"vaster" poems
Thy voice is on the rolling air;
I hear thee where the waters run;
Thou standest in the rising sun,
And in the setting thou art fair.
What art thou then? I cannot guess;
But tho' I seem in star and flower
To feel thee some diffusive power,
I do not therefore love thee less:
My love involves the love before;
My love is vaster passion now;
Tho' mix'd with God and Nature thou,
I seem to love thee more and more.
Far off thou art, but ever nigh;
I have thee still, and I rejoice;
I prosper, circled with thy voice;
I shall not lose thee tho' I die.
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Ethereal petals
blue
unfurling a presence
on the waveless
shoreless waters
bathed in golden light
a smile, a portal
to vaster worlds
unfolding
on the placid lake
a golden peace
unending dawn
Apr 1, 2016
Apr 1, 2016 at 3:59 AM UTC
When she told me she loved me
I didn't believe her.
So i killed myself instead.
A fairy came to me & whispered enticing secrets in my ear.
He outlined a closet upstairs
where I live alone inside my head.
Tidal waves of white roses grow in & out my of spine.
Suffocating the fishes prancing in a field of raving vines.
Lunar Lullaby plays hopscotch in a cloud of flies.
She licks cherry red ice pops & sings bird hymns to oak trees withering in the wuthering skies.
Swarming dragon-lies fly in lakes upon Monet's canvas.
There he paints a beauty of Thumbelina whose grave resides in the darkest corner of my empty heart.
A red cape looms above & flutters without wings.
My cave is growing vaster
And so I sail amongst its seas.
This Psychosis is no more wearing thin than Rigor Mortis can begin.
I'll live sedentarily as a maid serving rotten apples to men chained as apes.
A lotus will float on by down this bloodstream & into the night.
As a crater on the moon your corpse died suddenly as when fruit bloom.
May 3, 2014
May 3, 2014 at 1:42 PM UTC
i go through this daily plot
waking, working, trudging
first world ease, office walls
wheeled chairs
afternoon run
tupperware lunch
dinner the night before
home again, dinner
dishes again,
play again,
daughter picks up
new phrases, new looks
vegetable strainer toy
"umbrella," she says
i see those eyes, my wife's
and i wonder
what is this place?
these walls, these roads,
those sitka pines and shrinking
glaciers?
how 'm i supposed to be a father
with all these things stretching out
vaster than reason, than comprehension
those talking heads, ranting this or that
liberty's ***** freedom's snatched,
the world warms, the world cools
Filipinos scream in the face of angry
winds, the prim cut weatherman wildly
gestures at a colorful map, powerful
he says, historic
he says
more dripping mouthes,
government want guns now,
more money to ****** our phones
to send unmanned drones
our president's muhammad,
or jesus, or kenyan, or raciest
a genius or incompetent
everyone knows
just back home
a tiny algae grows and foams
thrashing in the autumn water
brown oxygen choking life
never found on our shores before
kills fish,
i imagine so much more
i hold my daughter in my lap
reading mother goose,
run my hand through her
thin smooth hair,
sometimes afraid
of what she'll see and hear
with her mother's eyes
and her father's ears
Nov 21, 2013
Nov 21, 2013 at 3:10 AM UTC
The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
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Pretend piety,
Of the temporary variety,
Placed in a shine of "I am better than you high society".
Your words are intelligent,
Your words hold weigh,
But my sentiment makes your feeble words tremble and shake.
It has taken years of mental ************
To develop the concentration,
To compose these compilations of rhythmic translations!
You think you are the victor,
You feel you have won,
But this is no mere battle, it's a ******* war...son...your pain has just begun.
Because we don't need five minutes alone,
To crush any poem,
But reaching the masses and in between is where, I, call home.
Love and pain are parts of the game, but so are other emotions,
So merely beware, your pen must dip a little deeper into far vaster oceans,
If you think you can contend to my level or quotient...
My friend....
Jan 16, 2014
Jan 16, 2014 at 1:50 PM UTC
Oh, may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence; live
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
For miserable aims that end with self,
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge men's search
To vaster issues. So to live is heaven:
To make undying music in the world,
Breathing a beauteous order that controls
With growing sway the growing life of man.
So we inherit that sweet purity
For which we struggled, failed, and agonized
With widening retrospect that bred despair.
Rebellious flesh that would not be subdued,
A vicious parent shaming still its child,
Poor anxious penitence, is quick dissolved;
Its discords, quenched by meeting harmonies,
Die in the large and charitable air,
And all our rarer, better, truer self
That sobbed religiously in yearning song,
That watched to ease the burden of the world,
Laboriously tracing what must be,
And what may yet be better, -- saw within
A worthier image for the sanctuary,
And shaped it forth before the multitude,
Divinely human, raising worship so
To higher reverence more mixed with love, --
That better self shall live till human Time
Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky
Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb
Unread forever. This is life to come, --
Which martyred men have made more glorious
For us who strive to follow. May I reach
That purest heaven, -- be to other souls
The cup of strength in some great agony,
Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love,
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty,
Be the sweet presence of a good diffused,
And in diffusion ever more intense!
So shall I join the choir invisible
Whose music is the gladness of the world.
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1202
The Frost was never seen—
If met, too rapid passed,
Or in too unsubstantial Team—
The Flowers notice first
A Stranger hovering round
A Symptom of alarm
In Villages remotely set
But search effaces him
Till some retrieveless Night
Our Vigilance at waste
The Garden gets the only shot
That never could be traced.
Unproved is much we know—
Unknown the worst we fear—
Of Strangers is the Earth the Inn
Of Secrets is the Air—
To analyze perhaps
A Philip would prefer
But Labor vaster than myself
I find it to infer.
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1542
Come show thy Durham Breast
To her who loves thee best,
Delicious Robin—
And if it be not me
At least within my Tree
Do the avowing—
Thy Nuptial so minute
Perhaps is more astute
Than vaster suing—
For so to soar away
Is our propensity
The Day ensuing—
2.7k
A love like this,
perhaps it isn't made
for mundane living.
I can still feel
the texture of your
deep yellow shirt
as I held you in my arms,
sleeping your holy sleep.
At the very centre of my fingertips,
I can still feel the sense
that I am holding life itself,
that I am holding - Infinity.
Green and new as emerging plant life,
vaster than the velvety immensity
of this Icelandic night.
Feb 21, 2017
Feb 21, 2017 at 7:33 PM UTC
A father who has conquered all
that is in space,
here and among the stars
and the higher worlds,
begot Her as his child,
She of an essence beyond time:
aeons of vaster joys,
sundered now from the world
so sorely imperfect,
must yet come down here
to lead us back to the wonder
beauty of the blank spirit
the basis of all;
We can bottle up fragrance
in choicest the vials of our whim:
but released, it must fill all space, no less.
So was She the freedom
shining in the stars
flowing in the rivers that raft through the hills
in the winds that beat down the vales;
Protected, She grew in his home
among others lustred lesser
shining forth as his darling
who would keep aflame
the glory of his name;
Sep 29, 2018
Sep 29, 2018 at 2:20 PM UTC
My boyfriend (Peter) and I went down to New Haven Harbor today.
Let’s face it, we’re surrounded by oceans,
and most of them are downright inhospitable.
I live near the ocean, (pointing) it’s right over there.
I love the ocean, tripping over whenever I’ve time to spare.
The way I’m fawning over it, you’d think I know it well.
But I really only love its edges and undulating swells.
It’s like a book that I’ve judged by its cover,
a beautiful stranger taken as a lover,
or a pie when I’ve only tasted the crust.
I love something, I suppose, I’ve barely even touched.
Peter says that black, inky “outer-space” is a low-viscosity liquid,
another, even vaster ocean that’s more dangerous and rarely visited.
The air that we breathe is an ocean - our own, vast, atmosphere -
in it swim creatures too small to see, but to the naked eye it looks clear.
It flows, eddies and swells - birds swoop in it so you can tell.
Of course, the ocean has issues - it's hardly news - corrosion, erosion, sharks and drowning - and the way the ocean lets the moon and air push it around.
What I love most is its motion, and how it reflects the sun and the moon.
Did I mention that hanging-out by the ocean makes for a pleasant afternoon?
Mar 22, 2023
Mar 22, 2023 at 10:35 AM UTC
what am i about
giving you no gifts
unable to pin
my finger on a theme
phenomenal you
with whom i play away the year,
yearned love from a decade's dream
you've swayed into the real
to flesh it here and interrupt all Being
with a node of savvy personality
i lessen if i think my words can measure
that, how you emerge there, change
come across the shore of presence, waves of filtered seas
deeply you have gone and risen from within
expanding metaphor in a lambency of ageless gazing at the stars
and giving all a joyful undercurrent swim.
luffa vines abound, for future shiny backskins arching bliss--
shedding all, i snake my way around the roots--
the yellow sheen fades and pupils zero intimate
a finer lived experience... ripe intrusion truly love in tune with
tips of sneezing hearts, curling toes unite, shout
an intertwining pelvic orbit vaster space to yet unmake
unspoken pleasures wide in everpresent fontanels
the spectra plenum here again, next breath, ends of in, ends of out
Mar 25, 2013
Mar 25, 2013 at 11:16 PM UTC
Tomorrow was your birthday.
Love survives.
Are you vaster, out of body bounds?
Are you NOW ?
You remain deep in our soul.
Hearts thrashing weeping still,
You fast burning comet
irresistible untamable seeker
Thief of yourself.
Thief of my brother.
Jul 25, 2012
Jul 25, 2012 at 9:43 PM UTC
On that last night before we went
From out the doors where I was bred,
I dream'd a vision of the dead,
Which left my after-morn content.
Methought I dwelt within a hall,
And maidens with me: distant hills
From hidden summits fed with rills
A river sliding by the wall.
The hall with harp and carol rang.
They sang of what is wise and good
And graceful. In the centre stood
A statue veil'd, to which they sang;
And which, tho' veil'd, was known to me,
The shape of him I loved, and love
For ever: then flew in a dove
And brought a summons from the sea:
And when they learnt that I must go
They wept and wail'd, but led the way
To where a little shallop lay
At anchor in the flood below;
And on by many a level mead,
And shadowing bluff that made the banks,
We glided winding under ranks
Of iris, and the golden reed;
And still as vaster grew the shore
And roll'd the floods in grander space,
The maidens gather'd strength and grace
And presence, lordlier than before;
And I myself, who sat apart
And watch'd them, wax'd in every limb;
I felt the thews of Anakim,
The pulses of a Titan's heart;
As one would sing the death of war,
And one would chant the history
Of that great race, which is to be,
And one the shaping of a star;
Until the forward-creeping tides
Began to foam, and we to draw
From deep to deep, to where we saw
A great ship lift her shining sides.
The man we loved was there on deck,
But thrice as large as man he bent
To greet us. Up the side I went,
And fell in silence on his neck:
Whereat those maidens with one mind
Bewail'd their lot; I did them wrong:
'We served thee here' they said, 'so long,
And wilt thou leave us now behind?'
So rapt I was, they could not win
An answer from my lips, but he
Replying, 'Enter likewise ye
And go with us:' they enter'd in.
And while the wind began to sweep
A music out of sheet and shroud,
We steer'd her toward a crimson cloud
That landlike slept along the deep.
1.8k
Southampton Docks: October 1899
Here, where Vespasian’s legions struck the sands,
And Cendric with the Saxons entered in,
And Henry’s army lept afloat to win
Convincing triumphs over neighboring lands,
Vaster battalions press for further strands,
To argue in the selfsame ****** mode
Which this late age of thought, and pact, and code,
Still fails to mend.—Now deckward ***** the bands,
Yellow as autumn leaves, alive as spring;
And as each host draws out upon the sea
Beyond which lies the tragical To-be,
None dubious of the cause, none murmuring,
Wives, sisters, parents, wave white hands and smile,
As if they knew not that they weep the while.
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290
Of Bronze—and Blaze—
The North—Tonight—
So adequate—it forms—
So preconcerted with itself—
So distant—to alarms—
And Unconcern so sovereign
To Universe, or me—
Infects my simple spirit
With Taints of Majesty—
Till I take vaster attitudes—
And strut upon my stem—
Disdaining Men, and Oxygen,
For Arrogance of them—
My Splendors, are Menagerie—
But their Completeless Show
Will entertain the Centuries
When I, am long ago,
An Island in dishonored Grass—
Whom none but Beetles—know.
1.7k
563
I could not prove the Years had feet—
Yet confident they run
Am I, from symptoms that are past
And Series that are done—
I find my feet have further Goals—
I smile upon the Aims
That felt so ample—Yesterday—
Today’s—have vaster claims—
I do not doubt the self I was
Was competent to me—
But something awkward in the fit—
Proves that—outgrown—I see—
1.6k
659
That first Day, when you praised Me, Sweet,
And said that I was strong—
And could be mighty, if I liked—
That Day—the Days among—
Glows Central—like a Jewel
Between Diverging Golds—
The Minor One—that gleamed behind—
And Vaster—of the World’s.
1.5k
Strong Son of God, immortal Love,
Whom we, that have not seen thy face,
By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove;
Thine are these orbs of light and shade;
Thou madest Life in man and brute;
Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot
Is on the skull which thou hast made.
Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:
Thou madest man, he knows not why,
He thinks he was not made to die;
And thou hast made him: thou art just.
Thou seemest human and divine,
The highest, holiest manhood, thou.
Our wills are ours, we know not how;
Our wills are ours, to make them thine.
Our little systems have their day;
They have their day and cease to be:
They are but broken lights of thee,
And thou, O Lord, art more than they.
We have but faith: we cannot know;
For knowledge is of things we see;
And yet we trust it comes from thee,
A beam in darkness: let it grow.
Let knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell;
That mind and soul, according well,
May make one music as before,
But vaster. We are fools and slight;
We mock thee when we do not fear:
But help thy foolish ones to bear;
Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light.
Forgive what seem'd my sin in me;
What seem'd my worth since I began;
For merit lives from man to man,
And not from man, O Lord, to thee.
Forgive my grief for one removed,
Thy creature, whom I found so fair.
I trust he lives in thee, and there
I find him worthier to be loved.
Forgive these wild and wandering cries,
Confusions of a wasted youth;
Forgive them where they fail in truth,
And in thy wisdom make me wise.
1.5k
There is something
In your voice
Much more than
Just a sound
Something deeper
I can’t explain
There is something
In your presence
vaster than just your
figure and form
I can’t point
I Can’t explain
No words can describe
No feeling can relate
As soon as you leave
For you to come back
I always wait
©️Sobbingsoul
Jan 23, 2019
Jan 23, 2019 at 8:33 PM UTC
These weaving streets
pounding with
lovers' heart beats.
I know these things
tear you apart inside.
The way that we light fire to hearts,
And we burn them for the light.
These streets, they're pounding.
Drops of salty rain dampen the flame.
Fight the fire.
Burn up more of our desires.
Until desire runs out.
Until the fire dies out.
These wastelands, they're drowning.
What is left in wreckage is more than before.
Darker ashes.
Vaster endings.
And a heart-felt war.
As I sift the remnants of my love from this dust,
I whisper to the sky:
"Your almond eyes tell beautiful lies."
and I bury my heart goodbye.
May 19, 2016
May 19, 2016 at 3:59 PM UTC
Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk and pass our long love’s day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side
Shouldst rubies find: I by the tide
Of Humber would complain.
I would
Love you ten years before the Flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast;
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart;
For, Lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.
But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song: then worms shall try
That long preserved virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust:
The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapt power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
Dec 3, 2023
Dec 3, 2023 at 9:16 AM UTC
Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk and pass our long love’s day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side
Shouldst rubies find: I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast;
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart;
For, Lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.
*But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;*
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song: then worms shall try
That long preserved virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust:
*The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.*
Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapt power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
Jun 21, 2015
Jun 21, 2015 at 12:04 PM UTC