Desert Places

Related poetry:

1. I Went Down into the Desert I went down into the desert To meet Elijah- Arisen from the dead. I thought to. find him in an echoing cave; For so my dream had said. I went down into the desert To meet John the Baptist. I walked with feet that bled, Seeking that prophet lean and brown and bold. I spied […]...
2. I walked in a desert I walked in a desert. And I cried, “Ah, God, take me from this place!” A voice said, “It is no desert.” I cried, “Well, But The sand, the heat, the vacant horizon.” A voice said, “It is no desert.”...
3. Places ROSES and gold For you today, And the flash of flying flags. I will have Ashes, Dust in my hair, Crushes of hoofs. Your name Fills the mouth Of rich man and poor. Women bring Armfuls of flowers And throw on you. I go hungry Down in dreams And loneliness, Across the rain To slashed […]...
4. Lost in the Prairie In one of fhe States of America, some years ago, There suddenly came on a violent storm of snow, Which was nearly the death of a party of workmen, Who had finished their day’s work – nine or ten of them. The distance was nearly twenty miles to their camp, And with the thick falling […]...
5. Nearer, my God, to Thee Nearer, my God, to Thee, Nearer to Thee! E’en though it be a cross That raiseth me: Still all my song shall be Nearer, my God! to Thee, Nearer to Thee. Though, like the wanderer, The sun gone down, Darkness be over me, My rest a stone; Yet in my dreams I’d be Nearer, my […]...
6. Until the Desert knows Until the Desert knows That Water grows His Sands suffice But let him once suspect That Caspian Fact Sahara dies Utmost is relative Have not or Have Adjacent sums Enough the first Abode On the familiar Road Galloped in Dreams...
7. Rangipo Desert Whangaehu waters, hot-spilled from the cauldron Of Crater Lake, swirling mud-green from the cup Between Tahurangi and Pyramid Peak, Sulphurous, sibilant among purer daughters Of the snow-line, Plunging eastwards down broken-faced ravines, Boiling between razor-edged ridges, Breasting a broken, blackened ghostscape To desert Rangipo. Where these waters slow their rush And ease the dragon’s fire […]...
8. In the desert In the desert I saw a creature, naked, bestial, Who, squatting upon the ground, Held his heart in his hands, And ate of it. I said: “Is it good, friend?” “It is bitter – bitter,” he answered; “But I like it Because it is bitter, And because it is my heart.”...
9. Sonnet 11 – And therefore if to love can be desert And therefore if to love can be desert, I am not all unworthy. Cheeks as pale As these you see, and trembling knees that fail To bear the burden of a heavy heart,- This weary minstrel-life that once was girt To climb Aornus, and can scarce avail To pipe now ‘gainst the valley nightingale A […]...
10. Places among the stars Places among the stars, Soft gardens near the sun, Keep your distant beauty; Shed no beams upon my weak heart. Since she is here In a place of blackness, Not your golden days Nor your silver nights Can call me to you. Since she is here In a place of blackness, Here I stay and […]...
11. In many and reportless places In many and reportless places We feel a Joy Reportless, also, but sincere as Nature Or Deity It comes, without a consternation Dissolves the same But leaves a sumptuous Destitution Without a Name Profane it by a search we cannot It has no home Nor we who having once inhaled it Thereafter roam....
12. Worthy Places There were some worthy places where we could escape, Avoid the heavy weight of living in a densely Peopled space; the first was to the outside loo (the only loo but where at least the toilet paper Could be read), a very basic spot at best and Not a famous thought unless you needed To […]...
13. From "THE TALK OF FLOWERS&quot I do not know, whether the sun Accomplished it, The rain or wind – But I was missing so The whiteness and the snow. I listened to the rustling Of spring rain, Washing the reddish buds Of chestnut-trees, – And a tiny spring ran down Into the valley from the hill – And I was […]...
14. On the desert On the desert A silence from the moon’s deepest valley. Fire rays fall athwart the robes Of hooded men, squat and dumb. Before them, a woman Moves to the blowing of shrill whistles And distant thunder of drums, While mystic things, sinuous, dull with terrible colour, Sleepily fondle her body Or move at her will, […]...
15. On Chloris Walking in the Snow I saw fair Chloris walk alone, Whilst feather’d rain came softly down, And Jove descended from his tower To court her in a silver shower. The wanton snow flew on her breast Like little birds unto their nest; But overcome with whiteness there, For grief it thaw’d into a tear; Thence falling on her garment’s […]...
16. Chloris in the Snow I SAW fair Chloris walk alone, When feather’d rain came softly down, As Jove descending from his Tower To court her in a silver shower: The wanton snow flew to her breast, Like pretty birds into their nest, But, overcome with whiteness there, For grief it thaw’d into a tear: Thence falling on her garments’ […]...
17. Loneliness I pause midway in the in the whirl, Of deadlines, things undone, And average the sadness and joys – There remains only loneliness, Of which I see no cure, No bitter palliatives, no anodyne. We remain in life’s journey, Like loners sitting depressed, On solitary park benches, or, Standing in balconies, staring, Loneliness gnawing at […]...
18. Safe-home don’t be so lazy maisie maisie Don’t be so lazy please I know it’s snowing And a hard wind’s blowing But nobody knows At the rate we’re going What time we’ll get home tonight Keep to the path for me timothy timothy Keep to the path for me please My legs are aching And my […]...
19. The Snow Fairy I Throughout the afternoon I watched them there, Snow-fairies falling, falling from the sky, Whirling fantastic in the misty air, Contending fierce for space supremacy. And they flew down a mightier force at night, As though in heaven there was revolt and riot, And they, frail things had taken panic flight Down to the calm […]...
20. In The Kalahari Desert The sun rose like a tarnished Looking-glass to catch the sun And flash His hot message At the missionaries below Isabella and the Rev. Roger Price, And the Helmores with a broken axle Left, two days behind, at Fever Ponds. The wilderness was full of home: A glinting beetle on its back Struggled like an […]...
21. Places and Men In Sussex here, by shingle and by sand, Flat fields and farmsteads in their wind-blown trees, The shallow tide-wave courses to the land, And all along the down a fringe one sees Of ducal woods. That ‘dim discovered spire’ Is Chichester, where Collins felt a fire Touch his sad lips; thatched Felpham roofs are these, […]...
22. I did not reach Thee I did not reach Thee But my feet slip nearer every day Three Rivers and a Hill to cross One Desert and a Sea I shall not count the journey one When I am telling thee. Two deserts, but the Year is cold So that will help the sand One desert crossed The second one […]...
23. The Loneliness One dare not sound The Loneliness One dare not sound And would as soon surmise As in its Grave go plumbing To ascertain the size The Loneliness whose worst alarm Is lest itself should see And perish from before itself For just a scrutiny The Horror not to be surveyed But skirted in the Dark With Consciousness suspended And […]...
24. Snow In the gloom of whiteness, In the great silence of snow, A child was sighing And bitterly saying: “Oh, They have killed a white bird up there on her nest, The down is fluttering from her breast!” And still it fell through that dusky brightness On the child crying for the bird of the snow....
25. The Never-Never Country By homestead, hut, and shearing-shed, By railroad, coach, and track By lonely graves of our brave dead, Up-Country and Out-Back: To where ‘neath glorious the clustered stars The dreamy plains expand My home lies wide a thousand miles In the Never-Never Land. It lies beyond the farming belt, Wide wastes of scrub and plain, A […]...
26. Leaves The leaves are falling one and one, Each like a life to me, As over-soonly in the sun They spiral goldenly: So airily and warily They falter free. The leaves are falling two and two, Beneath a baleful sky; So silently the sward they strew, Reluctantly they die. . . Rich crimson leaves, and no […]...
27. The Land God Forgot The lonely sunsets flare forlorn Down valleys dreadly desolate; The lordly mountains soar in scorn As still as death, as stern as fate. The lonely sunsets flame and die; The giant valleys gulp the night; The monster mountains scrape the sky, Where eager stars are diamond-bright. So gaunt against the gibbous moon, Piercing the silence […]...
28. Come From The Daisied Meadows HOME from the daisied meadows, where you linger yet – Home, golden-headed playmate, ere the sun is set; For the dews are falling fast And the night has come at last. Home with you, home and lay your little head at rest, Safe, safe, my little darling, on your mother’s breast. Lullaby, darling; your mother […]...
29. Snowy Night Last night, an owl In the blue dark Tossed An indeterminate number Of carefully shaped sounds into The world, in which, A quarter of a mile away, I happened To be standing. I couldn’t tell Which one it was – The barred or the great-horned Ship of the air – It was that distant. But, […]...
30. What the Miner in the Desert Said The moon’s a brass-hooped water-keg, A wondrous water-feast. If I could climb the ridge and drink And give drink to my beast; If I could drain that keg, the flies Would not be biting so, My burning feet be spry again, My mule no longer slow. And I could rise and dig for ore, And […]...
31. The Thought-Fox I imagine this midnight moment’s forest: Something else is alive Beside the clock’s loneliness And this blank page where my fingers move. Through the window I see no star: Something more near Though deeper within darkness Is entering the loneliness: Cold, delicately as the dark snow, A fox’s nose touches twig, leaf; Two eyes serve […]...
32. Marine Snow At Mid-Depths And Down As you descend, slowly, falling faster past You this snow, Ghostly, some flakes bio- Luminescent (you plunge, And this lit snow doesn’t land At your feet but keeps falling below You): single-cell-plant chains, shreds Of zooplankton’s mucus food traps, Fish fecal pellets, radioactive fallouts, Sand grains, pollen….And inside These jagged falling islands Live more microlives, […]...
33. Grandeur loneliness is a state The lonely cannot reach It carries a grandeur That doesn’t fit into Bed-sitters or rejected Ideas – it’s the label stuck On the bottle after The tables have gone...
34. I explain the silvered passing of a ship at night I explain the silvered passing of a ship at night, The sweep of each sad lost wave, The dwindling boom of the steel thing’s striving, The little cry of a man to a man, A shadow falling across the greyer night, And the sinking of the small star; Then the waste, the far waste of […]...
35. The Tent Only the stars endome the lonely camp, Only the desert leagues encompass it; Waterless wastes, a wilderness of wit, Embattled Cold, Imagination’s Cramp. Now were the Desolation fain to stamp The congealed Spirit of man into the pit, Save that, unquenchable because unlit, The Love of God burns steady, like a Lamp. It burns! beyond […]...
36. The Snow that never drifts The Snow that never drifts The transient, fragrant snow That comes a single time a Year Is softly driving now So thorough in the Tree At night beneath the star That it was February’s Foot Experience would swear Like Winter as a Face We stern and former knew Repaired of all but Loneliness By Nature’s […]...
37. A Winter's Tale Yesterday the fields were only grey with scattered snow, And now the longest grass-leaves hardly emerge; Yet her deep footsteps mark the snow, and go On towards the pines at the hills’ white verge. I cannot see her, since the mist’s white scarf Obscures the dark wood and the dull orange sky; But she’s waiting, […]...
38. Desmond's Song By the Feal’s wave benighted, No star in the skies, To thy door by Love lighted, I first saw those eyes. Some voice whisper’d o’er me, As the threshold I cross’d, There was ruin before me, If I loved, I was lost. Love came, and brought sorrow Too soon in his train; Yet so sweet, […]...
39. Science-fiction Cradlesong By and by Man will try To get out into the sky, Sailing far beyond the air From Down and Here to Up and There. Stars and sky, sky and stars Make us feel the prison bars. Suppose it done. Now we ride Closed in steel, up there, outside Through our port-holes see the vast […]...
40. The Death of the Old Mendicant There was a rich old gentleman Lived on a lonely moor in Switzerland, And he was very hard to the wandering poor, ‘Tis said he never lodged nor served them at his door. ‘Twas on a stormy night, and Boreas blew a bitter blast, And the snowflakes they fell thick and fast, When a poor […]...