The House Beautiful
by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

A naked house, a naked moor,
A shivering pool before the door,
A garden bare of flowers and fruit
And poplars at the garden foot;
Such is the place that I live in,
Bleak without and bare within.

Yet shall your ragged moor receive
The incomparable pomp of eve,
And the cold glories of the dawn
Behind your shivering trees be drawn;
And when the wind from place to place
Doth the unmoored cloud-galleons chase,
Your garden gloom and gleam again,
With leaping sun, with glancing rain.
Here shall the wizard moon ascend
The heavens, in the crimson end
Of day’s declining splendour; here
The army of the stars appear.
The neighbour hollows dry or wet,
Spring shall with tender flowers beset;
And oft the morning muser see
Larks rising from the broomy lea,
And every fairy wheel and thread
Of cobweb dew-bediamonded.
When daisies go, shall winter time
Silver the simple grass with rime;
Autumnal frosts enchant the pool
And make the cart-ruts beautiful;
And when snow-bright the moor expands,
How shall your children clap their hands!
To make this earth, our hermitage,
A cheerful and a changeful page,
God’s bright and intricate device
Of days and seasons doth suffice.

Views: 40

The Village Blacksmith
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

Under a spreading chestnut-tree
⁠         The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
⁠         With large and sinewy hands,
And the muscles of his brawny arms
⁠         Are strong as iron bands.

His hair is crisp, and black, and long;
⁠         His face is like the tan;
His brow is wet with honest sweat,
⁠         He earns whate’er he can,
And looks the whole world in the face,
⁠         For he owes not any man.

Week in, week out, from morn till night,
⁠         You can hear his bellows blow;
You can hear him swing his heavy sledge,
⁠         With measured beat and slow,
Like a sexton ringing the village bell,
⁠         When the evening sun is low.

And children coming home from school
⁠         Look in at the open door;
They love to see the flaming forge,
⁠         And hear the bellows roar,
And catch the burning sparks that fly
⁠         Like chaff from a threshing-floor.

He goes on Sunday to the church,
⁠         And sits among his boys;
He hears the parson pray and preach,
⁠         He hears his daughter’s voice
Singing in the village choir,
⁠         And it makes his heart rejoice.

It sounds to him like her mother’s voice
⁠         Singing in Paradise!
He needs must think of her once more,
⁠         How in the grave she lies;
And with his hard, rough hand he wipes
⁠         A tear out of his eyes.

Toiling,—rejoicing,—sorrowing,
⁠         Onward through life he goes;
Each morning sees some task begin,
⁠         Each evening sees it close;
Something attempted, something done,
⁠         Has earned a night’s repose.

Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,
⁠         For the lesson thou hast taught!
Thus at the flaming forge of life
⁠         Our fortunes must be wrought;
Thus on its sounding anvil shaped
⁠         Each burning deed and thought.

Views: 27

At a Reading
by Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836-1907)

The spare professor, grave and bald,
Began his paper. It was called,
I think, “A Brief Historic Glance
At Russia, Germany, and France.”
A glance, but to my best belief
’T was almost anything but brief–
A wide survey, in which the earth
Was seen before mankind had birth;
Strange monsters basked them in the sun,
Behemoth, armored glyptodon,
And in the dawn’s unpractised ray
The transient dodo winged its way;
Then, by degrees, through slit and slough,
We reached Berlin—I don’t know how.
The good Professor’s monotone
Had turned me into senseless stone
Instanter, but that near me sat
Hypatia in her new spring hat,
Blue-eyed, intent, with lips whose bloom
Lighted the heavy-curtained room.
Hypatia—ah, what lovely things
Are fashioned out of eighteen springs!
At first, in sums of this amount,
The eighteen winters do not count.
Just as my eyes were growing dim
With heaviness, I saw that slim,
Erect, elastic figure there,
Like a pond-lily taking air.
She looked so fresh, so wise, so neat,
So altogether crisp and sweet,
I quite forgot what Bismarck said,
And why the Emperor shook his head,
And how it was Von Moltke’s frown
Cost France another frontier town.
The only facts I took away
From the Professor’s theme that day
Were these: a forehead broad and low,
Such as antique sculptures show;
A chin to Greek perfection true;
Eyes of Astarte’s tender blue;
A high complection without fleck
Or flaw, and curls about her neck.

Views: 33

Song (from The Vicar of Wakefield)
by Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774)

When lovely woman stoops to folly,
      And finds too late that men betray,
What charm can sooth her melancholy,
      What art can wash her guilt away?

The only art her guilt to cover,
      To hide her shame from every eye,
To give repentance to her lover,
      And wring his bosom—is to die.

Views: 31

Benevolence
by Mark Akenside (1721-1770)

Thron’d in the sun; s descending car,
What power unseen diffuseth far
      This tenderness of mind?
What Genius smiles on yonder flood?
What God, in whispers from the wood,
      Bids every thought be kind?

O Thou, whate’er thy awful name,
Whose wisdom our untoward frame
      With social love restrains;
Thou, who by fair affection’s ties
Giv’st us to double all our joys
      And half disarm our pains;

Let universal candour still,
Clear as yon heaven-reflecting rill,
      Preserve my open mind;
Nor this nor that man’s crooked ways
One sordid doubt within me raise
      To injure human kind.

Views: 33

Thoughts at Sunrise
by Robert Bulwer-Lytton (“Owen Meredith”) (1831-1891)

         The lark leaves the earth,
               With the dew on his breast,
         And my love’s at the birth,
               And my life’s at the best,
What bliss shall I bid the beam bring thee
                           To-day, love?
What care shall I bid the breeze fling thee
                           Away, love?
What song shall I bid the bird sing thee,
                           O say, love?
         For the beam, and the breeze,
         And the birds—all of these
(Because thou hast loved me) my bidding obey, love.
         Now the lark’s in the light,
               And the dew on the bough,
         And my heart’s at the height
               Of the day that dawn’s now.

Views: 44

The Pet
by Lenora Speyer (1872-1956)

Hope gnawed at my heart like a hungry rat,
Ran in and out of my dreams high-walled,
I heard its scampering feet:
“Pretty rat – pretty rat — !” I called,
And crumbled it songs to eat.

Hope peeped at me from behind my dreams,
Nibbled the crumbs of my melodies,
Grew tame and sleek and fat;
Oh, but my heart knew ease
To feel the teeth of my rat!

Then came a night — and then a day –
I heard soft feet that scuttled away –
Rats leave the sinking ship, they say.

Views: 37

“This is the shape of the leaf”
by Conrad Aiken (1889-1973)

This is the shape of the leaf, and this of the flower,
And this the pale bole of the tree
Which watches its bough in a pool of unwavering water
In a land we never shall see.

The thrush on the bough is silent, the dew falls softly,
In the evening is hardly a sound.
And the three beautiful pilgrims who come here together
Touch lightly the dust of the ground.

Touch it with feet that trouble the dust but as wings do,
Come shyly together, are still,
Like dancers who wait in a pause of the music, for music
The exquisite silence to fill.

This is the thought of the first, and this of the second,
And this the grave thought of the third:
‛Linger we thus for a moment, palely expectant,
And silence will end, and the bird

‛Sing the pure phrase, sweet phrase, clear phrase in the twilight
To fill the blue bell of the world;
And we, who on music so leaflike have drifted together,
Leaflike apart shall be whirled

‛Into what but the beauty of silence, silence forever?’ . . .
. . . This is the shape of the tree,
And the flower, and the leaf, and the three pale beautiful pilgrims:
This is what you are to me.

Views: 46

The Year
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919)

What can be said in New Year rhymes,
That’s not been said a thousand times?

The new years come, the old years go,
We know we dream, we dream we know.

We rise up laughing with the light,
We lie down weeping with the night.

We hug the world until it stings,
We curse it then and sigh for wings.

We live, we love, we woo, we wed,
We wreathe our brides, we sheet our dead.

We laugh, we weep, we hope, we fear,
And that’s the burden of the year.

Views: 40

A Letter to Her Husband Absent Upon Public Employment
by Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672)

As loving Hind that (Hartless) wants her Deer,
Scuds through the woods and fern with harkning ear,
Perplext, in every bush and nook doth pry,
Her dearest Deer, might answer ear or eye;
So doth my anxious soul, which now doth miss
A dearer dear (far dearer Heart) than this.
Still wait with doubts, and hopes, and failing eye,
His voice to hear or person to descry.
Or as the pensive Dove doth all alone
On withered bough most uncouthly bemoan
The absence of her Love and loving Mate,
Whose loss hath made her so unfortunate:
Ev’n thus do I, with many a deep sad groan,
Bewail my turtle true, who now is gone,
His presence and his safe return still woo,
With thousand doleful sighs and mournful Coo.
Or as the loving Mullet, that true Fish,
Her fellow lost, nor joy nor life do wish,
But launches on that shore, there for to die,
Where she her captive husband doth espy.
Mine being gone, I lead a joyless life,
I have a loving peer, yet seem no wife;
But worst of all, to him can’t steer my course,
I here, he there, alas, both kept by force.
Return my Dear, my joy, my only Love,
Unto thy Hind, thy Mullet, and thy Dove,
Who neither joys in pasture, house, nor streams,
The substance gone, O me, these are but dreams.
Together at one Tree, oh let us browse,
And like two Turtles roost within one house,
And like the Mullets in one River glide,
Let’s still remain but one, till death divide.

Views: 32