In Memoriam A. H. H.: Is it, then, regret for buried time poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
Is it, then, regret for buried time That keenlier in sweet April wakes, And meets the year, and gives and takes The colours of the crescent prime? Not all: the songs, the stirring air, The life re-orient out of dust, Cry thro’ the sense to hearten trust In that which made the world so […]
In Memoriam A. H. H.: 131. O living will that shalt endure poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
O living will that shalt endure When all that seems shall suffer shock, Rise in the spiritual rock, Flow thro’ our deeds and make them pure, That we may lift from out of dust A voice as unto him that hears, A cry above the conquer’d years To one that with us works, and […]
In Memoriam A. H. H.: 99. Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again, So loud with voices of the birds, So thick with lowings of the herds, Day, when I lost the flower of men; Who tremblest thro’ thy darkling red On yon swoll’n brook that bubbles fast By meadows breathing of the past, And woodlands holy to the dead; Who […]
In Memoriam A. H. H.: 95. By night we linger’d on the lawn poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
By night we linger’d on the lawn, For underfoot the herb was dry; And genial warmth; and o’er the sky The silvery haze of summer drawn; And calm that let the tapers burn Unwavering: not a cricket chirr’d: The brook alone far-off was heard, And on the board the fluttering urn: And bats went […]
In Memoriam A. H. H.: 83. Dip down upon the northern shore poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
Dip down upon the northern shore O sweet new-year delaying long; Thou doest expectant nature wrong; Delaying long, delay no more. What stays thee from the clouded noons, Thy sweetness from its proper place? Can trouble live with April days, Or sadness in the summer moons? Bring orchis, bring the foxglove spire, The little […]
In Memoriam A. H. H.: 82. I wage not any feud with death poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
I wage not any feud with Death For changes wrought on form and face; No lower life that earth’s embrace May breed with him, can fright my faith. Eternal process moving on, From state to state the spirit walks; And these are but the shatter’d stalks, Or ruin’d chrysalis of one. Nor blame I […]
In Memoriam A. H. H.: 7. Dark house, by which once more I s poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
Dark house, by which once more I stand Here in the long unlovely street, Doors, where my heart was used to beat So quickly, waiting for a hand, A hand that can be clasp’d no more– Behold me, for I cannot sleep, And like a guilty thing I creep At earliest morning to the […]
In Memoriam A. H. H.: 78. Again at Christmas did we weave poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
Again at Christmas did we weave The holly round the Christmas hearth; The silent snow possess’d the earth, And calmly fell our Christmas-eve: The yule-log sparkled keen with frost, No wing of wind the region swept, But over all things brooding slept The quiet sense of something lost. As in the winters left […]
In Memoriam A. H. H.: 5. Sometimes I Hold it half a Sin poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
I sometimes hold it half a sin To put in words the grief I feel; For words, like Nature, half reveal And half conceal the Soul within. But, for the unquiet heart and brain, A use in measured language lies; The sad mechanic exercise, Like dull narcotics, numbing pain. In words, like weeds, I’ll […]
In Memoriam A. H. H.: 55. The wish, that of the living whol poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
The wish, that of the living whole No life may fail beyond the grave, Derives it not from what we have The likest God within the soul? Are God and Nature then at strife, That Nature lends such evil dreams? So careful of the type she seems, So careless of the single life; That […]
In Memoriam A. H. H.: 54. Oh, yet we Trust that somehow Goo poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
Oh, yet we trust that somehow good Will be the final end of ill, To pangs of nature, sins of will, Defects of doubt, and taints of blood; That nothing walks with aimless feet; That not one life shall be destroy’d, Or cast as rubbish to the void, When God hath made the pile […]
In Memoriam A. H. H.: 45. The baby new to earth and sky poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
The baby new to earth and sky, What time his tender palm is prest Against the circle of the breast, Has never thought that “this is I”: But as he grows he gathers much, And learns the use of “I,” and “me,” And finds “I am not what I see, And other than the […]
In Memoriam A. H. H.: 39. Old warder of these buried bones poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
Old warder of these buried bones, And answering now my random stroke With fruitful cloud and living smoke, Dark yew, that graspest at the stones And dippest toward the dreamless head, To thee too comes the golden hour When flower is feeling after flower; But Sorrow–fixt upon the dead, And darkening the dark graves […]
In Memoriam A. H. H.: 2. Old Yew, which graspest at the sto poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
Old Yew, which graspest at the stones That name the under-lying dead, Thy fibres net the dreamless head, Thy roots are wrapt about the bones. The seasons bring the flower again, And bring the firstling to the flock; And in the dusk of thee, the clock Beats out the little lives of men. O […]
In Memoriam A. H. H.: 22. The path by which we twain did go poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
The path by which we twain did go, Which led by tracts that pleased us well, Thro’ four sweet years arose and fell, From flower to flower, from snow to snow: And we with singing cheer’d the way, And, crown’d with all the season lent, From April on to April went, And glad at […]
Idylls of the King: The Last Tournament (excerpt) poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
Dagonet, the fool, whom Gawain in his mood Had made mock-knight of Arthur’s Table Round, At Camelot, high above the yellowing woods, Danced like a wither’d leaf before the hall. And toward him from the hall, with harp in hand, And from the crown thereof a carcanet Of ruby swaying to and fro, the […]
Otho The Great – Act IV poem – John Keats poems
SCENE I. AURANTHE’S Apartment. AURANTHE and CONRAD discovered. Conrad. Well, well, I know what ugly jeopardy We are cag’d in; you need not pester that Into my ears. Prythee, let me be spared A foolish tongue, that I may bethink me Of remedies with some deliberation. You cannot doubt but ’tis in Albert’s […]
Lamia. Part I poem – John Keats poems
Upon a time, before the faery broods Drove Nymph and Satyr from the prosperous woods, Before King Oberon’s bright diadem, Sceptre, and mantle, clasp’d with dewy gem, Frighted away the Dryads and the Fauns From rushes green, and brakes, and cowslip’d lawns, The ever-smitten Hermes empty left His golden throne, bent warm on […]
Fancy poem – John Keats poems
Ever let the Fancy roam, Pleasure never is at home: At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth, Like to bubbles when rain pelteth; Then let winged Fancy wander Through the thought still spread beyond her: Open wide the mind’s cage-door, She’ll dart forth, and cloudward soar. O sweet Fancy! let her loose; Summer’s joys are […]
Endymion: Book III poem – John Keats poems
There are who lord it o’er their fellow-men With most prevailing tinsel: who unpen Their baaing vanities, to browse away The comfortable green and juicy hay From human pastures; or, O torturing fact! Who, through an idiot blink, will see unpack’d Fire-branded foxes to sear up and singe Our gold and ripe-ear’d hopes. With […]
Samson Agonistes poem – John Milton poems
Of that sort of Dramatic Poem which is call’d Tragedy. TRAGEDY, as it was antiently compos’d, hath been ever held the gravest, moralest, and most profitable of all other Poems: therefore said by Aristotle to be of power by raising pity and fear, or terror, to purge the mind of those and such like […]
Paradise Lost: Book 11 poem – John Milton poems
Undoubtedly he will relent, and turn From his displeasure; in whose look serene, When angry most he seemed and most severe, What else but favour, grace, and mercy, shone? So spake our father penitent; nor Eve Felt less remorse: they, forthwith to the place Repairing where he judged them, prostrate fell Before him reverent; […]
Paradise Lost: Book 10 poem – John Milton poems
Mean while the heinous and despiteful act Of Satan, done in Paradise; and how He, in the serpent, had perverted Eve, Her husband she, to taste the fatal fruit, Was known in Heaven; for what can ‘scape the eye Of God all-seeing, or deceive his heart Omniscient? who, in all things wise and just, […]
Paradise Lost: Book 09 poem – John Milton poems
No more of talk where God or Angel guest With Man, as with his friend, familiar us’d, To sit indulgent, and with him partake Rural repast; permitting him the while Venial discourse unblam’d. I now must change Those notes to tragick; foul distrust, and breach Disloyal on the part of Man, revolt, And disobedience: […]
The Kingfisher poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
In a year the nightingales were said to be so loud they drowned out slumber, and peafowl strolled screaming beside the ruined nunnery, through the long evening of a dazzled pub crawl, the halcyon color, portholed by those eye-spots’ stunning tapestry, unsettled the pastoral nightfall with amazements opening. Months later, intermission in a […]
The Cooling Tower poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
By night a laddered diagram seen from the windows of this bedroom town-rayflowcrs of dread ascending and descending- identifies the cooling tower, insomniac vision revealed by day as a grayed obese archangel, its twiddled dirk of ash and rhinestone a metronomic rerun of some half obliterated last nightmare of Eden in the West: […]
Stacking The Straw poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
In those days the oatfields’ fenced-in vats of running platinum, the yellower alloy of wheat and barley, whose end, however gorgeous all that trammeled rippling in the wind, came down to toaster-fodder, cereal as a commodity, were a rebuke to permanence-to bronze or any metal less utilitarian than the barbed braids that marked […]
Stacking The Straw poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
In those days the oatfields’ fenced-in vats of running platinum, the yellower alloy of wheat and barley, whose end, however gorgeous all that trammeled rippling in the wind, came down to toaster-fodder, cereal as a commodity, were a rebuke to permanence-to bronze or any metal less utilitarian than the barbed braids that marked […]
Gradual Clearing poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
Late in the day the fog wrung itself out like a sponge in glades of rain, sieving the half-invisible cove with speartips; then, in a lifting of wisps and scarves, of smoke-rings from about the islands, disclosing what had been wavering fishnet plissé as a smoothness of peau-de-soie or just-ironed percale, with a […]
Brought From Beyond poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
The magpie and the bowerbird, its odd predilection unheard of by Marco Polo when he came upon, high in Badakhshan, that blue stone’s embedded glint of pyrites, like the dance of light on water, or of angels (the surface tension of the Absolute) on nothing, turned, by processes already ancient, into pigment: ultramarine, […]
A Hairline Fracture poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
Whatever went wrong, that week, was more than weather: a shoddy streak in the fabric of the air of London that disintegrated into pollen and came charging down by the bushelful, an abrasive the color of gold dust, eroding the tearducts and littering the sidewalks in the neighborhood of Sloane Square, where the […]
A Cure At Porlock poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
For whatever did it-the cider at the Ship Inn, where the crowd from the bar that night had overflowed singing into Southey’s Corner, or an early warning of appendicitis- the remedy the chemist in the High Street purveyed was still a dose of kaopectate in morphine-the bane and the afflatus of S.T.C. when […]
The Red Lacquer Music-Stand poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
A music-stand of crimson lacquer, long since brought In some fast clipper-ship from China, quaintly wrought With bossed and carven flowers and fruits in blackening gold, The slender shaft all twined about and thickly scrolled With vine leaves and young twisted tendrils, whirling, curling, Flinging their new shoots over the four wings, and swirling […]
The Book of Hours of Sister Clotilde poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
The Bell in the convent tower swung. High overhead the great sun hung, A navel for the curving sky. The air was a blue clarity. Swallows flew, And a cock crew. The iron clanging sank through the light air, Rustled over with blowing branches. A flare Of spotted green, and a snake had gone […]
The Bombardment poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
Slowly, without force, the rain drops into the city. It stops a moment on the carved head of Saint John, then slides on again, slipping and trickling over his stone cloak. It splashes from the lead conduit of a gargoyle, and falls from it in turmoil on the stones in the Cathedral square. Where […]
Sword Blades and Poppy Seed poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
A drifting, April, twilight sky, A wind which blew the puddles dry, And slapped the river into waves That ran and hid among the staves Of an old wharf. A watery light Touched bleak the granite bridge, and white Without the slightest tinge of gold, The city shivered in the cold. All day my […]
Patterns poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
I walk down the garden paths, And all the daffodils Are blowing, and the bright blue squills. I walk down the patterned garden-paths In my stiff, brocaded gown. With my powdered hair and jewelled fan, I too am a rare Pattern. As I wander down The garden paths. My dress is richly figured, And […]
Nightmare: A Tale for an Autumn Evening poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
After a Print by George Cruikshank It was a gusty night, With the wind booming, and swooping, Looping round corners, Sliding over the cobble-stones, Whipping and veering, And careering over the roofs Like a thousand clattering horses. Mr. Spruggins had been dining in the city, Mr. Spruggins was none too steady in his gait, […]
Lead Soldiers poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
The nursery fire burns brightly, crackling in cheerful little explosions and trails of sparks up the back of the chimney. Miniature rockets peppering the black bricks with golden stars, as though a gala flamed a night of victorious wars. The nodding mandarin on the bookcase moves his head forward and back, slowly, and looks […]
Vacant Lot With Pokeweed poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
Tufts, follicles, grubstake biennial rosettes, a low- life beach-blond scruff of couch grass: notwithstanding the interglinting dregs of wholesale upheaval and dismemberment, weeds do not hesitate, the wheeling rise of the ailanthus halts at nothing—and look! here’s a pokeweed, sprung up from seed dropped by some vagrant, that’s seized a foothold: a magenta- […]