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Best Famous Forges Poems

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Written by Andrew Barton Paterson | Create an image from this poem

A Dream of the Melbourne Cup

 Bring me a quart of colonial beer 
And some doughy damper to make good cheer, 
I must make a heavy dinner; 
Heavily dine and heavily sup, 
Of indigestible things fill up, 
Next month they run the Melbourne Cup, 
And I have to dream the winner. 
Stoke it in, boys! the half-cooked ham, 
The rich ragout and the charming cham., 
I've got to mix my liquor; 
Give me a gander's gaunt hind leg, 
Hard and tough as a wooden peg, 
And I'll keep it down with a hard-boiled egg, 
'Twill make me dream the quicker. 

Now that I'm full of fearful feed, 
Oh, but I'll dream of a winner indeed 
In my restless, troubled slumber; 
While the night-mares race through my heated brain 
And their devil-riders spur amain, 
The trip for the Cup will reward my pain, 
And I'll spot the winning number. 

Thousands and thousands and thousands more, 
Like sands on the white Pacific shore, 
The crowding people cluster; 
For evermore is the story old, 
While races are bought and backers are sold, 
Drawn by the greed of the gain of gold, 
In their thousands still they muster. 

* * * * * 

And the bookies' cries grow fierce and hot, 
"I'll lay the Cup! The double, if not!" 
"Five monkeys, Little John, sir!" 
"Here's fives bar one, I lay, I lay!" 
And so they shout through the livelong day, 
And stick to the game that is sure to pay, 
While fools put money on, sir! 

And now in my dream I seem to go 
And bet with a "book" that I seem to know -- 
A Hebrew money-lender; 
A million to five is the price I get -- 
Not bad! but before I book the bet 
The horse's name I clean forgret, 
Its number and even gender. 

Now for the start, and here they come, 
And the hoof-strokes roar like a mighty drum 
Beat by a hand unsteady; 
They come like a rushing, roaring flood, 
Hurrah for the speed of the Chester blood; 
For Acme is making the pace so good 
They are some of 'em done already. 

But round the track she begins to tire, 
And a mighty shout goes up "Crossfire!" 
The magpie jacket's leading; 
And Crossfire challenges fierce and bold, 
And the lead she'll have and the lead she'll hold, 
But at length gives way to the black and gold, 
Which right to the front is speeding. 

Carry them on and keep it up -- 
A flying race is the Melbourne Cup, 
You must race and stay to win it; 
And old Commotion, Victoria's pride, 
Now takes the lead with his raking stride, 
And a mighty roar goes far and wide -- 
"There's only Commotion in it!" 

But one draws out from the beaten ruck 
And up on the rails by a piece of luck 
He comes in a style that's clever; 
"It's Trident! Trident! Hurrah for Hales!" 
"Go at 'em now while their courage fails;" 
"Trident! Trident! for New South Wales!" 
"The blue and white for ever!" 

Under the whip! with the ears flat back, 
Under the whip! though the sinews crack, 
No sign of the base white feather: 
Stick to it now for your breeding's sake, 
Stick to it now though your hearts should break, 
While the yells and roars make the grand-stand shake, 
They come down the straignt together. 

Trident slowly forges ahead, 
The fierce whips cut and the spurs are red, 
The pace is undiminished 
Now for the Panics that never fail! 
But many a backer's face grows pale 
As old Commotion swings his tail 
And swerves -- and the Cup is finished. 

* * * * * 

And now in my dream it all comes back: 
I bet my coin on the Sydney crack, 
A million I've won, no question! 
"Give me my money, you hook-nosed hog! 
Give me my money, bookmaking dog!" 
But he disappeared in a kind of fog, 
And I woke with "the indigestion".


Written by Paul Laurence Dunbar | Create an image from this poem

Ode To Ethiopia

O Mother Race! to thee I bring
This pledge of faith unwavering,
This tribute to thy glory.
I know the pangs which thou didst feel,
When Slavery crushed thee with its heel,
With thy dear blood all gory.
Sad days were those—ah, sad indeed!
But through the land the fruitful seed
Of better times was growing.
The plant of freedom upward sprung,
And spread its leaves so fresh and young—
Its blossoms now are blowing.
On every hand in this fair land,
Proud Ethiope's swarthy children stand
Beside their fairer neighbor;
The forests flee before their stroke,
Their hammers ring, their forges smoke,—
They stir in honest labour.
They tread the fields where honour calls;
Their voices sound through senate halls
In majesty and power.
To right they cling; the hymns they sing
Up to the skies in beauty ring,
And bolder grow each hour.
Be proud, my Race, in mind and soul;
Thy name is writ on Glory's scroll
In characters of fire.
High 'mid the clouds of Fame's bright sky
Thy banner's blazoned folds now fly,
And truth shall lift them higher.
Thou hast the right to noble pride,
Whose spotless robes were purified
By blood's severe baptism.
Upon thy brow the cross was laid,[Pg 16]
And labour's painful sweat-beads made
A consecrating chrism.
No other race, or white or black,
When bound as thou wert, to the rack,
So seldom stooped to grieving;
No other race, when free again,
Forgot the past and proved them men
So noble in forgiving.
Go on and up! Our souls and eyes
Shall follow thy continuous rise;
Our ears shall list thy story
From bards who from thy root shall spring,
And proudly tune their lyres to sing
Of Ethiopia's glory.
Written by Matthew Arnold | Create an image from this poem

Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse

 Through Alpine meadows soft-suffused
With rain, where thick the crocus blows,
Past the dark forges long disused,
The mule-track from Saint Laurent goes.
The bridge is cross'd, and slow we ride,
Through forest, up the mountain-side. 

The autumnal evening darkens round,
The wind is up, and drives the rain;
While, hark! far down, with strangled sound
Doth the Dead Guier's stream complain,
Where that wet smoke, among the woods,
Over his boiling cauldron broods. 

Swift rush the spectral vapours white
Past limestone scars with ragged pines,
Showing--then blotting from our sight!--
Halt--through the cloud-drift something shines!
High in the valley, wet and drear,
The huts of Courrerie appear. 

Strike leftward! cries our guide; and higher
Mounts up the stony forest-way.
At last the encircling trees retire;
Look! through the showery twilight grey
What pointed roofs are these advance?--
A palace of the Kings of France? 

Approach, for what we seek is here!
Alight, and sparely sup, and wait
For rest in this outbuilding near;
Then cross the sward and reach that gate.
Knock; pass the wicket! Thou art come
To the Carthusians' world-famed home. 

The silent courts, where night and day
Into their stone-carved basins cold
The splashing icy fountains play--
The humid corridors behold!
Where, ghostlike in the deepening night,
Cowl'd forms brush by in gleaming white. 

The chapel, where no organ's peal
Invests the stern and naked prayer--
With penitential cries they kneel
And wrestle; rising then, with bare
And white uplifted faces stand,
Passing the Host from hand to hand; 

Each takes, and then his visage wan
Is buried in his cowl once more.
The cells!--the suffering Son of Man
Upon the wall--the knee-worn floor--
And where they sleep, that wooden bed,
Which shall their coffin be, when dead! 

The library, where tract and tome
Not to feed priestly pride are there,
To hymn the conquering march of Rome,
Nor yet to amuse, as ours are!
They paint of souls the inner strife,
Their drops of blood, their death in life. 

The garden, overgrown--yet mild,
See, fragrant herbs are flowering there!
Strong children of the Alpine wild
Whose culture is the brethren's care;
Of human tasks their only one,
And cheerful works beneath the sun. 

Those halls, too, destined to contain
Each its own pilgrim-host of old,
From England, Germany, or Spain--
All are before me! I behold
The House, the Brotherhood austere!
--And what am I, that I am here? 

For rigorous teachers seized my youth,
And purged its faith, and trimm'd its fire,
Show'd me the high, white star of Truth,
There bade me gaze, and there aspire.

Even now their whispers pierce the gloom:
What dost thou in this living tomb? 

Forgive me, masters of the mind!
At whose behest I long ago
So much unlearnt, so much resign'd--
I come not here to be your foe!
I seek these anchorites, not in ruth,
To curse and to deny your truth; 

Not as their friend, or child, I speak!
But as, on some far northern strand,
Thinking of his own Gods, a Greek
In pity and mournful awe might stand
Before some fallen Runic stone--
For both were faiths, and both are gone. 

Wandering between two worlds, one dead,
The other powerless to be born,
With nowhere yet to rest my head,
Like these, on earth I wait forlorn.
Their faith, my tears, the world deride--
I come to shed them at their side. 

Oh, hide me in your gloom profound,
Ye solemn seats of holy pain!
Take me, cowl'd forms, and fence me round,
Till I possess my soul again;
Till free my thoughts before me roll,
Not chafed by hourly false control! 

For the world cries your faith is now
But a dead time's exploded dream;
My melancholy, sciolists say,
Is a pass'd mode, an outworn theme--
As if the world had ever had
A faith, or sciolists been sad! 

Ah, if it be pass'd, take away,
At least, the restlessness, the pain;
Be man henceforth no more a prey
To these out-dated stings again!
The nobleness of grief is gone
Ah, leave us not the fret alone! 

But--if you cannot give us ease--
Last of the race of them who grieve
Here leave us to die out with these
Last of the people who believe!
Silent, while years engrave the brow;
Silent--the best are silent now. 

Achilles ponders in his tent,
The kings of modern thought are dumb,
Silent they are though not content,
And wait to see the future come.
They have the grief men had of yore,
But they contend and cry no more. 

Our fathers water'd with their tears
This sea of time whereon we sail,
Their voices were in all men's ears
We pass'd within their puissant hail.
Still the same ocean round us raves,
But we stand mute, and watch the waves. 

For what avail'd it, all the noise
And outcry of the former men?--
Say, have their sons achieved more joys,
Say, is life lighter now than then?
The sufferers died, they left their pain--
The pangs which tortured them remain. 

What helps it now, that Byron bore,
With haughty scorn which mock'd the smart,
Through Europe to the ?tolian shore
The pageant of his bleeding heart?
That thousands counted every groan,
And Europe made his woe her own? 

What boots it, Shelley! that the breeze
Carried thy lovely wail away,
Musical through Italian trees
Which fringe thy soft blue Spezzian bay?
Inheritors of thy distress
Have restless hearts one throb the less? 

Or are we easier, to have read,
O Obermann! the sad, stern page,
Which tells us how thou hidd'st thy head
From the fierce tempest of thine age
In the lone brakes of Fontainebleau,
Or chalets near the Alpine snow? 

Ye slumber in your silent grave!--
The world, which for an idle day
Grace to your mood of sadness gave,
Long since hath flung her weeds away.
The eternal trifler breaks your spell;
But we--we learned your lore too well! 

Years hence, perhaps, may dawn an age,
More fortunate, alas! than we,
Which without hardness will be sage,
And gay without frivolity.
Sons of the world, oh, speed those years;
But, while we wait, allow our tears! 

Allow them! We admire with awe
The exulting thunder of your race;
You give the universe your law,
You triumph over time and space!
Your pride of life, your tireless powers,
We laud them, but they are not ours. 

We are like children rear'd in shade
Beneath some old-world abbey wall,
Forgotten in a forest-glade,
And secret from the eyes of all.
Deep, deep the greenwood round them waves,
Their abbey, and its close of graves! 

But, where the road runs near the stream,
Oft through the trees they catch a glance
Of passing troops in the sun's beam--
Pennon, and plume, and flashing lance!
Forth to the world those soldiers fare,
To life, to cities, and to war! 

And through the wood, another way,
Faint bugle-notes from far are borne,
Where hunters gather, staghounds bay,
Round some fair forest-lodge at morn.
Gay dames are there, in sylvan green;
Laughter and cries--those notes between! 
The banners flashing through the trees

Make their blood dance and chain their eyes;
That bugle-music on the breeze
Arrests them with a charm'd surprise.
Banner by turns and bugle woo:
Ye shy recluses, follow too! 
O children, what do ye reply?--

'Action and pleasure, will ye roam
Through these secluded dells to cry
And call us?--but too late ye come!
Too late for us your call ye blow,
Whose bent was taken long ago. 

'Long since we pace this shadow'd nave;
We watch those yellow tapers shine,
Emblems of hope over the grave,
In the high altar's depth divine;
The organ carries to our ear
Its accents of another sphere. 

'Fenced early in this cloistral round
Of reverie, of shade, of prayer,
How should we grow in other ground?
How can we flower in foreign air?
--Pass, banners, pass, and bugles, cease;
And leave our desert to its peace!'
Written by Henry Van Dyke | Create an image from this poem

Americas Prosperity

 They tell me thou art rich, my country: gold
In glittering flood has poured into thy chest;
Thy flocks and herds increase, thy barns are pressed
With harvest, and thy stores can hardly hold
Their merchandise; unending trains are rolled
Along thy network rails of East and West;
Thy factories and forges never rest; 
Thou art enriched in all things bought and sold! 

But dost thou prosper? Better news I crave.
O dearest country, is it well with thee
Indeed, and is thy soul in health?
A nobler people, hearts more wisely brave,
And thoughts that lift men up and make them free,--
These are prosperity and vital wealth!
Written by Philip Levine | Create an image from this poem

I Sing The Body Electric

 People sit numbly at the counter 
waiting for breakfast or service. 
Today it's Hartford, Connecticut 
more than twenty-five years after 
the last death of Wallace Stevens. 
I have come in out of the cold 
and wind of a Sunday morning 
of early March, and I seem to be 
crying, but I'm only freezing 
and unpeeled. The waitress brings 
me hot tea in a cracked cup, 
and soon it's all over my paper, 
and so she refills it. I read 
slowly in The New York Times 
that poems are dying in Iowa, 
Missoula, on the outskirts of Reno, 
in the shopping galleries of Houston. 
We should all go to the grave 
of the unknown poet while the rain 
streaks our notebooks or stand 
for hours in the freezing winds 
off the lost books of our fathers 
or at least until we can no longer 
hold our pencils. Men keep coming 
in and going out, and two of them 
recall the great dirty fights 
between Willy Pep and Sandy Sadler, 
between little white perfection 
and death in red plaid trunks. 
I want to tell them I saw 
the last fight, I rode out 
to Yankee Stadium with two deserters 
from the French Army of Indochina 
and back with a drunken priest 
and both ways the whole train 
smelled of piss and vomit, but no 
one would believe me. Those are 
the true legends better left to die. 
In my black rain coat I go back 
out into the gray morning and dare 
the cars on North Indemnity Boulevard 
to hit me, but no one wants trouble 
at this hour. I have crossed 
a continent to bring these citizens 
the poems of the snowy mountains, 
of the forges of hopelessness, 
of the survivors of wars they 
never heard of and won't believe. 
Nothing is alive in this tunnel 
of winds of the end of winter 
except the last raging of winter, 
the cats peering smugly from the homes 
of strangers, and the great stunned sky 
slowly settling like a dark cloud 
lined only with smaller dark clouds.


Written by Vachel Lindsay | Create an image from this poem

Sunshine

 FOR A VERY LITTLE GIRL, NOT A YEAR OLD. 
CATHARINE FRAZEE WAKEFIELD.


The sun gives not directly
The coal, the diamond crown;
Not in a special basket
Are these from Heaven let down.

The sun gives not directly
The plough, man's iron friend;
Not by a path or stairway 
Do tools from Heaven descend. 

Yet sunshine fashions all things
That cut or burn or fly;
And corn that seems upon the earth
Is made in the hot sky.

The gravel of the roadbed, 
The metal of the gun, 
The engine of the airship 
Trace somehow from the sun.

And so your soul, my lady—
(Mere sunshine, nothing more)—
Prepares me the contraptions
I work with or adore.

Within me cornfields rustle,
Niagaras roar their way,
Vast thunderstorms and rainbows
Are in my thought to-day.

Ten thousand anvils sound there
By forges flaming white,
And many books I read there,
And many books I write;

And freedom's bells are ringing,
And bird-choirs chant and fly—
The whole world works in me to-day
And all the shining sky,

Because of one small lady
Whose smile is my chief sun.
She gives not any gift to me
Yet all gifts, giving one. . . .

Amen.
Written by Horace | Create an image from this poem

Let others Rhodes (LAUDABUNT ALII)

     Let others Rhodes or Mytilene sing,
         Or Ephesus, or Corinth, set between
     Two seas, or Thebes, or Delphi, for its king
         Each famous, or Thessalian Tempe green;
     There are who make chaste Pallas' virgin tower
         The daily burden of unending song,
     And search for wreaths the olive's rifled bower;
         The praise of Juno sounds from many a tongue,
     Telling of Argos' steeds, Mycenaes's gold.
         For me stern Sparta forges no such spell,
     No, nor Larissa's plain of richest mould,
         As bright Albunea echoing from her cell.
     O headlong Anio! O Tiburnian groves,
         And orchards saturate with shifting streams!
     Look how the clear fresh south from heaven removes
         The tempest, nor with rain perpetual teems!
     You too be wise, my Plancus: life's worst cloud
         Will melt in air, by mellow wine allay'd,
     Dwell you in camps, with glittering banners proud,
         Or 'neath your Tibur's canopy of shade.
     When Teucer fled before his father's frown
         From Salamis, they say his temples deep
     He dipp'd in wine, then wreath'd with poplar crown,
         And bade his comrades lay their grief to sleep:
     "Where Fortune bears us, than my sire more kind,
         There let us go, my own, my gallant crew.
     'Tis Teucer leads, 'tis Teucer breathes the wind;
         No more despair; Apollo's word is true.
     Another Salamis in kindlier air
         Shall yet arise. Hearts, that have borne with me
     Worse buffets! drown to-day in wine your care;
         To-morrow we recross the wide, wide sea!"
Written by Victor Hugo | Create an image from this poem

The Universal Republic

 ("Temps futurs.") 
 
 {Part "Lux," Jersey, Dec. 16-20, 1853.} 


 O vision of the coming time! 
 When man has 'scaped the trackless slime 
 And reached the desert spring; 
 When sands are crossed, the sward invites 
 The worn to rest 'mid rare delights 
 And gratefully to sing. 
 
 E'en now the eye that's levelled high, 
 Though dimly, can the hope espy 
 So solid soon, one day; 
 For every chain must then be broke, 
 And hatred none will dare evoke, 
 And June shall scatter May. 
 
 E'en now amid our misery 
 The germ of Union many see, 
 And through the hedge of thorn, 
 Like to a bee that dawn awakes, 
 On, Progress strides o'er shattered stakes, 
 With solemn, scathing scorn. 
 
 Behold the blackness shrink, and flee! 
 Behold the world rise up so free 
 Of coroneted things! 
 Whilst o'er the distant youthful States, 
 Like Amazonian bosom-plates, 
 Spread Freedom's shielding wings. 
 
 Ye, liberated lands, we hail! 
 Your sails are whole despite the gale! 
 Your masts are firm, and will not fail— 
 The triumph follows pain! 
 Hear forges roar! the hammer clanks— 
 It beats the time to nations' thanks— 
 At last, a peaceful strain! 
 
 'Tis rust, not gore, that gnaws the guns, 
 And shattered shells are but the runs 
 Where warring insects cope; 
 And all the headsman's racks and blades 
 And pincers, tools of tyrants' aids, 
 Are buried with the rope. 
 
 Upon the sky-line glows i' the dark 
 The Sun that now is but a spark; 
 But soon will be unfurled— 
 The glorious banner of us all, 
 The flag that rises ne'er to fall, 
 Republic of the World! 


 




Written by D. H. Lawrence | Create an image from this poem

Reminder

    Do you remember
How night after night swept level and low
Overhead, at home, and had not one star,
Nor one narrow gate for the moon to go
    Forth to her field of November.

    And you remember,
How towards the north a red blot on the sky
Burns like a blotch of anxiety
Over the forges, and small flames ply
    Like ghosts the shadow of the ember.

    Those were the days
When it was awful autumn to me,
When only there glowed on the dark of the sky
The red reflection of her agony,
    My beloved smelting down in the blaze

    Of death--my dearest
Love who had borne, and was now leaving me.
And I at the foot of her cross did suffer
    My own gethsemane.

    So I came to you,
And twice, after great kisses, I saw
The rim of the moon divinely rise
And strive to detach herself from the raw
    Blackened edge of the skies.

    Strive to escape;
With her whiteness revealing my sunken world
Tall and loftily shadowed. But the moon
Never magnolia-like unfurled
    Her white, her lamp-like shape.

    For you told me no,
And bade me not to ask for the dour
Communion, offering--"a better thing."
So I lay on your breast for an obscure hour
    Feeling your fingers go

    Like a rhythmic breeze
Over my hair, and tracing my brows,
Till I knew you not from a little wind:
--I wonder now if God allows
    Us only one moment his keys.

    If only then
You could have unlocked the moon on the night,
And I baptized myself in the light
Of your love; we both have entered then the white
    Pure passion, and never again.

    I wonder if only
You had taken me then, how different
Life would have been: should I have spent
Myself in waste, and you have bent
    Your pride, through being lonely?

Book: Reflection on the Important Things