Best Famous Snap Up Poems

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

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• All Famous Snap Up Poems

Written by Christina Rossetti | A Daughter of Eve A fool I was to sleep at noon, And wake when night is chilly Beneath the comfortless cold moon; A fool to pluck my rose too soon, A fool to snap my lily. My garden-plot I have not kept; Faded and all-forsaken, I weep as I have never wept: Oh it was summer when I slept, It's winter now I waken. Talk what you please of future spring And sun-warm'd sweet to-morrow:— Stripp'd bare of hope and everything, No more to laugh, no more to sing, I sit alone with sorrow.

Written by Siegfried Sassoon | Haunted EVENING was in the wood, louring with storm. A time of drought had sucked the weedy pool And baked the channels; birds had done with song. Thirst was a dream of fountains in the moon, Or willow-music blown across the water 5 Leisurely sliding on by weir and mill. Uneasy was the man who wandered, brooding, His face a little whiter than the dusk. A drone of sultry wings flicker¡¯d in his head. The end of sunset burning thro¡¯ the boughs 10 Died in a smear of red; exhausted hours Cumber¡¯d, and ugly sorrows hemmed him in. He thought: ¡®Somewhere there¡¯s thunder,¡¯ as he strove To shake off dread; he dared not look behind him, But stood, the sweat of horror on his face. 15 He blunder¡¯d down a path, trampling on thistles, In sudden race to leave the ghostly trees. And: ¡®Soon I¡¯ll be in open fields,¡¯ he thought, And half remembered starlight on the meadows, Scent of mown grass and voices of tired men, 20 Fading along the field-paths; home and sleep And cool-swept upland spaces, whispering leaves, And far off the long churring night-jar¡¯s note. But something in the wood, trying to daunt him, Led him confused in circles through the thicket. 25 He was forgetting his old wretched folly, And freedom was his need; his throat was choking. Barbed brambles gripped and clawed him round his legs, And he floundered over snags and hidden stumps. Mumbling: ¡®I will get out! I must get out!¡¯ 30 Butting and thrusting up the baffling gloom, Pausing to listen in a space ¡¯twixt thorns, He peers around with peering, frantic eyes. An evil creature in the twilight looping, Flapped blindly in his face. Beating it off, 35 He screeched in terror, and straightway something clambered Heavily from an oak, and dropped, bent double, To shamble at him zigzag, squat and bestial. Headlong he charges down the wood, and falls With roaring brain¡ªagony¡ªthe snap¡¯t spark¡ª 40 And blots of green and purple in his eyes. Then the slow fingers groping on his neck, And at his heart the strangling clasp of death.

Written by Elizabeth Bishop | The Fish I caught a tremendous fish and held him beside the boat half out of water, with my hook fast in a corner of his mouth. He didn't fight. He hadn't fought at all. He hung a grunting weight, battered and venerable and homely. Here and there his brown skin hung in strips like ancient wallpaper, and its pattern of darker brown was like wallpaper: shapes like full-blown roses stained and lost through age. He was speckled with barnacles, fine rosettes of lime, and infested with tiny white sea-lice, and underneath two or three rags of green weed hung down. While his gills were breathing in the terrible oxygen --the frightening gills, fresh and crisp with blood, that can cut so badly-- I thought of the coarse white flesh packed in like feathers, the big bones and the little bones, the dramatic reds and blacks of his shiny entrails, and the pink swim-bladder like a big peony. I looked into his eyes which were far larger than mine but shallower, and yellowed, the irises backed and packed with tarnished tinfoil seen through the lenses of old scratched isinglass. They shifted a little, but not to return my stare. --It was more like the tipping of an object toward the light. I admired his sullen face, the mechanism of his jaw, and then I saw that from his lower lip --if you could call it a lip grim, wet, and weaponlike, hung five old pieces of fish-line, or four and a wire leader with the swivel still attached, with all their five big hooks grown firmly in his mouth. A green line, frayed at the end where he broke it, two heavier lines, and a fine black thread still crimped from the strain and snap when it broke and he got away. Like medals with their ribbons frayed and wavering, a five-haired beard of wisdom trailing from his aching jaw. I stared and stared and victory filled up the little rented boat, from the pool of bilge where oil had spread a rainbow around the rusted engine to the bailer rusted orange, the sun-cracked thwarts, the oarlocks on their strings, the gunnels--until everything was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow! And I let the fish go.

Written by Rainer Maria Rilke | Duino Elegies The First Elegy Who if I cried out would hear me among the angels' hierarchies? and even if one of them pressed me suddenly against his heart: I would be consumed I that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror which we still are just able to endure and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying. And so I hold myself back and swallow the call-note Of my dark sobbing. Ah whom can we ever turn to in our need? Not angels not humans and already the knowing animals are aware that we are not really at home in our interpreted world. Perhaps there remains for us some tree on a hillside which every day we can take into our vision; there remains for us yesterday's street and the loyalty of a habit so much at ease when it stayed with us that it moved in and never left. Oh and night: there is night when a wind full of infinite space gnaws at out faces. Whom would it not remain for-that longed-after mildly disillusioning presence which the solitary heart so painfully meets. Is it any less difficult for lovers? But they keep on using each other to hide their own fate. Don't you know yet? Fling the emptiness out of your arms Into the spaces we breathe; perhaps the birds will feel the expanded air with more passionate flying. Yes-the springtime needed you. Often a star was waiting for you to notice it. A wave rolled toward you out of the distant past or as you walked under an open window a violin yielded itself to your hearing. All this was mission. But could you accomplish it? Weren't you always Distracted by expectation as if every event announced a beloved? (Where can you find a place to keep her with all the huge strange thoughts inside you going and coming and often staying all night.) But when you feel longing sing of women in love; for their famous passion is still not immortal. Sing of women abandoned and desolate (you envy them almost) who could love so much more purely than those who were gratified. Begin again and again the never-attainable praising; remember: the hero lives on; even his downfall was merely a pretext for achieving his final birth. But Nature spent and exhausted takes lovers back into herself as if there were not enough strength to create them a second time. Have you imagined Gaspara Stampa intensely enough so that any girl deserted by her beloved might be inspired by that fierce example of soaring objectless love and might say to herself Perhaps I can be like her ? Shouldn't this most ancient suffering finally grow more fruitful for us? Isn't it time that we lovingly freed ourselves from the beloved and quivering endured: as the arrow endures the bowstring's tension so that gathered in the snap of release it can be more than itself. For there is no place where we can remain. Voices. Voices. Listen my heart as only Saints have listened: until the gigantic call lifted them off the ground; yet they kept on impossibly kneeling and didn't notice at all: so complete was their listening. Not that you could endure God's voice-far from it. But listen to the voice of the wind and the ceaseless message that forms itself out of silence. It is murmuring toward you now from those who died young. Didn't their fate whenever you stepped into a church In Naples or Rome quietly come to address you? Or high up some eulogy entrusted you with a mission as last year on the plaque in Santa Maria Formosa. What they want of me is that I gently remove the appearance of injustice about their death-which at times slightly hinders their souls from proceeding onward. Of course it is strange to inhabit the earth no longer to give up customs one barely had time to learn not to see roses and other promising Things in terms of a human future; no longer to be what one was in infinitely anxious hands; to leave even one's own first name behind forgetting it as easily as a child abandons a broken toy. Strange to no longer desire one's desires. Strange to see meanings that clung together once floating away in every direction. And being dead is hard work and full of retrieval before one can gradually feel a trace of eternity. -Though the living are wrong to believe in the too-sharp distinctions which they themselves have created. Angels (they say) don't know whether it is the living they are moving among or the dead. The eternal torrent whirls all ages along in it through both realms forever and their voices are drowned out in its thunderous roar. In the end those who were carried off early no longer need us: they are weaned from earth's sorrows and joys as gently as children outgrow the soft breasts of their mothers. But we who do need such great mysteries we for whom grief is so often the source of our spirit's growth-: could we exist without them? Is the legend meaningless that tells how in the lament for Linus the daring first notes of song pierced through the barren numbness; and then in the startled space which a youth as lovely as a god had suddenly left forever the Void felt for the first time that harmony which now enraptures and comforts and helps us.

Written by Ralph Waldo Emerson | Dæmonic Love Man was made of social earth, Child and brother from his birth; Tethered by a liquid cord Of blood through veins of kindred poured, Next his heart the fireside band Of mother, father, sister, stand; Names from awful childhood heard, Throbs of a wild religion stirred, Their good was heaven, their harm was vice, Till Beauty came to snap all ties, The maid, abolishing the past, With lotus-wine obliterates Dear memory's stone-incarved traits, And by herself supplants alone Friends year by year more inly known. When her calm eyes opened bright, All were foreign in their light. It was ever the self-same tale, The old experience will not fail,— Only two in the garden walked, And with snake and seraph talked. But God said; I will have a purer gift, There is smoke in the flame; New flowerets bring, new prayers uplift, And love without a name. Fond children, ye desire To please each other well; Another round, a higher, Ye shall climb on the heavenly stair, And selfish preference forbear; And in right deserving, And without a swerving Each from your proper state, Weave roses for your mate. Deep, deep are loving eyes, Flowed with naphtha fiery sweet, And the point is Paradise Where their glances meet: Their reach shall yet be more profound, And a vision without bound: The axis of those eyes sun-clear Be the axis of the sphere; Then shall the lights ye pour amain Go without check or intervals, Through from the empyrean walls, Unto the same again. Close, close to men, Like undulating layer of air, Right above their heads, The potent plain of Dæmons spreads. Stands to each human soul its own, For watch, and ward, and furtherance In the snares of nature's dance; And the lustre and the grace Which fascinate each human heart, Beaming from another part, Translucent through the mortal covers, Is the Dæmon's form and face. To and fro the Genius hies, A gleam which plays and hovers Over the maiden's head, And dips sometimes as low as to her eyes. Unknown, — albeit lying near, — To men the path to the Dæmon sphere, And they that swiftly come and go, Leave no track on the heavenly snow. Sometimes the airy synod bends, And the mighty choir descends, And the brains of men thenceforth, In crowded and in still resorts, Teem with unwonted thoughts. As when a shower of meteors Cross the orbit of the earth, And, lit by fringent air, Blaze near and far. Mortals deem the planets bright Have slipped their sacred bars, And the lone seaman all the night Sails astonished amid stars. Beauty of a richer vein, Graces of a subtler strain, Unto men these moon-men lend, And our shrinking sky extend. So is man's narrow path By strength and terror skirted, Also (from the song the wrath Of the Genii be averted! The Muse the truth uncolored speaking), The Dæmons are self-seeking; Their fierce and limitary will Draws men to their likeness still. The erring painter made Love blind, Highest Love who shines on all; Him radiant, sharpest-sighted god None can bewilder; Whose eyes pierce The Universe, Path-finder, road-builder, Mediator, royal giver, Rightly-seeing, rightly-seen, Of joyful and transparent mien. 'Tis a sparkle passing From each to each, from me to thee, Perpetually, Sharing all, daring all, Levelling, misplacing Each obstruction, it unites Equals remote, and seeming opposites. And ever and forever Love Delights to build a road; Unheeded Danger near him strides, Love laughs, and on a lion rides. But Cupid wears another face Born into Dæmons less divine, His roses bleach apace, His nectar smacks of wine. The Dæmon ever builds a wall, Himself incloses and includes, Solitude in solitudes: In like sort his love doth fall. He is an oligarch, He prizes wonder, fame, and mark, He loveth crowns, He scorneth drones; He doth elect The beautiful and fortunate, And the sons of intellect, And the souls of ample fate, Who the Future's gates unbar, Minions of the Morning Star. In his prowess he exults, And the multitude insults. His impatient looks devour Oft the humble and the poor, And, seeing his eye glare, They drop their few pale flowers Gathered with hope to please Along the mountain towers, Lose courage, and despair. He will never be gainsaid, Pitiless, will not be stayed. His hot tyranny Burns up every other tie; Therefore comes an hour from Jove Which his ruthless will defies, And the dogs of Fate unties. Shiver the palaces of glass, Shrivel the rainbow-colored walls Where in bright art each god and sibyl dwelt Secure as in the Zodiack's belt; And the galleries and halls Wherein every Siren sung, Like a meteor pass. For this fortune wanted root In the core of God's abysm, Was a weed of self and schism: And ever the Dæmonic Love Is the ancestor of wars, And the parent of remorse.

Written by Jonathan Swift | Elegy Upon Tiger Her dead lady's joy and comfort, Who departed this life The last day of March, 1727: To the great joy of Bryan That his antagonist is gone. And is poor Tiger laid at last so low? O day of sorrow! -Day of dismal woe! Bloodhounds, or spaniels, lap-dogs, 'tis all one, When Death once whistles -snap! -away they're gone. See how she lies, and hangs her lifeless ears, Bathed in her mournful lady's tears! Dumb is her throat, and wagless is her tail, Doomed to the grave, to Death's eternal jail! In a few days this lovely creature must First turn to clay, and then be changed to dust. That mouth which used its lady's mouth to lick Must yield its jaw-bones to the worms to pick. That mouth which used the partridge-wing to eat Must give its palate to the worms to eat. Methinks I see her now in Charon's boat Bark at the Stygian fish which round it float; While Cerberus, alarmed to hear the sound, Makes Hell's wide concave bellow all around. She sees him not, but hears him through the dark, And valiantly returns him bark for bark. But now she trembles -though a ghost, she dreads To see a dog with three large yawning heads. Spare her, you hell-hounds, case your frightful paws, And let poor Tiger 'scape your furious jaws. Let her go safe to the Elysian plains, Where Hylax barks among the Mantuan swains; There let her frisk about her new-found love: She loved a dog when she was here above. The Epitaph Here lies beneath this marble An animal could bark, or warble: Sometimes a *****, sometimes a bird, Could eat a tart, or eat a t -.

Written by Mark Doty | Turtle Swan Because the road to our house is a back road, meadowlands punctuated by gravel quarry and lumberyard, there are unexpected travelers some nights on our way home from work. Once, on the lawn of the Tool and Die Company, a swan; the word doesn't convey the shock of the thing, white architecture rippling like a pond's rain-pocked skin, beak lifting to hiss at my approach. Magisterial, set down in elegant authority, he let us know exactly how close we might come. After a week of long rains that filled the marsh until it poured across the road to make in low woods a new heaven for toads, a snapping turtle lumbered down the center of the asphalt like an ambulatory helmet. His long tail dragged, blunt head jutting out of the lapidary prehistoric sleep of shell. We'd have lifted him from the road but thought he might bend his long neck back to snap. I tried herding him; he rushed, though we didn't think those blocky legs could hurry-- then ambled back to the center of the road, a target for kids who'd delight in the crush of something slow with the look of primeval invulnerability. He turned the blunt spear point of his jaws, puffing his undermouth like a bullfrog, and snapped at your shoe, vising a beakful of-- thank God-- leather. You had to shake him loose. We left him to his own devices, talked on the way home of what must lead him to new marsh or old home ground. The next day you saw, one town over, remains of shell in front of the little liquor store. I argued it was too far from where we'd seen him, too small to be his... though who could tell what the day's heat might have taken from his body. For days he became a stain, a blotch that could have been merely oil. I did not want to believe that was what we saw alive in the firm center of his authority and right to walk the center of the road, head up like a missionary moving certainly into the country of his hopes. In the movies in this small town I stopped for popcorn while you went ahead to claim seats. When I entered the cool dark I saw straight couples everywhere, no single silhouette who might be you. I walked those two aisles too small to lose anyone and thought of a book I read in seventh grade, "Stranger Than Science," in which a man simply walked away, at a picnic, and was, in the act of striding forward to examine a flower, gone. By the time the previews ended I was nearly in tears-- then realized the head of one-half the couple in the first row was only your leather jacket propped in the seat that would be mine. I don't think I remember anything of the first half of the movie. I don't know what happened to the swan. I read every week of some man's lover showing the first symptoms, the night sweat or casual flu, and then the wasting begins and the disappearance a day at a time. I don't know what happened to the swan; I don't know if the stain on the street was our turtle or some other. I don't know where these things we meet and know briefly, as well as we can or they will let us, go. I only know that I do not want you --you with your white and muscular wings that rise and ripple beneath or above me, your magnificent neck, eyes the deep mottled autumnal colors of polished tortoise-- I do not want you ever to die.

Written by Margaret Atwood | Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing The world is full of women who'd tell me I should be ashamed of myself if they had the chance. Quit dancing. Get some self-respect and a day job. Right. And minimum wage, and varicose veins, just standing in one place for eight hours behind a glass counter bundled up to the neck, instead of naked as a meat sandwich. Selling gloves, or something. Instead of what I do sell. You have to have talent to peddle a thing so nebulous and without material form. Exploited, they'd say. Yes, any way you cut it, but I've a choice of how, and I'll take the money. I do give value. Like preachers, I sell vision, like perfume ads, desire or its facsimile. Like jokes or war, it's all in the timing. I sell men back their worse suspicions: that everything's for sale, and piecemeal. They gaze at me and see a chain-saw murder just before it happens, when thigh, ass, inkblot, crevice, tit, and nipple are still connected. Such hatred leaps in them, my beery worshippers! That, or a bleary hopeless love. Seeing the rows of heads and upturned eyes, imploring but ready to snap at my ankles, I understand floods and earthquakes, and the urge to step on ants. I keep the beat, and dance for them because they can't. The music smells like foxes, crisp as heated metal searing the nostrils or humid as August, hazy and languorous as a looted city the day after, when all the rape's been done already, and the killing, and the survivors wander around looking for garbage to eat, and there's only a bleak exhaustion. Speaking of which, it's the smiling tires me out the most. This, and the pretence that I can't hear them. And I can't, because I'm after all a foreigner to them. The speech here is all warty gutturals, obvious as a slab of ham, but I come from the province of the gods where meanings are lilting and oblique. I don't let on to everyone, but lean close, and I'll whisper: My mother was raped by a holy swan. You believe that? You can take me out to dinner. That's what we tell all the husbands. There sure are a lot of dangerous birds around. Not that anyone here but you would understand. The rest of them would like to watch me and feel nothing. Reduce me to components as in a clock factory or abattoir. Crush out the mystery. Wall me up alive in my own body. They'd like to see through me, but nothing is more opaque than absolute transparency. Look--my feet don't hit the marble! Like breath or a balloon, I'm rising, I hover six inches in the air in my blazing swan-egg of light. You think I'm not a goddess? Try me. This is a torch song. Touch me and you'll burn.

Written by D. H. Lawrence | Snap-Dragon She bade me follow to her garden where The mellow sunlight stood as in a cup Between the old grey walls; I did not dare To raise my face, I did not dare look up Lest her bright eyes like sparrows should fly in My windows of discovery and shrill 'Sin!' So with a downcast mien and laughing voice I followed, followed the swing of her white dress That rocked in a lilt along: I watched the poise Of her feet as they flew for a space, then paused to press The grass deep down with the royal burden of her: And gladly I'd offered my breast to the tread of her. 'I like to see,' she said, and she crouched her down, She sunk into my sight like a settling bird; And her bosom crouched in the confines of her gown Like heavy birds at rest there, softly stirred By her measured breaths: 'I like to see,' said she, 'The snap-dragon put out his tongue at me.' She laughed, she reached her hand out to the flower Closing its crimson throat: my own throat in her power Strangled, my heart swelled up so full As if it would burst its wineskin in my throat, Choke me in my own crimson; I watched her pull The gorge of the gaping flower, till the blood did float Over my eyes and I was blind -- Her large brown hand stretched over The windows of my mind, And in the dark I did discover Things I was out to find: My grail, a brown bowl twined With swollen veins that met in the wrist, Under whose brown the amethyst I longed to taste: and I longed to turn My heart's red measure in her cup, I longed to feel my hot blood burn With the lambent amethyst in her cup. Then suddenly she looked up And I was blind in a tawny-gold day Till she took her eyes away.

Written by Amy Levy | A Minor Poet "What should such fellows as I do, Crawling between earth and heaven?" Here is the phial; here I turn the key Sharp in the lock. Click!--there's no doubt it turned. This is the third time; there is luck in threes-- Queen Luck, that rules the world, befriend me now And freely I'll forgive you many wrongs! Just as the draught began to work, first time, Tom Leigh, my friend (as friends go in the world), Burst in, and drew the phial from my hand, (Ah, Tom! ah, Tom! that was a sorry turn!) And lectured me a lecture, all compact Of neatest, newest phrases, freshly culled From works of newest culture: "common good ;" "The world's great harmonies;""must be content With knowing God works all things for the best, And Nature never stumbles." Then again, "The common good," and still, "the common, good;" And what a small thing was our joy or grief When weigh'd with that of thousands. Gentle Tom, But you might wag your philosophic tongue From morn till eve, and still the thing's the same: I am myself, as each man is himself-- Feels his own pain, joys his own joy, and loves With his own love, no other's. Friend, the world Is but one man; one man is but the world. And I am I, and you are Tom, that bleeds When needles prick your flesh (mark, yours, not mine). I must confess it; I can feel the pulse A-beating at my heart, yet never knew The throb of cosmic pulses. I lament The death of youth's ideal in my heart; And, to be honest, never yet rejoiced In the world's progress--scarce, indeed, discerned; (For still it seems that God's a Sisyphus With the world for stone). You shake your head. I'm base, Ignoble? Who is noble--you or I? I was not once thus? Ah, my friend, we are As the Fates make us. This time is the third; The second time the flask fell from my hand, Its drowsy juices spilt upon the board; And there my face fell flat, and all the life Crept from my limbs, and hand and foot were bound With mighty chains, subtle, intangible; While still the mind held to its wonted use, Or rather grew intense and keen with dread, An awful dread--I thought I was in Hell. In Hell, in Hell ! Was ever Hell conceived By mortal brain, by brain Divine devised, Darker, more fraught with torment, than the world For such as I? A creature maimed and marr'd From very birth. A blot, a blur, a note All out of tune in this world's instrument. A base thing, yet not knowing to fulfil Base functions. A high thing, yet all unmeet For work that's high. A dweller on the earth, Yet not content to dig with other men Because of certain sudden sights and sounds (Bars of broke music; furtive, fleeting glimpse Of angel faces 'thwart the grating seen) Perceived in Heaven. Yet when I approach To catch the sound's completeness, to absorb The faces' full perfection, Heaven's gate, Which then had stood ajar, sudden falls to, And I, a-shiver in the dark and cold, Scarce hear afar the mocking tones of men: "He would not dig, forsooth ; but he must strive For higher fruits than what our tillage yields; Behold what comes, my brothers, of vain pride!" Why play with figures? trifle prettily With this my grief which very simply's said, "There is no place for me in all the world"? The world's a rock, and I will beat no more A breast of flesh and blood against a rock. . . A stride across the planks for old time's sake. Ah, bare, small room that I have sorrowed in; Ay, and on sunny days, haply, rejoiced; We know some things together, you and I! Hold there, you rangèd row of books ! In vain You beckon from your shelf. You've stood my friends Where all things else were foes; yet now I'll turn My back upon you, even as the world Turns it on me. And yet--farewell, farewell! You, lofty Shakespere, with the tattered leaves And fathomless great heart, your binding's bruised Yet did I love you less? Goethe, farewell; Farewell, triumphant smile and tragic eyes, And pitiless world-wisdom! For all men These two. And 'tis farewell with you, my friends, More dear because more near: Theokritus; Heine that stings and smiles; Prometheus' bard; (I've grown too coarse for Shelley latterly:) And one wild singer of to-day, whose song Is all aflame with passionate bard's blood Lash'd into foam by pain and the world's wrong. At least, he has a voice to cry his pain; For him, no silent writhing in the dark, No muttering of mute lips, no straining out Of a weak throat a-choke with pent-up sound, A-throb with pent-up passion. . . Ah, my sun! That's you, then, at the window, looking in To beam farewell on one who's loved you long And very truly. Up, you creaking thing, You squinting, cobwebbed casement! So, at last, I can drink in the sunlight. How it falls. Across that endless sea of London roofs, Weaving such golden wonders on the grey, That almost, for the moment, we forget The world of woe beneath them. Underneath, For all the sunset glory, Pain is king. Yet, the sun's there, and very sweet withal; And I'll not grumble that it's only sun, But open wide my lips--thus--drink it in; Turn up my face to the sweet evening sky (What royal wealth of scarlet on the blue So tender toned, you'd almost think it green) And stretch my hands out--so--to grasp it tight. Ha, ha! 'tis sweet awhile to cheat the Fates, And be as happy as another man. The sun works in my veins like wine, like wine! 'Tis a fair world: if dark, indeed, with woe, Yet having hope and hint of such a joy, That a man, winning, well might turn aside, Careless of Heaven . . . O enough; I turn From the sun's light, or haply I shall hope. I have hoped enough; I would not hope again: 'Tis hope that is most cruel. Tom, my friend, You very sorry philosophic fool; 'Tis you, I think, that bid me be resign'd, Trust, and be thankful. Out on you! Resign'd? I'm not resign'd, not patient, not school'd in To take my starveling's portion and pretend I'm grateful for it. I want all, all, all; I've appetite for all. I want the best: Love, beauty, sunlight, nameless joy of life. There's too much patience in the world, I think. We have grown base with crooking of the knee. Mankind--say--God has bidden to a feast; The board is spread, and groans with cates and drinks; In troop the guests; each man with appetite Keen-whetted with expectance. In they troop, Struggle for seats, jostle and push and seize. What's this? what's this? There are not seats for all! Some men must stand without the gates; and some Must linger by the table, ill-supplied With broken meats. One man gets meat for two, The while another hungers. If I stand Without the portals, seeing others eat Where I had thought to satiate the pangs Of mine own hunger; shall I then come forth When all is done, and drink my Lord's good health In my Lord's water? Shall I not rather turn And curse him, curse him for a niggard host? O, I have hungered, hungered, through the years, Till appetite grows craving, then disease; I am starved, wither'd, shrivelled. Peace, O peace! This rage is idle; what avails to curse The nameless forces, the vast silences That work in all things. This time is the third, I wrought before in heat, stung mad with pain, Blind, scarcely understanding; now I know What thing I do. There was a woman once; Deep eyes she had, white hands, a subtle smile, Soft speaking tones: she did not break my heart, Yet haply had her heart been otherwise Mine had not now been broken. Yet, who knows? My life was jarring discord from the first: Tho' here and there brief hints of melody, Of melody unutterable, clove the air. From this bleak world, into the heart of night, The dim, deep bosom of the universe, I cast myself. I only crave for rest; Too heavy is the load. I fling it down. EPILOGUE. We knocked and knocked; at last, burst in the door, And found him as you know--the outstretched arms Propping the hidden face. The sun had set, And all the place was dim with lurking shade. There was no written word to say farewell, Or make more clear the deed. I search'd and search'd; The room held little: just a row of books Much scrawl'd and noted; sketches on the wall, Done rough in charcoal; the old instrument (A violin, no Stradivarius) He played so ill on; in the table drawer Large schemes of undone work. Poems half-writ; Wild drafts of symphonies; big plans of fugues; Some scraps of writing in a woman's hand: No more--the scattered pages of a tale, A sorry tale that no man cared to read. Alas, my friend, I lov'd him well, tho' he Held me a cold and stagnant-blooded fool, Because I am content to watch, and wait With a calm mind the issue of all things. Certain it is my blood's no turbid stream; Yet, for all that, haply I understood More than he ever deem'd; nor held so light The poet in him. Nay, I sometimes doubt If they have not, indeed, the better part-- These poets, who get drunk with sun, and weep Because the night or a woman's face is fair. Meantime there is much talk about my friend. The women say, of course, he died for love; The men, for lack of gold, or cavilling Of carping critics. I, Tom Leigh, his friend I have no word at all to say of this. Nay, I had deem'd him more philosopher; For did he think by this one paltry deed To cut the knot of circumstance, and snap The chain which binds all being?