Jonathan Houghton

Related poetry:

1. Jonathan Swift Somers After you have enriched your soul To the highest point, With books, thought, suffering, the understanding of many personalities, The power to interpret glances, silences, The pauses in momentous transformations, The genius of divination and prophecy; So that you feel able at times to hold the world In the hollow of your hand; Then, if, […]...
2. Death Death is a road our dearest friends have gone; Why with such leaders, fear to say, “Lead on?” Its gate repels, lest it too soon be tried, But turns in balm on the immortal side. Mothers have passed it: fathers, children; men Whose like we look not to behold again; Women that smiled away their […]...
3. Brother Jonathan's Lament SHE has gone, she has left us in passion and pride, Our stormy-browed sister, so long at our side! She has torn her own star from our firmament’s glow, And turned on her brother the face of a foe! Oh, Caroline, Caroline, child of the sun, We can never forget that our hearts have been […]...
4. Armistice Day (1953) Don’t jeer because we celebrate Armistice Day, Though thirty years of sorry fate Have passed away. Though still we gaurd the Sacred Flame, And fly the Flag, That World War Two with grief and shame Revealed a rag. For France cannot defend to-day Her native land; And she is far to proud to pray For […]...
5. The going from a world we know The going from a world we know To one a wonder still Is like the child’s adversity Whose vista is a hill, Behind the hill is sorcery And everything unknown, But will the secret compensate For climbing it alone?...
6. Alone I’ve listened: and all the sounds I heard Were music,-wind, and stream, and bird. With youth who sang from hill to hill I’ve listened: my heart is hungry still. I’ve looked: the morning world was green; Bright roofs and towers of town I’ve seen; And stars, wheeling through wingless night. I’ve looked: and my soul […]...
7. Lights Out I have come to the borders of sleep, The unfathomable deep Forest where all must lose Their way, however straight, Or winding, soon or late; They cannot choose. Many a road and track That, since the dawn’s first crack, Up to the forest brink, Deceived the travellers, Suddenly now blurs, And in they sink. Here […]...
8. The Gardener XXII: When She Passed by Me When she passed by me with quick Steps, the end of her skirt touched Me. From the unknown island of a Heart came a sudden warm breath of Spring. A flutter of a flitting touch brushed Me and vanished in a moment, like a Torn flower petal blown in the breeze. It fell upon my […]...
9. The Tramps Can you recall, dear comrade, when we tramped God’s land together, And we sang the old, old Earth-song, for our youth was very sweet; When we drank and fought and lusted, as we mocked at tie and tether, Along the road to Anywhere, the wide world at our feet Along the road to Anywhere, when […]...
10. Good-by and Keep Cold This saying good-by on the edge of the dark And the cold to an orchard so young in the bark Reminds me of all that can happen to harm An orchard away at the end of the farm All winter, cut off by a hill from the house. I don’t want it girdled by rabbit […]...
11. The Country Of Marriage I. I dream of you walking at night along the streams Of the country of my birth, warm blooms and the nightsongs Of birds opening around you as you walk. You are holding in your body the dark seed of my sleep. II. This comes after silence. Was it something I said That bound me […]...
12. At the grave of Anastasia Baluk – Cross Stone Anastasia And the sad snow falling A toiling sky And a long white line of hills A distant birthplace Short span and early dying Pain from what heaven Sorrowed your slope of life? Through valley’s throat Run double veins of water Feverish river Somnolent canal – the vein of the metal rail And the trundling […]...
13. The Road and the End I SHALL foot it Down the roadway in the dusk, Where shapes of hunger wander And the fugitives of pain go by. I shall foot it In the silence of the morning, See the night slur into dawn, Hear the slow great winds arise Where tall trees flank the way And shoulder toward the sky. […]...
14. Thirty-nine O hapless day! O wretched day! I hoped you’d pass me by Alas, the years have sneaked away And all is changed but I! Had I the power, I would remand You to a gloom condign, But here you’ve crept upon me and I I am thirty-nine! Now, were I thirty-five, I could Assume a […]...
15. Charles Webster The pine woods on the hill, And the farmhouse miles away, Showed clear as though behind a lens Under a sky of peacock blue! But a blanket of cloud by afternoon Muffled the earth. And you walked the road And the clover field, where the only sound Was the cricket’s liquid tremolo. Then the sun […]...
16. The Road was lit with Moon and star The Road was lit with Moon and star The Trees were bright and still Descried I by the distant Light A Traveller on a Hill To magic Perpendiculars Ascending, though Terrene Unknown his shimmering ultimate But he indorsed the sheen...
17. Woak Hill When sycamore leaves wer a-spreaden Green-ruddy in hedges, Bezide the red doust o’ the ridges, A-dried at Woak Hill; I packed up my goods, all a-sheenen Wi’ long years o’ handlen, On dousty red wheels ov a waggon, To ride at Woak Hill. The brown thatchen ruf o’ the dwellen I then wer a-leaven, Had […]...
18. The Hill Where are Elmer, Herman, Bert, Tom, and Charley, The weak of will, the strong of arm, the clown, the boozer, the fighter? All, all, are sleeping on the hill. One passed in a fever, One was burned in a mine, One was killed in a brawl, One died in jail, One fell from a bridge […]...
19. THE INNOCENT EYE I struggled through streets of Bricked-up, boarded-up houses, Mostly burned-out, keeping To the middle of the road, Watching the abandoned gardens With here and there a house Still lived in, curtained Against the daylight and distantly I saw the iron railings of the school I’d taught in thirty years before. The same brick buildings, hop […]...
20. Yvonne Of Brittany In your mother’s apple-orchard, Just a year ago, last spring: Do you remember, Yvonne! The dear trees lavishing Rain of their starry blossoms To make you a coronet? Do you ever remember, Yvonne, As I remember yet? In your mother’s apple-orchard, When the world was left behind: You were shy, so shy, Yvonne! But your […]...
21. The Iron Gate WHERE is this patriarch you are kindly greeting? Not unfamiliar to my ear his name, Nor yet unknown to many a joyous meeting In days long vanished, is he still the same, Or changed by years, forgotten and forgetting, Dull-eared, dim-sighted, slow of speech and thought, Still o’er the sad, degenerate present fretting, Where all […]...
22. Etienne de la Boéce I serve you not, if you I follow, Shadow-like, o’er hill and hollow, And bend my fancy to your leading, All too nimble for my treading. When the pilgrimage is done, And we’ve the landscape overrun, I am bitter, vacant, thwarted, And your heart is unsupported. Vainly valiant, you have missed The manhood that should […]...
23. Ghost House I DWELL in a lonely house I know That vanished many a summer ago, And left no trace but the cellar walls, And a cellar in which the daylight falls, And the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow. O’er ruined fences the grape-vines shield The woods come back to the mowing field; The orchard tree has grown […]...
24. Why FOR a name unknown, Whose fame unblown Sleeps in the hills For ever and aye; For her who hears The stir of the years Go by on the wind By night and day; And heeds no thing Of the needs of spring, Of autumn’s wonder Or winter’s chill; For one who sees The great sun […]...
25. The Valley Of The Black Pig The dews drop slowly and dreams gather: unknown spears Suddenly hurtle before my dream-awakened eyes, And then the clash of fallen horsemen and the cries Of unknown perishing armies beat about my ears. We who still labour by the cromlech on the shore, The grey caim on the hill, when day sinks drowned in dew, […]...
26. Mrs. Merritt Silent before the jury, Returning no word to the judge when he asked me If I had aught to say against the sentence, Only shaking my head. What could I say to people who thought That a woman of thirty-five was at fault When her lover of nineteen killed her husband? Even though she had […]...
27. Meeting and Passing As I went down the hill along the wall There was a gate I had leaned at for the view And had just turned from when I first saw you As you came up the hill. We met. But all We did that day was mingle great and small Footprints in summer dust as if […]...
28. Sheep and Lambs All in the April evening, April airs were abroad; The sheep with their little lambs Passed me by on the road. The sheep with their little lambs Passed me by on the road; All in the April evening I thought on the Lamb of God. The lambs were weary and crying With a weak, human […]...
29. Nellie Clark I was only eight years old; And before I grew up and knew what it meant I had no words for it, except That I was frightened and told my Mother; And that my Father got a pistol And would have killed Charlie, who was a big boy, Fifteen years old, except for his Mother. […]...
30. Into The Twilight Out-Worn heart, in a time out-worn, Come clear of the nets of wrong and right; Laugh, heart, again in the grey twilight, Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn. Your mother Eire is aways young, Dew ever shining and twilight grey; Though hope fall from you and love decay, Burning in fires of […]...
31. The Long Race Up the old hill to the old house again Where fifty years ago the friend was young Who should be waiting somewhere there among Old things that least remembered most remain, He toiled on with a pleasure that was pain To think how soon asunder would be flung The curtain half a century had hung […]...
32. Tristitiae O well for him who lives at ease With garnered gold in wide domain, Nor heeds the splashing of the rain, The crashing down of forest trees. O well for him who ne’er hath known The travail of the hungry years, A father grey with grief and tears, A mother weeping all alone. But well […]...
33. No Neck-Tie Party A prisoner speaks: Majority of twenty-three, I face the Judge with joy and glee; For am I not a lucky chap – No more hanging, no more cap; A “lifer,” yes, but well I know In fifteen years they’ll let me go; For I’ll be pious in my prison, Sing with gusto: Christ Is Risen; […]...
34. Morning You know how it is waking From a dream certain you can fly And that someone, long gone, returned And you are filled with longing, For a brief moment, to drive off The road and feel nothing Or to see the loved one and feel Everything. Perhaps one morning, Taking brush to hair you’ll wonder […]...
35. The Lover Tells Of The Rose In His Heart All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old, The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart, The heavy steps of the ploughman, splashing the wintry mould, Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart. The wrong of unshapely things is […]...
36. Threshold I was not aware of the moment When I first crossed the threshold of this life. What was the power that made me open out into this vast mystery Like a bud in the forest at midnight! When in the morning I looked upon the light I felt in a moment that I was no […]...
37. Cherry – Tree Inn The rafters are open to sun, moon, and star, Thistles and nettles grow high in the bar The chimneys are crumbling, the log fires are dead, And green mosses spring from the hearthstone instead. The voices are silent, the bustle and din, For the railroad hath ruined the Cherry-tree Inn. Save the glimmer of stars, […]...
38. Of Tribulation, these are They Of Tribulation, these are They, Denoted by the White The Spangled Gowns, a lesser Rank Of Victors designate All these did conquer But the ones who overcame most times Wear nothing commoner than Snow No Ornament, but Palms Surrender is a sort unknown On this superior soil Defeat an outgrown Anguish Remembered, as the Mile […]...
39. Like Truthless Dreams, So Are My Joys Expired Like truthless dreams, so are my joys expired, And past return are all my dandled days; My love misled, and fancy quite retired – Of all which passed the sorrow only stays. My lost delights, now clean from sight of land, Have left me all alone in unknown ways; My mind to woe, my life […]...
40. A Lady red amid the Hill A Lady red amid the Hill Her annual secret keeps! A Lady white, within the Field In placid Lily sleeps! The tidy Breezes, with their Brooms Sweep vale and hill and tree! Prithee, My pretty Housewives! Who may expected be? The Neighbors do not yet suspect! The Woods exchange a smile! Orchard, and Buttercup, and […]...