This is where I put some of my favorite poems or parts of stories that I love very much. If anyone else has anything they would like to add here it is welcome.

I already have a huge list!

Edgar Allan Poe

--

Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow

You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream;

Yet if hope has flown away

In a night, or in a day,

In a vision, or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone?

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar

Of a surf-tormented shore,

And I hold within my hand

Grains of the golden sand

How few! yet how they creep

Through my fingers to the deep,

While I weep - while I weep!

O God! can I not grasp

Them with a tighter clasp?

O God! can I not save

One from the pitiless wave?

Is all that we see or seem

But a dream within a dream?

--

The movement of the upper airs whispers coming storm.

Though the days grow longer, we yearn for winter sleep so long denied.

My sister Methys flew this day in the morning lands, soaring downward, joyful.

Aidan's song hath already loosed her melody.

Soon, Methys will shape her own song.

--

Yet my own, my beloved, doth grieve.

When his words fall silent, I hear it still.

I tell him, "Do not sorrow.

The dayfires burn and fade.

Comes the day soon when all my brothers and sisters will sing with thee.

My sisters weep for younglings lost, and so have wandered deep.

But, even so, thy giving brings them wholeness. Soon. Soon.

And Jodar and my brothers have tasted too much human blood.

But the passing seasons will sate their unholy hunger, and,

truly thier being doth move already with the teaching.

Thy songs are true, Aidan, beloved.

With every turning of the light, thy power grows."

--

He says his sorrowing is for his own kind, so lost,

so weary, in the changing of the world.

But when enough seasons pass, they too, will hear his songs and understnad.

Never in all its turning hath the world seen what my beloved will become.

--

Yet still there is more...

Ah, beloved, dost thou think I cannot see thy heart?

One alone art thou. So alone. Bound to earth. Bound to me by the ever-giving.

Thy being incomplete...

I will not see thee in such pain.

Fly, old Roelan. Set right this unbalancing...

E. E. Cummings

--

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond

any experience,your eyes have their silence:

in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,

or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me

though i have closed myself as fingers,

you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens

(touching skilfully,mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me,i and

my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,

as when the heart of this flower imagines

the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals

the power of your intense fragility: whose texture

compels me with the color of its countries,

rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes

and opens; only something in me understands

the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)

nobody,not even the rain, has such small hands

Sylvia Plath

--

As the gods began one world, and man another,

So the snakecharmer begins a snaky sphere

With moon-eye, mouth-pipe, He pipes. Pipes green. Pipes water.

Pipes water green until green waters waver

With reedy lengths and necks and undulatings.

And as his notes twine green, the green river

Shapes its images around his sons.

He pipes a place to stand on, but no rocks,

No floor: a wave of flickering grass tongues

Supports his foot. He pipes a world of snakes,

Of sways and coilings, from the snake-rooted bottom

Of his mind. And now nothing but snakes

Is visible. The snake-scales have become

Leaf, become eyelid; snake-bodies, bough, breast

Of tree and human. And he within this snakedom

Rules the writhings which make manifest

His snakehood and his might with pliant tunes

From his thin pipe. Out of this green nest

As out of Eden's navel twist the lines

Of snaky generations: let there be snakes!

And snakes there were, are, will be--till yawns

Consume this pipe and he tires of music

And pipes the world back to the simple fabric

Of snake-warp, snake-weft. Pipes the cloth of snakes

To a melting of green waters, till no snake

Shows its head, and those green waters back to

Water, to green, to nothing like a snake.

Puts up his pipe, and lids his moony eye.

Sylvia Plath

--

Haunched like a faun, he hooed

From grove of moon-glint and fen-frost

Until all owls in the twigged forest

Flapped black to look and brood

On the call this man made.

No sound but a drunken coot

Lurching home along river bank.

Stars hung water-sunk, so a rank

Of double star-eyes lit

Boughs where those owls sat.

An arena of yellow eyes

Watched the changing shape he cut,

Saw hoof harden from foot, saw sprout

Goat-horns. Marked how god rose

And galloped woodward in that guise.

Edgar Allan Poe

--

'Twas noontide of summer,

And mid-time of night;

And stars, in their orbits,

Shone pale, thro' the light

Of the brighter, cold moon,

'Mid planets her slaves,

Herself in the Heavens,

Her beam on the waves.

I gazed awhile

On her cold smile;

Too cold- too cold for me-

There pass'd, as a shroud,

A fleecy cloud,

And I turned away to thee,

Proud Evening Star,

In thy glory afar,

And dearer thy beam shall be;

For joy to my heart

Is the proud part

Thou bearest in Heaven at night,

And more I admire

Thy distant fire,

Than that colder, lowly light.

Edgar Allan Poe

--

Gaily bedight,

A gallant knight,

In sunshine and in shadow,

Had journeyed long,

Singing a song,

In search of Eldorado.

But he grew old--

This knight so bold--

And o'er his heart a shadow

Fell as he found

No spot of ground

That looked like Eldorado.

And, as his strength

Failed him at length,

He met a pilgrim shadow-

"Shadow," said he,

"Where can it be--

This land of Eldorado?"

"Over the Mountains

Of the Moon,

Down the Valley of the Shadow,

Ride, boldly ride,"

The shade replied--

"If you seek for Eldorado!"

Edgar Allan Poe

--

Type of the antique Rome! Rich reliquary

Of lofty contemplation left to Time

By buried centuries of pomp and power!

At length- at length- after so many days

Of weary pilgrimage and burning thirst,

(Thirst for the springs of lore that in thee lie,)

I kneel, an altered and an humble man,

Amid thy shadows, and so drink within

My very soul thy grandeur, gloom, and glory!

Vastness! and Age! and Memories of Eld!

Silence! and Desolation! and dim Night!

I feel ye now- I feel ye in your strength-

O spells more sure than e'er Judaean king

Taught in the gardens of Gethsemane!

O charms more potent than the rapt Chaldee

Ever drew down from out the quiet stars!

Here, where a hero fell, a column falls!

Here, where the mimic eagle glared in gold,

A midnight vigil holds the swarthy bat!

Here, where the dames of Rome their gilded hair

Waved to the wind, now wave the reed and thistle!

Here, where on golden throne the monarch lolled,

Glides, spectre-like, unto his marble home,

Lit by the wan light of the horned moon,

The swift and silent lizard of the stones!

But stay! these walls- these ivy-clad arcades-

These moldering plinths- these sad and blackened shafts-

These vague entablatures- this crumbling frieze-

These shattered cornices- this wreck- this ruin-

These stones- alas! these grey stones- are they all-

All of the famed, and the colossal left

By the corrosive Hours to Fate and me?

"Not all"- the Echoes answer me- "not all!

Prophetic sounds and loud, arise forever

From us, and from all Ruin, unto the wise,

As melody from Memnon to the Sun.

We rule the hearts of mightiest men- we rule

With a despotic sway all giant minds.

We are not impotent- we pallid stones.

Not all our power is gone- not all our fame-

Not all the magic of our high renown-

Not all the wonder that encircles us-

Not all the mysteries that in us lie-

Not all the memories that hang upon

And cling around about us as a garment,

Clothing us in a robe of more than glory."

Robert Frost

--

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost

--

Nature's first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf's a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

Robert Frost

--

I DWELL in a lonely house I know

That vanished many a summer ago,

And left no trace but the cellar walls,

And a cellar in which the daylight falls,

And the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow.

O'er ruined fences the grape-vines shield

The woods come back to the mowing field;

The orchard tree has grown one copse

Of new wood and old where the woodpecker chops;

The footpath down to the well is healed.

I dwell with a strangely aching heart

In that vanished abode there far apart

On that disused and forgotten road

That has no dust-bath now for the toad.

Night comes; the black bats tumble and dart;

The whippoorwill is coming to shout

And hush and cluck and flutter about:

I hear him begin far enough away

Full many a time to say his say

Before he arrives to say it out.

It is under the small, dim, summer star.

I know not who these mute folk are

Who share the unlit place with me--

Those stones out under the low-limbed tree

Doubtless bear names that the mosses mar.

They are tireless folk, but slow and sad,

Though two, close-keeping, are lass and lad,--

With none among them that ever sings,

And yet, in view of how many things,

As sweet companions as might be had.

Sarojini Naidu

--

CHILDREN, ye have not lived, to you it seems

Life is a lovely stalactite of dreams,

Or carnival of careless joys that leap

About your hearts like billows on the deep

In flames of amber and of amethyst.

Children, ye have not lived, ye but exist

Till some resistless hour shall rise and move

Your hearts to wake and hunger after love,

And thirst with passionate longing for the things

That burn your brows with blood-red sufferings.

Till ye have battled with great grief and fears,

And borne the conflict of dream-shattering years,

Wounded with fierce desire and worn with strife,

Children, ye have not lived: for this is life.

Shel Silverstein

--

I'll tell you the story of Cloony the Clown

Who worked in a circus that came through town.

His shoes were too big and his hat was too small,

But he just wasn't, just wasn't funny at all.

He had a trombone to play loud silly tunes,

He had a green dog and a thousand balloons.

He was floppy and sloppy and skinny and tall,

But he just wasn't, just wasn't funny at all.

And every time he did a trick,

Everyone felt a little sick.

And every time he told a joke,

Folks sighed as if their hearts were broke.

And every time he lost a shoe,

Everyone looked awfully blue.

And every time he stood on his head,

Everyone screamed, "Go back to bed!"

And every time he made a leap,

Everybody fell asleep.

And every time he ate his tie,

Everyone began to cry.

And Cloony could not make any money

Simply because he was not funny.

One day he said, "I'll tell this town

How it feels to be an unfunny clown."

And he told them all why he looked so sad,

And he told them all why he felt so bad.

He told of Pain and Rain and Cold,

He told of Darkness in his soul,

And after he finished his tale of woe,

Did everyone cry? Oh no, no, no,

They laughed until they shook the trees

With "Hah-Hah-Hahs" and "Hee-Hee-Hees."

They laughed with howls and yowls and shrieks,

They laughed all day, they laughed all week,

They laughed until they had a fit,

They laughed until their jackets split.

The laughter spread for miles around

To every city, every town,

Over mountains, 'cross the sea,

From Saint Tropez to Mun San Nee.

And soon the whole world rang with laughter,

Lasting till forever after,

While Cloony stood in the circus tent,

With his head drooped low and his shoulders bent.

And he said,"THAT IS NOT WHAT I MEANT -

I'M FUNNY JUST BY ACCIDENT."

And while the world laughed outside.

Cloony the Clown sat down and cried.

Hafiz

--

As not what sorrows for love I endure

Ask not of partiong poisons that make me impure.

I have travelled the world and in the end

Ask not what lover I willingly allure.

Longing for a vision, at her door

Ask not of the tears that I pour.

With my own ears I heard her last night

Ask not of her words, harsh yet demure.

Bite not your uppper lip and speak not

Ask not what sweet lips I may secure.

In my mendicant state without you

Ask not of my pain need for a cure.

On the paith of Love, Hafiz, lost and unsure

Ask not of his standing, high and pure.

Lord Byron

--

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.

The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars

Did wander darkling in the eternal space,

Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth

Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;

Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day,

And men forgot their passions in the dread

Of this their desolation; and all hearts

Were chilled into a selfish prayer for light;

And they did live by watchfires—and the thrones,

The palaces of crowned kings—the huts,

The habitations of all things which dwell,

Were burnt for beacons; cities were consumed,

And men were gathered round their blazing homes

To look once more into each other's face;

Happy were those which dwelt within the eye

Of the volcanoes, and their mountain-torch;

A fearful hope was all the world contained;

Forests were set on fire—but hour by hour

They fell and faded—and the crackling trunks

Extinguished with a crash—and all was black.

The brows of men by the despairing light

Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits

The flashes fell upon them: some lay down

And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest

Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smiled;

And others hurried to and fro, and fed

Their funeral piles with fuel, and looked up

With mad disquietude on the dull sky,

The pall of a past world; and then again

With curses cast them down upon the dust,

And gnashed their teeth and howled; the wild birds shrieked,

And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,

And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes

Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawled

And twined themselves among the multitude,

Hissing, but stingless—they were slain for food;

And War, which for a moment was no more,

Did glut himself again;—a meal was bought

With blood, and each sate sullenly apart

Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;

All earth was but one thought—and that was death,

Immediate and inglorious; and the pang

Of famine fed upon all entrails—men

Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;

The meagre by the meagre were devoured,

Even dogs assailed their masters, all save one,

And he was faithful to a corse, and kept

The birds and beasts and famished men at bay,

Till hunger clung them, or the drooping dead

Lured their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,

But with a piteous and perpetual moan,

And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand

Which answered not with a caress—he died.

The crowd was famished by degrees; but two

Of an enormous city did survive,

And they were enemies: they met beside

The dying embers of an altar-place

Where had been heaped a mass of holy things

For an unholy usage: they raked up,

And shivering scraped with their cold skeleton hands

The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath

Blew for a little life, and made a flame

Which was a mockery; then they lifted up

Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld

Each other's aspects—saw, and shrieked, and died—

Even of their mutual hideousness they died,

Unknowing who he was upon whose brow

Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,

The populous and the powerful was a lump,

Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless—

A lump of death—a chaos of hard clay.

The rivers, lakes, and ocean all stood still,

And nothing stirred within their silent depths;

Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,

And their masts fell down piecemeal; as they dropped

They slept on the abyss without a surge—

The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,

The Moon, their mistress, had expired before;

The winds were withered in the stagnant air,

And the clouds perished! Darkness had no need

Of aid from them—She was the Universe!

Tu Fu

--

Above the tower -- a lone, twice-sized moon.

On the cold river passing night-filled homes,

It scatters restless gold across the waves.

On mats, it shines richer than silken gauze.

Empty peaks, silence: among sparse stars,

Not yet flawed, it drifts. Pine and cinnamon

Spreading in my old garden . . . All light,

All ten thousand miles at once in its light!

Tu Fu

--

A slight rain comes, bathed in dawn light.

I hear it among treetop leaves before mist

Arrives. Soon it sprinkles the soil and,

Windblown, follows clouds away. Deepened

Colors grace thatch homes for a moment.

Flocks and herds of things wild glisten

Faintly. Then the scent of musk opens across

Half a mountain -- and lingers on past noon.

Charlotte Bronte

--

LIFE, believe, is not a dream

So dark as sages say;

Oft a little morning rain

Foretells a pleasant day.

Sometimes there are clouds of gloom,

But these are transient all;

If the shower will make the roses bloom,

O why lament its fall ?

Rapidly, merrily,

Life's sunny hours flit by,

Gratefully, cheerily,

Enjoy them as they fly !

What though Death at times steps in

And calls our Best away ?

What though sorrow seems to win,

O'er hope, a heavy sway ?

Yet hope again elastic springs,

Unconquered, though she fell;

Still buoyant are her golden wings,

Still strong to bear us well.

Manfully, fearlessly,

The day of trial bear,

For gloriously, victoriously,

Can courage quell despair !

Maya Angelou

--

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.

I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size

But when I start to tell them,

They think I'm telling lies.

I say,

It's in the reach of my arms

The span of my hips,

The stride of my step,

The curl of my lips.

I'm a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,

That's me.

I walk into a room

Just as cool as you please,

And to a man,

The fellows stand or

Fall down on their knees.

Then they swarm around me,

A hive of honey bees.

I say,

It's the fire in my eyes,

And the flash of my teeth,

The swing in my waist,

And the joy in my feet.

I'm a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,

That's me.

Men themselves have wondered

What they see in me.

They try so much

But they can't touch

My inner mystery.

When I try to show them

They say they still can't see.

I say,

It's in the arch of my back,

The sun of my smile,

The ride of my breasts,

The grace of my style.

I'm a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,

That's me.

Now you understand

Just why my head's not bowed.

I don't shout or jump about

Or have to talk real loud.

When you see me passing

It ought to make you proud.

I say,

It's in the click of my heels,

The bend of my hair,

the palm of my hand,

The need of my care,

'Cause I'm a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,

That's me.

Oscar Wilde

--

Out of the mid-wood's twilight

Into the meadow's dawn,

Ivory limbed and brown-eyed,

Flashes my Faun!

He skips through the copses singing,

And his shadow dances along,

And I know not which I should follow,

Shadow or song!

O Hunter, snare me his shadow!

O Nightingale, catch me his strain!

Else moonstruck with music and madness

I track him in vain!

Oscar Wilde

--

We caught the tread of dancing feet,

We loitered down the moonlit street,

And stopped beneath the harlot's house.

Inside, above the din and fray,

We heard the loud musicians play

The 'Treues Liebes Herz' of Strauss.

Like strange mechanical grotesques,

Making fantastic arabesques,

The shadows raced across the blind.

We watched the ghostly dancers spin

To sound of horn and violin,

Like black leaves wheeling in the wind.

Like wire-pulled automatons,

Slim silhouetted skeletons

Went sidling through the slow quadrille,

Then took each other by the hand,

And danced a stately saraband;

Their laughter echoed thin and shrill.

Sometimes a clockwork puppet pressed

A phantom lover to her breast,

Sometimes they seemed to try to sing.

Sometimes a horrible marionette

Came out, and smoked its cigarette

Upon the steps like a live thing.

Then, turning to my love, I said,

'The dead are dancing with the dead,

The dust is whirling with the dust.'

But she - she heard the violin,

And left my side, and entered in:

Love passed into the house of lust.

Then suddenly the tune went false,

The dancers wearied of the waltz,

The shadows ceased to wheel and whirl.

And down the long and silent street,

The dawn, with silver-sandalled feet,

Crept like a frightened girl.

Langston Hughes

--

Let America be America again.

Let it be the dream it used to be.

Let it be the pioneer on the plain

Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--

Let it be that great strong land of love

Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme

That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty

Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,

But opportunity is real, and life is free,

Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,

Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?

And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,

I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.

I am the red man driven from the land,

I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--

And finding only the same old stupid plan

Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,

Tangled in that ancient endless chain

Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!

Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!

Of work the men! Of take the pay!

Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.

I am the worker sold to the machine.

I am the Negro, servant to you all.

I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--

Hungry yet today despite the dream.

Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!

I am the man who never got ahead,

The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream

In the Old World while still a serf of kings,

Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,

That even yet its mighty daring sings

In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned

That's made America the land it has become.

O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas

In search of what I meant to be my home--

For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,

And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,

And torn from Black Africa's strand I came

To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?

Surely not me? The millions on relief today?

The millions shot down when we strike?

The millions who have nothing for our pay?

For all the dreams we've dreamed

And all the songs we've sung

And all the hopes we've held

And all the flags we've hung,

The millions who have nothing for our pay--

Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--

The land that never has been yet--

And yet must be--the land where every man is free.

The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--

Who made America,

Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,

Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,

Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--

The steel of freedom does not stain.

From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,

We must take back our land again,

America!

O, yes,

I say it plain,

America never was America to me,

And yet I swear this oath--

America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,

The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,

We, the people, must redeem

The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.

The mountains and the endless plain--

All, all the stretch of these great green states--

And make America again!

Langston Hughes

--

I would liken you

To a night without stars

Were it not for your eyes.

I would liken you

To a sleep without dreams

Were it not for your songs.

Langston Hughes

--

Being walkers with the dawn and morning,

Walkers with the sun and morning,

We are not afraid of night,

Nor days of gloom,

Nor darkness--

Being walkers with the sun and morning.

Pablo Neruda

--

O tower of light, sad beauty

that magnified necklaces and statues in the sea,

calcareous eye, insignia of the vast waters, cry

of the mourning petrel, tooth of the sea, wife

of the Oceanian wind, O separate rose

from the long stem of the trampled bush

that the depths, converted into archipelago,

O natural star, green diadem,

alone in your lonesome dynasty,

still unattainable, elusive, desolate

like one drop, like one grape, like the sea.

Pablo Neruda

--

An odor has remained among the sugarcane:

a mixture of blood and body, a penetrating

petal that brings nausea.

Between the coconut palms the graves are full

of ruined bones, of speechless death-rattles.

The delicate dictator is talking

with top hats, gold braid, and collars.

The tiny palace gleams like a watch

and the rapid laughs with gloves on

cross the corridors at times

and join the dead voices

and the blue mouths freshly buried.

The weeping cannot be seen, like a plant

whose seeds fall endlessly on the earth,

whose large blind leaves grow even without light.

Hatred has grown scale on scale,

blow on blow, in the ghastly water of the swamp,

with a snout full of ooze and silence

Emily Dickinson

--

A Drop Fell on the Apple Tree --

Another -- on the Roof --

A Half a Dozen kissed the Eaves --

And made the Gables laugh --

A few went out to help the Brook

That went to help the Sea --

Myself Conjectured were they Pearls --

What Necklace could be --

The Dust replaced, in Hoisted Roads --

The Birds jocoser sung --

The Sunshine threw his Hat away --

The Bushes -- spangles flung --

The Breezes brought dejected Lutes --

And bathed them in the Glee --

Then Orient showed a single Flag,

And signed the Fete away --

William Butler Yeats

--

Where dips the rocky highland

Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,

There lies a leafy island

Where flapping herons wake

The drowsy water-rats;

There we've hid our faery vats,

Full of berries

And of reddest stolen cherries.

Come away, O human child!

To the waters and the wild

With a faery, hand in hand,

For the world's more full of weeping than you

can understand.

Where the wave of moonlight glosses

The dim grey sands with light,

Far off by furthest Rosses

We foot it all the night,

Weaving olden dances,

Mingling hands and mingling glances

Till the moon has taken flight;

To and fro we leap

And chase the frothy bubbles,

While the world is full of troubles

And is anxious in its sleep.

Come away, O human child!

To the waters and the wild

With a faery, hand in hand,

For the world's more full of weeping than you

can understand.

Where the wandering water gushes

From the hills above Glen-Car,.

In pools among the rushes

That scarce could bathe a star,

We seek for slumbering trout

And whispering in their ears

Give them unquiet dreams;

Leaning softly out

From ferns that drop their tears

Over the young streams.

Come away, O human child!

To to waters and the wild

With a faery, hand in hand,

For to world's more full of weeping than you

can understand.

Away with us he's going,

The solemn-eyed:

He'll hear no more the lowing

Of the calves on the warm hillside

Or the kettle on the hob

Sing peace into his breast,

Or see the brown mice bob

Round and round the oatmeal-chest.

For be comes, the human child,

To the waters and the wild

With a faery, hand in hand,

from a world more full of weeping than you.

William Butler Yeats

--

That crazed girl improvising her music.

Her poetry, dancing upon the shore,

Her soul in division from itself

Climbing, falling She knew not where,

Hiding amid the cargo of a steamship,

Her knee-cap broken, that girl I declare

A beautiful lofty thing, or a thing

Heroically lost, heroically found.

No matter what disaster occurred

She stood in desperate music wound,

Wound, wound, and she made in her triumph

Where the bales and the baskets lay

No common intelligible sound

But sang, 'O sea-starved, hungry sea.'

William Butler Yeats

--

I have no happiness in dreaming of Brycelinde,

Nor Avalon the grass-green hollow, nor Joyous Isle,

Where one found Lancelot crazed and hid him for a while;

Nor Uladh, when Naoise had thrown a sail upon the wind;

Nor lands that seem too dim to be burdens on the heart:

Land-under-Wave, where out of the moon's light and the sun's

Seven old sisters wind the threads of the long-lived ones,

Land-of-the-Tower, where Aengus has thrown the gates apart,

And Wood-of-Wonders, where one kills an ox at dawn,

To find it when night falls laid on a golden bier.

Therein are many queens like Branwen and Guinevere;

And Niamh and Laban and Fand, who could change to an otter or fawn,

And the wood-woman, whose lover was changed to a blue-eyed hawk;

And whether I go in my dreams by woodland, or dun, or shore,

Or on the unpeopled waves with kings to pull at the oar,

I hear the harp-string praise them, or hear their mournful talk.

Because of something told under the famished horn

Of the hunter's moon, that hung between the night and the day,

To dream of women whose beauty was folded in dis may,

Even in an old story, is a burden not to be borne.

William Butler Yeats

--

Ah, that Time could touch a form

That could show what Homer's age

Bred to be a hero's wage.

'Were not all her life but storm

Would not painters paint a form

Of such noble lines,' I said,

'Such a delicate high head,

All that sternness amid charm,

All that sweetness amid strength?'

Ah, but peace that comes at length,

Came when Time had touched her form.

William Butler Yeats

--

The island dreams under the dawn

And great boughs drop tranquillity;

The peahens dance on a smooth lawn,

A parrot sways upon a tree,

Raging at his own image in the enamelled sea.

Here we will moor our lonely ship

And wander ever with woven hands,

Murmuring softly lip to lip,

Along the grass, along the sands,

Murmuring how far away are the unquiet lands:

How we alone of mortals are

Hid under quiet boughs apart,

While our love grows an Indian star,

A meteor of the burning heart,

One with the tide that gleams, the wings that gleam and dart,

The heavy boughs, the burnished dove

That moans and sighs a hundred days:

How when we die our shades will rove,

When eve has hushed the feathered ways,

With vapoury footsole by the water's drowsy blaze.

William Butler Yeats

I

Blessed be this place,

More blessed still this tower;

A bloody, arrogant power

Rose out of the race

Uttering, mastering it,

Rose like these walls from these

Storm-beaten cottages -

In mockery I have set

A powerful emblem up,

And sing it rhyme upon rhyme

In mockery of a time

Half dead at the top.

II

Alexandria's was a beacon tower, and Babylon's

An image of the moving heavens, a log-book of the sun's journey and the moon's;

And Shelley had his towers, thought's crowned powers he called them once.

I declare this tower is my symbol; I declare

This winding, gyring, spiring treadmill of a stair is my ancestral stair;

That Goldsmith and the Dean, Berkeley and Burke have travelled there.

Swift beating on his breast in sibylline frenzy blind

Because the heart in his blood-sodden breast had dragged him down into mankind,

Goldsmith deliberately sipping at the honey-pot of his mind,

And haughtier-headed Burke that proved the State a tree,

That this unconquerable labyrinth of the birds, century after century,

Cast but dead leaves to mathematical equality;

And God-appointed Berkeley that proved all things a dream,

That this pragmatical, preposterous pig of a world, its farrow that so solid seem,

Must vanish on the instant if the mind but change its theme;

Saeva Indignatio and the labourer's hire,

The strength that gives our blood and state magnanimity of its own desire;

Everything that is not God consumed with intellectual fire.

III

The purity of the unclouded moon

Has flung its atrowy shaft upon the floor.

Seven centuries have passed and it is pure,

The blood of innocence has left no stain.

There, on blood-saturated ground, have stood

Soldier, assassin, executioner.

Whether for daily pittance or in blind fear

Or out of abstract hatred, and shed blood,

But could not cast a single jet thereon.

Odour of blood on the ancestral stair!

And we that have shed none must gather there

And clamour in drunken frenzy for the moon.

IV

Upon the dusty, glittering windows cling,

And seem to cling upon the moonlit skies,

Tortoiseshell butterflies, peacock butterflies,

A couple of night-moths are on the wing.

Is every modern nation like the tower,

Half dead at the top? No matter what I said,

For wisdom is the property of the dead,

A something incompatible with life; and power,

Like everything that has the stain of blood,

A property of the living; but no stain

Can come upon the visage of the moon

When it has looked in glory from a cloud.

William Butler Yeats

--

A doll in the doll-maker's house

Looks at the cradle and bawls:

'That is an insult to us.'

But the oldest of all the dolls,

Who had seen, being kept for show,

Generations of his sort,

Out-screams the whole shelf: 'Although

There's not a man can report

Evil of this place,

The man and the woman bring

Hither, to our disgrace,

A noisy and filthy thing.'

Hearing him groan and stretch

The doll-maker's wife is aware

Her husband has heard the wretch,

And crouched by the arm of his chair,

She murmurs into his ear,

Head upon shoulder leant:

'My dear, my dear, O dear,

It was an accident.'

Kobayashi Issa

--

In this world

we walk on the roof of hell,

gazing at flowers.

John Berryman

--

Cedars and the westward sun.

The darkening sky. A man alone

Watches beside the fallen wall

The evening multitudes of sin

Crowd in upon us all.

For when the light fails they begin

Nocturnal sabotage among

The outcast and the loose of tongue,

The lax in walk, the murderers:

Our twilight universal curse.

Children are faultless in the wood,

Untouched. If they are later made

Scandal and index to their time,

It is that twilight brings for bread

The faculty of crime.

Only the idiot and the dead

Stand by, while who were young before

Wage insolent and guilty war

By night within that ancient house,

Immense, black, damned, anonymous.

Nimah Nawwab

--

When the call of the hudud,

Echoes through the palm fronds

Carrying in their mists,

Visions, memories:

Caravans of high spirited steads,

Crisscrossing the endless seas of sand,

Rushing through the oasis,

Free, yet under control.

Of women washing in the hot springs,

Sheltered in the evergreen palms,

Weaving baskets,

Cooking, sewing, scampering after the herds,

Of days filled with toil.

Visions, memories:

Cascading starlight,

Casting its mild light over campsites,

The moonlight’s silver shadow

Illuminating bearded faces,

Young boys thumping their feet

To the wild desert drum beat

‘Dana, ya dan dan’

Singing of the pearls in the far away gulf

‘Dana, ya dan dan’

The warm cardamom scented breeze

Carrying the fresh coffee aroma,

Warming, sizzling in the golden hooked pots

To the young giggling girls

Shyly peeking from behind the partitioned tent walls.

Flames flickering in the pit

Wood slowly consumed, sparks flying,

Dancing to the strain: ‘dana, ya dan dan.’

The cry of the hudud

Sweeps through the quiet morning air,

To the dawn of a new century.

Visions, memories,

Blown away by the winds of change.

* Hudud hoopoe

** Dana refers to a type of Gulf pearls, and the refrain

‘dana ya dan dan’ is a popular one used in Gulf songs.

William Butler Yeats

--

I passed along the water's edge below the humid trees,

My spirit rocked in evening light, the rushes round my knees,

My spirit rocked in sleep and sighs; and saw the moor-fowl pace

All dripping on a grassy slope, and saw them cease to chase

Each other round in circles, and heard the eldest speak:

Who holds the world between His bill and made us strong or weak

Is an undying moorfowl, and He lives beyond the sky.

The rains are from His dripping wing, the moonbeams from His eye.

I passed a little further on and heard a lotus talk:

Who made the world and ruleth it, He hangeth on a stalk,

For I am in His image made, and all this tinkling tide

Is but a sliding drop of rain between His petals wide.

A little way within the gloom a roebuck raised his eyes

Brimful of starlight, and he said: The Stamper of the Skies,

He is a gentle roebuck; for how else, I pray, could He

Conceive a thing so sad and soft, a gentle thing like me?

I passed a little further on and heard a peacock say:

Who made the grass and made the worms and made my feathers gay,

He is a monstrous peacock, and He waveth all the night

His languid tail above us, lit with myriad spots of light.

William Blake

--

The nameless shadowy female rose from out the breast of Orc,

Her snaky hair brandishing in the winds of Enitharmon;

And thus her voice arose:

'O mother Enitharmon, wilt thou bring forth other sons?

To cause my name to vanish, that my place may not be found,

For I am faint with travail,

Like the dark cloud disburden'd in the day of dismal thunder.

My roots are brandish'd in the heavens, my fruits in earth beneath

Surge, foam and labour into life, first born and first consum'd!

Consumed and consuming!

Then why shouldst thou, accursed mother, bring me into life?

I wrap my turban of thick clouds around my lab'ring head,

And fold the sheety waters as a mantle round my limbs;

Yet the red sun and moon

And all the overflowing stars rain down prolific pains.

Unwilling I look up to heaven, unwilling count the stars:

Sitting in fathomless abyss of my immortal shrine

I seize their burning power

And bring forth howling terrors, all devouring fiery kings,

Devouring and devoured, roaming on dark and desolate mountains,

In forests of eternal death, shrieking in hollow trees.

Ah mother Enitharmon!

Stamp not with solid form this vig'rous progeny of fires.

I bring forth from my teeming bosom myriads of flames,

And thou dost stamp them with a signet; then they roam abroad

And leave me void as death.

Ah! I am drown'd in shady woe and visionary joy.

And who shall bind the infinite with an eternal band?

To compass it with swaddling bands? and who shall cherish it

With milk and honey?

I see it smile, and I roll inward, and my voice is past.'

She ceased, and roll'd her shady clouds

Into the secret place.

Sidney Lanier

Written for the Art Autograph during the Irish Famine, 1880.

--

Heartsome Ireland, winsome Ireland,

Charmer of the sun and sea,

Bright beguiler of old anguish,

How could Famine frown on thee?

As our Gulf-Stream, drawn to thee-ward,

Turns him from his northward flow,

And our wintry western headlands

Send thee summer from their snow,

Thus the main and cordial current

Of our love sets over sea, --

Tender, comely, valiant Ireland,

Songful, soulful, sorrowful Ireland, --

Streaming warm to comfort thee.

Rudyard Kipling

--

1918

God rest you, peaceful gentlemen, let nothing you dismay,

But--leave your sports a little while--the dead are borne

this way!

Armies dead and Cities dead, past all count or care.

God rest you, merry gentlemen, what portent see you there?

Singing:--Break ground for a wearied host

That have no ground to keep.

Give them the rest that they covet most . . .

And who shall next to sleep, good sirs,

In such a trench to sleep?

God rest you, peaceful gentlemen, but give us leave to pass.

We go to dig a nation's grave as great as England was.

For this Kingdom and this Glory and this Power and this Pride

Three hundred years it flourished--in three hundred days it

died.

Singing:--Pour oil for a frozen throng,

That lie about the ways.

Give them the warmth they have lacked so

long . . .

And what shall be next to blaze, good sirs,

On such a pyre to blaze?

God rest you, thoughtful gentlemen, and send your sleep is light!

Remains of this dominion no shadow, sound, or sight,

Except the sound of weeping and the sight of burning fire,

And the shadow of a people that is trampled into mire.

Singing:--Break bread for a starving folk

That perish in the field.

Give them their food as they take the yoke . . .

And who shall be next to yield, good sirs,

For such a bribe to yield?

God rest you merry gentlemen, and keep you in your mirth!

Was ever Kingdom turned so soon to ashes, blood and earth?

'Twixt the summer and the snow-seeding-time and frost--

Arms and victual, hope and counsel, name and country lost!

Singing:--Let down by the foot and the head--

Shovel and smooth it all !

So do we bury a Nation dead . . .

And who shall be next to fall, good sirs,

With your good help to fall?

William Vaughn Moody

--

Streets of the roaring town,

Hush for him, hus, be still!

He comes, who was stricken down

Doing the word of our will.

Hush! Let him have his state,

Give him his soldier's crown.

The grists of trade can wait

Their grinding at the mill,

But he cannot wait for his honor, now the trumpet has been blown.

Wreathe pride now for his granite brow, lay love on his breast of stone.

Toll! Let the great bells toll

Till the clashing air is dim.

Did we wrong this parted soul?

We will make it up to him.

Toll! Let him never guess

What work we set him to.

Laurel, laurel, yes;

He did waht we bade him do.

Praise, and never a whispered hint but the fight he fought was good;

Never a word that the blood on his sword was his country's own heart's-blood.

A flag for the soldier's bier

Who dies that his land may live;

O, banners, banners here,

That he doubt not nor misgive !

That he heed not from the tomb

The evil days draw near

When the nation, robed in gloom,

With its faithless past shall strive.

Let him never dream that his bullet's scream went wide of its island mark,

Home to the heart of his darling land where she stumbled and sinned in the dark.

Walter de la Mare

--

Far are the shades of Arabia,

Where the Princes ride at noon,

'Mid the verdurous vales and thickets,

Under the ghost of the moon;

And so dark is that vaulted purple

Flowers in the forest rise

And toss into blossom 'gainst the phantom stars

Pale in the noonday skies.

Sweet is the music of Arabia

In my heart, when out of dreams

I still in the thin clear mirk of dawn

Descry her gliding streams;

Hear her strange lutes on the green banks

Ring loud with the grief and delight

Of the dim-silked, dark-haired Musicians

In the brooding silence of night.

They haunt me -- her lutes and her forests;

No beauty on earth I see

But shadowed with that dream recalls

Her loveliness to me:

Still eyes look coldly upon me,

Cold voices whisper and say --

'He is crazed with the spell of far Arabia,

They have stolen his wits away.'

Charles Sorley

--

You are blind like us. Your hurt no man designed,

And no man claimed the conquest of your land.

But gropers both through fields of thought confined

We stumble and we do not understand.

You only saw your future bigly planned,

And we, the tapering paths of our own mind,

And in each others dearest ways we stand,

And hiss and hate. And the blind fight the blind.

When it is peace, then we may view again

With new won eyes each other's truer form and wonder.

Grown more loving kind and warm

We'll grasp firm hands and laugh at the old pain,

When it is peace. But until peace, the storm,

The darkness and the thunder and the rain.

William Butler Yeats

--

Now as at all times I can see in the mind's eye,

In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones

Appear and disappear in the blue depth of the sky

With all their ancient faces like rain-beaten stones,

And all their helms of Silver hovering side by side,

And all their eyes still fixed, hoping to find once more,

Being by Calvary's turbulence unsatisfied,

The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.

Sarojini Naidu

--

He

Lift up the veils that darken the delicate moon

of thy glory and grace,

Withhold not, O love, from the night

of my longing the joy of thy luminous face,

Give me a spear of the scented keora

guarding thy pinioned curls,

Or a silken thread from the fringes

that trouble the dream of thy glimmering pearls;

Faint grows my soul with thy tresses' perfume

and the song of thy anklets' caprice,

Revive me, I pray, with the magical nectar

that dwells in the flower of thy kiss.

She

How shall I yield to the voice of thy pleading,

how shall I grant thy prayer,

Or give thee a rose-red silken tassel,

a scented leaf from my hair?

Or fling in the flame of thy heart's desire the veils that cover my face,

Profane the law of my father's creed for a foe

of my father's race?

Thy kinsmen have broken our sacred altars and slaughtered our sacred kine,

The feud of old faiths and the blood of old battles sever thy people and mine.

He

What are the sins of my race, Beloved,

what are my people to thee?

And what are thy shrines, and kine and kindred,

what are thy gods to me?

Love recks not of feuds and bitter follies,

of stranger, comrade or kin,

Alike in his ear sound the temple bells

and the cry of the muezzin.

For Love shall cancel the ancient wrong

and conquer the ancient rage,

Redeem with his tears the memoried sorrow

that sullied a bygone age.

Edgar Allan Poe

--

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door -

Only this, and nothing more."

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,

And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.

Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow

From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore -

For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore -

Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain

Thrilled me - filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;

So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,

"'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door -

Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; -

This it is, and nothing more."

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,

"Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;

But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,

And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,

That I scarce was sure I heard you"- here I opened wide the door; -

Darkness there, and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,

Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before;

But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,

And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore?"

This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!" -

Merely this, and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,

Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.

"Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice:

Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore -

Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; -

'Tis the wind and nothing more."

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,

In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore;

Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;

But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door -

Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door -

Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,

By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore.

"Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven,

Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore -

Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!"

Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,

Though its answer little meaning- little relevancy bore;

For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being

Ever yet was blest with seeing bird above his chamber door -

Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,

With such name as "Nevermore."

But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only

That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.

Nothing further then he uttered- not a feather then he fluttered -

Till I scarcely more than muttered, "other friends have flown before -

On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before."

Then the bird said, "Nevermore."

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,

"Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store,

Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster

Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore -

Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore

Of 'Never - nevermore'."

But the Raven still beguiling all my fancy into smiling,

Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;

Then upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking

Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore -

What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt and ominous bird of yore

Meant in croaking "Nevermore."

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing

To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;

This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining

On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamplight gloated o'er,

But whose velvet violet lining with the lamplight gloating o'er,

She shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then methought the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer

Swung by Seraphim whose footfalls tinkled on the tufted floor.

"Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee - by these angels he hath sent thee

Respite - respite and nepenthe, from thy memories of Lenore:

Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!"

Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil! -

Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,

Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted -

On this home by horror haunted- tell me truly, I implore -

Is there - is there balm in Gilead? - tell me - tell me, I implore!"

Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil - prophet still, if bird or devil!

By that Heaven that bends above us - by that God we both adore -

Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,

It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore -

Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore."

Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

"Be that word our sign in parting, bird or fiend," I shrieked, upstarting -

"Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!

Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!

Leave my loneliness unbroken!- quit the bust above my door!

Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!"

Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting

On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;

And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,

And the lamplight o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;

And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor

Shall be lifted - nevermore!

Edgar Allan Poe

--

Lo! Death has reared himself a throne

In a strange city lying alone

Far down within the dim West,

Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best

Have gone to their eternal rest.

There shrines and palaces and towers

(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)

Resemble nothing that is ours.

Around, by lifting winds forgot,

Resignedly beneath the sky

The melancholy waters lie.

No rays from the holy heaven come down

On the long night-time of that town;

But light from out the lurid sea

Streams up the turrets silently—

Gleams up the pinnacles far and free—

Up domes—up spires—up kingly halls—

Up fanes—up Babylon-like walls—

Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers

Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers—

Up many and many a marvellous shrine

Whose wreathed friezes intertwine

The viol, the violet, and the vine.

Resignedly beneath the sky

The melancholy waters lie.

So blend the turrets and shadows there

That all seem pendulous in air,

While from a proud tower in the town

Death looks gigantically down.

There open fanes and gaping graves

Yawn level with the luminous waves;

But not the riches there that lie

In each idol's diamond eye—

Not the gaily-jewelled dead

Tempt the waters from their bed;

For no ripples curl, alas!

Along that wilderness of glass—

No swellings tell that winds may be

Upon some far-off happier sea—

No heavings hint that winds have been

On seas less hideously serene.

But lo, a stir is in the air!

The wave—there is a movement there!

As if the towers had thrust aside,

In slightly sinking, the dull tide—

As if their tops had feebly given

A void within the filmy Heaven.

The waves have now a redder glow—

The hours are breathing faint and low—

And when, amid no earthly moans,

Down, down that town shall settle hence,

Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,

Shall do it reverence.

Sarojini Naidu

--

WEAVERS, weaving at break of day,

Why do you weave a garment so gay? . . .

Blue as the wing of a halcyon wild,

We weave the robes of a new-born child.

Weavers, weaving at fall of night,

Why do you weave a garment so bright? . . .

Like the plumes of a peacock, purple and green,

We weave the marriage-veils of a queen.

Weavers, weaving solemn and still,

What do you weave in the moonlight chill? . . .

White as a feather and white as a cloud,

We weave a dead man's funeral shroud.

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