The Faithless Shadows

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1. Stone Shadows For an entire year she dressed in all the shades Of ash – the gray of old paper; the deeper, Almost auburn ash of pencil boxes; the dark, nearly Black marl of oak beds pulled from burning houses. That year, even her hair itself was woven With an ashen white, just single threads here & […]...
2. Bredon Hill In summertime on Bredon The bells they sound so clear; Round both the shires they ring them In steeples far and near, A happy noise to hear. Here of a Sunday morning My love and I would lie, And see the coloured counties, And hear the larks so high About us in the sky. The […]...
3. Aaron Holiness on the head, Light and perfection on the breast, Harmonious bells below, raising the dead To led them unto life and rest. Thus are true Aarons dressed. Profaneness in my head, Defects and darkness in my breast, A noise of passions ringing me for dead Unto a place where is no rest. Poor priest […]...
4. That Women Are But Men's Shadows Follow a shadow, it still flies you; Seem to fly it, it will pursue: So court a mistress, she denies you; Let her alone, she will court you. Say, are not women truly then Styled but the shadows of us men? At morn and even shades are longest, At noon they are or short or […]...
5. Villanelle Of Spring Bells Bells in the town alight with spring Converse, with a concordance of new airs Make clear the fresh and ancient sound they sing. People emerge from winter to hear them ring, Children glitter with mischief and the blind man hears Bells in the town alight with spring. Even he on his eyes feels the caressing […]...
6. Like Men and Women Shadows walk Like Men and Women Shadows walk Upon the Hills Today With here and there a mighty Bow Or trailing Courtesy To Neighbors doubtless of their own Not quickened to perceive Minuter landscape as Ourselves And Boroughs where we live...
7. Love and Friendship Love is like the wild rose-briar, Friendship like the holly-tree The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms But which will bloom most contantly? The wild-rose briar is sweet in the spring, Its summer blossoms scent the air; Yet wait till winter comes again And who wil call the wild-briar fair? Then scorn the silly […]...
8. Harlem Shadows I hear the halting footsteps of a lass In Negro Harlem when the night lets fall Its veil. I see the shapes of girls who pass To bend and barter at desire’s call. Ah, little dark girls who in slippered feet Go prowling through the night from street to street! Through the long night until […]...
9. The Sonnets To Orpheus: XXV But you now, dear girl, whom I loved like a flower whose name I didn’t know, you who so early were taken away: I will once more call up your image and show it to them, Beautiful companion of the unsubduable cry. Dancer whose body filled with your hesitant fate, Pausing, as though your young […]...
10. The Song Of Shadows “Sweep thy faint strings, Musician, With thy long lean hand; Downward the starry tapers burn, Sinks soft the waning sand; The old hound whimpers couched in sleep, The embers smoulder low; Across the walls the shadows Come, and go. Sweep softly thy strings, Musician, The minutes mount to hours; Frost on the windless casement weaves […]...
11. XVII (Thinking, Tangling Shadows…) Thinking, tangling shadows in the deep solitude. You are far away too, oh farther than anyone. Thinking, freeing birds, dissolving images, Burying lamps. Belfry of fogs, how far away, up there! Stifling laments, milling shadowy hopes, Taciturn miller, Night falls on you face downward, far from the city. Your presence is foreign, as strange to […]...
12. Bavarian Gentians Not every man has gentians in his house In Soft September, at slow, Sad Michaelmas. Bavarian gentians, big and dark, only dark Darkening the daytime torchlike with the smoking blueness of Pluto’s gloom, Ribbed and torchlike, with their blaze of darkness spread blue Down flattening into points, flattened under the sweep of white day Torch-flower […]...
13. Flowers in Winter How strange to greet, this frosty morn, In graceful counterfeit of flower, These children of the meadows, born Of sunshine and of showers! How well the conscious wood retains The pictures of its flower-sown home, The lights and shades, the purple stains, And golden hues of bloom! It was a happy thought to bring To […]...
14. The Faithless Wife So I took her to the river Believing she was a maiden, But she already had a husband. It was on St. James night And almost as if I was obliged to. The lanterns went out And the crickets lighted up. In the farthest street corners I touched her sleeping breasts And they opened to […]...
15. The Human Seasons Four Seasons fill the measure of the year; There are four seasons in the mind of man: He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear Takes in all beauty with an easy span: He has his Summer, when luxuriously Spring’s honied cud of youthful thought he loves To ruminate, and by such dreaming high Is […]...
16. THE AMARANTH Bhaskar Roy Barman The kaleidoscope stood befrilled with splendour; No messenger from on high did descend to hand It blessings, though. The rassling trees coruscated in an interplay of light and dark, The sun dipping down the western horizon. Exuding a unisonant desire to search for the amaranth, A group of youths were chanting their […]...
17. Faithless Nelly Gray A Pathetic Ballad Ben Battle was a soldier bold, And used to war’s alarms; But a cannon-ball took off his legs, So he laid down his arms. Now as they bore him off the field, Said he, ‘Let others shoot; For here I leave my second leg, And the Forty-second Foot.’ The army-surgeons made him […]...
18. Faithless Sally Brown Young Ben he was a nice young man, A carpenter by trade; And he fell in love with Sally Brown, That was a lady’s maid. But as they fetch’d a walk one day, They met a press-gang crew; And Sally she did faint away, Whilst Ben he was brought to. The Boatswain swore with wicked […]...
19. We grow accustomed to the Dark We grow accustomed to the Dark When light is put away As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp To witness her Goodbye A Moment We uncertain step For newness of the night Then fit our Vision to the Dark And meet the Road erect And so of larger Darkness Those Evenings of the Brain When […]...
20. 241. Written in Friars' Carse Hermitage (Second Version) THOU whom chance may hither lead, Be thou clad in russet weed, Be thou deckt in silken stole, Grave these counsels on thy soul. Life is but a day at most, Sprung from night,-in darkness lost; Hope not sunshine ev’ry hour, Fear not clouds will always lour. As Youth and Love with sprightly dance, Beneath […]...
21. The Dark Cavalier I am the Dark Cavalier; I am the Last Lover: My arms shall welcome you when other arms are tired; I stand to wait for you, patient in the darkness, Offering forgetfulness of all that you desired. I ask no merriment, no pretense of gladness, I can love heavy lids and lips without their rose; […]...
22. Light Hearted William Light hearted William twirled His November moustaches And, half dressed, looked From the bedroom window Upon the spring weather. Heigh-ya! sighed he gaily Leaning out to see Up and down the street Where a heavy sunlight Lay beyond some blue shadows. Into the room he drew His head again and laughed To himself quietly Twirling […]...
23. The Call (France, August first, 1914) Far and near, high and clear, Hark to the call of War! Over the gorse and the golden dells, Ringing and swinging of clamorous bells, Praying and saying of wild farewells: War! War! War! High and low, all must go: Hark to the shout of War! Leave to the women the […]...
24. Nothing But Death There are cemeteries that are lonely, Graves full of bones that do not make a sound, The heart moving through a tunnel, In it darkness, darkness, darkness, Like a shipwreck we die going into ourselves, As though we were drowning inside our hearts, As though we lived falling out of the skin into the soul. […]...
25. PULLED FROM A LIFE SOME LEAVES Pulled from a life some leaves in evergreen Or dressed like fragrant crinoline draped Over shadows by di Chirico, stolen From a station where trains never run And set up in a tableau in the parsonage at Haworth The three sisters with Chekovian overtones Stood round the table where their mirrored forms Await the blast […]...
26. Desertion So light we were, so right we were, so fair faith shone, And the way was laid so certainly, that, when I’d gone, What dumb thing looked up at you? Was it something heard, Or a sudden cry, that meekly and without a word You broke the faith, and strangely, weakly, slipped apart. You gave […]...
27. THE FAITHLESS BOY THERE was a wooer blithe and gay, A son of France was he, Who in his arms for many a day, As though his bride were she, A poor young maiden had caress’d, And fondly kiss’d, and fondly press’d, And then at length deserted. When this was told the nut-brown maid, Her senses straightway fled; […]...
28. While yet we wait for spring, and from the dry While yet we wait for spring, and from the dry And blackening east that so embitters March, Well-housed must watch grey fields and meadows parch, And driven dust and withering snowflake fly; Already in glimpses of the tarnish’d sky The sun is warm and beckons to the larch, And where the covert hazels interarch Their […]...
29. Psalm 39 part 2 v.4-7 C. M. The vanity of man as mortal. Teach me the measure of my days, Thou Maker of my frame; I would survey life’s narrow space, And learn how frail I am. A span is all that we can boast, An inch or two of time; Man is but vanity and dust In all […]...
30. On a Soldier Fallen in the Philippines Streets of the roaring town, Hush for him, hus, be still! He comes, who was stricken down Doing the word of our will. Hush! Let him have his state, Give him his soldier’s crown. The grists of trade can wait Their grinding at the mill, But he cannot wait for his honor, now the trumpet […]...
31. The Last Rose ‘O WHICH is the last rose?’ A blossom of no name. At midnight the snow came; At daybreak a vast rose, In darkness unfurl’d, O’er-petall’d the world. Its odourless pallor Blossom’d forlorn, Till radiant valour Establish’d the morn Till the night Was undone In her fight With the sun. The brave orb in state rose, […]...
32. The House Of Dust: Part 04: 04: Counterpoint: Two Rooms He, in the room above, grown old and tired, She, in the room below-his floor her ceiling- Pursue their separate dreams. He turns his light, And throws himself on the bed, face down, in laughter. . . . She, by the window, smiles at a starlight night, His watch-the same he has heard these cycles […]...
33. Over The Land Is April OVER the land is April, Over my heart a rose; Over the high, brown mountain The sound of singing goes. Say, love, do you hear me, Hear my sonnets ring? Over the high, brown mountain, Love, do you hear me sing? By highway, love, and byway The snows succeed the rose. Over the high, brown […]...
34. My Pretty Rose Tree A flower was offered to me; Such a flower as May never bore. But I said I’ve a Pretty Rose-tree. And I passed the sweet flower o’er. Then I went to my Pretty Rose-tree: To tend her by day and by night. But my Rose turnd away with jealousy: And her thorns were my only […]...
35. Eve – Song I span and Eve span A thread to bind the heart of man; But the heart of man was a wandering thing That came and went with little to bring: Nothing he minded what we made, As here he loitered, and there he stayed. I span and Eve span A thread to bind the heart […]...
36. Sonnet 33 – Yes, call me by my pet-name! let me hear Yes, call me by my pet-name! let me hear The name I used to run at, when a child, From innocent play, and leave the cowslips piled, To glance up in some face that proved me dear With the look of its eyes. I miss the clear Fond voices which, being drawn and reconciled Into […]...
37. Mother and child One night a tiny dewdrop fell Into the bosom of a rose, “Dear little one, I love thee well, Be ever here thy sweet repose!” Seeing the rose with love bedight, The envious sky frowned dark, and then Sent forth a messenger of light And caught the dewdrop up again. “Oh, give me back my […]...
38. Shadows Before “Like clouds o’er the South are the nations who reign On fair islands that we would command; But clouds that are darker and denser than these Have sailed from an Isle in the Northern Seas And rest on our Southern Land. Low in dust is our Goddess of Liberty hurled At our feet, and the […]...
39. The Recall The night was dark when she went away, and the slept. The night is dark now, and I call for her, “Come back, my Darling; the world is asleep; and no one would know, if you came For a moment while stars are gazing at stars.” She went away when the trees were in bud […]...
40. The Cap And Bells The jester walked in the garden: The garden had fallen still; He bade his soul rise upward And stand on her window-sill. It rose in a straight blue garment, When owls began to call: It had grown wise-tongued by thinking Of a quiet and light footfall; But the young queen would not listen; She rose […]...