The Caged Eagle’s Death Dream
from CAWDOR
While George went to the house
For his revolver, Michal climbed up the hill
Weeping; but when he came with death in his hand
She'd not go away, but watched. At the one shot
The great dark bird leaped at the roof of the cage
In silence and struck the wood; it fell, then suddenly
Looked small and soft, muffled in its folded wings.
The nerves of men after they die dream dimly
And dwindle into their peace; they are not very passionate,
And what they had was mostly spent while they lived.
They are sieves for leaking desire; they have many pleasures
And conversations; their dreams too are like that.
The unsocial birds are a greater race;
Cold-eyed, and their blood burns. What leaped up to death,
The extension of one storm-dark wing filling
its world,
Was more than the soft garment that fell. Something had flown
away. Oh cage-hoarded desire,
Like the blade of a breaking wave reaped by the wind, or flame
rising from fire, or cloud-coiled lightning
Suddenly unfurled in the cave of heaven: I that am stationed,
and cold at heart, incapable of burning,
My blood like standing sea-water lapped in a stone pool, my desire
to the rock, how can I speak of you?
Mine will go down to the deep rock.
This rose,
Possessing the air over its emptied prison,
The eager powers at its shoulders waving shadowless
Unwound the ever-widened spirals of flight
As a star light, it spins the night-stabbing threads
From its own strength and substance: so the aquiline desire
Burned itself into meteor freedom and spired
Higher still, and saw the mountain-dividing
Canyon of its captivity (that was to Cawdor
Almost his world) like an old crack in a wall,
Violet-shadowed and gold-lighted; the little stain
Spilt on the floor of the crack was the strong forest;
The grain of sand was the Rock. A speck, an atomic
Center of power clouded in its own smoke
Ran and cried in the crack; it was Cawdor; the other
Points of humanity had neither weight nor shining
To prick the eyes of even an eagle's passion.
This burned and soared. The shining ocean below lay on the
shore
Like the great shield of the moon come down, rolling bright rim
to rim with the earth. Against it the multiform
And many-canyoned coast-range hills were gathered into one
carven mountain, one modulated
Eagle's cry made stone, stopping the strength of the sea. The
beaked and winged effluence
Felt the air foam under its throat and saw
The mountain sun-cup Tassajara, where fawns
Dance in the steam of the hot fountains at dawn,
Smoothed out, and the high strained ridges beyond Cachagua,
Where the rivers are born and the last condor is dead,
Flatten, and a hundred miles toward morning the Sierras
Dawn with their peaks of snow, and dwindle and smooth down
On the globed earth.
It saw from the height and desert space of
unbreathable air
Where meteors make green fire and die, the ocean dropping
westward to the girdle of the pearls of dawn
And the hinder edge of the night sliding toward Asia; it saw
far under eastward the April-delighted
Continent; and time relaxing about it now, abstracted from being,
it saw the eagles destroyed,
Mean generations of gulls and crows taking their world: turn
for turn in the air, as on earth
The white faces drove out the brown. It saw the white decayed
and the brown from Asia returning;
It saw men learn to outfly the hawk's brood and forget it again;
it saw men cover the earth and again
Devour each other and hide in caverns, be scarce as wolves. It
neither wondered nor cared, and it saw
Growth and decay alternate forever, and the tides returning.
It saw, according to the sight of its kind, the archetype
Body of life a beaked carnivorous desire
Self-upheld on storm-broad wings: but the eyes
Were spouts of blood; the eyes were gashed out; dark blood
Ran from the ruinous eye-pits to the hook of the beak
And rained on the waste spaces of empty heaven.
Yet the great Life continued; yet the great Life
Was beautiful, and she drank her defeat, and devoured
Her famine for food.
There the eagle's phantom perceived
Its prison and its wound were not its peculiar wretchedness,
All that lives was maimed and bleeding, caged or in blindness,
Lopped at the ends with death and conception, and shrewd
Cautery of pain on the stumps to stifle the blood, but not
Refrains for all that; life was more than its functions
And accidents, more important than its pains and pleasures,
A torch to burn in with pride, a necessary
Ecstasy in the run of the cold substance,
And scape-goat of the greater world. (But as for me,
I have heard the summer dust crying to be born
As much as ever flesh cried to be quiet.)
Pouring itself on fulfilment the eagle's passion
Left life behind and flew at the sun, its father.
The great unreal talons took peace for prey
Exultantly, their death beyond death; stooped upward, and struck
Peace like a white fawn in a dell of fire.
poem by Robinson Jeffers
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Related quotes
The Ghosts Of The Trees
The silver fangs of the mighty axe,
Bit to the blood of our giant boles;
It smote our breasts and smote our backs,
Thunder'd the front-cleared leaves--
As sped in fire,
The whirl and flame of scarlet leaves
With strong desire
Leaped to the air our captive souls.
While down our corpses thunder'd,
The air at our strong souls gazed and wondered
And cried to us, 'Ye
Are full of all mystery to me!
I saw but thy plumes of leaves,
Thy strong, brown greaves;
The sinewy roots and lusty branches,
And fond and anxious,
I laid my ear and my restless breast
By each pride-high crest;
And softly stole
And listen'd by limb and listen'd by bole,
Nor ever the stir of a soul,
Heard I in ye--
Great is the mystery!'
The strong, brown eagle plung'd from his peak,
From the hollow iron of his beak;
The wood pigeon fell; its breast of blue
Cold with sharp death all thro' and thro',
To our ghosts he cried.
'With talons of steel,
I hold the storm;
Where the high peaks reel,
My young lie warm.
In the wind-rock'd spaces of air I bide;
My wings too wide--
Too angry-strong for the emerald gyves,
Of woodland cell where the meek dove thrives.
And when at the bar,
Of morn I smote with my breast its star,
And under--
My wings grew purple, the jealous thunder,
With the flame of the skies
Hot in my breast, and red in my eyes;
From peak to peak of sunrise pil'd
That set space glowing,
With flames from air-based crater's blowing--
I downward swept, beguiled
By the close-set forest gilded and spread
A sea for the lordly tread,
Of a God's wardship--
I broke its leafy turf with my breast;
My iron lip
I dipp'd in the cool of each whispering crest;
From thy leafy steeps,
I saw in my deeps,
Red coral the flame necked oriole--
But never the stir of a soul
Heard I in ye--
Great is the mystery!'
From its ferny coasts,
The river gazed at our strong, free ghosts,
And with rocky fingers shed
Apart the silver curls of its head;
Laid its murmuring hands,
On the reedy bands;
And at gaze
Stood in the half-moon's of brown, still bays;
Like gloss'd eyes of stags
Its round pools gaz'd from the rusty flags,
At our ghostly crests
At the bark-shields strong on our phantom breasts;
And its tide
Took lip and tongue and cried.
'I have push'd apart
The mountain's heart;
I have trod the valley down;
With strong hands curled,
Have caught and hurled,
To the earth the high hill's crown!
My brow I thrust,
Through sultry dust,
That the lean wolf howl'd upon;
I drove my tides,
Between the sides,
Of the bellowing canon.
From chrystal shoulders,
I hurled my boulders,
On the bridge's iron span.
When I rear'd my head
From its old time bed,
Shook the pale cities of man!
I have run a course
With the swift, wild horse;
I have thunder'd pace for pace,
With the rushing herds--
I have caught the beards
Of the swift stars in the race!
Neither moon nor sun
Could me out-run;
Deep cag'd in my silver bars,
I hurried with me,
To the shouting sea,
Their light and the light of the stars!
The reeling earth
In furious mirth
With sledges of ice I smote.
I whirled my sword
Where the pale berg roar'd,
I took the ship by the throat!
With stagnant breath
I called chill Death
My guest to the hot bayou.
I built men's graves,
With strong thew'd waves
That thing that my strength might do.
I did right well--
Men cried 'From Hell
The might of Thy hand is given!'
By loose rocks stoned
The stout quays groaned,
Sleek sands by my spear were riven.
O'er shining slides,
On my gloss'd tides,
The brown cribs close woven roll'd;
The stout logs sprung,
Their height among
My loud whirls of white and gold!
The great raft prest,
My calm, broad breast--
A dream thro' my shady trance,
The light canoe--
A spirit flew--
The pulse of my blue expanse.
Wing'd swift the ships.
My foaming lips
Made rich with dewy kisses,
All night and morn,
Field's red with corn,
And where the mill-wheel hisses.
And shivers and sobs,
With lab'ring throbs,
With its whirls my strong palms play'd.
I parted my flags,
For thirsty stags,
On the necks of arches laid.
To the dry-vined town
My tide roll'd down--
Dry lips and throats a-quiver,
Rent sky and sod
With shouts 'From God
The strength of the mighty river!'
I, list'ning, heard
The soft-song'd bird;
The beetle about thy boles.
The calling breeze,
In thy crests, O Trees--
Never the voices of souls!'
* * * * *
We, freed souls, of the Trees look'd down
On the river's shining eyes of brown;
And upward smiled
At the tender air and its warrior child,
The iron eagle strong and wild.
* * * * *
'No will of ours,
The captive souls of our barky tow'rs;
'His the deed
Who laid in the secret earth the seed;
And with strong hand
Knitted each woody fetter and band.
Never, ye
Ask of the tree,
The 'Wherefore' or 'Why' the tall trees stand,
Built in their places on the land
Their souls unknit;
With any wisdom or any wit,
The subtle 'Why,'
Ask ye not of earth or sky--
But one command it.
poem by Isabella Valancy Crawford
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Night
The ebb slips from the rock, the sunken
Tide-rocks lift streaming shoulders
Out of the slack, the slow west
Sombering its torch; a ship's light
Shows faintly, far out,
Over the weight of the prone ocean
On the low cloud.
Over the dark mountain, over the dark pinewood,
Down the long dark valley along the shrunken river,
Returns the splendor without rays, the shining of shadow,
Peace-bringer, the matrix of all shining and quieter of shining.
Where the shore widens on the bay she opens dark wings
And the ocean accepts her glory. O soul worshipful of her
You like the ocean have grave depths where she dwells always,
And the film of waves above that takes the sun takes also
Her, with more love. The sun-lovers have a blond favorite,
A father of lights and noises, wars, weeping and laughter,
Hot labor, lust and delight and the other blemishes. Quietness
Flows from her deeper fountain; and he will die; and she is
immortal.
Far off from here the slender
Flocks of the mountain forest
Move among stems like towers
Of the old redwoods to the stream,
No twig crackling; dip shy
Wild muzzles into the mountain water
Among the dark ferns.
O passionately at peace you being secure will pardon
The blasphemies of glowworms, the lamp in my tower, the
fretfulness
Of cities, the cressets of the planets, the pride of the stars.
This August night in a rift of cloud Antares reddens,
The great one, the ancient torch, a lord among lost children,
The earth's orbit doubled would not girdle his greatness, one fire
Globed, out of grasp of the mind enormous; but to you O Night
What? Not a spark? What flicker of a spark in the faint far
glimmer
Of a lost fire dying in the desert, dim coals of a sand-pit the
Bedouins
Wandered from at dawn . . . Ah singing prayer to what gulfs
tempted
Suddenly are you more lost? To us the near-hand mountain
Be a measure of height, the tide-worn cliff at the sea-gate a
measure of continuance.
The tide, moving the night's
Vastness with lonely voices,
Turns, the deep dark-shining
Pacific leans on the land,
Feeling his cold strength
To the outmost margins: you Night will resume
The stars in your time.
O passionately at peace when will that tide draw shoreward?
Truly the spouting fountains of light, Antares, Arcturus,
Tire of their flow, they sing one song but they think silence.
The striding winter giant Orion shines, and dreams darkness.
And life, the flicker of men and moths and the wolf on the hill,
Though furious for continuance, passionately feeding, passionately
Remaking itself upon its mates, remembers deep inward
The calm mother, the quietness of the womb and the egg,
The primal and the latter silences: dear Night it is memory
Prophesies, prophecy that remembers, the charm of the dark.
And I and my people, we are willing to love the four-score years
Heartily; but as a sailor loves the sea, when the helm is for harbor.
Have men's minds changed,
Or the rock hidden in the deep of the waters of the soul
Broken the surface? A few centuries
Gone by, was none dared not to people
The darkness beyond the stars with harps and habitations.
But now, dear is the truth. Life is grown sweeter and lonelier,
And death is no evil.
poem by Robinson Jeffers
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Bible in Poetry: Revelation 8
1He opened then the seventh seal,
And heav’n turned silent for half hour.
2The seven angels before God,
Were given seven trumpets then.
3An angel, with a gold censer,
Came and stood before the altar.
He had incense to offer much,
With prayers of all the saints,
On the golden altar of God.
4The incense-smoke and saints’ prayers
Went up to God from angel's hand.
5The angel took the censer then,
And filled it with altar’s fire,
And hurled it onto the earth’s face;
There came thunder, rumblings, flashes
Of lightning and an earthquake great.
The Trumpets:
6The seven angels then prepared
To blow their trumpets, one by one.
7 When first angel blew his trumpet,
Hail came with fire, mixed with blood,
And it was hurled down on the earth.
A third of earth was burned up soon,
A third of trees were burned up too,
And all the green grass was burned up.
8The second angel blew trumpet,
And something like a huge mountain
Ablaze, was thrown into the sea.
A third of sea then turned to blood,
9A third of creatures of sea died,
A third of ships were all destroyed.
10The third angel blew his trumpet,
A great star, blazing like a torch,
Fell from sky on third of rivers
And on the earth’s springs of water—
11The name of the star was Wormwood.
A third of waters turned bitter,
And many people died from it.
12The fourth angel sounded trumpet,
A third of sun was darkened then,
A third of moon, and third of stars,
Was turned dark soon afterwards.
A third of day was without light,
A third of night also alike.
13And as I watched, an eagle flew
In midair, calling out aloud:
'Woe! Woe! To earth’s inhabitants,
Because of trumpet blasts about
To come from three other angels! '
Copyright by Dr John Celes 7-16-2007
poem by John Celes
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Beautiful(An Indians Thank You)
She was'nt Native American
but she was one true to the heart
loving all things
the only way she knew how she can
she has a soul that would shine
beautiful as a dandelion
in a field of dreams
flooting in a smoke of clouds
beautiful as all life that flourish
warmed by a summer's kiss
Standing in shadow's of lonely crowds
the Great Spirit walked beside her
there by her side they walked together
guided by the Holy Light
she lite the burning sun
that burned in the sky
she was the color's of every rainbow
blessed like the star's at night
Gentle as a Butterfly
becoming one with the beauty of nature
becoming one with Mother Earth
God guided her since birth
She has a Spirit of the Eagle
like Angel's, she spreads her wing's
soaring high in the heaven's
like a Eagle she would fly
beautiful word's like a bird that sing's
sweeter than a sound of a chime
blowing in the wind
pure as a desert flower that grow's again
Yeah, she's as beautiful
as the moon shining when it's full
keeping peace from falling apart
beautiful as a river that flow's
like The Holy Ghost
that cover's you when it snow's
She roam's free forever more
glittering like the sand
on a ocean shore
beautiful as a pedal
falling from her hand
silent as a willow weeping
like Lion's laying and sleeping
(spiritwind-2009)
poem by Spiritwind Wood
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Poetry: Ode to Eagle
Ode to Eagle
By Laijon Liu 20091010
-O1-
Who are you, my love, soaring so high!
The god of all birds, a king of azure sky
On the precipitous cliff you make home
Off the lofty peak you leap a great dive
You call up the morning sun to ascend
And escort the moon where she roams
Earth revolves under your mighty talons
And heaven is for your wings to mete
-O2-
A pair firm claws, steel dagger sharp
Where your enemies find no escape
Above the vast land or the roaring sea
All livings are under your decree
Your eyes are made of pure gold
To see through the hour of dark night
Who dares to stare at the glorious sun?
And catch the true splendor of light!
-O3-
Upon the high rock you pick your nest
Above the deep sea you set window-view
And facing the cold winds you make love
There you raise young, hatch a brave heart
All worlds look up and envy your spot
But they never know how much you sacrifice
Your title and fame must cost so much
Upon that rocky cliff, in the gushing winds
-O4-
Lonesome and pride is the way of your life
It’s against your deity to group with a flock
No one dares to dictate your hour of flight
And no peak or valley is out of your reach
Toward the sun you stare and rise head on
And into the wintry wave you make a splash
White clouds are for your wings to smash
Rain and snow are your showers and bath
-O5-
Nature has preordained your tragic fate
Struggling since birth, fighting to become
Where your infant bed is a wrestling court
And then your test flight is a deadly dive
Yet you raise your hooked beak proudly
Stretch your broad wings measuring winds
Hop your muscular legs for a great leap
To aim the sun and answer the storm
-O6-
How calm you are, driving the winds above
Rise and fall freely, soar and turn with ease
Where in the sky you find dragon is a myth
And shadow of phoenix disappeared in sun
The idols on earth all become fairytale news
Only your wings and spirit are true examples
Death and fear can never conquer you in life
Dream and desires are all possible to reach
-O7-
Oh my great Bird, a miracle you pursue!
You’re hatched on cliff and born of storm
Sun above you and earth down below
Sky your lodge and death is like a home
In the gushing winds you howl battle cry
Into the cold waves you toy snowflake
Through the challenges you grow strong
And in turmoil and crisis you obtain peace
-O8-
Who is the maker of your striking shape?
Who gifted you a pair golden pupil
For the far vision and detail view?
Who gave you a pair brave wings
To set your faith fly and courage to dive?
Who made your nest on high cliff?
Who drove the winds and storms
And the red sun over the blue sea?
***Who made you, so great? ***
poem by Laijon Liu
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Old Fires
The fire burns low
Where it has burned ages ago,
Sinks and sighs
As it has done to a hundred eyes
Staring, staring
At the last cold smokeless glow.
Here men sat
Lonely and watched the golden grate
Turn at length black;
Heard the cooling iron crack:
Shadows, shadows,
Watching the shadows come and go.
And still the hiss
I hear, the soft fire's sob and kiss,
And still it burns
And the bright gold to crimson turns,
Sinking, sinking,
And the fire shadows larger grow.
O dark-cheeked fire,
Wasting like spent heart's desire,
You that were gold,
And now crimson will soon be cold--
Cold, cold,
Like moon-shadows on new snow.
Shadows all,
They that watched your shadows fall.
But now they come
Rising around me, grave and dumb....
Shadows, shadows,
Come as the fire-shadows go.
And stay, stay,
Though all the fire sink cold as clay,
Whispering still,
Ancestral wise Familiars--till,
Staring, staring,
Dawn's wild fires through the casement glow.
poem by John Freeman
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Magnetism
By the impulse of my will,
By the red flame in my blood,
By me nerves' electric thrill,
By the passion of my mood,
My concentrated desire,
My undying, desperate love,
I ignore Fate, I defy her,
Iron-hearted Death I move.
When the town lies numb with sleep,
Here, round-eyed I sit; my breath
Quickly stirred, my flesh a-creep,
And I force the gates of death.
I nor move nor speak-you'd deem
From my quiet face and hands,
I were tranced-but in her dream,
SHE responds, she understands.
I have power on what is not,
Or on what has ceased to be,
From that deep, earth-hollowed spot,
I can lift her up to me.
And, or ere I am aware
Through the closed and curtained door,
Comes my lady white and fair,
And embraces me once more.
Though the clay clings to her gown,
Yet all heaven is in her eyes;
Cool, kind fingers press mine eyes,
To my soul her soul replies.
But when breaks the common dawn,
And the city wakes-behold!
My shy phantom is withdrawn,
And I shiver lone and cold.
And I know when she has left,
She is stronger far than I,
And more subtly spun her weft,
Than my human wizardry.
Though I force her to my will,
By the red flame in my blood,
By my nerves' electric thrill,
By the passion of my mood,
Yet all day a ghost am I.
Nerves unstrung, spent will, dull brain.
I achieve, attain, but die,
And she claims me hers again.
poem by Emma Lazarus
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Meditation On Saviors
I
When I considered it too closely, when I wore it like an element
and smelt it like water,
Life is become less lovely, the net nearer than the skin, a
little troublesome, a little terrible.
I pledged myself awhile ago not to seek refuge, neither in death
nor in a walled garden,
In lies nor gated loyalties, nor in the gates of contempt, that
easily lock the world out of doors.
Here on the rock it is great and beautiful, here on the foam-wet
granite sea-fang it is easy to praise
Life and water and the shining stones: but whose cattle are the
herds of the people that one should love them?
If they were yours, then you might take a cattle-breeder's
delight in the herds of the future. Not yours.
Where the power ends let love, before it sours to jealousy.
Leave the joys of government to Caesar.
Who is born when the world wanes, when the brave soul of the
world falls on decay in the flesh increasing
Comes one with a great level mind, sufficient vision, sufficient
blindness, and clemency for love.
This is the breath of rottenness I smelt; from the world
waiting, stalled between storms, decaying a little,
Bitterly afraid to be hurt, but knowing it cannot draw the
savior Caesar but out of the blood-bath.
The apes of Christ lift up their hands to praise love: but
wisdom without love is the present savior,
Power without hatred, mind like a many-bladed machine subduing
the world with deep indifference.
The apes of Christ itch for a sickness they have never known;
words and the little envies will hardly
Measure against that blinding fire behind the tragic eyes they
have never dared to confront.
II
Point Lobos lies over the hollowed water like a humped whale
swimming to shoal; Point Lobos
Was wounded with that fire; the hills at Point Sur endured it;
the palace at Thebes; the hill Calvary.
Out of incestuous love power and then ruin. A man forcing the
imaginations of men,
Possessing with love and power the people: a man defiling his
own household with impious desire.
King Oedipus reeling blinded from the palace doorway, red tears
pouring from the torn pits
Under the forehead; and the young Jew writhing on the domed hill
in the earthquake, against the eclipse
Frightfully uplifted for having turned inward to love the
people: -that root was so sweet O dreadful agonist? -
I saw the same pierced feet, that walked in the same crime to
its expiation; I heard the same cry.
A bad mountain to build your world on. Am I another keeper of
the people, that on my own shore,
On the gray rock, by the grooved mass of the ocean, the
sicknesses I left behind me concern me?
Here where the surf has come incredible ways out of the splendid
west, over the deeps
Light nor life sounds forever; here where enormous sundowns
flower and burn through color to quietness;
Then the ecstasy of the stars is present? As for the people, I
have found my rock, let them find theirs.
Let them lie down at Caesar's feet and be saved; and he in his
time reap their daggers of gratitude.
III
Yet I am the one made pledges against the refuge contempt, that
easily locks the world out of doors.
This people as much as the sea-granite is part of the God from
whom I desire not to be fugitive.
I see them: they are always crying. The shored Pacific makes
perpetual music, and the stone mountains
Their music of silence, the stars blow long pipings of light:
the people are always crying in their hearts.
One need not pity; certainly one must not love. But who has seen
peace, if he should tell them where peace
Lives in the world...they would be powerless to understand; and
he is not willing to be reinvolved.
IV
How should one caught in the stone of his own person dare tell
the people anything but relative to that?
But if a man could hold in his mind all the conditions at once,
of man and woman, of civilized
And barbarous, of sick and well, of happy and under torture, of
living and dead, of human and not
Human, and dimly all the human future: -what should persuade him
to speak? And what could his words change?
The mountain ahead of the world is not forming but fixed. But
the man's words would be fixed also,
Part of that mountain, under equal compulsion; under the same
present compulsion in the iron consistency.
And nobody sees good or evil but out of a brain a hundred
centuries quieted, some desert
Prophet's, a man humped like a camel, gone mad between the mud-
walled village and the mountain sepulchres.
V
Broad wagons before sunrise bring food into the city from the
open farms, and the people are fed.
They import and they consume reality. Before sunrise a hawk in
the desert made them their thoughts.
VI
Here is an anxious people, rank with suppressed
bloodthirstiness. Among the mild and unwarlike
Gautama needed but live greatly and be heard, Confucius needed
but live greatly and be heard:
This people has not outgrown blood-sacrifice, one must writhe on
the high cross to catch at their memories;
The price is known. I have quieted love; for love of the people
I would not do it. For power I would do it.
--But that stands against reason: what is power to a dead man,
dead under torture? --What is power to a man
Living, after the flesh is content? Reason is never a root,
neither of act nor desire.
For power living I would never do it; they'are not delightful to
touch, one wants to be separate. For power
After the nerves are put away underground, to lighten the
abstract unborn children toward peace...
A man might have paid anguish indeed. Except he had found the
standing sea-rock that even this last
Temptation breaks on; quieter than death but lovelier; peace
that quiets the desire even of praising it.
VII
Yet look: are they not pitiable? No: if they lived forever they
would be pitiable:
But a huge gift reserved quite overwhelms them at the end; they
are able then to be still and not cry.
And having touched a little of the beauty and seen a little of
the beauty of things, magically grow
Across the funeral fire or the hidden stench of burial
themselves into the beauty they admired,
Themselves into the God, themselves into the sacred steep
unconsciousness they used to mimic
Asleep between lamp's death and dawn, while the last drunkard
stumbled homeward down the dark street.
They are not to be pitied but very fortunate; they need no
savior, salvation comes and takes them by force,
It gathers them into the great kingdoms of dust and stone, the
blown storms, the stream's-end ocean.
With this advantage over their granite grave-marks, of having
realized the petulant human consciousness
Before, and then the greatness, the peace: drunk from both
pitchers: these to be pitied? These not fortunate
But while he lives let each man make his health in his mind, to
love the coast opposite humanity
And so be freed of love, laying it like bread on the waters; it
is worst turned inward, it is best shot farthest.
Love, the mad wine of good and evil, the saint's and murderer's,
the mote in the eye that makes its object
Shine the sun black; the trap in which it is better to catch the
inhuman God than the hunter's own image.
Anonymous submission.
poem by Robinson Jeffers
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Reproach
Had I but known yesterday,
Helen, you could discharge the ache
Out of the cloud;
Had I known yesterday you could take
The turgid electric ache away,
Drink it up with your proud
White body, as lovely white lightning
Is drunk from an agonised sky by the earth,
I might have hated you, Helen.
But since my limbs gushed full of fire,
Since from out of my blood and bone
Poured a heavy flame
To you, earth of my atmosphere, stone
Of my steel, lovely white flint of desire,
You have no name.
Earth of my swaying atmosphere,
Substance of my inconstant breath,
I cannot but cleave to you.
Since you have drunken up the drear
Painful electric storm, and death
Is washed from the blue
Of my eyes, I see you beautiful.
You are strong and passive and beautiful,
I come like winds that uncertain hover;
But you
Are the earth I hover over.
poem by David Herbert Lawrence
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
The Dead To The Living
Work while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.
IN the childhood of April, while purple woods
With the young year's blood in them smiled,
I passed through the lanes and the wakened fields,
And stood by the grave of the child.
And the pain awoke that is never dead
Though it sometimes sleeps, and again
It set its teeth in this heart of mine,
And fastened its claws in my brain:
For it seemed so hard that the little hands
And the little well-loved head
Should be out of reach of my living lips,
And be side by side with the dead--
Not side by side with us who had loved,
But with these who had never seen
The grace of the smile, the gold of the hair,
And the eyes of my baby-queen.
Yet with trees about where the brown birds build,
And with long green grass above,
She lies in the cold sweet breast of earth
Beyond the reach of our love;
Whatever befalls in the coarse loud world,
We know she will never wake.
When I thought of the sorrow she might have known,
I was almost glad for her sake. . . .
Tears might have tired those kiss-closed eyes,
Grief hardened the mouth I kissed;
I was almost glad that my dear was dead
Because of the pain she had missed.
Oh, if I could but have died a child
With a white child-soul like hers,
As pure as the wind-flowers down in the copse,
Where the soul of the spring's self stirs;
Or if I had only done with it all,
And might lie by her side unmoved!
I envied the very clods of earth
Their place near the child I loved!
And my soul rose up in revolt at life,
As I stood dry-eyed by her grave,
When sudden the grass of the churchyard sod
Rolled back like a green smooth wave;
The brown earth looked like the brown sea rocks,
The tombstones were white like spray,
And white like surf were the curling folds
Of the shrouds where the dead men lay;
For each in his place with his quiet face
I saw the dead lie low,
Who had worked and suffered and found life sad,
So many sad years ago.
Unchanged by time I saw them lie
As when first they were laid to rest,
The tired eyes closed, the sad lips still,
And the work-worn hands on the breast.
There were some who had found the green world so grey,
They had left it before their time,
And some were little ones like my dear,
And some had died in their prime;
And some were old, they had had their fill
Of bitter unfruitful hours,
And knew that none of them, none, had known
A flower of a hope like ours!
Through their shut eyelids the dead looked up,
And without a voice they said:
'We lived without hope, without hope we died,
And hopeless we lie here dead;
And death is better than life that draws
Pain in, as it draws in breath,
If life never dreams of a coming day
When life shall not envy death.
Through the dark of our hours and our times we lived,
Uncheered by a single ray
Of such hope as lightens the lives of you
Who are finding life hard to-day;
With our little lanterns of human love
We lighted our dark warm night--
But you in the chill of the dawn are set
With your face to the eastern light.
Freedom is waiting with hands held out
Till you tear the veil from her face--
And when once men have seen the light of her eyes,
And felt her divine embrace,
The light of the world will be risen indeed,
And will shine in the eyes of men,
And those who come after will find life fair,
And their lives worth living then!
Will you strive to the light in your loud rough world,
That these things may come to pass,
Or lie in the shadow beside the child,
And strive to the sun through the grass?'
'My world while I may,' I cried; 'but you
Whose lives were as dark as your grave?'
'We too are a part of the coming light,'
They called through the smooth green wave.
Their white shrouds gleamed as the flood of green
Rolled over and hid them from me--
Hid all but the little hands and the hair,
And the face that I always see.
poem by Edith Nesbit
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Comes Death (A song)
'Out the window lies the future,
where we can see, but never reach her.' - P.N.
All the world is hopeless,
All the sights been seen
all the land is bought up
all the dreams been dreamed
The end comes to everything
to every time - to every place
comes death on wings of fire
cones death on wings of dark
All the years are fruitless
all the work's been done
all the curses lifted
all the prizes won
The end comes to everything
to every dream - to all that's green
comes death with eyes of fire
comes death with eyes of dark
All the difference taken
all the people same
all that's war is broken
all this peace is lame
The end comes to everything
to every war - to every peace
comes death with thoughts of fire
comes death with thoughts of dark
All the gold is rusted
all the cities gone
all the wind is hollow
all the lights left on
The end comes to everything
to every story - every theme
comes death on tireless mission
comes death with darkened peace
poem by Poet Dragon
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Lazarus Heart
He looked beneath his shirt today
There was a wound in his flesh so deep and wide
From the wound a lovely flower grew
From somewhere deep inside
He turned around to face his mother
To show her the wound in his breast that burned like a brand
But the sword that cut him open
Was the sword in his mothers hand
Every day another miracle
Only death will tear us apart
To sacrifice a life for yours
Id be the blood of the lazarus heart
The blood of the lazarus heart
Though the sword was his protection
The wound itself would give him power
The power to remake himself at the time of his darkest hour
She said the wound would give him courage and pain
The kind of pain that you cant hide
From the wound a lovely flower grew
From somewhere deep inside
Every day another miracle
Only death will keep us apart
To sacrifice a life for yours
Id be the blood of the lazarus heart
The blood of the lazarus heart
Birds on the roof of my mothers house
Ive no stones that chase them away
Birds on the roof of my mothers house
Will sit on my roof some day
They fly at the window, they fly at the door
Where does she get the strength to fight them anymore
She counts all her children as a shield against the pain
Lifts her eyes to the sky like a flower in the rain
Every day another miracle
Only death will keep us apart
To sacrifice a life for yours
Id be the blood of the lazarus heart
The blood of the lazarus heart
song performed by by Sting
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
De Rerum Virtute
I.
Here is the skull of a man: a man’s thoughts and emotions
Have moved under the thin bone vault like clouds
Under the blue one: love and desire and pain,
Thunderclouds of wrath and white gales of fear
Have hung inside here: and sometimes the curious desire of knowing
Values and purpose and the causes of things
Has coasted like a little observer air-plane over the images
That filled this mind: it never discovered much,
And now all’s empty, a bone bubble, a blown-out eggshell.
II.
That’s what it’s like: for the egg too has a mind,
Doing what our able chemists will never do,
Building the body of a hatchling, choosing among the proteins:
These for the young wing-muscles, these for the great
Crystalline eyes, these for the flighty nerves and brain:
Choosing and forming: a limited but superhuman intelligence,
Prophetic of the future and aware of the past:
The hawk’s egg will make a hawk, and the serpent’s
A gliding serpent: but each with a little difference
From its ancestors—and slowly, if it works, the race
Forms a new race: that also is a part of the plan
Within the egg. I believe the first living cell
Had echoes of the future in it, and felt
Direction and the great animals, the deep green forest
And whale’s-track sea; I believe this globed earth
Not all by chance and fortune brings forth her broods,
But feels and chooses. And the Galaxy, the firewheel
On which we are pinned, the whirlwind of stars in which our sun is one dust-grain, one electron, this giant atom of the universe
Is not blind force, but fulfils its life and intends its courses. “All things are full of God.
Winter and summer, day and night, war and peace are God.”
III.
Thus the thing stands; the labor and the games go on—
What for? What for? —Am I a God that I should know?
Men live in peace and happiness; men live in horror
And die howling. Do you think the blithe sun
Is ignorant that black waste and beggarly blindness trail him like hounds,
And will have him at last? He will be strangled
Among his dead satellites, remembering magnificence.
IV.
I stand on the cliff at Sovranes creek-mouth.
Westward beyond the raging water and the bent shoulder of the world
The bitter futile war in Korea proceeds, like an idiot
Prophesying. It is too hot in mind
For anyone, except God perhaps, to see beauty in it. Indeed it is hard to see beauty
In any of the acts of man: but that means the acts of a sick microbe
On a satellite of a dust-grain twirled in a whirlwind
In the world of stars ....
Something perhaps may come of him; in any event
He can’t last long. —Well: I am short of patience
Since my wife died ... and this era of spite and hate-filled half-worlds
Gets to the bone. I believe that man too is beautiful,
But it is hard to see, and wrapped up in falsehoods. Michael Angelo and the Greek sculptors—
How they flattered the race! Homer and Shakespeare—
How they flattered the race!
V.
One light is left us: the beauty of things, not men;
The immense beauty of the world, not the human world.
Look—and without imagination, desire nor dream—directly
At the mountains and sea. Are they not beautiful?
These plunging promontories and flame-shaped peaks
Stopping the sombre stupendous glory, the storm-fed ocean? Look at the Lobos Rocks off the shore,
With foam flying at their flanks, and the long sea-lions
Couching on them. Look at the gulls on the cliff wind,
And the soaring hawk under the cloud-stream—
But in the sage-brush desert, all one sun-stricken
Color of dust, or in the reeking tropical rain-forest,
Or in the intolerant north and high thrones of ice—is the earth not beautiful?
Nor the great skies over the earth?
The beauty of things means virtue and value in them.
It is in the beholder’s eye, not the world? Certainly.
It is the human mind’s translation of the transhuman
Intrinsic glory. It means that the world is sound,
Whatever the sick microbe does. But he too is part of it.
poem by Robinson Jeffers
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Lighted
Great books call on us, to tell,
The reason of all ill fate,
Is only the burning desire.
Now I strongly ask,
Who does not have?
With time I answered it.
From common man,
To the Lord above,
All are lighted with fire,
The fire of desire.
If not, why is the earth?
And why is life in it?
Is it this fire, that,
Moves the earth and life?
Yes, so burn with fire,
The fire of desire.
poem by Santhosh Vijayakumar
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Second Best
Here in the dark, O heart;
Alone with the enduring Earth, and Night,
And Silence, and the warm strange smell of clover;
Clear-visioned, though it break you; far apart
From the dead best, the dear and old delight;
Throw down your dreams of immortality,
O faithful, O foolish lover!
Here's peace for you, and surety; here the one
Wisdom - the truth! - 'All day the good glad sun
Showers love and labour on you, wine and song;
The greenwood laughs, the wind blows, all day long
Till night.' And night ends all things.
Then shall be
No lamp relumed in heaven, no voices crying,
Or changing lights, or dreams and forms that hover!
(And, heart, for all your sighing,
That gladness and those tears are over, over. . . .)
And has the truth brought no new hope at all,
Heart, that you're weeping yet for Paradise?
Do they still whisper, the old weary cries?
‘’Mid youth and song, feasting and carnival,
Through laughter, through the roses,as of old
Comes Death, on shadowy and relentless feet,
Death, unappeaseable by prayer or gold;
Death is the end, the end!’
Proud, then, clear-eyed and laughing, go to greet
Death as a friend!
Exile of immortality, strongly wise,
Strain through the dark with undesirous eyes
To what may lie beyond it. Sets your star,
O heart, for ever! Yet, behind the night,
Waits for the great unborn, somewhere afar,
Some white tremendous daybreak. And the light,
Returning, shall give back the golden hours,
Ocean a windless level, Earth a lawn
Spacious and full of sunlit dancing-places,
And laughter, and music, and, among the flowers,
The gay child-hearts of men, and the child-faces
O heart, in the great dawn!
poem by Rupert Brooke (1908)
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
Vote! | Copy!
Burn in Desire
dont play with fire
dont fondle my desire
becasue im burning like hell
inside this shell
ashes of my sin
enticed by what could have been
baby dont play with my fire
you'll burn in desire
i tell you to runaway
with me you wont stay
pure, but burned clean to the bone
with the burning edge in my tone
push you away
dont suffer my stay
just runaway
from the fire that plays
with your heart
your desire
ive caught you
you burn in my fire
cant fight away
what we know
will kill us, but in anyway
we cant let go
cant burn me out
black me out
get me out of your head
why the screaming?
your already dead
from desire
of this fire
kid dont play with fire
you take sin offered in my hand
im only a tease
smoldering what you understand
to a fire that cant please
only the thirst
that hurts
it rips us to pieces
beware of me
ill burn you eyes black
till you cant see
life from lust
or what to trust
i give you desire
now burn in fire
im your simple desire
take me, burn in fire
dancing with tongues of a devil
scorching sins
runaway, and ill take you again
ive told you my plans
but you hold my hand
smoldered by embers in my eyes
i hkkope you know this fire wont ever die
it burns in me
burns me up to death
till all i see
is passion, and death to the rest
take regret with the pain
going to hell
its all the same
driven by sin
all over again
play with fire
consumed with desire
poem by Kathryn Garner
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Ghost Eagle Still Flies Ghost Skies
beauty solemnly slips from grief dark shadows
her eyes were soulful as dark as her hair shines
dance with life smile at his funeral an angel divine
his spirit flew in bright white blue mountain thermals
morning burn golden light upon life sacred mountain
eagle flies no more these spectral blue white skies
hunters came creeping shot free eagle as he soars flies
feelings ghost haunting hunt skies where eagle flies no more
poem by Terence George Craddock
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
At Thurgarton Church
To the memory of my father
At Thurgarton Church the sun
burns the winter clouds over
the gaunt Danish stone
and thatched reeds that cover
the barest chapel I know.
I could compare it with
the Norse longboats that bore
burning the body forth
in honour from the shore
of great fjords long ago.
The sky is red and cold
overhead, and three small
sturdy trees keep a hold
on the world and the stone wall
that encloses the dead below.
I enter and find I stand
in a great barn, bleak and bare.
Like ice the winter ghosts and
the white walls gleam and flare
and flame as the sun drops low.
And I see, then, that slowly
the December day has gone.
I stand in the silence, not wholly
believing I am alone.
Somehow I cannot go.
Then a small wind rose, and the trees
began to crackle and stir
and I watched the moon by degrees
ascend in the window till her
light cut a wing in the shadow.
I thought: the House of the Dead.
The dead moon inherits it.
And I seem in a sense to have died
as I rise from where I sit
and out into darkness go.
I know as I leave I shall pass
where Thurgarton’s dead lie
at those old stones in the grass
under the cold moon’s eye.
I see the old bones glow.
No, they do not sleep here
in the long holy night of
the serene soul, but keep here
a dark tenancy and the right of
rising up to go.
Here the owl and soul shriek with
the voice of the dead as they turn
on the polar spit and burn
without hope and seek with
out hope the holy home below.
Yet to them the mole and
mouse bring a wreath and a breath
of the flowering leaves of the soul, and
it is from the Tree of Death
the leaves of life grow.
The rain, the sometime summer
rain on a memory of roses
will fall lightly and come a-
mong them as it erases
summers so long ago.
And the voices of those
once so much loved will flitter
over the nettled rows
of graves, and the holly tree twitter
like friends they used to know.
And not far away the
icy and paralysed stream
has found it also, that day the
flesh became glass and a dream
with no where to go.
Haunting the December
fields their bitter lives
entreat us to remember
the lost spirit that grieves
over these fields like a scarecrow.
That grieves over all it ever
did and all, all not
done, that grieves over
its crosspurposed lot:
to know and not to know.
The masterless dog sits
outside the church door
with dereliction haunting its
heart that hankers for
the hand that loved it so.
Not in a small grave
outside the stone wall
will the love that it gave
ever be returned, not for all
time or tracks in the snow.
More mourned the death of the dog
than our bones ever shall
receive from the hand of god
this bone again, or all
that high hand could bestow.
As I stand by the porch
I believe that no one has heard
here in Thurgarton Church
a single veritable word
save the unspoken No.
The godfathered negative
that responds to our mistaken
incredulous and heartbroken
desire above all to live
as though things were not so.
Desire to live as though the
two-footed clay stood up
proud never to know the
tempests that rage in the cup
under a rainbow.
Desire above all to live
as though the soul was stone,
believing we cannot give
or love since we are alone
and always will be so.
That heartbroken desire
to live as though no light
ever set the seas on fire
and no sun burned at night
or Mercy walked to and fro.
The proud flesh cries: I am not
caught up in the great cloud
of my unknowing. But that
proud flesh had endowed
us with the cloud we know.
To this the unspoken No
of the dead god responds
and then the whirlwinds blow
over all the things and beyond
and the dead mop and mow.
And there in the livid dust
and bones of death we search
until we find as we must
outside Thurgarton Church
only wild grasses blow.
I hear the old bone in me cry
and the dying spirit call:
I have forfeited all
and once and for all must die
and this is all that I know.
For now in a wild way we
know that justice is served
and that we die in the clay we
dread, desired, and deserved,
awaiting no Judgement Day.
poem by George Barker
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Genesis
In the outer world that was before this earth,
That was before all shape or space was born,
Before the blind first hour of time had birth,
Before night knew the moonlight or the morn;
Yea, before any world had any light,
Or anything called God or man drew breath,
Slowly the strong sides of the heaving night
Moved, and brought forth the strength of life and death.
And the sad shapeless horror increate
That was all things and one thing, without fruit,
Limit, or law; where love was none, nor hate,
Where no leaf came to blossom from no root;
The very darkness that time knew not of,
Nor God laid hand on, nor was man found there,
Ceased, and was cloven in several shapes; above
Light, and night under, and fire, earth, water, and air.
Sunbeams and starbeams, and all coloured things,
All forms and all similitudes began;
And death, the shadow cast by life's wide wings,
And God, the shade cast by the soul of man.
Then between shadow and substance, night and light,
Then between birth and death, and deeds and days,
The illimitable embrace and the amorous fight
That of itself begets, bears, rears, and slays,
The immortal war of mortal things that is
Labour and life and growth and good and ill,
The mild antiphonies that melt and kiss,
The violent symphonies that meet and kill,
All nature of all things began to be.
But chiefliest in the spirit (beast or man,
Planet of heaven or blossom of earth or sea)
The divine contraries of life began.
For the great labour of growth, being many, is one;
One thing the white death and the ruddy birth;
The invisible air and the all-beholden sun,
And barren water and many-childed earth.
And these things are made manifest in men
From the beginning forth unto this day:
Time writes and life records them, and again
Death seals them lest the record pass away.
For if death were not, then should growth not be,
Change, nor the life of good nor evil things;
Nor were there night at all nor light to see,
Nor water of sweet nor water of bitter springs.
For in each man and each year that is born
Are sown the twin seeds of the strong twin powers;
The white seed of the fruitful helpful morn,
The black seed of the barren hurtful hours.
And he that of the black seed eateth fruit,
To him the savour as honey shall be sweet;
And he in whom the white seed hath struck root,
He shall have sorrow and trouble and tears for meat.
And him whose lips the sweet fruit hath made red
In the end men loathe and make his name a rod;
And him whose mouth on the unsweet fruit hath fed
In the end men follow and know for very God.
And of these twain, the black seed and the white,
All things come forth, endured of men and done;
And still the day is great with child of night,
And still the black night labours with the sun.
And each man and each year that lives on earth
Turns hither or thither, and hence or thence is fed;
And as a man before was from his birth,
So shall a man be after among the dead.
poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Pluck the rose to colour the dreams
The springs of my life
Have been burnt
By the violet light of the moon
The blood turns blue in every thought
The breath turns fire in every sight
Every dropp of saliva becomes the poison for the heart.
The gust of wish shaking the hell gates
And the river dries up to death in the desert.
I don't know
How long the night is
I don't know the density of the dark
Neither have I known where the top is
Of my desires and the depth-less bottom lies
I don't have any measurement to fathom.
But I only know the spread
Of the crops up to the horizon
And the scent from the center
The drug of my heart and the desire …
The horse of my wish
Jumping over the fence across the sea
And the lazy sleep keeps
Rolling down from this side to that
And the dreams turn black and white.
But I am waiting for the summer to turn
To melt the snow
And the greens to come
Then I shall scale down the hill
And pluck the rose along with the pollen
To color my all dreams.
poem by Abdul Wahab
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!