10 Best Famous Sunsets Poems

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

• All Famous Sunsets Poems

 Some people go their whole lives
without ever writing a single poem.
Extraordinary people who don't hesitate
to cut somebody's heart or skull open.
They go to baseball games with the greatest of ease.
and play a few rounds of golf as if it were nothing.
These same people stroll into a church 
as if that were a natural part of life. 
Investing money is second nature to them. 
They contribute to political campaigns 
that have absolutely no poetry in them 
and promise none for the future.
They sit around the dinner table at night 
and pretend as though nothing is missing. 
Their children get caught shoplifting at the mall 
and no one admits that it is poetry they are missing. 
The family dog howls all night, 
lonely and starving for more poetry in his life. 
Why is it so difficult for them to see
that, without poetry, their lives are effluvial.
Sure, they have their banquets, their celebrations, 
croquet, fox hunts, their sea shores and sunsets, 
their cocktails on the balcony, dog races,
and all that kissing and hugging, and don't 
forget the good deeds, the charity work, 
nursing the baby squirrels all through the night,
filling the birdfeeders all winter,
helping the stranger change her tire.
Still, there's that disagreeable exhalation
from decaying matter, subtle but everpresent.
They walk around erect like champions.
They are smooth-spoken and witty.
When alone, rare occasion, they stare
into the mirror for hours, bewildered.
There was something they meant to say, but didn't: 
"And if we put the statue of the rhinoceros
next to the tweezers, and walk around the room three times,
learn to yodel, shave our heads, call 
our ancestors back from the dead--" 
poetrywise it's still a bust, bankrupt.
You haven't scribbled a syllable of it.
You're a nowhere man misfiring
the very essence of your life, flustering
nothing from nothing and back again.
The hereafter may not last all that long.
Radiant childhood sweetheart,
secret code of everlasting joy and sorrow, 
fanciful pen strokes beneath the eyelids:
all day, all night meditation, knot of hope,
kernel of desire, pure ordinariness of life 
seeking, through poetry, a benediction
or a bed to lie down on, to connect, reveal,
explore, to imbue meaning on the day's extravagant labor. 
And yet it's cruel to expect too much. 
It's a rare species of bird 
that refuses to be categorized.
Its song is barely audible.
It is like a dragonfly in a dream--
here, then there, then here again,
low-flying amber-wing darting upward
then out of sight.
And the dream has a pain in its heart
the wonders of which are manifold,
or so the story is told.

 Not under foreign skies
 Nor under foreign wings protected -
 I shared all this with my own people
 There, where misfortune had abandoned us.
 [1961]

INSTEAD OF A PREFACE

During the frightening years of the Yezhov terror, I
spent seventeen months waiting in prison queues in
Leningrad. One day, somehow, someone 'picked me out'.
On that occasion there was a woman standing behind me,
her lips blue with cold, who, of course, had never in
her life heard my name. Jolted out of the torpor
characteristic of all of us, she said into my ear
(everyone whispered there) - 'Could one ever describe
this?' And I answered - 'I can.' It was then that
something like a smile slid across what had previously
been just a face.
[The 1st of April in the year 1957. Leningrad]

DEDICATION

Mountains fall before this grief,
A mighty river stops its flow,
But prison doors stay firmly bolted
Shutting off the convict burrows
And an anguish close to death.
Fresh winds softly blow for someone,
Gentle sunsets warm them through; we don't know this,
We are everywhere the same, listening
To the scrape and turn of hateful keys
And the heavy tread of marching soldiers.
Waking early, as if for early mass,
Walking through the capital run wild, gone to seed,
We'd meet - the dead, lifeless; the sun,
Lower every day; the Neva, mistier:
But hope still sings forever in the distance.
The verdict. Immediately a flood of tears,
Followed by a total isolation,
As if a beating heart is painfully ripped out, or,
Thumped, she lies there brutally laid out,
But she still manages to walk, hesitantly, alone.
Where are you, my unwilling friends,
Captives of my two satanic years?
What miracle do you see in a Siberian blizzard?
What shimmering mirage around the circle of the moon?
I send each one of you my salutation, and farewell.
[March 1940]

INTRODUCTION
[PRELUDE]

It happened like this when only the dead
Were smiling, glad of their release,
That Leningrad hung around its prisons
Like a worthless emblem, flapping its piece.
Shrill and sharp, the steam-whistles sang
Short songs of farewell
To the ranks of convicted, demented by suffering,
As they, in regiments, walked along -
Stars of death stood over us
As innocent Russia squirmed
Under the blood-spattered boots and tyres
Of the black marias.

I

You were taken away at dawn. I followed you
As one does when a corpse is being removed.
Children were crying in the darkened house.
A candle flared, illuminating the Mother of God. . .
The cold of an icon was on your lips, a death-cold
sweat
On your brow - I will never forget this; I will gather

To wail with the wives of the murdered streltsy (1)
Inconsolably, beneath the Kremlin towers.
[1935. Autumn. Moscow]

II

Silent flows the river Don
A yellow moon looks quietly on
Swanking about, with cap askew
It sees through the window a shadow of you
Gravely ill, all alone
The moon sees a woman lying at home
Her son is in jail, her husband is dead
Say a prayer for her instead.

III

It isn't me, someone else is suffering. I couldn't.
Not like this. Everything that has happened,
Cover it with a black cloth,
Then let the torches be removed. . .
Night.

IV

Giggling, poking fun, everyone's darling,
The carefree sinner of Tsarskoye Selo (2)
If only you could have foreseen
What life would do with you -
That you would stand, parcel in hand,
Beneath the Crosses (3), three hundredth in
line,
Burning the new year's ice
With your hot tears.
Back and forth the prison poplar sways
With not a sound - how many innocent
Blameless lives are being taken away. . .
[1938]

V

For seventeen months I have been screaming,
Calling you home.
I've thrown myself at the feet of butchers
For you, my son and my horror.
Everything has become muddled forever -
I can no longer distinguish
Who is an animal, who a person, and how long
The wait can be for an execution.
There are now only dusty flowers,
The chinking of the thurible,
Tracks from somewhere into nowhere
And, staring me in the face
And threatening me with swift annihilation,
An enormous star.
[1939]

VI

Weeks fly lightly by. Even so,
I cannot understand what has arisen,
How, my son, into your prison
White nights stare so brilliantly.
Now once more they burn,
Eyes that focus like a hawk,
And, upon your cross, the talk
Is again of death.
[1939. Spring]

VII
THE VERDICT

The word landed with a stony thud
Onto my still-beating breast.
Nevermind, I was prepared,
I will manage with the rest.

I have a lot of work to do today;
I need to slaughter memory,
Turn my living soul to stone
Then teach myself to live again. . .

But how. The hot summer rustles
Like a carnival outside my window;
I have long had this premonition
Of a bright day and a deserted house.
[22 June 1939. Summer. Fontannyi Dom (4)]

VIII
TO DEATH

You will come anyway - so why not now?
I wait for you; things have become too hard.
I have turned out the lights and opened the door
For you, so simple and so wonderful.
Assume whatever shape you wish. Burst in
Like a shell of noxious gas. Creep up on me
Like a practised bandit with a heavy weapon.
Poison me, if you want, with a typhoid exhalation,
Or, with a simple tale prepared by you
(And known by all to the point of nausea), take me
Before the commander of the blue caps and let me
glimpse
The house administrator's terrified white face.
I don't care anymore. The river Yenisey
Swirls on. The Pole star blazes.
The blue sparks of those much-loved eyes
Close over and cover the final horror.
[19 August 1939. Fontannyi Dom]

IX

Madness with its wings
Has covered half my soul
It feeds me fiery wine
And lures me into the abyss.

That's when I understood
While listening to my alien delirium
That I must hand the victory
To it.

However much I nag
However much I beg
It will not let me take
One single thing away:

Not my son's frightening eyes -
A suffering set in stone,
Or prison visiting hours
Or days that end in storms

Nor the sweet coolness of a hand
The anxious shade of lime trees
Nor the light distant sound
Of final comforting words.
[14 May 1940. Fontannyi Dom]

X
CRUCIFIXION

Weep not for me, mother.
I am alive in my grave.

1.
A choir of angels glorified the greatest hour,
The heavens melted into flames.
To his father he said, 'Why hast thou forsaken me!'
But to his mother, 'Weep not for me. . .'
[1940. Fontannyi Dom]

2.
Magdalena smote herself and wept,
The favourite disciple turned to stone,
But there, where the mother stood silent,
Not one person dared to look.
[1943. Tashkent]

EPILOGUE

1.
I have learned how faces fall,
How terror can escape from lowered eyes,
How suffering can etch cruel pages
Of cuneiform-like marks upon the cheeks.
I know how dark or ash-blond strands of hair
Can suddenly turn white. I've learned to recognise
The fading smiles upon submissive lips,
The trembling fear inside a hollow laugh.
That's why I pray not for myself
But all of you who stood there with me
Through fiercest cold and scorching July heat
Under a towering, completely blind red wall.

2.
The hour has come to remember the dead.
I see you, I hear you, I feel you:
The one who resisted the long drag to the open window;
The one who could no longer feel the kick of familiar
soil beneath her feet;
The one who, with a sudden flick of her head, replied,

'I arrive here as if I've come home!'
I'd like to name you all by name, but the list
Has been removed and there is nowhere else to look.
So,
I have woven you this wide shroud out of the humble
words
I overheard you use. Everywhere, forever and always,
I will never forget one single thing. Even in new
grief.
Even if they clamp shut my tormented mouth
Through which one hundred million people scream;
That's how I wish them to remember me when I am dead
On the eve of my remembrance day.
If someone someday in this country
Decides to raise a memorial to me,
I give my consent to this festivity
But only on this condition - do not build it
By the sea where I was born,
I have severed my last ties with the sea;
Nor in the Tsar's Park by the hallowed stump
Where an inconsolable shadow looks for me;
Build it here where I stood for three hundred hours
And no-one slid open the bolt.
Listen, even in blissful death I fear
That I will forget the Black Marias,
Forget how hatefully the door slammed and an old woman
Howled like a wounded beast.
Let the thawing ice flow like tears
From my immovable bronze eyelids
And let the prison dove coo in the distance
While ships sail quietly along the river.
[March 1940. Fontannyi Dom]

FOOTNOTES

1 An elite guard which rose up in rebellion
 against Peter the Great in 1698. Most were either
 executed or exiled.
2 The imperial summer residence outside St
 Petersburg where Ahmatova spent her early years.
3 A prison complex in central Leningrad near the
 Finland Station, called The Crosses because of the
 shape of two of the buildings.
4 The Leningrad house in which Ahmatova lived.

 Thou hast committed—
Fornication: but that was in another country,
And besides, the wench is dead.

The Jew of Malta.


I

AMONG the smoke and fog of a December afternoon
You have the scene arrange itself—as it will seem to do—
With “I have saved this afternoon for you”;
And four wax candles in the darkened room,
Four rings of light upon the ceiling overhead,
An atmosphere of Juliet’s tomb
Prepared for all the things to be said, or left unsaid.
We have been, let us say, to hear the latest Pole
Transmit the Preludes, through his hair and fingertips.
“So intimate, this Chopin, that I think his soul
Should be resurrected only among friends
Some two or three, who will not touch the bloom
That is rubbed and questioned in the concert room.”
—And so the conversation slips
Among velleities and carefully caught regrets
Through attenuated tones of violins
Mingled with remote cornets
And begins.

“You do not know how much they mean to me, my friends,
And how, how rare and strange it is, to find
In a life composed so much, so much of odds and ends,
[For indeed I do not love it ... you knew? you are not blind!
How keen you are!]
To find a friend who has these qualities,
Who has, and gives
Those qualities upon which friendship lives.
How much it means that I say this to you—
Without these friendships—life, what cauchemar!”

Among the windings of the violins
And the ariettes
Of cracked cornets
Inside my brain a dull tom-tom begins
Absurdly hammering a prelude of its own,
Capricious monotone
That is at least one definite “false note.”
—Let us take the air, in a tobacco trance,
Admire the monuments,
Discuss the late events,
Correct our watches by the public clocks.
Then sit for half an hour and drink our bocks.

II

Now that lilacs are in bloom
She has a bowl of lilacs in her room
And twists one in his fingers while she talks.
“Ah, my friend, you do not know, you do not know
What life is, you who hold it in your hands”;
(Slowly twisting the lilac stalks)
“You let it flow from you, you let it flow,
And youth is cruel, and has no remorse
And smiles at situations which it cannot see.”
I smile, of course,
And go on drinking tea.
“Yet with these April sunsets, that somehow recall
My buried life, and Paris in the Spring,
I feel immeasurably at peace, and find the world
To be wonderful and youthful, after all.”

The voice returns like the insistent out-of-tune
Of a broken violin on an August afternoon:
“I am always sure that you understand
My feelings, always sure that you feel,
Sure that across the gulf you reach your hand.

You are invulnerable, you have no Achilles’ heel.
You will go on, and when you have prevailed
You can say: at this point many a one has failed.

But what have I, but what have I, my friend,
To give you, what can you receive from me?
Only the friendship and the sympathy
Of one about to reach her journey’s end.

I shall sit here, serving tea to friends...”

I take my hat: how can I make a cowardly amends
For what she has said to me?
You will see me any morning in the park
Reading the comics and the sporting page.
Particularly I remark
An English countess goes upon the stage.
A Greek was murdered at a Polish dance,
Another bank defaulter has confessed.
I keep my countenance,
I remain self-possessed
Except when a street piano, mechanical and tired
Reiterates some worn-out common song
With the smell of hyacinths across the garden
Recalling things that other people have desired.
Are these ideas right or wrong?

III

The October night comes down; returning as before
Except for a slight sensation of being ill at ease
I mount the stairs and turn the handle of the door
And feel as if I had mounted on my hands and knees.
“And so you are going abroad; and when do you return?
But that’s a useless question.
You hardly know when you are coming back,
You will find so much to learn.”
My smile falls heavily among the bric-à-brac.

“Perhaps you can write to me.”
My self-possession flares up for a second;
This is as I had reckoned.
“I have been wondering frequently of late
(But our beginnings never know our ends!)
Why we have not developed into friends.”
I feel like one who smiles, and turning shall remark
Suddenly, his expression in a glass.
My self-possession gutters; we are really in the dark.

“For everybody said so, all our friends,
They all were sure our feelings would relate
So closely! I myself can hardly understand.
We must leave it now to fate.
You will write, at any rate.
Perhaps it is not too late.
I shall sit here, serving tea to friends.”

And I must borrow every changing shape
To find expression ... dance, dance
Like a dancing bear,
Cry like a parrot, chatter like an ape.
Let us take the air, in a tobacco trance—

Well! and what if she should die some afternoon,
Afternoon grey and smoky, evening yellow and rose;
Should die and leave me sitting pen in hand
With the smoke coming down above the housetops;
Doubtful, for a while
Not knowing what to feel or if I understand
Or whether wise or foolish, tardy or too soon...
Would she not have the advantage, after all?
This music is successful with a “dying fall”
Now that we talk of dying—
And should I have the right to smile?

 Have you gazed on naked grandeur where there's nothing else to gaze on,
 Set pieces and drop-curtain scenes galore,
Big mountains heaved to heaven, which the blinding sunsets blazon,
 Black canyons where the rapids rip and roar?
Have you swept the visioned valley with the green stream streaking through it,
 Searched the Vastness for a something you have lost?
Have you strung your soul to silence? Then for God's sake go and do it;
 Hear the challenge, learn the lesson, pay the cost.

Have you wandered in the wilderness, the sagebrush desolation,
 The bunch-grass levels where the cattle graze?
Have you whistled bits of rag-time at the end of all creation,
 And learned to know the desert's little ways?
Have you camped upon the foothills, have you galloped o'er the ranges,
 Have you roamed the arid sun-lands through and through?
Have you chummed up with the mesa? Do you know its moods and changes?
 Then listen to the Wild -- it's calling you.

Have you known the Great White Silence, not a snow-gemmed twig aquiver?
 (Eternal truths that shame our soothing lies.)
Have you broken trail on snowshoes? mushed your huskies up the river,
 Dared the unknown, led the way, and clutched the prize?
Have you marked the map's void spaces, mingled with the mongrel races,
 Felt the savage strength of brute in every thew?
And though grim as hell the worst is, can you round it off with curses?
 Then hearken to the Wild -- it's wanting you.

Have you suffered, starved and triumphed, groveled down, yet grasped at glory,
 Grown bigger in the bigness of the whole?
"Done things" just for the doing, letting babblers tell the story,
 Seeing through the nice veneer the naked soul?
Have you seen God in His splendors, heard the text that nature renders?
 (You'll never hear it in the family pew.)
The simple things, the true things, the silent men who do things --
 Then listen to the Wild -- it's calling you.

They have cradled you in custom, they have primed you with their preaching,
 They have soaked you in convention through and through;
They have put you in a showcase; you're a credit to their teaching --
 But can't you hear the Wild? -- it's calling you.
Let us probe the silent places, let us seek what luck betide us;
 Let us journey to a lonely land I know.
There's a whisper on the night-wind, there's a star agleam to guide us,
 And the Wild is calling, calling . . . let us go.

The most complicated skill 
Is to be simple. 

To say more while saying less 
Is the secret of being simple. 

To not say all that can be said 
Is the secret of discipline and economy. 

To leave out beautiful sunsets 
Is the secret of good taste. 

To hide feelings when you are near crying 
Is the secret of dignity. 

To cut and tighten sentences 
Is the secret of mastery. 

To keep the air fresh among words 
Is the secret of verbal cleanliness. 

To write good poems 
Is the secret of brevity. 

To go against the grain 
Is the secret of bravery. 

To risk life to save a smile on a face of a woman or a child 
Is the secret of chivalry. 

To go where no one else has ever gone before 
Is the secret of heroism. 

To expect to be kissed having bad breath 
Is the secret of a fool. 

Words rich in meaning 
Can be cheap in sound effects. 

 GIFT from the cold and silent Past! 
A relic to the present cast, 
Left on the ever-changing strand 
Of shifting and unstable sand, 
Which wastes beneath the steady chime 
And beating of the waves of Time! 
Who from its bed of primal rock 
First wrenched thy dark, unshapely block? 
Whose hand, of curious skill untaught, 
Thy rude and savage outline wrought? 
The waters of my native stream 
Are glancing in the sun's warm beam; 
From sail-urged keel and flashing oar 
The circles widen to its shore; 
And cultured field and peopled town 
Slope to its willowed margin down. 
Yet, while this morning breeze is bringing 
The home-life sound of school-bells ringing, 
And rolling wheel, and rapid jar 
Of the fire-winged and steedless car, 
And voices from the wayside near 
Come quick and blended on my ear,-- 
A spell is in this old gray stone, 
My thoughts are with the Past alone! 

A change! -- The steepled town no more 
Stretches along the sail-thronged shore; 
Like palace-domes in sunset's cloud, 
Fade sun-gilt spire and mansion proud: 
Spectrally rising where they stood, 
I see the old, primeval wood; 
Dark, shadow-like, on either hand 
I see its solemn waste expand; 
It climbs the green and cultured hill, 
It arches o'er the valley's rill, 
And leans from cliff and crag to throw 
Its wild arms o'er the stream below. 
Unchanged, alone, the same bright river 
Flows on, as it will flow forever! 
I listen, and I hear the low 
Soft ripple where its water go; 
I hear behind the panther's cry, 
The wild-bird's scream goes thrilling by, 
And shyly on the river's brink 
The deer is stooping down to drink. 

But hard! -- from wood and rock flung back, 
What sound come up the Merrimac? 
What sea-worn barks are those which throw 
The light spray from each rushing prow? 
Have they not in the North Sea's blast 
Bowed to the waves the straining mast? 
Their frozen sails the low, pale sun 
Of Thulë's night has shone upon; 
Flapped by the sea-wind's gusty sweep 
Round icy drift, and headland steep. 
Wild Jutland's wives and Lochlin's daughters 
Have watched them fading o'er the waters, 
Lessening through driving mist and spray, 
Like white-winged sea-birds on their way! 

Onward they glide, -- and now I view 
Their iron-armed and stalwart crew; 
Joy glistens in each wild blue eye, 
Turned to green earth and summer sky. 
Each broad, seamed breast has cast aside 
Its cumbering vest of shaggy hide; 
Bared to the sun and soft warm air, 
Streams back the Northmen's yellow hair. 
I see the gleam of axe and spear, 
A sound of smitten shields I hear, 
Keeping a harsh and fitting time 
To Saga's chant, and Runic rhyme; 
Such lays as Zetland's Scald has sung, 
His gray and naked isles among; 
Or mutter low at midnight hour 
Round Odin's mossy stone of power. 
The wolf beneath the Arctic moon 
Has answered to that startling rune; 
The Gael has heard its stormy swell, 
The light Frank knows its summons well; 
Iona's sable-stoled Culdee 
Has heard it sounding o'er the sea, 
And swept, with hoary beard and hair, 
His altar's foot in trembling prayer! 

'T is past, -- the 'wildering vision dies 
In darkness on my dreaming eyes! 
The forest vanishes in air, 
Hill-slope and vale lie starkly bare; 
I hear the common tread of men, 
And hum of work-day life again; 
The mystic relic seems alone 
A broken mass of common stone; 
And if it be the chiselled limb 
Of Berserker or idol grim, 
A fragment of Valhalla's Thor, 
The stormy Viking's god of War, 
Or Praga of the Runic lay, 
Or love-awakening Siona, 
I know not, -- for no graven line, 
Nor Druid mark, nor Runic sign, 
Is left me here, by which to trace 
Its name, or origin, or place. 
Yet, for this vision of the Past, 
This glance upon its darkness cast, 
My spirit bows in gratitude 
Before the Giver of all good, 
Who fashioned so the human mind, 
That, from the waste of Time behind, 
A simple stone, or mound of earth, 
Can summon the departed forth; 
Quicken the Past to life again, 
The Present lose in what hath been, 
And in their primal freshness show 
The buried forms of long ago. 
As if a portion of that Thought 
By which the Eternal will is wrought, 
Whose impulse fills anew with breath 
The frozen solitude of Death, 
To mortal mind were sometimes lent, 
To mortal musing sometimes sent, 
To whisper -- even when it seems 
But Memory's fantasy of dreams -- 
Through the mind's waste of woe and sin, 
Of an immortal origin!

 If I could live again my life,
In the next - I'll try,
- to make more mistakes,
I won't try to be so perfect,
I'll be more relaxed,
I'll be more full - than I am now,
In fact, I'll take fewer things seriously,
I'll be less hygenic,
I'll take more risks,
I'll take more trips,
I'll watch more sunsets,
I'll climb more mountains,
I'll swim more rivers,
I'll go to more places - I've never been,
I'll eat more ice creams and less (lime) beans,
I'll have more real problems - and less imaginary
 ones,
I was one of those people who live
 prudent and prolific lives -
 each minute of his life,
Offcourse that I had moments of joy - but,
 if I could go back I'll try to have only good moments,

If you don't know - thats what life is made of,
Don't lose the now!

I was one of those who never goes anywhere
 without a thermometer,
without a hot-water bottle,
 and without an umberella and without a parachute,

If I could live again - I will travel light,
If I could live again - I'll try to work bare feet
 at the beginning of spring till
 the end of autumn,
I'll ride more carts,
I'll watch more sunrises and play with more children,
If I have the life to live - but now I am 85,
 - and I know that I am dying ...

 TO the assembled folk 
At great St. Kavin’s spoke 
Young Brother Amiel on Christmas Eve; 
I give you joy, my friends, 
That as the round year ends, 
We meet once more for gladness by God’s leave. 

On other festal days 
For penitence or praise 
Or prayer we meet, or fullness of thanksgiving; 
To-night we calendar 
The rising of that star 
Which lit the old world with new joy of living. 

Ah, we disparage still 
The Tidings of Good Will, 
Discrediting Love’s gospel now as then! 
And with the verbal creed 
That God is love indeed, 
Who dares make Love his god before all men? 

Shall we not, therefore, friends, 
Resolve to make amends 
To that glad inspiration of the heart; 
To grudge not, to cast out 
Selfishness, malice, doubt, 
Anger and fear; and for the better part, 

To love so much, so well, 
The spirit cannot tell 
The range and sweep of her own boundary! 
There is no period 
Between the soul and God; 
Love is the tide, God the eternal sea.… 

To-day we walk by love; 
To strive is not enough, 
Save against greed and ignorance and might. 
We apprehend peace comes 
Not with the roll of drums, 
But in the still processions of the night. 

And we perceive, not awe 
But love is the great law 
That binds the world together safe and whole. 
The splendid planets run 
Their courses in the sun; 
Love is the gravitation of the soul. 

In the profound unknown, 
Illumined, fair, and lone, 
Each star is set to shimmer in its place. 
In the profound divine 
Each soul is set to shine, 
And its unique appointed orbit trace. 

There is no near nor far, 
Where glorious Algebar 
Swings round his mighty circuit through the night, 
Yet where without a sound 
The winged seed comes to ground, 
And the red leaf seems hardly to alight. 

One force, one lore, one need 
For satellite and seed, 
In the serene benignity for all. 
Letting her time-glass run 
With star-dust, sun by sun, 
In Nature’s thought there is no great nor small. 

There is no far nor near 
Within the spirit’s sphere. 
The summer sunset’s scarlet-yellow wings 
Are tinged with the same dye 
That paints the tulip’s ply. 
And what is colour but the soul of things? 

(The earth was without form; 
God moulded it with storm, 
Ice, flood, and tempest, gleaming tint and hue; 
Lest it should come to ill 
For lack of spirit still, 
He gave it colour,—let the love shine through.)… 

Of old, men said, ‘Sin not; 
By every line and jot 
Ye shall abide; man’s heart is false and vile.’ 
Christ said, ‘By love alone 
In man’s heart is God known; 
Obey the word no falsehood can defile.’… 

And since that day we prove 
Only how great is love, 
Nor to this hour its greatness half believe. 
For to what other power 
Will life give equal dower, 
Or chaos grant one moment of reprieve! 

Look down the ages’ line, 
Where slowly the divine 
Evinces energy, puts forth control; 
See mighty love alone 
Transmuting stock and stone, 
Infusing being, helping sense and soul. 

And what is energy, 
In-working, which bids be 
The starry pageant and the life of earth? 
What is the genesis 
Of every joy and bliss, 
Each action dared, each beauty brought to birth? 

What hangs the sun on high? 
What swells the growing rye? 
What bids the loons cry on the Northern lake? 
What stirs in swamp and swale, 
When April winds prevail, 
And all the dwellers of the ground awake?… 

What lurks in the deep gaze 
Of the old wolf? Amaze, 
Hope, recognition, gladness, anger, fear. 
But deeper than all these 
Love muses, yearns, and sees, 
And is the self that does not change nor veer. 

Not love of self alone, 
Struggle for lair and bone, 
But self-denying love of mate and young, 
Love that is kind and wise, 
Knows trust and sacrifice, 
And croons the old dark universal tongue.… 

And who has understood 
Our brothers of the wood, 
Save he who puts off guile and every guise 
Of violence,—made truce 
With panther, bear, and moose, 
As beings like ourselves whom love makes wise? 

For they, too, do love’s will, 
Our lesser clansmen still; 
The House of Many Mansions holds us all; 
Courageous, glad and hale, 
They go forth on the trail, 
Hearing the message, hearkening to the call.… 

Open the door to-night 
Within your heart, and light 
The lantern of love there to shine afar. 
On a tumultuous sea 
Some straining craft, maybe, 
With bearings lost, shall sight love’s silver star.

 'Tis strange that in a land so strong 
So strong and bold in mighty youth, 
We have no poet's voice of truth 
To sing for us a wondrous song. 
Our chiefest singer yet has sung 
In wild, sweet notes a passing strain, 
All carelessly and sadly flung 
To that dull world he thought so vain. 

"I care for nothing, good nor bad, 
My hopes are gone, my pleasures fled, 
I am but sifting sand," he said: 
What wonder Gordon's songs were sad! 

And yet, not always sad and hard; 
In cheerful mood and light of heart 
He told the tale of Britomarte, 
And wrote the Rhyme of Joyous Garde. 

And some have said that Nature's face 
To us is always sad; but these 
Have never felt the smiling grace 
Of waving grass and forest trees 
On sunlit plains as wide as seas. 

"A land where dull Despair is king 
O'er scentless flowers and songless bird!" 
But we have heard the bell-birds ring 
Their silver bells at eventide, 
Like fairies on the mountain side, 
The sweetest note man ever heard. 

The wild thrush lifts a note of mirth; 
The bronzewing pigeons call and coo 
Beside their nests the long day through; 
The magpie warbles clear and strong 
A joyous, glad, thanksgiving song, 
For all God's mercies upon earth. 

And many voices such as these 
Are joyful sounds for those to tell, 
Who know the Bush and love it well, 
With all its hidden mysteries. 

We cannot love the restless sea, 
That rolls and tosses to and fro 
Like some fierce creature in its glee; 
For human weal or human woe 
It has no touch of sympathy. 

For us the bush is never sad: 
Its myriad voices whisper low, 
In tones the bushmen only know, 
Its sympathy and welcome glad. 
For us the roving breezes bring 
From many a blossum-tufted tree -- 
Where wild bees murmur dreamily -- 
The honey-laden breath of Spring. 

* * * * 

We have our tales of other days, 
Good tales the northern wanderers tell 
When bushmen meet and camp-fires blaze, 
And round the ring of dancing light 
The great, dark bush with arms of night 
Folds every hearer in its spell. 

We have our songs -- not songs of strife 
And hot blood spilt on sea and land; 
But lilts that link achievement grand 
To honest toil and valiant life. 

Lift ye your faces to the sky 
Ye barrier mountains in the west 
Who lie so peacefully at rest 
Enshrouded in a haze of blue; 
'Tis hard to feel that years went by 
Before the pioneers broke through 
Your rocky heights and walls of stone, 
And made your secrets all their own. 

For years the fertile Western plains 
Were hid behind your sullen walls, 
Your cliffs and crags and waterfalls 
All weatherworn with tropic rains. 

Between the mountains and the sea 
Like Israelites with staff in hand, 
The people waited restlessly: 
They looked towards the mountains old 
And saw the sunsets come and go 
With gorgeous golden afterglow, 
That made the West a fairyland, 
And marvelled what that West might be 
Of which such wondrous tales were told. 

For tales were told of inland seas 
Like sullen oceans, salt and dead, 
And sandy deserts, white and wan, 
Where never trod the foot of man, 
Nor bird went winging overhead, 
Nor ever stirred a gracious breeze 
To wake the silence with its breath -- 
A land of loneliness and death. 

At length the hardy pioneers 
By rock and crag found out the way, 
And woke with voices of today 
A silence kept for years and tears. 

Upon the Western slope they stood 
And saw -- a wide expanse of plain 
As far as eye could stretch or see 
Go rolling westward endlessly. 
The native grasses, tall as grain, 
Bowed, waved and rippled in the breeze; 
From boughs of blossom-laden trees 
The parrots answered back again. 
They saw the land that it was good, 
A land of fatness all untrod, 
And gave their silent thanks to God. 

The way is won! The way is won! 
And straightway from the barren coast 
There came a westward-marching host, 
That aye and ever onward prest 
With eager faces to the West, 
Along the pathway of the sun. 

The mountains saw them marching by: 
They faced the all-consuming drought, 
They would not rest in settled land: 
But, taking each his life in hand, 
Their faces ever westward bent 
Beyond the farthest settlement, 
Responding to the challenge cry 
of "better country farther out". 

And lo, a miracle! the land 
But yesterday was all unknown, 
The wild man's boomerang was thrown 
Where now great busy cities stand. 
It was not much, you say, that these 
Should win their way where none withstood; 
In sooth there was not much of blood -- 
No war was fought between the seas. 

It was not much! but we who know 
The strange capricious land they trod -- 
At times a stricken, parching sod, 
At times with raging floods beset -- 
Through which they found their lonely way 
Are quite content that you should say 
It was not much, while we can feel 
That nothing in the ages old, 
In song or story written yet 
On Grecian urn or Roman arch, 
Though it should ring with clash of steel, 
Could braver histories unfold 
Than this bush story, yet untold -- 
The story of their westward march. 

* * * * 

But times are changed, and changes rung 
From old to new -- the olden days, 
The old bush life and all its ways, 
Are passing from us all unsung. 
The freedom, and the hopeful sense 
Of toil that brought due recompense, 
Of room for all, has passed away, 
And lies forgotten with the dead. 
Within our streets men cry for bread 
In cities built but yesterday. 
About us stretches wealth of land, 
A boundless wealth of virgin soil 
As yet unfruitful and untilled! 
Our willing workmen, strong and skilled, 
Within our cities idle stand, 
And cry aloud for leave to toil. 

The stunted children come and go 
In squalid lanes and alleys black: 
We follow but the beaten track 
Of other nations, and we grow 
In wealth for some -- for many, woe. 

And it may be that we who live 
In this new land apart, beyond 
The hard old world grown fierce and fond 
And bound by precedent and bond, 
May read the riddle right, and give 
New hope to those who dimly see 
That all things yet shall be for good, 
And teach the world at length to be 
One vast united brotherhood. 

* * * * 

So may it be! and he who sings 
In accents hopeful, clear, and strong, 
The glories which that future brings 
Shall sing, indeed, a wondrous song.

for Ruth Fainlight


I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root;
It is what you fear.
I do not fear it: I have been there.

Is it the sea you hear in me,
Its dissatisfactions?
Or the voice of nothing, that was you madness?

Love is a shadow.
How you lie and cry after it.
Listen: these are its hooves: it has gone off, like a horse.

All night I shall gallup thus, impetuously,
Till your head is a stone, your pillow a little turf,
Echoing, echoing.

Or shall I bring you the sound of poisons?
This is rain now, the big hush.
And this is the fruit of it: tin white, like arsenic.

I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets.
Scorched to the root
My red filaments burn and stand,a hand of wires.

Now I break up in pieces that fly about like clubs.
A wind of such violence
Will tolerate no bystanding: I must shriek.

The moon, also, is merciless: she would drag me
Cruelly, being barren.
Her radiance scathes me. Or perhaps I have caught her.

I let her go. I let her go
Diminished and flat, as after radical surgery.
How your bad dreams possess and endow me.

I am inhabited by a cry.
Nightly it flaps out
Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.

I am terrified by this dark thing
That sleeps in me;
All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.

Clouds pass and disperse.
Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables?
Is it for such I agitate my heart?

I am incapable of more knowledge.
What is this, this face
So murderous in its strangle of branches? ----

Its snaky acids kiss.
It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults
That kill, that kill, that kill.