The Dead Drummer

Related poetry:

1. Drummer Hodge They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest Uncoffined just as found: His landmark is a kopje-crest That breaks the veldt around: And foreign constellations west Each night above his mound. Young Hodge the drummer never knew Fresh from his Wessex home The meaning of the broad Karoo, The Bush, the dusty loam, And why uprose […]...
2. Loam IN the loam we sleep, In the cool moist loam, To the lull of years that pass And the break of stars, From the loam, then, The soft warm loam, We rise: To shape of rose leaf, Of face and shoulder. We stand, then, To a whiff of life, Lifted to the silver of the […]...
3. The Dead Master Amid earth’s vagrant noises, he caught the note sublime: To-day around him surges from the silences of Time A flood of nobler music, like a river deep and broad, Fit song for heroes gathered in the banquet-hall of God....
4. The Unconquered Dead “. . . defeated, with great loss.” Not we the conquered! Not to us the blame Of them that flee, of them that basely yield; Nor ours the shout of victory, the fame Of them that vanquish in a stricken field. That day of battle in the dusty heat We lay and heard the bullets […]...
5. 215. Song-Hey, the Dusty Miller HEY, the dusty Miller, And his dusty coat, He will win a shilling, Or he spend a groat: Dusty was the coat, Dusty was the colour, Dusty was the kiss That I gat frae the Miller. Hey, the dusty Miller, And his dusty sack; Leeze me on the calling Fills the dusty peck: Fills the […]...
6. The King's Experiment It was a wet wan hour in spring, And Nature met King Doom beside a lane, Wherein Hodge trudged, all blithely ballading The Mother’s smiling reign. “Why warbles he that skies are fair And coombs alight,” she cried, “and fallows gay, When I have placed no sunshine in the air Or glow on earth to-day?” […]...
7. Sonnet 23 – Is it indeed so? If I lay here dead Is it indeed so? If I lay here dead, Wouldst thou miss any life in losing mine? And would the sun for thee more coldly shine Because of grave-damps falling round my head? I marvelled, my Beloved, when I read Thy thought so in the letter. I am thine- But. . . so much to […]...
8. On The Night Train Have you seen the bush by moonlight, from the train, go running by? Blackened log and stump and sapling, ghostly trees all dead and dry; Here a patch of glassy water; there a glimpse of mystic sky? Have you heard the still voice calling – yet so warm, and yet so cold: “I’m the Mother-Bush […]...
9. Hare Drummer Do the boys and girls still go to Siever’s For cider, after school, in late September? Or gather hazel nuts among the thickets On Aaron Hatfield’s farm when the frosts begin? For many times with the laughing girls and boys Played I along the road and over the hills When the sun was low and […]...
10. Frank Drummer Out of a cell into this darkened space The end at twenty-five! My tongue could not speak what stirred within me, And the village thought me a fool. Yet at the start there was a clear vision, A high and urgent purpose in my soul Which drove me on trying to memorize The Encyclopedia Britannica!...
11. The Tenants Of The Little Box Throw into the little box A stone You’ll take out a bird Throw in your shadow You’ll take out the shirt of happiness Throw in your father’s root You’ll take out the axle of the universe The little box works for you Throw into the little box A mouse You’ll take out a quaking hill […]...
12. I'm sorry for the Dead Today I’m sorry for the Dead Today It’s such congenial times Old Neighbors have at fences It’s time o’ year for Hay. And Broad Sunburned Acquaintance Discourse between the Toil And laugh, a homely species That makes the Fences smile It seems so straight to lie away From all of the noise of Fields The Busy […]...
13. Visiting a Dead Man on a Summer Day In flat America, in Chicago, Graceland cemetery on the German North Side. Forty feet of Corinthian candle Celebrate Pullman embedded Lonely raisin in a cake of concrete. The Potter Palmers float In an island parthenon. Barons of hogfat, railroads and wheat Are postmarked with angels and lambs. But the Getty tomb: white, snow patterned In […]...
14. In Defence of the Bush So you’re back from up the country, Mister Lawson, where you went, And you’re cursing all the business in a bitter discontent; Well, we grieve to disappoint you, and it makes us sad to hear That it wasn’t cool and shady and there wasn’t whips of beer, And the looney bullock snorted when you first […]...
15. Dolor of Autumn The acrid scents of autumn, Reminiscent of slinking beasts, make me fear Everything, tear-trembling stars of autumn And the snore of the night in my ear. For suddenly, flush-fallen, All my life, in a rush Of shedding away, has left me Naked, exposed on the bush. I, on the bush of the globe, Like a […]...
16. Tourists In a strange town in a far land They met amid a throng; They stared, they could not understand How life was sudden song. As brown eyes looked in eyes of grey Just for a moment’s space, Twin spirits met with sweet dismay In that strange place. And then the mob that swept them near […]...
17. Grieg Being Dead GRIEG being dead we may speak of him and his art. Grieg being dead we can talk about whether he was any good or not. Grieg being with Ibsen, Björnson, Lief Ericson and the rest, Grieg being dead does not care a hell’s hoot what we say. Morning, Spring, Anitra’s Dance, He dreams them at […]...
18. THREATENING SIGNS IF Venus in the evening sky Is seen in radiant majesty, If rod-like comets, red as blood, Are ‘mongst the constellations view’d, Out springs the Ignoramus, yelling: “The star’s exactly o’er my dwelling! What woeful prospect, ah, for me! Then calls his neighbour mournfully: “Behold that awful sign of evil, Portending woe to me, poor […]...
19. The Dead Village Here there is death. But even here, they say, Here where the dull sun shines this afternoon As desolate as ever the dead moon Did glimmer on dead Sardis, men were gay; And there were little children here to play, With small soft hands that once did keep in tune The strings that stretch from […]...
20. He Wishes His Beloved Were Dead Were you but lying cold and dead, And lights were paling out of the West, You would come hither, and bend your head, And I would lay my head on your breast; And you would murmur tender words, Forgiving me, because you were dead: Nor would you rise and hasten away, Though you have the […]...
21. Temporary Poem Of My Time Hebrew writing and Arabic writing go from east to west, Latin writing, from west to east. Languages are like cats: You must not stroke their hair the wrong way. The clouds come from the sea, the hot wind from the desert, The trees bend in the wind, And stones fly from all four winds, Into […]...
22. A Dead Rose O Rose! who dares to name thee? No longer roseate now, nor soft, nor sweet; But pale, and hard, and dry, as stubble-wheat, – Kept seven years in a drawer – thy titles shame thee. The breeze that used to blow thee Between the hedgerow thorns, and take away An odour up the lane to […]...
23. Of a Woman, Dead Young If she had been beautiful, even, Or wiser than women about her, Or had moved with a certain defiance; If she had had sons at her sides, And she with her hands on their shoulders, Sons, to make troubled the Gods- But where was there wonder in her? What had she, better or eviler, Whose […]...
24. Spirits Of The Dead Thy soul shall find itself alone ‘Mid dark thoughts of the grey tomb-stone; Not one, of all the crowd, to pry Into thine hour of secrecy. Be silent in that solitude, Which is not loneliness – for then The spirits of the dead, who stood In life before thee, are again In death around thee, […]...
25. Yes, the Dead Speak to Us YES, the Dead speak to us. This town belongs to the Dead, to the Dead and to the Wilderness. Back of the clamps on a fireproof door they hold the papers of the Dead in a house here And when two living men fall out, when one says the Dead spoke a Yes, and the […]...
26. In Springtime My garden blazes brightly with the rose-bush and the peach, And the koil sings above it, in the siris by the well, From the creeper-covered trellis comes the squirrel’s chattering speech, And the blue jay screams and flutters where the cheery sat-bhai dwell. But the rose has lost its fragrance, and the koil’s note is […]...
27. The Dead Man Walking They hail me as one living, But don’t they know That I have died of late years, Untombed although? I am but a shape that stands here, A pulseless mould, A pale past picture, screening Ashes gone cold. Not at a minute’s warning, Not in a loud hour, For me ceased Time’s enchantments In hall […]...
28. Kaspar Is Dead alas our good kaspar is dead. Who will bury a burning flag in the wings of the clouds who will pull Black wool over our eyes day by day. Who will turn the coffee mills in the primal barrel. Who will lure the idyllic roe from his petrified paperbag. Who will sneeze oceanliners unbrellas windudders […]...
29. Journey's End In western lands beneath the Sun The flowers may rise in Spring, The trees may bud, the waters run, The merry finches sing. Or there maybe ’tis cloudless night, And swaying branches bear The Elven-stars as jewels white Amid their branching hair. Though here at journey’s end I lie In darkness buried deep, Beyond all […]...
30. If You Only Knew Far from me and like the stars, the sea and all the trappings of poetic myth, Far from me but here all the same without your knowing, Far from me and even more silent because I imagine you endlessly. Far from me, my lovely mirage and eternal dream, you cannot know. If you only knew. […]...
31. Discipline Throw away thy rod, Throw away thy wrath: O my God, Take the gentle path. For my heart’s desire Unto thine is bent: I aspire To a full consent. Not a word or look I affect to own, But by book, And thy book alone. Though I fail, I weep: Though I halt in pace, […]...
32. Shelley's Skylark (The neighbourhood of Leghorn: March) Somewhere afield here something lies In Earth’s oblivious eyeless trust That moved a poet to prophecies – A pinch of unseen, unguarded dust The dust of the lark that Shelley heard, And made immortal through times to be; – Though it only lived like another bird, And knew not its immortality. Lived its meek life; […]...
33. The Bush Girl So you rode from the range where your brothers “select,” Through the ghostly grey bush in the dawn – You rode slowly at first, lest her heart should suspect That you were glad to be gone; You had scarcely the courage to glance back at her By the homestead receding from view, And you breathed […]...
34. The Song of the Dead Hear now the Song of the Dead in the North by the torn berg-edges They that look still to the Pole, asleep by their hide-stripped sledges. Song of the Dead in the South in the sun by their skeleton horses, Where the warrigal whimpers and bays through the dust of the sere river-courses. Song of […]...
35. Dead Man's Dump The plunging limbers over the shattered track Racketed with their rusty freight, Stuck out like many crowns of thorns, And the rusty stakes like sceptres old To stay the flood of brutish men Upon our brothers dear. The wheels lurched over sprawled dead But pained them not, though their bones crunched; Their shut mouths made […]...
36. To Thyrza: And Thou Art Dead And thou art dead, as young and fair As aught of mortal birth; And form so soft and charm so rare Too soon returned to Earth! Though Earth received them in her bed, And o’er the spot the crowd may tread In carelessness or mirth, There is an eye which could not brook A moment […]...
37. And Thou Art Dead, As Young and Fair And thou art dead, as young and fair As aught of mortal birth; And form so soft, and charms so rare, Too soon return’d to Earth! Though Earth receiv’d them in her bed, And o’er the spot the crowd may tread In carelessness or mirth, There is an eye which could not brook A moment […]...
38. My Vineyard To me at night the stars are vocal. They say: ‘Your planet’s oh so local! A speck of dust in heaven’s ceiling; Your faith divine a foolish feeling. What odds if you are chaos hurled, Yours is a silly little world.’ For their derision, haply true, I hate the stars, as wouldn’t you? But whether […]...
39. Reedy River Ten miles down Reedy River A pool of water lies, And all the year it mirrors The changes in the skies, And in that pool’s broad bosom Is room for all the stars; Its bed of sand has drifted O’er countless rocky bars. Around the lower edges There waves a bed of reeds, Where water […]...
40. The Teams A cloud of dust on the long white road, And the teams go creeping on Inch by inch with the weary load; And by the power of the green-hide goad The distant goal is won. With eyes half-shut to the blinding dust, And necks to the yokes bent low, The beasts are pulling as bullocks […]...