Home ⇒ 📌Vachel Lindsay ⇒ The Sorceress!
The Sorceress!
I asked her, “Is Aladdin’s lamp
Hidden anywhere?”
“Look into your heart,” she said,
“Aladdin’s lamp is there.”
She took my heart with glowing hands.
It burned to dust and air
And smoke and rolling thistledown
Blowing everywhere.
“Follow the thistledown,” she said,
“Till doomsday, if you dare,
Over the hills and far away.
Aladdin’s lamp is there.”
(2 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
Related poetry:
- The Journey Anghiari is medieval, a sleeve sloping down A steep hill, suddenly sweeping out To the edge of a cliff, and dwindling. But far up the mountain, behind the town, We too were swept out, out by the wind, Alone with the Tuscan grass. Wind had been blowing across the hills For days, and everything now […]...
- A Peck of Gold Dust always blowing about the town, Except when sea-fog laid it down, And I was one of the children told Some of the blowing dust was gold. All the dust the wind blew high Appeared like god in the sunset sky, But I was one of the children told Some of the dust was really […]...
- Lily-Bell and Thistledown Song II Thistledown in prison sings: Bright shines the summer sun, Soft is the summer air; Gayly the wood-birds sing, Flowers are blooming fair. But, deep in the dark, cold rock, Sadly I dwell, Longing for thee, dear friend, Lily-Bell! Lily-Bell! Lily-Bell replies: Through sunlight and summer air I have sought for thee long, Guided by birds […]...
- The Sea And the Hills 1902 Who hath desired the Sea? the sight of salt wind-hounded The heave and the halt and the hurl and the crash of the comber win hounded? The sleek-barrelled swell before storm, grey, foamless, enormous, and growing Stark calm on the lap of the Line or the crazy-eyed hurricane blowing His Sea in no showing […]...
- The Gardener LXXXIII: She Dwelt on the Hillside She dwelt on the hillside by edge Of a maize-field, near the spring that Flows in laughing rills through the Solemn shadows of ancient trees. The Women came there to fill their jars, And travellers would sit there to rest And talk. She worked and dreamed Daily to the tune of the bubbling Stream. One […]...
- Scots of the Riverina The boy cleared out to the city from his home at harvest time They were Scots of the Riverina, and to run from home was a crime. The old man burned his letters, the first and last he burned, And he scratched his name from the Bible when the old wife’s back was turned. A […]...
- Lament for Eorl the Young Where now is the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing? Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing? Where is the hand on the harpstring, and the red fire glowing? They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow; The days […]...
- The Land of Story-Books At evening when the lamp is lit, Around the fire my parents sit; They sit at home and talk and sing, And do not play at anything. Now, with my little gun, I crawl All in the dark along the wall, And follow round the forest track Away behind the sofa back. There, in the […]...
- There Pass the Careless People There pass the careless people That call their souls their own: Here by the road I loiter, How idle and alone. Ah, past the plunge of plummet, In seas I cannot sound, My heart and soul and senses, World without end, are drowned. His folly has not fellow Beneath the blue of day That gives […]...
- Style Flaubert wanted to write a novel About nothing. It was to have no subject And be sustained upon the style alone, Like the Holy Ghost cruising above The abyss, or like the little animals In Disney cartoons who stand upon a branch That breaks, but do not fall Till they look down. He never wrote […]...
- Smoke Smoke, it is all smoke In the throat of eternity. . . . For centuries, the air was full of witches Whistling up chimneys On their spiky brooms Cackling or singing more sweetly than Circe, As they flew over rooftops Blessing & cursing their Kind. We banished & burned them Making them smoke in the […]...
- The House Of Dust: Part 02: 06: Adele And Davis She turned her head on the pillow, and cried once more. And drawing a shaken breath, and closing her eyes, To shut out, if she could, this dingy room, The wigs and costumes scattered around the floor,- Yellows and greens in the dark,-she walked again Those nightmare streets which she had walked so often. . […]...
- Follow Your Heart Although it’s been said many Times before It’s a powerful message, so I’ll Say it once more… Follow your heart, go wherever It may lead, Follow your heart and you’re Sure to succeed! For when you follow your heart And do what you love, God gives you guidance and help From above… And things start […]...
- The Song of the Garden-Toad Down, down beneath the daisy beds, O hear the cries of pain! And moaning on the cinder-path They’re blind amid the rain. Can murmurs of the worms arise To higher hearts than mine? I wonder if that gardener hears Who made the mold all fine And packed each gentle seedling down So carefully in line? […]...
- Impression De Voyage The sea was sapphire coloured, and the sky Burned like a heated opal through the air; We hoisted sail; the wind was blowing fair For the blue lands that to the eastward lie. From the steep prow I marked with quickening eye Zakynthos, every olive grove and creek, Ithaca’s cliff, Lycaon’s snowy peak, And all […]...
- Kingdom of Love In the dawn of the day when the sea and the earth Reflected the sunrise above, I set forth with a heart full of courage and mirth To seek for the Kingdom of Love. I asked of a Poet I met on the way Which cross-road would lead me aright. And he said: “Follow me, […]...
- ASYLUM SEEKERS When Blunkett starts to talk like Enoch Powell I think of Harold Wilson’s statue in Huddersfield Station Caught striding forward, gripping his pipe in his pocket, Hair blowing in the wind. Could we but turn that bronze To flesh I would have asked him to meet the two Asylum-seekers I met in Huddersfield’s main street […]...
- Smoke I SIT in a chair and read the newspapers. Millions of men go to war, acres of them are buried, guns and ships broken, cities burned, villages sent up in smoke, and children where cows are killed off amid hoarse barbecues vanish like finger-rings of smoke in a north wind. I sit in a chair […]...
- The Gardener LXIV: I Spent My Day I spent my day on the scorching Hot dust of the road. Now, in the cool of the evening, I Knock at the door of the inn. It is Deserted and in ruins. A grim ashath tree spreads its Hungry clutching roots through the Gaping fissures of the walls. Days have been when wayfarers Came […]...
- Time to play It is a pristine page, clean on the blue screen Where I compose, I don’t expect it to stay that way As words glow from blunt, abused fingers, as insistent Sounds in my head translate into sentence structures, As lips articulate the rhythms and the sounds of the Jumbled lexis as swiftly as I can […]...
- To My Wife – With A Copy Of My Poems I can write no stately proem As a prelude to my lay; From a poet to a poem I would dare to say. For if of these fallen petals One to you seem fair, Love will waft it till it settles On your hair. And when wind and winter harden All the loveless land, It […]...
- My Boy Jack 1914-18 Have you news of my boy Jack?” Not this tide. “When d’you think that he’ll come back?” Not with this wind blowing, and this tide. “Has any one else had word of him?: “ Not this tide. For what is sunk will hardly swim, Not with this wind blowing, and this tide. “Oh, dear, […]...
- Over The Alley Here in my office I sit and write Hour on hour, and day on day, With no one to speak to from morn till night, Though I have a neighbour just over the way. Across the alley that yawns between A maiden sits sewing the whole day long; A face more lovely is seldom seen […]...
- Work When twenty-one I loved to dream, And was to loafing well inclined; Somehow I couldn’t get up steam To welcome work of any kind. While students burned the midnight lamp, With dour ambition as their goad, I longed to be a gayful tramp And greet adventure on the road. But now that sixty years have […]...
- Cool Tombs WHEN Abraham Lincoln was shoveled into the tombs, he forgot the copperheads and the assassin… in the dust, in the cool tombs. And Ulysses Grant lost all thought of con men and Wall Street, cash and collateral turned ashes… in the dust, in the cool tombs. Pocahontas’ body, lovely as a poplar, sweet as a […]...
- Last Answers I wrote a poem on the mist And a woman asked me what I meant by it. I had thought till then only of the beauty of the mist, how pearl and gray of it mix and reel, And change the drab shanties with lighted lamps at evening into points of mystery quivering with color. […]...
- Hymn To Eros O Eros, silently smiling one, hear me. Let the shadow of thy wings Brush me. Let thy presence Enfold me, as if darkness Were swandown. Let me see that darkness Lamp in hand, This country become The other country Sacred to desire. Drowsy god, Slow the wheels of my thought So that I listen only […]...
- Hohenlinden 1 On Linden, when the sun was low, 2 All bloodless lay the untrodden snow, 3 And dark as winter was the flow 4 Of Iser, rolling rapidly. 5 But Linden saw another sight 6 When the drum beat at dead of night, 7 Commanding fires of death to light 8 The darkness of her […]...
- The Fires Men make them fires on the hearth Each under his roof-tree, And the Four Winds that rule the earth They blow the smoke to me. Across the high hills and the sea And all the changeful skies, The Four Winds blow the smoke to me Till the tears are in my eyes. Until the tears […]...
- Follow Me 'ome There was no one like ‘im, ‘Orse or Foot, Nor any o’ the Guns I knew; An’ because it was so, why, o’ course ‘e went an’ died, Which is just what the best men do. So it’s knock out your pipes an’ follow me! An’ it’s finish up your swipes an’ follow me! Oh, […]...
- I have never seen "Volcanoes" I have never seen “Volcanoes” But, when Travellers tell How those old phlegmatic mountains Usually so still Bear within appalling Ordnance, Fire, and smoke, and gun, Taking Villages for breakfast, And appalling Men If the stillness is Volcanic In the human face When upon a pain Titanic Features keep their place If at length the […]...
- Afterthoughts We parted where the old gas-lamp still burned Under the wayside maple and walked on, Into the dark, as we had always done; And I, no doubt, if he had not returned, Might yet be unaware that he had earned More than earth gives to many who have won More than it has to give […]...
- Winter Night It snowed and snowed, the whole world over, Snow swept the world from end to end. A candle burned on the table; A candle burned. As during summer midges swarm To beat their wings against a flame Out in the yard the snowflakes swarmed To beat against the window pane The blizzard sculptured on the […]...
- The Floods The rain it rains without a stay In the hills above us, in the hills; And presently the floods break way Whose strength is in the hills. The trees they suck from every cloud, The valley brooks they roar aloud Bank-high for the lowlands, lowlands, Lowlands under the hills! The first wood down is sere […]...
- The Warrior He wrought in poverty, the dull grey days, But with the night his little lamp-lit room Was bright with battle flame, or through a haze Of smoke that stung his eyes he heard the boom Of Bluecher’s guns; he shared Almeida’s scars, And from the close-packed deck, about to die, Looked up and saw the […]...
- Cacoethes Scribendi If all the trees in all the woods were men; And each and every blade of grass a pen; If every leaf on every shrub and tree Turned to a sheet of foolscap; every sea Were changed to ink, and all earth’s living tribes Had nothing else to do but act as scribes, And for […]...
- Friendship After Love After the fierce midsummer all ablaze Has burned itself to ashes, and expires In the intensity of its own fires, There come the mellow, mild, St. Martin days Crowned with the calm of peace, but sad with haze. So after Love has led us, till he tires Of his own throes, and torments, and desires, […]...
- The Yukoner He burned a hole in frozen muck, He pierced the icy mould, And there in six-foot dirt he struck A sack or so of gold. He burned holes in the Decalogue, And then it cam about, For Fortune’s just a lousy rogue, His “pocket” petered out. And lo! ’twas but a year all told, When […]...
- Itylus Swallow, my sister, O sister swallow, How can thine heart be full of the spring? A thousand summers are over and dead. What hast thou found in the spring to follow? What hast thou found in thine heart to sing? What wilt thou do when the summer is shed? O swallow, sister, O fair swift […]...
- Nurse's Song (Innocence) When voices of children are heard on the green And laughing is heard on the hill, My heart is at rest within my breast And everything else is still Then come home my children the sun is gone down And the dews of night arise Come come leave off play, and let us away Till […]...