Written by
Percy Bysshe Shelley |
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
|
Written by
William Butler Yeats |
I
I walk through the long schoolroom questioning;
A kind old nun in a white hood replies;
The children learn to cipher and to sing,
To study reading-books and histories,
To cut and sew, be neat in everything
In the best modern way - the children's eyes
In momentary wonder stare upon
A sixty-year-old smiling public man.
II
I dream of a Ledaean body, bent
Above a sinking fire. a tale that she
Told of a harsh reproof, or trivial event
That changed some childish day to tragedy -
Told, and it seemed that our two natures blent
Into a sphere from youthful sympathy,
Or else, to alter Plato's parable,
Into the yolk and white of the one shell.
III
And thinking of that fit of grief or rage
I look upon one child or t'other there
And wonder if she stood so at that age -
For even daughters of the swan can share
Something of every paddler's heritage -
And had that colour upon cheek or hair,
And thereupon my heart is driven wild:
She stands before me as a living child.
IV
Her present image floats into the mind -
Did Quattrocento finger fashion it
Hollow of cheek as though it drank the wind
And took a mess of shadows for its meat?
And I though never of Ledaean kind
Had pretty plumage once - enough of that,
Better to smile on all that smile, and show
There is a comfortable kind of old scarecrow.
V
What youthful mother, a shape upon her lap
Honey of generation had betrayed,
And that must sleep, shriek, struggle to escape
As recollection or the drug decide,
Would think her Son, did she but see that shape
With sixty or more winters on its head,
A compensation for the pang of his birth,
Or the uncertainty of his setting forth?
VI
Plato thought nature but a spume that plays
Upon a ghostly paradigm of things;
Solider Aristotle played the taws
Upon the bottom of a king of kings;
World-famous golden-thighed Pythagoras
Fingered upon a fiddle-stick or strings
What a star sang and careless Muses heard:
Old clothes upon old sticks to scare a bird.
VII
Both nuns and mothers worship images,
But thos the candles light are not as those
That animate a mother's reveries,
But keep a marble or a bronze repose.
And yet they too break hearts - O presences
That passion, piety or affection knows,
And that all heavenly glory symbolise -
O self-born mockers of man's enterprise;
VIII
Labour is blossoming or dancing where
The body is not bruised to pleasure soul.
Nor beauty born out of its own despair,
Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil.
O chestnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?
|
Written by
Rabindranath Tagore |
Day after day, O lord of my life,
shall I stand before thee face to face.
With folded hands, O lord of all worlds,
shall I stand before thee face to face.
Under thy great sky in solitude and silence,
with humble heart shall I stand before thee face to face.
In this laborious world of thine, tumultuous with toil
and with struggle, among hurrying crowds
shall I stand before thee face to face.
And when my work shall be done in this world,
O King of kings, alone and speechless
shall I stand before thee face to face.
|
Written by
Ralph Waldo Emerson |
I Alphonso live and learn,
Seeing nature go astern.
Things deteriorate in kind,
Lemons run to leaves and rind,
Meagre crop of figs and limes,
Shorter days and harder times.
Flowering April cools and dies
In the insufficient skies;
Imps at high Midsummer blot
Half the sun's disk with a spot;
'Twill not now avail to tan
Orange cheek, or skin of man:
Roses bleach, the goats are dry,
Lisbon quakes, the people cry.
Yon pale scrawny fisher fools,
Gaunt as bitterns in the pools,
Are no brothers of my blood,—
They discredit Adamhood.
Eyes of gods! ye must have seen,
O'er your ramparts as ye lean,
The general debility,
Of genius the sterility,
Mighty projects countermanded,
Rash ambition broken-handed,
Puny man and scentless rose
Tormenting Pan to double the dose.
Rebuild or ruin: either fill
Of vital force the wasted rill,
Or, tumble all again in heap
To weltering chaos, and to sleep.
Say, Seigneurs, are the old Niles dry,
Which fed the veins of earth and sky,
That mortals miss the loyal heats
Which drove them erst to social feats,
Now to a savage selfness grown,
Think nature barely serves for one;
With. science poorly mask their hurt,
And vex the gods with question pert,
Immensely curious whether you
Still are rulers, or Mildew.
Masters, I'm in pain with you;
Masters, I'll be plain with you.
In my palace of Castile,
I, a king, for kings can feel;
There my thoughts the matter roll,
And solve and oft resolve the whole,
And, for I'm styled Alphonse the Wise,
Ye shall not fail for sound advice,
Before ye want a drop of rain,
Hear the sentiment of Spain.
You have tried famine: no more try it;
Ply us now with a full diet;
Teach your pupils now with plenty,
For one sun supply us twenty:
I have thought it thoroughly over,
State of hermit, state of lover;
We must have society,
We cannot spare variety.
Hear you, then, celestial fellows!
Fits not to be over zealous;
Steads not to work on the clean jump,
Nor wine nor brains perpetual pump;
Men and gods are too extense,—
Could you slacken and condense?
Your rank overgrowths reduce,
Till your kinds abound with juice;
Earth crowded cries, "Too many men,"—
My counsel is, Kill nine in ten,
And bestow the shares of all
On the remnant decimal.
Add their nine lives to this cat;
Stuff their nine brains in his hat;
Make his frame and forces square
With the labors he must dare;
Thatch his flesh, and even his years
With the marble which he rears;
There growing slowly old at ease,
No faster than his planted trees,
He may, by warrant of his age,
In schemes of broader scope engage:
So shall ye have a man of the sphere,
Fit to grace the solar year.
|
Written by
Anonymous |
There’s not a leaf within the bower,—There’s not a bird upon the tree,—There’s not a dewdrop on the flower,—But bears the impress, Lord, of Thee.[Pg 008]Thy power the varied leaf designed,And gave the bird its thrilling tone;Thy hand the dewdrops’ tints combined,Till like a diamond’s blaze they shone.Yes, dewdrops, leaves and buds, and all,—The smallest, like the greatest things,—The sea’s vast space, the earth’s wide ball,Alike proclaim Thee, King of kings!But man alone, to bounteous Heaven,Thanksgiving’s conscious strains can raise:To favored man, alone, ’tis given,To join the angelic choir in praise.
|
Written by
Joyce Kilmer |
(For S. M. E.)
I take my leave, with sorrow, of Him I love so well;
I look my last upon His small and radiant prison-cell;
O happy lamp! to serve Him with never ceasing light!
O happy flame! to tremble forever in His sight!
I leave the holy quiet for the loudly human train,
And my heart that He has breathed upon is filled with lonely pain.
O King, O Friend, O Lover! What sorer grief can be
In all the reddest depths of Hell than banishment from Thee?
But from my window as I speed across the sleeping land
I see the towns and villages wherein His houses stand.
Above the roofs I see a cross outlined against the night,
And I know that there my Lover dwells in His sacramental might.
Dominions kneel before Him, and Powers kiss His feet,
Yet for me He keeps His weary watch in the turmoil of the street:
The King of Kings awaits me, wherever I may go,
O who am I that He should deign to love and serve me so?
|
Written by
Rudyard Kipling |
1903
After Boer War
Duly with knees that feign to quake--
Bent head and shaded brow,--
Yet once again, for my father's sake,
In Rimmon's House I bow.
The curtains part, the trumpet blares,
And the eunuchs howl aloud;
And the gilt, swag-bellied idol glares
Insolent over the crowd.
"This is Rimmon, Lord of the Earth--
"Fear Him and bow the knee!"
And I watch my comrades hide their mirth
That rode to the wars with me.
For we remember the sun and the sand
And the rocks whereon we trod,
Ere we came to a scorched and a scornful land
That did not know our God;
As we remember the sacrifice,
Dead men an hundred laid--
Slain while they served His mysteries,
And that He would not aid--
Not though we gashed ourselves and wept,
For the high-priest bade us wait;
Saying He went on a journey or slept,
Or was drunk or had taken a mate.
(Praise ye Rimmon, King of Kings,
Who ruleth Earth and Sky!
And again I bow as the censer swings
And the God Enthroned goes by.)
Ay, we remember His sacred ark
And the virtuous men that knelt
To the dark and the hush behind the dark
Wherein we dreamed He dwelt;
Until we entered to hale Him out
And found no more than an old
Uncleanly image girded about
The loins with scarlet and gold.
Him we o'erset with the butts of our spears--
Him and his vast designs--
To be scorn of our muleteers
And the jest of our halted line.
By the picket-pins that the dogs defile,
In the dung and the dust He lay,
Till the priests ran and chattered awhile
And we wiped Him and took Him away.
Hushing the matter before it was known,
They returned to our fathers afar,
And hastily set Him afresh on His throne
Because he had won us the war.
Wherefore with knees that feign to quake--
Bent head and shaded brow--
To this dog, for my father's sake,
In the Rimmon's House I bow!
|
Written by
George William Russell |
I PAUSED beside the cabin door and saw the King of Kings at play,
Tumbled upon the grass I spied the little heavenly runaway.
The mother laughed upon the child made gay by its ecstatic morn,
And yet the sages spake of It as of the Ancient and Unborn.
I heard the passion breathed amid the honeysuckle scented glade,
And saw the King pass lightly from the beauty that he had betrayed.
I saw him pass from love to love; and yet the pure allowed His claim
To be the purest of the pure, thrice holy, stainless, without blame.
I saw the open tavern door flash on the dusk a ruddy glare,
And saw the King of Kings outcast reel brawling through the starlit air.
And yet He is the Prince of Peace of whom the ancient wisdom tells,
And by their silence men adore the lovely silence where He dwells.
I saw the King of Kings again, a thing to shudder at and fear,
A form so darkened and so marred that childhood fled if it drew near.
And yet He is the Light of Lights whose blossoming is Paradise,
That Beauty of the King which dawns upon the seers’ enraptured eyes.
I saw the King of Kings again, a miser with a heart grown cold,
And yet He is the Prodigal, the Spendthrift of the Heavenly Gold,
The largesse of whose glory crowns the blazing brows of cherubim,
And sun and moon and stars and flowers are jewels scattered forth by Him.
I saw the King of Kings descend the narrow doorway to the dust
With all his fires of morning still, the beauty, bravery, and lust.
And yet He is the life within the Ever-living Living Ones,
The ancient with eternal youth, the cradle of the infant suns,
The fiery fountain of the stars, and He the golden urn where all
The glittering spray of planets in their myriad beauty fall.
|
Written by
Isaac Watts |
God's wonders of creation, providence, redemption, and salvation.
Give to our God immortal praise;
Mercy and truth are all his ways:
Wonders of grace to God belong,
Repeat his mercies in your song.
Give to the Lord of lords renown,
The King of kings with glory crown:
His mercies ever shall endure,
When lords and kings are known no more.
He built the earth, he spread the sky,
And fixed the starry lights on high:
Wonders of grace to God belong,
Repeat his mercies in your song.
He fills the sun with morning light;
He bids the moon direct the night:
His mercies ever shall endure,
When suns and moons shall shine no more.
The Jews he freed from Pharaoh's hand,
And brought them to the promised land
Wonders of grace to God belong,
Repeat his mercies in your song.
He saw the Gentiles dead in sin,
And felt his pity work within
His mercies ever shall endure,
When death and sin shall reign no more.
He sent his Son with power to save
From guilt, and darkness, and the grave
Wonders of grace to God belong,
Repeat his mercies in your song.
Through this vain world he guides our feet,
And leads us to his heav'nly seat
His mercies ever shall endure,
When this vain world shall be no more.
|
Written by
Isaac Watts |
The names and titles of Christ. From several scriptures.
With cheerful voice I sing
The titles of my Lord,
And borrow all the names
Of honor from his word:
Nature and art can ne'er supply
Sufficient forms of majesty.
In Jesus we behold
His Father's glorious face,
Shining for ever bright,
With mild and lovely rays
Th' eternal God's eternal Son
Inherits and partakes the throne.]
The sovereign King of kings,
The Lord of lords most high,
Writes his own name upon
His garment and his thigh:
His name is called The Word of God;
He rules the earth with iron rod.
Where promises and grace
Can neither melt nor move,
The angry Lamb resents
The injuries of his love;
Awakes his wrath without delay,
As lions roar, and tear the prey.
But when for works of peace
The great Redeemer comes,
What gentle characters,
What titles he assumes!
Light of the world, and Life of men;
Nor will he bear those names in vain.
Immense compassion reigns
In our Immanuel's heart,
When he descends to act
A Mediator's part:
He is a Friend and Brother too;
Divinely kind, divinely true.
At length the Lord the Judge
His awful throne ascends,
And drives the rebels far
From favorites and friends:
Then shall the saints completely prove
The heights and depths of all his love.
|