A Birthday Sequel!
Dawn break gently across the glen,
That those, to whom you make a difference, may be born again,
Mists make way, run,
A brand new day tied with all my hopes comes undone,
Trees bow not any lower,
Up you sway with the life of all things fluttering at the core,
Bloom little flower pour from your golden chalice,
Let your perfumes kindle a memory in the one across the seas,
Sing on sweet bird, not of the humdrum,
Bubble with songs of sweet hope and good things to come,
Winds keep your shrieks low, stir not the old woe,
That let the past night’s darkness swallow,
Curl on new leaf, this day you embrace,
Let him add abundance to our grace,
Hills- shield him with my prayers, majestically tower,
In thy shadows lie my dreams waiting to soar,
Buzz a tune bumble bee,
That reminds him of our promises at least once, daily
Clouds gather your skirts, head away,
One who sets my face beaming it's his birthday.
Let the skies shine through
A day of colors unfold its hued light,
Let its loveliness in your perfection stand out doubly bright,
Celestial spheres disclose the truth of the ages,
That in absence, letters mingle souls than kisses.
What if the roads are not trodden by our mutual feet?
In the dumb throng of men and women,
Only your face projects, only you I greet,
Let this dawn light my life and I shall call it fair,
To know of yearning and strange despair,
To stretch our yearning hands to gain,
Love’s tide shall come again.
poem by Seema joglekar
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Haunted Streets
Lo, haply walking in some clattering street--
Where throngs of men and women dumbly pass,
Like shifting pictures seen within a glass
Which leave no trace behind--one seems to meet,
In roads once trodden by our mutual feet,
A face projected from that shadowy mass
Of faces, quite familiar as it was,
Which beaming on us stands out clear and sweet.
The face of faces we again behold
That lit our life when life was very fair,
And leaps our heart toward eyes and mouth and hair:
Oblivious of the undying love grown cold,
Or body sheeted in the churchyard mould,
We stretch out yearning hands and grasp--the air.
poem by Mathilde Blind
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What Will God Do?
What will God do this brand new day?
Whose world will God improve?
To whom will Jesus show the way
To guide them to the Truth?
Our God is love and truth and light
And all we know that's good.
What will God do to put things right
Within our neighbourhood?
What will God do this brand new morn?
Right from the start, He's here!
Before the light that heralds dawn,
His love casts out all fear.
His perfect love transcends the night,
Its darkness holds no power!
Our God has all things in His sight,
Each second of each hour!
What will God do for you, for me?
What prayers have Christians prayed?
What miracles are yet to be?
What wonders yet unmade?
Yet we are called to help the Lord,
As if His hands and feet.
To serve with love, not for reward,
With tenderness so sweet.
What will we do for God today
To serve our God and King?
To help Him save lost lambs astray,
To teach them psalms to sing?
Because today is quite unique,
Serve God before it's through
God knows our needs before we speak!
Yet asks, 'What will YOU do? '
poem by Denis Martindale
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A Hymn for Evening
The beam-repelling mists arise,
And evening spreads obscurer skies;
The twilight will the night forerun,
And night itself be soon begun.
Upon thy knees devoutly bow,
And pray the Lord of glory now
To fill thy breast, or deadly sin
May cause a blinder night within.
And whether pleasing vapours rise
Which gently dim the closing eyes,
Which make the weary members bless'd
With sweet refreshment in their rest,
Or whether spirits in the brain
Dispel their soft embrace again,
And on my watchful bed I stay,
Forsook by sleep and waiting day,
Be God for ever in my view
And never He forsake me, too;
But, still as day concludes in night
To break again with new-born light,
His wondrous bounty let me find
With still a more enlighten'd mind
When grace and love in one agree,
Grace from God, and love from me,
Grace that will from heaven inspire,
Love that seals it with desire,
Grace and love that mingle beams,
And fill me with encreasing flames.
Thou that hast Thy palace far
Above the moon and every star,
Thou that sittest on a throne
To which the night was never known,
Regard my voice and make me bless'd,
By kindly granting its request.
If thoughts on Thee my soul employ,
My darkness will afford me joy,
'Till Thou shalt call, and I shall soar,
And part with darkness evermore.
poem by Thomas Parnell
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Natalie's Gift
Natalie so bright and free
A flower to unfold
The essence of serenity
Of wisdom's tales untold.
Your magic tune
The song of life
Your essence of pure love
Will lift the world from darkness
To lofty realms above
And now the tide is turning
Your youthful mind is burning
And that for which your yearning
Is right within your soul.
Please know you're loved
And cared for in spite of
Life's cruel pain
The light you give to others
Has never been in vain.
And when the winds of time
Have blown away the clouds
You are the song of joy
The birds will sing aloud.
poem by Lynne FincherSpringarden
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Music
Move on, light hands, so strongly tenderly,
Now with dropped calm and yearning undersong,
Now swift and loud, tumultuously strong,
And I in darkness, sitting near to thee,
Shall not only hear, and feel, but shall not see,
One hour made passionately bright with dreams,
Keen glimpses of life's splendour, dashing gleams
Of what we would, and what we cannot be.
Surely not painful ever, yet not glad,
Shall such hours be to me, but blindly sweet,
Sharp with all yearning and all fact at strife,
Dreams that shine by with unremembered feet,
And tones that like far distance make this life
Spectral and wonderful and strangely sad.
poem by Archibald Lampman
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Till You Come!
I will be the gurgling stream,
Surmounting all your hurdles, I shall unwind,
By the head I will drown a hundred sorrows,
And lend you the quiet mind.
I will be a distant star,
On all your sojourns my lights shall burn,
Ask me for whom I shine, for a hundred light years,
And your name, they shall not learn.
I will be the dark night,
Wait till the moon returns every fortnight,
Watch over you with my ten thousand stars,
Till the dawn restores light.
I will be the bird’s call,
In my dawn song sing your praises & promises,
But in none of those ten thousand notes shall fall,
The skip my heart misses.
I will be the blue skies,
That gives your each day a new expression,
Up there lie written a thousand sighs,
And you can’t erase one.
I shall be the gentle breeze,
Seeking you, glide through all your paths chosen,
In my path bend a thousand blades of grass,
And not rest on one.
I will be the tender blossom,
Like a string of dewy pearls wear all your burden,
In a day’s deadline, brave a thousand woes,
And not cushion from one.
I will be the mighty river,
Thirsting to meet the sea, rush driven,
Let thousand springs flow in my path,
I shall not quench from one.
I shall be the raging storm,
Through me all your tempers shall run,
I will rumple the hair on a thousand trees,
And not uproot one.
I will be the brilliant rainbow,
Where ever your dreams have trodden,
In ten thousand wishes, gift you all my colors,
And not save one.
I will be the spring,
Paint you flowers as bright as a beacon,
Shall brave the wrath of a hundred winters,
And not a leaf will I burn.
I will be the bumble bee,
And whine away all your inattentions
Shall steal the scent of a thousand perfumes,
And not breathe of one.
I will be the cool wind,
That wraps around you in the sun,
I will part a hundred clouds,
And not drench in one.
TILL YOU COME!
x--x--x
Seema.Joglekar.
5th Dec -2009
poem by Seema joglekar
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Ballade of Summer's Sleep
Sweet summer is gone; they have laid her away-
The last sad hours that were touched with her grace-
In the hush where the ghosts of the dead flowers play;
The sleep that is sweet of her slumbering space
Let not a sight or a sound erase
Of the woe that hath fallen on all the lands:
Gather, ye dreams, to her sunny face,
Shadow her head with your golden hands.
The woods that are golden and red for a day
Girdle the hills in a jewelled case,
Like a girl's strange mirth, ere the quick death slay
The beautiful life that he hath in chase.
Darker and darker the shadows pace
Out of the north to the southern sands,
Ushers bearing the winter's mace:
Keep them away with your woven hands.
The yellow light lies on the wide wastes gray,
More bitter and cold than the winds that race,
From the skirts of the autumn, tearing away,
This way and that way, the woodland lace.
In the autumn's cheek is a hectic trace;
Behind her the ghost of the winter stands;
Sweet summer will moan in her soft gray place:
Mantle her head with your glowing hands.
Envoi.
Till the slayer be slain and the spring displace
The might of his arms with her rose-crowned bands,
Let her heart not gather a dream that is base:
Shadow her head with your golden hands.
poem by Archibald Lampman
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Love-Trilogy
I.
SHE stood against the Orient sun,
Her face inscrutable for light;
A myriad larks in unison
Sang o'er her, soaring out of sight.
A myriad flowers around her feet
Burst flame-like from the yielding sod,
Till all the wandering airs were sweet
With incense mounting up to God.
A mighty rainbow shook, inclined
Towards her, from the Occident,
Girdling the cloud-wrack which enshrined
Half the light-bearing firmament.
Lit showers flashed golden o'er the hills,
And trees flung silver to the breeze,
And, scattering diamonds, fleet-foot rills
Fled laughingly across the leas.
Yea Love, the skylarks laud but thee,
And writ in flowers thine awful name;
Spring is thy shade, dread Ecstasy,
And life a brand which feeds thy flame.
II.
WINDING all my life about thee,
Let me lay my lips on thine;
What is all the world without thee,
Mine--oh mine!
Let me press my heart out on thee,
Crush it like a fiery vine,
Spilling sacramental on thee
Love's red wine.
Let thy strong eyes yearning o'er me
Draw me with their force divine;
All my soul has gone before me
Clasping thine.
Irresistibly I follow,
As wherever we may run
Runs our shadow, as the swallow
Seeks the sun.
Yea, I tremble, swoon, surrender
All my spirit to thy sway,
As a star is drowned in splendour
Of the day.
III.
I CHARGE you, O winds of the West, O winds with the wings of the dove,
That ye blow o'er the brows of my Love, breathing low that I sicken for love.
I charge you, O dews of the Dawn, O tears of the star of the morn,
That ye fall at the feet of my love with the sound of one weeping forlorn.
I charge you, O birds of the Air, O birds flying home to your nest,
That ye sing in his ears of the joy that for ever has fled from my breast.
I charge you, O flowers of the Earth, O frailest of things, and most fair,
That ye droop in his path as the life in me shrivels consumed by despair.
O Moon, when he lifts up his face, when he seeth the waning of thee,
A memory of her who lies wan on the limits of life let it be.
Many tears cannot quench, nor my sighs extinguish, the flames of love's fire,
Which lifteth my heart like a wave, and smites it, and breaks its desire.
I rise like one in a dream when I see the red sun flaring low,
That drags me back shuddering from sleep each morning to life with its woe.
I go like one in a dream, unbidden my feet know the way
To that garden where love stood in blossom with the red and white hawthorn of May.
The song of the throstle is hushed, and the fountain is dry to its core,
The moon cometh up as of old; she seeks, but she finds him no more.
The pale-faced, pitiful moon shines down on the grass where I weep,
My face to the earth, and my breast in an anguish ne'er soothed into sleep.
The moon returns, and the spring, birds warble, trees burst into leaf,
But Love once gone, goes for ever, and all that endures is the grief.
poem by Mathilde Blind
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Dawn Of A New Earth
dawn sways still birds
into golden dawn chorus
paradise heard bird songs
birth born birds of flight
soar on wings of songs
carried upon chorus air
serenades to dreams
to wonder sung solos
dawn bathes our faces
light lit faces seal love
passion dawn sways seas
in warm afterglow love
truly the dawn
sways the seas
seas of infinity
dawn fire moves
model clay bodies
bodies of breathing
thunder distance echoes
over new shores
over new horizons
truly between wake
dreams broke sleep
is interaction of life
an interaction of life
infused into hard world
earth ecosystem harmony
potential world of bliss
love creativity
spinning into infinity
poem by Terence George Craddock
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Wishing You Were Here
I'm writing letters and your candle is burning
Things could be better, can't handle this yearning.
Can't stop my head from spinning,
wishing you were here.
Look at your photo but it still can't hold me,
I just recall the things you never ever told me
Like you're the one and I am
wishing you were here.
Wish you were here
to see the moon in the sky
Oh here, to see the light in your eyes
Looking at the stars and
Wishing you were here.
The clock is ticking but the time moves slowly
The weeks go quickly so you just won't know me
I'm writing love songs and I'm wishing
Wish you were here,
to see the moon in the skies
Oh here, to see the light in your eyes
Looking at the stars and
Wishing you were here
To put a smile on my face
Oh here, to get caught in my
warm embrace
Looking at the stars and
wishing you were here
Bridge:
To calm the restless nights
To kiss my fears away.
Here, to make this wrong seem right
To start our lives today.
Wish you were here,
to see the moon in the skies
Oh here, to see the light in your eyes
Looking at the stars and
Wishing you were here
To put a smile on my face
Oh here, to get caught in my
warm embrace
Looking at the stars and
wishing you were here
song performed by by Debbie Gibson
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Beauty
Even as on some black background full of night
And hollow storm in cloudy disarray,
The forceful brush of some great master may
More brilliantly evoke a higher light;
So beautiful, so delicately white,
So like a very metaphor of May,
Your loveliness on my life's sombre grey
In its perfection stands out doubly bright.
And yet your beauty breeds a strange despair,
And pang of yearning in the helpless heart;
To shield you from time's fraying wear and tear,
That from yourself yourself would wrench apart,
How save you, fairest, but to set you where
Mortality kills death in deathless art?
poem by Mathilde Blind
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To A Cat
STATELY, kindly, lordly friend,
Condescend
Here to sit by me, and turn
Glorious eyes that smile and burn,
Golden eyes, love's lustrous meed,
On the golden page I read.
All your wondrous wealth of hair,
Dark and fair,
Silken-shaggy, soft and bright
As the clouds and beams of night,
Pays my reverent hand's caress
Back with friendlier gentleness.
Dogs may fawn on all and some
As they come;
You, a friend of loftier mind,
Answer friends alone in kind.
Just your foot upon my hand
Softly bids it understand.
Morning round this silent sweet
Garden-seat
Sheds its wealth of gathering light,
Thrills the gradual clouds with might,
Changes woodland, orchard, heath,
Lawn, and garden there beneath.
Fair and dim they gleamed below:
Now they glow
Deep as even your sunbright eyes,
Fair as even the wakening skies.
Can it not or can it be
Now that you give thanks to see ?
May not you rejoice as I,
Seeing the sky
Change to heaven revealed, and bid
Earth reveal the heaven it hid
All night long from stars and moon,
Now the sun sets all in tune?
What within you wakes with day
Who can say?
All too little may we tell,
Friends who like each other well,
What might haply, if we might,
Bid us read our lives aright.
Wild on woodland ways your sires
Flashed like fires;
Fair as flame and fierce and fleet
As with wings on wingless feet
Shone and sprang your mother, free,
Bright and brave as wind or sea.
Free and proud and glad as they,
Here to-day
Rests or roams their radiant child,
Vanquished not, but reconciled,
Free from curb of aught above
Save the lovely curb of love.
Love through dreams of souls divine
Fain would shine
Round a dawn whose light and song
Then should right our mutual wrong---
Speak, and seal the love-lit law
Sweet Assisi's seer foresaw.
Dreams were theirs; yet haply may
Dawn a day
When such friends and fellows born,
Seeing our earth as fair at morn,
May for wiser love's sake see
More of heaven's deep heart than we.
poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne
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The poet and poetess
(a poetical exercise with Menime Soul)
The poet:
Oh..is it just a strange illusion..?
I feel love knocking on my door.
I know..and this is my confession..
I always loved you from my core.
The poetess:
My love is like a darkness fire
It's like a subconscious dream
It burns to kill any desire
Even you hate me and you scream
But I'll make you be completely mine
And you will feel so much alive
And when in dawn the sun will shine
you'll be yourself and you'll survive.
The poet:
Oh great..this is not an illusion.
This is love in its perfection.
Hard to believe but I know my dear..
This is true love's resurrection.
The poetess:
My love for you is complete and strong
I feel we met in other life
And love of a life time is one song
We sing it as husband and wife.
The poet:
I waited my whole life for this night
No matter how cold it is out
You changed my day, you're the dawn of light
Your love keeps me warm, it's no doubt.
The poetess:
When we can feel our love inside
And maybe it is more than love
It's our everything, it's our flood tide
A new world of time, a rock dove.
And I feel this need deeply within
And our dawn entwining the souls
By inspiring breath and touching skin
At the moment we become whole.
poem by Marieta Maglas
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The Streets Of Broken Dreams
This life is more than dreams, I know,
Yet this dream came to me,
For down the streets my feet walked slow
While no-one else could see...
For in my spirit walk I went
And gently told to pray
For those to whom I had been sent
As I walked past their way...
So many broken hearts and dreams,
So many broken lives
And broken promises it seems
For husbands and their wives...
And little children roam those streets
Like lions, tigers, bears...
And hardly one the Saviour meets
Except in solemn prayers...
Relationships are all we are,
If sweethearts now and then,
Not everyone's a superstar
Who gets ten out of ten...
For some, it's failures all the time,
A humdrum life, no more,
Yet with the Lord, life's so sublime,
A gift worth praying for...
So as I walked past humdrum homes,
I prayed to God with love,
Who sees the bees in honeycombs,
Upon His Throne above...
For He alone can heal Mankind,
Restore lost souls to Him
And break their burdens that now bind,
Then fill them to the brim...
As I looked back, I saw things change,
Like darkness turned to light,
As God began to rearrange
And fight to make things right...
And only then did my dream fade
And melt away from view...
Then God declared, 'The changes made
Were simply thanks to you...'
Denis Martindale, copyright, June 2012.
We can hear the word of the Lord on
Revelation TV on UK Sky Digital 581
as well as the WATCH NOW link on
the revelationtv-dot-com website...
poem by Denis Martindale
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Lotus Leaves
I -
There is no peace beneath the moon,-
Ah! in those meadows is there peace
Where, girdled with a silver fleece,
As a bright shepherd, strays the moon? -
Queen of the gardens of the sky,
Where stars like lilies, white and fair,
Shine through the mists of frosty air,
Oh, tarry, for the dawn is nigh! -
Oh, tarry, for the envious day
Stretches long hands to catch thy feet.
Alas! but thou art overfleet,
Alas! I know thou wilt not stay.
II -
Eastward the dawn has broken red,
The circling mists and shadows flee;
Aurora rises from the sea,
And leaves the crocus-flowered bed. -
Eastward the silver arrows fall,
Splintering the veil of holy night:
And a long wave of yellow light
Breaks silently on tower and hall. -
And speeding wide across the wold
Wakes into flight some fluttering bird;
And all the chestnut tops are stirred,
And all the branches streaked with gold.
III -
To outer senses there is peace,
A dream-like peace on either hand,
Deep silence in the shadowy land,
Deep silence where the shadows cease, -
Save for a cry that echoes shrill
From some lone bird disconsolate;
A curlew calling to its mate;
The answer from the distant hill. -
And, herald of my love to Him
Who, waiting for the dawn, doth lie,
The orbed maiden leaves the sky,
And the white firs grow more dim.
IV -
Up sprang the sun to run his race,
The breeze blew fair on meadow and lea,
But in the west I seemed to see
The likeness of a human face. -
A linnet on the hawthorn spray
Sang of the glories of the spring,
And made the flow'ring copses ring
With gladness for the new-born day. -
A lark from out the grass I trod
Flew wildly, and was lost to view
In the great seamless veil of blue
That hangs before the face of God. -
The willow whispered overhead
That death is but a newer life
And that with idle words of strife
We bring dishonour on the dead. -
I took a branch from off the tree,
And hawthorn branches drenched with dew,
I bound them with a sprig of yew,
And made a garland fair to see. -
I laid the flowers where He lies
(Warm leaves and flowers on the stones):
What joy I had to sit alone
Till evening broke on tired eyes: -
Till all the shifting clouds had spun
A robe of gold for God to wear
And into seas of purple air
Sank the bright galley of the sun.
V -
Shall I be gladdened for the day,
And let my inner heart be stirred
By murmuring tree or song of bird,
And sorrow at the wild winds' play? -
Not so, such idle dreams belong
To souls of lesser depth than mine;
I feel that I am half divine;
I that I am great and strong. -
I know that every forest tree
By labour rises from the root
I know that none shall gather fruit
By sailing on the barren sea.
poem by Oscar Wilde
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Moving Through The Dew
I
Moving through the dew, moving through the dew,
Ere I waken in the city—Life, thy dawn makes all things new!
And up a fir-clad glen, far from all the haunts of men,
Up a glen among the mountains, oh my feet are wings again!
Moving through the dew, moving through the dew,
O mountains of my boyhood, I come again to you,
By the little path I know, with the sea far below,
And above, the great cloud-galleons with their sails of rose and snow
As of old, when all was young, and the earth a song unsung
And the heather through the crimson dawn its Eden incense flung
From the mountain-heights of joy, for a careless-hearted boy,
And the lavrocks rose like fountain sprays of bliss that ne’er could cloy,
From their little beds of bloom, from the golden gorse and broom,
With a song to God the Giver, o’er that waste of wild perfume;
Blowing from height to height, in a glory of great light,
While the cottage-clustered valleys held the lilac last of night,
So, when dawn is in the skies, in a dream, a dream, I rise,
And I follow my lost boyhood to the heights of Paradise.
Life, thy dawn makes all things new! Hills of Youth, I come to you,
Moving through the dew, moving through the dew.
II
Moving through the dew, moving through the dew,
Floats a brother’s face to meet me! Is it you? Is it you?
For the night I leave behind keeps these dazzled eyes still blind!
But oh, the little hill-flowers, their scent is wise and kind;
And I shall not lose the way from the darkness to the day,
While dust can cling as their scent clings to memory for aye;
And the least link in the chain can recall the whole again,
And heaven at last resume its far-flung harvests, grain by grain.
To the hill-flowers clings my dust, and tho’ eyeless Death may thrust
All else into the darkness, in their heaven I put my trust;
And a dawn shall bid me climb to the little spread of thyme
Where first I heard the ripple of the fountain-heads of rhyme.
And a fir-wood that I know, from dawn to sunset-glow,
Shall whisper to a lonely sea, that swings far, far below.
Death, thy dawn makes all things new. Hills of Youth, I come to you,
Moving through the dew, moving through the dew.
poem by Alfred Noyes
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Sun-Woman
Let the sun show
over the hills, I love it so
Life is the sun,
the sun is life
let life rise, brightly, slowly, funly
let life never set.
But it does.
light turns to night, the
darkness comes
my eyes close slowly
sun, please don’t go.
please don’t go.
but wait-in the light of the setting sun
I see some hope
a slender shape
walks over the hills in the distance
the sun halls to a stop, seems
to look at the figure
seems to stare, decide if it’s worthy
then the sun starts flying,
back up into the sky.
the figure keeps walking, closer,
closer.
the sun keeps moving, as fast as light itself,
into the middle of the sky above me.
the shape is hope, hope itself
she is light, and for me, the only
way to avoid darkness.
She is not far now, I see her face.
she says, “Are you all right? ”
“Don’t worry, ” I tell her, “the sun is not
my enemy anymore. He is my ally.”
She smiles at my healing face, and then I say,
“You were my hope, you are my hope. You
are my only hope of avoiding the darkness.”
“And you are the same to me, my love, ”
She says.
I jump up and I take her hands,
and I sing, “My love, my hope,
when you go the darkness comes,
but as long as you come back
light will shed on my weary face.
I owe my life to you, Sun-Woman.
I owe my life to you, my love.
I owe my life to you.
I owe my life to you.”
poem by Llew N. Rmail
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Etude Realiste
A Baby's feet, like sea-shells pink,
Might tempt, should heaven see meet,
An angel's lips to kiss, we think,
A baby's feet.
Like rose-hued sea-flowers toward the heat
They stretch and spread and wink
Their ten soft buds that part and meet.
No flower-bells that expand and shrink
Gleam half so heavenly sweet
As shine on life's untrodden brink
A baby's feet.
II.
A baby's hands, like rosebuds furled
Whence yet no leaf expands,
Ope if you touch, though close upcurled,
A baby's hands.
Then, fast as warriors grip their brands
When battle's bolt is hurled,
They close, clenched hard like tightening bands.
No rosebuds yet by dawn impearled
Match, even in loveliest lands,
The sweetest flowers in all the world -
A baby's hands.
III.
A baby's eyes, ere speech begin,
Ere lips learn words or sighs,
Bless all things bright enough to win
A baby's eyes.
Love, while the sweet thing laughs and lies,
And sleep flows out and in,
Sees perfect in them Paradise.
Their glance might cast out pain and sin,
Their speech make dumb the wise,
By mute glad godhead felt within
A baby's eyes.
poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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The Dead Child
ALL silent is the room,
There is no stir of breath,
Save mine, as in the gloom
I sit alone with Death.
Short life it had, the sweet,
Small babe here lying dead,
With tapers at its feet
And tapers at its head.
Dear little hands, too frail
Their grasp on life to hold;
Dear little mouth so pale,
So solemn, and so cold;
Small feet that nevermore
About the house shall run;
Thy little life is o’er!
Thy little journey done!
Sweet infant, dead too soon,
Thou shalt no more behold
The face of sun or moon,
Or starlight clear and cold;
Nor know, where thou art gone,
The mournfulness and mirth
We know who dwell upon
This sad, glad, mad, old earth.
The foolish hopes and fond
That cheat us to the last
Thou shalt not feel; beyond
All these things thou hast passed.
The struggles that upraise
The soul by slow degrees
To God, through weary days—
Thou hast no part in these.
And at thy childish play
Shall we, O little one,
No more behold thee? Nay,
No more beneath the sun.
Death’s sword may well be bared
’Gainst those grown old in strife,
But, ah! it might have spared
Thy little unlived life.
Why talk as in despair?
Just God, whose rod I kiss,
Did not make thee so fair
To end thy life at this.
There is some pleasant shore—
Far from His Heaven of Pride,
Where those strong souls who bore
His Cross in bliss abide—
Some place where feeble things,
For Life’s long war too weak,
Young birds with unfledged wings,
Buds nipped by storm-winds bleak,
Young lambs left all forlorn
Beneath a bitter sky,
Meek souls to sorrow born,
Find refuge when they die.
There day is one long dawn,
And from the cups of flowers
Light dew-filled clouds updrawn
Rain soft and perfumed showers.
Child Jesus walketh there
Amidst child-angel bands,
With smiling lips, and fair
White roses in His hands.
I kiss thee on the brow,
I kiss thee on the eyes—
Farewell! Thy home is now
The Children’s Paradise.
poem by Victor James Daley
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Sydney Exhibition Cantata
Songs of morning, with your breath
Sing the darkness now to death;
Radiant river, beaming bay,
Fair as Summer, shine to-day;
Flying torrent, falling slope, ~Chorus~
Wear the face as bright as Hope;
Wind and woodland, hill and sea,
Lift your voices - sing for glee!
Greet the guests your fame has won -
Put your brightest garments on.
~Recitative and Chorus~
Lo, they come - the lords unknown,
Sons of Peace, from every zone!
See above our waves unfurled
All the flags of all the world!
North and south and west and east
Gather in to grace our feast.
Shining nations! let them see
How like England we can be.
Mighty nations! let them view
Sons of generous sires in you.
~Solo - Tenor~
By the days that sound afar,
Sound, and shine like star by star;
By the grand old years aflame
With the fires of England's fame -
Heirs of those who fought for right
When the world's wronged face was white -
Meet these guests your fortune sends,
As your fathers met their friends;
Let the beauty of your race
Glow like morning in your face.
Part II
~Solo - Bass~
Where now a radiant city stands,
The dark oak used to wave,
The elfin harp of lonely lands
Above the wild man's grave;
Through windless woods, one clear, sweet stream
(Sing soft and very low)
Stole like the river of a dream
A hundred years ago.
~Solo - Alto~
Upon the hills that blaze to-day
With splendid dome and spire,
The naked hunter tracked his prey,
And slumbered by his fire.
Within the sound of shipless seas
The wild rose used to blow
About the feet of royal trees,
A hundred years ago.
~Solo - Soprano~
Ah! haply on some mossy slope,
Against the shining springs,
In those old days the angel Hope
Sat down with folded wings;
Perhaps she touched in dreams sublime,
In glory and in glow,
The skirts of this resplendent time,
A hundred years ago.
Part III
~Children~
A gracious morning on the hills of wet
And wind and mist her glittering feet has set;
The life and heat of light have chased away
Australia's dark, mysterious yesterday.
A great, glad glory now flows down and shines
On gold-green lands where waved funereal pines.
~Solo - Soprano~
And hence a fair dream goes before our gaze,
And lifts the skirts of the hereafter days,
And sees afar, as dreams alone can see,
The splendid marvel of the years to be.
Part IV
~Basses and Chorus~
Father, All-Bountiful, humbly we bend to Thee;
Heads are uncovered in sight of Thy face.
Here, in the flow of the psalms that ascend to Thee,
Teach us to live for the light of Thy grace.
Here, in the pause of the anthems of praise to Thee,
Master and Maker - pre-eminent Friend -
Teach us to look to Thee - give all our days to Thee,
Now and for evermore, world without end!
poem by Henry Kendall
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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