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Best Famous Thereafter Poems

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Written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe | Create an image from this poem

THE BRIDE OF CORINTH

 [First published in Schiller's Horen, in connection 
with a
friendly contest in the art of ballad-writing between the two
great poets, to which many of their finest works are owing.
] ONCE a stranger youth to Corinth came, Who in Athens lived, but hoped that he From a certain townsman there might claim, As his father's friend, kind courtesy.
Son and daughter, they Had been wont to say Should thereafter bride and bridegroom be.
But can he that boon so highly prized, Save tis dearly bought, now hope to get? They are Christians and have been baptized, He and all of his are heathens yet.
For a newborn creed, Like some loathsome weed, Love and truth to root out oft will threat.
Father, daughter, all had gone to rest, And the mother only watches late; She receives with courtesy the guest, And conducts him to the room of state.
Wine and food are brought, Ere by him besought; Bidding him good night.
she leaves him straight.
But he feels no relish now, in truth, For the dainties so profusely spread; Meat and drink forgets the wearied youth, And, still dress'd, he lays him on the bed.
Scarce are closed his eyes, When a form in-hies Through the open door with silent tread.
By his glimmering lamp discerns he now How, in veil and garment white array'd, With a black and gold band round her brow, Glides into the room a bashful maid.
But she, at his sight, Lifts her hand so white, And appears as though full sore afraid.
"Am I," cries she, "such a stranger here, That the guest's approach they could not name? Ah, they keep me in my cloister drear, Well nigh feel I vanquish'd by my shame.
On thy soft couch now Slumber calmly thou! I'll return as swiftly as I came.
" "Stay, thou fairest maiden!" cries the boy, Starting from his couch with eager haste: "Here are Ceres', Bacchus' gifts of joy; Amor bringest thou, with beauty grac'd! Thou art pale with fear! Loved one let us here Prove the raptures the Immortals taste.
" "Draw not nigh, O Youth! afar remain! Rapture now can never smile on me; For the fatal step, alas! is ta'en, Through my mother's sick-bed phantasy.
Cured, she made this oath: 'Youth and nature both Shall henceforth to Heav'n devoted be.
' "From the house, so silent now, are driven All the gods who reign'd supreme of yore; One Invisible now rules in heaven, On the cross a Saviour they adore.
Victims slay they here, Neither lamb nor steer, But the altars reek with human gore.
" And he lists, and ev'ry word he weighs, While his eager soul drinks in each sound: "Can it be that now before my gaze Stands my loved one on this silent ground? Pledge to me thy troth! Through our father's oath: With Heav'ns blessing will our love be crown'd.
" "Kindly youth, I never can be thine! 'Tis my sister they intend for thee.
When I in the silent cloister pine, Ah, within her arms remember me! Thee alone I love, While love's pangs I prove; Soon the earth will veil my misery.
" "No! for by this glowing flame I swear, Hymen hath himself propitious shown: Let us to my fathers house repair, And thoult find that joy is not yet flown, Sweetest, here then stay, And without delay Hold we now our wedding feast alone!" Then exchange they tokens of their truth; She gives him a golden chain to wear, And a silver chalice would the youth Give her in return of beauty rare.
"That is not for me; Yet I beg of thee, One lock only give me of thy hair.
" Now the ghostly hour of midnight knell'd, And she seem'd right joyous at the sign; To her pallid lips the cup she held, But she drank of nought but blood-red wine.
For to taste the bread There before them spread, Nought he spoke could make the maid incline.
To the youth the goblet then she brought,-- He too quaff'd with eager joy the bowl.
Love to crown the silent feast he sought, Ah! full love-sick was the stripling's soul.
From his prayer she shrinks, Till at length he sinks On the bed and weeps without control.
And she comes, and lays her near the boy: "How I grieve to see thee sorrowing so! If thou think'st to clasp my form with joy, Thou must learn this secret sad to know; Yes! the maid, whom thou Call'st thy loved one now, Is as cold as ice, though white as snow.
" Then he clasps her madly in his arm, While love's youthful might pervades his frame: "Thou might'st hope, when with me, to grow warm, E'en if from the grave thy spirit came! Breath for breath, and kiss! Overflow of bliss! Dost not thou, like me, feel passion's flame?" Love still closer rivets now their lips, Tears they mingle with their rapture blest, From his mouth the flame she wildly sips, Each is with the other's thought possess'd.
His hot ardour's flood Warms her chilly blood, But no heart is beating in her breast.
In her care to see that nought went wrong, Now the mother happen'd to draw near; At the door long hearkens she, full long, Wond'ring at the sounds that greet her ear.
Tones of joy and sadness, And love's blissful madness, As of bride and bridegroom they appear, From the door she will not now remove 'Till she gains full certainty of this; And with anger hears she vows of love, Soft caressing words of mutual bliss.
"Hush! the cock's loud strain! But thoult come again, When the night returns!"--then kiss on kiss.
Then her wrath the mother cannot hold, But unfastens straight the lock with ease "In this house are girls become so bold, As to seek e'en strangers' lusts to please?" By her lamp's clear glow Looks she in,--and oh! Sight of horror!--'tis her child she sees.
Fain the youth would, in his first alarm, With the veil that o'er her had been spread, With the carpet, shield his love from harm; But she casts them from her, void of dread, And with spirit's strength, In its spectre length, Lifts her figure slowly from the bed.
"Mother! mother!"--Thus her wan lips say: "May not I one night of rapture share? From the warm couch am I chased away? Do I waken only to despair? It contents not thee To have driven me An untimely shroud of death to wear? "But from out my coffin's prison-bounds By a wond'rous fate I'm forced to rove, While the blessings and the chaunting sounds That your priests delight in, useless prove.
Water, salt, are vain Fervent youth to chain, Ah, e'en Earth can never cool down love! "When that infant vow of love was spoken, Venus' radiant temple smiled on both.
Mother! thou that promise since hast broken, Fetter'd by a strange, deceitful oath.
Gods, though, hearken ne'er, Should a mother swear To deny her daughter's plighted troth.
From my grave to wander I am forc'd, Still to seek The Good's long-sever'd link, Still to love the bridegroom I have lost, And the life-blood of his heart to drink; When his race is run, I must hasten on, And the young must 'neath my vengeance sink, "Beauteous youth! no longer mayst thou live; Here must shrivel up thy form so fair; Did not I to thee a token give, Taking in return this lock of hair? View it to thy sorrow! Grey thoult be to-morrow, Only to grow brown again when there.
"Mother, to this final prayer give ear! Let a funeral pile be straightway dress'd; Open then my cell so sad and drear, That the flames may give the lovers rest! When ascends the fire From the glowing pyre, To the gods of old we'll hasten, blest.
" 1797.


Written by Rudyard Kipling | Create an image from this poem

A Code of Morals

 Now Jones had left his new-wed bride to keep his house in order,
And hied away to the Hurrum Hills above the Afghan border,
To sit on a rock with a heliograph; but ere he left he taught
His wife the working of the Code that sets the miles at naught.
And Love had made him very sage, as Nature made her fair; So Cupid and Apollo linked , per heliograph, the pair.
At dawn, across the Hurrum Hills, he flashed her counsel wise -- At e'en, the dying sunset bore her busband's homilies.
He warned her 'gainst seductive youths in scarlet clad and gold, As much as 'gainst the blandishments paternal of the old; But kept his gravest warnings for (hereby the ditty hangs) That snowy-haired Lothario, Lieutenant-General Bangs.
'Twas General Bangs, with Aide and Staff, who tittupped on the way, When they beheld a heliograph tempestuously at play.
They thought of Border risings, and of stations sacked and burnt -- So stopped to take the message down -- and this is whay they learnt -- "Dash dot dot, dot, dot dash, dot dash dot" twice.
The General swore.
"Was ever General Officer addressed as 'dear' before? "'My Love,' i' faith! 'My Duck,' Gadzooks! 'My darling popsy-wop!' "Spirit of great Lord Wolseley, who is on that mountaintop?" The artless Aide-de-camp was mute; the gilded Staff were still, As, dumb with pent-up mirth, they booked that message from the hill; For clear as summer lightning-flare, the husband's warning ran: -- "Don't dance or ride with General Bangs -- a most immoral man.
" [At dawn, across the Hurrum Hills, he flashed her counsel wise -- But, howsoever Love be blind, the world at large hath eyes.
] With damnatory dot and dash he heliographed his wife Some interesting details of the General's private life.
The artless Aide-de-camp was mute, the shining Staff were still, And red and ever redder grew the General's shaven gill.
And this is what he said at last (his feelings matter not): -- "I think we've tapped a private line.
Hi! Threes about there! Trot!" All honour unto Bangs, for ne'er did Jones thereafter know By word or act official who read off that helio.
But the tale is on the Frontier, and from Michni to Mooltan They know the worthy General as "that most immoral man.
"
Written by Les Murray | Create an image from this poem

Travels With John Hunter

 We who travel between worlds 
lose our muscle and bone.
I was wheeling a barrow of earth when agony bayoneted me.
I could not sit, or lie down, or stand, in Casualty.
Stomach-calming clay caked my lips, I turned yellow as the moon and slid inside a CAT-scan wheel in a hospital where I met no one so much was my liver now my dire preoccupation.
I was sped down a road.
of treetops and fishing-rod lightpoles towards the three persons of God and the three persons of John Hunter Hospital.
Who said We might lose this one.
Twenty days or to the heat-death of the Universe have the same duration: vaguely half a hour.
I awoke giggling over a joke about Paul Kruger in Johannesburg and missed the white court stockings I half remembered from my prone still voyage beyond flesh and bone.
I asked my friend who got new lungs How long were you crazy, coming back? Five days, he said.
Violent and mad.
Fictive Afrikaner police were at him, not unworldly Oom Paul Kruger.
Valerie, who had sat the twenty days beside me, now gently told me tales of my time-warp.
The operative canyon stretched, stapled, with dry roseate walls down my belly.
Seaweed gel plugged views of my pluck and offal.
The only poet whose liver damage hadn't been self-inflicted, grinned my agent.
A momentarily holed bowel had released flora who live in us and will eat us when we stop feeding them the earth.
I had, it did seem, rehearsed the private office of the grave, ceased excreting, made corpse gases all while liana'd in tubes and overseen by cockpit instruments that beeped or struck up Beethoven's Fifth at behests of fluid.
I also hear when I lay lipless and far away I was anointed first by a mild metaphoric church then by the Church of no metaphors.
Now I said, signing a Dutch contract in a hand I couldn't recognise, let's go and eat Chinese soup and drive to Lake Macquarie.
Was I not renewed as we are in Heaven? In fact I could hardly endure Earth gravity, and stayed weak and cranky till the soup came, squid and vegetables, pure Yang.
And was sane thereafter.
It seemed I'd also travelled in a Spring-in-Winter love-barque of cards, of flowers and phone calls and letters, concern I'd never dreamed was there when black kelp boiled in my head.
I'd awoken amid my State funeral, nevermore to eat my liver or feed it to the Black Dog, depression which the three Johns Hunter seem to have killed with their scalpels: it hasn't found its way home, where I now dodder and mend in thanks for devotion, for the ambulance this time, for the hospital fork lift, for pethidine, and this face of deity: not the foreknowledge of death but the project of seeing conscious life rescued from death defines and will atone for the human.
Written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow | Create an image from this poem

Hiawathas Lamentation

 In those days the Evil Spirits,
All the Manitos of mischief,
Fearing Hiawatha's wisdom,
And his love for Chibiabos,
Jealous of their faithful friendship,
And their noble words and actions,
Made at length a league against them,
To molest them and destroy them.
Hiawatha, wise and wary, Often said to Chibiabos, "O my brother! do not leave me, Lest the Evil Spirits harm you!" Chibiabos, young and heedless, Laughing shook his coal-black tresses, Answered ever sweet and childlike, "Do not fear for me, O brother! Harm and evil come not near me!" Once when Peboan, the Winter, Roofed with ice the Big-Sea-Water, When the snow-flakes, whirling downward, Hissed among the withered oak-leaves, Changed the pine-trees into wigwams, Covered all the earth with silence, Armed with arrows, shod with snow-shoes, Heeding not his brother's warning, Fearing not the Evil Spirits, Forth to hunt the deer with antlers All alone went Chibiabos.
Right across the Big-Sea-Water Sprang with speed the deer before him.
With the wind and snow he followed, O'er the treacherous ice he followed, Wild with all the fierce commotion And the rapture of the hunting.
But beneath, the Evil Spirits Lay in ambush, waiting for him, Broke the treacherous ice beneath him, Dragged him downward to the bottom, Buried in the sand his body.
Unktahee, the god of water, He the god of the Dacotahs, Drowned him in the deep abysses Of the lake of Gitche Gumee.
From the headlands Hiawatha Sent forth such a wail of anguish, Such a fearful lamentation, That the bison paused to listen, And the wolves howled from the prairies, And the thunder in the distance Starting answered "Baim-wawa!" Then his face with black he painted, With his robe his head he covered, In his wigwam sat lamenting, Seven long weeks he sat lamenting, Uttering still this moan of sorrow: "He is dead, the sweet musician! He the sweetest of all singers! He has gone from us forever, He has moved a little nearer To the Master of all music, To the Master of all singing! O my brother, Chibiabos!" And the melancholy fir-trees Waved their dark green fans above him, Waved their purple cones above him, Sighing with him to console him, Mingling with his lamentation Their complaining, their lamenting.
Came the Spring, and all the forest Looked in vain for Chibiabos; Sighed the rivulet, Sebowisha, Sighed the rushes in the meadow.
From the tree-tops sang the bluebird, Sang the bluebird, the Owaissa, "Chibiabos! Chibiabos! He is dead, the sweet musician!" From the wigwam sang the robin, Sang the robin, the Opechee, "Chibiabos! Chibiabos! He is dead, the sweetest singer!" And at night through all the forest Went the whippoorwill complaining, Wailing went the Wawonaissa, "Chibiabos! Chibiabos! He is dead, the sweet musician! He the sweetest of all singers!" Then the Medicine-men, the Medas, The magicians, the Wabenos, And the Jossakeeds, the Prophets, Came to visit Hiawatha; Built a Sacred Lodge beside him, To appease him, to console him, Walked in silent, grave procession, Bearing each a pouch of healing, Skin of beaver, lynx, or otter, Filled with magic roots and simples, Filled with very potent medicines.
When he heard their steps approaching~, Hiawatha ceased lamenting, Called no more on Chibiabos; Naught he questioned, naught he answered, But his mournful head uncovered, From his face the mourning colors Washed he slowly and in silence, Slowly and in silence followed Onward to the Sacred Wigwam.
There a magic drink they gave him, Made of Nahma-wusk, the spearmint, And Wabeno-wusk, the yarrow, Roots of power, and herbs of healing; Beat their drums, and shook their rattles; Chanted singly and in chorus, Mystic songs like these, they chanted.
"I myself, myself! behold me! `T Is the great Gray Eagle talking; Come, ye white crows, come and hear him! The loud-speaking thunder helps me; All the unseen spirits help me; I can hear their voices calling, All around the sky I hear them! I can blow you strong, my brother, I can heal you, Hiawatha!" "Hi-au-ha!" replied the chorus, "Wayha-way!" the mystic chorus.
Friends of mine are all the serpents! Hear me shake my skin of hen-hawk! Mahng, the white loon, I can kill him; I can shoot your heart and kill it! I can blow you strong, my brother, I can heal you, Hiawatha !" "Hi-au-ha!" replied the chorus, "Wayhaway!" the mystic chorus.
"I myself, myself! the prophet! When I speak the wigwam trembles, Shakes the Sacred Lodge with terror, Hands unseen begin to shake it! When I walk, the sky I tread on Bends and makes a noise beneath me! I can blow you strong, my brother! Rise and speak, O Hiawatha!" "Hi-au-ha!" replied the chorus, "Way-ha-way!" the mystic chorus.
Then they shook their medicine-pouches O'er the head of Hiawatha, Danced their medicine-dance around him; And upstarting wild and haggard, Like a man from dreams awakened, He was healed of all his madness.
As the clouds are swept from heaven, Straightway from his brain departed All his moody melancholy; As the ice is swept from rivers, Straightway from his heart departed All his sorrow and affliction.
Then they summoned Chibiabos From his grave beneath the waters, From the sands of Gitche Gumee Summoned Hiawatha's brother.
And so mighty was the magic Of that cry and invocation, That he heard it as he lay there Underneath the Big-Sea-Water; From the sand he rose and listened, Heard the music and the singing, Came, obedient to the summons, To the doorway of the wigwam, But to enter they forbade him.
Through a chink a coal they gave him, Through the door a burning fire-brand; Ruler in the Land of Spirits, Ruler o'er the dead, they made him, Telling him a fire to kindle For all those that died thereafter, Camp-fires for their night encampments On their solitary journey To the kingdom of Ponemah, To the land of the Hereafter.
From the village of his childhood, From the homes of those who knew him, Passing silent through the forest, Like a smoke-wreath wafted sideways, Slowly vanished Chibiabos! Where he passed, the branches moved not, Where he trod, the grasses bent not, And the fallen leaves of last year Made no sound beneath his footstep.
Four whole days he journeyed onward Down the pathway of the dead men; On the dead-man's strawberry feasted, Crossed the melancholy river, On the swinging log he crossed it, Came unto the Lake of Silver, In the Stone Canoe was carried To the Islands of the Blessed, To the land of ghosts and shadows.
On that journey, moving slowly, Many weary spirits saw he, Panting under heavy burdens, Laden with war-clubs, bows and arrows, Robes of fur, and pots and kettles, And with food that friends had given For that solitary journey.
"Ay! why do the living," said they, "Lay such heavy burdens on us! Better were it to go naked, Better were it to go fasting, Than to bear such heavy burdens On our long and weary journey!" Forth then issued Hiawatha, Wandered eastward, wandered westward, Teaching men the use of simples And the antidotes for poisons, And the cure of all diseases.
Thus was first made known to mortals All the mystery of Medamin, All the sacred art of healing.
Written by Edwin Arlington Robinson | Create an image from this poem

Lancelot

 Gawaine, aware again of Lancelot 
In the King’s garden, coughed and followed him; 
Whereat he turned and stood with folded arms 
And weary-waiting eyes, cold and half-closed— 
Hard eyes, where doubts at war with memories
Fanned a sad wrath.
“Why frown upon a friend? Few live that have too many,” Gawaine said, And wished unsaid, so thinly came the light Between the narrowing lids at which he gazed.
“And who of us are they that name their friends?” Lancelot said.
“They live that have not any.
Why do they live, Gawaine? Ask why, and answer.
” Two men of an elected eminence, They stood for a time silent.
Then Gawaine, Acknowledging the ghost of what was gone, Put out his hand: “Rather, I say, why ask? If I be not the friend of Lancelot, May I be nailed alive along the ground And emmets eat me dead.
If I be not The friend of Lancelot, may I be fried With other liars in the pans of hell.
What item otherwise of immolation Your Darkness may invent, be it mine to endure And yours to gloat on.
For the time between, Consider this thing you see that is my hand.
If once, it has been yours a thousand times; Why not again? Gawaine has never lied To Lancelot; and this, of all wrong days— This day before the day when you go south To God knows what accomplishment of exile— Were surely an ill day for lies to find An issue or a cause or an occasion.
King Ban your father and King Lot my father, Were they alive, would shake their heads in sorrow To see us as we are, and I shake mine In wonder.
Will you take my hand, or no? Strong as I am, I do not hold it out For ever and on air.
You see—my hand.
” Lancelot gave his hand there to Gawaine, Who took it, held it, and then let it go, Chagrined with its indifference.
“Yes, Gawaine, I go tomorrow, and I wish you well; You and your brothers, Gareth, Gaheris,— And Agravaine; yes, even Agravaine, Whose tongue has told all Camelot and all Britain More lies than yet have hatched of Modred’s envy.
You say that you have never lied to me, And I believe it so.
Let it be so.
For now and always.
Gawaine, I wish you well.
Tomorrow I go south, as Merlin went, But not for Merlin’s end.
I go, Gawaine, And leave you to your ways.
There are ways left.
” “There are three ways I know, three famous ways, And all in Holy Writ,” Gawaine said, smiling: “The snake’s way and the eagle’s way are two, And then we have a man’s way with a maid— Or with a woman who is not a maid.
Your late way is to send all women scudding, To the last flash of the last cramoisy, While you go south to find the fires of God.
Since we came back again to Camelot From our immortal Quest—I came back first— No man has known you for the man you were Before you saw whatever ’t was you saw, To make so little of kings and queens and friends Thereafter.
Modred? Agravaine? My brothers? And what if they be brothers? What are brothers, If they be not our friends, your friends and mine? You turn away, and my words are no mark On you affection or your memory? So be it then, if so it is to be.
God save you, Lancelot; for by Saint Stephen, You are no more than man to save yourself.
” “Gawaine, I do not say that you are wrong, Or that you are ill-seasoned in your lightness; You say that all you know is what you saw, And on your own averment you saw nothing.
Your spoken word, Gawaine, I have not weighed In those unhappy scales of inference That have no beam but one made out of hates And fears, and venomous conjecturings; Your tongue is not the sword that urges me Now out of Camelot.
Two other swords There are that are awake, and in their scabbards Are parching for the blood of Lancelot.
Yet I go not away for fear of them, But for a sharper care.
You say the truth, But not when you contend the fires of God Are my one fear,—for there is one fear more.
Therefore I go.
Gawaine, I wish you well.
” “Well-wishing in a way is well enough; So, in a way, is caution; so, in a way, Are leeches, neatherds, and astrologers.
Lancelot, listen.
Sit you down and listen: You talk of swords and fears and banishment.
Two swords, you say; Modred and Agravaine, You mean.
Had you meant Gaheris and Gareth, Or willed an evil on them, I should welcome And hasten your farewell.
But Agravaine Hears little what I say; his ears are Modred’s.
The King is Modred’s father, and the Queen A prepossession of Modred’s lunacy.
So much for my two brothers whom you fear, Not fearing for yourself.
I say to you, Fear not for anything—and so be wise And amiable again as heretofore; Let Modred have his humor, and Agravaine His tongue.
The two of them have done their worst, And having done their worst, what have they done? A whisper now and then, a chirrup or so In corners,—and what else? Ask what, and answer.
” Still with a frown that had no faith in it, Lancelot, pitying Gawaine’s lost endeavour To make an evil jest of evidence, Sat fronting him with a remote forbearance— Whether for Gawaine blind or Gawaine false, Or both, or neither, he could not say yet, If ever; and to himself he said no more Than he said now aloud: “What else, Gawaine? What else, am I to say? Then ruin, I say; Destruction, dissolution, desolation, I say,—should I compound with jeopardy now.
For there are more than whispers here, Gawaine: The way that we have gone so long together Has underneath our feet, without our will, Become a twofold faring.
Yours, I trust, May lead you always on, as it has led you, To praise and to much joy.
Mine, I believe, Leads off to battles that are not yet fought, And to the Light that once had blinded me.
When I came back from seeing what I saw, I saw no place for me in Camelot.
There is no place for me in Camelot.
There is no place for me save where the Light May lead me; and to that place I shall go.
Meanwhile I lay upon your soul no load Of counsel or of empty admonition; Only I ask of you, should strife arise In Camelot, to remember, if you may, That you’ve an ardor that outruns your reason, Also a glamour that outshines your guile; And you are a strange hater.
I know that; And I’m in fortune that you hate not me.
Yet while we have our sins to dream about, Time has done worse for time than in our making; Albeit there may be sundry falterings And falls against us in the Book of Man.
” “Praise Adam, you are mellowing at last! I’ve always liked this world, and would so still; And if it is your new Light leads you on To such an admirable gait, for God’s sake, Follow it, follow it, follow it, Lancelot; Follow it as you never followed glory.
Once I believed that I was on the way That you call yours, but I came home again To Camelot—and Camelot was right, For the world knows its own that knows not you; You are a thing too vaporous to be sharing The carnal feast of life.
You mow down men Like elder-stems, and you leave women sighing For one more sight of you; but they do wrong.
You are a man of mist, and have no shadow.
God save you, Lancelot.
If I laugh at you, I laugh in envy and in admiration.
” The joyless evanescence of a smile, Discovered on the face of Lancelot By Gawaine’s unrelenting vigilance, Wavered, and with a sullen change went out; And then there was the music of a woman Laughing behind them, and a woman spoke: “Gawaine, you said ‘God save you, Lancelot.
’ Why should He save him any more to-day Than on another day? What has he done, Gawaine, that God should save him?” Guinevere, With many questions in her dark blue eyes And one gay jewel in her golden hair, Had come upon the two of them unseen, Till now she was a russet apparition At which the two arose—one with a dash Of easy leisure in his courtliness, One with a stately calm that might have pleased The Queen of a strange land indifferently.
The firm incisive languor of her speech, Heard once, was heard through battles: “Lancelot, What have you done to-day that God should save you? What has he done, Gawaine, that God should save him? I grieve that you two pinks of chivalry Should be so near me in my desolation, And I, poor soul alone, know nothing of it.
What has he done, Gawaine?” With all her poise, To Gawaine’s undeceived urbanity She was less queen than woman for the nonce, And in her eyes there was a flickering Of a still fear that would not be veiled wholly With any mask of mannered nonchalance.
“What has he done? Madam, attend your nephew; And learn from him, in your incertitude, That this inordinate man Lancelot, This engine of renown, this hewer down daily Of potent men by scores in our late warfare, Has now inside his head a foreign fever That urges him away to the last edge Of everything, there to efface himself In ecstasy, and so be done with us.
Hereafter, peradventure certain birds Will perch in meditation on his bones, Quite as if they were some poor sailor’s bones, Or felon’s jettisoned, or fisherman’s, Or fowler’s bones, or Mark of Cornwall’s bones.
In fine, this flower of men that was our comrade Shall be for us no more, from this day on, Than a much remembered Frenchman far away.
Magnanimously I leave you now to prize Your final sight of him; and leaving you, I leave the sun to shine for him alone, Whiles I grope on to gloom.
Madam, farewell; And you, contrarious Lancelot, farewell.


Written by Bertolt Brecht | Create an image from this poem

I Never Loved You More

 I never loved you more, ma soeur
Than as I walked away from you that evening.
The forest swallowed me, the blue forest, ma soeur The blue forest and above it pale stars in the west.
I did not laugh, not one little bit, ma soeur As I playfully walked towards a dark fate-- While the faces behind me Slowly paled in the evening of the blue forest.
Everything was grand that one night, ma soeur Never thereafter and never before-- I admit it: I was left with nothing but the big birds And their hungry cries in the dark evening sky.
Written by Alec Derwent (A D) Hope | Create an image from this poem

Conquistador

 I sing of the decline of Henry Clay 
Who loved a white girl of uncommon size.
Although a small man in a little way, He had in him some seed of enterprise.
Each day he caught the seven-thirty train To work, watered his garden after tea, Took an umbrella if it looked like rain A nd was remarkably like you or me.
He had his hair cut once a fortnight, tried Not to forget the birthday of his wife, And might have lived unnoticed till he died Had not ambition entered Henry's life.
He met her in the lounge of an hotel - A most unusual place for him to go - But there he was and there she was as well Sitting alone.
He ordered beers for two.
She was so large a girl that when they came He gave the waiter twice the usual tip.
She smiled without surprise, told him her name, And as the name trembled on Henry's lip, His parched soul, swelling like a desert root, Broke out its delicate dream upon the air; The mountains shook with earthquake under foot; An angel seized him suddenly by the hair; The sky was shrill with peril as he passed; A hurricane crushed his senses with its din; The wildfire crackled up his reeling mast; The trumpet of a maelstrom sucked hirn in; The desert shrivelled and burnt off his feet; His bones and buttons an enormous snake Vomited up; still in the shimmering heat The pygmies showed him their forbidden lake And then transfixed him with their poison darts; He married six black virgins in a bunch, Who, when they had drawn out his manly parts, Stewed him and ate him lovingly for lunch.
Adventure opened wide its grisly jaws; Henry looked in and knew the Hero's doom.
The huge white girl drank on without a pause And, just at closing time, she asked him home.
The tram they took was full of Roaring Boys Announcing the world's ruin and Judgment Day; The sky blared with its grand orchestral voice The Gotterdammerung of Henry Clay.
But in her quiet room they were alone.
There, towering over Henry by a head, She stood and took her clothes off one by one, And then she stretched herself upon the bed.
Her bulk of beauty, her stupendous grace Challenged the lion heart in his puny dust.
Proudly his Moment looked him in the face: He rose to meet it as a hero must; Climbed the white mountain of unravished snow, Planted his tiny flag upon the peak.
The smooth drifts, scarcely breathing, lay below.
She did not take the trouble to smile or speak.
And afterwards, it may have been in play, The enormous girl rolled over and squashed him flat; And, as she could not send him home that way, Used him thereafter as a bedside mat.
Speaking at large, I will say this of her: S he did not spare expense to make him nice.
Tanned on both sides and neatly edged with fur, The job would have been cheap at any price.
And when, in winter, getting out of bed, Her large soft feet pressed warmly on the skin, The two glass eyes would sparkle in his head, The jaws extend their papier-mache grin.
Good people, for the soul of Henry Clay Offer your prayers, and view his destiny! He was the Hero of our Time.
He may With any luck, one day, be you or me.
Written by Edwin Muir | Create an image from this poem

The Horses

 Barely a twelvemonth after
The seven days war that put the world to sleep,
Late in the evening the strange horses came.
By then we had made our covenant with silence, But in the first few days it was so still We listened to our breathing and were afraid.
On the second day The radios failed; we turned the knobs; no answer.
On the third day a warship passed us, heading north, Dead bodies piled on the deck.
On the sixth day A plane plunged over us into the sea.
Thereafter Nothing.
The radios dumb; And still they stand in corners of our kitchens, And stand, perhaps, turned on, in a million rooms All over the world.
But now if they should speak, If on a sudden they should speak again, If on the stroke of noon a voice should speak, We would not listn, we would not let it bring That old bad world that swallowed its children quick At one great gulp.
We would not have it again.
Sometimes we think of the nations lying asleep, Curled blindly in impenetrable sorrow, And then the thought confounds us with its strangeness.
The tractors lie about our fields; at evening They look like dank sea-monsters couched and waiting.
We leave them where they are and let them rust: "They'll molder away and be like other loam.
" We make our oxen drag our rusty plows, Long laid aside.
We have gone back Far past our fathers' land.
And then, that evening Late in the summer the strange horses came.
We heard a distant tapping on the road, A deepening drumming; it stopped, went on again And at the corner changed to hollow thunder.
We saw the heads Like a wild wave charging and were afraid.
We had sold our horses in our fathers' time To buy new tractors.
Now they were strange to us As fabulous steeds set on an ancient shield.
Or illustrations in a book of knights.
We did not dare go near them.
Yet they waited, Stubborn and shy, as if they had been sent By an old command to find our whereabouts And that long-lost archaic companionship.
In the first moment we had never a thought That they were creatures to be owned and used.
Among them were some half a dozen colts Dropped in some wilderness of the broken world, Yet new as if they had come from their own Eden.
Since then they have pulled our plows and borne our loads, But that free servitude still can pierce our hearts.
Our life is changed; their coming our beginning.
Written by Edwin Arlington Robinson | Create an image from this poem

Sainte-Nitouche

 Though not for common praise of him, 
Nor yet for pride or charity, 
Still would I make to Vanderberg 
One tribute for his memory: 

One honest warrant of a friend
Who found with him that flesh was grass— 
Who neither blamed him in defect 
Nor marveled how it came to pass; 

Or why it ever was that he— 
That Vanderberg, of all good men,
Should lose himself to find himself, 
Straightway to lose himself again.
For we had buried Sainte-Nitouche, And he had said to me that night: “Yes, we have laid her in the earth, But what of that?” And he was right.
And he had said: “We have a wife, We have a child, we have a church; ’T would be a scurrilous way out If we should leave them in the lurch.
“That’s why I have you here with me To-night: you know a talk may take The place of bromide, cyanide, Et cetera.
For heaven’s sake, “Why do you look at me like that? What have I done to freeze you so? Dear man, you see where friendship means A few things yet that you don’t know; “And you see partly why it is That I am glad for what is gone: For Sainte-Nitouche and for the world In me that followed.
What lives on— “Well, here you have it: here at home— For even home will yet return.
You know the truth is on my side, And that will make the embers burn.
“I see them brighten while I speak, I see them flash,—and they are mine! You do not know them, but I do: I know the way they used to shine.
“And I know more than I have told Of other life that is to be: I shall have earned it when it comes, And when it comes I shall be free.
“Not as I was before she came, But farther on for having been The servitor, the slave of her— The fool, you think.
But there’s your sin— “Forgive me!—and your ignorance: Could you but have the vision here That I have, you would understand As I do that all ways are clear “For those who dare to follow them With earnest eyes and honest feet.
But Sainte-Nitouche has made the way For me, and I shall find it sweet.
“Sweet with a bitter sting left?—Yes, Bitter enough, God knows, at first; But there are more steep ways than one To make the best look like the worst; “And here is mine—the dark and hard, For me to follow, trust, and hold: And worship, so that I may leave No broken story to be told.
“Therefore I welcome what may come, Glad for the days, the nights, the years.
”— An upward flash of ember-flame Revealed the gladness in his tears.
“You see them, but you know,” said he, “Too much to be incredulous: You know the day that makes us wise, The moment that makes fools of us.
“So I shall follow from now on The road that she has found for me: The dark and starry way that leads Right upward, and eternally.
“Stumble at first? I may do that; And I may grope, and hate the night; But there’s a guidance for the man Who stumbles upward for the light, “And I shall have it all from her, The foam-born child of innocence.
I feel you smiling while I speak, But that’s of little consequence; “For when we learn that we may find The truth where others miss the mark, What is it worth for us to know That friends are smiling in the dark? “Could we but share the lonely pride Of knowing, all would then be well; But knowledge often writes itself In flaming words we cannot spell.
“And I, who have my work to do, Look forward; and I dare to see, Far stretching and all mountainous, God’s pathway through the gloom for me.
” I found so little to say then That I said nothing.
—“Say good-night,” Said Vanderberg; “and when we meet To-morrow, tell me I was right.
“Forget the dozen other things That you have not the faith to say; For now I know as well as you That you are glad to go away.
” I could have blessed the man for that, And he could read me with a smile: “You doubt,” said he, “but if we live You’ll know me in a little while.
” He lived; and all as he foretold, I knew him—better than he thought: My fancy did not wholly dig The pit where I believed him caught.
But yet he lived and laughed, and preached, And worked—as only players can: He scoured the shrine that once was home And kept himself a clergyman.
The clockwork of his cold routine Put friends far off that once were near; The five staccatos in his laugh Were too defensive and too clear; The glacial sermons that he preached Were longer than they should have been; And, like the man who fashioned them, The best were too divinely thin.
But still he lived, and moved, and had The sort of being that was his, Till on a day the shrine of home For him was in the Mysteries:— “My friend, there’s one thing yet,” said he, “And one that I have never shared With any man that I have met; But you—you know me.
” And he stared For a slow moment at me then With conscious eyes that had the gleam, The shine, before the stroke:—“You know The ways of us, the way we dream: “You know the glory we have won, You know the glamour we have lost; You see me now, you look at me,— And yes, you pity me, almost; “But never mind the pity—no, Confess the faith you can’t conceal; And if you frown, be not like one Of those who frown before they feel.
“For there is truth, and half truth,—yes, And there’s a quarter truth, no doubt; But mine was more than half.
… You smile? You understand? You bear me out? “You always knew that I was right— You are my friend—and I have tried Your faith—your love.
”—The gleam grew small, The stroke was easy, and he died.
I saw the dim look change itself To one that never will be dim; I saw the dead flesh to the grave, But that was not the last of him.
For what was his to live lives yet: Truth, quarter truth, death cannot reach; Nor is it always what we know That we are fittest here to teach.
The fight goes on when fields are still, The triumph clings when arms are down; The jewels of all coronets Are pebbles of the unseen crown; The specious weight of loud reproof Sinks where a still conviction floats; And on God’s ocean after storm Time’s wreckage is half pilot-boats; And what wet faces wash to sight Thereafter feed the common moan:— But Vanderberg no pilot had, Nor could have: he was all alone.
Unchallenged by the larger light The starry quest was his to make; And of all ways that are for men, The starry way was his to take.
We grant him idle names enough To-day, but even while we frown The fight goes on, the triumph clings, And there is yet the unseen crown But was it his? Did Vanderberg Find half truth to be passion’s thrall, Or as we met him day by day, Was love triumphant, after all? I do not know so much as that; I only know that he died right: Saint Anthony nor Sainte-Nitouche Had ever smiled as he did—quite.
Written by Edgar Lee Masters | Create an image from this poem

Dora Williams

 When Reuben Pantier ran away and threw me
I went to Springfield.
There I met a lush, Whose father just deceased left him a fortune.
He married me when drunk.
My life was wretched.
A year passed and one day they found him dead.
That made me rich.
I moved on to Chicago.
After a time met Tyler Rountree, villain.
I moved on to New York.
A gray-haired magnate Went mad about me -- so another fortune.
He died one night right in my arms, you know.
(I saw his purple face for years thereafter.
) There was almost a scandal.
I moved on, This time to Paris.
I was now a woman, Insidious, subtle, versed in the world and rich.
My sweet apartment near the Champs Élysées Became a center for all sorts of people, Musicians, poets, dandies, artists, nobles, Where we spoke French and German, Italian, English.
I wed Count Navigato, native of Genoa.
We went to Rome.
He poisoned me, I think.
Now in the Campo Santo overlooking The sea where young Columbus dreamed new worlds, See what they chiseled: "Contessa Navigato Implora eterna quiete.
"