The Cloud
I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,
When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,
As she dances about the sun.
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains under,
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.
I sift the snow on the mountains below,
And their great pines groan aghast;
And all the night 'tis my pillow white,
While I sleep in the arms of the blast.
Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers,
Lightning, my pilot, sits;
In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,
It struggles and howls at fits;
Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion,
This pilot is guiding me,
Lured by the love of the genii that move
In the depths of the purple sea;
Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills,
Over the lakes and the plains,
Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,
The Spirit he loves remains;
And I all the while bask in Heaven's blue smile,
Whilst he is dissolving in rains.
The sanguine Sunrise, with his meteor eyes,
And his burning plumes outspread,
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,
When the morning star shines dead;
As on the jag of a mountain crag,
Which an earthquake rocks and swings,
An eagle alit one moment may sit
In the light of its golden wings.
And when Sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath,
Its ardors of rest and of love,
And the crimson pall of eve may fall
From the depth of Heaven above,
With wings folded I rest, on mine aery nest,
As still as a brooding dove.
That orbed maiden with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the Moon,
Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor,
By the midnight breezes strewn;
And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,
Which only the angels hear,
May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof,
The stars peep behind her and peer;
And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,
Like a swarm of golden bees,
When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,
Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas,
Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,
Are each paved with the moon and these.
I bind the Sun's throne with a burning zone,
And the Moon's with a girdle of pearl;
The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim
When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.
From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,
Over a torrent sea,
Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof,--
The mountains its columns be.
The triumphal arch through which I march
With hurricane, fire, and snow,
When the Powers of the air are chained to my chair,
Is the million-colored bow;
The sphere-fire above its soft colors wove,
While the moist Earth was laughing below.
I am the daughter of Earth and Water,
And the nursling of the Sky;
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die.
For after the rain when with never a stain
The pavilion of Heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams
Build up the blue dome of air,
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,
And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise and unbuild it again.
poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley
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Related quotes
Take Her
As she danced about the sun,
She whitened the green plains under her;
As she moved about the moon,
She whitened the red valley below her;
But, in the light of her golden wings i do rest my case.
With a gentle motion in heaven's blue smile,
Over the lakes and the plains with her sweet love;
But in the depths of the purple sea,
The stars peeped behind her and peered.
She is very far away but,
Her love and rest ardour me;
And the diamond lights up her secret mine like,
The dark plains below her;
Which is found in an old region when looking for her.
The pearl gleams forth from her coral strand,
Like the wealth of the seas;
Over her sands of gold i do respect.
Not there my child,
Over here to see the fearless eyes of love;
Like the lit by her deep love's truth.
Her love is like the flowers of the bees,
Remembering the day when she first came;
Take her as your wife and make love to her.
Take her like the sages of Egypt,
Take her like the wealth of the seas,
The very lit by her deep love's truth;
Study her dance and be in love.
poem by Edward Kofi Louis
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The Two Spirits: An Allegory
FIRST SPIRIT
O thou, who plum'd with strong desire
Wouldst float above the earth, beware!
A Shadow tracks thy flight of fire--
Night is coming!
Bright are the regions of the air,
And among the winds and beams
It were delight to wander there--
Night is coming!SECOND SPIRIT
The deathless stars are bright above;
If I would cross the shade of night,
Within my heart is the lamp of love,
And that is day!
And the moon will smile with gentle light
On my golden plumes where'er they move;
The meteors will linger round my flight,
And make night day.FIRST SPIRIT
But if the whirlwinds of darkness waken
Hail, and lightning, and stormy rain;
See, the bounds of the air are shaken--
Night is coming!
The red swift clouds of the hurricane
Yon declining sun have overtaken,
The clash of the hail sweeps over the plain--
Night is coming!SECOND SPIRIT
I see the light, and I hear the sound;
I'll sail on the flood of the tempest dark,
With the calm within and the light around
Which makes night day:
And thou, when the gloom is deep and stark,
Look from thy dull earth, slumber-bound,
My moon-like flight thou then mayst mark
On high, far away.----
Some say there is a precipice
Where one vast pine is frozen to ruin
O'er piles of snow and chasms of ice
Mid Alpine mountains;
And that the languid storm pursuing
That winged shape, for ever flies
Round those hoar branches, aye renewing
Its aëry fountains.
Some say when nights are dry and dear,
And the death-dews sleep on the morass,
Sweet whispers are heard by the traveller,
Which make night day:
And a silver shape like his early love doth pass
Upborne by her wild and glittering hair,
And when he awakes on the fragrant grass,
He finds night day.
poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley
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Arethusa
I.
Arethusa arose
From her couch of snows
In the Acroceraunian mountains,--
From cloud and from crag,
With many a jag,
Shepherding her bright fountains.
She leapt down the rocks,
With her rainbow locks
Streaming among the streams;--
Her steps paved with green
The downward ravine
Which slopes to the western gleams;
And gliding and springing
She went, ever singing,
In murmurs as soft as sleep;
The Earth seemed to love her,
And Heaven smiled above her,
As she lingered towards the deep.
II.
Then Alpheus bold,
On his glacier cold,
With his trident the mountains strook;
And opened a chasm
In the rocks—with the spasm
All Erymanthus shook.
And the black south wind
It unsealed behind
The urns of the silent snow,
And earthquake and thunder
Did rend in sunder
The bars of the springs below.
And the beard and the hair
Of the River-god were
Seen through the torrent’s sweep,
As he followed the light
Of the fleet nymph’s flight
To the brink of the Dorian deep.
III.
'Oh, save me! Oh, guide me!
And bid the deep hide me,
For he grasps me now by the hair!'
The loud Ocean heard,
To its blue depth stirred,
And divided at her prayer;
And under the water
The Earth’s white daughter
Fled like a sunny beam;
Behind her descended
Her billows, unblended
With the brackish Dorian stream:—
Like a gloomy stain
On the emerald main
Alpheus rushed behind,--
As an eagle pursuing
A dove to its ruin
Down the streams of the cloudy wind.
IV.
Under the bowers
Where the Ocean Powers
Sit on their pearled thrones;
Through the coral woods
Of the weltering floods,
Over heaps of unvalued stones;
Through the dim beams
Which amid the streams
Weave a network of coloured light;
And under the caves,
Where the shadowy waves
Are as green as the forest’s night:--
Outspeeding the shark,
And the sword-fish dark,
Under the Ocean’s foam,
And up through the rifts
Of the mountain clifts
They passed to their Dorian home.
V.
And now from their fountains
In Enna’s mountains,
Down one vale where the morning basks,
Like friends once parted
Grown single-hearted,
They ply their watery tasks.
At sunrise they leap
From their cradles steep
In the cave of the shelving hill;
At noontide they flow
Through the woods below
And the meadows of asphodel;
And at night they sleep
In the rocking deep
Beneath the Ortygian shore;--
Like spirits that lie
In the azure sky
When they love but live no more.
poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley
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Hymn of Apollo
I.
The sleepless Hours who watch me as I lie,
Curtained with star-inwoven tapestries,
From the broad moonlight of the sky,
Fanning the busy dreams from my dim eyes,--
Waken me when their Mother, the gray Dawn,
Tells them that dreams and that the moon is gone.
II.
Then I arise, and climbing Heaven's blue dome,
I walk over the mountains and the waves,
Leaving my robe upon the ocean foam;
My footsteps pave the clouds with fire; the caves
Are filled with my bright presence, and the air
Leaves the green Earth to my embraces bare.
III.
The sunbeams are my shafts, with which I kill
Deceit, that loves the night and fears the day;
All men who do or even imagine ill
Fly me, and from the glory of my ray
Good minds and open actions take new might,
Until diminished by the reign of Night.
IV.
I feed the clouds, the rainbows, and the flowers,
With their ethereal colors; the Moon's globe,
And the pure stars in their eternal bowers,
Are cinctured with my power as with a robe;
Whatever lamps on Earth or Heaven may shine,
Are portions of one power, which is mine.
V.
I stand at noon upon the peak of Heaven;
Then with unwilling steps I wander down
Into the clouds of the Atlantic even;
For grief that I depart they weep and frown:
What look is more delightful than the smile
With which I soothe them from the western isle?
VI.
I am the eye with which the Universe
Beholds itself, and knows it is divine;
All harmony of instrument or verse,
All prophecy, all medicine, is mine,
All light of art or nature; - to my song
Victory and praise in its own right belong.
poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley
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The Autumn-Spirit.
Now the Autumn-Spirit reigneth over mountain, vale and plain,
And the Earth, bedecked with symbols of the Autumn-Spirit's reign,
Makes us think about the season of the flowers with a sigh,
When life was lush in every tree-love laughed in every eye,
Whilst her lineaments of beauty were imprinted on the sod,
When the Spring with Winter wrestled, on that gala-day of God!
But the Spring is dead and buried, and the Summer's vital fire,
Like a heap of sullen embers, smoulders ready to expire;
For the Autumn-Spirit, reigning over mountain, vale and plain,
Robes the Earth in royal symbols emblematic of his reign!
Hark! a singing train of seraphim doth o'er its surface pass!
Mark! their flowing robes of flame have singed the green and speary grass!
Witness! every tender blade appeareth tipped and tinged with brown,
And the hedge is hemmed with rose-leaves, which their wings have shaken down,
Though the hind but hears the whirring of ten thousand pinions beat,
Sees a cloud of birds of passage trail its shadow by his feet,
For the pageantry of Heaven hath escaped his optics dim,
And he sees but birds of passage in the God-sent seraphim,
While the Autumn-Spirit reigneth over mountain, vale and plain,
And the Earth is robed in symbols of the Autumn-Spirit's reign!
While his tread is on the mountain, through the valley and the plain,
Like some Fate-commissioned angel, Desolation tracks his train,
And the glory of the Summer and the beauty of the Spring
Form a carpet for his feet, a fading, weird, and worn-out thing!
And his wings distil an odour, as of corpses in perfume,
Warbled through his ghastly whispers sound the sighs of buried bloom,
And his accents are dim echoes from the hollow caves of Death,
And the wailing woods are withered by his cold and crisping breath,
For the Autumn-Spirit reigneth over mountain, vale and plain,
And the Earth is robed in symbols of the Autumn-spirit's reign!
Where the Poet loves to saunter in some unfrequented nook,
Or to sit and learn the language of the ever-babbling brook,
While its glassy surface mirrors the deep gulf of Heaven's blue,
Where the sunny cloud-ships, sailing, point to vapour lands in view,
There the river's creeks are mantled with red leaves and yellow foam,
And its broken banks are scattered with dead branches dipped in loam,
And a wail of desolation through the fading forest hums,
And the Winds grow chill by thinking of the Winter ere it comes,
While the Autumn-Spirit reigneth over mountain, vale and plain,
And the Earth is robed in symbols of the Autumn-Spirit's reign!
Where the lily of the valley and the violet of the copse
Looked like Thoughts incorporated-like embodied youthful Hopes!
Where the golden-tubëd honeysuckle's pipes were interwound
With the ruddy-tinted roses breathing scented music round,
In the field or the forest, by the verdure-sheltered rills,
Where, in green and golden garments, Summer sate among the hills,
There the green is growing yellow, and the yellow turning sere,
And the Summer Sun, made mellow with the Autumn-Spirit's cheer,
Goeth reeling to his slumber every evening more soon,
While with nightly brighter lustre glows the silver-mantled Moon;
For the Autumn-Spirit reigneth over mountain, vale and plain,
And the Earth is robed in symbols of the Autumn-Spirit's reign!
When the sanguine-featured Planet shows her forehead in the west,
While a sea of glowing silver rocks the god of day to rest,
And, above, a cloudy. canopy of purple tinged with gold
In its ruddy-flaming fringes doth the dying Day enfold,
And the drapery of Heaven is enwreathed around the brow
Of bright Eve, whose maiden blushes bathe the Earth in crimson glow,
And that orbëd angel, Vesper, in a flood of rosy light,
Laves her glowing limbs a, moment ere she ushers in the Night;
Then the Autumn-Spirit reigneth over mountain, vale and plain,
And the Evening wears the symbols of the Autumn-Spirit's reign!
When the mellow-voicëd blackbird grows more plaintive in his tone,
And weird Fancy in its echo hears the Summer's dying groan,
While his tale of blissful sorrow doth the soul as much appal
As if some lost angel sang a song of Heaven e'er his fall;
Then the Autumn-Spirit reigneth over mountain, vale and plain,
And the twilight wears the symbols of the Autumn-Spirit's reign!
When the glow-worm in the coppice on the mossy bank doth lie,
Like a jewel that had fallen from Jove's palace in the sky,
Or a pebble, by some angel cast o'er Heaven's battlement,
That had kindled in its coming by the speed of its descent,
And with soft and saintly lustre gleams and glitters on the sod,
Like a pearl from Air's blue ocean in the garments of a God!
Then the Autumn-Spirit reigneth over mountain, vale and plain,
And the Night is robed in symbols of the Autumn-Spirit's reign!
When the roar of distant rivers, through the midnight's ghostly gloom,
Utters prophecies of stillness, sadness, silence, and the tomb;
When strange minstrelsy is mingled with the boding forest-breath,
Like the music of an organ fingered by the hand of Death,
While, through sheen and shade, through dusky dells, and moon-illumined bowers,
Elves and fairies walk in mourning at the funeral of the Flowers,
And a death-dance of pale Shadows is performed around the tomb,
Where the yew-trees' sable crosses and the dark-green hollies gloom,
Then the Autumn-Spirit reigneth over mountain, vale and plain,
And the midnight wears the symbols of the Autumn-Spirit's reign!
When the cloud-fiends dip their fingers in the purple blood of Dawn,
And ring Day's rising planet with a sanguine-cinctured zone,
Like a flame-enveloped vessel sailing in a sea of gore,
Then the sun through sanguine cloud-waves dim-red radiance down doth pour,
Which alarms the sleeping valleys, while their streams of purple mist,
Rising, wrap the blue hill-summits in a robe of amethyst,
And the hoar-frost and the sunlight, met upon the city spire,
Make it seem a glowing pyramid of mingled snow and fire,
And the trees all tinged with silver, and the buildings touched with white,
Show that Winter kissed the Earth beneath the canopy of Night;
Then the Autumn-Spirit reigneth over mountain, vale and plain,
And the Morn is robed in symbols of the Autumn-Spirit's reign!
When the nuts upon the hazels seem to burn within their husks,
Like that ring of sullen fire which Phoebe's shining forehead dusks-
Like the bodyguard of Cherubim which belts her bright abode
When Old Æolus, the Wind-God, sends his blustering sons abroad;
Then the Autumn-Spirit reigneth over mountain, vale and plain,
And the bushes bear the symbols of the Autumn-Spirit's reign!
When the clouds appear like phantoms from the castle-keep of Care,
And the sky looks pale and lurid as the forehead of Despair,
When the Lake appears to labour with the Mountain's mighty form,
Wombed within her glassy deeps, to be delivered by the Storm,
As a starry midnight Heaven, brooding full of unborn Thought,
Waits and watches for the Bard by whom deliverance is brought,
When the aspect of the hills becomes more solemn, still, and strange,
And all Nature seems prophetic of some dark and deadly change,
And the Earth looks up in agony as if her end were nigh,
Whilst sable clouds, like sepulchres, hang in the hollow sky;
Then the Autumn-Spirit reigneth over mountain, vale and plain,
And the weather wears the symbols of the Autumn-Spirit's reign!
When the whirlwinds rock the steeples, and the hurricane sweeps by,
And the frown of God hangs glooming in the tempest-laden sky,
Till a gleaming gulf of lightning lays the Heart of Heaven bare,
And the growls of prisoned Thunder hurtle through the darkened air,
Then the giant rocks are splintered, and the oaks are cloven down,
And the Alpine crags, unwintered, wear a fierce and fiery crown,
While the mingled wrath of Tempests upon mountain, vale and plain,
Dashes down a fiery deluge and a surging sea of rain,
Till the roads are turned to rivers, and the rivers turned to roads,
Where the wealth of golden harvest-shocks the rushing torrent loads,
And the roar of rushing rivers, mixed with Ocean's hollow boom,
In the language of the Angels seems to sing the Song of Doom;
Then the Autumn-Spirit reigneth over mountain, vale and plain,
And the Storm is clad in symbols of the Autumn-Spirit's reign!
But the golden grain is gathered, and the glowing fruit no more,
With its purple globes and crimson, makes the branches kiss the floor;
And, anon, by wizard Winter in a snowy mantle dressed,
Sleeping Nature will be pressing Death's pale image to her breast;
For the golden gorgeous splendours of the Summer have decayed,
And brown Autumn's ghostly garb is on the Earth's green shoulders laid,
While she bows in silent homage to that pale and pensive train
Of Stars, that smile down glory on the Autumn-Spirit's reign!
poem by William Billington
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The Worship of Nature
The harp at Nature's advent strung
Has never ceased to play;
The song the stars of morning sung
Has never died away.
And prayer is made, and praise is given,
By all things near and far;
The ocean looketh up to heaven,
And mirrors every star.
Its waves are kneeling on the strand,
As kneels the human knee,
Their white locks bowing to the sand,
The priesthood of the sea!
They pour their glittering treasures forth,
Their gifts of pearl they bring,
And all the listening hills of earth
Take up the song they sing.
The green earth sends its incense up
From many a mountain shrine;
From folded leaf and dewy cup
She pours her sacred wine.
The mists above the morning rills
Rise white as wings of prayer;
The altar-curtains of the hills
Are sunset's purple air.
The winds with hymns of praise are loud,
Or low with sobs of pain, --
The thunder-organ of the cloud,
The dropping tears of rain.
With drooping head and branches crossed
The twilight forest grieves,
Or speaks with tongues of Pentecost
From all its sunlit leaves.
The blue sky is the temple's arch,
Its transept earth and air,
The music of its starry march
The chorus of a prayer.
So Nature keeps the reverent frame
With which her years began,
And all her signs and voices shame
The prayerless heart of man.
poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
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Wahonomin
GREAT mother! from the depths of forest wilds,
From mountain pass and burning sunset plain,
We, thine unlettered children of the woods,
Upraise to thee the everlasting hymn
Of nature, language of the skies and seas,
5
Voice of the birds and sighing of the pine
In wintry wastes. We know none other tongue,
Nor the smooth speech that, like the shining leaves,
Hides the rough stems beneath. We bring our song,
Wood-fragrant, rough, yet autumn-streaked with love,
10
And lay it as a tribute at thy feet.
But should it vex thee thus to hear us sing,
Sad in the universal joy that crowns
This year of years, and shouldst thou deem our voice
But death-cry of the ages that are past,
15
Bear with us—say, "My children of the woods,
In language learnt from bird and wood and stream,
From changing moons and stars and misty lakes,
Pour forth their love, and lay it at my feet;
The voice is wild and strange, untuned to ear
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Of majesty, ill-timed to fevered pulse
Of this young age, and meteor-souls that flash
New paths upon night's dome; yet will I hear
This singing of my children ere they die."
Great mother! thou art wise, they say, and good,
25
And reignest like the moon in autumn skies,
The world about thy feet. We have not seen
Thy face, nor the wild seas of life that surge
Around thy throne; but we have stood by falls,
Deep-shadowed in the silence of the woods,
30
And heard the water-thunders, and have said,
Thus is the voice of men about our Queen.
What is the red man but the forest stream,
The cry of screech-owl in the desert wilds?
This flood that overflows the hills and plains
35
Is not for us. Back, Westward, Northward, ay,
Up to eternal winter 'neath the stars,
Our path must be in silence, till the snows
And sun and wind have bleached our children's bones.
The red must go; the axe and plough and plane
40
Are not for him. We perish with the pine,
We vanish in the silence of the woods;
Our footsteps, like the war-trail in the snow,
Grow fainter while the new spring buds with life.
Great mother! the white faces came with words
45
Of love and hope, and pointed to the skies,
And in the sunrise splendour set the throne
Of the Great Spirit, and upon the cross
Showed us His Son, and asked a throne for Him.
Their speech was music; but in camp at night
50
We brooded o'er the matter round the fire,
The shadowy pines about us, and the stars,
Set in the silent heavens, looking down.
We brooded o'er the matter days and years,
For thus each thought and thus each spake in words:
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"We children of the woods have lived and died
In these our forests, since the first moon tipped
Their thousand lakes and rivers with her beams,
Pale silver in the fading sky of even.
Our fathers' faces kindled in the glow
60
Of setting suns; they read the starlit sky;
They heard the Spirit's breathing on the storm,
And on the quaking earth they felt His tread;
But never yet the story of His Son
Was wafted to them from the sighing woods,
65
Or bird or stream. Our fathers' God is ours;
And as for these new words, we watch and wait."
Great mother! we have waited days and years,
Thro' spring and summer—summer, autumn, spring;
Brooding in silence, for anon we dreamed
70
A bird's voice in our hearts half sung, "'Tis true."
We listened and we watched the pale face come,
When, lo! new gods came with them—gods of iron
And fire, that shook the forests as they rushed,
Filling with thunder and loud screeching, plains,
75
Mountains, and woods, and dimming with their breath
The shining skies. These new gods, who were they,
That came devouring all, and blackening earth
And sky with smoke and thunder? We knew not,
But fled in terror further from the face
80
Of these white children and their gods of iron;
We heard no more their story of the Son,
And words of love. Their own lives were not love,
But war concealed and fire beneath the ash.
Thus ever now the burden of our speech—
85
We perish with the pine tree and the bird,
We vanish in the silence of the woods,
The white man's hunting-ground, it is not ours;
We care not for his gods of iron and fire;
Our home is in the trackless wilds, the depths
90
Of mountain solitudes, by starlit lakes,
By noise of waters in the unchanging woods.
Great mother! we have wondered that thy sons,
Thy pale sons, should have left thy side and come
To these wild plains, and sought the haunts of bears
95
And red men. Why their battle with the woods?
Whither they go upon their gods of iron,
Out of the golden sunrise to the mists
Of purple evening in the setting west?
Their lives have scarce as many moons as ours,
100
Nor happier are. We know not what they seek;
For death's cold finger chills their fevered life,
As in the wilds he stills the meanest worm,
And death flies with them over all their paths,
And waits them in the heart of wildest waste;
105
They cannot break his power. Forgive these thoughts
If, as they rise like mists, they dim the gold
That zones thy brow. They came to us at night,
As we have sat in council round the fire;
They seemed the echo of the sighing pines
110
Far in our soul. One evening rose a chief,
White-headed, bowed with years, one hand on staff,
One on death's arm, preparing for the way.
"My sons," he said, "these people are not wise.
We bide our time, and they will pass away;
115
Then shall the red man come like bird in spring,
And build the broken camp, and hunt and fish
In his old woods. These people pass away;
Then shall the red man come like bird in spring,
And build the broken camp, and hunt and fish
120
In his old woods. These people pass away;
For I have thought through many nights and days,
And wondered what they seek; and now I know,
And knowing, say these people are not wise.
They found these plains beneath the burning west,
125
And westward, ever westward, still they press,
Seeking the shining meadows of the land
Where the sun sleeps, and, folded 'neath his wings,
The happy spirits breathe eternal day.
But I have lived thro' five score changing years,
130
And I have talked with wintry-headed chiefs,
And I have heard that kingdom is not reached
Thro' woods and plains, but by the bridge of death.
This people is not wise; we bide our time."
Great mother! they have told us that the snows
135
Of fifty winters sleep about thy throne,
And buds of spring now blossom with sweet breath
Beneath thy tread. They tell us of the sea,
And other lands, where other children dwell;
Of mighty cities and the gleam of gold,
140
Of empires wider than the shining plains
Viewed from giant hill, that lift thy throne above
The clouded mountain-tops. They tell us, too,
Of wonders in the home of man; of gods
Of iron and fire made servants, and of fire
145
Snatched from the clouds to flash man's swiftest thought;
But these are not for us. The forest flower
Droops in the haunts of man; it needs the sky,
And smokeless air, and glances of the sun
Thro' rustling leaves. We perish with the woods;
150
The plains are all before thee. Send thy sons
To plant and build, and drive their flashing gods,
Startling the forests, till, like ocean's bounds,
Thine empire rolls in splendour from wide east
To widest west, broad fields of gold for thee
155
And thy white children; but our spirits wait
Amid the silent ages, and we pass
To where our fathers dwell, by silent streams,
And hunt in trackless wilds through cloudless days.
The wheels of thy great empire, as it moves
160
From east to west, from south to icy north,
Crush us to earth. We perish with the woods.
Great mother; if the changing moons have brought
Thee nearer to the darksome bridge that spans
The gulf between this and the eternal day,
165
If thy path and thy children's be the same,
And thy feet follow where thy fathers went,
Perchance thy soul upon earth's utmost verge,
The eternal sky about thee, and the deeps
Unfathomable beyond—perchance thy soul,
170
Grown weary with the fever of thy life,
May yearn for song of bird, and sighing pine,
And silent meditation of the woods;
Perchance, when, looking back from infinite skies
To restless man, thy soul, too, echoes, "Why?"
175
"Where?" and "Whither?" and thy heart may love
This death-song of thy children, ere they pass
With birds and forests to the silent land.
Perchance the white face told us what was true,
And love and hope wait by the throne of God.
180
The ruffled lake gives out but broken gleams
Of the clear stars above; so, restless life
May be the troubled reflex of the skies.
The world rolls onward, ever on and on,
Through clouded vast and moans of dying years,
185
Into the depths of sunset; but the light
Blinds our dim eyes, we cannot see the goal.
The spirit of the world is not for us;
We perish with the pine tree and the bird;
We bow our heads in silence. We must die.
poem by Frederick George Scott
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Black ash
Up Into the sky the smoke blast,
And black ash covered white clouds,
Overseas and streams aghast,
With lashing dust and darken moods.
Slowly passing over earth and ocean,
Disturb the leaves in the noon day,
And halt the easy flights of locomotion,
Painting the ecliptic sky black and grey
Guide the shifting floating vapor,
In serene dominion without a compass,
Wind and time create the power,
And find the path over winding paradise.
Black ash spread in dept too dark to see,
Dissolving material in swaying motion,
Ignorant of pain erupting like infinity,
And flow over the entire beautiful heaven.
Black ash shedding tear and terror,
In the arms of a wicked volcano blast,
The world stood tripping with fear,
Hear the thunder and lightning flash.
New signs in blood, vapor and smoke,
A living force with cape and wings,
Breaking chains through space invoke,
Climate change burning things.
Travelers groan, in struggles and fits,
Dream of happy time passes the hour,
Bemused mankind left with many stitches,
To build a better memorial in the atmosphere.
poem by Gerry Legister
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The Hurricane
Lord of the winds! I feel thee nigh,
I know thy breath in the burning sky!
And I wait, with a thrill in every vein,
For the coming of the hurricane!
And lo! on the wing of the heavy gales,
Through the boundless arch of heaven he sails;
Silent and slow, and terribly strong,
The mighty shadow is borne along,
Like the dark eternity to come;
While the world below, dismayed and dumb,
Through the calm of the thick hot atmosphere
Looks up at its gloomy folds with fear.
They darken fast; and the golden blaze
Of the sun is quenched in the lurid haze,
And he sends through the shade a funeral ray--
A glare that is neither night nor day,
A beam that touches, with hues of death,
The clouds above and the earth beneath.
To its covert glides the silent bird,
While the hurricane's distant voice is heard,
Uplifted among the mountains round,
And the forests hear and answer the sound.
He is come! he is come! do ye not behold
His ample robes on the wind unrolled?
Giant of air! we bid thee hail!--
How his gray skirts toss in the whirling gale;
How his huge and writhing arms are bent,
To clasp the zone of the firmament,
And fold at length, in their dark embrace,
From mountain to mountain the visible space.
Darker--still darker! the whirlwinds bear
The dust of the plains to the middle air:
And hark to the crashing, long and loud,
Of the chariot of God in the thunder-cloud!
You may trace its path by the flashes that start
From the rapid wheels where'er they dart,
As the fire-bolts leap to the world below,
And flood the skies with a lurid glow.
What roar is that?--'tis the rain that breaks
In torrents away from the airy lakes,
Heavily poured on the shuddering ground,
And shedding a nameless horror round.
Ah! well known woods, and mountains, and skies,
With the very clouds!--ye are lost to my eyes.
I seek ye vainly, and see in your place
The shadowy tempest that sweeps through space,
A whirling ocean that fills the wall
Of the crystal heaven, and buries all.
And I, cut off from the world, remain
Alone with the terrible hurricane.
poem by William Cullen Bryant
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After Storm
Was there a wind? Tap… tap… Night pads upon the snow with moccasined feet… and it is still… so still… an eagle's feather might fall like a stone. Could there have been a storm… mad-tossing golden mane on the neck of the wind… tearing up the sky… loose-flapping like a tent about the ice-capped stars?
Cool, sheer and motionless
the frosted pines
are jeweled with a million flaming points
that fling their beauty up in long white sheaves
till they catch hands with stars.
Could there have been a wind
that haled them by the hair….
and blinding
blue-forked
flowers of the lightning
in their leaves?
Tap… tap…
slow-ticking centuries…
Soft as bare feet upon the snow…
faint… lulling as heard rain
upon heaped leaves….
Silence
builds her wall
about a dream impaled.
poem by Lola Ridge
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Desert Plains
Full moon is rising
The sky is black
I need your call Im coming back
The road is straight cast
Winds in my eyes
The engine roars between my thighs
From desert plains I bring you love
From desert plains I bring you love
Wild mountain thunder
Echoes my quest
My body aches but Ill not rest
Quartz light to guide me
Till sunrise leads
My passion screams, my heart it bleeds
From desert plains I bring you love
From desert plains I bring you love
Then in the distance
I see you stand
On the horizon you raise your hand
In burning rubber
I end my quest
You fall into my arms at last
From desert plains I bring you love
From desert plains I bring you love
song performed by by Judas Priest
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Divine Spice
Beneath the ashes golden rivers
Feathers preened in gentle winds
Beacons like snow capped mountains
Shine on all you humble friends
Gold finches with ebullient joy
Her marvelous smile is a dream
Fields of yellow daffodils
Wreaths made of ancient streams
Muse wiser than great Solemn
Sleep in dreams of acacia and honey
Spirit of the garden gently blows
She awakes the fire of dawn in me
Night blazes with cleansing fire
Zephyrs of first delicate love
Recipients of eternal stars
The mystic moon shines above
Perfume rich from apple blossoms
Barley sires elegant meadows of time
Radiant soul elegant as maple leaves
Autumn shelters beauties sweet delight
Voices gentle with patience sing forever
The cloak of the muse in purple twilight
Candles shine on her face of rapture
Stars of ruby queens prickle the night
Tides glow with embellished blue
Light dances like mysterious elves
Gatherings of the oaks and pines
Owls amidst the eagle’s high realm
Born in rivers laced with romance
The royal sea sparkles in her eyes
Nectarines in orchards of cinnamon
Love is truly the eternal divine spice
By Violet Sublime
poem by Joseph Narusiewicz
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The Mother's Soul
When the moon was horned the mother died,
And the child pulled at her hand and knee,
And he rubbed her cheek and loudly cried:
'O mother, arise, give bread to me!'
But the pine tree bent its head,
And the wind at the door-post said:
'O child, thy mother is dead !'
The sun set his loom to weave the day;
The frost bit sharp like a silent cur;
The child by her pillow paused in his play:
'Mother, build up the sweet fire of fir !'
But the fir tree shook its cones,
And loud cried the pitiful stones:
'Wolf Death has thy mother's bones!'
They bore the mother out on her bier;
Their tears made warm her breast and shroud;
The smiling child at her head stood near;
And the long, white tapers shook and bowed,
And said with their tongues of gold,
To the ice lumps of the grave mold:
'How heavy are ye and cold!'
They buried the mother; to the feast
They flocked with the beaks of unclean crows.
The wind came up from the red-eyed east
And bore in its arms the chill, soft snows.
They said to each other: 'Sere
Are the hearts the mother held dear;
Forgotten, her babe plays here!'
The child with the tender snowflakes played,
And the wind on its fingers twined his hair;
And still by the tall, brown grave he stayed,
Alone in the churchyard lean and bare.
The sods on the high grave cried
To the mother's white breast inside:
'Lie still; in thy deep rest bide!'
Her breast lay still like a long-chilled stone,
Her soul was out on the bleak, grey day;
She saw her child by the grave alone,
With the sods and snow and wind at play.
Said the sharp lips of the rush,
'Red as thy roses,O bush,
With anger the dead can blush !'
A butterfly to the child's breast flew,*
Fluttered its wings on his sweet, round cheek,
Danced by his fingers, small, cold and blue.
The sun strode down past the mountain peak.
The butterfly whispered low
To the child: 'Babe, follow me; know,
Cold is the earth here below.'
The butterfly flew; followed the child,
Lured by the snowy torch of its wings;
The wind sighed after them soft and wild
Till the stars wedded night with golden rings
Till the frost upreared its head,
And the ground to it groaned and said:
'The feet of the child are lead!'
The child's head drooped to the brown, sere mold,
On the crackling cones his white breast lay;
The butterfly touched the locks of gold,
The soul of the child sprang from its clay.
The moon to the pine tree stole,
And silver-lipped, said to its bole:
'How strong is the mother's soul !'
The wings of the butterfly grew out
To the mother's arms, long, soft and white;
She folded them warm her babe about,
She kissed his lips into berries bright,
She warmed his soul on her breast;
And the east called out to the west:
'Now the mother's soul will rest!'
Under the roof where the burial feast
Was heavy with meat and red with wine,
Each crossed himself as out of the east
A strange wind swept over oak and pine.
The trees to the home-roof said:
' 'Tis but the airy rush and tread
Of angels greeting thy dead.'
poem by Isabella Valancy Crawford
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Dirge
PLACE this bunch of mignonette
In her cold, dead hand;
When the golden sun is set,
Where the poplars stand,
Bury her from sun and day,
Lay my little love away
From my sight.
She was like a modest flower
Blown in sunny June,
Warm as sun at noon's high hour,
Chaster than the moon.
Ah, her day was brief and bright,
Earth has lost a star of light;
She is dead.
Softly breathe her name to me,—
Ah, I loved her so.
Gentle let your tribute be;
None may better know
Her true worth than I who weep
O'er her as she lies asleep —
Soft asleep.
Lay these lilies on her breast,
They are not more white
Than the soul of her, at rest
'Neath their petals bright.
Chant your aves soft and low,
Solemn be your tread and slow, —
She is dead.
Lay her here beneath the grass,
Cool and green and sweet,
Where the gentle brook may pass
Crooning at her feet.
Nature's bards shall come and sing,
And the fairest flowers shall spring
Where she lies.
Safe above the water's swirl,
She has crossed the bar;
Earth has lost a precious pearl,
Heaven has gained a star,
That shall ever sing and shine,
Till it quells this grief of mine
For my love.
poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Light Day and Night
A golden rain falls down
A golden dawn
A golden age
At last a Angel appears
She dreamt ever so sweetly
The rain comes down
Like a song
An angel plays a harp
A bird dances
And Joy is echoing
In the footsteps
And the shoes are running
As if with wings
A round the tree
Under the sun, angels dance
In circles and all night too
A large bee is sitting
As an angel blows in its ear
A purple rose appears
An angel bows, his head
Into the silence
And on his pillow
Sleeps with tears
Of love streaming down.
A dove calls and moves
Towards the Light
All angels sing
A fog comes down
An angel sings
Three angel’s wings
Spread out for flight
An eagle flies across the sky
Sharing a nest with a diamond
An angel flies by singing
So all the trees can grow
A sun is setting
Over a deep forest
All the birds and animals
Are sleeping now
A moon comes up
And some stars
And all the world
A star is singing about joy
Of the waves on the ocean
And the fish in the sea
And the dolphins jump
And a wave is running by
As a boat has many masts
Moves forwards, backwards
A song dissolves into the mists
Like a poem that soon passes
An angel is swishing
Above and below
And now a moon looks on
A rose grows
Ever so slowly
A candle burns quietly
A snail loves to walk
On the grass in the morning
And an angel flies home in the night
This is a prayer, given to the air
When the rains come down
And the tears fall, I will be
Holding you firm in my wings
I will step in the Shadows before you
The angel’s feather blows across
The wide skies, it falls at my feet
To my surprise it intrigues me
It warms me. it warns me
That love is coming
That truth is foretold
And that I am witnessed
I am a witness to love
Angel love of feathers keen.
Light feathers wanting to be
A song that comes down
Is sung, is light
A heart reaches out this day
No Night. a dream is shared
Angel’s wings, angel’s might
And a gift is brought into being
This cannot be matched
Under heaven and earth.
This truth has been granted
And a blessing to health.
Guard it, know it well
As it sings through the universe
As an angel would sing
In the morning as birds
Watch by, two feathers fall
From her graceful wings
Messages from the departed.
Various melodies are calling
Various paths back to her heart
Love’s refined and refrain.
And in that morning mist
When all around seems filled
Future dreams are lurking, waiting
For the moment when paths
Shall cross. Their Light shall shine
The water that runs smoothly
Downhill, over grass, and weeds
And flowers, all the same
As An angel carries an urn
Filled with birds, and treasures
And messages and laughter
Her heart opens up like a flower
And her feet dance as in the snow
All the ancestors stand up in smile
A Vague moon, showers its peace
And doves flies over
As an angel starts a journey
Coming home to all things
Small and great
I listened for the heart beat
Eternal, justified, complete
In the twinkling of an eye
The Journey had begun
Life was carrying me before it
In its Arms and in its way
Towards a destination pure
And sweet and at peace
Love was my joy was my family
Nature was before me
My Justice my guide
The veils of truth were parting
Layer after layer, tide after tide
In rhythms of rain and sunlight
And warmth. was born again…
poem by Char Pattrick
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The Mother
I
IT was April, blossoming spring,
They buried me, when the birds did sing;
Earth, in clammy wedging earth,
They banked my bed with a black, damp girth.
Under the damp and under the mould,
I kenned my breasts were clammy and cold.
Out from the red beams, slanting and bright,
I kenned my cheeks were sunken and white.
I was a dream, and the world was a dream,
And yet I kenned all things that seem.
I was a dream, and the world was a dream,
But you cannot bury a red sunbeam.
For though in the under-grave's doom-night
I lay all silent and stark and white,
Yet over my head I seemed to know
The murmurous moods of wind and snow,
The snows that wasted, the winds that blew,
The rays that slanted, the clouds that drew
The water-ghosts up from lakes below,
And the little flower-souls in earth that grow.
Under earth, in the grave's stark night,
I felt the stars and the moon's pale light.
I felt the winds of ocean and land
That whispered the blossoms soft and bland.
Though they had buried me dark and low,
My soul with the season's seemed to grow.
II
From throes of pain they buried me low,
For death had finished a mother's woe.
But under the sod, in the grave's dread doom,
I dreamed of my baby in glimmer and gloom.
I dreamed of my babe, and I kenned that his rest
Was broken in wailings on my dead breast.
I dreamed that a rose-leaf hand did cling;
Oh, you cannot bury a mother in spring!
When the winds are soft and the blossoms are red
She could not sleep in her cold earth-bed.
I dreamed of my babe for a day and a night,
And then I rose in my grave-clothes white.
I rose like a flower from my damp earth-bed
To the world of sorrowing overhead.
Men would have called me a thing of harm,
But dreams of my babe made me rosy and warm.
I felt my breasts swell under my shroud;
No star shone white, no winds were loud;
But I stole me past the graveyard wall,
For the voice of my baby seemed to call;
And I kenned me a voice, though my lips were dumb:
Hush, baby, hush! for mother is come.
I passed the streets to my husband's home;
The chamber stairs in a dream I clomb;
I heard the sound of each sleeper's breath,
Light waves that break on the shores of death.
I listened a space at my chamber door,
Then stole like a moon-ray over its floor.
My babe was asleep on a stranger's arm,
'O baby, my baby, the grave is so warm,
'Though dark and so deep, for mother is there!
O come with me from the pain and care!
'O come with me from the anguish of earth,
Where the bed is banked with a blossoming girth,
'Where the pillow is soft and the rest is long,
And mother will croon you a slumber-song–
'A slumber-song that will charm your eyes
To a sleep that never in earth-song lies!
'The loves of earth your being can spare,
But never the grave, for mother is there.'
I nestled him soft to my throbbing breast,
And stole me back to my long, long rest.
And here I lie with him under the stars,
Dead to earth, its peace and its wars;
Dead to its hates, its hopes, and its harms,
So long as he cradles up soft in my arms.
And heaven may open its shimmering doors,
And saints make music on pearly floors,
And hell may yawn to its infinite sea,
But they never can take my baby from me.
For so much a part of my soul he hath grown
That God doth know of it high on His throne.
And here I lie with him under the flowers
That sun-winds rock through the billowy hours,
With the night-airs that steal from the murmuring sea,
Bringing sweet peace to my baby and me.
poem by William Wilfred Campbell
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Lullaby
Now the day is done,
Now the shepherd sun
Drives his white flocks from the sky;
Now the flowers rest
On their mother's breast,
Hushed by her low lullaby.
Now the glowworms glance,
Now the fireflies dance,
Under fern-boughs green and high;
And the western breeze
To the forest trees
Chants a tuneful lullaby.
Now 'mid shadows deep
Falls blessed sleep,
Like dew from the summer sky;
And the whole earth dreams,
In the moon's soft beams,
While night breathes a lullaby.
Now, birdlings, rest,
In your wind-rocked nest,
Unscared by the owl's shrill cry;
For with folded wings
Little Brier swings,
And singeth your lullaby.
poem by Louisa May Alcott
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The Sensitive Plant
PART 1.
A Sensitive Plant in a garden grew,
And the young winds fed it with silver dew,
And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light.
And closed them beneath the kisses of Night.
And the Spring arose on the garden fair,
Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere;
And each flower and herb on Earth’s dark breast
Rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.
But none ever trembled and panted with bliss
In the garden, the field, or the wilderness,
Like a doe in the noontide with love’s sweet want,
As the companionless Sensitive Plant.
The snowdrop, and then the violet,
Arose from the ground with warm rain wet,
And their breath was mixed with fresh odour, sent
From the turf, like the voice and the instrument.
Then the pied wind-flowers and the tulip tall,
And narcissi, the fairest among them all,
Who gaze on their eyes in the stream’s recess,
Till they die of their own dear loveliness;
And the Naiad-like lily of the vale,
Whom youth makes so fair and passion so pale
That the light of its tremulous bells is seen
Through their pavilions of tender green;
And the hyacinth purple, and white, and blue,
Which flung from its bells a sweet peal anew
Of music so delicate, soft, and intense,
It was felt like an odour within the sense;
And the rose like a nymph to the bath addressed,
Which unveiled the depth of her glowing breast,
Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air
The soul of her beauty and love lay bare:
And the wand-like lily, which lifted up,
As a Maenad, its moonlight-coloured cup,
Till the fiery star, which is its eye,
Gazed through clear dew on the tender sky;
And the jessamine faint, and the sweet tuberose,
The sweetest flower for scent that blows;
And all rare blossoms from every clime
Grew in that garden in perfect prime.
And on the stream whose inconstant bosom
Was pranked, under boughs of embowering blossom,
With golden and green light, slanting through
Their heaven of many a tangled hue,
Broad water-lilies lay tremulously,
And starry river-buds glimmered by,
And around them the soft stream did glide and dance
With a motion of sweet sound and radiance.
And the sinuous paths of lawn and of moss,
Which led through the garden along and across,
Some open at once to the sun and the breeze,
Some lost among bowers of blossoming trees,
Were all paved with daisies and delicate bells
As fair as the fabulous asphodels,
And flow’rets which, drooping as day drooped too,
Fell into pavilions, white, purple, and blue,
To roof the glow-worm from the evening dew.
And from this undefiled Paradise
The flowers (as an infant’s awakening eyes
Smile on its mother, whose singing sweet
Can first lull, and at last must awaken it),
When Heaven’s blithe winds had unfolded them,
As mine-lamps enkindle a hidden gem,
Shone smiling to Heaven, and every one
Shared joy in the light of the gentle sun;
For each one was interpenetrated
With the light and the odour its neighbour shed,
Like young lovers whom youth and love make dear
Wrapped and filled by their mutual atmosphere.
But the Sensitive Plant which could give small fruit
Of the love which it felt from the leaf to the root,
Received more than all, it loved more than ever,
Where none wanted but it, could belong to the giver,—
For the Sensitive Plant has no bright flower;
Radiance and odour are not its dower;
It loves, even like Love, its deep heart is full,
It desires what it has not, the Beautiful!
The light winds which from unsustaining wings
Shed the music of many murmurings;
The beams which dart from many a star
Of the flowers whose hues they bear afar;
The plumed insects swift and free,
Like golden boats on a sunny sea,
Laden with light and odour, which pass
Over the gleam of the living grass;
The unseen clouds of the dew, which lie
Like fire in the flowers till the sun rides high,
Then wander like spirits among the spheres,
Each cloud faint with the fragrance it bears;
The quivering vapours of dim noontide,
Which like a sea o’er the warm earth glide,
In which every sound, and odour, and beam,
Move, as reeds in a single stream;
Each and all like ministering angels were
For the Sensitive Plant sweet joy to bear,
Whilst the lagging hours of the day went by
Like windless clouds o’er a tender sky.
And when evening descended from Heaven above,
And the Earth was all rest, and the air was all love,
And delight, though less bright, was far more deep,
And the day’s veil fell from the world of sleep,
And the beasts, and the birds, and the insects were drowned
In an ocean of dreams without a sound;
Whose waves never mark, though they ever impress
The light sand which paves it, consciousness;
(Only overhead the sweet nightingale
Ever sang more sweet as the day might fail,
And snatches of its Elysian chant
Were mixed with the dreams of the Sensitive Plant);--
The Sensitive Plant was the earliest
Upgathered into the bosom of rest;
A sweet child weary of its delight,
The feeblest and yet the favourite,
Cradled within the embrace of Night.
PART 2.
There was a Power in this sweet place,
An Eve in this Eden; a ruling Grace
Which to the flowers, did they waken or dream,
Was as God is to the starry scheme.
A Lady, the wonder of her kind,
Whose form was upborne by a lovely mind
Which, dilating, had moulded her mien and motion
Like a sea-flower unfolded beneath the ocean,
Tended the garden from morn to even:
And the meteors of that sublunar Heaven,
Like the lamps of the air when Night walks forth,
Laughed round her footsteps up from the Earth!
She had no companion of mortal race,
But her tremulous breath and her flushing face
Told, whilst the morn kissed the sleep from her eyes,
That her dreams were less slumber than Paradise:
As if some bright Spirit for her sweet sake
Had deserted Heaven while the stars were awake,
As if yet around her he lingering were,
Though the veil of daylight concealed him from her.
Her step seemed to pity the grass it pressed;
You might hear by the heaving of her breast,
That the coming and going of the wind
Brought pleasure there and left passion behind.
And wherever her aery footstep trod,
Her trailing hair from the grassy sod
Erased its light vestige, with shadowy sweep,
Like a sunny storm o’er the dark green deep.
I doubt not the flowers of that garden sweet
Rejoiced in the sound of her gentle feet;
I doubt not they felt the spirit that came
From her glowing fingers through all their frame.
She sprinkled bright water from the stream
On those that were faint with the sunny beam;
And out of the cups of the heavy flowers
She emptied the rain of the thunder-showers.
She lifted their heads with her tender hands,
And sustained them with rods and osier-bands;
If the flowers had been her own infants, she
Could never have nursed them more tenderly.
And all killing insects and gnawing worms,
And things of obscene and unlovely forms,
She bore, in a basket of Indian woof,
Into the rough woods far aloof,--
In a basket, of grasses and wild-flowers full,
The freshest her gentle hands could pull
For the poor banished insects, whose intent,
Although they did ill, was innocent.
But the bee and the beamlike ephemeris
Whose path is the lightning's, and soft moths that kiss
The sweet lips of the flowers, and harm not, did she
Make her attendant angels be.
And many an antenatal tomb,
Where butterflies dream of the life to come,
She left clinging round the smooth and dark
Edge of the odorous cedar bark.
This fairest creature from earliest Spring
Thus moved through the garden ministering
Mi the sweet season of Summertide,
And ere the first leaf looked brown—she died!
PART 3.
Three days the flowers of the garden fair,
Like stars when the moon is awakened, were,
Or the waves of Baiae, ere luminous
She floats up through the smoke of Vesuvius.
And on the fourth, the Sensitive Plant
Felt the sound of the funeral chant,
And the steps of the bearers, heavy and slow,
And the sobs of the mourners, deep and low;
The weary sound and the heavy breath,
And the silent motions of passing death,
And the smell, cold, oppressive, and dank,
Sent through the pores of the coffin-plank;
The dark grass, and the flowers among the grass,
Were bright with tears as the crowd did pass;
From their sighs the wind caught a mournful tone,
And sate in the pines, and gave groan for groan.
The garden, once fair, became cold and foul,
Like the corpse of her who had been its soul,
Which at first was lovely as if in sleep,
Then slowly changed, till it grew a heap
To make men tremble who never weep.
Swift Summer into the Autumn flowed,
And frost in the mist of the morning rode,
Though the noonday sun looked clear and bright,
Mocking the spoil of the secret night.
The rose-leaves, like flakes of crimson snow,
Paved the turf and the moss below.
The lilies were drooping, and white, and wan,
Like the head and the skin of a dying man.
And Indian plants, of scent and hue
The sweetest that ever were fed on dew,
Leaf by leaf, day after day,
Were massed into the common clay.
And the leaves, brown, yellow, and gray, and red,
And white with the whiteness of what is dead,
Like troops of ghosts on the dry wind passed;
Their whistling noise made the birds aghast.
And the gusty winds waked the winged seeds,
Out of their birthplace of ugly weeds,
Till they clung round many a sweet flower’s stem,
Which rotted into the earth with them.
The water-blooms under the rivulet
Fell from the stalks on which they were set;
And the eddies drove them here and there,
As the winds did those of the upper air.
Then the rain came down, and the broken stalks
Were bent and tangled across the walks;
And the leafless network of parasite bowers
Massed into ruin; and all sweet flowers.
Between the time of the wind and the snow
All loathliest weeds began to grow,
Whose coarse leaves were splashed with many a speck,
Like the water-snake’s belly and the toad’s back.
And thistles, and nettles, and darnels rank,
And the dock, and henbane, and hemlock dank,
Stretched out its long and hollow shank,
And stifled the air till the dead wind stank.
And plants, at whose names the verse feels loath,
Filled the place with a monstrous undergrowth,
Prickly, and pulpous, and blistering, and blue,
Livid, and starred with a lurid dew.
And agarics, and fungi, with mildew and mould
Started like mist from the wet ground cold;
Pale, fleshy, as if the decaying dead
With a spirit of growth had been animated!
Spawn, weeds, and filth, a leprous scum,
Made the running rivulet thick and dumb,
And at its outlet flags huge as stakes
Dammed it up with roots knotted like water-snakes.
And hour by hour, when the air was still,
The vapours arose which have strength to kill;
At morn they were seen, at noon they were felt,
At night they were darkness no star could melt.
And unctuous meteors from spray to spray
Crept and flitted in broad noonday
Unseen; every branch on which they alit
By a venomous blight was burned and bit.
The Sensitive Plant, like one forbid,
Wept, and the tears within each lid
Of its folded leaves, which together grew,
Were changed to a blight of frozen glue.
For the leaves soon fell, and the branches soon
By the heavy axe of the blast were hewn;
The sap shrank to the root through every pore
As blood to a heart that will beat no more.
For Winter came: the wind was his whip:
One choppy finger was on his lip:
He had torn the cataracts from the hills
And they clanked at his girdle like manacles;
His breath was a chain which without a sound
The earth, and the air, and the water bound;
He came, fiercely driven, in his chariot-throne
By the tenfold blasts of the Arctic zone.
Then the weeds which were forms of living death
Fled from the frost to the earth beneath.
Their decay and sudden flight from frost
Was but like the vanishing of a ghost!
And under the roots of the Sensitive Plant
The moles and the dormice died for want:
The birds dropped stiff from the frozen air
And were caught in the branches naked and bare.
First there came down a thawing rain
And its dull drops froze on the boughs again;
Then there steamed up a freezing dew
Which to the drops of the thaw-rain grew;
And a northern whirlwind, wandering about
Like a wolf that had smelt a dead child out,
Shook the boughs thus laden, and heavy, and stiff,
And snapped them off with his rigid griff.
When Winter had gone and Spring came back
The Sensitive Plant was a leafless wreck;
But the mandrakes, and toadstools, and docks, and darnels,
Rose like the dead from their ruined charnels.
CONCLUSION.
Whether the Sensitive Plant, or that
Which within its boughs like a Spirit sat,
Ere its outward form had known decay,
Now felt this change, I cannot say.
Whether that Lady’s gentle mind,
No longer with the form combined
Which scattered love, as stars do light,
Found sadness, where it left delight,
I dare not guess; but in this life
Of error, ignorance, and strife,
Where nothing is, but all things seem,
And we the shadows of the dream,
It is a modest creed, and yet
Pleasant if one considers it,
To own that death itself must be,
Like all the rest, a mockery.
That garden sweet, that lady fair,
And all sweet shapes and odours there,
In truth have never passed away:
’Tis we, ’tis ours, are changed; not they.
For love, and beauty, and delight,
There is no death nor change: their might
Exceeds our organs, which endure
No light, being themselves obscure.
poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley
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Like A Butterfly
In my boyhood,
So sweet so lovely;
Like an eagle with its meteor eyes.
This pilot is guiding me,
This love is my hope;
Like a swarm of golden bees.
Of my unseen feet,
Of your unseen feet,
Of his unseen feet,
Of her unseen feet,
From Cape to Cape;
I am lured by the love of my growth.
Of a world so fair,
Eyes have not seen it;
It is like life beyond the tomb of love.
Ears have not heard its deep songs of joy,
This land is full of harvest;
But another race has filled it.
In silence and in fear like,
The banners up high in the sky;
Living in a better land as expected but,
A little weeping will ease my heart.
Another joy has come like,
The anthem of freed Slaves;
Where i do hear you speak like the long Amazon River.
Quiet as a stone,
A thing of beauty is of a joy;
Like a bed of straw in my boyhood,
Of the days gone by like a butterfly.
poem by Edward Kofi Louis
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Nature’s season
Sweet is the lore which nature brings,
In tidings and shapes of beautiful formed things,
In peaceful respite the tearful moments weep,
With uneasy tears and breezy thoughts sweep.
Time and seasons bring emotions sinking deep,
With reasons and secrets only time can keep.
Clouds aloft expose heavens grand panorama,
And buttery darkening stars gathered in sky arena,
Gaze upon bright shapes from infinite space,
Spellbound arms hold each other in sweet embrace.
And there in heaven, we look for grace to be forgiven,
Of things loosed from this world at the second coming.
Jealous angels fold their wings in amorous trance,
Watch the moon stood and stars around earth dance.
And change the merry climate to give nature dominion,
Over rivers and land where ancient mariners have gone,
We glimpse for a visible moment the rage chosen,
By the force of nature to linger with humanity in the wind,
Coastal plains in gay high day’s pleasures were found.
Homes submerged in the ground, till the ground breaks down,
Further into the realm of terrestrial phenomenon.
Time let seasons come again with birds singing in spring,
June showers descended with the rush for summer to begin,
Surprise rain comes between night and the appearing sun,
When stars in haste go hiding behind the moon.
And waters of golden grain flung heavy showers down,
Earth is covered with gloom above the grass that is green,
Floods overflowing rivers, lakes, streams and Ocean,
But nature is kind; and still more forgiving.
While Angel's sit and contemplate upon silk tassel rainbow,
Holding nervous fate near river lips widening below,
Beneficent sorrow grip the stranded heart in resolute
Mind, the stillness finds hope whispering like a warbling flute,
Triumphant now in life as in death, persistent as fear,
And the fear in the shadows hung over towns in terror,
Leaving the trail of wreckage the atmosphere conspire,
Flash into darkness and vanish with our hopes and dreams,
Into reliable memories borne from fire and ashes,
Remaining hopes are those of burnt out embers.
We wash our minds and analyze the search for answers,
Waters from the mountains mingle with dark weedy rivers,
And rivers; and lakes, eventually surrender their powers,
Then love too; will flee from spellbound arms in speed,
And find eclipse of nature roaming silently through sleep.
poem by Gerry Legister
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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