Famous Long Moving On Poems

Famous Long Moving On Poems. Long Moving On Poetry by Famous Poets. A collection of the all-time best Moving On long poems

See also: Long Member Poems

 I 

The other night I had a dream, most clear 
And comforting, complete
In every line, a crystal sphere,
And full of intimate and secret cheer. 
Therefore I will repeat
That vision, dearest heart, to you,
As of a thing not feigned, but very true,
Yes, true as ever in my life befell;
And you, perhaps, can tell
Whether my dream was really sad or sweet. 


II 

The shadows flecked the elm-embowered street 
I knew so well, long, long ago;
And on the pillared porch where Marguerite 
Had sat with me, the moonlight lay like snow. 
But she, my comrade and my friend of youth, 
Most gaily wise,
Most innocently loved, --
She of the blue-grey eyes
That ever smiled and ever spoke the truth, --
From that familiar dwelling, where she moved 
Like mirth incarnate in the years before,
Had gone into the hidden house of Death.
I thought the garden wore
White mourning for her blessed innocence, 
And the syringa's breath
Came from the corner by the fence,
Where she had made her rustic seat,
With fragrance passionate, intense,
As if it breathed a sigh for Marguerite.
My heart was heavy with a sense
Of something good forever gone. I sought 
Vainly for some consoling thought,
Some comfortable word that I could say
To the sad father, whom I visited...
Read the rest of this poem...

 OLD FITZ, who from your suburb grange,
Where once I tarried for a while,
Glance at the wheeling orb of change,
And greet it with a kindly smile;
Whom yet I see as there you sit
Beneath your sheltering garden-tree,
And watch your doves about you flit,
And plant on shoulder, hand, and knee,
Or on your head their rosy feet,
As if they knew your diet spares
Whatever moved in that full sheet
Let down to Peter at his prayers;
Who live on milk and meal and grass;
And once for ten long weeks I tried
Your table of Pythagoras,
- And seem'd at first "a thing enskied,"
As Shakespeare has it, airy-light
To float above the ways of men,
Then fell from that half-spiritual height
Chill'd, till I tasted flesh again
One night when earth was winter-b]ack,
And all the heavens flash'd in frost;
And on me, half-asleep, came back
That wholesome heat the blood had lost,
And set me climbing icy capes
And glaciers, over which there roll'd
To meet me long-arm'd vines with grapes
Of Eshcol hugeness- for the cold
Without, and warmth within me, wrought
To mould the dream; but none can say
That Lenten fare makes Lenten thought
Who reads your golden Eastern lay,
Than which I know no version done
In English more divinely well;
A planet equal to the sun
Which cast it, that large infidel
Your...
Read the rest of this poem...

 THE SIMPLE Bard, rough at the rustic plough,
Learning his tuneful trade from ev’ry bough;
The chanting linnet, or the mellow thrush,
Hailing the setting sun, sweet, in the green thorn bush;
The soaring lark, the perching red-breast shrill,
Or deep-ton’d plovers grey, wild-whistling o’er the hill;
Shall he—nurst in the peasant’s lowly shed,
To hardy independence bravely bred,
By early poverty to hardship steel’d.
And train’d to arms in stern Misfortune’s field—
Shall he be guilty of their hireling crimes,
The servile, mercenary Swiss of rhymes?
Or labour hard the panegyric close,
With all the venal soul of dedicating prose?
No! though his artless strains he rudely sings,
And throws his hand uncouthly o’er the strings,
He glows with all the spirit of the Bard,
Fame, honest fame, his great, his dear reward.
Still, if some patron’s gen’rous care he trace,
Skill’d in the secret, to bestow with grace;
When Ballantine befriends his humble name,
And hands the rustic stranger up to fame,
With heartfelt throes his grateful bosom swells,
The godlike bliss, to give, alone excels.


—————— ’Twas when the stacks get on their winter hap,
And thack and rape secure the toil-won crap;
Potatoe-bings are snuggèd up frae skaith
O’ coming Winter’s biting, frosty breath;
The bees, rejoicing o’er their summer toils,
Unnumber’d buds an’ flow’rs’ delicious spoils,
Seal’d up with frugal care in massive waxen...
Read the rest of this poem...

 'The mist is resting on the hill;
The smoke is hanging in the air;
The very clouds are standing still:
A breathless calm broods everywhere.
Thou pilgrim through this vale of tears,
Thou, too, a little moment cease
Thy anxious toil and fluttering fears,
And rest thee, for a while, in peace.' 

'I would, but Time keeps working still
And moving on for good or ill:
He will not rest or stay.
In pain or ease, in smiles or tears,
He still keeps adding to my years
And stealing life away.
His footsteps in the ceaseless sound
Of yonder clock I seem to hear,
That through this stillness so profound
Distinctly strikes the vacant ear.
For ever striding on and on,
He pauses not by night or day;
And all my life will soon be gone
As these past years have slipped away.
He took my childhood long ago,
And then my early youth; and lo,
He steals away my prime!
I cannot see how fast it goes,
But well my inward spirit knows
The wasting power of time.' 

'Time steals thy moments, drinks thy breath,
Changes and wastes thy mortal frame;
But though he gives the clay to death,
He cannot touch the inward flame.
Nay, though he steals thy years away,
Their memory is left thee still,
And every month and every day
Leaves some effect of good or ill.
The...
Read the rest of this poem...

 PART I

It is an hour before the hour of dawn.
Set in mine hand my staff and leave me here
Outside the hollow house that blind men fear,
More blind than I who live on life withdrawn
And feel on eyes that see not but foresee
The shadow of death which clothes Antigone.

Here lay her living body that here lies
Dead, if man living know what thing is death,
If life be all made up of blood and breath,
And no sense be save as of ears and eyes.
But heart there is not, tongue there is not found,
To think or sing what verge hath life or bound.

In the beginning when the powers that made
The young child man a little loved him, seeing
His joy of life and fair face of his being,
And bland and laughing with the man-child played,
As friends they saw on our divine one day
King Cadmus take to queen Harmonia.

The strength of soul that builds up as with hands
Walls spiritual and towers and towns of thought
Which only fate, not force, can bring to nought,
Took then to wife the light of all men's lands,
War's child and love's, most sweet and wise and strong,
Order of things and rule and guiding song.

It was long since: yea, even the sun...
Read the rest of this poem...

 At break of day the College Portress came: 
She brought us Academic silks, in hue 
The lilac, with a silken hood to each, 
And zoned with gold; and now when these were on, 
And we as rich as moths from dusk cocoons, 
She, curtseying her obeisance, let us know 
The Princess Ida waited: out we paced, 
I first, and following through the porch that sang 
All round with laurel, issued in a court 
Compact of lucid marbles, bossed with lengths 
Of classic frieze, with ample awnings gay 
Betwixt the pillars, and with great urns of flowers. 
The Muses and the Graces, grouped in threes, 
Enringed a billowing fountain in the midst; 
And here and there on lattice edges lay 
Or book or lute; but hastily we past, 
And up a flight of stairs into the hall. 

There at a board by tome and paper sat, 
With two tame leopards couched beside her throne, 
All beauty compassed in a female form, 
The Princess; liker to the inhabitant 
Of some clear planet close upon the Sun, 
Than our man's earth; such eyes were in her head, 
And so much grace and power, breathing down 
From over her arched brows, with every...
Read the rest of this poem...

 From noiseful arms, and acts of prowess done 
In tournament or tilt, Sir Percivale, 
Whom Arthur and his knighthood called The Pure, 
Had passed into the silent life of prayer, 
Praise, fast, and alms; and leaving for the cowl 
The helmet in an abbey far away 
From Camelot, there, and not long after, died. 

And one, a fellow-monk among the rest, 
Ambrosius, loved him much beyond the rest, 
And honoured him, and wrought into his heart 
A way by love that wakened love within, 
To answer that which came: and as they sat 
Beneath a world-old yew-tree, darkening half 
The cloisters, on a gustful April morn 
That puffed the swaying branches into smoke 
Above them, ere the summer when he died 
The monk Ambrosius questioned Percivale: 

`O brother, I have seen this yew-tree smoke, 
Spring after spring, for half a hundred years: 
For never have I known the world without, 
Nor ever strayed beyond the pale: but thee, 
When first thou camest--such a courtesy 
Spake through the limbs and in the voice--I knew 
For one of those who eat in Arthur's hall; 
For good ye are and bad, and like to coins, 
Some true, some light, but every one...
Read the rest of this poem...