Home ⇒ 📌Siegfried Sassoon ⇒ Picture-Show
Picture-Show
And still they come and go: and this is all I know –
That from the gloom I watch an endless picture-show,
Where wild or listless faces flicker on their way,
With glad or grievous hearts I’ll never understand
Because Time spins so fast, and they’ve no time to stay
Beyond the moment’s gesture of a lifted hand.
And still, between the shadow and the blinding flame,
The brave despair of men flings onward, ever the same
As in those doom-lit years that wait them, and have been…
And life is just the picture dancing on a screen.
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
Related poetry:
- Witchcraft By A Picture I fix mine eye on thine, and there Pity my picture burning in thine eye; My picture drowned in a transparent tear, When I look lower I espy. Hadst thou the wicked skill By pictures made and mard, to kill, How many ways mightst thou perform thy will? But now I have drunk thy sweet […]...
- Picture-Books in Winter Summer fading, winter comes Frosty mornings, tingling thumbs, Window robins, winter rooks, And the picture story-books. Water now is turned to stone Nurse and I can walk upon; Still we find the flowing brooks In the picture story-books. All the pretty things put by, Wait upon the children’s eye, Sheep and shepherds, trees and crooks, […]...
- Dream Song 119: Fresh-shaven, past months & a picture in New York Fresh-shaven, past months & a picture in New York Of Beard Two, I did have Three took off. Well. . Shadow & act, shadow & act, Better get white or you’ get whacked, Or keep so-called black & raise new hell. I’ve had enough of this dying. You’ve done me a dozen goodnesses; get well. […]...
- Picture Puzzle Piece One picture puzzle piece Lyin’ on the sidewalk, One picture puzzle piece Soakin’ in the rain. It might be a button of blue On the coat of the woman Who lived in a shoe. It might be a magical bean, Or a fold in the red Velvet robe of a queen. It might be the […]...
- Lover's Gifts XLII: Are You a Mere Picture Are you a mere picture, and not as true as those stars, true as This dust? They throb with the pulse of things, but you are Immensely aloof in your stillness, painted form. The day was when you walked with me, your breath warm, your Limbs singing of life. My world found its speech in […]...
- I would not paint a picture I would not paint a picture I’d rather be the One Its bright impossibility To dwell delicious on And wonder how the fingers feel Whose rare celestial stir Evokes so sweet a Torment Such sumptuous Despair I would not talk, like Cornets I’d rather be the One Raised softly to the Ceilings And out, and […]...
- The Love a Life can show Below The Love a Life can show Below Is but a filament, I know, Of that diviner thing That faints upon the face of Noon And smites the Tinder in the Sun And hinders Gabriel’s Wing ‘Tis this in Music hints and sways And far abroad on Summer days Distils uncertain pain ‘Tis this enamors in […]...
- My Picture I made a picture; all my heart I put in it, and all I knew Of canvas-cunning and of Art, Of tenderness and passion true. A worshipped Master came to see; Oh he was kind and gentle, too. He studied it with sympathy, And sensed what I had sought to do. Said he: “Your paint […]...
- To see her is a Picture To see her is a Picture To hear her is a Tune To know her an Intemperance As innocent as June To know her not Affliction To own her for a Friend A warmth as near as if the Sun Were shining in your Hand....
- Large Bad Picture Remembering the Strait of Belle Isle or Some northerly harbor of Labrador, Before he became a schoolteacher A great-uncle painted a big picture. Receding for miles on either side Into a flushed, still sky Are overhanging pale blue cliffs Hundreds of feet high, Their bases fretted by little arches, The entrances to caves Running in […]...
- Make me a picture of the sun Make me a picture of the sun So I can hang it in my room And make believe I’m getting warm When others call it “Day”! Draw me a Robin on a stem So I am hearing him, I’ll dream, And when the Orchards stop their tune Put my pretense away Say if it’s really […]...
- Loving In Truth, And Fain In Verse My Love To Show Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show, That She, dear She, might take some pleasure of my pain, -Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know, Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain – I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe, Studying inventions fine, […]...
- The Show My soul looked down from a vague height with Death, As unremembering how I rose or why, And saw a sad land, weak with sweats of dearth, Gray, cratered like the moon with hollow woe, And fitted with great pocks and scabs of plaques. Across its beard, that horror of harsh wire, There moved thin […]...
- Elegy V: His Picture Here take my picture; though I bid farewell, Thine, in my heart, where my soul dwells, shall dwell. ‘Tis like me now, but I dead, ’twill be more When we are shadows both than ’twas before. When weather-beaten I come back, my hand Perhaps with rude oars torn, or sunbeams tanned, My face and breast […]...
- When Earth's Last Picture Is Painted When Earth’s last picture is painted and the tubes are twisted and dried, When the oldest colours have faded, and the youngest critic has died, We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it lie down for an aeon or two, Till the Master of All Good Workmen shall put us to work anew. And […]...
- Mae Marsh, Motion Picture Actress I The arts are old, old as the stones From which man carved the sphinx austere. Deep are the days the old arts bring: Ten thousand years of yesteryear. II She is madonna in an art As wild and young as her sweet eyes: A frail dew flower from this hot lamp That is today’s […]...
- Picture Dealer There were twin artists A. and B. Who painted pictures two, And hung them in my galley For everyone to view; The one exhibited by A. The name “A Sphere” did bear, While strangely brother B’s display Was catalogued: “A Square”. Now although A. (and this is queer) Could squeeze a pretty tube, The picture […]...
- Rain After a Vaudeville Show The last pose flickered, failed. The screen’s dead white Glared in a sudden flooding of harsh light Stabbing the eyes; and as I stumbled out The curtain rose. A fat girl with a pout And legs like hams, began to sing “His Mother”. Gusts of bad air rose in a choking smother; Smoke, the wet […]...
- 16-bit Intel 8088 chip with an Apple Macintosh You can’t run Radio Shack programs In its disc drive. Nor can a Commodore 64 Drive read a file You have created on an IBM Personal Computer. Both Kaypro and Osborne computers use The CP/M operating system But can’t read each other’s Handwriting For they format (write On) discs in different […]...
- My Picture Left in Scotland I now think Love is rather deaf than blind, For else it could not be That she, Whom I adore so much, should so slight me And cast my love behind. I’m sure my language to her was as sweet, And every close did meet In sentence of as subtle feet, As hath the youngest […]...
- How many schemes may die How many schemes may die In one short Afternoon Entirely unknown To those they most concern The man that was not lost Because by accident He varied by a Ribbon’s width From his accustomed route The Love that would not try Because beside the Door It must be competitions Some unsuspecting Horse was tied Surveying […]...
- The Picture SOLICITED I’ve been to give a tale, In which (though true, decorum must prevail), The subject from a picture shall arise, That by a curtain’s kept from vulgar eyes. My brain must furnish various features new: What’s delicate and smart produce to view; By this expressed, and not by t’other said: And all so clear, […]...
- On Carpaccio's Picture: The Dream of St. Ursula Swept, clean, and still, across the polished floor From some unshuttered casement, hid from sight, The level sunshine slants, its greater light Quenching the little lamp which pallid, poor, Flickering, unreplenished, at the door Has striven against darkness the long night. Dawn fills the room, and penetrating, bright, The silent sunbeams through the window pour. […]...
- No Man can compass a Despair No Man can compass a Despair As round a Goalless Road No faster than a Mile at once The Traveller proceed Unconscious of the Width Unconscious that the Sun Be setting on His progress So accurate the One At estimating Pain Whose own has just begun His ignorance the Angel That pilot Him along...
- To My Own Minature Picture Taken At Two Years Of Age And I was once like this! that glowing cheek Was mine, those pleasure-sparkling eyes, that brow Smooth as the level lake, when not a breeze Dies o’er the sleeping surface! twenty years Have wrought strange alteration! Of the friends Who once so dearly prized this miniature, And loved it for its likeness, some are gone […]...
- Once more, my now bewildered Dove Once more, my now bewildered Dove Bestirs her puzzled wings Once more her mistress, on the deep Her troubled question flings Thrice to the floating casement The Patriarch’s bird returned, Courage! My brave Columbia! There may yet be land...
- Show Biz I can’t have it And you can’t have it And we won’t Get it So don’t bet on it Or even think about It Just get out of bed Each morning Wash Shave Clothe Yourself And go out into It Because Outside of that All that’s left is Suicide and Madness So you just Can’t […]...
- I Hear an Army Charging Upon the Land I hear an army charging upon the land, And the thunder of horses plunging, foam about their knees: Arrogant, in black armour, behind them stand, Disdaining the reins, with fluttering whips, the charioteers. They cry unto the night their battle-name: I moan in sleep when I hear afar their whirling laughter. They cleave the gloom […]...
- Come show thy Durham Breast Come show thy Durham Breast To her who loves thee best, Delicious Robin And if it be not me At least within my Tree Do the avowing Thy Nuptial so minute Perhaps is more astute Than vaster suing For so to soar away Is our propensity The Day ensuing...
- You Mustn't Show Weakness You mustn’t show weakness And you’ve got to have a tan. But sometimes I feel like the thin veils Of Jewish women who faint At weddings and on Yom Kippur. You mustn’t show weakness And you’ve got to make a list Of all the things you can load In a baby carriage without a baby. […]...
- Some one prepared this mighty show Some one prepared this mighty show To which without a Ticket go The nations and the Days Displayed before the simplest Door That all may witness it and more, The pomp of summer Days....
- Picture Postcard From The Other World Since I don’t know who will be reading This or even if it will be read, I must Invent someone on the other end Of eternity, a distant cousin laboring Under the same faint stars I labored All those unnumbered years ago. I make you Like me in everything I can a man Or woman […]...
- To The Painter Of An Ill-drawn Picture of Cleone Sooner I’d praise a Cloud which Light beguiles, Than thy rash Hand which robs this Face of Smiles; And does that sweet and pleasing Air control, Which to us paints the fair CLEONE’s Soul. ‘Tis vain to boast of Rules or labour’d Art; I miss the Look that captivates my Heart, Attracts my Love, and […]...
- Wert Thou but ill that I might show thee Wert Thou but ill that I might show thee How long a Day I could endure Though thine attention stop not on me Nor the least signal, Me assure Wert Thou but Stranger in ungracious country And Mine the Door Thou paused at, for a passing bounty No More Accused wert Thou and Myself Tribunal […]...
- On Going Back To The Street After Viewing An Art Show they talk down through The centuries to us, And this we need more and more, The statues and paintings In midnight age As we go along Holding dead hands. And we would say Rather than delude the knowing: A damn good show, But hardly enough for a horse to eat, And out on the sunshine […]...
- Sonnet 77: Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear, Thy dial how thy precious minutes waste; These vacant leaves thy mind’s imprint will bear, And of this book, this learning mayst thou taste. The wrinkles which thy glass will truly show Of mouthèd graves will give thee memory, Thou by thy dial’s shady stealth mayst […]...
- Picture-Writing In those days said Hiawatha, “Lo! how all things fade and perish! From the memory of the old men Pass away the great traditions, The achievements of the warriors, The adventures of the hunters, All the wisdom of the Medas, All the craft of the Wabenos, All the marvellous dreams and visions Of the Jossakeeds, […]...
- Holy Sonnet XVIII: Show me, dear Christ, thy Spouse, so bright and clear Show me, dear Christ, thy Spouse, so bright and clear. What! is it She, which on the other shore Goes richly painted? or which, robbed and tore, Laments and mourns in Germany and here? Sleeps she a thousand, then peeps up one year? Is she self-truth and errs? now new, now outwore? Doth she, and […]...
- 1887 From Clee to heaven the beacon burns, The shires have seen it plain, From north and south the sign returns And beacons burn again. Look left, look right, the hills are bright, The dales are light between, Because ’tis fifty years to-night That God has saved the Queen. Now, when the flame they watch not […]...
- Sonnet XIII: Letters and Lines To the Shadow Letters and lines we see are soon defac’d, Metals do waste and fret with canker’s rust, The diamond shall once consume to dust, And freshest colors with foul stains disgrac’d; Paper and ink can paint but naked words, To write with blood of force offends the sight; And if with tears I […]...