Night by Sidney Lanier
Night by Sidney Lanier Fair is the wedded reign of Night and Day. Each rules a half of earth with different sway, Exchanging kingdoms, East and West, alway. Like the round pearl that Egypt drunk in wine, The sun half sinks i’ the brimming, rosy brine: The wild Night drinks all up: how her eyes […]
My Springs by Sidney Lanier
My Springs by Sidney Lanier In the heart of the Hills of Life, I know Two springs that with unbroken flow Forever pour their lucent streams Into my soul’s far Lake of Dreams. Not larger than two eyes, they lie Beneath the many-changing sky And mirror all of life and time, — Serene and dainty […]
Martha Washington by Sidney Lanier
Martha Washington by Sidney Lanier Written for the “Martha Washington Court Journal”. Down cold snow-stretches of our bitter time, When windy shams and the rain-mocking sleet Of Trade have cased us in such icy rime That hearts are scarcely hot enough to beat, Thy fame, O Lady of the lofty eyes, Doth fall along the […]
Marsh Hymns by Sidney Lanier
Marsh Hymns by Sidney Lanier Between Dawn and Sunrise. Were silver pink, and had a soul, Which soul were shy, which shyness might A visible influence be, and roll Through heaven and earth — ’twere thou, O light! O rhapsody of the wraith of red, O blush but yet in prophecy, O sun-hint that hath […]
Laus Mariae by Sidney Lanier
Laus Mariae by Sidney Lanier Across the brook of Time man leaping goes On stepping-stones of epochs, that uprise Fixed, memorable, midst broad shallow flows Of neutrals, kill-times, sleeps, indifferencies. So twixt each morn and night rise salient heaps: Some cross with but a zigzag, jaded pace From meal to meal: some with convulsive leaps […]
Laughter In The Senate by Sidney Lanier
Laughter In The Senate by Sidney Lanier In the South lies a lonesome, hungry Land; He huddles his rags with a cripple’s hand; He mutters, prone on the barren sand, What time his heart is breaking. He lifts his bare head from the ground; He listens through the gloom around: The winds have brought him […]
June Dreams, In January by Sidney Lanier
June Dreams, In January by Sidney Lanier “So pulse, and pulse, thou rhythmic-hearted Noon That liest, large-limbed, curved along the hills, In languid palpitation, half a-swoon With ardors and sun-loves and subtle thrills; “Throb, Beautiful! while the fervent hours exhale As kisses faint-blown from thy finger-tips Up to the sun, that turn him passion-pale And […]
Jones’s Porvate Argyment by Sidney Lanier
Jones’s Porvate Argyment by Sidney Lanier That air same Jones, which lived in Jones, He had this pint about him: He’d swear with a hundred sighs and groans, That farmers MUST stop gittin’ loans, And git along without ’em: That bankers, warehousemen, and sich Was fatt’nin’ on the planter, And Tennessy was rotten-rich A-raisin’ meat […]
Ireland. by Sidney Lanier
Ireland. by Sidney Lanier Written for the Art Autograph during the Irish Famine, 1880. Heartsome Ireland, winsome Ireland, Charmer of the sun and sea, Bright beguiler of old anguish, How could Famine frown on thee? As our Gulf-Stream, drawn to thee-ward, Turns him from his northward flow, And our wintry western headlands Send thee summer […]
In The Foam. by Sidney Lanier
In The Foam. by Sidney Lanier Life swelleth in a whitening wave, And dasheth thee and me apart. I sweep out seaward: — be thou brave. And reach the shore, Sweetheart. Beat back the backward-thrusting sea. Thy weak white arm his blows may thwart, Christ buffet the wild surge for thee Till thou’rt ashore, Sweetheart. […]
In Absence. by Sidney Lanier
In Absence. by Sidney Lanier I. The storm that snapped our fate’s one ship in twain Hath blown my half o’ the wreck from thine apart. O Love! O Love! across the gray-waved main To thee-ward strain my eyes, my arms, my heart. I ask my God if e’en in His sweet place, Where, by […]
Hymns Of The Marshes. by Sidney Lanier
Hymns Of The Marshes. by Sidney Lanier I. Sunrise. In my sleep I was fain of their fellowship, fain Of the live-oak, the marsh, and the main. The little green leaves would not let me alone in my sleep; Up-breathed from the marshes, a message of range and of sweep, Interwoven with waftures of wild […]
From The Flats. by Sidney Lanier
From The Flats. by Sidney Lanier What heartache — ne’er a hill! Inexorable, vapid, vague and chill The drear sand-levels drain my spirit low. With one poor word they tell me all they know; Whereat their stupid tongues, to tease my pain, Do drawl it o’er again and o’er again. They hurt my heart with […]
Corn by Sidney Lanier
Corn by Sidney Lanier To-day the woods are trembling through and through With shimmering forms, that flash before my view, Then melt in green as dawn-stars melt in blue. The leaves that wave against my cheek caress Like women’s hands; the embracing boughs express A subtlety of mighty tenderness; The copse-depths into little noises start, […]
Control by Sidney Lanier
Control by Sidney Lanier O Hunger, Hunger, I will harness thee And make thee harrow all my spirit’s glebe. Of old the blind bard Herve sang so sweet He made a wolf to plow his land. ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems by topic and subject. Poetry […]
Clover by Sidney Lanier
Clover by Sidney Lanier Inscribed to the Memory of John Keats. Dear uplands, Chester’s favorable fields, My large unjealous Loves, many yet one — A grave good-morrow to your Graces, all, Fair tilth and fruitful seasons! Lo, how still! The midmorn empties you of men, save me; Speak to your lover, meadows! None can hear. […]
Barnacles by Sidney Lanier
Barnacles by Sidney Lanier My soul is sailing through the sea, But the Past is heavy and hindereth me. The Past hath crusted cumbrous shells That hold the flesh of cold sea-mells About my soul. The huge waves wash, the high waves roll, Each barnacle clingeth and worketh dole And hindereth me from sailing! Old […]
Baby Charley. by Sidney Lanier
Baby Charley. by Sidney Lanier He’s fast asleep. See how, O Wife, Night’s finger on the lip of life Bids whist the tongue, so prattle-rife, Of busy Baby Charley. One arm stretched backward round his head, Five little toes from out the bed Just showing, like five rosebuds red, — So slumbers Baby Charley. Heaven-lights, […]
At First. To Charlotte Cushman. by Sidney Lanier
At First. To Charlotte Cushman. by Sidney Lanier My crippled sense fares bow’d along His uncompanioned way, And wronged by death pays life with wrong And I wake by night and dream by day. And the Morning seems but fatigued Night That hath wept his visage pale, And the healthy mark ‘twixt dark and light […]
An Evening Song. by Sidney Lanier
An Evening Song. by Sidney Lanier Look off, dear Love, across the sallow sands, And mark yon meeting of the sun and sea, How long they kiss in sight of all the lands. Ah! longer, longer, we. Now in the sea’s red vintage melts the sun, As Egypt’s pearl dissolved in rosy wine, And Cleopatra […]
Acknowledgment. by Sidney Lanier
Acknowledgment. by Sidney Lanier I. O Age that half believ’st thou half believ’st, Half doubt’st the substance of thine own half doubt, And, half perceiving that thou half perceiv’st, Stand’st at thy temple door, heart in, head out! Lo! while thy heart’s within, helping the choir, Without, thine eyes range up and down the time, […]
A Sunrise Song. by Sidney Lanier
A Sunrise Song. by Sidney Lanier Young palmer sun, that to these shining sands Pourest thy pilgrim’s tale, discoursing still Thy silver passages of sacred lands, With news of Sepulchre and Dolorous Hill, Canst thou be he that, yester-sunset warm, Purple with Paynim rage and wrack desire, Dashed ravening out of a dusty lair of […]
A Song Of The Future. by Sidney Lanier
A Song Of The Future. by Sidney Lanier Sail fast, sail fast, Ark of my hopes, Ark of my dreams; Sweep lordly o’er the drowned Past, Fly glittering through the sun’s strange beams; Sail fast, sail fast. Breaths of new buds from off some drying lea With news about the Future scent the sea: My […]
A Song Of Eternity In Time by Sidney Lanier
A Song Of Eternity In Time by Sidney Lanier Once, at night, in the manor wood My Love and I long silent stood, Amazed that any heavens could Decree to part us, bitterly repining. My Love, in aimless love and grief, Reached forth and drew aside a leaf That just above us played the thief […]
A Sea-Shore Grave. To M. J. L. by Sidney Lanier
A Sea-Shore Grave. To M. J. L. by Sidney Lanier By Sidney and Clifford Lanier. O wish that’s vainer than the plash Of these wave-whimsies on the shore: “Give us a pearl to fill the gash — God, let our dead friend live once more!” O wish that’s stronger than the stroke Of yelling wave […]
A Florida Sunday. by Sidney Lanier
A Florida Sunday. by Sidney Lanier From cold Norse caves or buccaneer Southern seas Oft come repenting tempests here to die; Bewailing old-time wrecks and robberies, They shrive to priestly pines with many a sigh, Breathe salutary balms through lank-lock’d hair Of sick men’s heads, and soon — this world outworn — Sink into saintly […]
A Florida Ghost. by Sidney Lanier
A Florida Ghost. by Sidney Lanier Down mildest shores of milk-white sand, By cape and fair Floridian bay, Twixt billowy pines — a surf asleep on land — And the great Gulf at play, Past far-off palms that filmed to nought, Or in and out the cunning keys That laced the land like fragile patterns […]
A Dedication. To Charlotte Cushman. by Sidney Lanier
A Dedication. To Charlotte Cushman. by Sidney Lanier As Love will carve dear names upon a tree, Symbol of gravure on his heart to be, So thought I thine with loving text to set In the growth and substance of my canzonet; But, writing it, my tears begin to fall — This wild-rose stem for […]
A Birthday Song. To S. G. by Sidney Lanier
A Birthday Song. To S. G. by Sidney Lanier For ever wave, for ever float and shine Before my yearning eyes, oh! dream of mine Wherein I dreamed that time was like a vine, A creeping rose, that clomb a height of dread Out of the sea of Birth, all filled with dead, Up to […]
A Ballad Of The Trees And The Master by Sidney Lanier
A Ballad Of The Trees And The Master by Sidney Lanier Into the woods my Master went, Clean forspent, forspent. Into the woods my Master came, Forspent with love and shame. But the olives they were not blind to Him, The little gray leaves were kind to Him: The thorn-tree had a mind to Him […]
The Swamp Fox by William Gilmore Simms
WE follow where the Swamp Fox guides, His friends and merry men are we; And when the troop of Tarleton rides, We burrow in the cypress tree. The turfy hammock is our bed, Our home is in the red deer’s den, Our roof, the tree-top overhead, For we are wild and hunted men. We fly […]
The Lost Pleiad by William Gilmore Simms
NOT in the sky, Where it was seen So long in eminence of light serene,— Nor on the white tops of the glistering wave, Nor down in mansions of the hidden deep, Though beautiful in green And crystal, its great caves of mystery,— Shall the bright watcher have Her place, and, as of old, high […]
The Decay Of A People by William Gilmore Simms
THIS the true sign of ruin to a race— It undertakes no march, and day by day Drowses in camp, or, with the laggard’s pace, Walks sentry o’er possessions that decay; Destined, with sensible waste, to fleet away;— For the first secret of continued power Is the continued conquest;—all our sway Hath surety in the […]
The Bard by William Gilmore Simms
Where dwells the spirit of the Bard–what sky Persuades his daring wing,– Folded in soft carnation, or in snow Still sleeping, far o’er summits of the cloud, And, with a seeming, sweet unconsciousness, Wooing his plume, through baffling storms to fly, Assured of all that ever yet might bless The spirit, by love and loftiest […]
The Angel Of The Church by William Gilmore Simms
I. Aye, strike with sacrilegious aim The temple of the living God; Hurl iron bolt and seething flame Through aisles which holiest feet have trod; Tear up the altar, spoil the tomb, And, raging with demoniac ire, Send down, in sudden crash of doom, That grand, old, sky-sustaining spire. II. That spire, for full a […]
Sumter In Ruins by William Gilmore Simms
I. Ye batter down the lion’s den, But yet the lordly beast g’oes free; And ye shall hear his roar again, From mountain height, from lowland glen, From sandy shore and reedy fen– Where’er a band of freeborn men Rears sacred shrines to liberty. II. The serpent scales the eagle’s nest, And yet the royal […]
Song In March by William Gilmore Simms
NOW are the winds about us in their glee, Tossing the slender tree; Whirling the sands about his furious car, March cometh from afar; Breaks the sealed magic of old Winter’s dreams, And rends his glassy streams; Chafing with potent airs, he fiercely takes Their fetters from the lakes, And, with a power by queenly […]
William Gilmore Simms – William Gilmore Simms
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Ode–Shell The Old City! Shell! by William Gilmore Simms
I. Shell the old city I shell! Ye myrmidons of Hell; Ye serve your master well, With hellish arts! Hurl down, with bolt and fire, The grand old shrines, the spire; But know, your demon ire Subdues no hearts! II. There, we defy ye still, With sworn and resolute will; Courage ye cannot kill While […]
Morris Island by William Gilmore Simms
Oh! from the deeds well done, the blood well shed In a good cause springs up to crown the land With ever-during verdure, memory fed, Wherever freedom rears one fearless band, The genius, which makes sacred time and place, Shaping the grand memorials of a race! The barren rock becomes a monument, The sea-shore sands […]