Reluctance
Out through the fields and the woods And over the walls I have wended; I have climbed the hills of view And looked at the world, and descended; I have come by the highway home, And lo, it is ended. The leaves are all dead on the group, Save those that the oak is keeping To ravel them one by one And let them go scraping and creeping Out over the crusted snow, When others are sleeping. And the dead leaves lie huddled and still, No longer blown hither and thither; The last long aster is gone; The flowers of the witch-hazel wither; The heart is still aching to seek, But the feel question 'Whither?' Ah, when to the heart of man Was it ever less than a treason To go with the drift of things, To yield with a grace to reason, And bow and accept the end Of a love or a season?
poem by Robert Frost
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Related quotes
Ah, when to the heart of man Was it ever less than a treason To go with the drift of things To yield with a grace to reason And bow and accept at the end Of a love or a season.
quote by Robert Frost
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Spoils Of The Dead
Two fairies it was
On a still summer day
Came forth in the woods
With the flowers to play.
The flowers they plucked
They cast on the ground
For others, and those
For still others they found.
Flower-guided it was
That they came as they ran
On something that lay
In the shape of a man.
The snow must have made
The feathery bed
When this one fell
On the sleep of the dead.
But the snow was gone
A long time ago,
And the body he wore
Nigh gone with the snow.
The fairies drew near
And keenly espied
A ring on his hand
And a chain at his side.
They knelt in the leaves
And eerily played
With the glittering things,
And were not afraid.
And when they went home
To hide in their burrow,
They took them along
To play with to-morrow.
When you came on death,
Did you not come flower-guided
Like the elves in the wood?
I remember that I did.
But I recognised death
With sorrow and dread,
And I hated and hate
The spoils of the dead.
poem by Robert Frost
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George Edmunds' Song
Autumn leaves, autumn leaves, lie strewn around he here;
Autumn leaves, autumn leaves, how sad, how cold, how drear!
How like the hopes of childhood's day,
Thick clust'ring on the bough!
How like those hopes in their decay-
How faded are they now!
Autumn leaves, autumn leaves, lie strewn around me here;
Autumn leaves, autumn leaves, how sad, how cold, how drear!
Wither'd leaves, wither'd leaves, that fly before the gale:
Withered leaves, withered leaves, ye tell a mournful tale,
Of love once true, and friends once kind,
And happy moments fled:
Dispersed by every breath of wind,
Forgotten, changed, or dead!
Autumn leaves, autumn leaves, lie strewn around me here!
Autumn leaves, autumn leaves, how sad, how cold, how drear!
poem by Charles Dickens
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Dead Leaves
When these dead leaves were green, love,
November's skies were blue,
And summer came with lips aflame,
The gentle spring to woo;
And to us, wandering hand in hand,
Life was a fairy scene,
That golden morning in the woods
When these dead leaves were green!
How dream-like now that dewy morn,
Sweet with the wattle's flowers,
When love, love, love was all our theme,
And youth and hope were ours!
Two happier hearts in all the land
There were not then, I ween,
Than those young lovers' -- yours and mine --
When these dead leaves were green.
How gaily did you pluck these leaves
From the acacia's bough,
To mark the lyric we had read --
I can repeat it now!
While came the words, like music sweet,
Your smiling lips between --
"So fold my love within your heart,"
When these dead leaves were green!
How many springs have passed since then?
Ah, wherefore should we count,
The years that sped, like waters fled
From Time's unstaying fount?
We've had our share of happiness,
Our share of care have seen;
But love alone has never flown
Since these dead leaves were green.
Your heart is kind and loving still,
Your face to me as fair,
As when, that morn, the sunshine played
Amid your golden hair.
So, dearest, sweethearts still we'll be,
As we have ever been,
And keep our love as fresh and true
As when these leaves were green.
poem by Edward Booth Loughran
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I Told You
I told you the winter would go, love,
I told you the winter would go,
That he'd flee in shame when the south wind came,
And you smiled when I told you so.
You said the blustering fellow
Would never yield to a breeze,
That his cold, icy breath had frozen to death
The flowers, the birds, and trees.
And I told you the snow would melt, love,
In the passionate glance o' the sun;
And the leaves o' the trees, and the flowers and bees,
Would come back again, one by one.
That the great, gray clouds would vanish,
And the sky turn tender and blue;
And the sweet birds would sing, and talk of the spring
And, love, it has all come true.
I told you that sorrow would fade, love,
And you would forget half your pain;
That the sweet bird of song would waken ere long,
And sing in your bosom again;
That hope would creep out of the shadows,
And back to its nest in your heart,
And gladness would come, and find its old home,
And that sorrow at length would depart.
I told you that grief seldom killed, love,
Though the heart might seem dead for awhile.
But the world is so bright, and full of warm light
That 'twould waken at length, in its smile.
Ah, love! was I not a true prophet?
There's a sweet happy smile on your face;
Your sadness has flown - the snow-drift is gone,
And the buttercups bloom in its place.
poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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My Winter Season
The calm after the storm
A beautiful thing
Orange autumn sky
Wet green grass
Dead brown leaves
A few little birds still sing
The temperature is low
Im not complaining
This atmosphere makes me happy
I can wear all my warm clothes
The people are calm
My energy is no longer draining
The parks are all empty
The rivers start to ice
Cars frost over
Day turns to night
The season is bad but the mood nice
The frost now covers the ground
The trees with leaves no more
Its always mellow now a day
The cold has set in to stay now
My mind starts to go astray
This season is my own
The year is almost over
It won't be long now until its over
I don't want it to end
Spring will come soon with the first little clover
My love for this time has no reason
I just don't want it to do
All year around I've looked forward to now
Its my time right now
My beautiful season
poem by Daniel Laurence
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To ----
Within these leafless trees,
That bare against the sky,
Their naked branches rear;
Leaves, buds, and blossoms lie.
So beauty's myriad forms,
Within thy soul are sleeping;
While thou, upon their sleep,
A wintry spell art keeping.
But soon the leaves and flowers
Shall burst their living tomb,
And fill the air around
With perfume and with bloom.
And buried in thy heart,
Shall thought's fair blossoms lie,
Forever unrevealed,
To wither and to die?
poem by Anne Lynch Botta from Poems (1848)
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Dead Love
Dead love, by treason slain, lies stark,
White as a dead stark-stricken dove:
None that pass by him pause to mark
Dead love.
His heart, that strained and yearned and strove
As toward the sundawn strives the lark,
Is cold as all the old joy thereof.
Dead men, re-risen from dust, may hark
When rings the trumpet blown above:
It will not raise from out the dark
Dead love.
poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne
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This Aching Heart
This aching heart shall ache no more
For you, its ached too long
I told you my feelings clean cut and raw
And my pain you just prolong
This aching heart shall love no more
It will not ever love another
At all my efforts you just guffaw
Yet, still I love you like no other
This aching heart shall beat no more
For you, its beat too long
This is the day that I no longer abhore
myself, and learn to be strong
This aching heart shall ache no more
For my heart you are no longer in
This achign heart shall ache no more
I have a new life to begin
poem by Lucy Heart
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One Princess to Another
Sleeping Beauty stroked
Her blonde hair
And sighed and
Longed for the woods
Snow White stared
At her reflection
And watched as
Her face aged and her life faded
Cinderella pulled at
Her long dress
And looked at
The glass shoes of enslavement
And then Cinderella
Found Sleeping Beauty
And asked:
“Did we ever have a choice? ”
Sleeping Beauty went
To Snow White
And told her:
“I hate my life.”
Then they went
Home to the princes
Who owned them
Because they were the first to kiss them
Cinderella broke her glass slippers
And ran away from the prince
With a nice teacher from the village
Leaving behind a note and glass slippers
Sleeping Beauty
Bore her prince a son
Before she turned to the woods
And never came out again
Snow White took
A poison apple from the
Wicked Witch’s dungeon and bit down into it
And died this time
poem by Elizabeth Rebel
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Bohemian Folk-Song
(From the French)
The moon was in the sky,
Pale, pale her light had grown
I went into the forest
All alone.
All alone,
My heart was well-nigh glad,
But when I thought of thee
Grief came and made me sad.
It came with the winds of autumn
When the dead leaves drop from the tree,
Because thy heart hath forgotten
Thy lover afar from thee.
It came with the rain fast falling
Through the dead leaves again,
Because that over a dead love
The heart must weep like rain.
poem by Arthur Symons
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The Spring
Now that the winter's gone, the earth hath lost
Her snow-white robes, and now no more the frost
Candies the grass, or casts an icy cream
Upon the silver lake or crystal stream;
But the warm sun thaws the benumbed earth,
And makes it tender; gives a sacred birth
To the dead swallow; wakes in hollow tree
The drowsy cuckoo and the humble-bee.
Now do a choir of chirping minstrels bring
In triumph to the world the youthful spring.
The valleys, hills, and woods in rich array
Welcome the coming of the long'd-for May.
Now all things smile; only my love doth lour;
Nor hath the scalding noonday sun the power
To melt that marble ice, which still doth hold
Her heart congeal'd, and makes her pity cold.
The ox, which lately did for shelter fly
Into the stall, doth now securely lie
In open fields; and love no more is made
By the fireside, but in the cooler shade
Amyntas now doth with his Chloris sleep
Under a sycamore, and all things keep
Time with the season; only she doth carry
June in her eyes, in her heart January.
poem by Thomas Carew
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Coming Home This Christmas
coming home this christmas
when all the leaves are dead
when all the twigs are broken
when there are no flowers
she looks underneath the bed
looking for old letters maybe
there must be some in there
she goes out to the open yard
looking for some creeping roots
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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The Garden of Prosperine
Here, where the world is quiet,
Here, where all trouble seems
Dead winds' and spent waves' riot
In doubtful dreams of dreams;
I watch the green field growing
For reaping folk and sowing,
For harvest-time and mowing,
A sleepy world of streams.
I am tired of tears and laughter,
And men that laugh and weep;
Of what may come hereafter
For men that sow to reap:
I am weary of days and hours,
Blown buds of barren flowers,
Desires and dreams and powers
And everything but sleep.
Here life has death for neighbour,
And far from eye or ear
Wan waves and wet winds labour,
Weak ships and spirits steer;
They drive adrift, and whither
They wot not who make thither;
But no such winds blow hither,
And no such things grow here.
No growth of moor or coppice,
No heather-flower or vine,
But bloomless buds of poppies,
Green grapes of Proserpine,
Pale beds of blowing rushes,
Where no leaf blooms or blushes
Save this whereout she crushes
For dead men deadly wine.
Pale, without name or number,
In fruitless fields of corn,
They bow themselves and slumber
All night till light is born;
And like a soul belated,
In hell and heaven unmated,
By cloud and mist abated
Comes out of darkness morn.
Though one were strong as seven,
He too with death shall dwell,
Nor wake with wings in heaven,
Nor weep for pains in hell;
Though one were fair as roses,
His beauty clouds and closes;
And well though love reposes,
In the end it is not well.
Pale, beyond porch and portal,
Crowned with calm leaves, she stands
Who gathers all things mortal
With cold immortal hands;
Her languid lips are sweeter
Than love's who fears to greet her
To men that mix and meet her
From many times and lands.
She waits for each and other,
She waits for all men born;
Forgets the earth her mother,
The life of fruits and corn;
And spring and seed and swallow
Take wing for her and follow
Where summer song rings hollow
And flowers are put to scorn.
There go the loves that wither,
The old loves with wearier wings;
And all dead years draw thither,
And all disastrous things;
Dead dreams of days forsaken,
Blind buds that snows have shaken,
Wild leaves that winds have taken,
Red strays of ruined springs.
We are not sure of sorrow,
And joy was never sure;
Today will die tomorrow;
Time stoops to no man's lure;
And love, grown faint and fretful,
With lips but half regretful
Sighs, and with eyes forgetful
Weeps that no loves endure.
From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be That no life lives for ever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.
Then star nor sun shall waken,
Nor any change of light:
Nor sound of waters shaken,
Nor any sound or sight:
Nor wintry leaves nor vernal,
Nor days nor things diurnal;
Only the sleep eternal
In an eternal night.
poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne
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Hendecasyllabics
In the month of the long decline of roses
I, beholding the summer dead before me,
Set my face to the sea and journeyed silent,
Gazing eagerly where above the sea-mark
Flame as fierce as the fervid eyes of lions
Half divided the eyelids of the sunset;
Till I heard as it were a noise of waters
Moving tremulous under feet of angels
Multitudinous, out of all the heavens;
Knew the fluttering wind, the fluttered foliage,
Shaken fitfully, full of sound and shadow;
And saw, trodden upon by noiseless angels,
Long mysterious reaches fed with moonlight,
Sweet sad straits in a soft subsiding channel,
Blown about by the lips of winds I knew not,
Winds not born in the north nor any quarter,
Winds not warm with the south nor any sunshine;
Heard between them a voice of exultation,
'Lo, the summer is dead, the sun is faded,
Even like as a leaf the year is withered,
All the fruits of the day from all her branches
Gathered, neither is any left to gather.
All the flowers are dead, the tender blossoms,
All are taken away; the season wasted,
Like an ember among the fallen ashes.
Now with light of the winter days, with moonlight,
Light of snow, and the bitter light of hoarfrost,
We bring flowers that fade not after autumn,
Pale white chaplets and crowns of latter seasons,
Fair false leaves (but the summer leaves were falser),
Woven under the eyes of stars and planets
When low light was upon the windy reaches
Where the flower of foam was blown, a lily
Dropt among the sonorous fruitless furrows
And green fields of the sea that make no pasture:
Since the winter begins, the weeping winter,
All whose flowers are tears, and round his temples
Iron blossom of frost is bound for ever.'
poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne
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Love Found
As I weep and wait for you,
From the chill there is no escape,
All night I walk the mist filled hills,
And long for your warm embrace.
I hunger for your kisses,
The pain in my heart to errace,
But I know this won't happen,
For the tomb holds your embrace.
Your lips now stone cold,
To the living do not yield,
My love, a soldier brave,
Now dead on some foreign feild.
My heart is slowly dying,
My mind will never heal,
I look for you in the mist filled hills,
Your love once again to feel.
How can my heart keep beating,
When my mind is dead to life,
My body feels so broken,
How can I bear this strife?
They say I greaved my self to death,
But it only set me free,
For at last I found my soldier,
If only they could see.
So if you walk these hills at night,
And two lovers embraced, you see,
You'll know I found my soldier,
And my love, he did find me.
poem by Teresa Dearing
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The season came
The lamp within my heart,
Triggering a deep insight,
Bringing in a great light,
Taking away the grief and hurt,
Loving you above great heights,
Fighting for you with might,
Proud to realise im right,
Right to know for you i will fight
The reason i had in mind,
I thought i said it with time,
The treason i did against you,
I thought i was punished in time,
The season then came,
The season to share the love i had,
A season to forget treason,
A season to tell the reasons,
To love you in all times,
Being my lamp, my reason,
In a new season
poem by Gaylord Munemo
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Haunted In Old Japan
I
Music of the star-shine shimmering o’er the sea
Mirror me no longer in the dusk of memory:
Dim and white the rose-leaves drift along the shore
Wind among the roses, blow no more!
II
All along the purple creek, lit with silver foam,
Silent, silent voices, cry no more of home;
Soft beyond the cherry-trees, o’er the dim lagoon,
Dawns the crimson lantern of the large low moon.
III
We that loved in April, we that turned away
Laughing, ere the wood-dove crooned across the May,
Watch the withered rose-leaves drift along the shore.
Wind among the roses, blow no more!
IV
We that saw the winter waste the weeping bower,
We that saw the young love perish like a flower,
We that saw the dark eyes deepening with tears,
Hear the vanished voices in the land beyond the years.
V
We that hurt the thing we loved; we that went astray,
We that in the darkness idly dreamed of day . . .
. . . Ah! The dreary rose-leaves drift along the shore.
Wind among the roses, blow no more!
VI
Lonely starry faces, wonderful and white,
Yearning with a cry across the dim sweet night,
All our dreams are blown a-drift as flowers before a fan,
All our hearts are haunted in the heart of old Japan.
VII
Haunted, haunted, haunted; we that mocked and sinned
Hear the vanished voices wailing down the wind,
Watch the ruined rose-leaves drift along the shore;
Wind among the roses, blow no more!
VIII
We, the sons of reason, we that chose to bride
Knowledge and rejected the Dream that we denied,
We that mocked the Holy Ghost and chose the Son of Man, [1]
Now must wander haunted in the heart of old Japan
IX
Haunted, haunted, haunted, by the sound of falling tears,
Haunted, haunted, haunted, by the yearning of the years;
Ah! the phantom rose-leaves drift along the shore;
Wind among the roses, blow no more!
X
All along the purple creek, lit with silver foam,
Sobbing, sobbing voices, cry no more of home:
Soft beyond the cherry trees, o’er the dim lagoon,
Dawns the crimson lantern of the large, low moon.
poem by Alfred Noyes
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Dead And Broken
Too many things I've never spoken
I'm not feeling fine
I never told you what to do
I never made you a promise that you could hold me to
That'll be the day you see me crying
Everyday, I still say you're dead and broken
Everyday, I still say you're dead and broken
You're dead and broken
How many different faces can you show me?
How many times can you be right?
Another world of fantasy
Another reason for dramatizing everything
Taking it all in just one more time
I'm dying
Everyday, I still say you're dead and broken
Everyday, I still say you're dead and broken
You're dead and broken
Sorry to see that you're underestimated lately
I'd rather be dead and broken than living in your grace
Everyday, I still say you're dead and broken
Everyday, I still say you're dead and broken
You're dead and broken
You're dead and broken
You're dead and broken
You're dead and broken
You're dead and broken
You're dead and broken
You're dead and broken
song performed by by Godsmack
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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At Last
O the years I lost before I knew you,
Love!
O, the hills I climbed and came not to you,
Love!
Ah! who shall render unto us to make
Us glad
The things which for and of each other's sake
We might have had?
If you and I had sat and played together,
Love,
Two speechless babes in the summer weather,
Love,
By one sweet brook which, though it dried up long
Ago,
Still makes for me today a sweeter song
Than all I know-
If hand-in-hand through the mysterious gateway,
Love
Of womanhood, we had first looked and straightway,
Love,
Had whispered to each other softly, ere
It yet
Was dawn, what now in noonday heat and fear
We both forget-
If all of this had given its completeness,
Love,
To every hour, would it be added sweetness,
Love?
Or ill
With thee? One wish could I more sweetly tell,
More swift fulfill?
Ah, vainly thus I sit and dream and ponder,
Love,
Losing the precious present while I wonder,
Love,
About the days in which you grew and came
To be
So beautiful, and did not know the name
Or sight of me.
But all lost things are in the angel's keeping,
Love;
No past is dead for us, but only sleeping,
Love;
The years of heaven will all earth's little pain
Make good,
Together there we can begin again,
In babyhood.
poem by Helen Hunt Jackson
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