10 Best Famous Goddesses Poems

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

• All Famous Goddesses Poems

 The road led straight to the temple.
Notre Dame, though not Gothic at all.
The huge doors were closed. I chose one on the side,
Not to the main building-to its left wing,
The one in green copper, worn into gaps below.
I pushed. Then it was revealed:
An astonishing large hall, in warm light.
Great statues of sitting women-goddesses,
In draped robes, marked it with a rhythm.
Color embraced me like the interior of a purple-brown flower
Of unheard-of size. I walked, liberated
From worries, pangs of conscience, and fears.
I knew I was there as one day I would be.
I woke up serene, thinking that this dream
Answers my question, often asked:
How is it when one passes the last threshold?

 As, when a lofty pile is raised,
We never hear the workmen praised,
Who bring the lime, or place the stones;
But all admire Inigo Jones:
So, if this pile of scattered rhymes
Should be approved in aftertimes;
If it both pleases and endures,
The merit and the praise are yours.
Thou, Stella, wert no longer young,
When first for thee my harp was strung,
Without one word of Cupid's darts,
Of killing eyes, or bleeding hearts;
With friendship and esteem possest,
I ne'er admitted Love a guest.
In all the habitudes of life,
The friend, the mistress, and the wife,
Variety we still pursue,
In pleasure seek for something new;
Or else, comparing with the rest,
Take comfort that our own is best;
The best we value by the worst,
As tradesmen show their trash at first;
But his pursuits are at an end,
Whom Stella chooses for a friend.
A poet starving in a garret,
Invokes his mistress and his Muse,
And stays at home for want of shoes:
Should but his Muse descending drop
A slice of bread and mutton-chop;
Or kindly, when his credit's out,
Surprise him with a pint of stout;
Or patch his broken stocking soles;
Or send him in a peck of coals;
Exalted in his mighty mind,
He flies and leaves the stars behind;
Counts all his labours amply paid,
Adores her for the timely aid.
Or, should a porter make inquiries
For Chloe, Sylvia, Phillis, Iris;
Be told the lodging, lane, and sign,
The bowers that hold those nymphs divine;
Fair Chloe would perhaps be found
With footmen tippling under ground;
The charming Sylvia beating flax,
Her shoulders marked with bloody tracks;
Bright Phyllis mending ragged smocks:
And radiant Iris in the pox.
These are the goddesses enrolled
In Curll's collection, new and old,
Whose scoundrel fathers would not know 'em,
If they should meet them in a poem.
True poets can depress and raise,
Are lords of infamy and praise;
They are not scurrilous in satire,
Nor will in panegyric flatter.
Unjustly poets we asperse;
Truth shines the brighter clad in verse,
And all the fictions they pursue
Do but insinuate what is true.
Now, should my praises owe their truth
To beauty, dress, or paint, or youth,
What stoics call without our power,
They could not be ensured an hour;
'Twere grafting on an annual stock,
That must our expectation mock,
And, making one luxuriant shoot,
Die the next year for want of root:
Before I could my verses bring,
Perhaps you're quite another thing.
So Maevius, when he drained his skull
To celebrate some suburb trull,
His similes in order set,
And every crambo he could get;
Had gone through all the common-places
Worn out by wits, who rhyme on faces;
Before he could his poem close,
The lovely nymph had lost her nose.
Your virtues safely I commend;
They on no accidents depend:
Let malice look with all her eyes,
She dare not say the poet lies.
Stella, when you these lines transcribe,
Lest you should take them for a bribe,
Resolved to mortify your pride,
I'll here expose your weaker side.
Your spirits kindle to a flame,
Moved by the lightest touch of blame;
And when a friend in kindness tries
To show you where your error lies,
Conviction does but more incense;
Perverseness is your whole defence;
Truth, judgment, wit, give place to spite,
Regardless both of wrong and right;
Your virtues all suspended wait,
Till time has opened reason's gate;
And, what is worse, your passion bends
Its force against your nearest friends,
Which manners, decency, and pride,

Have taught from you the world to hide;
In vain; for see, your friend has brought
To public light your only fault;
And yet a fault we often find
Mixed in a noble, generous mind:
And may compare to Etna's fire,
Which, though with trembling, all admire;
The heat that makes the summit glow,
Enriching all the vales below.
Those who, in warmer climes, complain
From Phoebus' rays they suffer pain,
Must own that pain is largely paid
By generous wines beneath a shade.
Yet, when I find your passions rise,
And anger sparkling in your eyes,
I grieve those spirits should be spent,
For nobler ends by nature meant.
One passion, with a different turn,
Makes wit inflame, or anger burn:
So the sun's heat, with different powers,
Ripens the grape, the liquor sours:
Thus Ajax, when with rage possest,
By Pallas breathed into his breast,
His valour would no more employ,
Which might alone have conquered Troy;
But, blinded be resentment, seeks
For vengeance on his friends the Greeks.
You think this turbulence of blood
From stagnating preserves the flood,
Which, thus fermenting by degrees,
Exalts the spirits, sinks the lees.
Stella, for once your reason wrong;
For, should this ferment last too long,
By time subsiding, you may find
Nothing but acid left behind;
From passion you may then be freed,
When peevishness and spleen succeed.
Say, Stella, when you copy next,
Will you keep strictly to the text?
Dare you let these reproaches stand,
And to your failing set your hand?
Or, if these lines your anger fire,
Shall they in baser flames expire?
Whene'er they burn, if burn they must,
They'll prove my accusation just.

 It is no night to drown in:
A full moon, river lapsing
Black beneath bland mirror-sheen,

The blue water-mists dropping
Scrim after scrim like fishnets
Though fishermen are sleeping,

The massive castle turrets
Doubling themselves in a glass
All stillness. Yet these shapes float

Up toward me, troubling the face
Of quiet. From the nadir
They rise, their limbs ponderous

With richness, hair heavier
Than sculptured marble. They sing
Of a world more full and clear

Than can be. Sisters, your song
Bears a burden too weighty
For the whorled ear's listening

Here, in a well-steered country,
Under a balanced ruler.
Deranging by harmony

Beyond the mundane order,
Your voices lay siege. You lodge
On the pitched reefs of nightmare,

Promising sure harborage;
By day, descant from borders
Of hebetude, from the ledge

Also of high windows. Worse
Even than your maddening
Song, your silence. At the source

Of your ice-hearted calling --
Drunkenness of the great depths.
O river, I see drifting

Deep in your flux of silver
Those great goddesses of peace.
Stone, stone, ferry me down there.

 Can we not force from widow'd poetry, 
Now thou art dead (great Donne) one elegy 
To crown thy hearse? Why yet dare we not trust, 
Though with unkneaded dough-bak'd prose, thy dust, 
Such as th' unscissor'd churchman from the flower 
Of fading rhetoric, short-liv'd as his hour, 
Dry as the sand that measures it, should lay 
Upon thy ashes, on the funeral day? 
Have we no voice, no tune? Didst thou dispense 
Through all our language, both the words and sense? 
'Tis a sad truth. The pulpit may her plain 
And sober Christian precepts still retain, 
Doctrines it may, and wholesome uses, frame, 
Grave homilies and lectures, but the flame 
Of thy brave soul (that shot such heat and light 
As burnt our earth and made our darkness bright, 
Committed holy rapes upon our will, 
Did through the eye the melting heart distil, 
And the deep knowledge of dark truths so teach 
As sense might judge what fancy could not reach) 
Must be desir'd forever. So the fire 
That fills with spirit and heat the Delphic quire, 
Which, kindled first by thy Promethean breath, 
Glow'd here a while, lies quench'd now in thy death. 
The Muses' garden, with pedantic weeds 
O'erspread, was purg'd by thee; the lazy seeds 
Of servile imitation thrown away, 
And fresh invention planted; thou didst pay 
The debts of our penurious bankrupt age; 
Licentious thefts, that make poetic rage 
A mimic fury, when our souls must be 
Possess'd, or with Anacreon's ecstasy, 
Or Pindar's, not their own; the subtle cheat 
Of sly exchanges, and the juggling feat 
Of two-edg'd words, or whatsoever wrong 
By ours was done the Greek or Latin tongue, 
Thou hast redeem'd, and open'd us a mine 
Of rich and pregnant fancy; drawn a line 
Of masculine expression, which had good 
Old Orpheus seen, or all the ancient brood 
Our superstitious fools admire, and hold 
Their lead more precious than thy burnish'd gold, 
Thou hadst been their exchequer, and no more 
They each in other's dust had rak'd for ore. 
Thou shalt yield no precedence, but of time, 
And the blind fate of language, whose tun'd chime 
More charms the outward sense; yet thou mayst claim 
From so great disadvantage greater fame, 
Since to the awe of thy imperious wit 
Our stubborn language bends, made only fit 
With her tough thick-ribb'd hoops to gird about 
Thy giant fancy, which had prov'd too stout 
For their soft melting phrases. As in time 
They had the start, so did they cull the prime 
Buds of invention many a hundred year, 
And left the rifled fields, besides the fear 
To touch their harvest; yet from those bare lands 
Of what is purely thine, thy only hands, 
(And that thy smallest work) have gleaned more 
Than all those times and tongues could reap before. 

But thou art gone, and thy strict laws will be 
Too hard for libertines in poetry; 
They will repeal the goodly exil'd train 
Of gods and goddesses, which in thy just reign 
Were banish'd nobler poems; now with these, 
The silenc'd tales o' th' Metamorphoses 
Shall stuff their lines, and swell the windy page, 
Till verse, refin'd by thee, in this last age 
Turn ballad rhyme, or those old idols be 
Ador'd again, with new apostasy. 

Oh, pardon me, that break with untun'd verse 
The reverend silence that attends thy hearse, 
Whose awful solemn murmurs were to thee, 
More than these faint lines, a loud elegy, 
That did proclaim in a dumb eloquence 
The death of all the arts; whose influence, 
Grown feeble, in these panting numbers lies, 
Gasping short-winded accents, and so dies. 
So doth the swiftly turning wheel not stand 
In th' instant we withdraw the moving hand, 
But some small time maintain a faint weak course, 
By virtue of the first impulsive force; 
And so, whilst I cast on thy funeral pile 
Thy crown of bays, oh, let it crack awhile, 
And spit disdain, till the devouring flashes 
Suck all the moisture up, then turn to ashes. 

I will not draw the envy to engross 
All thy perfections, or weep all our loss; 
Those are too numerous for an elegy, 
And this too great to be express'd by me. 
Though every pen should share a distinct part, 
Yet art thou theme enough to tire all art; 
Let others carve the rest, it shall suffice 
I on thy tomb this epitaph incise: 

Here lies a king, that rul'd as he thought fit 
The universal monarchy of wit; 
Here lie two flamens, and both those, the best, 
Apollo's first, at last, the true God's priest.

 One heavy day I ran away from the grim face of society and the dizzying clamor of the city and directed my weary step to the spacious alley. I pursued the beckoning course of the rivulet and the musical sounds of the birds until I reached a lonely spot where the flowing branches of the trees prevented the sun from the touching the earth. 

I stood there, and it was entertaining to my soul - my thirsty soul who had seen naught but the mirage of life instead of its sweetness. 

I was engrossed deeply in thought and my spirits were sailing the firmament when a hour, wearing a sprig of grapevine that covered part of her naked body, and a wreath of poppies about her golden hair, suddenly appeared to me. As she she realized my astonishment, she greeted me saying, "Fear me not; I am the Nymph of the Jungle." 

"How can beauty like yours be committed to live in this place? Please tell me who your are, and whence you come?" I asked. She sat gracefully on the green grass and responded, "I am the symbol of nature! I am the ever virgin your forefathers worshipped, and to my honor they erected shrines and temples at Baalbek and Jbeil." And I dared say, "But those temples and shrines were laid waste and the bones of my adoring ancestors became a part of the earth; nothing was left to commemorate their goddess save a pitiful few and the forgotten pages in the book of history." 

She replied, "Some goddesses live in the lives of their worshippers and die in their deaths, while some live an eternal and infinite life. My life is sustained by the world of beauty which you will see where ever you rest your eyes, and this beauty is nature itself; it is the beginning of the shepherds joy among the hills, and a villagers happiness in the fields, and the pleasure of the awe filled tribes between the mountains and the plains. This Beauty promotes the wise into the throne the truth." 

Then I said, "Beauty is a terrible power!" And she retorted, "Human beings fear all things, even yourselves. You fear heaven, the source of spiritual peace; you fear nature, the haven of rest and tranquility; you fear the God of goodness and accuse him of anger, while he is full of love and mercy." 

After a deep silence, mingled with sweet dreams, I asked, "Speak to me of that beauty which the people interpret and define, each one according to his own conception; I have seen her honored and worshipped in different ways and manners." 

She answered, "Beauty is that which attracts your soul, and that which loves to give and not to receive. When you meet Beauty, you feel that the hands deep within your inner self are stretched forth to bring her into the domain of your heart. It is the magnificence combined of sorrow and joy; it is the Unseen which you see, and the Vague which you understand, and the Mute which you hear - it is the Holy of Holies that begins in yourself and ends vastly beyond your earthly imagination." 

Then the Nymph of the Jungle approached me and laid her scented hands upon my eyes. And as she withdrew, I found me alone in the valley. When I returned to the city, whose turbulence no longer vexed me, I repeated her words: 

"Beauty is that which attracts your soul, and that which loves to give and not to receive."

 I have been reading Pomfret's "Choice" this spring, 
A pretty kind of--sort of--kind of thing, 
Not much a verse, and poem none at all, 
Yet, as they say, extremely natural. 
And yet I know not. There's an art in pies, 
In raising crusts as well as galleries; 
And he's the poet, more or less, who knows 
The charm that hallows the least truth from prose, 
And dresses it in its mild singing clothes. 
Not oaks alone are trees, nor roses flowers; 
Much humble wealth makes rich this world of ours. 
Nature from some sweet energy throws up 
Alike the pine-mount and the buttercup; 
And truth she makes so precious, that to paint 
Either, shall shrine an artist like a saint, 
And bring him in his turn the crowds that press 
Round Guido's saints or Titian's goddesses. 

Our trivial poet hit upon a theme 
Which all men love, an old, sweet household dream:-- 
Pray, reader, what is yours?--I know full well 
What sort of home should grace my garden-bell,-- 
No tall, half-furnish'd, gloomy, shivering house, 
That worst of mountains labouring with a mouse; 
Nor should I choose to fill a tawdry niche in 
A Grecian temple, opening to a kitchen. 
The frogs in Homer should have had such boxes, 
Or Aesop's frog, whose heart was like the ox's. 
Such puff about high roads, so grand, so small, 
With wings and what not, portico and all, 
And poor drench'd pillars, which it seems a sin 
Not to mat up at night-time, or take in. 
I'd live in none of those. Nor would I have 
Veranda'd windows to forestall my grave; 
Veranda'd truly, from the northern heat! 
And cut down to the floor to comfort one's cold feet! 
My house should be of brick, more wide than high, 
With sward up to the path, and elm-trees nigh; 
A good old country lodge, half hid with blooms 
Of honied green, and quaint with straggling rooms, 
A few of which, white-bedded and well swept, 
For friends, whose name endear'd them, should be kept. 
The tip-toe traveller, peeping through the boughs 
O'er my low wall, should bless the pleasant house: 
And that my luck might not seem ill-bestow'd, 
A bench and spring should greet him on the road. 

My grounds should not be large. I like to go 
To Nature for a range, and prospect too, 
And cannot fancy she'd comprise for me, 
Even in a park, her all-sufficiency. 
Besides, my thoughts fly far, and when at rest 
Love not a watch-tow'r but a lulling nest. 
A Chiswick or a Chatsworth might, I grant, 
Visit my dreams with an ambitious want; 
But then I should be forc'd to know the weight 
Of splendid cares, new to my former state; 
And these 'twould far more fit me to admire, 
Borne by the graceful ease of noblest Devonshire. 
Such grounds, however, as I had should look 
Like "something" still; have seats, and walks, and brook; 
One spot for flowers, the rest all turf and trees; 
For I'd not grow my own bad lettuces. 
I'd build a cover'd path too against rain, 
Long, peradventure, as my whole domain, 
And so be sure of generous exercise, 
The youth of age and med'cine of the wise. 
And this reminds me, that behind some screen 
About my grounds, I'd have a bowling-green; 
Such as in wits' and merry women's days 
Suckling preferr'd before his walk of bays. 
You may still see them, dead as haunts of fairies, 
By the old seats of Killigrews and Careys, 
Where all, alas! is vanish'd from the ring, 
Wits and black eyes, the skittles and the king! 
Fishing I hate, because I think about it, 
Which makes it right that I should do without it. 
A dinner, or a death, might not be much, 
But cruelty's a rod I dare not touch. 
I own I cannot see my right to feel 
For my own jaws, and tear a trout's with steel; 
To troll him here and there, and spike, and strain, 
And let him loose to jerk him back again. 
Fancy a preacher at this sort of work, 
Not with his trout or gudgeon, but his clerk: 
The clerk leaps gaping at a tempting bit, 
And, hah! an ear-ache with a knife in it! 
That there is pain and evil is no rule 
That I should make it greater, like a fool; 
Or rid me of my rust so vile a way, 
As long as there's a single manly play. 
Nay, "fool"'s a word my pen unjustly writes, 
Knowing what hearts and brains have dozed o'er "bites"; 
But the next inference to be drawn might be, 
That higher beings made a trout of me; 
Which I would rather should not be the case, 
Though Isaak were the saint to tear my face, 
And, stooping from his heaven with rod and line, 
Made the fell sport, with his old dreams divine, 
As pleasant to his taste, as rough to mine. 
Such sophistry, no doubt, saves half the hell, 
But fish would have preferr'd his reasoning well, 
And, if my gills concern'd him, so should I. 
The dog, I grant, is in that "equal sky," 
But, heaven be prais'd, he's not my deity. 
All manly games I'd play at,--golf and quoits, 
And cricket, to set lungs and limbs to rights, 
And make me conscious, with a due respect, 
Of muscles one forgets by long neglect. 
With these, or bowls aforesaid, and a ride, 
Books, music, friends, the day I would divide, 
Most with my family, but when alone, 
Absorb'd in some new poem of my own, 
A task which makes my time so richly pass, 
So like a sunshine cast through painted glass 
(Save where poor Captain Sword crashes the panes), 
That cold my friends live too, and were the gains 
Of toiling men but freed from sordid fears, 
Well could I walk this earth a thousand years.

 "Young girls in old Arabia were often buried alive next
to their fathers, apparently as sacrifice to the goddesses
of the tribes..."

--Harold Feldman, "Children of the Desert" Psychoanalysis
and Psychoanalytic Review, Fall 1958

It was only important
to smile and hold still,
to lie down beside him
and to rest awhile,
to be folded up together
as if we were silk,
to sink from the eyes of mother
and not to talk.
The black room took us
like a cave or a mouth
or an indoor belly.
I held my breath
and daddy was there,
his thumbs, his fat skull,
his teeth, his hair growing
like a field or a shawl.
I lay by the moss
of his skin until
it grew strange. My sisters
will never know that I fall
out of myself and pretend
that Allah will not see
how I hold my daddy
like an old stone tree.

 Between the green bud and the red
Youth sat and sang by Time, and shed
From eyes and tresses flowers and tears,
From heart and spirit hopes and fears,
Upon the hollow stream whose bed
Is channelled by the foamless years;
And with the white the gold-haired head
Mixed running locks, and in Time's ears
Youth's dreams hung singing, and Time's truth
Was half not harsh in the ears of Youth.

Between the bud and the blown flower
Youth talked with joy and grief an hour,
With footless joy and wingless grief
And twin-born faith and disbelief
Who share the seasons to devour;
And long ere these made up their sheaf
Felt the winds round him shake and shower
The rose-red and the blood-red leaf,
Delight whose germ grew never grain,
And passion dyed in its own pain.

Then he stood up, and trod to dust
Fear and desire, mistrust and trust,
And dreams of bitter sleep and sweet,
And bound for sandals on his feet
Knowledge and patience of what must
And what things may be, in the heat
And cold of years that rot and rust
And alter; and his spirit's meat
Was freedom, and his staff was wrought
Of strength, and his cloak woven of thought.

For what has he whose will sees clear
To do with doubt and faith and fear,
Swift hopes and slow despondencies?
His heart is equal with the sea's
And with the sea-wind's, and his ear
Is level to the speech of these,
And his soul communes and takes cheer
With the actual earth's equalities,
Air, light, and night, hills, winds, and streams,
And seeks not strength from strengthless dreams.

His soul is even with the sun
Whose spirit and whose eye are one,
Who seeks not stars by day, nor light
And heavy heat of day by night.
Him can no God cast down, whom none
Can lift in hope beyond the height
Of fate and nature and things done
By the calm rule of might and right
That bids men be and bear and do,
And die beneath blind skies or blue.

To him the lights of even and morn
Speak no vain things of love or scorn,
Fancies and passions miscreate
By man in things dispassionate.
Nor holds he fellowship forlorn
With souls that pray and hope and hate,
And doubt they had better not been born,
And fain would lure or scare off fate
And charm their doomsman from their doom
And make fear dig its own false tomb.

He builds not half of doubts and half
Of dreams his own soul's cenotaph,
Whence hopes and fears with helpless eyes,
Wrapt loose in cast-off cerecloths, rise
And dance and wring their hands and laugh,
And weep thin tears and sigh light sighs,
And without living lips would quaff
The living spring in man that lies,
And drain his soul of faith and strength
It might have lived on a life's length.

He hath given himself and hath not sold
To God for heaven or man for gold,
Or grief for comfort that it gives,
Or joy for grief's restoratives.
He hath given himself to time, whose fold
Shuts in the mortal flock that lives
On its plain pasture's heat and cold
And the equal year's alternatives.
Earth, heaven, and time, death, life, and he,
Endure while they shall be to be.

"Yet between death and life are hours
To flush with love and hide in flowers;
What profit save in these?" men cry:
"Ah, see, between soft earth and sky,
What only good things here are ours!"
They say, "what better wouldst thou try,
What sweeter sing of? or what powers
Serve, that will give thee ere thou die
More joy to sing and be less sad,
More heart to play and grow more glad?"

Play then and sing; we too have played,
We likewise, in that subtle shade.
We too have twisted through our hair
Such tendrils as the wild Loves wear,
And heard what mirth the Maenads made,
Till the wind blew our garlands bare
And left their roses disarrayed,
And smote the summer with strange air,
And disengirdled and discrowned
The limbs and locks that vine-wreaths bound.

We too have tracked by star-proof trees
The tempest of the Thyiades
Scare the loud night on hills that hid
The blood-feasts of the Bassarid,
Heard their song's iron cadences
Fright the wolf hungering from the kid,
Outroar the lion-throated seas,
Outchide the north-wind if it chid,
And hush the torrent-tongued ravines
With thunders of their tambourines.

But the fierce flute whose notes acclaim
Dim goddesses of fiery fame,
Cymbal and clamorous kettledrum,
Timbrels and tabrets, all are dumb
That turned the high chill air to flame;
The singing tongues of fire are numb
That called on Cotys by her name
Edonian, till they felt her come
And maddened, and her mystic face
Lightened along the streams of Thrace.

For Pleasure slumberless and pale,
And Passion with rejected veil,
Pass, and the tempest-footed throng
Of hours that follow them with song
Till their feet flag and voices fail,
And lips that were so loud so long
Learn silence, or a wearier wail;
So keen is change, and time so strong,
To weave the robes of life and rend
And weave again till life have end.

But weak is change, but strengthless time,
To take the light from heaven, or climb
The hills of heaven with wasting feet.
Songs they can stop that earth found meet,
But the stars keep their ageless rhyme;
Flowers they can slay that spring thought sweet,
But the stars keep their spring sublime;
Passions and pleasures can defeat,
Actions and agonies control,
And life and death, but not the soul.

Because man's soul is man's God still,
What wind soever waft his will
Across the waves of day and night
To port or shipwreck, left or right,
By shores and shoals of good and ill;
And still its flame at mainmast height
Through the rent air that foam-flakes fill
Sustains the indomitable light
Whence only man hath strength to steer
Or helm to handle without fear.

Save his own soul's light overhead,
None leads him, and none ever led,
Across birth's hidden harbour-bar,
Past youth where shoreward shallows are,
Through age that drives on toward the red
Vast void of sunset hailed from far,
To the equal waters of the dead;
Save his own soul he hath no star,
And sinks, except his own soul guide,
Helmless in middle turn of tide.

No blast of air or fire of sun
Puts out the light whereby we run
With girded loins our lamplit race,
And each from each takes heart of grace
And spirit till his turn be done,
And light of face from each man's face
In whom the light of trust is one;
Since only souls that keep their place
By their own light, and watch things roll,
And stand, have light for any soul.

A little time we gain from time
To set our seasons in some chime,
For harsh or sweet or loud or low,
With seasons played out long ago
And souls that in their time and prime
Took part with summer or with snow,
Lived abject lives out or sublime,
And had their chance of seed to sow
For service or disservice done
To those days daed and this their son.

A little time that we may fill
Or with such good works or such ill
As loose the bonds or make them strong
Wherein all manhood suffers wrong.
By rose-hung river and light-foot rill
There are who rest not; who think long
Till they discern as from a hill
At the sun's hour of morning song,
Known of souls only, and those souls free,
The sacred spaces of the sea.

 O crows circling over my head and cawing!
I admit to being, at times,
Suddenly, and without the slightest warning,
Exceedingly happy.

On a morning otherwise sunless,
Strolling arm in arm
Past some gallows-shaped trees
With my dear Helen,
Who is also a strange bird,

With a feeling of being summoned
Urgently, but by a most gracious invitation
To breakfast on slices of watermelon
In the company of naked gods and goddesses
On a patch of last night's snow.

 Even the beauteous must die! This vanquishes men and immortals;
But of the Stygian god moves not the bosom of steel.
Once and once only could love prevail on the ruler of shadows,
And on the threshold, e'en then, sternly his gift he recalled.
Venus could never heal the wounds of the beauteous stripling,
That the terrible boar made in his delicate skin;
Nor could his mother immortal preserve the hero so godlike,
When at the west gate of Troy, falling, his fate he fulfilled.
But she arose from the ocean with all the daughters of Nereus,
And o'er her glorified son raised the loud accents of woe.
See! where all the gods and goddesses yonder are weeping,
That the beauteous must fade, and that the perfect must die.
Even a woe-song to be in the mouth of the loved ones is glorious,
For what is vulgar descends mutely to Orcus' dark shades.