10 Best Famous Beckoning Poems

Here is a collection of the top 10 all-time best famous Beckoning poems. This is a select list of the best famous Beckoning poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Beckoning poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of beckoning poems.

• All Famous Beckoning Poems

When you come to me, unbidden,
Beckoning me
To long-ago rooms,
Where memories lie.

Offering me, as to a child, an attic,
Gatherings of days too few.
Baubles of stolen kisses.
Trinkets of borrowed loves.
Trunks of secret words,

I cry.

I
ICICLES fall from trees, molten with age, 
without memory - they stand aloof in their 
nakedness - they limber; 
like the gods terrified into silence, 
like tall brooding deities looming out of the 
fog: 

The forest hugs them 
carves them into stones, 
Etches them into the slow 
eastern landscape: rivers, hills 
the slow running water, 
times broken inscapes…

The willows are burdened with ice 
the white shrouds of burial spread 
upon the earth's ravaged face; the eyes 
unseeing, the mouth unspeaking, 
a gust of wind proclaims the anger of 
immemorial ages; the cycle, the 
eternal ritual of mystical returns - 

The cypress - whitening -
boneless; wearing her best habit, 
a pale green in the forest of ghosts -

And so I walk through this windless night 
through the narrow imponderable road 
through the silence - the silence of trees -

I hear not even the gust of wind
I hear only the quiet earth, thawing underneath; 
I hear the slow silent death of winter -

where the sun is yellowest. 
But above, Monadnock looms 
like some angry Moloch, her 
white nipple seizing the space

drained of all milk... 

A she-devil beckoning to worshippers 
seductive - her arm stretching outwards -
to this lonely pilgrim
lost in the mist: 

Behold the school of wild bucks 
Behold the meeting of incarnate 
spirits -
Behold the lost souls bearing tapers 
in rags of rich damask, 
Down Thomas - the saint of 
unbelievers - down the road to bliss 
Down to the red house, uncertain 
like a beggar's bowl hanging unto the cliff 
of withdrawn pledges, where the well is 
deepest... 

I have dared to live 
beneath the great untamed. 

To every good, to every 
flicker of stars along the pine 
shadows; 
To every tussle with lucid dusk, 
To every moonlit pledge, to 
every turn made to outleap 
silvery pollen, 

I have desired to listen - to listen -
to the ripening of seasons.... 

Winter 2001
This is ONE of a continuing sequence.  

 1
A SONG of the good green grass! 
A song no more of the city streets; 
A song of farms—a song of the soil of fields. 

A song with the smell of sun-dried hay, where the nimble pitchers handle the pitch-fork; 
A song tasting of new wheat, and of fresh-husk’d maize.

2
For the lands, and for these passionate days, and for myself, 
Now I awhile return to thee, O soil of Autumn fields, 
Reclining on thy breast, giving myself to thee, 
Answering the pulses of thy sane and equable heart, 
Tuning a verse for thee.

O Earth, that hast no voice, confide to me a voice! 
O harvest of my lands! O boundless summer growths! 
O lavish, brown, parturient earth! O infinite, teeming womb! 
A verse to seek, to see, to narrate thee. 

3
Ever upon this stage,
Is acted God’s calm, annual drama, 
Gorgeous processions, songs of birds, 
Sunrise, that fullest feeds and freshens most the soul, 
The heaving sea, the waves upon the shore, the musical, strong waves, 
The woods, the stalwart trees, the slender, tapering trees,
The flowers, the grass, the lilliput, countless armies of the grass, 
The heat, the showers, the measureless pasturages, 
The scenery of the snows, the winds’ free orchestra, 
The stretching, light-hung roof of clouds—the clear cerulean, and the bulging,
 silvery
 fringes, 
The high dilating stars, the placid, beckoning stars,
The moving flocks and herds, the plains and emerald meadows, 
The shows of all the varied lands, and all the growths and products. 

4
Fecund America! To-day, 
Thou art all over set in births and joys! 
Thou groan’st with riches! thy wealth clothes thee as with a swathing garment!
Thou laughest loud with ache of great possessions! 
A myriad-twining life, like interlacing vines, binds all thy vast demesne! 
As some huge ship, freighted to water’s edge, thou ridest into port! 
As rain falls from the heaven, and vapors rise from earth, so have the precious values
 fallen
 upon thee, and risen out of thee! 
Thou envy of the globe! thou miracle!
Thou, bathed, choked, swimming in plenty! 
Thou lucky Mistress of the tranquil barns! 
Thou Prairie Dame that sittest in the middle, and lookest out upon thy world, and lookest
 East,
 and lookest West! 
Dispensatress, that by a word givest a thousand miles—that giv’st a million
 farms,
 and missest nothing! 
Thou All-Acceptress—thou Hospitable—(thou only art hospitable, as God is
 hospitable.)

5
When late I sang, sad was my voice; 
Sad were the shows around me, with deafening noises of hatred, and smoke of conflict; 
In the midst of the armies, the Heroes, I stood, 
Or pass’d with slow step through the wounded and dying. 

But now I sing not War,
Nor the measur’d march of soldiers, nor the tents of camps, 
Nor the regiments hastily coming up, deploying in line of battle. 

No more the dead and wounded; 
No more the sad, unnatural shows of War. 

Ask’d room those flush’d immortal ranks? the first forth-stepping armies?
Ask room, alas, the ghastly ranks—the armies dread that follow’d. 

6
(Pass—pass, ye proud brigades! 
So handsome, dress’d in blue—with your tramping, sinewy legs; 
With your shoulders young and strong—with your knapsacks and your muskets; 
—How elate I stood and watch’d you, where, starting off, you march’d!

Pass;—then rattle, drums, again! 
Scream, you steamers on the river, out of whistles loud and shrill, your salutes! 
For an army heaves in sight—O another gathering army! 
Swarming, trailing on the rear—O you dread, accruing army! 
O you regiments so piteous, with your mortal diarrhoea! with your fever!
O my land’s maimed darlings! with the plenteous bloody bandage and the crutch! 
Lo! your pallid army follow’d!) 

7
But on these days of brightness, 
On the far-stretching beauteous landscape, the roads and lanes, the high-piled
 farm-wagons, and
 the fruits and barns, 
Shall the dead intrude?

Ah, the dead to me mar not—they fit well in Nature; 
They fit very well in the landscape, under the trees and grass, 
And along the edge of the sky, in the horizon’s far margin. 

Nor do I forget you, departed; 
Nor in winter or summer, my lost ones;
But most, in the open air, as now, when my soul is rapt and at peace—like pleasing
 phantoms, 
Your dear memories, rising, glide silently by me. 

8
I saw the day, the return of the Heroes; 
(Yet the Heroes never surpass’d, shall never return; 
Them, that day, I saw not.)

I saw the interminable Corps—I saw the processions of armies, 
I saw them approaching, defiling by, with divisions, 
Streaming northward, their work done, camping awhile in clusters of mighty camps. 

No holiday soldiers!—youthful, yet veterans; 
Worn, swart, handsome, strong, of the stock of homestead and workshop,
Harden’d of many a long campaign and sweaty march, 
Inured on many a hard-fought, bloody field. 

9
A pause—the armies wait; 
A million flush’d, embattled conquerors wait; 
The world, too, waits—then, soft as breaking night, and sure as dawn,
They melt—they disappear. 

Exult, indeed, O lands! victorious lands! 
Not there your victory, on those red, shuddering fields; 
But here and hence your victory. 

Melt, melt away, ye armies! disperse, ye blue-clad soldiers!
Resolve ye back again—give up, for good, your deadly arms; 
Other the arms, the fields henceforth for you, or South or North, or East or West, 
With saner wars—sweet wars—life-giving wars. 

10
Loud, O my throat, and clear, O soul! 
The season of thanks, and the voice of full-yielding;
The chant of joy and power for boundless fertility. 

All till’d and untill’d fields expand before me; 
I see the true arenas of my race—or first, or last, 
Man’s innocent and strong arenas. 

I see the Heroes at other toils;
I see, well-wielded in their hands, the better weapons. 

11
I see where America, Mother of All, 
Well-pleased, with full-spanning eye, gazes forth, dwells long, 
And counts the varied gathering of the products. 

Busy the far, the sunlit panorama;
Prairie, orchard, and yellow grain of the North, 
Cotton and rice of the South, and Louisianian cane; 
Open, unseeded fallows, rich fields of clover and timothy, 
Kine and horses feeding, and droves of sheep and swine, 
And many a stately river flowing, and many a jocund brook,
And healthy uplands with their herby-perfumed breezes, 
And the good green grass—that delicate miracle, the ever-recurring grass. 

12
Toil on, Heroes! harvest the products! 
Not alone on those warlike fields, the Mother of All, 
With dilated form and lambent eyes, watch’d you.

Toil on, Heroes! toil well! Handle the weapons well! 
The Mother of All—yet here, as ever, she watches you. 

Well-pleased, America, thou beholdest, 
Over the fields of the West, those crawling monsters, 
The human-divine inventions, the labor-saving implements:
Beholdest, moving in every direction, imbued as with life, the revolving hay-rakes, 
The steam-power reaping-machines, and the horse-power machines, 
The engines, thrashers of grain, and cleaners of grain, well separating the straw—the
 nimble work of the patent pitch-fork; 
Beholdest the newer saw-mill, the southern cotton-gin, and the rice-cleanser. 

Beneath thy look, O Maternal,
With these, and else, and with their own strong hands, the Heroes harvest. 

All gather, and all harvest; 
(Yet but for thee, O Powerful! not a scythe might swing, as now, in security; 
Not a maize-stalk dangle, as now, its silken tassels in peace.) 

13
Under Thee only they harvest—even but a wisp of hay, under thy great face, only;
Harvest the wheat of Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin—every barbed spear, under thee; 
Harvest the maize of Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee—each ear in its light-green
 sheath, 
Gather the hay to its myriad mows, in the odorous, tranquil barns, 
Oats to their bins—the white potato, the buckwheat of Michigan, to theirs; 
Gather the cotton in Mississippi or Alabama—dig and hoard the golden, the sweet
 potato of
 Georgia and the Carolinas,
Clip the wool of California or Pennsylvania, 
Cut the flax in the Middle States, or hemp, or tobacco in the Borders, 
Pick the pea and the bean, or pull apples from the trees, or bunches of grapes from the
 vines, 
Or aught that ripens in all These States, or North or South, 
Under the beaming sun, and under Thee.

 Do you give yourself to me utterly,

Body and no-body, flesh and no-flesh

Not as a fugitive, blindly or bitterly, 

But as a child might, with no other wish?

Yes, utterly.



Then I shall bear you down my estuary,

Carry you and ferry you to burial mysteriously,

Take you and receive you,

Consume you, engulf you,

In the huge cave, my belly, lave you

With huger waves continually.

And you shall cling and clamber there

And slumber there, in that dumb chamber,

Beat with my blood's beat, hear my heart move

Blindly in bones that ride above you,

Delve in my flesh, dissolved and bedded,

Through viewless valves embodied so –



Till daylight, the expulsion and awakening,

The riving and the driving forth,

Life with remorseless forceps beckoning –

Pangs and betrayal of harsh birth.

 I


Eddie Linden

Dear Eddie we’ve not met

Except upon the written page 

And at your age the wonder 

Is that you write at all

When so many have gone under 

Or been split asunder by narcissistic humours

Blunder following blunder

Barker and Graham, godfathering my verse

Bearing me cloud-handed to Haworth moor

From my chained metropolitan moorings,

O hyaline March morning with Leeds

At its thrusting best, the thirsty beasts

Of night quenched as the furnaces

Of Hunslet where Hudswell Clarke’s locos

Rust in their skeletal sheds, rails skewed

To graveyards platforms and now instead

Skyscrapers circle the city, cranes, aeroplanes,

Electric trains but even they cannot hinder

Branches bursting with semen

Seraphic cloud sanctuaries shunting

Us homeward to the beckoning moors.

II

Brenda Williams

Leeds voices soothe the turbulence

‘Ey’ ‘sithee’ and ‘love’, lastingly lilt

From cradle to grave, from backstreet

On the social, our son, beat his way

To Eton, Balliol, to Calcatta’s Shantiniketan

And all the way back to a locked ward.

While I in the meantime fondly fiddled 

With rhyme and unreason, publishing pamphlets

And Leeds Poetry Weekly while under the bane

Of his tragic illness, poet and mother,

You were driven from pillar to post

By the taunting yobbery of your family

And the crass insensitivity of wild therapy

To the smoking dark of despair,

Locked in your flat in the Abbey Road

With seven cats and poetry.

O stop and strop your bladed darkness

On the rock of ages while plangent tollings

Mock your cradled rockings, knock by knock.



III

Debjani Chatterjee

In these doom-laden days

You are steady as a pilot nursing tired ships homeward

Through churning seas

Where grey gulls scream

Forlornly and for ever.

I am the red-neck,

Bear-headed blaster

Shifting sheer rock

To rape the ore of poetry’s plunder

Or bulldozing trees to glean mines of silver

While you sail serenely onward 

Ever the diplomat’s daughter

Toujours de la politesse.

IV

Daisy Abey

Daisy, dearest of all, safest

And kindest, watcher and warner

Of chaotic corners looming

Round poetry’s boomerang bends

I owe you most a letter

While you are here beside me

Patient as a miller waiting on wind

To drive the great sails

Through summer. 

When the muse takes over

I am snatched from order and duty

Blowing routine into a riot of going

And coming, blind, backwards, tip

Over ****, sea waves crashing in suburbia,

Saturnalia in Sutton, headlines of mad poet

Striding naked over moors, roaring

"I am here I am waiting".

V

Jeremy Reed

Niagaras of letters on pink sheets

In sheaths of silver envelopes

Mutually exchanged. I open your missives

Like undressing a girl in my teens

Undoing the flap like a recalcitrant

Bra strap, the letters stiff as nipples

While I stroke the creviced folds

Of amber and mauve and lick

As I stick stamps like the ********

Of a reluctant virgin, urgent for

Defloration and the pulse of ******.

 Here is a silence I had not hoped for

This side of paradise, I am an old believer

In nature’s bounty as God’s grace

To us poor mortals, fretting and fuming

At frustrated lust or the scent of fame 

Coming too late to make a difference

Blue with white vertebrae of cloud forms

Riming the spectrum of green dark of poplars

Lined like soldiers, paler the hue of hawthorn 

With the heather beginning to bud blue

Before September purple, yellow ragwort

Sways in the wind as distantly a plane hums

And a lazy bee bumbles by.

A day in Brenda’s flat, mostly play with Eydie,

My favourite of her seven cats, they soothe better

Than Diazepan for panic

Seroxat for grief

Zopiclone to make me sleep.

I smoke my pipe and sip blackcurrant tea

Aware of the ticking clock: I have to be back

To talk to my son’s key nurse when she comes on

For the night shift. Always there are things to sort,

Misapprehensions to untangle, delusions to decipher,

Lies to expose, statistics to disclose, Trust Boards

And team meetings to attend, ‘Mental Health Monthly’

To peruse, funds for my press to raise – the only one 

I ever got will leave me out of pocket.

A couple sat on the next bench

Are earnestly discussing child custody, broken marriages,

Failed affairs, social service interventions – 

Even here I cannot escape complexity

"I should never have slept with her once we split" 

"The kids are what matters when it comes to the bottom line"

"Is he poisoning their minds against me?" 


Part of me nags to offer help but I’ve too much

On already and the clock keeps ticking.

"It’s a pity she won’t turn round and clip his ear"

But better not to interfere. Damn my bloody superego

Nattering like an old woman or Daisy nagging 

About my pipe and my loud voice on buses –

No doubt she’s right – smoking’s not good 

And hearing about psychosis, medication and end-on-sections

Isn’t what people are on buses for.



I long for a girl in summer, pubescent

With a twinkle in her eye to come and say

"Come on, let’s do it!" 

I was always shy in adolescence, too busy reading Baudelaire

To find a decent whore and learn to score

And now I’m probably impotent with depression

So I’d better forget sex and read more of Andr? Green

On metaphor from Hegel to Lacan and how the colloquium

At Bonneval changed analytic history, a mystery

I’ll not unravel if I live to ninety.

Ignorance isn’t bliss, I know enough to talk the piss

From jumped-up SHO’s and locums who’d miss vital side effects

And think all’s needed is a mother’s kiss.



I’ll wait till the heather’s purple and bring nail scissors

To cut and suture neatly and renew my stocks

Of moor momentoes vased in unsunny Surrey.

Can you believe it? Some arseholes letting off fireworks 

On the moor? Suburban excesses spread like the sores

Of syphilis and more regulations in a decade of Blair

Than in the century before.

"Shop your neighbours. Prove it. Bring birth certificates to A&E

If you want NHS treatment free. Be careful not to bleed to death

While finding the certificate. Blunkett wants us all to have ID

Photo cards, genetic codes, DNA database, eye scans, the lot – 

And kiss good-bye to the last bits of freedom we’ve got"

"At the end of the day she shopped me and all I’d done

Was take a few pound from the till ’cos Jenny was ill

And I didn’t have thirteen quid to get the bloody prescription done" 

To-morrow I’ll be back in the Great Wen,

Two days of manic catching up and then

Thistledown, wild wheat, a dozen kinds of grass,

The mass of beckoning hills I’d love to make

A poet’s map of but never will.

"Oh to break loose" Lowell’s magic lines

Entice me still but slimy Fenton had to have his will

And slate it in the NYB, arguing that panetone

Isn’t tin foil as Lowell thought. James you are a dreadful bore,

A pedantic creep like hundreds more, five A4 pages

Of sniping and nit-picking for how many greenbacks?

A thousand or two I’d guess, they couldn’t pay you less

For churning out such a king-size mess

But not even you can spoil this afternoon

Of watching Haworth heather bloom.

 THE MOUTH of this man is a gaunt strong mouth.
The head of this man is a gaunt strong head.

The jaws of this man are bone of the Rocky Mountains, the Appalachians.
The eyes of this man are chlorine of two sobbing oceans,
Foam, salt, green, wind, the changing unknown.
The neck of this man is pith of buffalo prairie, old longing and new beckoning of corn belt or cotton belt,
Either a proud Sequoia trunk of the wilderness
Or huddling lumber of a sawmill waiting to be a roof.

Brother mystery to man and mob mystery,
Brother cryptic to lifted cryptic hands,
He is night and abyss, he is white sky of sun, he is the head of the people.
The heart of him the red drops of the people,
The wish of him the steady gray-eagle crag-hunting flights of the people.

Humble dust of a wheel-worn road,
Slashed sod under the iron-shining plow,
These of service in him, these and many cities, many borders, many wrangles between Alaska and the Isthmus, between the Isthmus and the Horn, and east and west of Omaha, and east and west of Paris, Berlin, Petrograd.
The blood in his right wrist and the blood in his left wrist run with the right wrist wisdom of the many and the left wrist wisdom of the many.
It is the many he knows, the gaunt strong hunger of the many.

Strong Son of God, immortal Love,
   Whom we, that have not seen thy face,
   By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove;
 
Thine are these orbs of light and shade;
   Thou madest Life in man and brute;
   Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot
Is on the skull which thou hast made.
 
Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:
Thou madest man, he knows not why,
He thinks he was not made to die;
And thou hast made him: thou art just.
 
Thou seemest human and divine,
   The highest, holiest manhood, thou.
   Our wills are ours, we know not how;
Our wills are ours, to make them thine.
 
Our little systems have their day;
   They have their day and cease to be:
   They are but broken lights of thee,
And thou, O Lord, art more than they.
 
We have but faith: we cannot know;
   For knowledge is of things we see
   And yet we trust it comes from thee,
A beam in darkness: let it grow.
 
Let knowledge grow from more to more,
   But more of reverence in us dwell;
   That mind and soul, according well,
May make one music as before,
 
But vaster. We are fools and slight;
   We mock thee when we do not fear:
   But help thy foolish ones to bear;
Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light.
 
Forgive what seem'd my sin in me;
   What seem'd my worth since I began;
   For merit lives from man to man,
And not from man, O Lord, to thee.
 
Forgive my grief for one removed,
   Thy creature, whom I found so fair.
   I trust he lives in thee, and there
I find him worthier to be loved.
 
Forgive these wild and wandering cries,
   Confusions of a wasted youth;
   Forgive them where they fail in truth,
And in thy wisdom make me wise.
 
I
I held it truth, with him who sings
   To one clear harp in divers tones,
   That men may rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves to higher things.
 
But who shall so forecast the years
   And find in loss a gain to match?
   Or reach a hand thro' time to catch
The far-off interest of tears?
 
Let Love clasp Grief lest both be drown'd,
   Let darkness keep her raven gloss:
   Ah, sweeter to be drunk with loss,
To dance with death, to beat the ground,
 
Than that the victor Hours should scorn
   The long result of love, and boast,
   `Behold the man that loved and lost,
But all he was is overworn.'
 
II
Old Yew, which graspest at the stones
   That name the under-lying dead,
   Thy fibres net the dreamless head,
Thy roots are wrapt about the bones.
 
The seasons bring the flower again,
   And bring the firstling to the flock;
   And in the dusk of thee, the clock
Beats out the little lives of men.
 
O, not for thee the glow, the bloom,
   Who changest not in any gale,
   Nor branding summer suns avail
To touch thy thousand years of gloom:
 
And gazing on thee, sullen tree,
   Sick for thy stubborn hardihood,
   I seem to fail from out my blood
And grow incorporate into thee.
 
III
O Sorrow, cruel fellowship,
   O Priestess in the vaults of Death,
   O sweet and bitter in a breath,
What whispers from thy lying lip?
 
'The stars,' she whispers, `blindly run;
   A web is wov'n across the sky;
   From out waste places comes a cry,
And murmurs from the dying sun:
 
'And all the phantom, Nature, stands—
   With all the music in her tone,
   A hollow echo of my own,—
A hollow form with empty hands.'
 
And shall I take a thing so blind,
   Embrace her as my natural good;
   Or crush her, like a vice of blood,
Upon the threshold of the mind?
 
IV
To Sleep I give my powers away;
   My will is bondsman to the dark;
   I sit within a helmless bark,
And with my heart I muse and say:
 
O heart, how fares it with thee now,
   That thou should'st fail from thy desire,
   Who scarcely darest to inquire,
'What is it makes me beat so low?'
 
Something it is which thou hast lost,
   Some pleasure from thine early years.
   Break, thou deep vase of chilling tears,
That grief hath shaken into frost!
 
Such clouds of nameless trouble cross
   All night below the darken'd eyes;
   With morning wakes the will, and cries, 
'Thou shalt not be the fool of loss.'
 
V
I sometimes hold it half a sin
   To put in words the grief I feel;
   For words, like Nature, half reveal
And half conceal the Soul within.
 
But, for the unquiet heart and brain,
   A use in measured language lies;
   The sad mechanic exercise,
Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.
 
In words, like weeds, I'll wrap me o'er,
   Like coarsest clothes against the cold:
   But that large grief which these enfold
Is given in outline and no more.
 
VI
One writes, that `Other friends remain,'
   That `Loss is common to the race'—
   And common is the commonplace,
And vacant chaff well meant for grain.
 
That loss is common would not make
   My own less bitter, rather more:
   Too common! Never morning wore
To evening, but some heart did break.
 
O father, wheresoe'er thou be,
   Who pledgest now thy gallant son;
   A shot, ere half thy draught be done,
Hath still'd the life that beat from thee.
 
O mother, praying God will save
   Thy sailor,—while thy head is bow'd,
   His heavy-shotted hammock-shroud
Drops in his vast and wandering grave.
 
Ye know no more than I who wrought
   At that last hour to please him well;
   Who mused on all I had to tell,
And something written, something thought;
 
Expecting still his advent home;
   And ever met him on his way
   With wishes, thinking, `here to-day,'
Or `here to-morrow will he come.'
 
O somewhere, meek, unconscious dove,
   That sittest ranging golden hair;
   And glad to find thyself so fair,
Poor child, that waitest for thy love!
 
For now her father's chimney glows
   In expectation of a guest;
   And thinking `this will please him best,'
She takes a riband or a rose;
 
For he will see them on to-night;
   And with the thought her colour burns;
   And, having left the glass, she turns
Once more to set a ringlet right;
 
And, even when she turn'd, the curse
   Had fallen, and her future Lord
   Was drown'd in passing thro' the ford,
Or kill'd in falling from his horse.
 
O what to her shall be the end?
   And what to me remains of good?
   To her, perpetual maidenhood,
And unto me no second friend.
 
VII
Dark house, by which once more I stand
   Here in the long unlovely street,
   Doors, where my heart was used to beat
So quickly, waiting for a hand,
 
A hand that can be clasp'd no more—
   Behold me, for I cannot sleep,
   And like a guilty thing I creep
At earliest morning to the door.
 
He is not here; but far away
   The noise of life begins again,
   And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain
On the bald street breaks the blank day.
 
VIII
A happy lover who has come
   To look on her that loves him well,
   Who 'lights and rings the gateway bell,
And learns her gone and far from home;
 
He saddens, all the magic light
   Dies off at once from bower and hall,
   And all the place is dark, and all
The chambers emptied of delight:
 
So find I every pleasant spot
   In which we two were wont to meet,
   The field, the chamber, and the street,
For all is dark where thou art not.
 
Yet as that other, wandering there
   In those deserted walks, may find
   A flower beat with rain and wind,
Which once she foster'd up with care;
 
So seems it in my deep regret,
   O my forsaken heart, with thee
   And this poor flower of poesy
Which little cared for fades not yet.
 
But since it pleased a vanish'd eye,
   I go to plant it on his tomb,
   That if it can it there may bloom,
Or, dying, there at least may die.
 
IX
Fair ship, that from the Italian shore
   Sailest the placid ocean-plains
   With my lost Arthur's loved remains,
Spread thy full wings, and waft him o'er.
 
So draw him home to those that mourn
   In vain; a favourable speed
   Ruffle thy mirror'd mast, and lead
Thro' prosperous floods his holy urn.
 
All night no ruder air perplex
   Thy sliding keel, till Phosphor, bright
   As our pure love, thro' early light
Shall glimmer on the dewy decks.
 
Sphere all your lights around, above;
   Sleep, gentle heavens, before the prow;
   Sleep, gentle winds, as he sleeps now,
My friend, the brother of my love;
 
My Arthur, whom I shall not see
   Till all my widow'd race be run;
   Dear as the mother to the son,
More than my brothers are to me.
 
X
I hear the noise about thy keel;
   I hear the bell struck in the night:
   I see the cabin-window bright;
I see the sailor at the wheel.
 
Thou bring'st the sailor to his wife,
   And travell'd men from foreign lands;
   And letters unto trembling hands;
And, thy dark freight, a vanish'd life.
 
So bring him; we have idle dreams:
   This look of quiet flatters thus
   Our home-bred fancies. O to us,
The fools of habit, sweeter seems
 
To rest beneath the clover sod,
   That takes the sunshine and the rains,
   Or where the kneeling hamlet drains
The chalice of the grapes of God;
 
Than if with thee the roaring wells
   Should gulf him fathom-deep in brine;
   And hands so often clasp'd in mine,
Should toss with tangle and with shells.
 
XI
Calm is the morn without a sound,
   Calm as to suit a calmer grief,
   And only thro' the faded leaf
The chestnut pattering to the ground:
 
Calm and deep peace on this high world,
   And on these dews that drench the furze,
   And all the silvery gossamers
That twinkle into green and gold:
 
Calm and still light on yon great plain
   That sweeps with all its autumn bowers,
   And crowded farms and lessening towers,
To mingle with the bounding main:
 
Calm and deep peace in this wide air,
   These leaves that redden to the fall;
   And in my heart, if calm at all,
If any calm, a calm despair:
 
Calm on the seas, and silver sleep,
   And waves that sway themselves in rest,
   And dead calm in that noble breast
Which heaves but with the heaving deep.
 
XII
Lo, as a dove when up she springs
   To bear thro' Heaven a tale of woe,
   Some dolorous message knit below
The wild pulsation of her wings;
 
Like her I go; I cannot stay;
   I leave this mortal ark behind,
   A weight of nerves without a mind,
And leave the cliffs, and haste away
 
O'er ocean-mirrors rounded large,
   And reach the glow of southern skies,
   And see the sails at distance rise,
And linger weeping on the marge,
 
And saying; `Comes he thus, my friend?
   Is this the end of all my care?'
   And circle moaning in the air:
'Is this the end? Is this the end?'
 
And forward dart again, and play
   About the prow, and back return
   To where the body sits, and learn
That I have been an hour away.
 
XIII
Tears of the widower, when he sees
   A late-lost form that sleep reveals,
   And moves his doubtful arms, and feels
Her place is empty, fall like these;
 
Which weep a loss for ever new,
   A void where heart on heart reposed;
   And, where warm hands have prest and closed,
Silence, till I be silent too.
 
Which weep the comrade of my choice,
   An awful thought, a life removed,
   The human-hearted man I loved,
A Spirit, not a breathing voice.
 
Come, Time, and teach me, many years,
   I do not suffer in a dream;
   For now so strange do these things seem,
Mine eyes have leisure for their tears;
 
My fancies time to rise on wing,
   And glance about the approaching sails,
   As tho' they brought but merchants' bales,
And not the burthen that they bring.
 
XIV
If one should bring me this report,
   That thou hadst touch'd the land to-day,
   And I went down unto the quay,
And found thee lying in the port;
 
And standing, muffled round with woe,
   Should see thy passengers in rank
   Come stepping lightly down the plank,
And beckoning unto those they know;
 
And if along with these should come
   The man I held as half-divine;
   Should strike a sudden hand in mine,
And ask a thousand things of home;
 
And I should tell him all my pain,
   And how my life had droop'd of late,
   And he should sorrow o'er my state
And marvel what possess'd my brain;
 
And I perceived no touch of change,
   No hint of death in all his frame,
   But found him all in all the same,
I should not feel it to be strange.
 
XV
To-night the winds begin to rise
   And roar from yonder dropping day:
   The last red leaf is whirl'd away,
The rooks are blown about the skies;
 
The forest crack'd, the waters curl'd,
   The cattle huddled on the lea;
   And wildly dash'd on tower and tree
The sunbeam strikes along the world:
 
And but for fancies, which aver
   That all thy motions gently pass
   Athwart a plane of molten glass,
I scarce could brook the strain and stir
 
That makes the barren branches loud;
   And but for fear it is not so,
   The wild unrest that lives in woe
Would dote and pore on yonder cloud
 
That rises upward always higher,
   And onward drags a labouring breast,
   And topples round the dreary west,
A looming bastion fringed with fire.
 
XVI
What words are these have falle'n from me?
   Can calm despair and wild unrest
   Be tenants of a single breast,
Or sorrow such a changeling be?
 
Or cloth she only seem to take
   The touch of change in calm or storm;
   But knows no more of transient form
In her deep self, than some dead lake
 
That holds the shadow of a lark
   Hung in the shadow of a heaven?
   Or has the shock, so harshly given,
Confused me like the unhappy bark
 
That strikes by night a craggy shelf,
   And staggers blindly ere she sink?
   And stunn'd me from my power to think
And all my knowledge of myself;
 
And made me that delirious man
   Whose fancy fuses old and new,
   And flashes into false and true,
And mingles all without a plan?
 
XVII
Thou comest, much wept for: such a breeze
   Compell'd thy canvas, and my prayer
   Was as the whisper of an air
To breathe thee over lonely seas.
 
For I in spirit saw thee move
   Thro' circles of the bounding sky,
   Week after week: the days go by:
Come quick, thou bringest all I love.
 
Henceforth, wherever thou may'st roam,
   My blessing, like a line of light,
   Is on the waters day and night,
And like a beacon guards thee home.
 
So may whatever tempest mars
   Mid-ocean, spare thee, sacred bark;
   And balmy drops in summer dark
Slide from the bosom of the stars.
 
So kind an office hath been done,
   Such precious relics brought by thee;
   The dust of him I shall not see
Till all my widow'd race be run.
 
XVIII
'Tis well; 'tis something; we may stand
   Where he in English earth is laid,
   And from his ashes may be made
The violet of his native land.
 
'Tis little; but it looks in truth
   As if the quiet bones were blest
   Among familiar names to rest
And in the places of his youth.
 
Come then, pure hands, and bear the head
   That sleeps or wears the mask of sleep,
   And come, whatever loves to weep,
And hear the ritual of the dead.
 
Ah yet, ev'n yet, if this might be,
   I, falling on his faithful heart,
   Would breathing thro' his lips impart
The life that almost dies in me;
 
That dies not, but endures with pain,
   And slowly forms the firmer mind,
   Treasuring the look it cannot find,
The words that are not heard again.
 
XIX
The Danube to the Severn gave
   The darken'd heart that beat no more;
   They laid him by the pleasant shore,
And in the hearing of the wave.
 
There twice a day the Severn fills;
   The salt sea-water passes by,
   And hushes half the babbling Wye,
And makes a silence in the hills.
 
The Wye is hush'd nor moved along,
   And hush'd my deepest grief of all,
   When fill'd with tears that cannot fall,
I brim with sorrow drowning song.
 
The tide flows down, the wave again
   Is vocal in its wooded walls;
   My deeper anguish also falls,
And I can speak a little then.
 
XX
The lesser griefs that may be said,
   That breathe a thousand tender vows,
   Are but as servants in a house
Where lies the master newly dead;
 
Who speak their feeling as it is,
   And weep the fulness from the mind:
   `It will be hard,' they say, `to find
Another service such as this.'
 
My lighter moods are like to these,
   That out of words a comfort win;
   But there are other griefs within,
And tears that at their fountain freeze;
 
For by the hearth the children sit
   Cold in that atmosphere of Death,
   And scarce endure to draw the breath,
Or like to noiseless phantoms flit;
 
But open converse is there none,
   So much the vital spirits sink
   To see the vacant chair, and think,
'How good! how kind! and he is gone.'
 
XXI
I sing to him that rests below,
   And, since the grasses round me wave,
   I take the grasses of the grave,
And make them pipes whereon to blow.
 
The traveller hears me now and then,
   And sometimes harshly will he speak:
   `This fellow would make weakness weak,
And melt the waxen hearts of men.'
 
Another answers, `Let him be,
   He loves to make parade of pain
   That with his piping he may gain
The praise that comes to constancy.'
 
A third is wroth: `Is this an hour
   For private sorrow's barren song,
   When more and more the people throng
The chairs and thrones of civil power?
 
'A time to sicken and to swoon,
   When Science reaches forth her arms
   To feel from world to world, and charms
Her secret from the latest moon?'
 
Behold, ye speak an idle thing:
   Ye never knew the sacred dust:
   I do but sing because I must,
And pipe but as the linnets sing:
 
And one is glad; her note is gay,
   For now her little ones have ranged;
   And one is sad; her note is changed,
Because her brood is stol'n away.
 
XXII
The path by which we twain did go,
   Which led by tracts that pleased us well,
   Thro' four sweet years arose and fell,
From flower to flower, from snow to snow:
 
And we with singing cheer'd the way,
   And, crown'd with all the season lent,
   From April on to April went,
And glad at heart from May to May:
 
But where the path we walk'd began
   To slant the fifth autumnal slope,
   As we descended following Hope,
There sat the Shadow fear'd of man;
 
Who broke our fair companionship,
   And spread his mantle dark and cold,
   And wrapt thee formless in the fold,
And dull'd the murmur on thy lip,
 
And bore thee where I could not see
   Nor follow, tho' I walk in haste,
   And think, that somewhere in the waste
The Shadow sits and waits for me.
 
XXIII
Now, sometimes in my sorrow shut,
   Or breaking into song by fits,
   Alone, alone, to where he sits,
The Shadow cloak'd from head to foot,
 
Who keeps the keys of all the creeds,
   I wander, often falling lame,
   And looking back to whence I came,
Or on to where the pathway leads;
 
And crying, How changed from where it ran
   Thro' lands where not a leaf was dumb;
   But all the lavish hills would hum
The murmur of a happy Pan:
 
When each by turns was guide to each,
   And Fancy light from Fancy caught,
   And Thought leapt out to wed with Thought
Ere Thought could wed itself with Speech;
 
And all we met was fair and good,
   And all was good that Time could bring,
   And all the secret of the Spring
Moved in the chambers of the blood;
 
And many an old philosophy
   On Argive heights divinely sang,
   And round us all the thicket rang
To many a flute of Arcady.
 
XXIV
And was the day of my delight
   As pure and perfect as I say?
   The very source and fount of Day
Is dash'd with wandering isles of night.
 
If all was good and fair we met,
   This earth had been the Paradise
   It never look'd to human eyes
Since our first Sun arose and set.
 
And is it that the haze of grief
   Makes former gladness loom so great?
   The lowness of the present state,
That sets the past in this relief?
 
Or that the past will always win
   A glory from its being far;
   And orb into the perfect star
We saw not, when we moved therein?
 
XXV
I know that this was Life,—the track
   Whereon with equal feet we fared;
   And then, as now, the day prepared
The daily burden for the back.
 
But this it was that made me move
   As light as carrier-birds in air;
   I loved the weight I had to bear,
Because it needed help of Love:
 
Nor could I weary, heart or limb,
   When mighty Love would cleave in twain
   The lading of a single pain,
And part it, giving half to him.
 
XXVI
Still onward winds the dreary way;
   I with it; for I long to prove
   No lapse of moons can canker Love,
Whatever fickle tongues may say.
 
And if that eye which watches guilt
   And goodness, and hath power to see
   Within the green the moulder'd tree,
And towers fall'n as soon as built—
 
Oh, if indeed that eye foresee
   Or see (in Him is no before)
   In more of life true life no more
And Love the indifference to be,
 
Then might I find, ere yet the morn
   Breaks hither over Indian seas,
   That Shadow waiting with the keys,
To shroud me from my proper scorn.
 
XXVII
I envy not in any moods
   The captive void of noble rage,
   The linnet born within the cage,
That never knew the summer woods:
 
I envy not the beast that takes
   His license in the field of time,
   Unfetter'd by the sense of crime,
To whom a conscience never wakes;
 
Nor, what may count itself as blest,
   The heart that never plighted troth
   But stagnates in the weeds of sloth;
Nor any want-begotten rest.
 
I hold it true, whate'er befall;
   I feel it, when I sorrow most;
   'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

 Runs falls rises stumbles on from darkness into darkness 
and the darkness thicketed with shapes of terror 
and the hunters pursuing and the hounds pursuing 
and the night cold and the night long and the river 
to cross and the jack-muh-lanterns beckoning beckoning 
and blackness ahead and when shall I reach that somewhere
morning and keep on going and never turn back and keep on going

 Runagate
 Runagate
 Runagate

Many thousands rise and go
many thousands crossing over
 0 mythic North
 0 star-shaped yonder Bible city

Some go weeping and some rejoicing 
some in coffins and some in carriages 
some in silks and some in shackles

 Rise and go or fare you well

No more auction block for me
no more driver's lash for me

 If you see my Pompey, 30 yrs of age, 
 new breeches, plain stockings, ***** shoes; 
 if you see my Anna, likely young mulatto 
 branded E on the right cheek, R on the left, 
 catch them if you can and notify subscriber. 
 Catch them if you can, but it won't be easy.
 They'll dart underground when you try to catch them, 
 plunge into quicksand, whirlpools, mazes, 
 torn into scorpions when you try to catch them.

And before I'll be a slave 
I'll be buried in my grave

 North star and bonanza gold
 I'm bound for the freedom, freedom-bound 
 and oh Susyanna don't you cry for me

 Runagate

 Runagate


II.
Rises from their anguish and their power,

 Harriet Tubman,

 woman of earth, whipscarred,
 a summoning, a shining

 Mean to be free

 And this was the way of it, brethren brethren, 
 way we journeyed from Can't to Can. 
 Moon so bright and no place to hide, 
 the cry up and the patterollers riding, 
 hound dogs belling in bladed air.
 And fear starts a-murbling, Never make it, 
 we'll never make it. Hush that now, 
 and she's turned upon us, levelled pistol 
 glinting in the moonlight:
 Dead folks can't jaybird-talk, she says; 
 you keep on going now or die, she says.

Wanted Harriet Tubman alias The General 
alias Moses Stealer of Slaves

In league with Garrison Alcott Emerson 
Garrett Douglass Thoreau John Brown
Armed and known to be Dangerous 

Wanted Reward Dead or Alive

 Tell me, Ezekiel, oh tell me do you see 
 mailed Jehovah coming to deliver me?

Hoot-owl calling in the ghosted air, 
five times calling to the hants in the air. 
Shadow of a face in the scary leaves, 
shadow of a voice in the talking leaves:

 Come ride-a my train

 Oh that train, ghost-story train 
 through swamp and savanna movering movering,
 over trestles of dew, through caves of the wish, 
 Midnight Special on a sabre track movering movering,
 first stop Mercy and the last Hallelujah.

 Come ride-a my train

 Mean mean mean to be free.

 Part One - The Calling


Let me sleep, for my soul is intoxicated with love and 
Let me rest, for my spirit has had its bounty of days and nights; 
Light the candles and burn the incense around my bed, and 
Scatter leaves of jasmine and roses over my body; 
Embalm my hair with frankincense and sprinkle my feet with perfume, 
And read what the hand of Death has written on my forehead. 


Let me rest in the arms of Slumber, for my open eyes are tired; 
Let the silver-stringed lyre quiver and soothe my spirit; 
Weave from the harp and lute a veil around my withering heart. 


Sing of the past as you behold the dawn of hope in my eyes, for 
It's magic meaning is a soft bed upon which my heart rests. 


Dry your tears, my friends, and raise your heads as the flowers 
Raise their crowns to greet the dawn. 
Look at the bride of Death standing like a column of light 
Between my bed and the infinite; 
Hold your breath and listen with me to the beckoning rustle of 
Her white wings. 


Come close and bid me farewell; touch my eyes with smiling lips. 
Let the children grasp my hands with soft and rosy fingers; 
Let the ages place their veined hands upon my head and bless me; 
Let the virgins come close and see the shadow of God in my eyes, 
And hear the echo of His will racing with my breath. 



Part Two - The Ascending


I have passed a mountain peak and my soul is soaring in the 
Firmament of complete and unbound freedom; 
I am far, far away, my companions, and the clouds are 
Hiding the hills from my eyes. 
The valleys are becoming flooded with an ocean of silence, and the 
Hands of oblivion are engulfing the roads and the houses; 
The prairies and fields are disappearing behind a white specter 
That looks like the spring cloud, yellow as the candlelight 
And red as the twilight. 


The songs of the waves and the hymns of the streams 
Are scattered, and the voices of the throngs reduced to silence; 
And I can hear naught but the music of Eternity 
In exact harmony with the spirit's desires. 
I am cloaked in full whiteness; 
I am in comfort; I am in peace. 



Part Three - The Remains


Unwrap me from this white linen shroud and clothe me 
With leaves of jasmine and lilies; 
Take my body from the ivory casket and let it rest 
Upon pillows of orange blossoms. 
Lament me not, but sing songs of youth and joy; 
Shed not tears upon me, but sing of harvest and the winepress; 
Utter no sigh of agony, but draw upon my face with your 
Finger the symbol of Love and Joy. 
Disturb not the air's tranquility with chanting and requiems, 
But let your hearts sing with me the song of Eternal Life; 
Mourn me not with apparel of black, 
But dress in color and rejoice with me; 
Talk not of my departure with sighs in your hearts; close 
Your eyes and you will see me with you forevermore. 


Place me upon clusters of leaves and 
Carry my upon your friendly shoulders and 
Walk slowly to the deserted forest. 
Take me not to the crowded burying ground lest my slumber 
Be disrupted by the rattling of bones and skulls. 
Carry me to the cypress woods and dig my grave where violets 
And poppies grow not in the other's shadow; 
Let my grave be deep so that the flood will not 
Carry my bones to the open valley; 
Let my grace be wide, so that the twilight shadows 
Will come and sit by me. 


Take from me all earthly raiment and place me deep in my 
Mother Earth; and place me with care upon my mother's breast. 
Cover me with soft earth, and let each handful be mixed 
With seeds of jasmine, lilies and myrtle; and when they 
Grow above me, and thrive on my body's element they will 
Breathe the fragrance of my heart into space; 
And reveal even to the sun the secret of my peace; 
And sail with the breeze and comfort the wayfarer. 


Leave me then, friends - leave me and depart on mute feet, 
As the silence walks in the deserted valley; 
Leave me to God and disperse yourselves slowly, as the almond 
And apple blossoms disperse under the vibration of Nisan's breeze. 
Go back to the joy of your dwellings and you will find there 
That which Death cannot remove from you and me. 
Leave with place, for what you see here is far away in meaning 
From the earthly world. Leave me.