10 Best Famous Disturbing Poems

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

• All Famous Disturbing Poems

 Her teacher's certainty it must be Mabel
Made Maple first take notice of her name.
She asked her father and he told her, "Maple—
Maple is right."
"But teacher told the school
There's no such name."
"Teachers don't know as much
As fathers about children, you tell teacher.
You tell her that it's M-A-P-L-E.
You ask her if she knows a maple tree.
Well, you were named after a maple tree.
Your mother named you. You and she just saw
Each other in passing in the room upstairs,
One coming this way into life, and one
Going the other out of life—you know?
So you can't have much recollection of her.
She had been having a long look at you.
She put her finger in your cheek so hard
It must have made your dimple there, and said,
'Maple.' I said it too: 'Yes, for her name.'
She nodded. So we're sure there's no mistake.
I don't know what she wanted it to mean,
But it seems like some word she left to bid you
Be a good girl—be like a maple tree.
How like a maple tree's for us to guess.
Or for a little girl to guess sometime.
Not now—at least I shouldn't try too hard now.
By and by I will tell you all I know
About the different trees, and something, too,
About your mother that perhaps may help."
Dangerous self-arousing words to sow.
Luckily all she wanted of her name then
Was to rebuke her teacher with it next day,
And give the teacher a scare as from her father.
Anything further had been wasted on her,
Or so he tried to think to avoid blame.
She would forget it. She all but forgot it.
What he sowed with her slept so long a sleep,
And came so near death in the dark of years,
That when it woke and came to life again
The flower was different from the parent seed.
It carne back vaguely at the glass one day,
As she stood saying her name over aloud,
Striking it gently across her lowered eyes
To make it go well with the way she looked.
What was it about her name? Its strangeness lay
In having too much meaning. Other names,
As Lesley, Carol, Irma, Marjorie,
Signified nothing. Rose could have a meaning,
But hadn't as it went. (She knew a Rose.)
This difference from other names it was
Made people notice it—and notice her.
(They either noticed it, or got it wrong.)
Her problem was to find out what it asked
In dress or manner of the girl who bore it.
If she could form some notion of her mother—
What she bad thought was lovely, and what good.
This was her mother's childhood home;
The house one story high in front, three stories
On the end it presented to the road.
(The arrangement made a pleasant sunny cellar.)
Her mother's bedroom was her father's still,
Where she could watch her mother's picture fading.
Once she found for a bookmark in the Bible
A maple leaf she thought must have been laid
In wait for her there. She read every word
Of the two pages it was pressed between,
As if it was her mother speaking to her.
But forgot to put the leaf back in closing
And lost the place never to read again.
She was sure, though, there had been nothing in it.

So she looked for herself, as everyone
Looks for himself, more or less outwardly.
And her self-seeking, fitful though it was,
May still have been what led her on to read,
And think a little, and get some city schooling.
She learned shorthand, whatever shorthand may
Have had to do with it--she sometimes wondered.
So, till she found herself in a strange place
For the name Maple to have brought her to,
Taking dictation on a paper pad
And, in the pauses when she raised her eyes,
Watching out of a nineteenth story window
An airship laboring with unshiplike motion
And a vague all-disturbing roar above the river
Beyond the highest city built with hands.
Someone was saying in such natural tones
She almost wrote the words down on her knee,
"Do you know you remind me of a tree--
A maple tree?"

 "Because my name is Maple?"
"Isn't it Mabel? I thought it was Mabel."

 "No doubt you've heard the office call me Mabel.
I have to let them call me what they like."

 They were both stirred that he should have divined
Without the name her personal mystery.
It made it seem as if there must be something
She must have missed herself. So they were married,
And took the fancy home with them to live by.

 They went on pilgrimage once to her father's
(The house one story high in front, three stories
On the side it presented to the road)
To see if there was not some special tree
She might have overlooked. They could find none,
Not so much as a single tree for shade,
Let alone grove of trees for sugar orchard.
She told him of the bookmark maple leaf
In the big Bible, and all she remembered
of the place marked with it—"Wave offering,
Something about wave offering, it said."

 "You've never asked your father outright, have you?"

 "I have, and been Put off sometime, I think."
(This was her faded memory of the way
Once long ago her father had put himself off.)
"Because no telling but it may have been
Something between your father and your mother
Not meant for us at all."
"Not meant for me?
Where would the fairness be in giving me
A name to carry for life and never know
The secret of?"
"And then it may have been
Something a father couldn't tell a daughter
As well as could a mother. And again
It may have been their one lapse into fancy
'Twould be too bad to make him sorry for
By bringing it up to him when be was too old.
Your father feels us round him with our questing,
And holds us off unnecessarily,
As if he didn't know what little thing
Might lead us on to a discovery.
It was as personal as be could be
About the way he saw it was with you
To say your mother, bad she lived, would be
As far again as from being born to bearing."

 "Just one look more with what you say in mind,
And I give up"; which last look came to nothing.
But though they now gave up the search forever,
They clung to what one had seen in the other
By inspiration. It proved there was something.
They kept their thoughts away from when the maples
Stood uniform in buckets, and the steam
Of sap and snow rolled off the sugarhouse.
When they made her related to the maples,
It was the tree the autumn fire ran through
And swept of leathern leaves, but left the bark
Unscorched, unblackened, even, by any smoke.
They always took their holidays in autumn.
Once they came on a maple in a glade,
Standing alone with smooth arms lifted up,
And every leaf of foliage she'd worn
Laid scarlet and pale pink about her feet.
But its age kept them from considering this one.
Twenty-five years ago at Maple's naming
It hardly could have been a two-leaved seedling
The next cow might have licked up out at pasture.
Could it have been another maple like it?
They hovered for a moment near discovery,
Figurative enough to see the symbol,
But lacking faith in anything to mean
The same at different times to different people.
Perhaps a filial diffidence partly kept them
From thinking it could be a thing so bridal.
And anyway it came too late for Maple.
She used her hands to cover up her eyes.

 "We would not see the secret if we could now:
We are not looking for it any more."

 Thus had a name with meaning, given in death,
Made a girl's marriage, and ruled in her life.
No matter that the meaning was not clear.
A name with meaning could bring up a child,
Taking the child out of the parents' hands.
Better a meaningless name, I should say,
As leaving more to nature and happy chance.
Name children some names and see what you do.

 Smokey the Bear heads
into the autumn woods
with a red can of gasoline
and a box of wooden matches.

His ranger's hat is cocked
at a disturbing angle.

His brown fur gleams
under the high sun
as his paws, the size
of catcher's mitts,
crackle into the distance.

He is sick of dispensing
warnings to the careless,
the half-wit camper,
the dumbbell hiker.

He is going to show them
how a professional does it.

 He climbed toward the blinding light
and when his eyes adjusted
he looked down and could see

his fellow prisoners captivated
by shadows; everything he had believed
was false. And he was suddenly

in the 20th century, in the sunlight
and violence of history, encumbered
by knowledge. Only a hero

would dare return with the truth.
So from the cave's upper reaches,
removed from harm, he called out

the disturbing news.
What lovely echoes, the prisoners said,
what a fine musical place to live.

He spelled it out, then, in clear prose
on paper scraps, which he floated down.
But in the semi-dark they read his words

with the indulgence of those who seldom read:
It's about my father's death, one of them said.
No, said the others, it's a joke.

By this time he no longer was sure
of what he'd seen. Wasn't sunlight a shadow too?
Wasn't there always a source

behind a source? He just stood there,
confused, a man who had moved
to larger errors, without a prayer.

 I

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
 But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
 Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.
There they were, dignified, invisible,
Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,
In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,
And the bird called, in response to
The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,
And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at.
There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting.
So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern,
Along the empty alley, into the box circle,
To look down into the drained pool.
Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged,
And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light,
And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.
Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.


II

Garlic and sapphires in the mud
Clot the bedded axle-tree.
The trilling wire in the blood
Sings below inveterate scars
Appeasing long forgotten wars.
The dance along the artery
The circulation of the lymph
Are figured in the drift of stars
Ascend to summer in the tree
We move above the moving tree
In light upon the figured leaf
And hear upon the sodden floor
Below, the boarhound and the boar
Pursue their pattern as before
But reconciled among the stars.

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.
The inner freedom from the practical desire,
The release from action and suffering, release from the inner
And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded
By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving,
Erhebung without motion, concentration
Without elimination, both a new world
And the old made explicit, understood
In the completion of its partial ecstasy,
The resolution of its partial horror.
Yet the enchainment of past and future
Woven in the weakness of the changing body,
Protects mankind from heaven and damnation
Which flesh cannot endure.
 Time past and time future
Allow but a little consciousness.
To be conscious is not to be in time
But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,
The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,
The moment in the draughty church at smokefall
Be remembered; involved with past and future.
Only through time time is conquered.


III

Here is a place of disaffection
Time before and time after
In a dim light: neither daylight
Investing form with lucid stillness
Turning shadow into transient beauty
With slow rotation suggesting permanence
Nor darkness to purify the soul
Emptying the sensual with deprivation
Cleansing affection from the temporal.
Neither plenitude nor vacancy. Only a flicker
Over the strained time-ridden faces
Distracted from distraction by distraction
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning
Tumid apathy with no concentration
Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind
That blows before and after time,
Wind in and out of unwholesome lungs
Time before and time after.
Eructation of unhealthy souls
Into the faded air, the torpid
Driven on the wind that sweeps the gloomy hills of London,
Hampstead and Clerkenwell, Campden and Putney,
Highgate, Primrose and Ludgate. Not here
Not here the darkness, in this twittering world.

Descend lower, descend only
Into the world of perpetual solitude,
World not world, but that which is not world,
Internal darkness, deprivation
And destitution of all property,
Desiccation of the world of sense,
Evacuation of the world of fancy,
Inoperancy of the world of spirit;
This is the one way, and the other
Is the same, not in movement
But abstention from movement; while the world moves
In appetency, on its metalled ways
Of time past and time future.


IV

Time and the bell have buried the day,
The black cloud carries the sun away.
Will the sunflower turn to us, will the clematis
Stray down, bend to us; tendril and spray
Clutch and cling?

 Chill
Fingers of yew be curled
Down on us? After the kingfisher's wing
Has answered light to light, and is silent, the light is still
At the still point of the turning world.


V

Words move, music moves
Only in time; but that which is only living
Can only die. Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern,
Can words or music reach
The stillness, as a Chinese jar still
Moves perpetually in its stillness.
Not the stillness of the violin, while the note lasts,
Not that only, but the co-existence,
Or say that the end precedes the beginning,
And the end and the beginning were always there
Before the beginning and after the end.
And all is always now. Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still. Shrieking voices
Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering,
Always assail them. The Word in the desert
Is most attacked by voices of temptation,
The crying shadow in the funeral dance,
The loud lament of the disconsolate chimera.

 The detail of the pattern is movement,
As in the figure of the ten stairs.
Desire itself is movement
Not in itself desirable;
Love is itself unmoving,
Only the cause and end of movement,
Timeless, and undesiring
Except in the aspect of time
Caught in the form of limitation
Between un-being and being.
Sudden in a shaft of sunlight
Even while the dust moves
There rises the hidden laughter
Of children in the foliage
Quick now, here, now, always—
Ridiculous the waste sad time
Stretching before and after.

 First, London, for its myriads; for its height, 
Manhattan heaped in towering stalagmite; 
But Paris for the smoothness of the paths 
That lead the heart unto the heart's delight. . . . 


Fair loiterer on the threshold of those days 
When there's no lovelier prize the world displays 
Than, having beauty and your twenty years, 
You have the means to conquer and the ways, 


And coming where the crossroads separate 
And down each vista glories and wonders wait, 
Crowning each path with pinnacles so fair 
You know not which to choose, and hesitate -- 


Oh, go to Paris. . . . In the midday gloom 
Of some old quarter take a little room 
That looks off over Paris and its towers 
From Saint Gervais round to the Emperor's Tomb, -- 


So high that you can hear a mating dove 
Croon down the chimney from the roof above, 
See Notre Dame and know how sweet it is 
To wake between Our Lady and our love. 


And have a little balcony to bring 
Fair plants to fill with verdure and blossoming, 
That sparrows seek, to feed from pretty hands, 
And swallows circle over in the Spring. 


There of an evening you shall sit at ease 
In the sweet month of flowering chestnut-trees, 
There with your little darling in your arms, 
Your pretty dark-eyed Manon or Louise. 


And looking out over the domes and towers 
That chime the fleeting quarters and the hours, 
While the bright clouds banked eastward back of them 
Blush in the sunset, pink as hawthorn flowers, 


You cannot fail to think, as I have done, 
Some of life's ends attained, so you be one 
Who measures life's attainment by the hours 
That Joy has rescued from oblivion. 

II 


Come out into the evening streets. The green light lessens in the west. 
The city laughs and liveliest her fervid pulse of pleasure beats. 


The belfry on Saint Severin strikes eight across the smoking eaves: 
Come out under the lights and leaves 
to the Reine Blanche on Saint Germain. . . . 


Now crowded diners fill the floor of brasserie and restaurant. 
Shrill voices cry "L'Intransigeant," and corners echo "Paris-Sport." 


Where rows of tables from the street are screened with shoots of box and bay, 
The ragged minstrels sing and play and gather sous from those that eat. 


And old men stand with menu-cards, inviting passers-by to dine 
On the bright terraces that line the Latin Quarter boulevards. . . . 


But, having drunk and eaten well, 'tis pleasant then to stroll along 
And mingle with the merry throng that promenades on Saint Michel. 


Here saunter types of every sort. The shoddy jostle with the chic: 
Turk and Roumanian and Greek; student and officer and sport; 


Slavs with their peasant, Christ-like heads, 
and courtezans like powdered moths, 
And peddlers from Algiers, with cloths 
bright-hued and stitched with golden threads; 


And painters with big, serious eyes go rapt in dreams, fantastic shapes 
In corduroys and Spanish capes and locks uncut and flowing ties; 


And lovers wander two by two, oblivious among the press, 
And making one of them no less, all lovers shall be dear to you: 


All laughing lips you move among, all happy hearts that, knowing what 
Makes life worth while, have wasted not the sweet reprieve of being young. 


"Comment ca va!" "Mon vieux!" "Mon cher!" 
Friends greet and banter as they pass. 
'Tis sweet to see among the mass comrades and lovers everywhere, 


A law that's sane, a Love that's free, and men of every birth and blood 
Allied in one great brotherhood of Art and Joy and Poverty. . . . 


The open cafe-windows frame loungers at their liqueurs and beer, 
And walking past them one can hear fragments of Tosca and Boheme. 


And in the brilliant-lighted door of cinemas the barker calls, 
And lurid posters paint the walls with scenes of Love and crime and war. 


But follow past the flaming lights, borne onward with the stream of feet, 
Where Bullier's further up the street is marvellous on Thursday nights. 


Here all Bohemia flocks apace; you could not often find elsewhere 
So many happy heads and fair assembled in one time and place. 


Under the glare and noise and heat the galaxy of dancing whirls, 
Smokers, with covered heads, and girls dressed in the costume of the street. 


From tables packed around the wall the crowds that drink and frolic there 
Spin serpentines into the air far out over the reeking hall, 


That, settling where the coils unroll, tangle with pink and green and blue 
The crowds that rag to "Hitchy-koo" and boston to the "Barcarole". . . . 


Here Mimi ventures, at fifteen, to make her debut in romance, 
And join her sisters in the dance and see the life that they have seen. 


Her hair, a tight hat just allows to brush beneath the narrow brim, 
Docked, in the model's present whim, `frise' and banged above the brows. 


Uncorseted, her clinging dress with every step and turn betrays, 
In pretty and provoking ways her adolescent loveliness, 


As guiding Gaby or Lucile she dances, emulating them 
In each disturbing stratagem and each lascivious appeal. 


Each turn a challenge, every pose an invitation to compete, 
Along the maze of whirling feet the grave-eyed little wanton goes, 


And, flaunting all the hue that lies in childish cheeks and nubile waist, 
She passes, charmingly unchaste, illumining ignoble eyes. . . . 


But now the blood from every heart leaps madder through abounding veins 
As first the fascinating strains of "El Irresistible" start. 


Caught in the spell of pulsing sound, impatient elbows lift and yield 
The scented softnesses they shield to arms that catch and close them round, 


Surrender, swift to be possessed, the silken supple forms beneath 
To all the bliss the measures breathe and all the madness they suggest. 


Crowds congregate and make a ring. Four deep they stand and strain to see 
The tango in its ecstasy of glowing lives that clasp and cling. 


Lithe limbs relaxed, exalted eyes fastened on vacancy, they seem 
To float upon the perfumed stream of some voluptuous Paradise, 


Or, rapt in some Arabian Night, to rock there, cradled and subdued, 
In a luxurious lassitude of rhythm and sensual delight. 


And only when the measures cease and terminate the flowing dance 
They waken from their magic trance and join the cries that clamor "Bis!" . . . 


Midnight adjourns the festival. The couples climb the crowded stair, 
And out into the warm night air go singing fragments of the ball. 


Close-folded in desire they pass, or stop to drink and talk awhile 
In the cafes along the mile from Bullier's back to Montparnasse: 


The "Closerie" or "La Rotonde", where smoking, under lamplit trees, 
Sit Art's enamored devotees, chatting across their `brune' and `blonde'. . . . 


Make one of them and come to know sweet Paris -- not as many do, 
Seeing but the folly of the few, the froth, the tinsel, and the show -- 


But taking some white proffered hand that from Earth's barren every day 
Can lead you by the shortest way into Love's florid fairyland. 


And that divine enchanted life that lurks under Life's common guise -- 
That city of romance that lies within the City's toil and strife -- 


Shall, knocking, open to your hands, for Love is all its golden key, 
And one's name murmured tenderly the only magic it demands. 


And when all else is gray and void in the vast gulf of memory, 
Green islands of delight shall be all blessed moments so enjoyed: 


When vaulted with the city skies, on its cathedral floors you stood, 
And, priest of a bright brotherhood, performed the mystic sacrifice, 


At Love's high altar fit to stand, with fire and incense aureoled, 
The celebrant in cloth of gold with Spring and Youth on either hand. 

III 


Choral Song 


Have ye gazed on its grandeur 
Or stood where it stands 
With opal and amber 
Adorning the lands, 
And orcharded domes 
Of the hue of all flowers? 
Sweet melody roams 
Through its blossoming bowers, 
Sweet bells usher in from its belfries the train of the honey-sweet hour. 


A city resplendent, 
Fulfilled of good things, 
On its ramparts are pendent 
The bucklers of kings. 
Broad banners unfurled 
Are afloat in its air. 
The lords of the world 
Look for harborage there. 
None finds save he comes as a bridegroom, having roses and vine in his hair. 


'Tis the city of Lovers, 
There many paths meet. 
Blessed he above others, 
With faltering feet, 
Who past its proud spires 
Intends not nor hears 
The noise of its lyres 
Grow faint in his ears! 
Men reach it through portals of triumph, but leave through a postern of tears. 


It was thither, ambitious, 
We came for Youth's right, 
When our lips yearned for kisses 
As moths for the light, 
When our souls cried for Love 
As for life-giving rain 
Wan leaves of the grove, 
Withered grass of the plain, 
And our flesh ached for Love-flesh beside it with bitter, intolerable pain. 


Under arbor and trellis, 
Full of flutes, full of flowers, 
What mad fortunes befell us, 
What glad orgies were ours! 
In the days of our youth, 
In our festal attire, 
When the sweet flesh was smooth, 
When the swift blood was fire, 
And all Earth paid in orange and purple to pavilion the bed of Desire!

 Through portico of my elegant house you stalk
With your wild furies, disturbing garlands of fruit
And the fabulous lutes and peacocks, rending the net
Of all decorum which holds the whirlwind back.
Now, rich order of walls is fallen; rooks croak
Above the appalling ruin; in bleak light
Of your stormy eye, magic takes flight
Like a daunted witch, quitting castle when real days break.

Fractured pillars frame prospects of rock;
While you stand heroic in coat and tie, I sit
Composed in Grecian tunic and psyche-knot,
Rooted to your black look, the play turned tragic:
Which such blight wrought on our bankrupt estate,
What ceremony of words can patch the havoc?

 How does Love speak? 
In the faint flush upon the tell-tale cheek, 
And in the pallor that succeeds it; by
The quivering lid of an averted eye –
The smile that proves the parent to a sigh –
Thus doth Love speak.

How does Love speak? 
By the uneven heart-throbs, and the freak
Of bounding pulses that stand still and ache, 
While new emotions, like strange barques, make
Along vein-channels their disturbing course; 
Still as the dawn, and with the dawn’s swift force –
Thus doth Love speak.

How does Love speak? 
In the avoidance of that which we seek –
The sudden silence and reserve when near –
The eye that glistens with an unshed tear –
The joy that seems the counterpart of fear, 
As the alarmed heart leaps in the breast, 
And knows, and names, the greets its god-like guest –
Thus doth Love speak.

How doth Love speak? 
In the proud spirit suddenly grown meek –
The haughty heart grown humble; in the tender
And unnamed light that floods the world with splendour, 
In the resemblance which the fond eyes trace
In all things to one beloved face; 
In the shy touch of hands that thrill and tremble; 
In looks and lips that can no more dissemble –
Thus doth Love speak.

How doth Love speak? 
In the wild words that uttered seem so weak
They shrink ashamed to silence; in the fire
Glance strikes with glance, swift flashing high and higher, 
Like lightnings that precede the mighty storm; 
In the deep, soulful stillness; in the warm, 
Impassioned tide that sweeps through throbbing veins, 
Between the shores of keen delights and pains; 
In the embrace where madness melts in bliss, 
And in convulsive rapture of a kiss –
Thus doth Love speak.

 At last you yielded up the album, which
Once open, sent me distracted. All your ages
Matt and glossy on the thick black pages!
Too much confectionery, too rich:
I choke on such nutritious images.

My swivel eye hungers from pose to pose --
In pigtails, clutching a reluctant cat;
Or furred yourself, a sweet girl-graduate;
Or lifting a heavy-headed rose
Beneath a trellis, or in a trilby-hat

(Faintly disturbing, that, in several ways) --
From every side you strike at my control,
Not least through those these disquieting chaps who loll
At ease about your earlier days:
Not quite your class, I'd say, dear, on the whole.

But o, photography! as no art is,
Faithful and disappointing! that records
Dull days as dull, and hold-it smiles as frauds,
And will not censor blemishes
Like washing-lines, and Hall's-Distemper boards,

But shows a cat as disinclined, and shades
A chin as doubled when it is, what grace
Your candour thus confers upon her face!
How overwhelmingly persuades
That this is a real girl in a real place,

In every sense empirically true!
Or is it just the past? Those flowers, that gate,
These misty parks and motors, lacerate
Simply by being you; you
Contract my heart by looking out of date.

Yes, true; but in the end, surely, we cry
Not only at exclusion, but because
It leaves us free to cry. We know what was
Won't call on us to justify
Our grief, however hard we yowl across

The gap from eye to page. So I am left
To mourn (without a chance of consequence)
You, balanced on a bike against a fence;
To wonder if you'd spot the theft
Of this one of you bathing; to condense,

In short, a past that no one now can share,
No matter whose your future; calm and dry,
It holds you like a heaven, and you lie
Unvariably lovely there,
Smaller and clearer as the years go by.

 One hour devoted to the pursuit of Beauty 
And Love is worth a full century of glory 
Given by the frightened weak to the strong. 


From that hour comes man's Truth; and 
During that century Truth sleeps between 
The restless arms of disturbing dreams. 


In that hour the soul sees for herself 
The Natural Law, and for that century she 
Imprisons herself behind the law of man; 
And she is shackled with irons of oppression. 


That hour was the inspiration of the Songs 
Of Solomon, an that century was the blind 
Power which destroyed the temple of Baalbek. 


That hour was the birth of the Sermon on the 
Mount, and that century wrecked the castles of 
Palmyra and the Tower of Babylon. 


That hour was the Hegira of Mohammed and that 
Century forgot Allah, Golgotha, and Sinai. 


One hour devoted to mourning and lamenting the 
Stolen equality of the weak is nobler than a 
Century filled with greed and usurpation. 


It is at that hour when the heart is 
Purified by flaming sorrow and 
Illuminated by the torch of Love. 
And in that century, desires for Truth 
Are buried in the bosom of the earth. 
That hour is the root which must flourish. 
That hour of meditation, the hour of 
Prayer, and the hour of a new era of good. 


And that century is a life of Nero spent 
On self-investment taken solely from 
Earthly substance. 


This is life. 
Portrayed on the stage for ages; 
Recorded earthly for centuries; 
Lived in strangeness for years; 
Sung as a hymn for days; 
Exalted but for an hour, but the 
Hour is treasured by Eternity as a jewel.

 Amintor. STay gentle Nymph, nor so solic'tous be, 
To fly his sight that still would gaze on thee. 
With other Swaines I see thee oft converse, 
Content to speak, and hear what they rehearse: 
But I unhappy, when I e're draw nigh, 
Thou streight do'st leave both Place, and Company. 
If this thy Flight, from fear of Harm doth flow, 
Ah, sure thou little of my Heart dost know. 
 Alinda. What wonder, Swain, if the Pursu'd by Flight, 
Seeks to avoid the close Pursuers Sight ?
And if no Cause I have to fly from thee, 
Then thou hast none, why thou dost follow me. 

 Amin. If to the Cause thou wilt propitious prove, 
Take it at once, fair Nymph, and know 'tis Love. 

Alin. To my just Pray'r, ye favouring Gods attend, 
These Vows to Heaven with equal Zeal I send, 
My flocks from Wolves, my Heart from Love, defend. 

 Amin. The Gods which did on thee such Charms bestow, 
Ne're meant thou shouldst to Love have prov'd a Foe, 
That so Divine a Power thou shouldst defy. 
Could there a Reason be, I'd ask thee, why ? 

 Alin. Why does Licoris, once so bright and gay, 
Pale as a Lilly pine her self away ? 
Why does Elvira, ever sad, frequent
The lonely shades ? Why does yon Monument
Which we upon our Left Hand do behold, 
Hapless Amintas youthful Limbs enfold ? 
Say Shepherd, say: But if thou wilt not tell, 
Damon, Philisides, and Strephon well
Can speak the Cause, whose Falshood each upbraids, 
And justly me from Cruel Love disswades. 

 Amin. Hear me ye Gods. Me and my Flocks forsake, 
If e're like them my promis'd Faith I brake. 

Alin. By others sad Experience wise I'le be. 
 Amin. But such thy Wisdom highly injures me: 
And nought but Death can give a Remedy. 
Yet Learn'd in Physick, what does it avail, 
That you by Art (wherein ye never fail)
Present Relief have for the Mad-dogs Bite ? 
The Serpents sting ? The poisonous Achonite ? 
While helpless Love upbraids your baffl'd skill, 
And far more certain, than the rest, doth kill. 

 Alin. Fond Swain, go dote upon the new blown Rose, 
Whose Beauty with the Morning did disclose, 
And e're Days King forsakes th'enlightened Earth, 
Wither'd, returns from whence it took its Birth. 
As much Excuse will there thy Love attend, 
As what thou dost on Womens Beauty spend. 
 Amin. Ah Nymph, those Charms which I in thee admire, 
Can, nor before, nor with thy Life expire. 
From Heaven they are, and such as ne're can dye, 
But with thy Soul they will ascend the Sky !
For though my ravisht Eye beholds in Thee, 
Such beauty as I can in none else see; 

That Nature there alone is without blame, 
Yet did not this my faithful Heart enflame: 
Nor when in Dance thou mov'st upon the Plaine, 
Or other Sports pursu'st among the Train
Of choicest Nymphs, where thy attractive Grace
Shews thee alone, though thousands be in place !
Yet not for these do I Alinda love, 
Hear then what 'tis, that does my Passion move. 
 That Thou still Earliest at the Temple art, 
 And still the last that does from thence depart; 
 Pans Altar is by thee the oftnest prest, 
 Thine's still the fairest Offering and the Best; 
 And all thy other Actions seem to be, 
 The true Result of Unfeign'd Piety; 
 Strict in thy self, to others Just and Mild;
 Careful, nor to Deceive, nor be Beguil'd;
 Wary, without the least Offence, to live,
 Yet none than thee more ready to forgive !
 Even on thy Beauty thou dost Fetters lay, 
 Least, unawares, it any should betray. 
 Far unlike, sure, to many of thy Sex, 
 Whose Pride it is, the doting World to vex; 

Spreading their Universal Nets to take
 Who e're their artifice can captive make. 
 But thou command'st thy Sweet, but Modest Eye, 
 That no Inviting Glance from thence should fly. 
 Beholding with a Gen'rous Disdain, 
 The lighter Courtships of each amorous Swain; 
 Knowing, true Fame, Vertue alone can give: 
 Nor dost thou greedily even that receive. 
 And what 'bove this thy Character can raise ? 
 Thirsty of Merit, yet neglecting Praise !
While daily these Perfections I discry, 
Matchless Alinda makes me daily dy. 
Thou absent, Flow'rs to me no Odours yield, 
Nor find I freshness in the dewy Field; 
Not Thyrsis Voice, nor Melibeus Lire, 
Can my Sad Heart with one Gay Thought inspire; 
My thriving Flock ('mong Shepherds Vows the Chief)
I unconcern'd behold, as they my Grief. 
 This I profess, if this thou not believe, 
A further proof I ready am to give, 
Command: there's nothing I'le not undertake, 
And, thy Injunctions, Love will easie make. 

Ah, if thou couldst incline a gentle Ear, 
Of plighted Faith, and hated Hymen hear; 
Thou hourly then my spotless Love should'st see, 
That all my Study, how to please, should be; 
How to protect thee from disturbing Care, 
And in thy Griefs to bear the greatest share; 
Nor should a Joy, my Warie Heart surprize, 
That first I read not in thy charming Eyes. 
 Alin. If ever I to any do impart, 
My, till this present hour, well-guarded Heart, 
That Passion I have fear'd, I'le surely prove, 
For one that does, like to Amintor love. 
 Amintor. Ye Gods –
 Alin. Shepherd, no more: enough it is that I, 
Thus long to Love, have listn'd patiently. 
Farewel: Pan keep thee, Swain. 
 Amintor. And Blessings Thee, 
Rare as thy Vertues, still accompany.