, that, while we slept,
Struggled for life, now sleep and fear no storms:
O'er them let us not weep when heaven smiles.'
So we sailed on above the diamond sands,
Bright sea-flowers, and white faces stony calm,
Till the waves bore us to the open main,
And the great sun arose upon the world.
poem by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
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The Myth of Winter
Once more! The earth tilted towards the sun
That sent the frigid wind from north to south
Making summer marked the earth as it leaves
The trees and grassy mountains thirsty and dry,
Doom of the universe that darkened the clouds;
Rains of fate are in Mother Nature’s hands best;
Cynical desire of an earthling is still incomplete;
Must he know how, how winter showers bleed?
Yet, look around the snowy-veil of this mountain;
As bride in the aisle of clouds, she is shimmering;
Willing to standstill upon the eyes of her beholder,
With question in mind: Why winter cries in flakes?
Bound to love the creation of God, this artist’s hand
Laid this endless beauty on canvas, when she dies;
Selfsame, self-story then from wall to wall, he hangs
With tireless doubt in mind: Why do winter leaves?
Then the earth tilts once more away from the sun,
And brought back the trees and mountains anew,
Yet! Still, this earthling has composed a question,
“Why do other places have no winter like mine? “
poem by Efren Petalver Carranza
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A Cradle Song
Sleep, Sleep, beauty bright,
Dreaming o'er the joys of night;
Sleep, Sleep; in thy sleep
Little sorrows sit & weep.
Sweet Babe, in thy face
Soft desires I can trace,
Secret joys and secret smiles,
Little pretty infant wiles.
As thy softest limbs I feel,
Smiles as of the morning steal
O’er thy cheek & o’er thy breast
Where thy little heart doth rest.
O, the cunning wiles that creep
In thy little heart asleep.
When thy little heart doth wake,
Then the dreadful lightnings break.
From thy cheek & from thy eye
O'er the youthful harvests nigh
Infant wiles & infant smiles
Heaven & Earth of peace beguiles.
poem by William Blake (1794)
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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The World of Dream
Now, through the dusk
With muffled bell
The Dustman comes
The World to tell,
Night's elfin lanterns
Burn and gleam
in the twilight, wonderful
World of Dream.
Hollow and dim
Sleep's boat doth ride,
Heavily still
At the waterside.
Patter, patter,
The children come,
Yawning and sleepy,
Out of the gloom.
Like droning bees
in a garden green.
Over the thwarts
They clamber in.
And lovely Sleep
With long-drawn oar
Turns away
From the whispering shore.
Over the water
Like roses glide
Her hundreds of passengers
Packed inside,
To where in her garden
Tremble and gleam
The harps and lamps
Of the World of Dream.
poem by Walter de la Mare
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The First Spring Day
THE sunshine died long ago,
Stifled out long ago,
And the waste of the world was grey,
And night was the best to know,
For night was to doze and forget the day,
To be warm and forgetting and still,
And need not the sun and know not the chill:
But oh, for the day that was darkened so!
Why gaze on a barren heaven,
Void and unchanging heaven,
On a barren earth in the grime,
And not a poor blossom given,
No thing that was thinking of sunshine time,
For a promise, a praise of the past?
And so one forgot the sunshine at last;
And sleep could avail, but what to have striven?
The sunshine wakes once anew,
Wakes and is born anew,
And the Age of the earth grows young,
And heaven has its youth for hue,
And hope is the tune of the spring-bird's tongue,
And the leaves in their prisons all hark,
And blossoms will know there is end of the dark:
One hour of the sun, and the spring-time grew!
The sunshine new on the earth,
Heaven to brighten the earth,
And the deathful dimness gone by,
The barren and winter dearth!
And to-day is the best till the next is nigh,
And to-night is to-morrow begun,
To-morrow, when blossoms remember the sun!
Dead hopes, are ye born with the blossoms birth?
poem by Augusta Davies Webster
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The Flower of Leaves
The Flower of Leaves, does not speak, nor sing!
She breathes intensly and plays on sweet strings
The Flower of Leaves, in spring, does not bloom,
She hangs in the heat and weeps low in gloom
The Flower of Leaves, shrouds mis'ry and pain,
Yet exudes in song warm swelling disdain
The Flower of Leaves, shades but one pale green,
Yet blossoms 'neath moonlight in silv'ry gleam
She relieves, and like Great Nature, serene,
In stormless gardens passes through unseen
Sublime as rainfall, sincere as the sea,
O Heaven, such life that blooms before me!
Who only knows that which my heart believes,
In such mystique of The Flower of Leaves!
poem by Iam notThou
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Reflections From The Flash Of A Meteor
So teach me to regard my day,
How small a point my life appears;
One gleam to death the whole betrays,
A momentary flash of years.
One moment smiles, the scene is past,
Life's gaudy bloom at once we shed,
And thinly beneath affliction's blast,
Or drop as soon among the dead.
Short is the chain wound up at morn,
Which oft runs down and stops at noon;
Thus in a moment man is born,
And, lo! the creature dies as soon.
Life's little torch how soon forgot,
Dim burning on its dreary shore;
Just like that star which downwards shot,
It glimmers and is seen no more.
Teach me to draw this transient breath,
With conscious awe my end to prove,
Early to make my peace with death,
As thus in haste from time we move.
heaven, through this murky vale,
Direct me with a burning pen;
Thus shall I on a tuneful gale
Fleet out my threescore years and ten.
poem by George Moses Horton
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Stanzas
Up go the beautiful and world-watch'd stars,
Lifting the glory of America,
'Mong the red flags which gleam through masts
and spars
Crowded in gay magnificence, to-day,
Where three score years ago, none found their way,
Of all the ships which left old England's shore:
Up goes the starry flag, on waves which lay
In undiscover'd solitude, when o'er
America those stars first glanc'd from fields of gore!
In friendly beauty floats that free-fix'd flag
'Gainst England's glowing ensign! I could dream
Of times, when the wild bush, each uncouth crag,
And precipice, beside this haven-stream,
Shall yield to one vast city; and the gleam
Of new-born banners shall illumine it;
And these alike be foreign in the beam
Of Australasia's morning. Heaven admit
One patriot spirit here, and Freedom's fires are lit!
Not ever shall the exile's toil be all
To bring the harvest of this infant land;
The children of the buried exile shall
Behold a mother's beauty, in the bland
Aspect of Nature, on their native strand:
And Freedom then shall choose a dwelling here.
Oh! Happy epoch, when the 'great and grand,'
The memory of whose deeds mankind revere,
Number a Washington, from the world's Austral sphere.
poem by Sir Henry Parkes
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The Ocean
They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters, these see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep.
~ Psalm cvii. 23, 24.
HE that in venturous barks hath been
A wanderer on the deep,
Can tell of many an awful scene,
Where storms for ever sweep.
For many a fair, majestic sight
Hath met his wandering eye,
Beneath the streaming northern light,
Or blaze of Indian sky.
Go! ask him of the whirlpool's roar,
Whose echoing thunder peals
Loud, as if rushed along the shore
An army's chariot wheels;
Of icebergs, floating o'er the main,
Or fixed upon the coast,
Like glittering citadel or fane,
'Mid the bright realms of frost;
Of coral rocks, from waves below
In steep ascent that tower,
And fraught with peril, daily grow,
Formed by an insect's power;
Of sea-fires, which at dead of night
Shine o'er the tides afar,
And make th' expanse of ocean bright
As heaven, with many a star.
Oh God! thy name they well may praise,
Who to the deep go down,
And trace the wonders of thy ways,
Where rocks and billows frown.
If glorious be that awful deep,
No human power can bind,
What then art Thou, who bidst it keep
Within its bounds confined!
Let heaven and earth in praise unite,
Eternal praise to Thee,
Whose word can rouse the tempest's might,
Or still the raging sea!
poem by Felicia Dorothea Hemans
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Rebirth Of Spring
Fresh cut grass
The deep growl of a Harley
Memories of springs past
Jammin' to Bob Marley
The soul of Gaia stands
After the death of cold winter
Love and flowers bloom
After their funeral in November
The Rebirth of the seasons
The morning of the year
The cycle begins anew
Spring is here.
poem by Caleb Hall
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Stanzas to the Po
River, that rollest by the ancient walls,
Where dwells the lady of my love, when she
Walks by thy brink, and there perchance recalls
A faint and fleeting memory of me;
What if thy deep and ample stream should be
A mirror of my heart, where she may read
The thousand thoughts I now betray to thee,
Wild as thy wave, and headlong as thy speed!
What do I say -a mirror of my heart?
Are not thy waters sweeping, dark, and strong?
Such as my feelings were and are, thou art;
And such as thou art were my passions long.
Time may have somewhat tamed them, -not for ever;
Thou overflow'st thy banks, and not for aye
The bosom overboils, congenial river!
Thy floods subside, and mine have sunk away.
But left long wrecks behind, and now again,
Born in our old unchanged career, we move;
Thou tendest wildly onwards to the main,
And I -to loving one I should not love.
The current I behold will sweep beneath
Her native walls and murmur at her feet;
Her eyes will look on thee, when she shall breathe
The twilight air, unharmed by summer's heat.
She will look on thee, -I have looked on thee,
Full of that thought; and, from that moment, ne'er
Thy waters could I dream of, name, or see,
Without the inseparable sigh for her!
Her bright eyes will be imaged in thy stream, -
Yes! they will meet the wave I gaze on now:
Mine cannot witness, even in a dream,
That happy wave repass me in its flow!
The wave that bears my tears returns no more:
Will she return by whom that wave shall sweep?
Both tread thy banks, both wander on thy shore,
I by thy source, she by the dark-blue deep.
But that which keepeth us apart is not
Distance, nor depth of wave, nor space of earth,
But the distraction of a various lot,
As various as the climates of our birth.
A stranger loves the lady of the land,
Born far beyond the mountains, but his blood
Is all meridian, as if never fanned
By the black wind that chills the polar flood.
My blood is all meridian; were it not,
I had not left my clime, nor should I be,
In spite of tortures, ne'er to be forgot,
A slave again of love, -at least of thee.
'Tis vain to struggle -let me perish young -
Live as I lived, and love as I have loved;
To dust if I return, from dust I sprung,
And then, at least, my heart can ne'er be moved.
poem by Byron (1819)
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Heath from the Highlands
Here, where the great hills fall away
To bays of silver sea,
I hold within my hand to-day
A wild thing, strange to me.
Behind me is the deep green dell
Where lives familiar light;
The leaves and flowers I know so well
Are gleaming in my sight.
And yonder is the mountain glen,
Where sings in trees unstirred
By breath of breeze or axe of men
The shining satin-bird.
The old weird cry of plover comes
Across the marshy ways,
And here the hermit hornet hums,
And here the wild bee strays.
No novel life or light I see,
On hill, in dale beneath:
All things around are known to me
Except this bit of heath.
This touching growth hath made me dream -
It sends my soul afar
To where the Scottish mountains gleam
Against the Northern star.
It droops - this plant - like one who grieves;
But, while my fancy glows,
There is that glory on its leaves
Which never robed the rose.
For near its wind-blown native spot
Were born, by crags uphurled,
The ringing songs of Walter Scott
That shook the whole wide world.
There haply by the sounding streams,
And where the fountains break,
He saw the darling of his dreams,
The Lady of the Lake.
And on the peaks where never leaf
Of lowland beauty grew,
Perhaps he met Clan Alpine's chief,
The rugged Roderick Dhu.
Not far, perchance, this heather throve
(Above fair banks of ferns),
From that green place of stream and grove
That knew the voice of Burns.
Against the radiant river ways
Still waves the noble wood,
Where in the old majestic days
The Scottish poet stood.
Perhaps my heather used to beam
In robes of morning frost,
By dells which saw that lovely dream -
The Mary that he lost.
I hope, indeed, the singer knew
The little spot of land
On which the mountain beauty grew
That withers in my hand.
A Highland sky my vision fills;
I feel the great, strong North -
The hard grey weather of the hills
That brings men-children forth.
The peaks of Scotland, where the din
And flame of thunders go,
Seem near me, with the masculine,
Hale sons of wind and snow.
So potent is this heather here,
That under skies of blue,
I seem to breathe the atmosphere
That William Wallace knew.
And under windy mountain wall,
Where breaks the torrent loose,
I fancy I can hear the call
Of grand old Robert Bruce.
poem by Henry Kendall
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Death, and Life
so many forms of
death so many chapters
ended abruptly without
resolution
the father or mother
you thought you'd never lose
that you didnt spend enough time with
the son lost to a foreign conflict,
draped in a flag
the abortion you opted for
cause you couldnt see
any other way and now,
years later, you have doubts
the teenager who committed suicide,
that you couldnt reach,
somehow couldnt tell them or
show them they were not alone
the young man who overdosed
alone in an empty apartment
the baby left to die
in an alley and the teenage mother
who died there too!
the companion who walked away
after so many years and the
best part of you died there
the old man diagnosed with a cancer
that they cant treat and the death
of waiting to die.
the young family who loses everything,
and the dream of a future dies
as they become numbers lost
to the din of hopelessness
but what is death?
is it an ending?
or a beginning?
time worn brown leaves crumbling,
dissolving into dirt,
waiting through the winter
for a new spring to come
winter doesnt last forever!
spring is already there
in those time browned leaves
open your eyes, open your heart,
life never ends!
poem by Eric Cockrell
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