The First Tooth
There once was a wood, and a very thick wood,
So thick that to walk was as much as you could;
But a sunbeam got in, and the trees understood.
I went to this wood, at the end of the snows,
And as I was walking I saw a primrose;
Only one! Shall I show you the place where it grows?
There once was a house, and a very dark house,
As dark, I believe, as the hole of a mouse,
Or a tree in my wood, at the thick of the boughs.
I went to this house, and I searched it aright,
I opened the chambers, and I found a light;
Only one! Shall I show you this little lamp bright?
There once was a cave, and this very dark cave
One day took a gift from an incoming wave;
And I made up my mind to know what the sea gave.
I took a lit torch, I walked round the ness
When the water was lowest; and in a recess
In my cave was a jewel. Will nobody guess?
O there was a baby, he sat on my knee,
With a pearl in his mouth that was precious to me,
His little dark mouth like my cave of the sea!
I said to my heart, "And my jewel is bright!
He blooms like a primrose! He shines like a light!"
Put your hand in his mouth! Do you feel? He can bite!
poem by William Brighty Rands
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Related quotes
Incantation
A white well
In a black cave;
A bright shell
In a dark wave.
A white rose
Black brambles hood;
Smooth bright snows
In a dark wood.
A flung white glove
In a dark fight;
A white dove
On a wild black night.
A white door
In a dark lane;
A bright core
To bitter black pain.
A white hand
Waved from dark walls;
In a burnt black land
Bright waterfalls.
A bright spark
Where black ashes are;
In the smothering dark
One white star.
poem by Elinor Morton Wylie
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It’s dark in here
While I am walking
inside a cave,
it's rather dark in here
I wonder how people
could have lived in this place
and in my mind’s eye
I see them gathering
around hot fires
with bright red and yellow flames
leaping into the air
and blown higher by the slight draft.
They must have fried
some of the antelope
sketched in yellow, red, brown
and black on the wall
and although the stalagmites
and stalactites on the floor
of the cave are rather beautiful
there’s a chill in the air.
Without light I cannot see
were to go
and in ancient times
bats must have nested
against the roof
and somehow people
made this dark place
their home
and still it’s dark in here.
poem by Gert Strydom
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Contours
She invited her self into his dark
her out side wanting to absorb his inside part
his potential potential
his mysterious
cool heart
which she sensed needed nurturing.
She would enter his cave of cringing shyness
his cave of inarticulateness
bringing him to its mouth
showing him what light was.
She sensed that being
outside the cave
was an alien world to him;
she could be his guide
even as she partook
of his dark flesh
his dark longings
his darkened powers
which she sensed
wanted her
wanted to ravage her;
and she too
was curious about that
in him
excited by the fact that she controlled
it;
that it would not come out
until it was summoned by her
allowed by her;
plunging into her own dark
caressed by her own light.
She knew his need for her was
stronger
than her need
for him to have her
and so she gently,
Kissed His
Ironies,
toyed with her own
confidence
that
she would in the end
ravage him
in his need to ravage her;
that her enlightenment
was stronger
than the raw need to penetrate;
that she was correct in this
because it was balanced.
He understood this seemingly
saying:
'I want you more
than I can resist
that need in you
to transform
me.'
'This he said, 'will be the contours
of our relationship.
I understand.'
And he did
understand.
She
could then surrender
and she did;
he able to absorb her light's ability
to withstand his dark
she melding with him;
both moving toward
Twilight.
poem by Lonnie Hicks
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Through The Wood
THROUGH the wood, the green wood, the wet wood, the light wood,
Love and I went maying a thousand lives ago;
Shafts of golden sunlight had made a golden bright wood
In my heart reflected, because I loved you so.
Through the wood, the chill wood, the brown wood, the bare wood,
I alone went lonely no later than last year,
What had thinned the branches, and wrecked my dear and fair wood,
Killed the pale wild roses and left the rose-thorns sere?
Through the wood, the dead wood, the sad wood, the lone wood,
Winds of winter shiver through lichens old and grey,
You ride past forgetting the wood that was our own wood
All our own--and withered as ever a flower of May.
poem by Edith Nesbit
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Evans
Evans? Yes, many a time
I came down his bare flight
Of stairs into the gaunt kitchen
With its wood fire, where crickets sang
Accompaniment to the black kettle"s
Whine, and so into the cold
Dark to smother in the thick tide
Of night that drifted about the walls
Of his stark farm on the hill ridge.
It was not the dark filling my eyes
And mouth appalled me; not even the drip
Of rain like blood from the one tree
Weather-tortured. It was the dark
Silting the veins of that sick man
I left stranded upon the vast
And lonely shore of his bleak bed.
Submitted by Andrew Mayers
poem by Ronald Stuart Thomas
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Burial of Sarah
He stood before the sons of Heth,
And bowed his sorrowing head;
"I've come," he said, "to buy a place
Where I may lay my dead.
"I am a stranger in your land,
My home has lost its light;
Grant me a place where I may lay
My dead away from sight."
Then tenderly the sons of Heth
Gazed on the mourner's face,
And said, "Oh, Prince, amid our dead,
Choose thou her resting-place.
"The sepulchres of those we love,
We place at thy command;
Against the plea thy grief hath made
We close not heart nor hand."
The patriarch rose and bowed his head,
And said, "One place I crave;
'Tis at the end of Ephron's field,
And called Machpelah's cave.
"Entreat him that he sell to me
For her last sleep that cave;
I do not ask for her I loved
The freedom of a grave."
The son of Zohar answered him,
"Hearken, my lord, to me;
Before our sons, the field and cave
I freely give to thee."
"I will not take it as a gift,"
The grand old man then said;
"I pray thee let me buy the place
Where I may lay my dead."
And with the promise in his heart,
His seed should own that land,
He gave the shekels for the field
He took from Ephron's hand.
And saw afar the glorious day
His chosen seed should tread,
The soil where he in sorrow lay
His loved and cherished dead.
poem by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
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Home For Love
Because the earth is vast and dark
And wet and cold;
Because man's heart wants warmth and light
Lest it grow old;
Therefore the house was built--wall, roof
And brick and beam,
By a lost hand following the lost
Delight of a dream,
And room and stair show how that hand
Groped in eager doubt,
With needless weight of teasing timber
Matching his thought--
Such fond superfluousness of strength
In wall and wood
As his half-wise, half-fearful eye
Deemed only good.
His brain he built into the house,
Laboured his bones;
He burnt his heart into the brick
And red hearth-stones.
It is his blood that makes the house
Still warm, safe, bright,
Honest as aim and eye and hand,
As clean, as light.
Because the earth is vast and dark
The house was built--
Now with another heart and fire
To be fulfilled.
poem by John Freeman
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Your Cave Of Love
Let me spend te night in your cave of love,
And let me walk through your folding doors;
For i am like a tree floating along the direction of the river of love,
And like the joy of your muse in the time of romance.
Of the words you do speak in your bedroom,
And of the aroma in your cave of love;
So let me surround your city of love with my care,
Because, there is real peace in your dark cave!
poem by Edward Kofi Louis
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They Are Tearing Down My Grandfather's House
(An NLP Editor's Choice Award Winner in Verdant Lands of Spring) They are tearing down my Grandfather's house,
it's made of wood and brick and stone.
The windows they've removed. To them it's real
estate, to me it's my heart being ripped in two.
The realtors, the bankers, the moneymen don't understand.
A house is more than made of wood, a house is made of man. My Grandfather's house is a memory that will
endure after it's torn down.
He's been gone for near thirty years, but his
house had lived on.
I know the world is made of change, and change
is all that's real. But one thing I cannot change,
that is the way I feel. I wipe a tear in the falling rain,
because they are tearing down my Grandfather's
house, and it gives me pain.
I love him as if it were yesteryear,
his wit and smile as warm as the sun.
The house once stood to remind me, but that too
is gone. They are tearing down my Grandfather's house,
it's made of wood and brick and stone.
Yet a house if more than made of wood,
a house is made of love.
poem by David A. Webb
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A distant universe
dark as cave
we walk inside
yet is outside
there is a man
spiritual they say
filling the cave with
his chants
you walk the
lighted lane
they call common
sense
the darkness
holds over you
like a distant
universe, a
boundless part
you fear to tread
it exists like the
unreachable stars
so far away you never
even give it a thought
day after day
we walk the lane
a corner of the great cave
waiting for the man
to come out to light things up
with his halo and
enlightenment
there is a
distant universe
in the space of our brain
we all fear to tread
we walk inside
yet are all outside
a physique that helps
map every step we take
this cave that is all God
inside and outside
poem by John Tiong Chunghoo
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Gibbous over Wood
The moon is not yet grown -
It is at the doorstep of maturity.
But still its light comes down
Through the broadleaf wood.
Here and there, a leaf is silver,
Chosen favorite of the moon,
While the other trees shiver
In the dark with envy.
The moon is not yet grown –
It is brilliant in its youth.
It is to the sun a mirror
And to the sky a mouth.
There is a light about a tree
A white wedding-gown,
Shall the moon wed the tree
Before it is yet grown?
The moon is not yet grown –
It is confident, though,
And shines with great spirit,
Piercing the wood through.
There is a path across the river,
Wrought in silver stone.
The moon mocks the walker
Who takes the path and drowns.
poem by Sophia White
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The Opal Dream Cave
In an opal dream cave I found a fairy:
Her wings were frailer than flower petals,
Frailer far than snowflakes.
She was not frightened, but poised on my finger,
Then delicately walked into my hand.
I shut the two palms of my hands together
And held her prisoner.
I carried her out of the opal cave,
Then opened my hands.
First she became thistledown,
Then a mote in a sunbeam,
Then--nothing at all.
Empty now is my opal dream cave.
poem by Katherine Mansfield
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Silence and Stealth of Days
Silence, and stealth of days! 'tis now
Since thou art gone,
Twelve hundred hours, and not a brow
But clouds hang on.
As he that in some cave's thick damp
Lockt from the light,
Fixeth a solitary lamp,
To brave the night,
And walking from his sun, when past
That glim'ring ray
Cuts through the heavy mists in haste
Back to his day,
So o'r fled minutes I retreat
Unto that hour
Which show'd thee last, but did defeat
Thy light, and power,
I search, and rack my soul to see
Those beams again,
But nothing but the snuff to me
Appeareth plain;
That dark and dead sleeps in its known
And common urn,
But those fled to their Maker's throne
There shine and burn;
O could I track them! but souls must
Track one the other,
And now the spirit, not the dust,
Must be thy brother.
Yet I have one Pearl by whose light
All things I see,
And in the heart of earth and night
Find heaven and thee.
poem by Henry Vaughan
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The Sepulchral Voices
Farther than the seven seas,
And seven forests thick and green,
Flew I over the mountainy crests;
Over the gorges, winding deep,
And unexplored canyons dark,
Rested I on the plain high;
Beside the house made of glass,
With tall trees in the lawn,
Where the big busy parrots,
Were spoiling the fruit unripe.
Leading to the subterranean cave,
At the entrance I did halt,
For close it was with sills long,
Of transparent glassy stones.
Waited I long for the summon,
From the Lord of the House,
But returned depressed, despised,
When sepulchral voices came to me,
“He is busy, He can not see.”
poem by Muhammad Shanazar
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Dark and Light
All around me Darkness rolls
No Light shines through as it unfolds
Just as if the King foretold
A palace of pain and not of gold
Listen to him I did not
Put no trust in those Dark thoughts
Dark and Light must have fought
This answer is not what we sought
A huge mistake we have made
We did just what the King forebade
We crawled into that deep, Dark cave
In this pain we're forced to bathe
A warning I must give to you
Down to Earth the demons flew
And the King of Dark and Light
Will come and steal your soul tonight
2-23-8
poem by Chelsea Meigs
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Inspiration
"Inspiration is a judgment on a deep level, somewhere down in the ground of our being." Thomas Merton
In the bright morning
when I awake
my soul arises
from sleep's dark cave.
I'll not deny
what it is
that you see.
Just say what I am
and, by you inspired,
that will I be.
poem by Steven Federle
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A Midnight Walk By The Sea...
And at midnight we walked
the serpentined path by the sea,
over thick, moistened planks
of aged, splintered wood-
imbued with salted moisture
from height anemic dunes
that had failed surf and shore,
ravaged by the sea-wolves-
with such simplicity
that the splinters felt as smooth
as sheets of organdy,
loosing their jagged edges
from the eye of a June nor'easter.
Yet it wouldn't have really mattered
if our barefoot midnight walk
felt like mal-acupunture
from a Greenwich Village cave;
as when I reached for her hand,
saw her flushed pink face smiling
my sense of romance ossified
virility... my state of mind,
taken in by her feminine air,
stoned by her warm, almond eyes,
and we suddenly became aware
that the excitement of our jaunt
was all about 'the before'
of our midnight walk by the sea.
And we jogged-on back from where
we were flushed and pink an hour before
we had taken to the splintered wood
for a midnight walk by the sea.
poem by Frank James Ryan Jr.
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Dark in the midst?
Dark patch on elbow,
Dark circle around teats,
Dark pit of navel
Dark cave of arm pit
And dark bush down
Of a blond outshine.
Being dark, they stir.
24.11.2001, Pakd
poem by Rm. Shanmugam Chettiar
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Life And Death.
We come like bats that out of a dark cave
Have suddenly been scared into the day,
Blear-eyed and vexed as here and there they flap,
Unnatural denizens of such a world.
So seem we all, as this were not our home,
And we, as aliens in these elements,
Move here and there, purblind, heart-weary, and
Possessed with many fears, till Death's new dark
Shows us our passage back to the old cave,
Whence Birth before may have affrighted us.
poem by Robert Crawford
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In A Dark Time
In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood--
A lord of nature weeping to a tree.
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.
What's madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.
That place among the rocks--is it a cave,
Or a winding path? The edge is what I have.
A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is--
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.
Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.
poem by Theodore Roethke
Submitted by Dan Costinaş
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