Euthansia
A sea-gull with a broken wing,
I found upon the kelp-strewn shore.
It sprawled and gasped; I sighed: “Poor thing!
I fear your flying days are o’er;
Sad victim of a savage gun,
So ends your soaring in the sun.”
I only wanted to be kind;
Its icy legs I gently caught,
Thinking its fracture I might bind,
But fiercely in its fear it fought;
Till guessing that I meant no ill,
It glared and gaped, but lay quite still.
I took it home and gave it food,
And nursed its wing day after day.
Alas for my solicitude,
It would not eat, but pined away.
And so at last with tender hands
I took it to its native sands.
“I’ll leave it where its kindred are,”
I thought, “And maybe they will cheer
And comfort it”: I watched afar,
I saw them wheeling swiftly near. . . .
Awhile they hovered overhead,
Then darted down and – stabbed it dead.
When agonized is human breath,
And there’s of living not a chance,
Could it not be that gentle death
Might mean divine deliverance?
Might it not seep into our skulls
To be as merciful as gulls?
Related poetry:
- Hymn 47 Death of kindred improved. Zech. 1:5. Must friends and kindred droop and die, And helpers be withdrawn? While sorrow with a weeping eye Counts up our comforts gone? Be thou our comfort, mighty God! Our helper and our friend; Nor leave us in this dangerous road, Till all our trials end. O may our feet […]...
- The Gardener XXXIV: Do Not Go, My Love Do not go, my love, without asking My leave. I have watched all night, and now My eyes are heavy with sleep. I fear lest I lose you when I’m Sleeping. Do not go, my love, without asking My leave. I start up and stretch my hands to Touch you. I ask myself, “Is it […]...
- A Form Of Women I have come far enough From where I was not before To have seen the things Looking in at me from through the open door And have walked tonight By myself To see the moonlight And see it as trees And shapes more fearful Because I feared What I did not know But have wanted […]...
- An Evening Song Look off, dear Love, across the sallow sands, And mark yon meeting of the sun and sea, How long they kiss in sight of all the lands. Ah! longer, longer, we. Now in the sea’s red vintage melts the sun, As Egypt’s pearl dissolved in rosy wine, And Cleopatra night drinks all. ‘Tis done, Love, […]...
- Call Me Away Call me away; there’s nothing here, That wins my soul to stay; Then let me leave this prospect drear, And hasten far away. To our beloved land I’ll flee, Our land of thought and soul, Where I have roved so oft with thee, Beyond the world’s control. I’ll sit and watch those ancient trees, Those […]...
- Grey Gull ‘Twas on an iron, icy day I saw a pirate gull down-plane, And hover in a wistful way Nigh where my chickens picked their grain. An outcast gull, so grey and old, Withered of leg I watched it hop, By hunger goaded and by cold, To where each fowl full-filled its crop. They hospitably welcomed […]...
- Spring Pastoral Liza, go steep your long white hands In the cool waters of that spring Which bubbles up through shiny sands The colour of a wild-dove’s wing. Dabble your hands, and steep them well Until those nails are pearly white Now rosier than a laurel bell; Then come to me at candlelight. Lay your cold hands […]...
- Cheer It’s a mighty good world, so it is, dear lass, When even the worst is said. There’s a smile and a tear, a sigh and a cheer, But better be living than dead; A joy and a pain, a loss and a gain; There’s honey and may be some gall: Yet still I declare, foul […]...
- Joey I thought I would go daft when Joey died. He was my first, and wise beyond his years. For nigh a hundred nights I cried and cried, Until my weary eyes burned up my tears. Willie and Rosie tried to comfort me: A woeful, weeping family were we. I was a widow with no friends […]...
- 189. Verses on Castle Gordon STREAMS that glide in orient plains, Never bound by Winter’s chains; Glowing here on golden sands, There immix’d with foulest stains From Tyranny’s empurpled hands; These, their richly gleaming waves, I leave to tyrants and their slaves; Give me the stream that sweetly laves The banks by Castle Gordon. Spicy forests, ever gray, Shading from […]...
- The Captive's Dream Methought I saw him but I knew him not; He was so changed from what he used to be, There was no redness on his woe-worn cheek, No sunny smile upon his ashy lips, His hollow wandering eyes looked wild and fierce, And grief was printed on his marble brow, And O I thought he […]...
- Sunt Leones The lions who ate the Christians on the sands of the arena By indulging native appetites played was now been seen a Not entirely negligible part In consolidating at the very start The position of the Early Christian Church. Initiatory rights are always bloody In the lions, it appears From contemporary art, made a study […]...
- Goody for Our Side and Your Side Too Foreigners are people somewhere else, Natives are people at home; If the place you’re at Is your habitat, You’re a foreigner, say in Rome. But the scales of Justice balance true, And tit leads into tat, So the man who’s at home When he stays in Rome Is abroad when he’s where you’re at. When […]...
- My Masterpiece It’s slim and trim and bound in blue; Its leaves are crisp and edged with gold; Its words are simple, stalwart too; Its thoughts are tender, wise and bold. Its pages scintillate with wit; Its pathos clutches at my throat: Oh, how I love each line of it! That Little Book I Never Wrote. In […]...
- The Other One “Gather around me, children dear; The wind is high and the night is cold; Closer, little ones, snuggle near; Let’s seek a story of ages old; A magic tale of a bygone day, Of lovely ladies and dragons dread; Come, for you’re all so tired of play, We’ll read till it’s time to go to […]...
- Lines Written From Home Though bleak these woods, and damp the ground With fallen leaves so thickly strown, And cold the wind that wanders round With wild and melancholy moan; There is a friendly roof, I know, Might shield me from the wintry blast; There is a fire, whose ruddy glow Will cheer me for my wanderings past. And […]...
- The Consolation Though bleak these woods and damp the ground With fallen leaves so thickly strewn, And cold the wind that wanders round With wild and melancholy moan, There is a friendly roof I know Might shield me from the wintry blast; There is a fire whose ruddy glow Will cheer me for my wanderings past. And […]...
- I see around me tombstones grey I see around me tombstones grey Stretching their shadows far away. Beneath the turf my footsteps tread Lie low and lone the silent dead – Beneath the turf – beneath the mould – Forever dark, forever cold – And my eyes cannot hold the tears That memory hoards from vanished years For Time and Death […]...
- To Flush, My Dog Yet, my pretty sportive friend, Little is’t to such an end That I praise thy rareness! Other dogs may be thy peers Haply in these drooping ears, And this glossy fairness. But of thee it shall be said, This dog watched beside a bed Day and night unweary – Watched within a curtained room, Where […]...
- The Two Terrors Two terrors fright my soul by night and day: The first is Life, and with her come the years; A weary, winding train of maidens they, With forward-fronting eyes, too sad for tears; Upon whose kindred faces, blank and grey, The shadow of a kindred woe appears. Death is the second terror; who shall say […]...
- When Hope but made Tranquillity be felt (fragment) When Hope but made Tranquillity be felt A Flight of Hopes for ever on the wing But made Tranquillity a conscious Thing And wheeling round and round in sportive coil Fann’d the calm air upon the brow of Toil...
- Courage In the shadow of the grave I will be brave; I’ll smile, I know I will E’er I be still; Because I will not smile So long a while. But I’ll be sad, I fear, And shed a tear, For those I love and leave My loss to grieve: ‘Tis just their grief I’ll grieve, […]...
- Don't Cheer Don’t cheer, damn you! Don’t cheer! Silence! Your bitterest tear Is fulsomely sweet to-day. . . . Down on your knees and pray. See, they sing as they go, Marching row upon row. Who will be spared to return, Sombre and starkly stern? Chaps whom we knew – s0 strange, Distant and dark with change; […]...
- Ripeness With peace and rest And wisdom sage, Ripeness is best Of every age. With hands that fold In pensive prayer, For grave-yard mold Prepare. From fighting free With fear forgot, Let ripeness be, Before the rot. With heart of cheer At eighty odd, How man grows near To God! With passion spent And life nigh […]...
- "Birds of Prey" March March! The mud is cakin’ good about our trousies. Front! eyes front, an’ watch the Colour-casin’s drip. Front! The faces of the women in the ‘ouses Ain’t the kind o’ things to take aboard the ship. Cheer! An’ we’ll never march to victory. Cheer! An’ we’ll never live to ‘ear the cannon roar! The Large […]...
- Day That I Have Loved Tenderly, day that I have loved, I close your eyes, And smooth your quiet brow, and fold your thin dead hands. The grey veils of the half-light deepen; colour dies. I bear you, a light burden, to the shrouded sands, Where lies your waiting boat, by wreaths of the sea’s making Mist-garlanded, with all grey […]...
- Study Somewhere the long mellow note of the blackbird Quickens the unclasping hands of hazel, Somewhere the wind-flowers fling their heads back, Stirred by an impetuous wind. Some ways’ll All be sweet with white and blue violet. (Hush now, hush. Where am I?-Biuret-) On the green wood’s edge a shy girl hovers From out of the […]...
- The Tuft of Flowers I went to turn the grass once after one Who mowed it in the dew before the sun. The dew was gone that made his blade so keen Before I came to view the leveled scene. I looked for him behind an isle of trees; I listened for his whetstone on the breeze. But he […]...
- The Kingdom Now we are come to our Kingdom, And the State is thus and thus; Our legions wait at the Palace gate Little it profits us. Now we are come to our Kingdom! Now we are come to our Kingdom, And the Crown is ours to take With shame and fear for our daily cheer, And […]...
- UPON TIME Time was upon The wing, to fly away; And I call’d on Him but awhile to stay; But he’d be gone, For aught that I could say. He held out then A writing, as he went, And ask’d me, when False man would be content To pay again What God and Nature lent. An hour-glass, […]...
- The Sewing-Girl The humble garret where I dwell Is in that Quarter called the Latin; It isn’t spacious truth to tell, There’s hardly room to swing a cat in. But what of that! It’s there I fight For food and fame, my Muse inviting, And all the day and half the night You’ll find me writing, writing, […]...
- The Comforter As I sat by my baby’s bed That’s open to the sky, There fluttered round and round my head A radiant butterfly. And as I wept of hearts that ache The saddest in the land It left a lily for my sake, And lighted on my hand. I watched it, oh, so quietly, And though […]...
- Portent Courage mes gars: La guerre est proche. I plant my little plot of beans, I sit beneath my cyprus tree; I do not know what trouble means, I cultivate tranquillity. . . But as to-day my walk I made In all serenity and cheer, I saw cut in an agave blade: “Courage, my comrades, war […]...
- Fisherman jim's kids Fisherman Jim lived on the hill With his bonnie wife an’ his little boys; ‘T wuz “Blow, ye winds, as blow ye will – Naught we reck of your cold and noise!” For happy and warm were he an’ his, And he dandled his kids upon his knee To the song of the sea. Fisherman […]...
- Room 7: The Coco-Fiend I look at no one, me; I pass them on the stair; Shadows! I don’t see; Shadows! everywhere. Haunting, taunting, staring, glaring, Shadows! I don’t care. Once my room I gain Then my life begins. Shut the door on pain; How the Devil grins! Grin with might and main; Grin and grin in vain; Here’s […]...
- Litany to the Holy Spirit IN the hour of my distress, When temptations me oppress, And when I my sins confess, Sweet Spirit, comfort me! When I lie within my bed, Sick in heart and sick in head, And with doubts discomforted, Sweet Spirit, comfort me! When the house doth sigh and weep, And the world is drown’d in sleep, […]...
- THE EAGLE AND DOVE IN search of prey once raised his pinions An eaglet; A huntsman’s arrow came, and reft His right wing of all motive power. Headlong he fell into a myrtle grove, For three long days on anguish fed, In torment writhed Throughout three long, three weary nights; And then was cured, Thanks to all-healing Nature’s Soft, […]...
- Sonnets 09: Let You Not Say Of Me When I Am Old Let you not say of me when I am old, In pretty worship of my withered hands Forgetting who I am, and how the sands Of such a life as mine run red and gold Even to the ultimate sifting dust, “Behold, Here walketh passionless age!”-for there expands A curious superstition in these lands, And […]...
- A Crowded Trolley-Car The rain’s cold grains are silver-gray Sharp as golden sands, A bell is clanging, people sway Hanging by their hands. Supple hands, or gnarled and stiff, Snatch and catch and grope; That face is yellow-pale, as if The fellow swung from rope. Dull like pebbles, sharp like knives, Glances strike and glare, Fingers tangle, Bluebeard’s […]...
- Relax Do you recall that happy bike With bundles on our backs? How near to heaven it was like To blissfully relax! In cosy tavern of good cheer To doff our heavy packs, And with a mug of foamy beer Relax. Learn to relax: to clean the mind Of fear and doubt and care, And in […]...