Written by
Phillis Wheatley |
To cultivate in ev'ry noble mind
Habitual grace, and sentiments refin'd,
Thus while you strive to mend the human heart,
Thus while the heav'nly precepts you impart,
O may each bosom catch the sacred fire,
And youthful minds to Virtue's throne aspire!
When God's eternal ways you set in sight,
And Virtue shines in all her native light,
In vain would Vice her works in night conceal,
For Wisdom's eye pervades the sable veil.
Artists may paint the sun's effulgent rays,
But Amory's pen the brighter God displays:
While his great works in Amory's pages shine,
And while he proves his essence all divine,
The Atheist sure no more can boast aloud
Of chance, or nature, and exclude the God;
As if the clay without the potter's aid
Should rise in various forms, and shapes self-made,
Or worlds above with orb o'er orb profound
Self-mov'd could run the everlasting round.
It cannot be--unerring Wisdom guides
With eye propitious, and o'er all presides.
Still prosper, Amory! still may'st thou receive
The warmest blessings which a muse can give,
And when this transitory state is o'er,
When kingdoms fall, and fleeting Fame's no more,
May Amory triumph in immortal fame,
A nobler title, and superior name!
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Written by
Jean Toomer |
There is no transcience of twilight in
The beauty of your soft dusk-dimpled face,
No flicker of a slender flame in space,
In crucibles, fragility crystalline.
There is no fragrance of the jessamine
About you, no pathos of some old place
At dusk, that crumbles like moth-eaten lace
Beneath the touch. Nor has there ever been.
Your love is like the folk-song's flaming rise
In cane-lipped southern people, like their soul
Which burst its bondage in a bold travail;
Your voice is like them singing, soft and wise,
Your face, sweetly effulgent of the whole,
Inviolate of ways that would fail.
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Written by
Chris Mansell |
She is effulgent in the dark halls of town.
She is listening but they are hearing.
Her skin is blistering and sharp with sparks.
She is listening for the crick of grass underfoot.
They are hearing her heavy paces.
She is straining to feel the hum of the air.
They are hearing her voice wailing
like a warrigal. She is being
quiet to count the breathing.
They are hearing the stertorous cracks
of her fine pure voice. She sings knife prising
the clenched hills shrieked and sharp with danger.
They are being calm and combing their hair.
She is brittling the unseen strings connecting.
They are wishing softly in the afternoons.
She is testing with her naked feet
where the oyster edges are.
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Written by
Francesco Petrarch |
SONNET CXIV. O d' ardente virtute ornata e calda. HE CELEBRATES LAURA'S BEAUTY AND VIRTUE. O mind, by ardent virtue graced and warm'd.To whom my pen so oft pours forth my heart;Mansion of noble probity, who artA tower of strength 'gainst all assault full arm'd.O rose effulgent, in whose foldings, charm'd,We view with fresh carnation snow take part!O pleasure whence my wing'd ideas start[Pg 144]To that bless'd vision which no eye, unharm'd,Created, may approach—thy name, if rhymeCould bear to Bactra and to Thule's coast,Nile, Tanaïs, and Calpe should resound,And dread Olympus.—But a narrower boundConfines my flight: and thee, our native climeBetween the Alps and Apennine must boast. Capel Lofft. With glowing virtue graced, of warm heart known,Sweet Spirit! for whom so many a page I trace,Tower in high worth which foundest well thy base!Centre of honour, perfect, and alone!O blushes! on fresh snow like roses thrown,Wherein I read myself and mend apace;O pleasures! lifting me to that fair faceBrightest of all on which the sun e'er shone.Oh! if so far its sound may reach, your nameOn my fond verse shall travel West and East,From southern Nile to Thule's utmost bound.But such full audience since I may not claim,It shall be heard in that fair land at leastWhich Apennine divides, which Alps and seas surround. Macgregor.
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Written by
Paul Laurence Dunbar |
The sun is low,
The waters flow,
My boat is dancing to and fro.
The eve is still,
Yet from the hill
The killdeer echoes loud and shrill.
The paddles plash,
The wavelets dash,
We see the summer lightning flash;[Pg 286]
While now and then,
In marsh and fen
Too muddy for the feet of men,
Where neither bird
Nor beast has stirred,
The spotted bullfrog's croak is heard.
The wind is high,
The grasses sigh,
The sluggish stream goes sobbing by.
And far away
The dying day
Has cast its last effulgent ray;
While on the land
The shadows stand
Proclaiming that the eve's at hand.
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Written by
Thomas Hardy |
UPON a poet's page I wrote
Of old two letters of her name;
Part seemed she of the effulgent thought
Whence that high singer's rapture came.
--When now I turn the leaf the same
Immortal light illumes the lay
But from the letters of her name
The radiance has died away.
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Written by
Adela Florence Cory Nicolson |
If some day this body of mine were burned
(It found no favour alas! with you)
And the ashes scattered abroad, unurned,
Would Love die also, would Thought die too?
But who can answer, or who can trust,
No dreams would harry the windblown dust?
Were I laid away in the furrows deep
Secure from jackal and passing plough,
Would your eyes not follow me still through sleep
Torment me then as they torture now?
Would you ever have loved me, Golden Eyes,
Had I done aught better or otherwise?
Was I overspeechful, or did you yearn
When I sat silent, for songs or speech?
Ah, Beloved, I had been so apt to learn,
So apt, had you only cared to teach.
But time for silence and song is done,
You wanted nothing, my Golden Sun!
What should you want of a waning star?
That drifts in its lonely orbit far
Away from your soft, effulgent light
In outer planes of Eternal night?
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