Ode
by Arthur William Edgar O’Shaughnessy (1844-1881)

We are the music-makers,
         And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
         And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
         On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
         Of the world for ever, it seems.

With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the worl’d great cities,
         And out of a fabulous story
         We fashion an empire’s glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
         Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song’s measure
         Can trample an empire down.

We, in the ages lying
         In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
         And Babel itself with our mirth;
And o’erthrew them with prophesying
         To the old of the new world’s worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
         Or one that is coming to birth.

Views: 30

Love in a Life
by Robert Browning (1812-1889)

                  I

Room after room,
I hunt the house through
We inhabit together.
Heart, fear nothing, for, heart, thou shalt find her—
Next time, herself!—not the trouble behind her
Left in the curtain, the couch’s perfume!
As she brushed it, the cornice-wreath blossomed anew:
Yon looking-glass gleamed at the wave of her feather.

                  II

Yet the day wears,
And door succeeds door;
I try the fresh fortune—
Range the wide house from the wing to the centre.
Still the same chance! she goes out as I enter.
Spend my whole day in the quest,—who cares?
But ’tis twilight, you see,—with such suites to explore,
Such closets to search, such alcoves to importune!

Views: 39

The End of Desire
by Hugh McCrae (1876-1958)

A flooded fold of sarcenet
Against her slender body sank,
Death-black, and beaded all with jet
Across the pleasures of her flank.

The incense of a holy bowl
Flowed round her knees, till it did seem
That she was standing on the shoal
Of some forbidden sunlit stream.

A little gong, far through the wall.
Complained like one deep sorrowing.
And from the arras I saw fall
The woven swallow fluttering;

While o’er the room there swam the breath
Of roses on a trellised tree;
Loose ladies in pretended death
Of sweet abandon to the bee.

Flames filled the hollows of my hands;
Red blood rushed, hammering, round my heart
Like mighty sleds when anvil bands
Gape out, and from their holdings start.

No peace had I, and knew not where
To find a solace that would kill
This pain of flesh so hard to bear.
This sin of soul against the will.

But ever yet mine eyes would seek
That golden woman build for love,
Whose either breast displayed the beak
Through pouted plumes, of Venus’ dove.

Her heavy hair, as smoke blown down
Athwart the fields of plenteousness;
Her folded lips, her placid frown,
Her insolence of nakedness.

I took her closely, but while yet
I trembled, vassal to my lust,
Lo!—Nothing but some sarcenet
Deep buried in a pile of dust.

Views: 30

Chorus from Atalanta in Calydon
by Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909)

When the hounds of spring are on winter’s traces,
⁠      The mother of months in meadow or plain
Fills the shadows and windy places
⁠      With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain;
And the brown bright nightingale amorous
Is half assuaged for Itylus,
For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces,
⁠      The tongueless vigil, and all the pain.

Come with bows bent and with emptying of quivers,
⁠      Maiden most perfect, lady of light,
With a noise of winds and many rivers,
⁠      With a clamour of waters, and with might;
Bind on thy sandals, O thou most fleet,
Over the splendour and speed of thy feet;
For the faint east quickens, the wan west shivers,
⁠      Round the feet of the day and the feet of the night.

Where shall we find her, how shall we sing to her,
⁠      Fold our hands round her knees, and cling?
O that man’s heart were as fire and could spring to her,
⁠      Fire, or the strength of the streams that spring!
For the stars and the winds are unto her
As raiment, as songs of the harp-player;
For the risen stars and the fallen cling to her,
⁠      And the southwest-wind and the west-wind sing.

For winter’s rains and ruins are over,
⁠      And all the season of snows and sins;
The days dividing lover and lover,
⁠      The light that loses, the night that wins;
And time remembered is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
And in green underwood and cover
⁠      Blossom by blossom the spring begins.

The full streams feed on flower of rushes,
⁠      Ripe grasses trammel a travelling foot,
The faint fresh flame of the young year flushes
⁠      From leaf to flower and flower to fruit;
And fruit and leaf are as gold and fire,
And the oat is heard above the lyre,
And the hoofèd heel of a satyr crushes
⁠      The chestnut-husk at the chestnut-root.

And Pan by noon and Bacchus by night,
⁠      Fleeter of foot than the fleet-foot kid,
Follows with dancing and fills with delight
⁠      The Mænad and the Bassarid;
And soft as lips that laugh and hide
The laughing leaves of the trees divide,
And screen from seeing and leave in sight
⁠      The god pursuing, the maiden hid.

The ivy falls with the Bacchanal’s hair
⁠      Over her eyebrows hiding her eyes;
The wild vine slipping down leaves bare
⁠      Her bright breast shortening into sighs;
The wild vine slips with the weight of its leaves,
But the berried ivy catches and cleaves
To the limbs that glitter, the feet that scare
⁠      The wolf that follows, the fawn that flies.

Views: 31

Abschied
by Johann Freiherr von Eichendorff (1788-1857)

O Thäler weit, o Höhen,
O schöner, grüner Wald,
Du meiner Lust und Wehen
Andächt’ger Aufenthalt!
Da draußen, stets betrogen,
Saust die geschäft’ge Welt,
Schlag’ noch einmal die Bogen
Um mich, du grünes Zelt!

Wenn es beginnt zu tagen,
Die Erde dampft und blinkt,
Die Vögel lustig schlagen,
Daß dir dein Herz erklingt:
Da mag vergehn, verwehen
Das trübe Erdenleid,
Da sollst du auferstehen
In junger Herrlichkeit!

Da steht im Wald geschrieben,
Ein stilles, ernstes Wort
Von rechtem Thun und Lieben,
Und was des Menschen Hort.
Ich habe treu gelesen
Die Worte, schlicht und wahr,
Und durch mein ganzes Wesen
Ward’s unaussprechlich klar.

Bald werd’ ich dich verlassen
Fremd in der Fremde geh’n,
Auf buntbewegten Gassen
Des Lebens Schauspiel seh’n;
Und mitten in dem Leben
Wird deines Ernst’s Gewalt
Mich Einsamen erheben,
So wird mein Herz nicht alt.

Views: 37

To Mr. Coleridge
by Anna Laeititia Barbauld (1743-1825)

Midway the hill of Science, after steep
And rugged paths that tire th’ unpractised feet,
A Grove extends, in tangled mazes wrought,
And fill’d with strange enchantment:–dubious shapes
Flit thro’ dim glades, and lure the eager foot
Of youthful ardour to eternal chase.
Dreams hang on every leaf; unearthly forms
Glide thro’ the gloom, and mystic visions swim
Before the cheated sense. Athwart the mists,
Far into vacant space, huge shadows stretch
And seem realities; while things of life,
Obvious to sight and touch, all glowing round
Fade to the hue of shadows. Scruples here
With filmy net, most like th’ autumnal webs
Of floating Gossamer, arrest the foot
Of generous enterprize; and palsy hope
And fair ambition, with the chilling touch
Of sickly hesitation and blank fear.
Nor seldom Indolence these lawns among
Fixes her turf-built seat, and wears the garb
Of deep philosophy, and museful sits,
In dreamy twilight of the vacant mind,
Soothed by the whispering shade; for soothing soft
The shades; and vistas lengthening into air,
With moon beam rainbows tinted. Here each mind
Of finer mould, acute and delicate,
In its high progress to eternal truth
Rests for a space, in fairy bowers entranced;
And loves the softened light and tender gloom;
And, pampered with most unsubstantial food,
Looks down indignant on the grosser world,
And matter’s cumbrous shapings. Youth belov’d
Of Science–of the Muse belov’d, not here,
Not in the maze of metaphysic lore
Build thou thy place of resting; lightly tread
The dangerous ground, on noble aims intent;
And be this Circe of the studious cell
Enjoyed, but still subservient. Active scenes
Shall soon with healthful spirit brace thy mind;
And fair exertion, for bright fame sustained,
For friends, for country, chase each spleen-fed fog
That blots the wide creation–
Now Heaven conduct thee with a Parent’s love!

Views: 47

Casabianca
by Felicia Hemans (1793-1835)

The boy stood on the burning deck,
⁠      Whence all but him had fled;
The flame that lit the battle’s wreck
⁠      Shone round him o’er the dead.

Yet beautiful and bright he stood,
⁠      As born to rule the storm;
A creature of heroic blood,
⁠      A proud though childlike form.

The flames rolled on—he would not go
⁠      Without his father’s word;
That father, faint in death below,
⁠      His voice no longer heard.

He called aloud, “Say, father, say
⁠      If yet my task is done?”
He knew not that the chieftain lay
⁠      Unconscious of his son.

“Speak, father!” once again he cried,
⁠      “If I may yet be gone!”
And but the booming shots replied,
⁠      And fast the flames rolled on.

Upon his brow he felt their breath,
⁠      And in his waving hair;
And looked from that lone post of death,
⁠      In still, yet brave despair.

And shouted but once more aloud
⁠      “My father! must I stay?”
While o’er him fast, through sail and shroud,
⁠      The wreathing fires made way.

They wrapt the ship in splendour wild,
⁠      They caught the flag on high,
And streamed above the gallant child
⁠      Like banners in the sky.

Then came a burst of thunder sound—
⁠      The boy oh! where was he?
—Ask of the winds that far around
⁠      With fragments strew the sea;

With mast, and helm, and pennon fair,
⁠      That well had borne their part—
But the noblest thing that perished there
⁠      Was that young, faithful heart.

Views: 37

At Sunset
by Pauline Johnson (1861-1913)

To-night the west o’er-brims with warmest dyes;
Its chalice overflows
With pools of purple colouring the skies,
Aflood with gold and rose;
And some hot soul seems throbbing close to mine,
As sinks the sun within that world of wine.

I seem to hear a bar of music float
And swoon into the west;
My ear can scarcely catch the whispered note,
But something in my breast
Blends with that strain, till both accord in one,
As cloud and colour blend at set of sun.

And twilight comes with grey and restful eyes,
As ashes follow flame.
But O! I heard a voice from those rich skies
Call tenderly my name;
It was as if some priestly fingers stole
In benedictions o’er my lonely soul.

I know not why, but all my being longed
And leapt at that sweet call;
My heart outreached its arms, all passion thronged
And beat against Fate’s wall,
Crying in utter homesickness to be
Near to a heart that loves and leans to me.

Views: 27