Knowledge
by Louise Bogan (1897-1970)
Now that I know
How passion warms little
Of flesh in the mould,
And treasure is brittle,—
I’ll lie here and learn
How, over their ground
Trees make a long shadow
And a light sound.
Views: 26
Category Archives: poem of the day
Poem of the day
The Healers
by Laurence Binyon (1869-1943)
In a vision of the night I saw them,
In the battles of the night.
’Mid the roar and the reeling shadows of blood
They were moving like light,
Light of the reason, guarded
Tense within the will,
As a lantern under a tossing of boughs
Burns steady and still.
With scrutiny calm, and with fingers
Patient as swift
They bind up the hurts and the pain-writhen
Bodies uplift,
Untired and defenceless; around them
With shrieks in its breath
Bursts stark from the terrible horizon
Impersonal death;
But they take not their courage from anger
That blinds the hot being;
They take not their pity from weakness;
Tender, yet seeing;
Feeling, yet nerved to the uttermost;
Keen, like steel;
Yet the wounds of the mind they are stricken with,
Who shall heal?
They endure to have eyes of the watcher
In hell, and not swerve
For an hour from the faith that they follow,
The light that they serve.
Man true to man, to his kindness
That overflows all,
To his spirit erect in the thunder
When all his forts fall,—
This light, in the tiger-mad welter,
They serve and they save.
What song shall be worthy to sing of them
Braver than the brave?
Views: 27
Poem of the day
Promising a Visit
by John Oldham (1653-1683)
Sooner may art, and easier far, divide
The soft embracing waters of the tide,
Which with united friendship still rejoin,
Than part my eyes, my arms, or lips from thine:
Sooner it may time’s headlong motion force,
In which it marches with unaltered course,
Or sever this from the succeeding day,
Than from thy happy presence force my stay.
Not the touched needle (emblem of my soul)
With greater reverence trembles to its pole,
Nor flames with surer instinct upwards go,
Than mine, and all their motives tend to you.
Fly swift, ye minutes, and contract the space
Of time, which holds me from her dear embrace:
When I am there I’ll bid you kindly stay,
I’ll bid you rest, and never glide away.
Thither, when business gives me a release
To lose my cares in soft and gentle ease,
I’ll come, and all arrears of kindness pay,
And live o’er my whole absence in one day.
Not souls, released from human bodies, move
With quicker haste to meet their bliss above,
Than I, when freed from clogs that bind me now,
Eager to seize my happiness, will go.
Should a fierce angel armed with thunder stand,
And threaten vengeance with his brandished hand,
To stop the entrance to my paradise,
I’ll venture, and his slighted bolts despise.
Swift as the wings of fear shall be my love,
And me to her with equal speed remove;
Swift as the motions of the eye or mind,
I’ll thither fly, and leave slow thought behind!
Views: 36
Poem of the day
Love Me
by Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)
Brown-thrush singing all day long
In the leaves above me,
Take my love this April song,
“Love me, love me, love me!”
When he harkens what you say,
Bid him, lest he miss me,
Leave his work or leave his play,
And kiss me, kiss me, kiss me!
Views: 48
Poem of the day
The Flower of Beauty
by George Darley (1795-1846)
Sweet in her green dell the flower of beauty slumbers,
Lull’d by the faint breezes sighing through her hair;
Sleeps she and hears not the melancholy numbers
Breathed to my sad lute ’mid the lonely air.
Down from the high cliffs the rivulet is teeming
To wind round the willow banks that lure him from above:
O that in tears, from my rocky prison streaming,
I too could glide to the bower of my love!
Ah! where the woodbines with sleepy arms have wound her,
Opes she her eyelids at the dream of my lay,
Listening, like the dove, while the fountains echo round her,
To her lost mate’s call in the forests far away.
Come then, my bird! For the peace thou ever bearest,
Still Heaven’s messenger of comfort to me—
Come—this fond bosom, O faithfullest and fairest,
Bleeds with its death-wound, its wound of love for thee!
Views: 33
Poem of the day
The Splendour Falls
by Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)
The splendour falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story:
The long light shakes across the lakes
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes dying, dying, dying.
O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!
O sweet and far from cliff and scar
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying,
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes dying, dying, dying.
O love they die in yon rich sky,
They faint on hill or field, or river:
Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
And grow forever and forever.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.
Views: 25
Poem of the day
In the Highlands
by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)
In the highlands, in the country places,
Where the old plain men have rosy faces,
And the young fair maidens
Quiet eyes;
Where essential silence cheers and blesses,
And for ever in the hill-recesses
Her more lovely music
Broods and dies—
O to mount again where erst I haunted;
Where the old red hills are bird-enchanted,
And the low green meadows
Bright with sward;
And when even dies, the million-tinted,
And the night has come, and planets glinted,
Lo, the valley hollow
Lamp-bestarr’d!
O to dream, O to awake and wander
There, and with delight to take and render,
Through the trance of silence,
Quiet breath!
Lo! for there, among the flowers and grasses,
Only the mightier movement sounds and passes;
Only winds and rivers,
Life and death.
Views: 35
Poem of the day
Epipsychidion
by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
My Song, I fear that thou wilt find but few
Who fitly shall conceive thy reasoning,
Of such hard matter dost thou entertain;
Whence, if by misadventure, chance should bring
Thee to base company (as chance may do),
Quite unaware of what thou dost contain,
I prithee, comfort thy sweet self again,
My last delight! tell them that they are dull,
And bid them own that thou art beautiful.
Sweet Spirit! Sister of that orphan one,
Whose empire is the name thou weepest on,
In my heart’s temple I suspend to thee
These votive wreaths of withered memory.
Poor captive bird! who, from thy narrow cage,
Pourest such music, that it might assuage
The rugged hearts of those who prisoned thee,
Were they not deaf to all sweet melody;
This song shall be thy rose: its petals pale
Are dead, indeed, my adored Nightingale!
But soft and fragrant is the faded blossom,
And it has no thorn left to wound thy bosom.
Continue reading
Views: 25
Poem of the day
The Dance
by Rupert Brook (1887-1915)
As the Wind and as the Wind
In a corner of the way,
Goes stepping, stands twirling,
Invisibly, comes whirling,
Bows before and skips behind
In a grave, an endless play—
So my Heart and so my Heart
Following where your feet have gone,
Stirs dust of old dreams there;
He turns a toe; he gleams there,
Treading you a dance apart.
But you see not. You pass on.
Views: 28
Poem of the day
The Three Witches
by Ernest Dowson (1867-1900)
All the moon-shed nights are over,
And the days of gray and dun;
There is neither may nor clover,
And the day and night are one.
Not an hamlet, not a city
Meets our strained and tearless eyes;
In the plain without a pity,
Where the wan grass droops and dies.
We shall wander through the meaning
Of a day and see no light,
For our lichened arms are leaning
On the ends of endless night.
We, the children of Astarte,
Dear abortions of the moon,
In a gay and silent party,
We are riding to you soon.
Burning ramparts, ever burning!
To the flame which never dies
We are yearning, yearning, yearning,
With our gay and tearless eyes.
In the plain without a pity,
(Not an hamlet, not a city)
Where the wan grass droops and dies.
Views: 30