In Tara's Halls

Related poetry:

1. To Certain Journeymen UNDERTAKERS, hearse drivers, grave diggers, I speak to you as one not afraid of your business. You handle dust going to a long country, You know the secret behind your job is the same whether You lower the coffin with modern, automatic machinery, Well-oiled and noiseless, or whether the Body is laid in by naked […]...
2. Halls grew darker Halls grew darker and somehow faded. Grates of windows drowned in black. Every knight, every beautiful lady Knew the tiding: “The Queen’s deadly sick.” And the king, very silent and frowned, Passed the doors, lost of pages and slaves… Every word, that by chance cast around, Proved the truth of the closing grave. By the […]...
3. As At Thy Portals Also Death AS at thy portals also death, Entering thy sovereign, dim, illimitable grounds, To memories of my mother, to the divine blending, maternity, To her, buried and gone, yet buried not, gone not from me, (I see again the calm benignant face fresh and beautiful still, I sit by the form in the coffin, I kiss […]...
4. My Coffin Deeming that I was due to die I framed myself a coffin; So full of graveyard zeal was I, I set the folks a-laughing. I made it snugly to my fit, My joinering was honest; And sometimes in it I would sit, And fancy I was non est. I stored it on my cabin shelf […]...
5. Murderers He was my best and oldest friend. I’d known him all my life. And yet I’m sure towards the end He knew I loved his wife, And wonder, wonder if it’s why He came so dreadfully to die. He drove his car at racing speed And crashed into a tree. How could he have so […]...
6. Roscoe Purkapile She loved me. Oh! how she loved me! I never had a chance to escape From the day she first saw me. But then after we were married I thought She might prove her mortality and let me out, Or she might divorce me. But few die, none resign. Then I ran away and was […]...
7. Silence is in Our Festal Halls Silence is in our festal halls Sweet son of song! thy course is o’er; In vain on thee sad Erin calls, Her minstrel’s voice responds no more; All silent as the Eolian shell Sleeps at the close of some bright day, When the sweet breeze, that waked its swell At sunny morn, hath died away. […]...
8. The Harp That Once Through Tara's Halls The harp that once through Tara’s halls The soul of music shed, Now hangs as mute on Tara’s walls, As if that soul were fled. So sleeps the pride of former days, So glory’s thrill is o’er, And hearts, that once beat high for praise, Now feel that pulse no more. No more to chiefs […]...
9. To A Husband This is to the crown and blessing of my life, The much loved husband of a happy wife; To him whose constant passion found the art To win a stubborn and ungrateful heart, And to the world by tenderest proof discovers They err, who say that husbands can’t be lovers. With such return of passion, […]...
10. Mortification How soon doth man decay! When clothes are taken from a chest of sweets To swaddle infants, whose young breath Scarce knows the way; Those clouts are little winding-sheets, Which do consign and send them unto Death. When boyes go first to bed, They step into their voluntarie graves; Sleep binds them fast; onely their […]...
11. In The Moonlight “O lonely workman, standing there In a dream, why do you stare and stare At her grave, as no other grave where there?” “If your great gaunt eyes so importune Her soul by the shine of this corpse-cold moon, Maybe you’ll raise her phantom soon!” “Why, fool, it is what I would rather see Than […]...
12. The End of Love Now he is dead How should I know My true love’s arms From wind and snow? No man I meet In field or house Though in the street A hundred pass. The hurrying dust Has never a face, No longer human In man or woman. Now he is gone Why should I mourn My true […]...
13. Night Ray Most brightly of all burned the hair of my evening loved one: To her I send the coffin of lightest wood. Waves billow round it as round the bed of our dream in Rome; It wears a white wig as I do and speaks hoarsely: It talks as I do when I grant admittance to […]...
14. The Routine Things Around The House When Mother died I thought: now I’ll have a death poem. That was unforgivable. Yet I’ve since forgiven myself As sons are able to do Who’ve been loved by their mothers. I stared into the coffin Knowing how long she’d live, How many lifetimes there are In the sweet revisions of memory. It’s hard to […]...
15. My House I have a house I’ve lived in long: I can’t recall my going in. ‘Twere better bartered for a song Ere ruin, rot and rust begin. When it was fresh and fine and fair, I used it with neglect, I fear; But now I husband it with care And cherish it form year to year. […]...
16. New Year's Morning Only a night from old to new! Only a night, and so much wrought! The Old Year’s heart all weary grew, But said: The New Year rest has brought.” The Old Year’s hopes its heart laid down, As in a grave; but trusting, said: “The blossoms of the New Year’s crown Bloom from the ashes […]...
17. Farewell (II) Hill at mutual escort stop Day dusk shut wood door Spring grass next year green Prince offspring return not return We bid each other farewell beside the hill, As day meets dusk, I close the wooden gate. Next year, in spring, there will be green grass again, But will my honoured friend return?...
18. Villonaud for This Yule Towards the Noel that morte saison (Christ make the shepherds’ homage dear!) Then when the grey wolves everychone Drink of the winds their chill small-beer And lap o’ the snows food’s gueredon Then makyth my heart his yule-tide cheer (Skoal! with the dregs if the clear be gone!) Wineing the ghosts of yester-year. Ask ye […]...
19. End, Middle, Beginning There was an unwanted child. Aborted by three modern methods She hung on to the womb, Hooked onto I Building her house into it And it was to no avail, To black her out. At her birth She did not cry, Spanked indeed, But did not yell Instead snow fell out of her mouth. As […]...
20. Soldier, Maiden, and Flower “Sweetheart, take this,” a soldier said, “And bid me brave good-by; It may befall we ne’er shall wed, But love can never die. Be steadfast in thy troth to me, And then, whate’er my lot, ‘My soul to God, my heart to thee,’ Sweetheart, forget me not!” The maiden took the tiny flower And nursed […]...
21. The Firebombers We are America. We are the coffin fillers. We are the grocers of death. We pack them in crates like cauliflowers. The bomb opens like a shoebox. And the child? The child is certainly not yawning. And the woman? The woman is bathing her heart. It has been torn out of her And as a […]...
22. The Ragged Wood O hurry where by water among the trees The delicate-stepping stag and his lady sigh, When they have but looked upon their images – Would none had ever loved but you and I! Or have you heard that sliding silver-shoed Pale silver-proud queen-woman of the sky, When the sun looked out of his golden hood? […]...
23. Gone Everybody loved Chick Lorimer in our town. Far off Everybody loved her. So we all love a wild girl keeping a hold On a dream she wants. Nobody knows now where Chick Lorimer went. Nobody knows why she packed her trunk. . a few old things And is gone, Gone with her little chin Thrust […]...
24. Water I was born in a drouth year. That summer My mother waited in the house, enclosed In the sun and the dry ceaseless wind, For the men to come back in the evenings, Bringing water from a distant spring. Veins of leaves ran dry, roots shrank. And all my life I have dreaded the return […]...
25. The Three Bushes An incident from the ‘Historia mei Temporis’ Of the Abbe Michel de Bourdeille Said lady once to lover, ‘None can rely upon A love that lacks its proper food; And if your love were gone How could you sing those songs of love? I should be blamed, young man. O my dear, O my dear. […]...
26. A Man's Requirements I Love me Sweet, with all thou art, Feeling, thinking, seeing; Love me in the lightest part, Love me in full being. II Love me with thine open youth In its frank surrender; With the vowing of thy mouth, With its silence tender. III Love me with thine azure eyes, Made for earnest grantings; Taking […]...
27. Property The red-roofed house of dream design Looks three ways on the sea; For fifty years I’ve made it mine, And held it part of me. The pines I planted in my youth Triumpantly are tall. . . Yet now I know with sorry sooth I have to leave it all. Hard-hewn from out the living […]...
28. She is Far From the Land She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps, And lovers are round her, sighing; But coldly she turns from their gaze, and weeps, For her heart in his grave is lying. She sings the wild song of her dear native plains, Every note which he loved awaking; Ah! little they think, who […]...
29. My Dead Dream HAVE YOU found me, at last, O my Dream? Seven eons ago You died and I buried you deep under forests of snow. Why have you come hither? Who bade you awake from your sleep And track me beyond the cerulean foam of the deep? Would you tear from my lintels these sacred green garlands […]...
30. Fairy Tale Many times upon a time There was a man who loved a woman. Many times upon a time There was a woman who loved a man. Many times upon a time There was a man and there was a woman Who did not love the ones who loved them. Once upon a time Perhaps only […]...
31. Song of the Wise Children 1902 When the darkened Fifties dip to the North, And frost and the fog divide the air, And the day is dead at his breaking-forth, Sirs, it is bitter beneath the Bear! Far to Southward they wheel and glance, The million molten spears of morn The spears of our deliverance That shine on the house […]...
32. The Death of the Rev. Dr. Wilson ‘Twas in the year of 1888 and on the 17th of January That the late Rev. Dr. Wilson’s soul fled away; The generous-hearted Dr. had been ailing for some time, But death, with his dart, did pierce the heart of the learned divine. He was a man of open countenance and of great ability, And […]...
33. When You Are Old When you are old and grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep; How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But […]...
34. Meditation on a Bone A piece of bone, found at Trondhjem in 1901, with the following runic inscription (about A. D. 1050) cut on it: I loved her as a maiden; I will not trouble Erlend’s detestable wife; better she should be a widow. Words scored upon a bone, Scratched in despair or rage Nine hundred years have gone; […]...
35. Those Images What if I bade you leave The cavern of the mind? There’s better exercise In the sunlight and wind. I never bade you go To Moscow or to Rome. Renounce that drudgery, Call the Muses home. Seek those images That constitute the wild, The lion and the virgin, The harlot and the child. Find in […]...
36. Daughter Why is the world at peace. This may astonish you a little but when you realise how Easily Mrs. Charles Bianco sells the work of American Painters to American millionaires you will recognize that Authorities are constrained to be relieved. Let me tell you a Story. A painter loved a woman. A musician did not […]...
37. Shema You who live secure In your warm houses Who return at evening to find Hot food and friendly faces: Consider whether this is a man, Who labours in the mud Who knows no peace Who fights for a crust of bread Who dies at a yes or a no. Consider whether this is a woman, […]...
38. Sometimes with One I Love SOMETIMES with one I love, I fill myself with rage, for fear I effuse unreturn’d love; But now I think there is no unreturn’d love-the pay is certain, one way or another; (I loved a certain person ardently, and my love was not return’d; Yet out of that, I have written these songs.)...
39. My Hundred Books A thousand books my library Contains; And all are primed, it seems to me With brains. Mine are so few I scratch in thought My head; For just a hundred of the lot I’ve read. A hundred books, but of the best, I can With wisdom savour and digest And scan. Yet when afar from […]...
40. A Coffin is a small Domain A Coffin is a small Domain, Yet able to contain A Citizen of Paradise In it diminished Plane. A Grave is a restricted Breadth Yet ampler than the Sun And all the Seas He populates And Lands He looks upon To Him who on its small Repose Bestows a single Friend Circumference without Relief Or […]...