Written by
D. H. Lawrence |
When you went, how was it you carried with you
My missal book of fine, flamboyant hours?
My book of turrets and of red-thorn bowers,
And skies of gold, and ladies in bright tissue?
Now underneath a blue-grey twilight, heaped
Beyond the withering snow of the shorn fields
Stands rubble of stunted houses; all is reaped
And garnered that the golden daylight yields.
Dim lamps like yellow poppies glimmer among
The shadowy stubble of the under-dusk,
As farther off the scythe of night is swung,
And little stars come rolling from their husk.
And all the earth is gone into a dust
Of greyness mingled with a fume of gold,
Covered with aged lichens, past with must,
And all the sky has withered and gone cold.
And so I sit and scan the book of grey,
Feeling the shadows like a blind man reading,
All fearful lest I find the last words bleeding
With wounds of sunset and the dying day.
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Written by
Richard Crashaw |
LET us leave our island woods grown dim and blue;
O’er the waters creeping the pearl dust of the eve
Hides the silver of the long wave rippling through:
The chill for the warm room let us leave.
Turn the lamp down low and draw the curtain wide,
So the greyness of the starlight bathes the room;
Let us see the giant face of night outside,
Though vague as a moth’s wing is the gloom.
Rumour of the fierce-pulsed city far away
Breaks upon the peace that aureoles our rest,
Steeped in stillness as if some primeval day
Hung drowsily o’er the water’s breast.
Shut the eyes that flame and hush the heart that burns:
In quiet we may hear the old primeval cry:
God gives wisdom to the spirit that upturns:
Let us adore now, you and I.
Age on age is heaped about us as we hear:
Cycles hurry to and fro with giant tread
From the deep unto the deep: but do not fear,
For the soul unhearing them is dead.
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Written by
Amy Levy |
(After Heine.)
The sad rain falls from Heaven,
A sad bird pipes and sings ;
I am sitting here at my window
And watching the spires of "King's."
O fairest of all fair places,
Sweetest of all sweet towns!
With the birds, and the greyness and greenness,
And the men in caps and gowns.
All they that dwell within thee,
To leave are ever loth,
For one man gets friends, and another
Gets honour, and one gets both.
The sad rain falls from Heaven;
My heart is great with woe--
I have neither a friend nor honour,
Yet I am sorry to go.
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Written by
Rg Gregory |
the day was as grey as the abbey
the light that filtered through the glass
had no disturbing shine about it
no one inside was grasping to collect it
the organ had its notes tucked in a corner
its sound blending the greyness into calm
i was a stranger there but felt collated
a dovecote for the peace the cool notes bred
old tiles replaced by victorian replicas
lined the norman stonework near the choir
their age and halfworn coats-of-arms
touched a nerve i was not prepared for
a longing gaped in me (my eyes sensed tears)
a rush of inner silence urged me to give
my body to a void (my life's denial)
i was stunned beyond self into alertness
a hand not my own (but seemed at home)
sent signals out and had no need of answers
it could have been i came to be a tree
that with its tucked up roots went slowly out
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Written by
Amy Levy |
On Bellosguardo, when the year was young,
We wandered, seeking for the daffodil
And dark anemone, whose purples fill
The peasant's plot, between the corn-shoots sprung.
Over the grey, low wall the olive flung
Her deeper greyness ; far off, hill on hill
Sloped to the sky, which, pearly-pale and still,
Above the large and luminous landscape hung.
A snowy blackthorn flowered beyond my reach;
You broke a branch and gave it to me there;
I found for you a scarlet blossom rare.
Thereby ran on of Art and Life our speech;
And of the gifts the gods had given to each--
Hope unto you, and unto me Despair.
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