DayPoems: A Seven-Century Poetry Slam
93,142 lines of verse * www.daypoems.net
Timothy Bovee, editor
I DO not love thee!--no! I do not love thee!
And yet when thou art absent I am sad;
And envy even the bright blue sky above thee,
Whose quiet stars may see thee and be glad.
I do not love thee!--yet, I know not why,
Whate'er thou dost seems still well done, to me:
And often in my solitude I sigh
That those I do love are not more like thee!
I do not love thee!--yet, when thou art gone,
I hate the sound (though those who speak be dear)
Which breaks the lingering echo of the tone
Thy voice of music leaves upon my ear.
I do not love thee!--yet thy speaking eyes,
With their deep, bright, and most expressive blue,
Between me and the midnight heaven arise,
Oftener than any eyes I ever knew.
I know I do not love thee! yet, alas!
Others will scarcely trust my candid heart;
And oft I catch them smiling as they pass,
Because they see me gazing where thou art.
Lets terrorize baby.
Make him think he's in a cradle in a tree top,
swinging in the wind.
Hanging from a brittle bough ready to break,
moments from falling to the ground,
cradle and all.
I so loved once, when Death came by I hid
Away my face,
And all my sweetheart's tresses she undid
To make my hiding-place.
The dread shade passed me thus unheeding; and
I turned me then
To calm my love -- kiss down her shielding hand
And comfort her again.
And lo! she answered not: and she did sit
All fixedly,
With her fair face and the sweet smile of it,
In love with Death, not me.
I WILL make you brooches and toys for your delight
Of bird-song at morning and star-shine at night.
I will make a palace fit for you and me,
Of green days in forests and blue days at sea.
I will make my kitchen, and you shall keep your room,
Where white flows the river and bright blows the broom,
And you shall wash your linen and keep your body white
In rainfall at morning and dewfall at night.
And this shall be for music when no one else is near,
The fine song for singing, the rare song to hear!
That only I remember, that only you admire,
Of the broad road that stretches and the roadside fire.
Behind the golden western hills
The sun goes down, a founder'd bark,
Only a mighty sadness fills
The silence of the dark.
O twilight sad with wistful eyes,
Restore in ruth again to me
The shadow of the peace that lies
Beyond the purple sea.
The sun of my great joy goes down,
Against the paling heights afar,
Gleams out like some glad angel's crown,
A yellow evening star;
The glory from the western hills
Falls fading, spark on spark,
Only a mighty sadness fills
The spaces of the dark.
Thy clustering leaves are steeped in splendour;
No evening red, no morning dun,
Can show a hue as rich and tender
As thine -- bright lover of the sun!
What wondrous hints of hidden glory,
Of strains no human lips can sing;
What symbols rare of life's strange story,
Dost thou from earth's dark bosom bring!
What elements have made thy sweetness,
Thy glowing hue, thy emerald stem?
What hand has fashioned to completeness
From tiny germ, thy diadem?
Thou art the fair earth's fond expression
Of tenderness for heaven above --
The virgin blush that yields confession --
Thou bright "ambassador of love"!
Fair are thy leaves when summer glowing
Lies in the lap of swooning spring;
But where art thou when autumn, blowing,
Bids youth and tenderness take wing?
Sweet messenger! thou waftest beauty
Wherever human lives are sown,
Around the peasant's humble duty
Or weary grandeurs of a throne.
Transfused through hearts in future ages,
Thy glowing power anew may shine
Effulgent in the poets' pages
Or music's harmony divine.
But not to thee from future glory
Can shine one added charm or day;
Sweet is thy life's unwritten story
Of radiant bloom and swift decay.
Give, then, to vagrant winds thy sweetness,
Shine, tearful, in the summer shower;
And, heedless of thy season's fleetness,
Enrich with joy the passing hour.
HE that is by Mooni now
Sees the water-sapphires gleaming
Where the River Spirit, dreaming,
Sleeps by fall and fountain streaming
Under lute of leaf and bough!--
Hears what stamp of Storm with stress is,
Psalms from unseen wildernesses
Deep amongst far hill-recesses--
He that is by Mooni now.
Yea, for him by Mooni's marge
Sings the yellow-hair'd September,
With the face the gods remember,
When the ridge is burnt to ember,
And the dumb sea chains the barge!
Where the mount like molten brass is,
Down beneath fern-feather'd passes
Noonday dew in cool green grasses
Gleams on him by Mooni's marge.
Who that dwells by Mooni yet,
Feels in flowerful forest arches
Smiting wings and breath that parches
Where strong Summer's path of march is,
And the suns in thunder set!
Housed beneath the gracious kirtle
Of the shadowy water-myrtle--
Winds may kiss with heat and hurtle,
He is safe by Mooni yet!
Days there were when he who sings
(Dumb so long through passion's losses)
Stood where Mooni's water crosses
Shining tracks of green-hair'd mosses,
Like a soul with radiant wings:
Then the psalm the wind rehearses--
Then the song the stream disperses--
Lent a beauty to his verses,
Who to-night of Mooni sings.
Ah, the theme--the sad, gray theme!
Certain days are not above me,
Certain hearts have ceased to love me,
Certain fancies fail to move me,
Like the effluent morning dream.
Head whereon the white is stealing,
Heart whose hurts are past all healing,
Where is now the first, pure feeling?
Ah, the theme--the sad, gray theme!
Still to be by Mooni cool--
Where the water-blossoms glister,
And by gleaming vale and vista
Sits the English April's sister,
Soft and sweet and wonderful!
Just to rest beneath the burning
Outer world--its sneers and spurning--
Ah, my heart--my heart is yearning
Still to be by Mooni cool!
'YE have robb'd,' said he, 'ye have slaughter'd and made an end,
Take your ill-got plunder, and bury the dead:
What will ye more of your guest and sometime friend?'
'Blood for our blood,' they said.
He laugh'd: 'If one may settle the score for five,
I am ready; but let the reckoning stand till day:
I have loved the sunlight as dearly as any alive.'
'You shall die at dawn,' said they.
He flung his empty revolver down the slope,
He climb'd alone to the Eastward edge of the trees;
All night long in a dream untroubled of hope
He brooded, clasping his knees.
He did not hear the monotonous roar that fills
The ravine where the Yassîn river sullenly flows;
He did not see the starlight on the Laspur hills,
Or the far Afghan snows.
He saw the April noon on his books aglow,
The wistaria trailing in at the window wide;
He heard his father's voice from the terrace below
Calling him down to ride.
He saw the gray little church across the park,
The mounds that hid the loved and honour'd dead;
The Norman arch, the chancel softly dark,
The brasses black and red.
He saw the School Close, sunny and green,
The runner beside him, the stand by the parapet wall,
The distant tape, and the crowd roaring between,
His own name over all.
He saw the dark wainscot and timber'd roof,
The long tables, and the faces merry and keen;
The College Eight and their trainer dining aloof,
The Dons on the daïs serene.
He watch'd the liner's stem ploughing the foam,
He felt her trembling speed and the thrash of her screw;
He heard the passengers' voices talking of home,
He saw the flag she flew.
And now it was dawn. He rose strong on his feet,
And strode to his ruin'd camp below the wood;
He drank the breath of the morning cool and sweet:
His murderers round him stood.
Light on the Laspur hills was broadening fast,
The blood-red snow-peaks chill'd to a dazzling white;
He turn'd, and saw the golden circle at last,
Cut by the Eastern height.
'O glorious Life, Who dwellest in earth and sun,
I have lived, I praise and adore Thee.'
A sword swept.
Over the pass the voices one by one
Faded, and the hill slept.
O SLEEP, my babe, hear not the rippling wave,
Nor feel the breeze that round thee ling'ring strays
To drink thy balmy breath,
And sigh one long farewell.
Soon shall it mourn above thy wat'ry bed,
And whisper to me, on the wave-beat shore,
Deep murm'ring in reproach,
Thy sad untimely fate.
Ere those dear eyes had open'd on the light,
In vain to plead, thy coming life was sold,
O waken'd but to sleep,
Whence it can wake no more!
A thousand and a thousand silken leaves
The tufted beech unfolds in early spring,
All clad in tenderest green,
All of the self-same shape:
A thousand infant faces, soft and sweet,
Each year sends forth, yet every mother views
Her last not least beloved
Like its dear self alone.
No musing mind hath ever yet foreshaped
The face to-morrow's sun shall first reveal,
No heart hath e'er conceived
What love that face will bring.
O sleep, my babe, nor heed how mourns the gale
To part with thy soft locks and fragrant breath,
As when it deeply sighs
O'er autumn's latest bloom.
THE sun rises bright in France,
And fair sets he;
But he has tint the blythe blink he had
In my ain countree.
O, it 's nae my ain ruin
That saddens aye my e'e,
But the dear Marie I left behin'
Wi' sweet bairnies three.
My lanely hearth burn'd bonnie,
And smiled my ain Marie;
I've left a' my heart behin'
In my ain countree.
The bud comes back to summer,
And the blossom to the bee;
But I'll win back, O never,
To my ain countree.
O, I am leal to high Heaven,
Where soon I hope to be,
An' there I'll meet ye a' soon
Frae my ain countree!
Like star points in the ether to guide a homing soul
Towards God's Eternal Haven; above the wash and roll,
Across and o'er the oceans, on all the coasts they stand
Tall seneschals of commerce, High Wardens of the Strand --
The white lights slowly turning
Their kind eyes far and wide,
The red and green lights burning
Along the waterside.
When Night with breath of aloes, magnolia, spice, and balm
Creeps down the darkened jungles and mantles reef and palm,
By velvet waters making soft music as they surge
The shore lights of dark Asia will one by one emerge --
Oh, Ras Marshig by Aden
Shows dull on hazy nights;
And Bombay Channel's laid in
Its "In" and "Outer" lights.
When Night, in rain-wet garments comes sobbing cold and grey
Across the German Ocean and South from Stornoway,
Thro' snarling darkness slowly, some fixed and some a-turn,
The bright shore-lights of Europe like welcome tapers burn, --
From fierce Fruholmen streaming
O'er Northern ice and snow,
To Cape St. Vincent gleaming, --
These lamps of danger glow.
The dark Etruscan tending his watchfires by the shore,
On sacred altars burning, the world shall know no more;
His temple's column standing against the ancient stars
Is gone; Now bright catoptrics flash out electric bars, --
Slow swung his stately Argos
Unto the Tiber's mouth;
But now the Tuscan cargoes
Screw-driven, stagger South.
The lantern of Genoa guides home no Eastern fleets
As when the boy Columbus played in its narrow streets:
No more the Keltic `dolmens' their fitful warnings throw
Across the lone Atlantic, so long, so long ago --
No more the beaked prows dashing
Shall dare a shoreward foam;
No more will great oars threshing
Sweep Dorian galleys home.
No more the Vikings roaring their sagas wild and weird
Proclaim that Rome has fallen; no more a consul feared
Shall quench the Roman pharos lest Northern pirates free
Be pointed to their plunder on coasts of Italy --
Nor shall unwilling lovers,
From Lethean pleasures torn,
Fare nor'ward with those rovers,
To frozen lands forlorn.
The bale-fires and the watch-fires, the wrecker's foul false lure
No more shall vex the shipmen; and on their course secure
Past Pharos in the starlight the tow'ring hulls of Trade
Race in and out from Suez in iron cavalcade, --
So rode one sunset olden
Across the dark'ning sea,
With banners silk and golden,
The Barge of Antony!
They loom along the foreshores; they gleam across the Straits;
They guide the feet of Commerce unto the harbor gates.
In nights of storm and thunder, thro' fog and sleet and rain,
Like stars on angels' foreheads, they give man heart again, --
Oh, hear the high waves smashing
On Patagonia's shore!
Oh, hear the black waves threshing
Their weight on Skerryvore!
He searches night's grim chances upon his bridge alone
And seeks the distant glimmer of hopeful Eddystone:
And thro' a thick fog creeping, with chart and book and lead,
The homeward skipper follows their green and white and red --
By day his lighthouse wardens
In sunlit quiet stand,
But in the night the burdens
Are theirs of Sea and Land.
They fill that night with Knowledge. A thousand ships go by,
A thousand captains bless them, so bright and proud and high:
The world's dark capes they glamour; or low on sand banks dread,
They, crouching, mark a pathway between the Quick and Dead --
Like star points in the ether
They bring the seamen ease,
These Lords of Wind and Weather
These Wardens of the Seas!
Here comes the birds of the North
they fly in the dark
and walk in the day
nothing special at all,
just the normal lifestyle achieved by birds.
They come in dozens and move in myriads
they travel far and wide to get what they want
they are simply unrelentless about the future
they are the birds of the North
and they are here to stay.
The birds of the North
only attack when provoked
they are peaceful, intelligent and powerful birds
look at them once and then you know the score.
Thye are not quite pleasant to be with when you are different,
they are not the very best of friends when they do not know you
they are the birds that flock on the sea and never go deeper in search of something new and different,
that is why they are called the great birds of the North that never tire out.
There they are and when you come too close,
you know you have met the end because they are also very fast, very quick and calculating,
you would know when you have met a bird of the North because they truly are majestic, adventurous and totally wild.