Home ⇒ 📌Christina Rossetti ⇒ Cobwebs
Cobwebs
It is a land with neither night nor day,
Nor heat nor cold, nor any wind, nor rain,
Nor hills nor valleys; but one even plain
Stretches thro’ long unbroken miles away:
While thro’ the sluggish air a twilight grey
Broodeth; no moons or seasons wax and wane,
No ebb and flow are there among the main,
No bud-time no leaf-falling there for aye,
No ripple on the sea, no shifting sand,
No beat of wings to stir the stagnant space,
And loveless sea: no trace of days before,
No guarded home, no time-worn restingplace
No future hope no fear forevermore.
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
Related poetry:
- The Realists Hope that you may understand! What can books of men that wive In a dragon-guarded land, Paintings of the dolphin-drawn Sea-nymphs in their pearly wagons Do, but awake a hope to live That had gone With the dragons?...
- 168. Boat Song-Hey, Ca' Thro' UP wi’ the carls o’ Dysart, And the lads o’ Buckhaven, And the kimmers o’ Largo, And the lasses o’ Leven. Chorus.-Hey, ca’ thro’, ca’ thro’, For we hae muckle ado. Hey, ca’ thro’, ca’ thro’, For we hae muckle ado; We hae tales to tell, An’ we hae sangs to sing; We hae pennies […]...
- When Coldness Wraps This Suffering Clay When coldness wraps this suffering clay, Ah! whither strays the immortal mind? It cannot die, it cannot stay, But leaves its darken’d dust behind. Then, unembodied, doth it trace By steps each planet’s heavenly way? Or fill at once the realms of space, A thing of eyes, that all survey? Eternal, boundless, undecay’d, A thought […]...
- When First I Came Here WHEN first I came here I had hope, Hope for I knew not what. Fast beat My heart at the sight of the tall slope Or grass and yews, as if my feet Only by scaling its steps of chalk Would see something no other hill Ever disclosed. And now I walk Down it the […]...
- To Mary, On Receiving Her Picture This faint resemblance of thy charms, (Though strong as mortal art could give,) My constant heart of fear disarms, Revives my hopes, and bids me live. Here, I can trace the locks of gold Which round thy snowy forehead wave; The cheeks which sprung from Beauty’s mould, The lips, which made me Beauty’s slave. Here […]...
- The Sands of Dee 1 “O Mary, go and call the cattle home, 2 And call the cattle home, 3 And call the cattle home 4 Across the sands of Dee”; 5 The western wind was wild and dank with foam, 6 And all alone went she. 7 The western tide crept up along the sand, 8 And o’er […]...
- Land, Ho! I know ’tis but a loom of land, Yet is it land, and so I will rejoice, I know I cannot hear His voice Upon the shore, nor see Him stand; Yet is it land, ho! land. The land! the land! the lovely land! ‘Far off,’ dost say? Far off-ah, blessиd home! Farewell! farewell! thou […]...
- Lines to Him Who Will Understand Them THOU art no more my bosom’s FRIEND; Here must the sweet delusion end, That charm’d my senses many a year, Thro’ smiling summers, winters drear. O, FRIENDSHIP! am I doom’d to find Thou art a phantom of the mind? A glitt’ring shade, an empty name, An air-born vision’s vap’rish flame? And yet, the dear DECEIT […]...
- Epilogue O chansons foregoing You were a seven days’ wonder. When you came out in the magazines You created considerable stir in Chicago, And now you are stale and worn out, You’re a very depleted fashion, A hoop-skirt, a calash, An homely, transient antiquity. Only emotion remains. Your emotions? Are those of a maitre-de-cafe....
- Sonnet 06 (to a brook near the village of Corston.) As thus I bend me o’er thy babbling stream And watch thy current, Memory’s hand pourtrays The faint form’d scenes of the departed days, Like the far forest by the moon’s pale beam Dimly descried yet lovely. I have worn Upon thy banks the live-long hour away, […]...
- How the Land was Won The future was dark and the past was dead As they gazed on the sea once more – But a nation was born when the immigrants said “Good-bye!” as they stepped ashore! In their loneliness they were parted thus Because of the work to do, A wild wide land to be won for us By […]...
- Mollymook All week, in this rented house, sea spray and whispers of wind weave through the eucalypts, like a Sondheim melody. Through the pewter leaves the sea glimpsed from the wooden deck is, at times, teal silk. Other days it is grey. Longing stirs like waves about to break on the shore and sometimes they lift […]...
- People Who Live People who live by the sea Understand eternity. They copy the curves of the waves, Their hearts beat with the tides, & the saltiness of their blood Corresponds with the sea. They know that the house of flesh Is only a sandcastle Built on the shore, That skin breaks Under the waves Like sand under […]...
- Sonnet XXVI: I Ever Love To Despair I ever love where never hope appears, Yet hope draws on my never-hoping care, And my life’s hope would die, but for despair; My never-certain joy breeds ever-certain fears; Uncertain dread gives wings unto my hope, Yet my hope’s wings are laden so with fear As they cannot ascend to my hope’s sphere; […]...
- A Dream Once a dream did weave a shade, O’er my Angel-guarded bed. That an Emmet lost it’s way Where on grass methought I lay. Troubled wildered and forlorn Dark benighted travel-worn, Over many a tangled spray, All heart-broke I heard her say. O my children! do they cry, Do they hear their father sigh. Now they […]...
- Homage To A Government Next year we are to bring all the soldiers home For lack of money, and it is all right. Places they guarded, or kept orderly, We want the money for ourselves at home Instead of working. And this is all right. It’s hard to say who wanted it to happen, But now it’s been decided […]...
- Croquis The beach was crowded. Pausing now and then, He groped and fiddled doggedly along, His worn face glaring on the thoughtless throng The stony peevishness of sightless men. He seemed scarce older than his clothes. Again, Grotesquing thinly many an old sweet song, So cracked his fiddle, his hand so frail and wrong, You hardly […]...
- Dream Song 88: Op. posth. no. 11 In slack times visit I the violent dead And pick their awful brains. Most seem to feel Nothing is secret more To my disdain I find, when we who fled Cherish the knowings of both worlds, conceal More, beat on the floor, Where Bhain is stagnant, dear of Henry’s friends, Yellow with cancer, paper-thin, & […]...
- The Clock's Clear Voice Into The Clearer Air THE cock’s clear voice into the clearer air Where westward far I roam, Mounts with a thrill of hope, Falls with a sigh of home. A rural sentry, he from farm and field The coming morn descries, And, mankind’s bugler, wakes The camp of enterprise. He sings the morn upon the westward hills Strange and […]...
- The Wind Is Without There And Howls In The Trees THE wind is without there and howls in the trees, And the rain-flurries drum on the glass: Alone by the fireside with elbows on knees I can number the hours as they pass. Yet now, when to cheer me the crickets begin, And my pipe is just happily lit, Believe me, my friend, tho’ the […]...
- The Widower For a season there must be pain For a little, little space I shall lose the sight of her face, Take back the old life again While She is at rest in her place. For a season this pain must endure, For a little, little while I shall sigh more often than smile Till time […]...
- A Song of Travel Where’s the lamp that Hero lit Once to call Leander home? Equal Time hath shovelled it ‘Neath the wrack of Greece and Rome. Neither wait we any more That worn sail which Argo bore. Dust and dust of ashes close All the Vestal Virgin’s care; And the oldest altar shows But an older darkness there. […]...
- The Nightjar We loved our nightjar, but she would not stay with us. We had found her lying as dead, but soft and warm, Under the apple tree beside the old thatched wall. Two days we kept her in a basket by the fire, Fed her, and thought she well might live – till suddenly I the […]...
- To My Wife – With A Copy Of My Poems I can write no stately proem As a prelude to my lay; From a poet to a poem I would dare to say. For if of these fallen petals One to you seem fair, Love will waft it till it settles On your hair. And when wind and winter harden All the loveless land, It […]...
- On A Ruined house In A Romantic Country And this reft house is that the which he built, Lamented Jack! And here his malt he pil’d, Cautious in vain! These rats that squeak so wild, Squeak, not unconscious of their father’s guilt. Did ye not see her gleaming thro’ the glade? Belike, ’twas she, the maiden all forlorn. What though she milk no […]...
- America for Me ‘Tis fine to see the Old World and travel up and down Among the famous palaces and cities of renown, To admire the crumblyh castles and the statues and kings But now I think I’ve had enough of antiquated things. So it’s home again, and home again, America for me! My heart is turning home […]...
- A Grain Of Sand If starry space no limit knows And sun succeeds to sun, There is no reason to suppose Our earth the only one. ‘Mid countless constellations cast A million worlds may be, With each a God to bless or blast And steer to destiny. Just think! A million gods or so To guide each vital stream, […]...
- A Study (A Soul) She stands as pale as Parian statues stand; Like Cleopatra when she turned at bay, And felt her strength above the Roman sway, And felt the aspic writhing in her hand. Her face is steadfast toward the shadowy land, For dim beyond it looms the light of day; Her feet are steadfast; all the arduous […]...
- An American in Europe ‘Tis fine to see the Old World, and travel up and down Among the famous palaces and cities of renown, To admire the crumbly castles and the statues of the kings, But now I think I’ve had enough of antiquated things. So it’s home again, and home again, America for me! My heart is turning […]...
- You Ask Me, Why, Tho' Ill at Ease You ask me, why, tho’ ill at ease, Within this region I subsist, Whose spirits falter in the mist, And languish for the purple seas. It is the land that freemen till, That sober-suited Freedom chose, The land, where girt with friends or foes A man may speak the thing he will; A land of […]...
- Searching These quiet Autumn days, My soul, like Noah’s dove, on airy wings Goes out and searches for the hidden things Beyond the hills of haze. With mournful, pleading cries, Above the waters of the voiceless sea That laps the shore of broad Eternity, Day after day, it flies, Searching, but all in vain, For some […]...
- Lohengrin Back to the mystic shore beyond the main The mystic craft has sped, and left no trace. Ah, nevermore may she behold his face, Nor touch his hand, nor hear his voice again! With hidden front she crouches; all in vain The proffered balm. A vessel nears the place; They bring her young, lost brother; […]...
- If I Could But Forget If I could but forget The fullness of those first sweet days, When you burst sun-like thro’ the haze Of unacquaintance, on my sight, And made the wet, gray day seem bright While clouds themselves grew fair to see. And since, no day is gray or wet But all the scene comes back to me, […]...
- Remorse For Any Death Free of memory and of hope, Limitless, abstract, almost future, The dead man is not a dead man: he is death. Like the God of the mystics, Of Whom anything that could be said must be denied, The dead one, alien everywhere, Is but the ruin and absence of the world. We rob him of […]...
- Argument Days that cannot bring you near Or will not, Distance trying to appear Something more obstinate, Argue argue argue with me Endlessly Neither proving you less wanted nor less dear. Distance: Remember all that land Beneath the plane; That coastline Of dim beaches deep in sand Stretching indistinguishably All the way, All the way to […]...
- To the bright east she flies To the bright east she flies, Brothers of Paradise Remit her home, Without a change of wings, Or Love’s convenient things, Enticed to come. Fashioning what she is, Fathoming what she was, We deem we dream And that dissolves the days Through which existence strays Homeless at home....
- On Chillon Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind! Brightest in dungeons, Liberty, thou art; For there thy habitation is the heart— The heart which love of thee alone can bind; And when thy sons to fetters are consigned, – To fetters, and the damp vault’s dayless gloom— Their country conquers with their martyrdom, And Freedom’s fame finds […]...
- From an Essay on Man Heav’n from all creatures hides the book of fate, All but the page prescrib’d, their present state: From brutes what men, from men what spirits know: Or who could suffer being here below? The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed today, Had he thy reason, would he skip and play? Pleas’d to the last, he […]...
- Frustration Gazing to gold seraph wing, With wistful wonder in my eyes, A blue-behinded ape, I swing Upon the palms of Paradise. A parakeet of gaudy hue Upon a flame tree smugly rocks; Oh, we’re a precious pair, we two, I gibber while the parrot squawks. “If I had but your wings,” I sigh, “How ardently […]...
- The Presence Of Love And in Life’s noisiest hour, There whispers still the ceaseless Love of Thee, The heart’s Self-solace and soliloquy. You mould my Hopes, you fashion me within ; And to the leading Love-throb in the Heart Thro’ all my Being, thro’ my pulses beat ; You lie in all my many Thoughts, like Light, Like the […]...