Ebony Life

Related poetry:

1. Turns And Movies: Dancing Adairs Behold me, in my chiffon, gauze, and tinsel, Flitting out of the shadow into the spotlight, And into the shadow again, without a whisper!- Firefly’s my name, I am evanescent. Firefly’s your name. You are evanescent. But I follow you as remorselessly as darkness, And shut you in and enclose you, at last, and always, […]...
2. To Amarantha, That She Would Dishevel Her Hair Amarantha, sweet and fair, Ah, braid no more that shining hair! As my curious hand or eye Hovering round thee, let it fly! Let it fly as unconfined As its calm ravisher the wind, Who hath left his darling th’ East, To wanton o’er that spicy nest. Every tress must be confessed But neatly tangled […]...
3. Hide and Seek All the trees are sleeping, all the winds are still, All the flocks of fleecy clouds have wandered past the hill; Through the noonday silence, down the woods of June, Hark, a little hunter’s voice comes running with a tune. “Hide and seek! “When I speak, “You must answer me: “Call again, “Merry men, “Coo-ee, […]...
4. Life's Tragedy It may be misery not to sing at all, And to go silent through the brimming day; It may be misery never to be loved, But deeper griefs than these beset the way. To sing the perfect song, And by a half-tone lost the key, There the potent sorrow, there the grief, The pale, sad […]...
5. The Gardener X: Let Your Work Be, Bride Let your work be, bride. Listen, the Guest has come. Do you hear, he is gently shaking The chain which fastens the door? See that your anklets make no loud Noise, and that your step is not over- Hurried at meeting him. Let your work be, bride, the guest Had come in the evening. No, […]...
6. The night wind Have you ever heard the wind go “Yooooo”? ‘T is a pitiful sound to hear! It seems to chill you through and through With a strange and speechless fear. ‘T is the voice of the night that broods outside When folk should be asleep, And many and many’s the time I’ve cried To the darkness […]...
7. A Song Of Life In the rapture of life and of living, I lift up my head and rejoice, And I thank the great Giver for giving The soul of my gladness a voice. In the glow of the glorious weather, In the sweet-scented, sensuous air, My burdens seem light as a feather – They are nothing to bear. […]...
8. Silence I have known the silence of the stars and of the sea, And the silence of the city when it pauses, And the silence of a man and a maid, And the silence of the sick When their eyes roam about the room. And I ask: For the depths, Of what use is language? A […]...
9. A Loafer I hang about the streets all day, At night I hang about; I sleep a little when I may, But rise betimes the morning’s scout; For through the year I always hear Afar, aloft, a ghostly shout. My clothes are worn to threads and loops; My skin shows here and there ; About my face […]...
10. A Passing Bell Mournfully to and fro, to and fro the trees are waving; What did you say, my dear? The rain-bruised leaves are suddenly shaken, as a child Asleep still shakes in the clutch of a sob – Yes, my love, I hear. One lonely bell, one only, the storm-tossed afternoon is braving, Why not let it […]...
11. Day Dream One day people will touch and talk perhaps Easily, And loving be natural as breathing and warm as Sunlight, And people will untie themselves, as string is unknotted, Unfold and yawn and stretch and spread their fingers, Unfurl, uncurl like seaweed returned to the sea, And work will be simple and swift As a seagull […]...
12. Hymn 141 The Humiliation and exaltation of Christ. Isa. 53:1-5,10-12. Who has believed thy word, Or thy salvation known? Reveal thine arm, Almighty Lord, And glorify thy Son. The Jews esteemed him here Too mean for their belief; Sorrows his chief acquaintance were, And his companion, grief. They turned their eyes away, And treated him with scorn; […]...
13. To My Brothers Small, busy flames play through the fresh-laid coals, And their faint cracklings o’er our silence creep Like whispers of the household gods that keep A gentle empire o’er fraternal souls. And while for rhymes I search around the poles, Your eyes are fixed, as in poetic sleep, Upon the lore so voluble and deep, That […]...
14. 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 […]...
15. Still Life COOL your heels on the rail of an observation car. Let the engineer open her up for ninety miles an hour. Take in the prairie right and left, rolling land and new hay crops, swaths of new hay laid in the sun. A gray village flecks by and the horses hitched in front of the […]...
16. The Tenant-For-Life The sun said, watching my watering-pot “Some morn you’ll pass away; These flowers and plants I parch up hot – Who’ll water them that day? “Those banks and beds whose shape your eye Has planned in line so true, New hands will change, unreasoning why Such shape seemed best to you. “Within your house will […]...
17. Life CHILDREN, ye have not lived, to you it seems Life is a lovely stalactite of dreams, Or carnival of careless joys that leap About your hearts like billows on the deep In flames of amber and of amethyst. Children, ye have not lived, ye but exist Till some resistless hour shall rise and move Your […]...
18. Life's Progress How gayly is at first begun Our Life’s uncertain Race! Whilst yet that sprightly Morning Sun, With which we just set out to run Enlightens all the Place. How smiling the World’s Prospect lies How tempting to go through! Not Canaan to the Prophet’s Eyes, From Pisgah with a sweet Surprize, Did more inviting shew. […]...
19. Modern Love IV: All Other Joys of Life All other joys of life he strove to warm, And magnify, and catch them to his lip: But they had suffered shipwreck with the ship, And gazed upon him sallow from the storm. Or if Delusion came, ’twas but to show The coming minute mock the one that went. Cold as a mountain in its […]...
20. Soap Suds This brand of soap has the same smell as once in the big House he visited when he was eight: the walls of the bathroom open To reveal a lawn where a great yellow ball rolls back through a hoop To rest at the head of a mallet held in the hands of a child. […]...
21. The Guardian Angel Of The Private Life All this was written on the next day’s list. On which the busyness unfurled its cursive roots, Pale but effective, And the long stem of the necessary, the sum of events, Built-up its tiniest cathedral… (Or is it the sum of what takes place? ) If I lean down, to whisper, to them, Down into […]...
22. Silent, Silent Night Silent, silent night, Quench the holy light Of thy torches bright; For possessed of Day Thousand spirits stray That sweet joys betray. Why should joys be sweet Used with deceit, Nor with sorrows meet? But an honest joy Does itself destroy For a harlot coy....
23. I Like For You To Be Still I like for you to be still It is as though you are absent And you hear me from far away And my voice does not touch you It seems as though your eyes had flown away And it seems that a kiss had sealed your mouth As all things are filled with my soul […]...
24. 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 […]...
25. I Dream'd in a Dream I DREAM’D in a dream, I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth; I dream’d that was the new City of Friends; Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love-it led the rest; It was seen every hour in the actions of the men […]...
26. The Poet's Love-Song In noon-tide hours, O Love, secure and strong, I need thee not; mad dreams are mine to bind The world to my desire, and hold the wind A voiceless captive to my conquering song. I need thee not, I am content with these: Keep silence in thy soul, beyond the seas! But in the desolate […]...
27. What Is Life? Resembles Life what once was held of Light, Too ample in itself for human sight? An absolute Self an element ungrounded All, that we see, all colours of all shade [Image]By encroach of darkness made? Is very life by consciousness unbounded? And all the thoughts, pains, joys of mortal breath, A war-embrace of wrestling Life […]...
28. The Instructor At times when under cover I ‘ave said, To keep my spirits up an’ raise a laugh, ‘Earin ‘im pass so busy over-‘ead Old Nickel-Neck, ‘oo is n’t on the Staff “There’s one above is greater than us all” Before ‘im I ‘ave seen my Colonel fall, An ‘watched ‘im write my Captain’s epitaph, So […]...
29. Great are the Myths 1 GREAT are the myths-I too delight in them; Great are Adam and Eve-I too look back and accept them; Great the risen and fallen nations, and their poets, women, sages, inventors, rulers, warriors, and priests. Great is Liberty! great is Equality! I am their follower; Helmsmen of nations, choose your craft! where you sail, […]...
30. Human Life's Mystery We sow the glebe, we reap the corn, We build the house where we may rest, And then, at moments, suddenly, We look up to the great wide sky, Inquiring wherefore we were born… For earnest or for jest? The senses folding thick and dark About the stifled soul within, We guess diviner things beyond, […]...
31. Aaron Hatfield Better than granite, Spoon River, Is the memory-picture you keep of me Standing before the pioneer men and women There at Concord Church on Communion day. Speaking in broken voice of the peasant youth Of Galilee who went to the city And was killed by bankers and lawyers; My voice mingling with the June wind […]...
32. "How Great My Grief" (Triolet) How great my grief, my joys how few, Since first it was my fate to know thee! – Have the slow years not brought to view How great my grief, my joys how few, Nor memory shaped old times anew, Nor loving-kindness helped to show thee How great my grief, my joys how few, Since […]...
33. Departure It was not like your great and gracious ways! Do you, that have naught other to lament, Never, my Love, repent Of how, that July afternoon, You went, With sudden, unintelligible phrase, And frighten’d eye, Upon your journey of so many days Without a single kiss, or a good-bye? I knew, indeed, that you were […]...
34. A Poet's Death is His Life IV The dark wings of night enfolded the city upon which Nature had spread a pure white garment of snow; and men deserted the streets for their houses in search of warmth, while the north wind probed in contemplation of laying waste the gardens. There in the suburb stood an old hut heavily laden with snow […]...
35. NEW LOVE, NEW LIFE [Written at the time of Goethe’s connection With Lily.] HEART! my heart! what means this feeling? What oppresseth thee so sore? What strange life is o’er me stealing! I acknowledge thee no more. Fled is all that gave thee gladness, Fled the cause of all thy sadness, Fled thy peace, thine industry Ah, why suffer […]...
36. When You Are Old When you are old and grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep; How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But […]...
37. Ears In The Turrets Hear Ears in the turrets hear Hands grumble on the door, Eyes in the gables see The fingers at the locks. Shall I unbolt or stay Alone till the day I die Unseen by stranger-eyes In this white house? Hands, hold you poison or grapes? Beyond this island bound By a thin sea of flesh And […]...
38. The White Ships and the Red (For Alden March) With drooping sail and pennant That never a wind may reach, They float in sunless waters Beside a sunless beach. Their mighty masts and funnels Are white as driven snow, And with a pallid radiance Their ghostly bulwarks glow. Here is a Spanish galleon That once with gold was gay, Here is […]...
39. City of Orgies CITY of orgies, walks and joys! City whom that I have lived and sung in your midst will one day make you illustrious, Not the pageants of you-not your shifting tableaux, your spectacles, repay me; Not the interminable rows of your houses-nor the ships at the wharves, Nor the processions in the streets, nor the […]...
40. 488. Song-The Winter of Life BUT lately seen in gladsome green, The woods rejoic’d the day, Thro’ gentle showers, the laughing flowers In double pride were gay: But now our joys are fled On winter blasts awa; Yet maiden May, in rich array, Again shall bring them a’. But my white pow, nae kindly thowe Shall melt the snaws of […]...