London Poets poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
(In Memoriam.) They trod the streets and squares where now I tread, With weary hearts, a little while ago; When, thin and grey, the melancholy snow Clung to the leafless branches overhead; Or when the smoke-veiled sky grew stormy-red In autumn; with a re-arisen woe Wrestled, what time the passionate spring winds blow; […]
London in July poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
What ails my senses thus to cheat? What is it ails the place, That all the people in the street Should wear one woman’s face? The London trees are dusty-brown Beneath the summer sky; My love, she dwells in London town, Nor leaves it in July. O various and intricate maze, Wide […]
Lohengrin poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
Back to the mystic shore beyond the main The mystic craft has sped, and left no trace. Ah, nevermore may she behold his face, Nor touch his hand, nor hear his voice again! With hidden front she crouches; all in vain The proffered balm. A vessel nears the place; They bring her young, lost […]
Last Words poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
Dead! all’s done with! — R. Browning. These blossoms that I bring, This song that here I sing, These tears that now I shed, I give unto the dead. There is no more to be done, Nothing beneath the sun, All the long ages through, Nothing–by me for you. The tale […]
June poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
Last June I saw your face three times; Three times I touched your hand; Now, as before, May month is o’er, And June is in the land. O many Junes shall come and go, Flow’r-footed o’er the mead; O many Junes for me, to whom Is length of days decreed. There shall […]
In the Nower poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
To J. De P. Deep in the grass outstretched I lie, Motionless on the hill; Above me is a cloudless sky, Around me all is still: There is no breath, no sound, no stir, The drowsy peace to break: I close my tired eyes–it were So simple not to wake. Amy […]
In the Night poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
Cruel? I think there never was a cheating More cruel, thro’ all the weary days than this! This is no dream, my heart kept on repeating, But sober certainty of waking bliss. Dreams? O, I know their faces — goodly seeming, Vaporous, whirled on many-coloured wings; I have had dreams before, this is […]
In the Mile End Road poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
How like her! But ’tis she herself, Comes up the crowded street, How little did I think, the morn, My only love to meet! Whose else that motion and that mien? Whose else that airy tread? For one strange moment I forgot My only love was dead. Amy LevyAmy Levy […]
In the Black Forest poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
I lay beneath the pine trees, And looked aloft, where, through The dusky, clustered tree-tops, Gleamed rent, gay rifts of blue. I shut my eyes, and a fancy Fluttered my sense around: “I lie here dead and buried, And this is churchyard ground. “I am at rest for ever; Ended the stress […]
In September poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
The sky is silver-grey; the long Slow waves caress the shore.– On such a day as this I have been glad, Who shall be glad no more. Amy LevyAmy Levy (1861 – 1889) was a Victorian era poetess and prose author who wrote in English in the second half of the […]
In a Minor Key poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
(AN ECHO FROM A LARGER LYRE.) That was love that I had before Years ago, when my heart was young; Ev’ry smile was a gem you wore; Ev’ry word was a sweet song sung. You came–all my pulses burn’d and beat. (O sweet wild throbs of an early day!) You went–with the […]
Impotens poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
If I were a woman of old, What prayers I would pray for you, dear; My pitiful tribute behold– Not a prayer, but a tear. The pitiless order of things, Whose laws we may change not nor break, Alone I could face it–it wrings My heart for your sake. Amy […]
Felo de Se poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
With Apologies to Mr. Swinburne. For repose I have sighed and have struggled ; have sigh’d and have struggled in vain; I am held in the Circle of Being and caught in the Circle of Pain. I was wan and weary with life ; my sick soul yearned for death; I was weary […]
Contradictions poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
Now, even, I cannot think it true, My friend, that there is no more you. Almost as soon were no more I, Which were, of course, absurdity! Your place is bare, you are not seen, Your grave, I’m told, is growing green; And both for you and me, you know, There’s no Above and […]
Christopher Found poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
I. At last; so this is you, my dear! How should I guess to find you here? So long, so long, I sought in vain In many cities, many lands, With straining eyes and groping hands; The people marvelled at my pain. They said: “But sure, the woman’s mad; What ails her, we […]
Captivity poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
The lion remembers the forest, The lion in chains; To the bird that is captive a vision Of woodland remains. One strains with his strength at the fetter, In impotent rage; One flutters in flights of a moment, And beats at the cage. If the lion were loosed from the fetter, To […]
Cambridge in the Long poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
Where drowsy sound of college-chimes Across the air is blown, And drowsy fragrance of the limes, I lie and dream alone. A dazzling radiance reigns o’er all– O’er gardens densely green, O’er old grey bridges and the small, Slow flood which slides between. This is the place; it is not strange, But […]
Borderland poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
Am I waking, am I sleeping? As the first faint dawn comes creeping Thro’ the pane, I am aware Of an unseen presence hovering, Round, above, in the dusky air: A downy bird, with an odorous wing, That fans my forehead, and sheds perfume, As sweet as love, as soft as death, Drowsy-slow through […]
Between the Showers poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
Between the showers I went my way, The glistening street was bright with flowers; It seemed that March had turned to May Between the showers. Above the shining roofs and towers The blue broke forth athwart the grey; Birds carolled in their leafless bowers. Hither and tither, swift and gay, The people […]
Ballade of a Special Edition poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
He comes; I hear him up the street– Bird of ill omen, flapping wide The pinion of a printed sheet, His hoarse note scares the eventide. Of slaughter, theft, and suicide He is the herald and the friend; Now he vociferates with pride– A double murder in Mile End! A hanging to his […]
At Dawn poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
In the night I dreamed of you; All the place was filled With your presence; in my heart The strife was stilled. All night I have dreamed of you; Now the morn is grey.– How shall I arise and face The empty day? Amy LevyAmy Levy (1861 – 1889) was […]
At a Dinner Party poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
With fruit and flowers the board is deckt, The wine and laughter flow; I’ll not complain–could one expect So dull a world to know? You look across the fruit and flowers, My glance your glances find.– It is our secret, only ours, Since all the world is blind. Amy LevyAmy […]
A Wall Flower poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
I lounge in the doorway and languish in vain While Tom, Dick and Harry are dancing with Jane My spirit rises to the music’s beat; There is a leaden fiend lurks in my feet! To move unto your motion, Love, were sweet. Somewhere, I think, some other where, not here, In other […]
A Reminiscence poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
It is so long gone by, and yet How clearly now I see it all! The glimmer of your cigarette, The little chamber, narrow and tall. Perseus; your picture in its frame; (How near they seem and yet how far!) The blaze of kindled logs; the flame Of tulips in a mighty jar. […]
A Prayer poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
Since that I may not have Love on this side the grave, Let me imagine Love. Since not mine is the bliss Of ‘claspt hands and lips that kiss,’ Let me in dreams it prove. What tho’ as the years roll No soul shall melt to my soul, Let me conceive such thing; Tho’ […]
A March Day in London poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
The east wind blows in the street to-day; The sky is blue, yet the town looks grey. ‘Tis the wind of ice, the wind of fire, Of cold despair and of hot desire, Which chills the flesh to aches and pains, And sends a fever through all the veins. From end to end, […]
A London Plane-Tree poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
Green is the plane-tree in the square, The other trees are brown; They droop and pine for country air; The plane-tree loves the town. Here from my garret-pane, I mark The plane-tree bud and blow, Shed her recuperative bark, And spread her shade below. Among her branches, in and out, The city […]
A June-Tide Echo poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
(After a Richter Concert.) In the long, sad time, when the sky was grey, And the keen blast blew through the city drear, When delight had fled from the night and the day, My chill heart whispered, ” June will be here! ” June with its roses a-sway in the sun, Its […]
A Greek Girl poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
I may not weep, not weep, and he is dead. A weary, weary weight of tears unshed Through the long day in my sad heart I bear; The horrid sun with all unpitying glare Shines down into the dreary weaving-room, Where clangs the ceaseless clatter of the loom, And ceaselessly deft maiden-fingers weave The […]
A Farewell poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
(After Heine.) The sad rain falls from Heaven, A sad bird pipes and sings ; I am sitting here at my window And watching the spires of “King’s.” O fairest of all fair places, Sweetest of all sweet towns! With the birds, and the greyness and greenness, And the men in caps […]
A Cross-Road Epitaph poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
“Am Kreuzweg wird begraben Wer selber brachte sich um.” When first the world grew dark to me I call’d on God, yet came not he. Whereon, as wearier wax’d my lot, On Love I call’d, but Love came not. When a worse evil did befall, Death, on thee only did I call. […]
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- […]
The Sun Underfoot Among The Sundews poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
An ingenuity too astonishing to be quite fortuitous is this bog full of sundews, sphagnum- lined and shaped like a teacup. A step down and you’re into it; a wilderness swallows you up: ankle-, then knee-, then midriff- to-shoulder-deep in wetfooted understory, an overhead spruce-tamarack horizon hinting you’ll never get out of here. But […]
Syrinx poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
Like the foghorn that’s all lung, the wind chime that’s all percussion, like the wind itself, that’s merely air in a terrible fret, without so much as a finger to articulate what ails it, the aeolian syrinx, that reed in the throat of a bird, when it comes to the shaping of what we […]
Salvage poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
Daily the cortege of crumpled defunct cars goes by by the lasagna- layered flatbed truckload: hardtop reverting to tar smudge, wax shine antiqued to crusted winepress smear, windshield battered to intact ice-tint, a rarity fresh from the Pleistocene. I like it; privately I find esthetic satisfaction in these ceremonial removals from the […]
On The Disadvantages Of Central Heating poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
cold nights on the farm, a sock-shod stove-warmed flatiron slid under the covers, mornings a damascene- sealed bizarrerie of fernwork decades ago now waking in northwest London, tea brought up steaming, a Peak Frean biscuit alongside to be nibbled as blue gas leaps up singing decades ago now damp sheets in Dorset, fog-hung […]
Nothing Stays Put poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
In memory of Father Flye, 1884-1985 The strange and wonderful are too much with us. The protea of the antipodes—a great, globed, blazing honeybee of a bloom— for sale in the supermarket! We are in our decadence, we are not entitled. What have we done to deserve all the produce of the tropics— this fiery […]
Fog poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
A vagueness comes over everything, as though proving color and contour alike dispensable: the lighthouse extinct, the islands’ spruce-tips drunk up like milk in the universal emulsion; houses reverting into the lost and forgotten; granite subsumed, a rumor in a mumble of ocean. Tactile definition, however, has not been totally banished: hanging tassel by […]
Exmoor poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
Lost aboard the roll of Kodac- olor that was to have super- seded all need to remember Somerset were: a large flock of winter-bedcover-thick- pelted sheep up on the moor; a stile, a church spire, and an excess, at Porlock, of tenderly barbarous antique thatch in tandem with flower- beds, relentlessly pictur- esque, […]
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- […]