Ruins

Related poetry:

1. The Ruins Of Time (Quevedo, Mire los muros de la partia mia and Buscas en Roma a Roma, (!)O peregrino!) I I saw the musty shingles of my house, Raw wood and fixed once, now a wash of moss Eroded by the ruin of age Furning all fair and green things into waste. I climbed the pasture. I saw […]...
2. Ruins of Rome, by Bellay 1 Ye heavenly spirits, whose ashy cinders lie Under deep ruins, with huge walls opprest, But not your praise, the which shall never die Through your fair verses, ne in ashes rest; If so be shrilling voice of wight alive May reach from hence to depth of darkest hell, Then let those deep Abysses open […]...
3. Love Among The Ruins I Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles Miles and miles On the solitary pastures where our sheep Half-asleep Tinkle homeward thro’ the twilight, stray or stop As they crop – Was the site once of a city great and gay, (So they say) Of our country’s very capital, its prince Ages since Held his […]...
4. Monte Carlo Memories We took turns Watching seagulls there Walking on A tilted shore Of ancient waves And modern ships Sparkling in a Merchant’s breeze- Holding hands And getting wet In Monte Carlo Memories: You and I washing In a crystal sunset....
5. On the Ruins of a Country Inn WHERE now these mingled ruins lie A temple once to Bacchus rose, Beneath whose roof, aspiring high, Full many a guest forgot his woes. No more this dome, by tempests torn, Affords a social safe retreat; But ravens here, with eye forlorn, And clustering bats henceforth will meet. The Priestess of this ruined shrine, Unable […]...
6. Rome: Building a New Street in the Ancient Quarter These numbered cliffs and gnarls of masonry Outskeleton Time’s central city, Rome; Whereof each arch, entablature, and dome Lies bare in all its gaunt anatomy. And cracking frieze and rotten metope Express, as though they were an open tome Top-lined with caustic monitory gnome; “Dunces, Learn here to spell Humanity!” And yet within these ruins’ […]...
7. My Centenarian A hundred years is a lot of living I’ve often thought. and I’ll know, maybe, Some day if the gods are good in giving, And grant me to turn the century. Yet in all my eighty years of being I’ve never known but one ancient man Who actively feeling, hearing, seeing, Survived t beyond the […]...
8. Rimini Marching Song of a Roman Legion of the Later Empire Enlarged From “Puck of Pook’s Hill” When I left Rome for Lalage’s sake, By the Legions’ Road to Rimini, She vowed her heart was mine to take With me and my shield to Rimini (Till the Eagles flew from Rimini ) And I’ve tramped Britain, […]...
9. From One Augur to Another So, Calchas, on the sacred Palatine, You thought of Mopsus, and o’er wastes of sea A flower brought your message. I divine (Through my deep art) the kindly mockery That played about your lips and in your eyes, Plucking the frail leaf, while you dreamed of home. Thanks for the silent greeting! I shall prize, […]...
10. A City's Death By Fire After that hot gospeller has levelled all but the churched sky, I wrote the tale by tallow of a city’s death by fire; Under a candle’s eye, that smoked in tears, I Wanted to tell, in more than wax, of faiths that were snapped like wire. All day I walked abroad among the rubbled tales, […]...
11. The Bell From Europe The tower bell in the Tenth Street Church Rang out nostalgia for the refugee Who knew the source of bells by sound. We liked it, but in ignorance. One meets authorities on bells infrequently. Europe alone made bells with such a tone, Herr Mannheim said. The bell Struck midnight, and it shook the room. He […]...
12. The Lockless Door It went many years, But at last came a knock, And I though of the door With no lock to lock. I blew out the light, I tip-toed the floor, And raised both hands In prayer to the door. But the knock came again. My window was wide; I climbed on the sill And descended […]...
13. When the Lad for Longing Sighs When the lad for longing sighs, Mute and dull of cheer and pale, If at death’s own door he lies, Maiden, you can heal his ail. Lovers’ ills are all to buy: The wan look, the hollow tone, The hung head, the sunken eye, You can have them for your own. Buy them, buy them: […]...
14. Redemption Having been tenant long to a rich lord, Not thriving, I resolved to be bold, And make a suit unto him, to afford A new small-rented lease, and cancel the old. In heaven at his manor I him sought; They told me there that he was lately gone About some land, which he had dearly […]...
15. A Pict Song Rome never looks where she treads. Always her heavy hooves fall On our stomachs, our hearts or our heads; And Rome never heeds when we bawl. Her sentries pass on that is all, And we gather behind them in hordes, And plot to reconquer the Wall, With only our tongues for our swords. We are […]...
16. The White Lights When in from Delos came the gold That held the dream of Pericles, When first Athenian ears were told The tumult of Euripides, When men met Aristophanes, Who fledged them with immortal quills – Here, where the time knew none of these, There were some islands and some hills. When Rome went ravening to see […]...
17. Romulus and Remus Oh, little did the Wolf-Child care When first he planned his home, What City should arise and bear The weight and state of Rome. A shiftless, westward-wandering tramp, Checked by the Tiber flood, He reared a wall around his camp Of uninspired mud. But when his brother leaped the Wall And mocked its height and […]...
18. Sonnet XIII I fancied, while you stood conversing there, Superb, in every attitude a queen, Her ermine thus Boadicea bare, So moved amid the multitude Faustine. My life, whose whole religion Beauty is, Be charged with sin if ever before yours A lesser feeling crossed my mind than his Who owning grandeur marvels and adores. Nay, rather […]...
19. Rome Rome is but nature’s twin, which has reflected Rome. We see its civic might, the signs of its decorum In the transparent air, the firmament’s blue dome, The colonnades of groves and in the meadow’s forum....
20. Sonnet 76: Why is my verse so barren of new pride? Why is my verse so barren of new pride? So far from variation or quick change? Why with the time do I not glance aside To new-found methods, and to compounds strange? Why write I still all one, ever the same, And keep invention in a noted weed, That every word doth almost tell my […]...
21. Poet's Path My garden hath a slender path With ivy overgrown, A secret place where once would pace A pot all alone; I see him now with fretted brow, Plunged deep in thought; And sometimes he would write maybe, And sometimes he would not. A verse a day he used to say Keeps worry from the door; […]...
22. Leisure Leisure, thou goddess of a bygone age, When hours were long and days sufficed to hold Wide-eyed delights and pleasures uncontrolled By shortening moments, when no gaunt presage Of undone duties, modern heritage, Haunted our happy minds; must thou withhold Thy presence from this over-busy world, And bearing silence with thee disengage Our twined fortunes? […]...
23. The Children's Hour Between the dark and the daylight, When the night is beginning to lower, Comes a pause in the day’s occupation, That is know as the children’s hour. I hear in the chamber above me The patter of little feet, The sound of a door that is opened, And voices soft and sweet. From my study […]...
24. Brignall Banks O, Brignall banks are wild and fair, And Greta woods are green, And you may gather garlands there, Would grace a summer queen: And as I rode by Dalton Hall, Beneath the turrets high, A Maiden on the castle wall Was singing merrily:- ‘O, Brignall banks are fresh and fair, And Greta woods are green! […]...
25. Unlyric Love Song It is time to give that-of-myself which I could not at first: To offer you now at last my least and my worst: Minor, absurd preserves, The shell’s end-curves, A document kept at the back of a drawer, A tin hidden under the floor, Recalcitrant prides and hesitations: To pile them carefully in a desparate […]...
26. Margaret Fuller Slack I would have been as great as George Eliot But for an untoward fate. For look at the photograph of me made by Penniwit, Chin resting on hand, and deep-set eyes Gray, too, and far-searching. But there was the old, old problem: Should it be celibacy, matrimony or unchastity? Then John Slack, the rich druggist, […]...
27. The Grave Of Shelley Like burnt-out torches by a sick man’s bed Gaunt cypress-trees stand round the sun-bleached stone; Here doth the little night-owl make her throne, And the slight lizard show his jewelled head. And, where the chaliced poppies flame to red, In the still chamber of yon pyramid Surely some Old-World Sphinx lurks darkly hid, Grim warder […]...
28. Apollo Belvedere A-sitttin’ on a cracker box an’ spittin’ in the stove, I took a sudden notion that I’d kindo’ like to rove; An’ so I bought a ticket, jest as easy as could be, From Pumpkinville in Idaho to Rome in Italy; An’ found myself in seven days of mostly atmosphere A-starin’ at a statoo called […]...
29. Hughley Steeple LXI The vane on Hughley steeple Veers bright, a far-known sign, And there lie Hughley people, And there lie friends of mine. Tall in their midst the tower Divides the shade and sun, And the clock strikes the hour And tells the time to none. To south the headstones cluster, The sunny mounds lie thick; […]...
30. DOUBLE VILLANELLE I. O goat-foot God of Arcady! This modern world is grey and old, And what remains to us of thee? No more the shepherd lads in glee Throw apples at thy wattled fold, O goat-foot God of Arcady! Nor through the laurels can one see Thy soft brown limbs, thy beard of gold And what […]...
31. Uhland's There were three cavaliers that went over the Rhine, And gayly they called to the hostess for wine. “And where is thy daughter? We would she were here, Go fetch us that maiden to gladden our cheer!” “I’ll fetch thee thy goblets full foaming,” she said, “But in yon darkened chamber the maiden lies dead.” […]...
32. Sonnet XVII Who will believe my verse in time to come, If it were fill’d with your most high deserts? Though yet, heaven knows, it is but as a tomb Which hides your life and shows not half your parts. If I could write the beauty of your eyes And in fresh numbers number all your graces, […]...
33. Sonnet 17: Who will believe my verse in time to come Who will believe my verse in time to come If it were filled with your most high deserts? Though yet heaven knows it is but as a tomb Which hides your life, and shows not half your parts: If I could write the beauty of your eyes, And in fresh numbers number all your graces, […]...
34. Cousin Nancy MISS NANCY ELLICOTT Strode across the hills and broke them, Rode across the hills and broke them- The barren New England hills- Riding to hounds Over the cow-pasture. Miss Nancy Ellicott smoked And danced all the modern dances; And her aunts were not quite sure how they felt about it, But they knew that it […]...
35. Green Fields By this part of the century few are left who believe in the animals for they are not there in the carved parts Of them served on plates and the pleas from the slatted trucks are sounds of shadows that possess no future There is still game for the pleasure of killing and there are […]...
36. Poor Poet ‘A man should write to please himself,’ He proudly said. Well, see his poems on the shelf, Dusty, unread. When he came to my shop each day, So peaked and cold, I’d sneak one of his books away And say ’twas sold. And then by chance he looked below, And saw a stack Of his […]...
37. The Dove of Dacca 1892 The freed dove flew to the Rajah’s tower Fled from the slaughter of Moslem kings And the thorns have covered the city of Guar. Dove dove oh, homing dove! Little white traitor, with woe on thy wings! The Rajah of Dacca rode under the wall; He set in his bosom a dove of flight […]...
38. To The Spring Welcome, gentle Stripling, Nature’s darling thou! With thy basket full of blossoms, A happy welcome now! Aha! and thou returnest, Heartily we greet thee The loving and the fair one, Merrily we meet thee! Think’st thou of my maiden In thy heart of glee? I love her yet, the maiden And the maiden yet loves […]...
39. Toilet Seats While I am emulating Keats My brother fabrics toilet seats, The which, they say, are works of art, Aesthetic features of the mart; So exquisitely are they made With plastic of a pastel shade, Of topaz, ivory or rose, Inviting to serene repose. Rajahs I’m told have seats of gold, (They must, I fear, be […]...
40. A Letter to a Live Poet Sir, since the last Elizabethan died, Or, rather, that more Paradisal muse, Blind with much light, passed to the light more glorious Or deeper blindness, no man’s hand, as thine, Has, on the world’s most noblest chord of song, Struck certain magic strains. Ears satiate With the clamorous, timorous whisperings of to-day, Thrilled to perceive […]...