Dissolute

Related poetry:

1. The Story Of The Ashes And The Flame No matter why, nor whence, nor when she came, There was her place. No matter what men said, No matter what she was; living or dead, Faithful or not, he loved her all the same. The story was as old as human shame, But ever since that lonely night she fled, With books to blind […]...
2. Sonnet XXX: Those Priests To the Vestals Those priests which first the Vestal fire begun, Which might be borrow’d from no earthly flame, Devis’d a vessel to receive the Sun, Being steadfastly opposed to the same; Where, with sweet wood, laid curiously by art, On which the Sun might by reflection beat, Receiving strength from every secret part, The […]...
3. Sonnet XL: My Heart the Anvil My heart the anvil where my thoughts do beat; My words the hammers fashioning my desire; My breast the forge including all the heat; Love is the fuel which maintains the fire; My sighs the bellows which the flame increaseth, Filling mine ears with noise and nightly groaning; Toiling with pain, my labor never ceaseth, […]...
4. In The Forest HERE, O my heart, let us burn the dear dreams that are dead, Here in this wood let us fashion a funeral pyre Of fallen white petals and leaves that are mellow and red, Here let us burn them in noon’s flaming torches of fire. We are weary, my heart, we are weary, so long […]...
5. 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 […]...
6. Edmund Pollard I would I had thrust my hands of flesh Into the disk-flowers bee-infested, Into the mirror-like core of fire Of the light of life, the sun of delight. For what are anthers worth or petals Or halo-rays? Mockeries, shadows Of the heart of the flower, the central flame! All is yours, young passer-by; Enter the […]...
7. Song: Eternity of Love Protested How ill doth he deserve a lover’s name, Whose pale weak flame Cannot retain His heat, in spite of absence or disdain; But doth at once, like paper set on fire, Burn and expire; True love can never change his seat, Nor did her ever love, that could retreat. That noble flame which my breast […]...
8. Young Fellow My Lad “Where are you going, Young Fellow My Lad, On this glittering morn of May?” “I’m going to join the Colours, Dad; They’re looking for men, they say.” “But you’re only a boy, Young Fellow My Lad; You aren’t obliged to go.” “I’m seventeen and a quarter, Dad, And ever so strong, you know.” * * […]...
9. A Fever Oh do not die, for I shall hate All women so, when thou art gone, That thee I shall not celebrate, When I remember, thou wast one. But yet thou canst not die, I know, To leave this world behind, is death, But when thou from this world wilt go, The whole world vapors with […]...
10. Unlyric Love Song It is time to give that-of-myself which I could not at first: To offer you now at last my least and my worst: Minor, absurd preserves, The shell’s end-curves, A document kept at the back of a drawer, A tin hidden under the floor, Recalcitrant prides and hesitations: To pile them carefully in a desparate […]...
11. Paradise Seed Where is the seed Of the tree felled, Of the forest burned, Or living root Under ash and cinders? From woven bud What last leaf strives Into life, last Shrivelled flower? Is fruit of our harvest, Our long labour Dust to the core? To what far, fair land Borne on the wind What winged seed […]...
12. Thomas Bailey Aldrich I BIRTHDAY VERSES Dear Aldrich, now November’s mellow days Have brought another Festa round to you, You can’t refuse a loving-cup of praise From friends the fleeting years have bound to you. Here come your Marjorie Daw, your dear Bad Boy, Prudence, and Judith the Bethulian, And many more, to wish you birthday joy, And […]...
13. Barcelona The night before I left Milan A mob jammed the Cathedral Square, And high the tide of passion ran As politics befouled the air. A seething hell of human strife, I shrank back from its evil core, Seeing in this convulsive life The living seeds of war. To Barcelona then I came, And oh the […]...
14. Polarity Nay, why reproach each other, be unkind, For there’s no plane on which we two may meet? Let’s both forgive, forget, for both were blind, And life is of a day, and time is fleet. And I am fire, swift to flame and burn, Melting with elements high overhead, While you are water in an […]...
15. 1887 From Clee to heaven the beacon burns, The shires have seen it plain, From north and south the sign returns And beacons burn again. Look left, look right, the hills are bright, The dales are light between, Because ’tis fifty years to-night That God has saved the Queen. Now, when the flame they watch not […]...
16. To a Child of Quality, Five Years Old, 1704. The Author then Forty LORDS, knights, and squires, the numerous band That wear the fair Miss Mary’s fetters, Were summoned by her high command To show their passions by their letters. My pen amongst the rest I took, Lest those bright eyes, that cannot read, Should dart their kindling fire, and look The power they have to be obey’d. […]...
17. Cacoethes Scribendi If all the trees in all the woods were men; And each and every blade of grass a pen; If every leaf on every shrub and tree Turned to a sheet of foolscap; every sea Were changed to ink, and all earth’s living tribes Had nothing else to do but act as scribes, And for […]...
18. The Mole Said he: “I’ll dive deep in the Past, And write a book of direful days When summer skies were overcast With smoke of humble hearths ablaze; When War was rampant in the land, And poor folk cowered in the night, While ruin gaped on every hand – Of ravishing and wrath I’ll write.” Ten years […]...
19. Style Flaubert wanted to write a novel About nothing. It was to have no subject And be sustained upon the style alone, Like the Holy Ghost cruising above The abyss, or like the little animals In Disney cartoons who stand upon a branch That breaks, but do not fall Till they look down. He never wrote […]...
20. On Living I Living is no laughing matter: you must live with great seriousness like a squirrel, for example I mean without looking for something beyond and above living, I mean living must be your whole occupation. Living is no laughing matter: you must take it seriously, so much so and to such a degree that, for […]...
21. Recollections I. Years upon years, as a course of clouds that thicken Thronging the ways of the wind that shifts and veers, Pass, and the flames of remembered fires requicken Years upon years. Surely the thought in a man’s heart hopes or fears Now that forgetfulness needs must here have stricken Anguish, and sweetened the sealed-up […]...
22. The Call Out of the nothingness of sleep, The slow dreams of Eternity, There was a thunder on the deep: I came, because you called to me. I broke the Night’s primeval bars, I dared the old abysmal curse, And flashed through ranks of frightened stars Suddenly on the universe! The eternal silences were broken; Hell became […]...
23. Willard Fluke My wife lost her health, And dwindled until she weighed scarce ninety pounds. Then that woman, whom the men Styled Cleopatra, came along. And we we married ones All broke our vows, myself among the rest. Years passed and one by one Death claimed them all in some hideous form, And I was borne along […]...
24. George Meredith Forty years back, when much had place That since has perished out of mind, I heard that voice and saw that face. He spoke as one afoot will wind A morning horn ere men awake; His note was trenchant, turning kind. He was one of those whose wit can shake And riddle to the very […]...
25. Beachcomber When I have come with happy heart to sixty years and ten, I’ll buy a boat and sail away upon a summer sea; And in a little lonely isle that’s far and far from men, In peace and praise I’ll spend the days the Gods allow to me. For I am weary of a strife […]...
26. Poet's Path My garden hath a slender path With ivy overgrown, A secret place where once would pace A pot all alone; I see him now with fretted brow, Plunged deep in thought; And sometimes he would write maybe, And sometimes he would not. A verse a day he used to say Keeps worry from the door; […]...
27. Communism When my blood flows calm as a purling river, When my heart is asleep and my brain has sway, It is then that I vow we must part for ever, That I will forget you, and put you away Out of my life, as a dream is banished Out of the mind when the dreamer […]...
28. Golden Days Another day of toil and strife, Another page so white, Within that fateful Log of Life That I and all must write; Another page without a stain To make of as I may, That done, I shall not see again Until the Judgment Day. Ah, could I, could I backward turn The pages of that […]...
29. Calmly We Walk Through This April's Day Calmly we walk through this April’s day, Metropolitan poetry here and there, In the park sit pauper and rentier, The screaming children, the motor-car Fugitive about us, running away, Between the worker and the millionaire Number provides all distances, It is Nineteen Thirty-Seven now, Many great dears are taken away, What will become of you […]...
30. A Cruel Mistress We read of kings and gods that kindly took A pitcher fill’d with water from the brook ; But I have daily tender’d without thanks Rivers of tears that overflow their banks. A slaughter’d bull will appease angry Jove, A horse the Sun, a lamb the god of love, But she disdains the spotless sacrifice […]...
31. Sonnet (I) My God, where is that ancient heat towards thee, Wherewith whole showls of Martyrs once did burn, Besides their other flames? Doth Poetry Wear Venus livery? only serve her turn? Why are not Sonnets made of thee? and layes Upon thine Altar burnt? Cannot thy love Heighten a spirit to sound out thy praise As […]...
32. Futility Dusting my books I spent a busy day: Not ancient toes, time-hallowed and unread, But modern volumes, classics in their way, Whose makers now are numbered with the dead; Men of a generation more than mine, With whom I tattled, battled and drank wine. I worshipped them, rejoiced in their success, Grudging them not the […]...
33. Stafford's Cabin Once there was a cabin here, and once there was a man; And something happened here before my memory began. Time has made the two of them the fuel of one flame And all we have of them is now a legend and a name. All I have to say is what an old man […]...
34. Hoping With Care We are honored and humble and earnest to share In events which would happen Although we weren’t there, a trifling thing As it were we are sure but amazing The changes it has wrought in us where We’re inspired by dreams which ennui despairs. We are awed by these joys but not possessed, The paternally […]...
35. Immortality WE must pass like smoke or live within the spirit’s fire; For we can no more than smoke unto the flame return If our thought has changed to dream, our will unto desire, As smoke we vanish though the fire may burn. Lights of infinite pity star the grey dusk of our days: Surely here […]...
36. Now! Out of your whole life give but a moment! All of your life that has gone before, All to come after it, so you ignore, So you make perfect the present, condense, In a rapture of rage, for perfection’s endowment, Thought and feeling and soul and sense, Merged in a moment which gives me at […]...
37. Tonight I Can Write Tonight I can write the saddest lines. Write, for example, ‘The night is starry And the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.’ The night wind revolves in the sky and sings. Tonight I can write the saddest lines. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. Through nights like this one I […]...
38. Does It Matter? Does it matter?-losing your legs? For people will always be kind, And you need not show that you mind When others come in after hunting To gobble their muffins and eggs. Does it matter?-losing you sight? There’s such splendid work for the blind; And people will always be kind, As you sit on the terrace […]...
39. Saddest Poem I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. Write, for instance: “The night is full of stars, And the stars, blue, shiver in the distance.” The night wind whirls in the sky and sings. I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. On nights […]...
40. Dreams Are Best I just think that dreams are best, Just to sit and fancy things; Give your gold no acid test, Try not how your silver rings; Fancy women pure and good, Fancy men upright and true: Fortressed in your solitude, Let Life be a dream to you. For I think that Thought is all; Truth’s a […]...