The Man with the Hoe
by Edwin Markham (1852-1940)

Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
The emptiness of ages in his face,
And on his back the burden of the world.
Who made him dead to rapture and despair,
A thing that grieves not and that never hopes.
Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?
Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?
Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?

Is this the Thing the Lord God made and gave
To have dominion over sea and land;
To trace the stars and search the heavens for power;
To feel the passion of Eternity?
Is this the Dream He dreamed who shaped the suns
And marked their ways upon the ancient deep?
Down all the caverns of Hell to their last gulf
There is no shape more terrible than this —
More tongued with censure of the world’s blind greed —
More filled with signs and portents for the soul—
More packed with danger to the universe.

What gulfs between him and the seraphim!
Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him
Are Plato and the swing of Pleiades?
What the long reaches of the peaks of song,
The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose?
Through this dread shape the suffering ages look;
Time’s tragedy is in that aching stoop;
Through this dread shape humanity betrayed,
Plundered, profaned and disinherited,
Cries protest to the Judges of the World,
A protest that is also prophecy.

O masters, lords, and rulers in all lands,
Is this the handiwork you give to God,
This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched?
How will you ever straighten up this shape;
Touch it again with immortality;
Give back the upward looking and the light;
Rebuild in it the music and the dream;
Make right the immemorial infamies,
Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes?

O masters, lords, and rulers in all lands,
How will the Future reckon with this Man?
How answer his brute question in that hour
When whirlwinds of rebellion shake all shores?
How will it be with kingdoms and with kings—
With those who shaped him to the thing he is—–
When this dumb Terror shall rise to judge the world,
After the silence of the centuries?

Views: 27

Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter
by John Ransom Crowe (1888-1974)

There was such speed in her little body,
And such lightness in her footfall,
It is no wonder her brown study
Astonishes us all.

Her wars were bruited in our high window.
We looked among orchard trees and beyond
Where she took arms against her shadow,
Or harried unto the pond

The lazy geese, like a snow cloud
Dripping their snow on the green grass,
Tricking and stopping, sleepy and proud,
Who cried in goose, Alas,

For the tireless heart within the little
Lady with rod that made them rise
From their noon apple-dreams and scuttle
Goose-fashion under the skies!

But now go the bells, and we are ready,
In one house we are sternly stopped
To say we are vexed at her brown study,
Lying so primly propped.

Views: 33

Trees
by Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918)
because today is Arbor Day

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

Views: 34

The Breadth and Beauty of the Spacious Night
by Philip Bourke Marston (1850-1887)

The breadth and beauty of the spacious night
      Brimmed with white moonlight, swept by winds that blew
      The flying sea-spray up to where we two
Sat all alone, made one in Love’s delight, —
The sanctity of sunsets palely bright;
      Autumnal woods, seen ‘neath meek skies of blue;
      Old cities that God’s silent peace stole through, —
These of our love were very sound and sight.

The strain of labor ; the bewildering din
      Of thundering wheels ; the bells’ discordant chime;
      The sacredness of art; the spell of rhyme, —
These, too, with our dear love were woven in.
      That so, when parted, all things might recall
      The sacred love that had its part in all.

Views: 98

“ And when I am entombèd in my place”
by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

And when I am entombèd in my place,
Be it remembered of a single man,
He never, though he dearly loved his race,
For fear of human eyes swerved from his plan.

Views: 36

Frühlingsglaube
by Ludwig Uhland (1787-1862)

Die linden Lüfte sind erwacht,
Sie säuseln und weben Tag und Nacht,
Sie schaffen an allen Enden.
O frischer Duft, o neuer Klang!
Nun armes Herze, sey nicht bang!
Nun muß sich Alles, Alles wenden.

Die Welt wird schöner mit jedem Tag,
Man weiß nicht, was noch werden mag,
Das Blühen will nicht enden.
Es blüht das fernste, tiefste Tal.
Nun armes Herz, vergiß der Qual,
Nun muß sich Alles, Alles wenden.

Views: 33

The Song of the Mad Prince
by Walter de la Mare (1873-1956)

Who said, “Peacock Pie”?
      The old King to the sparrow:
Who said, “Crops are ripe”?
      Rust to the harrow:
Who said, “Where sleeps she now?
      Where rests she now her head,
Bathed in eve’s loveliness”?—
      That’s what I said.

Who said, “Ay, mum’s the word”?
      Sexton to willow:
Who said, “Green dusk for dreams,
      Moss for a pillow”?
Who said, “All Time’s delight
      Hath she for narrow bed;
Life’s troubled bubble broken”?—
      That’s what I said.

Views: 39

Locksley Hall
by Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

Comrades, leave me here a little, while as yet ’tis early morn:
Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle horn.

‘Tis the place, and all around it, as of old, the curlews call,
Dreary gleams about the moorland flying over Locksley Hall;

Locksley Hall, that in the distance overlooks the sandy tracts,
And the hollow ocean-ridges roaring into cataracts.

Many a night from yonder ivied casement, ere I went to rest,
Did I look on great Orion sloping slowly to the West.

Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising thro’ the mellow shade,
Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver braid.

Here about the beach I wander’d, nourishing a youth sublime
With the fairy tales of science, and the long result of Time;

When the centuries behind me like a fruitful land reposed;
When I clung to all the present for the promise that it closed:

When I dipt into the future far as human eye could see;
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be.—

In the Spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin’s breast;
In the Spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest;

In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnish’d dove;
In the Spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.

Continue reading …

Views: 37

The Soldier
by Rupert Brooke (1887-1915)

If I should die, think only this of me:
      That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
      In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
      Gave once her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England’s, breathing English air,
      Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think this heart, all evil shed away,
      A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
            Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
      And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
            In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

Views: 31

A Complaint of His Lady’s Cruelty
by Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542)

Since ye delight to know,
That my torment and woe
Should still increase
Without release,
I shall enforce me so,
That life and all shall go
For to content your cruelness.

And so this grievous train,
That I too long sustain,
Shall sometime cesse,
And have redress,
And you also remain,
Full pleased with my pain,
For to content your cruelness.

Unless that be too light,
And that ye would ye might
See the distress
And heaviness,
Of one slain outright,
Therewith to please your sight,
And to content your cruelness.

Then in your cruel mood
Would God forthwith ye would
With force express
My heart oppress,
To do your heart such good,
To see me bathe in blood,
For to content your cruelness.

Then could ye ask no more;
Then should ye ease my sore,
And the excess
Of my distress;
And you should evermore
Defamèd be therefor,
For to repent your cruelness.

Views: 31