An Image From A Past Life

Related poetry:

1. Broken Dreams There is grey in your hair. Young men no longer suddenly catch their breath When you are passing; But maybe some old gaffer mutters a blessing Because it was your prayer Recovered him upon the bed of death. For your sole sake – that all heart’s ache have known, And given to others all heart’s […]...
2. He Gives His Beloved Certain Rhymes Fasten your hair with a golden pin, And bind up every wandering tress; I bade my heart build these poor rhymes: It worked at them, day out, day in, Building a sorrowful loveliness Out of the battles of old times. You need but lift a pearl-pale hand, And bind up your long hair and sigh; […]...
3. The Divine Image To Mercy Pity Peace and Love. All pray in their distress: And to these virtues of delight Return their thankfulness. For Mercy Pity Peace and Love, Is God our Father dear: And Mercy Pity Peace and Love, Is Man his child and care. For Mercy has a human heart Pity, a human face: And Love, […]...
4. Sonnet 30 – I see thine image through my tears to-night I see thine image through my tears to-night, And yet to-day I saw thee smiling. How Refer the cause?-Beloved, is it thou Or I, who makes me sad? The acolyte Amid the chanted joy and thankful rite May so fall flat, with pale insensate brow, On the altar-stair. I hear thy voice and vow, Perplexed, […]...
5. All My Past Life All my past life is mine no more, The flying hours are gone, Like transitory dreams given o’er, Whose images are kept in store By memory alone. What ever is to come is not, How can it then be mine? The present moment’s all my lot, And that as fast as it is got, Phyllis, […]...
6. The Song Of Princess Zeb-Un-Nissa In Praise Of Her Own Beauty WHEN from my cheek I lift my veil, The roses turn with envy pale, And from their pierced hearts, rich with pain, Send forth their fragrance like a wail. Or if perchance one perfumed tress Be lowered to the wind’s caress, The honeyed hyacinths complain, And languish in a sweet distress. And, when I pause, […]...
7. The image, as in a Hexagram The image, as in a Hexagram: The hermit locks his door against the blizzard. He keeps the cabin warm. All winter long he sorts out all he has. What was well started shall be finished. What was not, should be thrown away. In spring he emerges with one garment And a single book. The cabin […]...
8. Sonnet 61: Is it thy will thy image should keep open Is it thy will thy image should keep open My heavy eyelids to the weary night? Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken While shadows like to thee do mock my sight? Is it thy spirit that thou send’st from thee So far from home into my deeds to pry, To find out shames […]...
9. Past and Future The new hath come and now the old retires: And so the past becomes a mountain-cell, Where lone, apart, old hermit-memories dwell In consecrated calm, forgotten yet Of the keen heart that hastens to forget Old longings in fulfilling new desires. And now the Soul stands in a vague, intense Expectancy and anguish of suspense, […]...
10. A Song: When June is Past, the Fading Rose Ask me no more where Jove bestows, When June is past, the fading rose; For in your beauty’s orient deep These flowers as in their causes, sleep. Ask me no more whither doth stray The golden atoms of the day; For in pure love heaven did prepare Those powders to enrich your hair. Ask me […]...
11. The Double Image 1. I am thirty this November. You are still small, in your fourth year. We stand watching the yellow leaves go queer, Flapping in the winter rain. Falling flat and washed. And I remember Mostly the three autumns you did not live here. They said I’d never get you back again. I tell you what […]...
12. Song I. Nay but you, who do not love her, Is she not pure gold, my mistress? Holds earth aught – speak truth – above her? Aught like this tress, see, and this tress, And this last fairest tress of all, So fair, see, ere I let it fall? II. Because, you spend your lives in […]...
13. I Wait For You I wait for you. The years in silence pass And as the image, one, I wait for you again. The distance is in flame and clear one as glass, I, silent, wait with sadness, love and pain. The distance is in flame, and you are coming fast, But I’m afraid that you will change your […]...
14. I, In My Intricate Image I I, in my intricate image, stride on two levels, Forged in man’s minerals, the brassy orator Laying my ghost in metal, The scales of this twin world tread on the double, My half ghost in armour hold hard in death’s corridor, To my man-iron sidle. Beginning with doom in the bulb, the spring unravels, […]...
15. Hymn To Life The hair falling on your forehead suddenly lifted. Suddenly something stirred on the ground. The trees are whispering in the dark. Your bare arms will be cold. Far off where we can’t see, the moon must be rising. It hasn’t reached us yet, slipping through the leaves to light up your shoulder. But I know […]...
16. Love's Blindness Now do I know that Love is blind, for I Can see no beauty on this beauteous earth, No life, no light, no hopefulness, no mirth, Pleasure nor purpose, when thou art not nigh. Thy absence exiles sunshine from the sky, Seres Spring’s maturity, checks Summer’s birth, Leaves linnet’s pipe as sad as plover’s cry, […]...
17. The Goblet of Life Filled is Life’s goblet to the brim; And though my eyes with tears are dim, I see its sparkling bubbles swim, And chant a melancholy hymn With solemn voice and slow. No purple flowers, no garlands green, Conceal the goblet’s shade or sheen, Nor maddening draughts of Hippocrene, Like gleams of sunshine, flash between Thick […]...
18. Past One O'Clock Past one o’clock. You must have gone to bed. The Milky Way streams silver through the night. I’m in no hurry; with lightning telegrams I have no cause to wake or trouble you. And, as they say, the incident is closed. Love’s boat has smashed against the daily grind. Now you and I are quits. […]...
19. The best days of my life What is it about Bryan Adams and his song ‘Summer of 69’? Why do the lyrics linger? Was it 90° in the shade and the harbinger of the end Of the golden weather, or the impending closure Of a glorious decade? He should have called it ‘The best days of my life’, it would have […]...
20. Human Life If dead, we cease to be ; if total gloom Swallow up life’s brief flash for aye, we fare As summer-gusts, of sudden birth and doom, Whose sound and motion not alone declare, But are their whole of being! If the breath Be Life itself, and not its task and tent, If even a soul […]...
21. Barter Life has loveliness to sell, All beautiful and splendid things; Blue waves whitened on a cliff, Soaring fire that sways and sings, And children’s faces looking up, Holding wonder like a cup. Life has loveliness to sell; Music like a curve of gold, Scent of pine trees in the rain, Eyes that love you, arms […]...
22. Artist's Life Of all the waltzes the great Strauss wrote, Mad with melody, rhythm rife From the very first to the final note, Give me his “Artist’s Life!” It stirs my blood to my finger ends, Thrills me and fills me with vague unrest, And all that is sweetest and saddest blends Together within my breast. It […]...
23. The Secret Rose Far-off, most secret, and inviolate Rose, Enfold me in my hour of hours; where those Who sought thee in the Holy Sepulchre, Or in the wine-vat, dwell beyond the stir And tumult of defeated dreams; and deep Among pale eyelids, heavy with the sleep Men have named beauty. Thy great leaves enfold The ancient beards, […]...
24. What Is Life? Resembles Life what once was held of Light, Too ample in itself for human sight? An absolute Self an element ungrounded All, that we see, all colours of all shade [Image]By encroach of darkness made? Is very life by consciousness unbounded? And all the thoughts, pains, joys of mortal breath, A war-embrace of wrestling Life […]...
25. Past Carin&#039 Now up and down the siding brown The great black crows are flyin’, And down below the spur, I know, Another ‘milker’s’ dyin’; The crops have withered from the ground, The tank’s clay bed is glarin’, But from my heart no tear nor sound, For I have gone past carin’ Past worryin’ or carin’, Past […]...
26. Past and Present I remember, I remember The house where I was born, The little window where the sun Came peeping in at morn; He never came a wink too soon Nor bought too long a day; But now, I often wish the night Had borne my breath away. I remember, I remember The roses, red and white, […]...
27. He Thinks Of Those Who Have Spoken Evil Of His Beloved Half close your eyelids, loosen your hair, And dream about the great and their pride; They have spoken against you everywhere, But weigh this song with the great and their pride; I made it out of a mouthful of air, Their children’s children shall say they have lied....
28. For The One Who Would Not Take His Life In His Hands Athlete, virtuoso, Training for happiness, Bend arm and knee, and seek The body’s sharp distress, For pain is pleasure’s cost, Denial is route To speech before the millions Or personal with the flute. The ape and great Achilles, Heavy with their fate, Batter doors down, strike Small children at the gate, Driven by love to […]...
29. A Country Life A bird that I don’t know, Hunched on his light-pole like a scarecrow, Looks sideways out into the wheat The wind waves under the waves of heat. The field is yellow as egg-bread dough Except where (just as though they’d let It live for looks) a locust billows In leaf-green and shade-violet, A standing mercy. […]...
30. Time Long Past Like the ghost of a dear friend dead Is Time long past. A tone which is now forever fled, A hope which is now forever past, A love so sweet it could not last, Was Time long past. There were sweet dreams in the night Of Time long past: And, was it sadness or delight, […]...
31. The Witch's Life When I was a child There was an old woman in our neighborhood whom we called The Witch. All day she peered from her second story Window From behind the wrinkled curtains And sometimes she would open the window And yell: Get out of my life! She had hair like kelp And a voice like […]...
32. Past Days ‘Tis strange to think, there was a time When mirth was not an empty name, When laughter really cheered the heart, And frequent smiles unbidden came, And tears of grief would only flow In sympathy for others’ woe; When speech expressed the inward thought, And heart to kindred heart was bare, And Summer days were […]...
33. George Gray I have studied many times The marble which was chiseled for me A boat with a furled sail at rest in a harbor. In truth it pictures not my destination But my life. For love was offered me and I shrank from its disillusionment; Sorrow knocked at my door, but I was afraid; Ambition called […]...
34. See See how her hair has thinned: it does not seem / Like hair at all, but like the airy moult / Of emus who outraced the wind and left / Soft plumage in their wake. See how her eyes / Are gentler now; see how each wrinkle laughs, / And deepens on itself, as though […]...
35. Solomon And The Witch And thus declared that Arab lady: ‘Last night, where under the wild moon On grassy mattress I had laid me, Within my arms great Solomon, I suddenly cried out in a strange tongue Not his, not mine.’ Who understood Whatever has been said, sighed, sung, Howled, miau-d, barked, brayed, belled, yelled, cried, crowed, Thereon replied: […]...
36. The Buried Life Light flows our war of mocking words, and yet, Behold, with tears mine eyes are wet! I feel a nameless sadness o’er me roll. Yes, yes, we know that we can jest, We know, we know that we can smile! But there’s a something in this breast, To which thy light words bring no rest, […]...
37. Villa Pauline But, ah! before he came You were only a name: Four little rooms and a cupboard Without a bone, And I was alone! Now with your windows wide Everything from outside Of sun and flower and loveliness Comes in to hide, To play, to laugh on the stairs, To catch unawares Our childish happiness, And […]...
38. Clouds Down the blue night the unending columns press In noiseless tumult, break and wave and flow, Now tread the far South, or lift rounds of snow Up to the white moon’s hidden loveliness. Some pause in their grave wandering comradeless, And turn with profound gesture vague and slow, As who would pray good for the […]...
39. All That's Past Very old are the woods; And the buds that break Out of the brier’s boughs, When March winds wake, So old with their beauty are Oh, no man knows Through what wild centuries Roves back the rose. Very old are the brooks; And the rills that rise Where snow sleeps cold beneath The azure skies […]...
40. The Morning Half-Life Blues Girls buck the wind in the grooves toward work In fuzzy coats promised to be warm as fur. The shop windows snicker Flashing them hurrying over dresses they cannot afford: You are not pretty enough, not pretty enough. Blown with yesterday’s papers through the boiled coffee morning We dream of the stop on the subway […]...