En.Citatepedia^®.ro

A Perfect Sonnet

Oh, for a perfect sonnet of all time!
Wild music, heralding immortal hopes,
Strikes the bold prelude. To it from each clime,
Like tropic birds on some green island slopes,
Thoughts answering come, high metaphors, brave tropes,
In ordered measure and majestic rhyme.
And, presently, all hearts, kings', poets', popes',
Throb to the truth of this new theme sublime.
Anon 'tis reason speaks. A note of death
Strengthens the symphony yet fraught with pain,
And men seek meanings with abated breath,
Vexing their souls,--till lo, once more, the strain
Breaks through triumphant, and Love's master voice
Thrills the last phrase and bids all joy rejoice.

poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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The Moderns

To many reading modern poetry more interesting the meaning in the metaphors they seek to find
They feel it makes their brains work that much harder that it is good exercise for the mind
Rhyme for their great brains seems that bit too simple it does not test their thinking power at all
'Tis not a poem to them if it seems simple and the meaning in it easy to recall,
Yes rhyme for them it does seem that bit simple and deciphering it to them is not a test
The hidden meaning in the metaphors is something that does seem to try them best
Rhyme poetry to them is too simple and far too easy for to understand
It has to be blank verse with dozens of metaphors for their interest for to command
They look on rhyme and bush poets as inferior their preference in poets and poetry they make known
On literature they air their opinions like it is said to each their own
Their poetry evenings do seem quite exclusive rhyme poets to read they never do invite
Their unmusical lines that are laced with metaphors to each other they do recite
They do not like rhyme or they do not like bush poetry to them it is of another time
And in their poetry evenings there is no place for the men and the women of rhyme.

poem by Francis Duggan
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The Splendour And The Curse Of Song

Methought the unknown God we seek in vain
Grew weary of the evil He had wrought—
The piteous litanies of human pain—
Till here and there some lonely souls He sought
To bear the message of Immortal Thought,
And sent them forth to wander ’midst the throng
Crowned with the splendour and the curse of Song.
But that which still was kindred to the stars
Fought with the flesh and moaned within its cell,
And beat its wings against its prison bars.
Thus, soaring oft to heights sublime, they fell,
Dragged by the flesh into the gulfs of hell;
Till all their days were as a tumult long
Between the splendour and the curse of Song.

Yet often ’mid the fever of distress
Some singer’s lips would chant so sweet a strain
That storm-tossed souls forgot their weariness,
And comfort crept about the bed of pain,
And men took heart and dreamt of heaven again;
And to the weak came hope and courage strong
Born of the beauty and the balm of Song.

But Life was bitter to the lips that sung;
And heavier on those souls the curse did grow
Who strove to speak to men an unknown tongue,
And mournfully their hearts did weigh and know
The measure of the whole world’s cruel woe,
And wearily they fared Time’s path along
Vexed by the splendour and the curse of Song.

Theirs was the homeless hunger of the heart—
Immortal thought within a mortal breast,
Listless they wandered through the crowded mart,
Who to a careless world had given their best;
And when Death lulled them with his wings to rest
What reeked they where they slumbered calm and strong
Crowned with the splendour of Immortal Song?

poem by George Essex Evans
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The Symphony

Wonder in happy eyes
Fades, fades away:
And the angel-coloured skies
Whisper farewell.

Loveliness over the strings of the heart may stray
In fugitive melodies;
But Oh, the hand of the Master must not stay,
Even for a breath;

For to prolong one joy, or even to dwell
On one rich chord of pain,
Beyond the pulse of the song, would untune heaven
And drown the stars in death.

So youth with its love-note dies;
And beauty fades in the air,
To make the master-symphony immortal,
And find new life and deeper wonder there.

poem by Alfred Noyes
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Sonnet- Sonnet Needs Rhymes

Can you a Sonnet write without its rhyme?
Now people want the modern verse that's free;
As ideas get stuck and cramped with time,
A Sonnet's like leafless branches of tree!

A Sonnet's great for men who rhyme too well;
Its beauty lives in metre, rhythm, rhyme;
Yet, it can never run into 'pel-mel';
The sonneteer can write in any clime.

Why abhor rhymes and not a Sonnet write?
Each genre has its rules to comply with;
Why sleep all day and stay awake all night?
Rhyme-play is done by Kindergarden kith!

Why ridicule something you can't do well,
Much things are done by practice, Sonnets tell.

poem by John Celes
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Rhyme

Poets rhyme from time to time
They don’t find rhyme a crime
It’s no sin, their using rhyme
Inspired rhyme is so sublime
Can often form a perfect line

ROTMS

poem by Ray Lucero
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Fourteen Lines

Old poets, torturing their thoughts to rhyme,
their lovely English verse to end-words tied,
oft found just cause to moan of 'envious Time',
and seek immortal fame in 'Time defied';

for rhymesters, it is ever June, when moon
shines on their corn; for moralists, base love
may find in Plato reason to attune
and lift their Muse to world on world above -

and then, there's Shakespeare: from whose boundless art
flows liquid gold; whose words bring heaven to earth,
to sing love's beauty; melt the frozen heart,
make men to cry with joy; gods, weep with mirth:

a sonnet's span can bring one to oneself;
in fourteen lines, bequeath us heaven's wealth.

poem by Michael Shepherd
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To the unknown builder of the Cathedral of Cologne

Unknown great Master! whose creative thought
Is here inscribed, though from Fame's shining scroll
Thy name is lost, this wondrous dome is fraught
With the expression of thy reverent soul.
Immortal, in each curve and line inwrought;
As in the vast, harmonious, perfect whole:
We see buttress, tower, and pinnacle that reach
In forests of great columns, towering high,
With deep grooved arches interlacing each,
Lift their bold outlines dark against the sky.
It rises like a vision in mid-air, indeed
A temple meet for a divine abode;
The embodied symbol of man's highest creed;
A symphony in stone; a thought of God.

poem by Anne Lynch Botta from Poems (1848)
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Twas One of Those Dreams

'TWAS one of those dreams, that by music are brought,
Like a bright summer haze, o'er the poet's warm thought --
When, lost in the future, his soul wanders on,
And all of this life, but its sweetness, is gone.

The wild notes he heard o'er the water were those
He had taught to sing Erin's dark bondage and woes,
And the breath of the bugle now wafted them o'er
From Dinis' green isle, to Glena's wooded shore.

He listen'd -- while, high o'er the eagle's rude nest,
The lingering sounds on their way loved to rest;
And the echoes sung back from their full mountain quire,
As if loath to let song to enchanting expire.

It seem'd as if every sweet note that died here
Was again brought to life in some airier sphere,
Some heaven in those hills, where the soul of the strain
That had ceased upon earth was awaking again!

Oh forgive, if, while listening to music, whose breath
Seem'd to circle his name with a charm against death,
He should feel a proud spirit within him proclaim,
"Even so shalt thou live in the echoes of Fame:

"Even so, though thy memory should now die away,
'Twill be caught up again in some happier day,
And the hearts and the voices of Erin prolong,
Through the answering Future, thy name and thy song."

poem by Thomas Moore
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The Last Rose Of Summer

That strain again? It seems to tell
Of something like a joy departed;
I love its mourning accents well,
Like voice of one, ah! broken-hearted.

That note that pensive dies away,
And can each answering thrill awaken,
It sadly, wildly, seems to say,
Thy meek heart mourns its truth forsaken.

Or there was one who never more
Shall meet thee with the looks of gladness,
When all of happier life was o'er,
When first began thy night of sadness.

Sweet mourner, cease that melting strain,
Too well it suits the grave's cold slumbers;
Too well the heart that loved in vain
Breathes, lives, and weeps in those wild numbers.

poem by Charles Wolfe
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The Musicians

The strings of my heart were strung by Pleasure,
And I laughed when the music fell on my ear,
For he and Mirth played a joyful measure,
And they played so loud that I could not hear
The wailing and mourning of souls a-weary -
The strains of sorrow that floated around,
For my heart's notes rang out loud and cheery,
And I heard no other sound.

Mirth and Pleasure, the music brothers,
Played louder and louder in joyful glee;
But sometimes a discord was heard by others -
Though only the rhythm was heard by me.
Louder and louder, faster and faster
The hands of the brothers played strain on strain,
When all of a sudden a Mighty Master
Swept them aside; and Pain,

Pain, the musician, the soul-refiner,
Restrung the strings of my quivering heart,
And the air that he played was a plaintive minor,
So sad that the tear-drops were forced to start;
Each note was an echo of awful anguish,
As shrill as solemn, as sharp as slow,
And my soul for a reason seemed to languish
And faint with its weight of woe.

With skilful hands that were never weary,
This Master of Music played strain on strain,
And between the bars of the miserere,
He drew up the strings of my heart again,
And I was filled with a vague, strange wonder,
To see that they did not snap in two.
'They are drawn so tight, they will break assunder, '
I thought, but instead, they grew,

In the hands of the Master, firmer and stronger;
And I could hear on the stilly air -
Now my ears were deafened by Mirth no longer -
The sound of sorrow, and grief, and despair;
And my soul grew kinder and tender to others,
My nature grew sweeter, my mind grew broad,
And I held all men to be my brothers,
Linked by the chastening rod.

My soul was lifted to God and heaven,
And when on my heart-strings fell again
The hands of Mirth, and Pleasure, even,
There was never a discord to mar the strain.
For Pain, the musician, and soul-refiner,
Attuned the strings with a master hand,
And whether the music be major or minor,
It is always sweet and grand.

poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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True Marriage

Your reticence speaks that all
What you never reciprocate at all.
Though you are tied with someone else,
My love is fixed and never grows less.
Marriage is a bond and a beautiful cage,
Which makes us a prisoner and a slave.
But love is a bird, O' dear, of infinite sky,
Knows no bound and flies very high.
Nuptial cord fastens only bodies, and not hearts,
Where lie our souls, the men's immortal parts.
Our body is earthly, but the soul the heaven's due;
Body lies here, but the soul with heaven does glue.
Marriage unites bodies and love unites souls;
Death is bodies' divorce, but not that of souls.
If union of souls our true marriage be,
You must admit you have betrothed to me.
Deathless is my love ye need know,
And till eternity it will glow.

poem by Rajpal Singh
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Nature’s Music

Of many gifts bestowed on earth
To cheer a lonely hour,
Oh is there one of equal worth
With music’s magic power?
’Twill charm each angry thought to rest,
’Twill gloomy care dispel,
And ever we its power can test,—
All nature breathes its spell.

There’s music in the sighing tone
Of the soft, southern breeze
That whispers thro’ the flowers lone,
And bends the stately trees,
And—in the mighty ocean’s chime,
The crested breakers roar,
The wild waves, ceaseless surge sublime,
Breaking upon the shore.

There’s music in the bulbul’s note,
Warbling its vesper lay
In some fair spot, from man remote,
Where wind and flowers play;
But, oh! beyond the sweetest strain
Of bird, or wave, or grove
Is that soother of our hours of pain—
The voice of those we love.

When sorrow weigheth down the heart
The night birds sweetest lay—
The harp’s most wild and thrilling art—
Care cannot chase away;
But let affection’s voice be heard,
New springs of life ’twill ope,—
One word—one little loving word—
Will bring relief and hope.

poem by Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
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We Need Love

We all need love
Like a child needs a mother's hug
Like a soldier needs rum in his mug.
That grey soul fixer
The old elixir
Since we were born.
Our hearts now new
Where they were torn.
When push comes to shove
One hand fits the glove
We've always sighed
That we need love.

We need kisses
Those hits to heal our misses.
The dancing in the dark
Enhancing one small spark
As two lost souls finally embark
Along the path of joy and pain.
Warm pleasant sunshine
After our rain.
One flower of hope
On barren plain.
As our dreams leave on a train.

We need love.
To feel again.
Like cheating death
With bated breath
I pen my rhyme.
Though dove released.
Our symphony ceased but was still sublime.
We took that stardust flight.
The love we made
In forest glade
Stole sweetest moonlit night.
So roll the dice
And Lady luck
Will either smile or frown.
We all need love
That could be hiding
Within a weeping clown.

poem by Kevin East
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Leaving This Man Alone

I'm still working
Always working
For the next bill, no time for thrills.
Sir you must head in to those hills.
Mine till sun comes down.
Just to make it home in time to go to bed.
Far away is where I'm going again.
The benefits within.
The wounds are slowly healing.
Agony, I love it here and love it their.
Making a life out of despair.
Have to do what you have to do.
Surving just to make it through.
I got you, you, you, and you.
A million different conversations.
I smile with aggravation.
What a revelation
Look at me now.
Just keeping my head above the ground.
Anyway I know how.
With heaven, lord let me just make it to the skies.
Time just flies by.
With wings it soars.
Come on now.
I will march upon the fields like anyone else.
I am man and I don't give a damn.
Not cause I don't want to.
But sometimes you just have no choice.
Echo's, echo's, echo's my voice.
For life is precious, and sometimes their is no time to rejoice.
Let the heart beat, let the sweat pour.
It's the only way I like it anymore.
Another no reward.
A master of nothing falls on his own swords.
A little of this and that.
Always moderation.
Even on my own free time.
I trying to figure how to make the green.
Ugly as sin.
Where does it end.
A new job doing the same thing.
Sometimes it must be gained.
A man of the insane.
With no complaints.
Not a saint.
I know where I stand, and I know where,
Oh echo's echo's echo's my voice, 'you do'.
No argument here.
To each their own.
So just leave this man alone.

poem by Ace Of Black Hearts
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Philomel in London

Not within a granite pass,
Dim with flowers and soft with grass--
Nay, but doubly, trebly sweet
In a poplared London street,
While below my windows go
Noiseless barges, to and fro,
Through the night's calm deep,
Ah! what breaks the bonds of sleep?

No steps on the pavement fall,
Soundless swings the dark canal;
From a church-tower out of sight
Clangs the central hour of night.
Hark! the Dorian nightingale!
Pan's voice melted to a wail!
Such another bird
Attic Tereus never heard.

Hung above the gloom and stain--
London's squalid cope of pain--
Pure as starlight, bold as love,
Honouring our scant poplar-grove,
That most heavenly voice of earth
Thrills in passion, grief or mirth,
Laves our poison'd air
Life's best song-bath crystal-fair.

While the starry minstrel sings
Little matters what he brings,
Be it sorrow, be it pain,
Let him sing and sing again,
Till, with dawn, poor souls rejoice,
Wakening, once to hear his voice,
Ere afar he flies,
Bound for purer woods and skies.

poem by Edmund William Gosse
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Our Lives

Our lives are songs. God writes the words,
And we set them to music at pleasure;
And the song grows glad, or sweet, or sad,
As we choose to fashion the measure.

We must write the music, whatever the song,
Whatever its rhyme, or metre;
And if it is sad, we can make it glad,
Or if sweet, we can make it sweeter.

One has a song that is free and strong;
But the music he writes is minor;
And the sad, sad strain is replete with pain,
And the singer becomes a repiner.

And he thinks God gave him a dirge-like lay,
Nor knows that the words are cheery;
And the song seems lonely and solemn-only
Because the music is dreary.

And the song of another has through the words
An under current of sadness;
But he sets it to music of ringing chords,
And makes it a pean of gladness.

So whether our songs are sad or not,
We can give the world more pleasure,
And better ourselves, by setting the words
To a glad, triumphant measure.

1872

poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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Lux In Tenebris

When first the Gods, whose Empire is eternal,
In Time’s deep chalice poured Life’s sacred wine,
Flashed all the crystal cup with fire supernal;
Then said they: “Shall the mortal be divine?
Shall man usurp the ways the Gods have trod?
Who quaffs this cup, himself should be a God!”
So tempered they the measure of their giving,
And mingled germs of evil with the good;
So mixed they death with the fierce fire of living,
And anguish with the joy of motherhood;
And with the balm of peace a weird unrest,
And an unformed desire in every breast.

So set they discord in the sweetest singing,
And a sharp thorn about the fairest rose;
And doubt around the cross where faith was clinging,
And fear to haunt the regions of repose;
And dimmed men’s eyes, so that they should not see,
Like Gods, the vistas of futurity.

They coloured failure with hope’s rainbow splendour,
And tinged the hour of triumph with regret;
Made strength subservient to the weak and tender,
And wisdom, folly-caught in beauty’s net;
Till unto man life’s wine was bitter-sweet—
Betwixt the perfect and the incomplete.

Then said the Gods—the Gods who live for ever—
“Let us shower gifts upon the soul of man,
That he may catch a glimpse of our endeavour,
And yet not solve the Universal Plan.
For, though Life’s deepest truths be near to find,
Man shall behold and see not, being blind!”

Thus, to the blessing of the Gods descending,
The universal curse and shadow clung;
The mystic evil with the glory blending
That mars the aeons since the world was young.
For upon all whom the High Gods had blest
There fell the quenchless fever of unrest.

Then rose a ferment and an exaltation,
And all men’s souls were thrilled and stirred within.
There came a prophet unto every nation
To teach new doctrines of the source of sin;
And men arose as Gods, and creeds began
To preach th’ Eternal Godhead one with man.

And ever, thro’ all lands, with waves sonorous,
Rolled on from age to age the stream of song
Which made low valleys sweet with rhythmic chorus,
And shook the rock-bound hills with music strong,
And flushed and fired men’s souls like fumes of wine—
Yet was but human! . . . not a song divine!

For, lo! thro’ all that seemeth inspiration
Enters the curse that blurs created things;
Beyond the barriers of our limitation
Not ever yet a soul has spread its wings!
Nor has been yet, nor ever shall there be,
A perfect song—a perfect harmony!

O music of the wind and of the ocean!—
O Power that sways the glory of the spheres!
O aching hearts that vibrate with emotion!
O mystery of Life! O human tears!
What light shall lead us thro’ the wilderness
From out the Egypt of our bitterness?

O Poets, round whose souls, since the beginning,
Strange echoes tremble and wild visions throng,
Ye all have heard the sweetness of the singing,
But no man knows the meaning of the song
That lifts our frail souls heavenwards with its strain—
Then flings us bleeding to the earth again!

Brothers, my soul has quickened with your gladness.
I, too, have sorrowed over human woe.
I, too, have felt the terror and the madness
That all who seek for truth and light must know.
My faint heart falters in the bitter strife—
The labyrinths of the mysteries of Life.

What hope—what comfort—in our desolation?
What ray to pierce the blackness of our night?
To weary hearts, what balm of consolation
That earth is finite, heaven is infinite?
What tho’ the hand of Faith still points the way—
The voice of Reason ever brings delay.

Nay! tho’ Life’s secret be beyond our dreaming,
And all the creeds that sway the world untrue,
A radiance creeps aslant the shadows gleaming
Whose golden arrows pierce the darkness thro’.
If all our errors hold one germ of right,
The paths that lead to truth are infinite!

Throughout all nature and throughout creation
A Power Supreme its manual sign has writ.
In pain and stress, thro’ aeons of gradation,
Shall the weak soul of man decipher it;
For, since the spirit is above the clay,
Man shall not know th’ Eternal in a day.

Yet, tho’ we know not their immortal places,
And tho’ their footsteps are not heard of man,
And tho’ with mystery they veil their faces
And bid us search the Universal Plan,
And tho’ to all there cometh with Life’s breath
Suffering, and doubt, and weariness, and death—

I sing Eternal Hope and Strong Endeavour,
Truth shining down a myriad aisles of thought;
I sing the deathless souls of men, for ever
By strange, wild paths to one vast triumph brought.
The God in Man—the hunger of the soul—
One with the Wisdom that inspires the Whole!

poem by George Essex Evans
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The Poets

When this young Land has reached its wrinkled prime,
And we are gone and all our songs are done,
And naught is left unchanged beneath the sun,
What other singers shall the womb of Time
Bring forth to reap the sunny slopes of rhyme?
For surely till the thread of life be spun
The world shall not lack poets, though but one
Make lonely music like a vesper chime
Above the heedless turmoil of the street.
What new strange voices shall be given to these,
What richer accents of melodious breath?
Yet shall they, baffled, lie at Nature's feet
Searching the volume of her mysteries,
And vainly question the fixed eyes of Death.

poem by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
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Wife to Be (Petrarchan Sonnet)

I stroll along a fragrant country lane
With honeysuckle perfume on the air -
And feathered crooner's warble to revere -
Then cross a golden sea of flowing grain
In empathy - it seems to sense my pain
Of knowing all was done with my affair -
Her empty meaning now the solitaire
She cast away - betrothment all in vain.
But oceans team with many fish to catch
So I must up and hoist another sail
And seek the one that really waits for me,
For soon auspicious breezes will prevail
In guiding forth to find a truer match:
The one to take my hand as wife to be.

Copyright © Mark R Slaughter 2010

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poem by Mark R Slaughter
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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You Dont Know What Love Is

Ah hoo. oh, yeah yeah yeah yeah.
Oh ooh oh oh.
Last night I saw you as I stood in the rain
Brought me right back to that feeling again.
I tried to hide the tears in my eyes
But you didnt see as you walked on by.
Tried to forget ya, I tried to move on.
But the deeper Im feeling, the harder I fall.
Nothing else matters at all. let me tell you.
You dont know what love is till you lose it.
You dont know what youve got till it slips away.
Leaves you alone in the dark and takes you and tears you apart.
You dont know what love is till it breaks your heart.
Till it breaks your heart.
Sometimes I think back when our love was new.
The crazy things that we used to do.
How could love thats so right turn to something so wrong
Still cant believe that youre really gone.
Wish I could stop all these thoughts in my head
Wish I could take back the words that I said
Its a lesson Ill never forget. let me tell you.
You dont know what love is till you lose it.
You dont know what youve got till it slips away.
Leaves you alone in the dark. takes you and tears you apart.
You dont know what love is till it breaks your heart.
Ooh ooh. yeh.
Love has no season, no beginning nor end.
No rhyme or reason, to the way the story ends.
No way of knowing how a broken heart mends.
Still we keep fallin time and time again.
You dont know what love is till you lose it.
You dont know what youve got till it slips away.
Leaves you alone in the dark. takes you and tears you apart.
You dont know what love is till it breaks your heart.
Till it breaks your heart. ah ooh. till it breaks your heart.

song performed by by Jessica Simpson
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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