Written by
John Betjeman |
The last year's leaves are on the beech:
The twigs are black; the cold is dry;
To deeps byond the deepest reach
The Easter bells enlarge the sky.
O ordered metal clatter-clang!
Is yours the song the angels sang?
You fill my heart with joy and grief -
Belief! Belief! And unbelief...
And, though you tell me I shall die,
You say not how or when or why.
Indifferent the finches sing,
Unheeding roll the lorries past:
What misery will this year bring
Now spring is in the air at last?
For, sure as blackthorn bursts to snow,
Cancer in some of us will grow,
The tasteful crematorium door
Shuts out for some the furnace roar;
But church-bells open on the blast
Our loneliness, so long and vast.
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Written by
G K Chesterton |
Lord Lilac thought it rather rotten
That Shakespeare should be quite forgotten,
And therefore got on a Committee
With several chaps out of the City,
And Shorter and Sir Herbert Tree,
Lord Rothschild and Lord Rosebery,
And F.C.G. and Comyn Carr
Two dukes and a dramatic star,
Also a clergy man now dead;
And while the vain world careless sped
Unheeding the heroic name --
The souls most fed with Shakespeare's flame
Still sat unconquered in a ring,
Remembering him like anything.
Lord Lilac did not long remain,
Lord Lilac did not some again.
He softly lit a cigarette
And sought some other social set
Where, in some other knots or rings,
People were doing cultured things.
-- Miss Zwilt's Humane Vivarium
-- The little men that paint on gum
-- The exquisite Gorilla Girl . . .
He sometimes, in this giddy whirl
(Not being really bad at heart),
Remembered Shakespeare with a start --
But not with that grand constancy
Of Clement Shorter, Herbert Tree,
Lord Rosebery and Comyn Carr
And all the other names there are;
Who stuck like limpets to the spot,
Lest they forgot, lest they forgot.
Lord Lilac was of slighter stuff;
Lord Lilac had had quite enough.
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Written by
Wang Wei |
THERE were many burning hours on the heartsweet tide,
And we passed away from ourselves, forgetting all
The immortal moods that faded, the god who died,
Hastening away to the King on a distant call.
There were ruby dews were shed when the heart was riven,
And passionate pleading and prayers to the dead we had wronged;
And we passed away, unremembering and unforgiven,
Hastening away to the King for the peace we longed.
Love unremembered and heart-ache we left behind,
We forsook them, unheeding, hastening away in our flight;
We knew the hearts we had wronged of old we would find
When we came to the fold of the King for rest in the night.
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Written by
Conrad Aiken |
All lovely things will have an ending,
All lovely things will fade and die,
And youth, that's now so bravely spending,
Will beg a penny by and by.
Fine ladies soon are all forgotten,
And goldenrod is dust when dead,
The sweetest flesh and flowers are rotten
And cobwebs tent the brightest head.
Come back, true love! Sweet youth, return!—
But time goes on, and will, unheeding,
Though hands will reach, and eyes will yearn,
And the wild days set true hearts bleeding.
Come back, true love! Sweet youth, remain!—
But goldenrod and daisies wither,
And over them blows autumn rain,
They pass, they pass, and know not whither.
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Written by
Adela Florence Cory Nicolson |
Just as the dawn of Love was breaking
Across the weary world of grey,
Just as my life once more was waking
As roses waken late in May,
Fate, blindly cruel and havoc-making,
Stepped in and carried you away.
Memories have I none in keeping
Of times I held you near my heart,
Of dreams when we were near to weeping
That dawn should bid us rise and part;
Never, alas, I saw you sleeping
With soft closed eyes and lips apart,
Breathing my name still through your dreaming.—
Ah! had you stayed, such things had been!
But Fate, unheeding human scheming,
Serenely reckless came between—
Fate with her cold eyes hard and gleaming
Unseared by all the sorrow seen.
Ah! well-beloved, I never told you,
I did not show in speech or song,
How at the end I longed to fold you
Close in my arms; so fierce and strong
The longing grew to have and hold you,
You, and you only, all life long.
They who know nothing call me fickle,
Keen to pursue and loth to keep.
Ah, could they see these tears that trickle
From eyes erstwhile too proud to weep.
Could see me, prone, beneath the sickle,
While pain and sorrow stand and reap!
Unopened scarce, yet overblown, lie
The hopes that rose-like round me grew,
The lights are low, and more than lonely
This life I lead apart from you.
Come back, come back! I want you only,
And you who loved me never knew.
You loved me, pleaded for compassion
On all the pain I would not share;
And I in weary, halting fashion
Was loth to listen, long to care;
But now, dear God! I faint with passion
For your far eyes and distant hair.
Yes, I am faint with love, and broken
With sleepless nights and empty days;
I want your soft words fiercely spoken,
Your tender looks and wayward ways—
Want that strange smile that gave me token
Of many things that no man says.
Cold was I, weary, slow to waken
Till, startled by your ardent eyes,
I felt the soul within me shaken
And long-forgotten senses rise;
But in that moment you were taken,
And thus we lost our Paradise!
Farewell, we may not now recover
That golden "Then" misspent, passed by,
We shall not meet as loved and lover
Here, or hereafter, you and I.
My time for loving you is over,
Love has no future, but to die.
And thus we part, with no believing
In any chance of future years.
We have no idle self-deceiving,
No half-consoling hopes and fears;
We know the Gods grant no retrieving
A wasted chance. Fate knows no tears.
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Written by
Robert Southey |
Small is the new-born plant scarce seen
Amid the soft encircling green,
Where yonder budding acorn rears,
Just o'er the waving grass, its tender head:
Slow pass along the train of years,
And on the growing plant, their dews and showers they shed.
Anon it rears aloft its giant form,
And spreads its broad-brown arms to meet the storm.
Beneath its boughs far shadowing o'er the plain,
From summer suns, repair the grateful village train.
Nor BEDFORD will my friend survey
The book of Nature with unheeding eye;
For never beams the rising orb of day,
For never dimly dies the refluent ray,
But as the moralizer marks the sky,
He broods with strange delight upon futurity.
And we must muse my friend! maturer years
Arise, and other Hopes and other Fears,
For we have past the pleasant plains of Youth.
Oh pleasant plains! that we might stray
For ever o'er your faery ground--
For ever roam your vales around,
Nor onward tempt the dangerous way--
For oh--what numerous foes assail
The Traveller, from that chearful vale!
With toil and heaviness opprest
Seek not the flowery bank for rest,
Tho' there the bowering woodbine spread
Its fragrant shelter o'er thy head,
Tho' Zephyr there should linger long
To hear the sky-lark's wildly-warbled song,
There heedless Youth shalt thou awake
The vengeance of the coiling snake!
Tho' fairly smiles the vernal mead
To tempt thy pilgrim feet, proceed
Hold on thy steady course aright,
Else shalt thou wandering o'er the pathless plain,
When damp and dark descends the night
Shivering and shelterless, repent in vain.
And yet--tho' Dangers lurk on every side
Receive not WORLDLY WISDOM for thy guide!
Beneath his care thou wilt not know
The throb of unavailing woe,
No tear shall tremble in thine eye
Thy breast shall struggle with no sigh,
He will security impart,
But he will apathize thy heart!
Ah no!
Fly Fly that fatal foe,
Virtue shall shrink from his torpedo grasp--
For not more fatal thro' the Wretches veins
Benumb'd in Death's cold pains
Creeps the chill poison of the deadly asp.
Serener joys my friend await
Maturer manhood's steady state.
The wild brook bursting from its source
Meanders on its early course,
Delighting there with winding way
Amid the vernal vale to stray,
Emerging thence more widely spread
It foams along its craggy bed,
And shatter'd with the mighty shock
Rushes from the giddy rock--
Hurl'd headlong o'er the dangerous steep
On runs the current to the deep,
And gathering waters as it goes
Serene and calm the river flows,
Diffuses plenty o'er the smiling coast,
Rolls on its stately waves and is in ocean lost.
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Written by
Robert Seymour Bridges |
Unflinching hero, watchful to foresee
And face thy country's peril wheresoe'er,
Directing war and peace with equal care,
Till by long toil ennobled thou wert he
Whom England call'd and bade "Set my arm free
To obey my will and save my honour fair," --
What day the foe presumed on her despair
And she herself had trust in none but thee:
Among Herculean deeds the miracle
That mass'd the labour of ten years in one
Shall be thy monument. Thy work was done
Ere we could thank thee; and the high sea swell
Surgeth unheeding where thy proud ship fell
By the lone Orkneys, at the set of sun.
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Written by
Adela Florence Cory Nicolson |
The Desert sands are heated, parched and dreary,
The tigers rend alive their quivering prey
In the near Jungle; here the kites rise, weary,
Too gorged with living food to fly away.
All night the hungry jackals howl together
Over the carrion in the river bed,
Or seize some small soft thing of fur or feather
Whose dying shrieks on the night air are shed.
I hear from yonder Temple in the distance
Whose roof with obscene carven Gods is piled,
Reiterated with a sad insistence
Sobs of, perhaps, some immolated child.
Strange rites here, where the archway's shade is deeper,
Are consummated in the river bed;
Parias steal the rotten railway sleeper
To burn the bodies of their cholera dead.
But yet, their lust, their hunger, cannot shame them
Goaded by fierce desire, that flays and stings;
Poor beasts, and poorer men. Nay, who shall blame them?
Blame the Inherent Cruelty of Things.
The world is horrible and I am lonely,
Let me rest here where yellow roses bloom
And find forgetfulness, remembering only
Your face beside me in the scented gloom.
Nay, do not shrink! I am not here for passion,
I crave no love, only a little rest,
Although I would my face lay, lover's fashion,
Against the tender coolness of your breast.
I am so weary of the Curse of Living
The endless, aimless torture, tumult, fears.
Surely, if life were any God's free giving,
He, seeing His gift, long since went blind with tears.
Seeing us; our fruitless strife, our futile praying,
Our luckless Present and our bloodstained Past.
Poor players, who make a trick or two in playing,
But know that death must win the game at last.
As round the Fowler, red with feathered slaughter,
The little joyous lark, unconscious, sings,—
As the pink Lotus floats on azure water,
Innocent of the mud from whence it springs.
You walk through life, unheeding all the sorrow,
The fear and pain set close around your way,
Meeting with hopeful eyes each gay to-morrow,
Living with joy each hour of glad to-day.
I love to have you thus (nay, dear, lie quiet,
How should these reverent fingers wrong your hair?)
So calmly careless of the rush and riot
That rages round is seething everywhere.
You do not understand. You think your beauty
Does but inflame my senses to desire,
Till all you hold as loyalty and duty,
Is shrunk and shrivelled in the ardent fire.
You wrong me, wearied out with thought and grieving
As though the whole world's sorrow eat my heart,
I come to gaze upon your face believing
Its beauty is as ointment to the smart.
Lie still and let me in my desolation
Caress the soft loose hair a moment's span.
Since Loveliness is Life's one Consolation,
And love the only Lethe left to man.
Ah, give me here beneath the trees in flower,
Beside the river where the fireflies pass,
One little dusky, all consoling hour
Lost in the shadow of the long grown grass
Give me, oh you whose arms are soft and slender,
Whose eyes are nothing but one long caress,
Against your heart, so innocent and tender,
A little Love and some Forgetfulness.
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Written by
Percy Bysshe Shelley |
Lift not the painted veil which those who live
Call Life: though unreal shapes be pictured there,
And it but mimic all we would believe
With colours idly spread,--behind, lurk Fear
And Hope, twin Destinies; who ever weave
Their shadows, o'er the chasm, sightless and drear.
I knew one who had lifted it--he sought,
For his lost heart was tender, things to love,
But found them not, alas! nor was there aught
The world contains, the which he could approve.
Through the unheeding many he did move,
A splendour among shadows, a bright blot
Upon this gloomy scene, a Spirit that strove
For truth, and like the Preacher found it not.
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Written by
Mary Darby Robinson |
By the side of the brook, where the willow is waving
Why sits the wan Youth, in his wedding-suit gay!
Now sighing so deeply, now frantickly raving
Beneath the pale light of the moon's sickly ray.
Now he starts, all aghast, and with horror's wild gesture,
Cries, "AGNES is coming, I know her white vesture!
"See! see! how she beckons me on to the willow,
"Where, on the cold turf, she has made our rude pillow.
"Sweet girl ! yes I know thee; thy cheek's living roses
"Are chang'd and grown pale, with the touch of despair:
"And thy bosom no longer the lily discloses--
"For thorns, my poor AGNES, are now planted there!
"Thy blue, starry Eyes! are all dimm'd by dark sorrow;
"No more from thy lip, can the flow'r fragrance borrow;
"For cold does it seem, like the pale light of morning,
"And thou smil'st, as in sadness, thy fond lover, scorning!
"From the red scene of slaughter thy Edmund returning,
"Has dress'd himself gayly, with May-blooming flow'rs;
"His bosom, dear AGNES! still faithfully burning,
"While, madly impatient, his eyes beam in show'rs!
"O ! many a time have I thought of thy beauty--
"When cannons, loud roaring, taught Valour its duty;
"And many a time, have I sigh'd to behold thee--
"When the sulphur of War, in its cloudy mist roll'd me!
"At the still hour of morn, when the Camp was reposing,
"I wander'd alone on the wide dewy plain:
"And when the gold curtains of Ev'ning were closing,
"I watch'd the long shadows steal over the Main!
"Across the wild Ocean, half frantic they bore me,
"Unheeding my groans, from Thee, AGNES, they tore me;
"But, though my poor heart might have bled in the battle,
"Thy name should have echoed, amidst the loud rattle!
"When I gaz'd on the field of the dead and the dying--
"O AGNES! my fancy still wander'd to Thee!
"When around, my brave Comrades in anguish were lying,
"I long'd on the death-bed of Valour to be.
"For, sever'd from THEE, my SWEET GIRL, the loud thunder
"Which tore the soft fetters of fondness asunder--
"Had only one kindness, in mercy to shew me,
"To bid me die bravely , that thou, Love, may'st know me!
His arms now are folded, he bows as in sorrow,
His tears trickle fast, down his wedding-suit gay;
"My AGNES will bless me," he murmurs, "to-morrow,
"As fresh as the breezes that welcome the day !"
Poor Youth! know thy AGNES, so lovely and blooming,
Stern Death has embrac'd, all her beauties entombing!
And, pale as her shroud in the grave she reposes,
Her bosom of snow, all besprinkled with Roses!
Her Cottage is now in the dark dell decaying,
And shatter'd the casements, and clos'd is the door,
And the nettle now waves, where the wild KID is playing,
And the neat little garden with weeds is grown o'er!
The Owl builds its nest in the thatch, and there, shrieking,
(A place all deserted and lonely bespeaking)
Salutes the night traveller, wandering near it,
And makes his faint heart, sicken sadly to hear it.
Then Youth, for thy habit, henceforth, thou should'st borrow
The Raven's dark colour, and mourn for thy dear:
Thy AGNES for thee, would have cherish'd her Sorrow,
And drest her pale cheek with a lingering tear:
For, soon as thy steps to the Battle departed,
She droop'd, and poor Maiden ! she died, broken hearted
And the turf that is bound with fresh garlands of roses,
Is now the cold bed, where her sorrow reposes!
The gay and the giddy may revel in pleasure,--
May think themselves happy, their short summer-day;
May gaze, with fond transport, on fortune's rich treasure,
And, carelessly sporting,--drive sorrow away:
But the bosom, where feeling and truth are united--
From folly's bright tinsel will turn, undelighted--
And find, at the grave where thy AGNES is sleeping,
That the proudest of hours, is the lone hour of weeping!
The Youth now approach'd the long branch of the willow,
And stripping its leaves, on the turf threw them round.
"Here, here, my sweet AGNES! I make my last pillow,
"My bed of long slumber, shall be the cold ground!
"The Sun, when it rises above thy low dwelling,
"Shall gild the tall Spire, where my death-toll is knelling.
"And when the next twilight its soft tears is shedding,
"At thy Grave shall the Villagers--witness our WEDDING!
Now over the Hills he beheld a group coming,
Their arms glitter'd bright, as the Sun slowly rose;
He heard them their purposes, far distant, humming,
And welcom'd the moment, that ended his woes!--
And now the fierce Comrade, unfeeling, espies him,
He darts thro' the thicket, in hopes to surprize him;
But EDMUND, of Valour the dauntless defender,
Now smiles , while his CORPORAL bids him--"SURRENDER!"
Soon, prov'd a DESERTER, Stern Justice prevailing,
HE DIED! and his Spirit to AGNES is fled:--
The breeze, on the mountain's tall summit now sailing
Fans lightly the dew-drops, that spangle their bed!
The Villagers, thronging around, scatter roses,
The grey wing of Evening the western sky closes,--
And Night's sable pall, o'er the landscape extending,
Is the mourning of Nature! the SOLEMN SCENE ENDING.
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