An Autumn Sunset
I
Leaguered in fire
The wild black promontories of the coast extend
Their savage silhouettes;
The sun in universal carnage sets,
And, halting higher,
The motionless storm-clouds mass their sullen threats,
Like an advancing mob in sword-points penned,
That, balked, yet stands at bay.
Mid-zenith hangs the fascinated day
In wind-lustrated hollows crystalline,
A wan Valkyrie whose wide pinions shine
Across the ensanguined ruins of the fray,
And in her hand swings high o’erhead,
Above the waste of war,
The silver torch-light of the evening star
Wherewith to search the faces of the dead.
II
Lagooned in gold,
Seem not those jetty promontories rather
The outposts of some ancient land forlorn,
Uncomforted of morn, Where old oblivions gather,
The melancholy unconsoling fold
Of all things that go utterly to death
And mix no more, no more
With life’s perpetually awakening breath?
Shall Time not ferry me to such a shore,
Over such sailless seas,
To walk with hope’s slain importunities
In miserable marriage? Nay, shall not
All things be there forgot,
Save the sea’s golden barrier and the black
Close-crouching promontories?
Dead to all shames, forgotten of all glories,
Shall I not wander there, a shadow’s shade,
A spectre self-destroyed,
So purged of all remembrance and sucked back
Into the primal void,
That should we on that shore phantasmal meet
I should not know the coming of your feet?
Related poetry:
- Sea Sunset A gallant city has been builded far In the pied heaven, Bannered with crimson, sentinelled by star Of crystal even; Around a harbor of the twilight glowing, With jubilant waves about its gateways flowing A city of the Land of Lost Delight, On seas enchanted, Presently to be lost in mist moon-white And music-haunted; Given […]...
- Autumn: A Dirge The warm sun is falling, the bleak wind is wailing, The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying, And the Year On the earth is her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead, Is lying. Come, Months, come away, From November to May, In your saddest array; Follow the bier Of the dead […]...
- From Sunset to Star Rise Go from me, summer friends, and tarry not: I am no summer friend, but wintry cold, A silly sheep benighted from the fold, A sluggard with a thorn-choked garden plot. Take counsel, sever from my lot your lot, Dwell in your pleasant places, hoard your gold; Lest you with me should shiver on the wold, […]...
- A Song of Autumn ‘WHERE shall we go for our garlands glad At the falling of the year, When the burnt-up banks are yellow and sad, When the boughs are yellow and sere? Where are the old ones that once we had, And when are the new ones near? What shall we do for our garlands glad At the […]...
- Autumn And Winter Three months bade wane and wax the wintering moon Between two dates of death, while men were fain Yet of the living light that all too soon Three months bade wane. Cold autumn, wan with wrath of wind and rain, Saw pass a soul sweet as the sovereign tune That death smote silent when he […]...
- Autumn I Saw old Autumn in the misty morn Stand shadowless like Silence, listening To silence, for no lonely bird would sing Into his hollow ear from woods forlorn, Nor lowly hedge nor solitary thorn;- Shaking his languid locks all dewy bright With tangled gossamer that fell by night, Pearling his coronet of golden corn. Where […]...
- An Autumn Reverie Alas! Beautiful Summer now hath fled, And the face of Nature doth seem dead, And the leaves are withered, and falling off the trees, By the nipping and chilling autumnal breeze. The pleasures of the little birds are all fled, And with the cold many of them will be found dead, Because the leaves of […]...
- An Autumn Rain-Scene There trudges one to a merry-making With sturdy swing, On whom the rain comes down. To fetch the saving medicament Is another bent, On whom the rain comes down. One slowly drives his herd to the stall Ere ill befall, On whom the rain comes down. This bears his missives of life and death With […]...
- In autumn moonlight, when the white air wan In autumn moonlight, when the white air wan Is fragrant in the wake of summer hence, ‘Tis sweet to sit entranced, and muse thereon In melancholy and godlike indolence: When the proud spirit, lull’d by mortal prime To fond pretence of immortality, Vieweth all moments from the birth of time, All things whate’er have been […]...
- Hornworm: Autumn Lamentation Since that first morning when I crawled Into the world, a naked grubby thing, And found the world unkind, My dearest faith has been that this Is but a trial: I shall be changed. In my imaginings I have already spent My brooding winter underground, Unfolded silky powdered wings, and climbed Into the air, free […]...
- Sleep Do you give yourself to me utterly, Body and no-body, flesh and no-flesh Not as a fugitive, blindly or bitterly, But as a child might, with no other wish? Yes, utterly. Then I shall bear you down my estuary, Carry you and ferry you to burial mysteriously, Take you and receive you, Consume you, engulf […]...
- No Foe Shall Gather Our Harvest Sons of the mountains of Scotland, Welshmen of coomb and defile, Breed of the moors of England, Children of Erin’s green isle, We stand four square to the tempest, Whatever the battering hail- No foe shall gather our harvest, Or sit on our stockyard rail. Our women shall walk in honour, Our children shall know […]...
- Autumn Whoever has no house now will never have one. Whoever is alone will stay alone Will sit, read, write long letters through the evening And wander on the boulevards, up and down… – from Autumn Day, Rainer Maria Rilke Its stain is everywhere. The sharpening air Of late afternoon Is now the colour of tea. […]...
- This is the land the Sunset washes This is the land the Sunset washes These are the Banks of the Yellow Sea Where it rose or whither it rushes These are the Western Mystery! Night after Night Her purple traffic Strews the landing with Opal Bales Merchantmen poise upon Horizons Dip and vanish like Orioles!...
- I look at the swaling sunset I look at the swaling sunset And wish I could go also Through the red doors beyond the black-purple bar. I wish that I could go Through the red doors where I could put off My shame like shoes in the porch, My pain like garments, And leave my flesh discarded lying Like luggage of […]...
- Milton I pace the sounding sea-beach and behold How the voluminous billows roll and run, Upheaving and subsiding, while the sun Shines through their sheeted emerald far unrolled, And the ninth wave, slow gathering fold by fold All its loose-flowing garments into one, Plunges upon the shore, and floods the dun Pale reach of sands, and […]...
- By an Autumn Fire Now at our casement the wind is shrilling, Poignant and keen And all the great boughs of the pines between It is harping a lone and hungering strain To the eldritch weeping of the rain; And then to the wild, wet valley flying It is seeking, sighing, Something lost in the summer olden. When night […]...
- A Sunset of the City Already I am no longer looked at with lechery or love. My daughters and sons have put me away with marbles and dolls, Are gone from the house. My husband and lovers are pleasant or somewhat polite And night is night. It is a real chill out, The genuine thing. I am not deceived, I […]...
- Easter Bring flowers to strew His way, Yea, sing, make holiday; Bid young lambs leap, And earth laugh after sleep. For now He cometh forth Winter flies to the north, Folds wings and cries Amid the bergs and ice. Yea, Death, great Death is dead, And Life reigns in his stead; Cometh the Athlete New from […]...
- I Thought I was not Alone I THOUGHT I was not alone, walking here by the shore, But the one I thought was with me, as now I walk by the shore, As I lean and look through the glimmering light-that one has utterly disappeared, And those appear that perplex me....
- The Wanderers OVER the sea our galleys went, With cleaving prows in order brave To a speeding wind and a bounding wave A gallant armament: Each bark built out of a forest-tree Left leafy and rough as first it grew, And nail’d all over the gaping sides, Within and without, with black bull-hides, Seethed in fat and […]...
- Looking For a Sunset Bird in Winter The west was getting out of gold, The breath of air had died of cold, When shoeing home across the white, I thought I saw a bird alight. In summer when I passed the place I had to stop and lift my face; A bird with an angelic gift Was singing in it sweet and […]...
- The Knife Can I explain this to you? Your eyes Are entrances the mouths of caves I issue from wonderful interiors Upon a blessed sea and a fine day, From inside these caves I look and dream. Your hair explicable as a waterfall In some black liquid cooled by legend Fell across my thought in a moment […]...
- Over the Sea our Galleys Went Over the sea our galleys went, With cleaving prows in order brave, To a speeding wind and a bounding wave, A gallant armament: Each bark built out of a forest-tree, Left leafy and rough as first it grew, And nailed all over the gaping sides, Within and without, with black bull-hides, Seethed in fat and […]...
- Away, Melancholy Away, melancholy, Away with it, let it go. Are not the trees green, The earth as green? Does not the wind blow, Fire leap and the rivers flow? Away melancholy. The ant is busy He carrieth his meat, All things hurry To be eaten or eat. Away, melancholy. Man, too, hurries, Eats, couples, buries, He […]...
- A Sunset I love the evenings, passionless and fair, I love the evens, Whether old manor-fronts their ray with golden fulgence leavens, In numerous leafage bosomed close; Whether the mist in reefs of fire extend its reaches sheer, Or a hundred sunbeams splinter in an azure atmosphere On cloudy archipelagos. Oh, gaze ye on the firmament! a […]...
- As if a Phantom Caress'd Me AS if a phantom caress’d me, I thought I was not alone, walking here by the shore; But the one I thought was with me, as now I walk by the shore-the one I loved, that caress’d me, As I lean and look through the glimmering light-that one has utterly disappear’d, And those appear that […]...
- After Sunset The vast and solemn company of clouds Around the Sun’s death, lit, incarnadined, Cool into ashy wan; as Night enshrouds The level pasture, creeping up behind Through voiceless vales, o’er lawn and purpled hill And hazéd mead, her mystery to fulfil. Cows low from far-off farms; the loitering wind Sighs in the hedge, you hear […]...
- Merry Autumn It’s all a farce,-these tales they tell About the breezes sighing, And moans astir o’er field and dell, Because the year is dying. Such principles are most absurd,- I care not who first taught ’em; There’s nothing known to beast or bird To make a solemn autumn. In solemn times, when grief holds sway With […]...
- Ultima Thule: Dedication to G. W. G With favoring winds, o’er sunlit seas, We sailed for the Hesperides, The land where golden apples grow; But that, ah! that was long ago. How far, since then, the ocean streams Have swept us from that land of dreams, That land of fiction and of truth, The lost Atlantis of our youth! Whither, ah, whither? […]...
- Last Words Dead! all’s done with! R. Browning. These blossoms that I bring, This song that here I sing, These tears that now I shed, I give unto the dead. There is no more to be done, Nothing beneath the sun, All the long ages through, Nothing by me for you. The tale is told to the […]...
- The Ships Are Made Ready In Silence Moored to the same ring: The hour, the darkness and I, Our compasses hooded like falcons. Now the memory of you comes aching in With a wash of broken bits which never left port In which once we planned voyages, They come knocking like hearts asking: What departures on this tide? Breath of land, warm […]...
- Autumn Within It is autumn; not without But within me is the cold. Youth and spring are all about; It is I that have grown old. Birds are darting through the air, Singing, building without rest; Life is stirring everywhere, Save within my lonely breast. There is silence: the dead leaves Fall and rustle and are still; […]...
- AUTUMN Thou comest, Autumn, heralded by the rain, With banners, by great gales incessant fanned, Brighter than brightest silks of Samarcand, And stately oxen harnessed to thy wain! Thou standest, like imperial Charlemagne, Upon thy bridge of gold; thy royal hand Outstretched with benedictions o’er the land, Blessing the farms through all thy vast domain! Thy […]...
- SONNET OF AUTUMN THEY say to me, thy clear and crystal eyes: “Why dost thou love me so, strange lover mine?” Be sweet, be still! My heart and soul despise All save that antique brute-like faith of thine; And will not bare the secret of their shame To thee whose hand soothes me to slumbers long, Nor their […]...
- Mourning Alas my brother! the cry of the mourners of old That cried on each other, All crying aloud on the dead as the death-note rolled, Alas my brother! As flashes of dawn that mists from an east wind smother With fold upon fold, The past years gleam that linked us one with another. Time sunders […]...
- Dreamland By a route obscure and lonely, Haunted by ill angels only, Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT, On a black throne reigns upright, I have reached these lands but newly From an ultimate dim Thule- From a wild clime that lieth, sublime, Out of SPACE – out of TIME. Bottomless vales and boundless floods, And chasms, […]...
- In Cabin'd Ships at Sea 1 IN cabin’d ships, at sea, The boundless blue on every side expanding, With whistling winds and music of the waves-the large imperious waves-In such, Or some lone bark, buoy’d on the dense marine, Where, joyous, full of faith, spreading white sails, She cleaves the ether, mid the sparkle and the foam of day, or […]...
- Song at Sunset SPLENDOR of ended day, floating and filling me! Hour prophetic-hour resuming the past! Inflating my throat-you, divine average! You, Earth and Life, till the last ray gleams, I sing. Open mouth of my Soul, uttering gladness, Eyes of my Soul, seeing perfection, Natural life of me, faithfully praising things; Corroborating forever the triumph of things. […]...
- Dolor of Autumn The acrid scents of autumn, Reminiscent of slinking beasts, make me fear Everything, tear-trembling stars of autumn And the snore of the night in my ear. For suddenly, flush-fallen, All my life, in a rush Of shedding away, has left me Naked, exposed on the bush. I, on the bush of the globe, Like a […]...