"mouldering" poems
To live in Wales is to be conscious
At dusk of the spilled blood
That went into the making of the wild sky,
Dyeing the immaculate rivers
In all their courses.
It is to be aware,
Above the noisy tractor
And hum of the machine
Of strife in the strung woods,
Vibrant with sped arrows.
You cannot live in the present,
At least not in Wales.
There is the language for instance,
The soft consonants
Strange to the ear.
There are cries in the dark at night
As owls answer the moon,
And thick ambush of shadows,
Hushed at the fields' corners.
There is no present in Wales,
And no future;
There is only the past,
Brittle with relics,
Wind-bitten towers and castles
With sham ghosts;
Mouldering quarries and mines;
And an impotent people,
Sick with inbreeding,
Worrying the carcase of an old song. To live in Wales is to be conscious
At dusk of the spilled blood
That went into the making of the wild sky,
Dyeing the immaculate rivers
In all their courses.
It is to be aware,
Above the noisy tractor
And hum of the machine
Of strife in the strung woods,
Vibrant with sped arrows.
You cannot live in the present,
At least not in Wales.
There is the language for instance,
The soft consonants
Strange to the ear.
There are cries in the dark at night
As owls answer the moon,
And thick ambush of shadows,
Hushed at the fields' corners.
There is no present in Wales,
And no future;
There is only the past,
Brittle with relics,
Wind-bitten towers and castles
With sham ghosts;
Mouldering quarries and mines;
And an impotent people,
Sick with inbreeding,
Worrying the carcase of an old song.
20.5k
1
Ever musing I delight to tread
The Paths of honour and the Myrtle Grove
Whilst the pale Moon her beams doth shed
On disappointed Love.
While Philomel on airy hawthorn Bush
Sings sweet and Melancholy, And the thrush
Converses with the Dove.
2
Gently brawling down the turnpike road,
Sweetly noisy falls the Silent Stream —
The Moon emerges from behind a Cloud
And darts upon the Myrtle Grove her beam.
Ah! then what Lovely Scenes appear,
The hut, the Cot, the Grot, and Chapel queer,
And eke the Abbey too a mouldering heap,
Cnceal'd by aged pines her head doth rear
And quite invisible doth take a peep.
6.9k
371
A precious—mouldering pleasure—’tis—
To meet an Antique Book—
In just the Dress his Century wore—
A privilege—I think—
His venerable Hand to take—
And warming in our own—
A passage back—or two—to make—
To Times when he—was young—
His quaint opinions—to inspect—
His thought to ascertain
On Themes concern our mutual mind—
The Literature of Man—
What interested Scholars—most—
What Competitions ran—
When Plato—was a Certainty—
And Sophocles—a Man—
When Sappho—was a living Girl—
And Beatrice wore
The Gown that Dante—deified—
Facts Centuries before
He traverses—familiar—
As One should come to Town—
And tell you all your Dreams—were true—
He lived—where Dreams were born—
His presence is Enchantment—
You beg him not to go—
Old Volume shake their Vellum Heads
And tantalize—just so—
2.9k
Mariana in the Moated Grange
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
With blackest moss the flower-plots
Were thickly crusted, one and all:
The rusted nails fell from the knots
That held the pear to the gable-wall.
The broken sheds look'd sad and strange:
Unlifted was the clinking latch;
Weeded and worn the ancient thatch
Upon the lonely moated grange.
She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
Her tears fell with the dews at even;
Her tears fell ere the dews were dried;
She could not look on the sweet heaven,
Either at morn or eventide.
After the flitting of the bats,
When thickest dark did trance the sky,
She drew her casement-curtain by,
And glanced athwart the glooming flats.
She only said, "The night is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
Upon the middle of the night,
Waking she heard the night-fowl crow:
The **** sung out an hour ere light:
From the dark fen the oxen's low
Came to her: without hope of change,
In sleep she seem'd to walk forlorn,
Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn
About the lonely moated grange.
She only said, "The day is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
About a stone-cast from the wall
A sluice with blacken'd waters slept,
And o'er it many, round and small,
The cluster'd marish-mosses crept.
Hard by a poplar shook alway,
All silver-green with gnarled bark:
For leagues no other tree did mark
The level waste, the rounding gray.
She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said "I am aweary, aweary
I would that I were dead!"
And ever when the moon was low,
And the shrill winds were up and away,
In the white curtain, to and fro,
She saw the gusty shadow sway.
But when the moon was very low
And wild winds bound within their cell,
The shadow of the poplar fell
Upon her bed, across her brow.
She only said, "The night is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
All day within the dreamy house,
The doors upon their hinges creak'd;
The blue fly sung in the pane; the mouse
Behind the mouldering wainscot shriek'd,
Or from the crevice peer'd about.
Old faces glimmer'd thro' the doors
Old footsteps trod the upper floors,
Old voices called her from without.
She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
The sparrow's chirrup on the roof,
The slow clock ticking, and the sound
Which to the wooing wind aloof
The poplar made, did all confound
Her sense; but most she loathed the hour
When the thick-moted sunbeam lay
Athwart the chambers, and the day
Was sloping toward his western bower.
Then said she, "I am very dreary,
He will not come," she said;
She wept, "I am aweary, aweary,
Oh God, that I were dead!"
3k
Remind me not, remind me not,
Of those beloved, those vanish’d hours,
When all my soul was given to thee;
Hours that may never be forgot,
Till Time unnerves our vital powers,
And thou and I shall cease to be.
Can I forget—canst thou forget,
When playing with thy golden hair,
How quick thy fluttering heart did move?
Oh! by my soul, I see thee yet,
With eyes so languid, breast so fair,
And lips, though silent, breathing love.
When thus reclining on my breast,
Those eyes threw back a glance so sweet,
As half reproach’d yet rais’d desire,
And still we near and nearer prest,
And still our glowing lips would meet,
As if in kisses to expire.
And then those pensive eyes would close,
And bid their lids each other seek,
Veiling the azure orbs below;
While their long lashes’ darken’d gloss
Seem’d stealing o’er thy brilliant cheek,
Like raven’s plumage smooth’d on snow.
I dreamt last night our love return’d,
And, sooth to say, that very dream
Was sweeter in its phantasy,
Than if for other hearts I burn’d,
For eyes that ne’er like thine could beam
In Rapture’s wild reality.
Then tell me not, remind me not,
Of hours which, though for ever gone,
Can still a pleasing dream restore,
Till thou and I shall be forgot,
And senseless, as the mouldering stone
Which tells that we shall be no more.
2.9k
Montgomery! true, the common lot
Of mortals lies in Lethe’s wave;
Yet some shall never be forgot,
Some shall exist beyond the grave.
“Unknown the region of his birth,”
The hero rolls the tide of war;
Yet not unknown his martial worth,
Which glares a meteor from afar.
His joy or grief, his weal or woe,
Perchance may ’scape the page of fame;
Yet nations, now unborn, will know
The record of his deathless name.
The Patriot’s and the Poet’s frame
Must share the common tomb of all:
Their glory will not sleep the same;
‘That’ will arise, though Empires fall.
The lustre of a Beauty’s eye
Assumes the ghastly stare of death;
The fair, the brave, the good must die,
And sink the yawning grave beneath.
Once more, the speaking eye revives,
Still beaming through the lover’s strain;
For Petrarch’s Laura still survives:
She died, but ne’er will die again.
The rolling seasons pass away,
And Time, untiring, waves his wing;
Whilst honour’s laurels ne’er decay,
But bloom in fresh, unfading spring.
All, all must sleep in grim repose,
Collected in the silent tomb;
The old, the young, with friends and foes,
Fest’ring alike in shrouds, consume.
The mouldering marble lasts its day,
Yet falls at length an useless fane;
To Ruin’s ruthless fangs a prey,
The wrecks of pillar’d Pride remain.
What, though the sculpture be destroy’d,
From dark Oblivion meant to guard;
A bright renown shall be enjoy’d,
By those, whose virtues claim reward.
Then do not say the common lot
Of all lies deep in Lethe’s wave;
Some few who ne’er will be forgot
Shall burst the ******* of the grave.
2.9k
Premeditated Amnesia 1
For nothing here is old, save for deep layers
Of moss and muck and mouldering remains
Civilisations lit by visions and fire
Now lost beneath a Wal-Mart Parking lot
Incuriously the tentacles of Now
Slither more deeply into the pale past
And churn up yet another housing estate
At the corner of Kingsford Lane and Heather Way
Near the Motorcycle Church, for piston prayers:
For nothing here is old, save for deep layers
1”The U.S. is probably the contemporary world’s purest example of a society which is perpetually trying to abolish history, to avoid thinking in historical terms, to associate dynamism with premeditated amnesia.” -Alexander Woodside quoted by Susan Sontag:
https://bostonreview.net/susan-sontag-interview-geoffrey-movius?utm_source=Boston+Review+Email+Subscribers&utm_campaign=b581739691-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_08_17_04_17_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2cb428c5ad-b581739691-41080789
Nov 18, 2018
Nov 18, 2018 at 4:19 PM UTC
Desperate limbs drape themselves in the exact same shade of undiluted greengreengreen that we've seen in stagnant pools and empty hearts. A tiny verdant forest of lichens and moss to mask the barren grey of a self inflicted winter. Fingers cast out towards the sky grow thin and wretched with the desperate, exhaustive need need need to ****** the light from the sky. Forgotten are the mouldering piles of discarded stars laying around its feet. I think of that girl as I pick up a damp leaf and carefully press it between love poems and silent reveries.
Feb 4, 2015
Feb 4, 2015 at 10:37 AM UTC
286
That after Horror—that ’twas us—
That passed the mouldering Pier—
Just as the Granite Crumb let go—
Our Savior, by a Hair—
A second more, had dropped too deep
For Fisherman to plumb—
The very profile of the Thought
Puts Recollection numb—
The possibility—to pass
Without a Moment’s Bell—
Into Conjecture’s presence—
Is like a Face of Steel—
That suddenly looks into ours
With a metallic grin—
The Cordiality of Death—
Who drills his Welcome in—
2.7k
I chased the first rays
of an autumn morning
but to my sorrow
when I arrived at
the urgent place
the sun had
already
risen
breathing a
crowning glory of a
seasons brilliant
splendor
alighting
the glowing amber
of golden woods
shining like gleaming
constellations of
dazzling morning
stars...
though I
desired to find
ascendent beauty
the ubiquitous glow of
transfigured leaves
immersed me in
a divine chrome...
as I traversed
the woods, my
solitary steps found
companionship
with a sullen
mistress singing
a sad rustle
of dry fallen leaves
and as the drone
of cars faded from the
receding road
I searched myself
for courage and
found resolve
I pondered truth
and discovered
the wisdom
of resolution...
yearning to
realize a
deeper faith
I hiked
further up
the wooded hill,
visiting the gay
playfields
of my youth
and received
an epiphany
of wholesome
closure
opening
new
timeless
doors...
still questing
for more light
a prophetic wren
whirred a pliant
secret into my ear
she bespoke
a symphony
of avian
improvisations
conversing in
a thousand
luminous tongues,
relating a sonorous
elegy teaming with
the brightest
joys of life
raising bold
proclamations
celebrating a
seasons radiance
imploring me
to join the chorus...
though the canopy
of the woods still
boasted boughs
of green
the
infant hues
of spring had
run its course
the glory of an
expiring season
strewn on the
forest floor
covering the
mouldering stags
inching back into
the compost of life
breeding blankets
of furry moss
feeding on the
primal organica
of seemingly
expired flora
here, in this
darkened moment
I realized
the transcendent
miracle
the loam of life
incubating
churning
in concert with
the turn of
seasons...
to my sorrow
I missed the first
rays of the morning
the first
peeks of light
a breaking day
gracefully bespeaks
upon a sleeping earth
awoken in new light
yet I am filled
I am transcendent
I am the first ray
of an eternal light
I am the first ray
of my earthen
gloaming...
on the morrow
the best of me
is in the marrow
of all who loved me
and all whom I loved
these rays of me
will forever rise
in an eternity
of dawnings
For Joey
Godspeed Beloved
Vaughan Williams:
Lark Ascending
Oakland
101313
jbm
Oct 14, 2013
Oct 14, 2013 at 12:13 AM UTC
SELECTED FROM THE IRISH NOVELISTS
THERE was a green branch hung with many a bell
When her own people ruled this tragic Eire;
And from its murmuring greenness, calm of Faery,
A Druid kindness, on all hearers fell.
It charmed away the merchant from his guile,
And turned the farmer's memory from his cattle,
And hushed in sleep the roaring ranks of battle:
And all grew friendly for a little while.
Ah, Exiles wandering over lands and seas,
And planning, plotting always that some morrow
May set a stone upon ancestral Sorrow!
I also bear a bell-branch full of ease.
I tore it from green boughs winds tore and tossed
Until the sap of summer had grown weary!
I tore it from the barren boughs of Eire,
That country where a man can be so crossed;
Can be so battered, badgered and destroyed
That he's a loveless man: gay bells bring laughter
That shakes a mouldering cobweb from the rafter;
And yet the saddest chimes are best enjoyed.
Gay bells or sad, they bring you memories
Of half-forgotten innocent old places:
We and our bitterness have left no traces
On Munster grass and Connemara skies.
2.6k
Type of the antique Rome! Rich reliquary
Of lofty contemplation left to Time
By buried centuries of pomp and power!
At length—at length—after so many days
Of weary pilgrimage and burning thirst,
(Thirst for the springs of lore that in thee lie,)
I kneel, an altered and an humble man,
Amid thy shadows, and so drink within
My very soul thy grandeur, gloom, and glory!
Vastness! and Age! and Memories of Eld!
Silence! and Desolation! and dim Night!
I feel ye now—I feel ye in your strength—
O spells more sure than e’er Judaean king
Taught in the gardens of Gethsemane!
O charms more potent than the rapt Chaldee
Ever drew down from out the quiet stars!
Here, where a hero fell, a column falls!
Here, where the mimic eagle glared in gold,
A midnight vigil holds the swarthy bat!
Here, where the dames of Rome their gilded hair
Waved to the wind, now wave the reed and thistle!
Here, where on golden throne the monarch lolled,
Glides, spectre-like, unto his marble home,
Lit by the wan light of the horned moon,
The swift and silent lizard of the stones!
But stay! these walls—these ivy-clad arcades—
These mouldering plinths—these sad and blackened shafts—
These vague entablatures—this crumbling frieze—
These shattered cornices—this wreck—this ruin—
These stones—alas! these gray stones—are they all—
All of the famed, and the colossal left
By the corrosive Hours to Fate and me?
“Not all”—the Echoes answer me—”not all!
Prophetic sounds and loud, arise forever
From us, and from all Ruin, unto the wise,
As melody from Memnon to the Sun.
We rule the hearts of mightiest men—we rule
With a despotic sway all giant minds.
We are not impotent—we pallid stones.
Not all our power is gone—not all our fame—
Not all the magic of our high renown—
Not all the wonder that encircles us—
Not all the mysteries that in us lie—
Not all the memories that hang upon
And cling around about us as a garment,
Clothing us in a robe of more than glory.”
2.5k
Ye banks and braes and streams around
The castle o’ Montgomery,
Green be your woods, and fair your flowers,
Your waters never drumlie!
There simmer first unfauld her robes,
And there the langest tarry;
For there I took the last fareweel
O’ my sweet Highland Mary.
How sweetly bloomed the gay green birk,
How rich the hawthorn’s blossom,
As underneath their fragrant shade
I clasped her to my *****
The golden hours on angel wings
Flew o’er me and my dearie;
For dear to me as light and life
Was my sweet Highland Mary.
Wi’ mony a vow and locked embrace
Our parting was fu’ tender;
And, pledging aft to meet again,
We tore oursels asunder;
But, O, fell Death’s untimely frost,
That nipt my flower sae early!
Now green’s the sod, and cauld’s the clay,
That wraps my Highland Mary!
O pale, pale now, those rosy lips
I aft hae kissed sae fondly;
And closed for aye the sparkling glance
That dwelt on me sae kindly;
And mouldering now in silent dust
That heart that lo’ed me dearly!
But still within my bosom’s core
Shall live my Highland Mary.
2.4k
When first, descending from the moorlands,
I saw the Stream of Yarrow glide
Along a bare and open valley,
The Ettrick Shepherd was my guide.
When last along its banks I wandered,
Through groves that had begun to shed
Their golden leaves upon the pathways,
My steps the Border-minstrel led.
The mighty Minstrel breathes no longer,
’Mid mouldering ruins low he lies;
And death upon the braes of Yarrow,
Has closed the Shepherd-poet’s eyes:
Nor has the rolling year twice measured,
From sign to sign, its stedfast course,
Since every mortal power of Coleridge
Was frozen at its marvellous source;
The rapt One, of the godlike forehead,
The heaven-eyed creature sleeps in earth:
And Lamb, the frolic and the gentle,
Has vanished from his lonely hearth.
Like clouds that rake the mountain-summits,
Or waves that own no curbing hand,
How fast has brother followed brother,
From sunshine to the sunless land!
Yet I, whose lids from infant slumber
Were earlier raised, remain to hear
A timid voice, that asks in whispers,
“Who next will drop and disappear?”
Our haughty life is crowned with darkness,
Like London with its own black wreath,
On which with thee, O Crabbe! forth-looking,
I gazed from Hampstead’s breezy heath.
As if but yesterday departed,
Thou too art gone before; but why,
O’er ripe fruit, seasonably gathered,
Should frail survivors heave a sigh?
Mourn rather for that holy Spirit,
Sweet as the spring, as ocean deep;
For Her who, ere her summer faded,
Has sunk into a breathless sleep.
No more of old romantic sorrows,
For slaughtered Youth or love-lorn Maid!
With sharper grief is Yarrow smitten,
And Ettrick mourns with her their Poet dead.
2.3k
There was a green branch hung with many a bell
When her own people ruled this tragic Eire;
And from its murmuring greenness, calm of Faery,
A Druid kindness, on all hearers fell.
It charmed away the merchant from his guile,
And turned the farmer's memory from his cattle,
And hushed in sleep the roaring ranks of battle:
And all grew friendly for a little while.
Ah, Exiles wandering over lands and seas,
And planning, plotting always that some morrow
May set a stone upon ancestral Sorrow!
I also bear a bell-branch full of ease.
I tore it from green boughs winds tore and tossed
Until the sap of summer had grown weary!
I tore it from the barren boughs of Eire,
That country where a man can be so crossed;
Can be so battered, badgered and destroyed
That he's a loveless man: gay bells bring laughter
That shakes a mouldering cobweb from the rafter;
And yet the saddest chimes are best enjoyed.
Gay bells or sad, they bring you memories
Of half-forgotten innocent old places:
We and our bitterness have left no traces
On Munster grass and Connemara skies.
2.2k
Oh, Friend! for ever lov’d, for ever dear!
What fruitless tears have bathed thy honour’d bier!
What sighs re-echo’d to thy parting breath,
Whilst thou wast struggling in the pangs of death!
Could tears ****** the tyrant in his course;
Could sighs avert his dart’s relentless force;
Could youth and virtue claim a short delay,
Or beauty charm the spectre from his prey;
Thou still hadst liv’d to bless my aching sight,
Thy comrade’s honour and thy friend’s delight.
If yet thy gentle spirit hover nigh
The spot where now thy mouldering ashes lie,
Here wilt thou read, recorded on my heart,
A grief too deep to trust the sculptor’s art.
No marble marks thy couch of lowly sleep,
But living statues there are seen to weep;
Affliction’s semblance bends not o’er thy tomb,
Affliction’s self deplores thy youthful doom.
What though thy sire lament his failing line,
A father’s sorrows cannot equal mine!
Though none, like thee, his dying hour will cheer,
Yet other offspring soothe his anguish here:
But, who with me shall hold thy former place?
Thine image, what new friendship can efface?
Ah, none!—a father’s tears will cease to flow,
Time will assuage an infant brother’s woe;
To all, save one, is consolation known,
While solitary Friendship sighs alone.
2.1k
607
Of nearness to her sundered Things
The Soul has special times—
When Dimness—looks the Oddity—
Distinctness—easy—seems—
The Shapes we buried, dwell about,
Familiar, in the Rooms—
Untarnished by the Sepulchre,
The Mouldering Playmate comes—
In just the Jacket that he wore—
Long buttoned in the Mold
Since we—old mornings, Children—played—
Divided—by a world—
The Grave yields back her Robberies—
The Years, our pilfered Things—
Bright Knots of Apparitions
Salute us, with their wings—
As we—it were—that perished—
Themself—had just remained till we rejoin them—
And ’twas they, and not ourself
That mourned.
2.1k
Oh Joy, Oh Great Heavens Above,
How I like to lingeringly slaver o'er
The fartleberries hanging humunguously
Out of your **** cleft like bunches of mouldering grapes,
And to gaze upon the lusciously stale shitstains
Decorating your hirsute **********
You so rarely wash and your dumps are omnipotent
And you are too mean to buy any **** wipes.
You moan quite loudly in colonic ecstacy
As I plumb the Stygian depths of your sit-upon place,
My nose diving daintily like a woodpecker's beak
Smeared with poo-bits, seeking Nirvana
In your ****** paradise, brown love-tunnel
Serenaded by the poets since Time began!
Nowhere in all the Hershey Universe can there be
A pongier rimmee than you, O unshaven beauty of mine!
My probing tongue is covered with nutty brown paste,
Your sweet excremental delight makes me drool
In joy, as I personhandle myself "down there";
Ignoring the most elemental rules of hygiene.
But sadly there is a fly in the ointment
Indeed a whole ******* barrelful of them:
Not only will I get a very nasty E-coli infection
But I'll have bad breath tomorrow at chapel.
Mar 11, 2015
Mar 11, 2015 at 1:45 PM UTC
There was a green branch hung with many a bell
When her own people ruled this tragic Eire;
And from its murmuring greenness, calm of Faery,
A Druid kindness, on all hearers fell.
It charmed away the merchant from his guile,
And turned the farmer's memory from his cattle,
And hushed in sleep the roaring ranks of battle:
And all grew friendly for a little while.
Ah, Exiles wandering over lands and seas,
And planning, plotting always that some morrow
May set a stone upon ancestral Sorrow!
I also bear a bell-branch full of ease.
I tore it from green boughs winds tore and tossed
Until the sap of summer had grown weary!
I tore it from the barren boughs of Eire,
That country where a man can be so crossed;
Can be so battered, badgered and destroyed
That he's a loveless man: gay bells bring laughter
That shakes a mouldering cobweb from the rafter;
And yet the saddest chimes are best enjoyed.
Gay bells or sad, they bring you memories
Of half-forgotten innocent old places:
We and our bitterness have left no traces
On Munster grass and Connemara skies.
1.9k
"Mariana in the Moated Grange"
(Shakespeare, Measure for Measure)
With blackest moss the flower-plots
Were thickly crusted, one and all:
The rusted nails fell from the knots
That held the pear to the gable-wall.
The broken sheds look'd sad and strange:
Unlifted was the clinking latch;
Weeded and worn the ancient thatch
Upon the lonely moated grange.
She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
Her tears fell with the dews at even;
Her tears fell ere the dews were dried;
She could not look on the sweet heaven,
Either at morn or eventide.
After the flitting of the bats,
When thickest dark did trance the sky,
She drew her casement-curtain by,
And glanced athwart the glooming flats.
She only said, "The night is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
Upon the middle of the night,
Waking she heard the night-fowl crow:
The **** sung out an hour ere light:
From the dark fen the oxen's low
In sleep she seem'd to walk forlorn,
Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn
About the lonely moated grange.
She only said, "The day is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
About a stone-cast from the wall
A sluice with blacken'd waters slept,
And o'er it many, round and small,
The cluster'd marish-mosses crept.
Hard by a poplar shook alway,
All silver-green with gnarled bark:
For leagues no other tree did mark
The level waste, the rounding gray.
She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said "I am aweary, aweary
I would that I were dead!"
And ever when the moon was low,
And the shrill winds were up and away,
In the white curtain, to and fro,
She saw the gusty shadow sway.
But when the moon was very low
And wild winds bound within their cell,
The shadow of the poplar fell
Upon her bed, across her brow.
She only said, "The night is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
All day within the dreamy house,
The doors upon their hinges creak'd;
The blue fly sung in the pane; the mouse
Behind the mouldering wainscot shriek'd,
Or from the crevice peer'd about.
Old faces glimmer'd thro' the doors
Old footsteps trod the upper floors,
Old voices called her from without.
She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
The sparrow's chirrup on the roof,
The slow clock ticking, and the sound
Which to the wooing wind aloof
The poplar made, did all confound
Her sense; but most she loathed the hour
When the thick-moted sunbeam lay
Athwart the chambers, and the day
Was sloping toward his western bower.
Then said she, "I am very dreary,
She wept, "I am aweary, aweary,
Oh God, that I were dead!"
1.8k
Tanagra! think not I forget
Thy beautifully-storey'd streets;
Be sure my memory bathes yet
In clear Thermodon, and yet greets
The blythe and liberal shepherd boy,
Whose sunny ***** swells with joy
When we accept his matted rushes
Upheaved with sylvan fruit; away he bounds, and blushes.
I promise to bring back with me
What thou with transport wilt receive,
The only proper gift for thee,
Of which no mortal shall bereave
In later times thy mouldering walls,
Until the last old turret falls;
A crown, a crown from Athens won!
A crown no god can wear, beside Latona's son.
There may be cities who refuse
To their own child the honours due,
And look ungently on the Muse;
But ever shall those cities rue
The dry, unyielding, niggard breast,
Offering no nourishment, no rest,
To that young head which soon shall rise
Disdainfully, in might and glory, to the skies.
Sweetly where cavern'd Dirce flows
Do white-arm'd maidens chaunt my lay,
Flapping the while with laurel-rose
The honey-gathering tribes away;
And sweetly, sweetly, Attick tongues
Lisp your Corinna's early songs;
To her with feet more graceful come
The verses that have dwelt in kindred ******* at home.
O let thy children lean aslant
Against the tender mother's knee,
And gaze into her face, and want
To know what magic there can be
In words that urge some eyes to dance,
While others as in holy trance
Look up to heaven; be such my praise!
Why linger? I must haste, or lose the Delphick bays.
1.8k
*Beneath yew tree's shade
mouldering they sleep
ashes of yesterday
Chronicles of time
ravage golden yesterdays
ne'er more to live again
O swelling anthem of praise
chorus of robin, warbler,
and oriole,
mocking my broken heart
triumphantly sing!
Smile on! Thou blazing sun
and scorn dreamless beds
of innocent furry friends
ashes of yesterday*
~
~Hilda~
Jan 18, 2014
Jan 18, 2014 at 6:33 PM UTC
From Shisha with Love
The room was dark as I entered
Like a tangled pipe, I twisted, turned, and stumbled to my seat
That’s when I saw her, everything was suddenly bright
My eyes struck her creating a spark, she set me alight
Her head had all the flavour, her hair the fiery glow
Her eyes sweet like double apples, and her mouth mulish like mint
She was, so tall, so fine, so slender
The combination of cute and **** any man would surrender
The path to the glow was clear, I couldn’t let this opportunity pass
Every advance I took towards her I inhaled and exhaled a little deeper
Like a shooting star in the night, I had to make my wish come true before the star strays
I found myself immersed in smoke I had lost my way; where was the star, the glow the blaze?
I began coughing and blowing the smoke away, and there she was
In my brief moment of vertiginous, the pipe was in another palm
The once fresh flavours became harsh, and the fiery flame was now smouldering
Like a coal that had lost its grey coat that protected its fragile warmth was now mouldering
Take a deep breath and let it go.
@BengGeorge
Sep 28, 2016
Sep 28, 2016 at 5:34 PM UTC