After A Journey by Thomas Hardy
I come to interview a Voiceless ghost; Whither, O whither will its whim now draw me? Up the cliff, down, till I’m lonely, lost, And the unseen waters’ soliloquies awe me. Where you will next be there’s no knowing, Facing round about me everywhere, With your nut-coloured hair, And gray eyes, and rose-flush coming and […]
“According to the Mighty Working” by Thomas Hardy
I When moiling seems at cease In the vague void of night-time, And heaven’s wide roomage stormless Between the dusk and light-time, And fear at last is formless, We call the allurement Peace. II Peace, this hid riot, Change, This revel of quick-cued mumming, This never truly being, This evermore becoming, This spinner’s wheel onfleeing […]
A Wasted Illness by Thomas Hardy
Through vaults of pain, Enribbed and wrought with groins of ghastliness, I passed, and garish spectres moved my brain To dire distress. And hammerings, And quakes, and shoots, and stifling hotness, blent With webby waxing things and waning things As on I went. “Where lies the end To this foul way?” I asked with weakening […]
A Jog-Trot Pair by Thomas Hardy
Who were the twain that trod this track So many times together Hither and back, In spells of certain and uncertain weather? Commonplace in conduct they Who wandered to and fro here Day by day: Two that few dwellers troubled themselves to know here. The very gravel-path was prim That daily they would follow: Borders […]
A Dream Or No by Thomas Hardy
Why go to Saint-Juliot? What’s Juliot to me? I’ve been but made fancy By some necromancy That much of my life claims the spot as its key. Yes. I have had dreams of that place in the West, And a maiden abiding Thereat as in hiding; Fair-eyed and white-shouldered, broad-browed and brown-tressed. And of how, […]
Without Ceremony by Thomas Hardy
It was your way, my dear, To be gone without a word When callers, friends, or kin Had left, and I hastened in To rejoin you, as I inferred. And when you’d a mind to career Off anywhere – say to town – You were all on a sudden gone Before I had thought thereon, […]
[Greek Title] by Thomas Hardy
Long have I framed weak phantasies of Thee, O Willer masked and dumb! Who makest Life become, – As though by labouring all-unknowingly, Like one whom reveries numb. How much of consciousness informs Thy will Thy biddings, as if blind, Of death-inducing kind, Nought shows to us ephemeral ones who fill But moments in Thy […]
Afterwards by Thomas Hardy
When the Present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay, And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings, Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the neighbours say, ‘He was a man who used to notice such things’? If it be in the dusk when, like an eyelid’s soundless blink, The dewfall-hawk comes […]
Walls at Drogheda by Tomás Ó Cárthaigh
Walls at Drogheda by Tomás Ó Cárthaigh Walls breached Swords wielded, born from passions Of the heart Of hate Of others And of others beliefs Gave birth to murder. Rights breached Laws wielded, born from passions Of revenge To avenge Forefathers Who died when another Regime gave birth to fundamentalism. Hatred breached Flags wielded, born […]
The Death of Knowledge by Tomás Ó Cárthaigh
The Death of Knowledge by Tomás Ó Cárthaigh The scholars cast the four wild winds Only Death the last thing sure And now the Knowledge dwells within And at the hearth sides of the poor And so it came to dawn the day That a visitor passing by In Gaelic tongue both pure and sure […]
Faith and Faiths by Tomás Ó Cárthaigh
Faith and Faiths by Tomás Ó Cárthaigh Two women, one old: one young Walk side by side, content The older, dressed as befits her faith: The other as befits her age in Ghent. With “Rock Chick” emblazoned on two crossed guitars, She may as well have been Belgian and white… The old woman, maybe her […]
Walls at Drogheda by Tomás Ó Cárthaigh
Walls at Drogheda by Tomás Ó Cárthaigh Walls breached Swords wielded, born from passions Of the heart Of hate Of others And of others beliefs Gave birth to murder. Rights breached Laws wielded, born from passions Of revenge To avenge Forefathers Who died when another Regime gave birth to fundamentalism. Hatred breached Flags wielded, born […]
The Death of Knowledge by Tomás Ó Cárthaigh
The Death of Knowledge by Tomás Ó Cárthaigh The scholars cast the four wild winds Only Death the last thing sure And now the Knowledge dwells within And at the hearth sides of the poor And so it came to dawn the day That a visitor passing by In Gaelic tongue both pure and sure […]
Faith and Faiths by Tomás Ó Cárthaigh
Faith and Faiths by Tomás Ó Cárthaigh Two women, one old: one young Walk side by side, content The older, dressed as befits her faith: The other as befits her age in Ghent. With “Rock Chick” emblazoned on two crossed guitars, She may as well have been Belgian and white… The old woman, maybe her […]
Walls at Drogheda by Tomás Ó Cárthaigh
Walls at Drogheda by Tomás Ó Cárthaigh Walls breached Swords wielded, born from passions Of the heart Of hate Of others And of others beliefs Gave birth to murder. Rights breached Laws wielded, born from passions Of revenge To avenge Forefathers Who died when another Regime gave birth to fundamentalism. Hatred breached Flags wielded, born […]
The Death of Knowledge by Tomás Ó Cárthaigh
The Death of Knowledge by Tomás Ó Cárthaigh The scholars cast the four wild winds Only Death the last thing sure And now the Knowledge dwells within And at the hearth sides of the poor And so it came to dawn the day That a visitor passing by In Gaelic tongue both pure and sure […]
Faith and Faiths by Tomás Ó Cárthaigh
Faith and Faiths by Tomás Ó Cárthaigh Two women, one old: one young Walk side by side, content The older, dressed as befits her faith: The other as befits her age in Ghent. With “Rock Chick” emblazoned on two crossed guitars, She may as well have been Belgian and white… The old woman, maybe her […]
Be Not a War Poet by Tomás Ó Cárthaigh
Be Not a War Poet by Tomás Ó Cárthaigh We have not the shot or shell Who read their poems from distant days Yet today it is still the same The dance of death that war it plays Other young men, not Flanders now Afghanistan, even Belfast Wars big and small, why fight at all […]
Yet Gentle Will the Griffin Be by Vachel Lindsay
(What Grandpa told the Children) The moon? It is a griffin’s egg, Hatching to-morrow night. And how the little boys will watch With shouting and delight To see him break the shell and stretch And creep across the sky. The boys will laugh. The little girls, I fear, may hide and cry. Yet gentle will […]
Written for a Musician by Vachel Lindsay
HUNGRY for music with a desperate hunger I prowled abroad, I threaded through the town; The evening crowd was clamoring and drinking, Vulgar and pitiful–my heart bowed down– Till I remembered duller hours made noble By strangers clad in some suprising grace. Wait, wait my soul, your music comes ere midnight Appearing in some unexpected […]
Who Knows? by Vachel Lindsay
They say one king is mad. Perhaps. Who knows? They say one king is doddering and grey. They say one king is slack and sick of mind, A puppet for hid strings that twitch and play. Is Europe then to be their sprawling-place? Their mad-house, till it turns the wide world’s bane? Their place of […]
When Bryan Speaks by Vachel Lindsay
When Bryan speaks, the town’s a hive. From miles around, the autos drive. The sparrow chirps. The rooster crows. The place is kicking and alive. When Bryan speaks, the bunting glows. The raw procession onward flows. The small dogs bark. The children laugh A wind of springtime fancy blows. When Bryan speaks, the wigwam shakes. […]
What the Sexton Said by Vachel Lindsay
Your dust will be upon the wind Within some certain years, Though you be sealed in lead to-day Amid the country’s tears. When this idyllic churchyard Becomes the heart of town, The place to build garage or inn, They’ll throw your tombstone down. Your name so dim, so long outworn, Your bones so near to […]
What the Moon Saw by Vachel Lindsay
Two statesmen met by moonlight. Their ease was partly feigned. They glanced about the prairie. Their faces were constrained. In various ways aforetime They had misled the state, Yet did it so politely Their henchmen thought them great. They sat beneath a hedge and spake No word, but had a smoke. A satchel passed from […]
What the Miner in the Desert Said by Vachel Lindsay
The moon’s a brass-hooped water-keg, A wondrous water-feast. If I could climb the ridge and drink And give drink to my beast; If I could drain that keg, the flies Would not be biting so, My burning feet be spry again, My mule no longer slow. And I could rise and dig for ore, And […]
What the Gray-Winged Fairy Said by Vachel Lindsay
The moon’s a gong, hung in the wild, Whose song the fays hold dear. Of course you do not hear it, child. It takes a FAIRY ear. The full moon is a splendid gong That beats as night grows still. It sounds above the evening song Of dove or whippoorwill. ————— The End And that’s […]
What the Ghost of the Gambler Said by Vachel Lindsay
WHERE now the huts are empty, Where never a camp-fire glows, In an abandoned cañon, A Gambler’s Ghost arose. He muttered there, “The moon’s a sack Of dust.” His voice rose thin: “I wish I knew the miner-man. I’d play, and play to win. In every game in Cripple-creek Of old, when stakes were high, […]
The Soul of the City Receives the Gift of the Holy Spirit by Vachel Lindsay
A BROADSIDE DISTRIBUTED IN SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS Censers are swinging, Over the town; Censers are swinging, Look overhead! Censers are swinging, Heaven comes down. City, dead city, Awake from the dead! Censers, tremendous, Gleam overhead. Wind-harps are ringing, Wind-harps unseen— Calling and calling:— “Wake from the dead. Rise, little city, Shine like a queen.” Soldiers of […]
The Scissors-Grinder by Vachel Lindsay
The old man had his box and wheel For grinding knives and shears. No doubt his bell in village streets Was joy to children’s ears. And I bethought me of my youth When such men came around, And times I asked them in, quite sure The scissors should be ground. The old man turned and […]
The Rose of Midnight by Vachel Lindsay
THE moon is now an opening flower, The sky a cliff of blue. The moon is now a silver rose; Her pollen is the dew. Her pollen is the mist that swings Across her face of dreams: Her pollen is the April rain, Filling the April streams. Her pollen is eternal life, Endless ambrosial foam. […]
The Proud Farmer by Vachel Lindsay
[In memory of E. S. Frazee, Rush County, Indiana] Into the acres of the newborn state He poured his strength, and plowed his ancient name, And, when the traders followed him, he stood Towering above their furtive souls and tame. That brow without a stain, that fearless eye Oft left the passing stranger wondering To […]
The Mysterious Cat by Vachel Lindsay
A chant for a children’s pantomime dance, suggested by a picture painted by George Mather Richards. I saw a proud, mysterious cat, I saw a proud, mysterious cat Too proud to catch a mouse or rat— Mew, mew, mew. But catnip she would eat, and purr, But catnip she would eat, and purr. And goldfish […]
The Moon’s the North Wind’s Cooky by Vachel Lindsay
The Moon’s the North Wind’s cooky. He bites it, day by day, Until there’s but a rim of scraps That crumble all away. The South Wind is a baker. He kneads clouds in his den, And bakes a crisp new moon that . . . greedy North . . . Wind . . . eats […]
The Little Turtle by Vachel Lindsay
A Recitation for Martha Wakefield, Three Years Old There was a little turtle. He lived in a box. He swam in a puddle. He climbed on the rocks. He snapped at a mosquito. He snapped at a flea. He snapped at a minnow. And he snapped at me. He caught the mosquito. He caught the […]
The Leaden-Eyed by Vachel Lindsay
Let not young souls be smothered out before They do quaint deeds and fully flaunt their pride. It is the world’s one crime its babes grow dull, Its poor are ox-like, limp and leaden-eyed. Not that they starve; but starve so dreamlessly, Not that they sow, but that they seldom reap, Not that they serve, […]
The Haughty Snail-King by Vachel Lindsay
Twelve snails went walking after night. They’d creep an inch or so, Then stop and bug their eyes And blow. Some folks . . . are . . . deadly . . . slow. Twelve snails went walking yestereve, Led by their fat old king. They were so dull their princeling had No sceptre, robe […]
The Flower of Mending by Vachel Lindsay
(To Eudora, after I had had certain dire adventures.) When Dragon-fly would fix his wings, When Snail would patch his house, When moths have marred the overcoat Of tender Mister Mouse, The pretty creatures go with haste To the sunlit blue-grass hills Where the Flower of Mending yields the wax And webs to help their […]
The Flower-Fed Buffaloes by Vachel Lindsay
THE flower-fed buffaloes of the spring In the days of long ago, Ranged where the locomotives sing And the prarie flowers lie low: The tossing, blooming, perfumed grass Is swept away by wheat, Wheels and wheels and wheels spin by In the spring that still is sweet. But the flower-fed buffaloes of the spring Left […]
The Fairy Bridal-Hymn by Vachel Lindsay
[This is the hymn to Eleanor, daughter of Mab and a golden drone, sung by the Locust choir when the fairy child marries her God, the yellow rose] This is a song to the white-armed one Cold in the breast as the frost-wrapped Spring, Whose feet are slow on the hills of life, Whose round […]
The Empty Boats by Vachel Lindsay
Why do I see these empty boats, sailing on airy seas? One haunted me the whole night long, swaying with every breeze, Returning always near the eaves, or by the skylight glass: There it will wait me many weeks, and then, at last, will pass. Each soul is haunted by a ship in which that […]