Prelude to an Evening

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1. Prelude They say that rhyme and rhythm are Outmoded now. I do not know, for I am far From high of brow. But if the twain you take away, Since basely bred, Proud Poetry, I dare to say, Would scarce be read. With humble heart I thus define My rôle in rhyme: Oh may I never […]...
2. Evening Song of the Thoughtful Child Shadow children, thin and small, Now the day is left behind, You are dancing on the wall, On the curtains, on the blind. On the ceiling, children, too, Peeping round the nursery door, Let me come and play with you, As we always played before. Let’s pretend that we have wings And can really truly […]...
3. Prelude BY sunny market-place and street Wherever I go my drum I beat, And wherever I go in my coat of red The ribbons flutter about my head. I seek recruits for wars to come – For slaughterless wars I beat the drum, And the shilling I give to each new ally Is hope to live […]...
4. Written On A Summer Evening The church bells toll a melancholy round, Calling the people to some other prayers, Some other gloominess, more dreadful cares, More harkening to the sermon’s horrid sound. Surely the mind of man is closely bound In some blind spell: seeing that each one tears Himself from fireside joys and Lydian airs, And converse high of […]...
5. The Spanish Needle Lovely dainty Spanish needle With your yellow flower and white, Dew bedecked and softly sleeping, Do you think of me to-night? Shadowed by the spreading mango, Nodding o’er the rippling stream, Tell me, dear plant of my childhood, Do you of the exile dream? Do you see me by the brook’s side Catching crayfish ‘neath […]...
6. Empty Room The clock disserts on punctuation, syntax. The clock’s voice, thin and dry, asserts, repeats. The clock insists: a lecturer demonstrating, Loudly, with finger raised, when the class has gone. But time flows through the room, light flows through the room Like someone picking flowers, like someone whistling Without a tune, like talk in front of […]...
7. In Memoriam A. H. H.: The Prelude Strong Son of God, immortal Love, Whom we, that have not seen thy face, By faith, and faith alone, embrace, Believing where we cannot prove; Thine are these orbs of light and shade; Thou madest Life in man and brute; Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot Is on the skull which thou hast made. […]...
8. Sonnet to Evening [Written under a tree in the woods of St. Amand, in Flanders.] SWEET BALMY HOUR! ­dear to the pensive mind, Oft have I watch’d thy dark and weeping shade, Oft have I hail’d thee in the dewy glade, And drop’d a tear of SYMPATHY refin’d. When humming bees, hid in their golden bow’rs, Sip the […]...
9. Sonnets 07: When I Too Long Have Looked Upon Your Face When I too long have looked upon your face, Wherein for me a brightness unobscured Save by the mists of brightness has its place, And terrible beauty not to be endured, I turn away reluctant from your light, And stand irresolute, a mind undone, A silly, dazzled thing deprived of sight From having looked too […]...
10. Prelude Pleasant it was, when woods were green, And winds were soft and low, To lie amid some sylvan scene. Where, the long drooping boughs between, Shadows dark and sunlight sheen Alternate come and go; Or where the denser grove receives No sunlight from above, But the dark foliage interweaves In one unbroken roof of leaves, […]...
11. For John, Who Begs Me Not To Enquire Further Not that it was beautiful, But that, in the end, there was A certain sense of order there; Something worth learning In that narrow diary of my mind, In the commonplaces of the asylum Where the cracked mirror Or my own selfish death Outstared me. And if I tried To give you something else, Something […]...
12. Prelude Between the green bud and the red Youth sat and sang by Time, and shed From eyes and tresses flowers and tears, From heart and spirit hopes and fears, Upon the hollow stream whose bed Is channelled by the foamless years; And with the white the gold-haired head Mixed running locks, and in Time’s ears […]...
13. Castile Orange blossoms blowing over Castile Children begging for coins I met my love under an orange tree Or was it an acacia tree Or was he not my love? I read this, then I dreamed this: Can waking take back what happened to me? Bells of San Miguel Ringing in the distance His hair in […]...
14. 430. Song-Dainty Davie NOW rosy May comes in wi’ flowers, To deck her gay, green-spreading bowers; And now comes in the happy hours, To wander wi’ my Davie. Chorus.-Meet me on the warlock knowe, Dainty Davie, Dainty Davie; There I’ll spend the day wi’ you, My ain dear Dainty Davie. The crystal waters round us fa’, The merry […]...
15. AN EVENING WITH JOHN HEATH-STUBBS Alone in Sutton with Fynbos my orange cat A long weekend of wind and rain drowning The tumultuous flurry of mid-February blossom A surfeit of letters to work through, a mountain Of files to sort, some irritation at the thought Of travelling to Kentish Town alone when My mind was flooded with the mellifluous voice […]...
16. Tampa Robins The robin laughed in the orange-tree: “Ho, windy North, a fig for thee: While breasts are red and wings are bold And green trees wave us globes of gold, Time’s scythe shall reap but bliss for me Sunlight, song, and the orange-tree. Burn, golden globes in leafy sky, My orange-planets: crimson I Will shine and […]...
17. Evening Solace THE human heart has hidden treasures, In secret kept, in silence sealed;­ The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures, Whose charms were broken if revealed. And days may pass in gay confusion, And nights in rosy riot fly, While, lost in Fame’s or Wealth’s illusion, The memory of the Past may die. But, there […]...
18. They Who Prepare my Evening Meal Below They who prepare my evening meal below Carelessly hit the kettle as they go With tongs or shovel, And ringing round and round, Out of this hovel It makes an eastern temple by the sound. At first I thought a cow bell right at hand Mid birches sounded o’er the open land, Where I plucked […]...
19. So give me back to Death So give me back to Death The Death I never feared Except that it deprived of thee And now, by Life deprived, In my own Grave I breathe And estimate its size Its size is all that Hell can guess And all that Heaven was...
20. Theme In Yellow I spot the hills With yellow balls in autumn. I light the prairie cornfields Orange and tawny gold clusters And I am called pumpkins. On the last of October When dusk is fallen Children join hands And circle round me Singing ghost songs And love to the harvest moon; I am a jack-o’-lantern With terrible […]...
21. Justice Denied In Massachusetts Let us abandon then our gardens and go home And sit in the sitting-room Shall the larkspur blossom or the corn grow under this cloud? Sour to the fruitful seed Is the cold earth under this cloud, Fostering quack and weed, we have marched upon but cannot Conquer; We have bent the blades of our […]...
22. Late Evening Song For a while Let it be enough: The responsive smile, Though effort goes into it. Across the warm room Shared in candlelight, This look beyond shame, Possible now, at night, Goes out to yours. Hidden by day And shaped by fires Grown dead, gone gray, That burned in other rooms I knew Too long ago […]...
23. Nightmare: A Tale for an Autumn Evening After a Print by George Cruikshank It was a gusty night, With the wind booming, and swooping, Looping round corners, Sliding over the cobble-stones, Whipping and veering, And careering over the roofs Like a thousand clattering horses. Mr. Spruggins had been dining in the city, Mr. Spruggins was none too steady in his gait, And […]...
24. I Remember By the first of August The invisible beetles began To snore and the grass was As tough as hemp and was No color no more than The sand was a color and We had worn our bare feet Bare since the twentieth Of June and there were times We forgot to wind up your Alarm […]...
25. The Sun Travels The sun is not a-bed, when I At night upon my pillow lie; Still round the earth his way he takes, And morning after morning makes. While here at home, in shining day, We round the sunny garden play, Each little Indian sleepy-head Is being kissed and put to bed. And when at eve I […]...
26. Prelude How could I love you more? I would give up Even that beauty I have loved too well That I might love you better. Alas, how poor the gifts that lovers give I can but give you of my flesh and strength, I can but give you these few passing days And passionate words that, […]...
27. TO HIS COY ONE SEEST thou yon smiling Orange? Upon the tree still hangs it; Already March bath vanish’d, And new-born flow’rs are shooting. I draw nigh to the tree then, And there I say: Oh Orange, Thou ripe and juicy Orange, Thou sweet and luscious Orange, I shake the tree, I shake it, Oh fall into my lap! […]...
28. The Reveille Trumpets of the Lancer Corps Sound a loud reveille; Sound it over Sydney shore, Send the message far and wide Down the Richmond River side. Boot and Saddle, mount and ride, Sound a loud reveille. Whither go ye, Lancers gay, With your bold reveille? O’er the ocean far away From your sunny southern home, Over […]...
29. Prelude I have eaten your bread and salt. I have drunk your water and wine. In deaths ye died I have watched beside, And the lives ye led were mine. Was there aught that I did not share In vigil or toil or ease, One joy or woe that I did not know, Dear hearts across […]...
30. The Heart Healed and Changed by Mercy Sin enslaved me many years, And led me bound and blind; Till at length a thousand fears Came swarming o’er my mind. “Where,” said I, in deep distress, “Will these sinful pleasures end? How shall I secure my peace And make the Lord my friend?” Friends and ministers said much The gospel to enforce; But […]...
31. A Summer Evening Churchyard, Lechlade, Gloucestershire THE wind has swept from the wide atmosphere Each vapour that obscured the sunset’s ray, And pallid Evening twines its beaming hair In duskier braids around the languid eyes of Day: Silence and Twilight, unbeloved of men, Creep hand in hand from yon obscurest glen. They breathe their spells towards the departing day, Encompassing the […]...
32. Prelude – Lohengrin Love, out of the depth of things, As a dewfall felt from above, From the heaven whence only springs Love, Love, heard from the heights thereof, The clouds and the watersprings, Draws close as the clouds remove. And the soul in it speaks and sings, A swan sweet-souled as a dove, An echo that only […]...
33. Jaws SEVEN nations stood with their hands on the jaws of death. It was the first week in August, Nineteen Hundred Fourteen. I was listening, you were listening, the whole world was Listening, And all of us heard a Voice murmuring: “I am the way and the light, He that believeth on me Shall not perish […]...
34. Evening The sky puts on the darkening blue coat Held for it by a row of ancient trees; You watch: and the lands grow distant in your sight, One journeying to heaven, one that falls; And leave you, not at home in either one, Not quite so still and dark as the darkened houses, Not calling […]...
35. The Wreck of the Steamer Mohegan Good people of high and low degree, I pray ye all to list to me, And I’ll relate a terrible tale of the sea Concerning the unfortunate steamer, Mohegan, That against the Manacles Rocks, ran. ‘Twas on Friday, the 14th of October, in the year of ninety-eight, Which alas! must have been a dreadful sight; […]...
36. Prelude to Space An Epithaliamium So Man, grown vigorous now, Holds himself ripe to breed, Daily devises how To ejaculate his seed And boldly fertilize The black womb of the unconsenting skies. Some now alive expect (I am told) to see the large, Steel member grow erect, Turgid with the fierce charge Of our whole planet’s skill, Courage, […]...
37. 'Twas comfort in her Dying Room ‘Twas comfort in her Dying Room To hear the living Clock A short relief to have the wind Walk boldly up and knock Diversion from the Dying Theme To hear the children play But wrong the more That these could live And this of ours must die....
38. Interior Her mind lives in a quiet room, A narrow room, and tall, With pretty lamps to quench the gloom And mottoes on the wall. There all the things are waxen neat And set in decorous lines; And there are posies, round and sweet, And little, straightened vines. Her mind lives tidily, apart From cold and […]...
39. Prelude – Tristan And Isolde Fate, out of the deep sea’s gloom, When a man’s heart’s pride grows great, And nought seems now to foredoom Fate, Fate, laden with fears in wait, Draws close through the clouds that loom, Till the soul see, all too late, More dark than a dead world’s tomb, More high than the sheer dawn’s gate, […]...
40. Prelude to an Unwritten Masterpiece You like my bird-sung gardens: wings and flowers; Calm landscapes for emotion; star-lit lawns; And Youth against the sun-rise… ‘Not profound; ‘But such a haunting music in the sound: ‘Do it once more; it helps us to forget’. Last night I dreamt an old recurring scene – Some complex out of childhood; (sex, of course!) […]...