Delphi Poetry Anthology: The World's Greatest Poems (Delphi Poets Series Book 50)

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Delphi Poetry Anthology: The World's Greatest Poems (Delphi Poets Series Book 50) Page 219

by Homer


  When her mother tends her before the laughing mirror,

  Tying up her laces, looping up her hair,

  Often she thinks, were this wild thing wedded,

  More love should I have, and much less care. 20

  When her mother tends her before the lighted mirror,

  Loosening her laces, combing down her curls,

  Often she thinks, were this wild thing wedded,

  I should miss but one for many boys and girls.

  Heartless she is as the shadow in the meadows 25

  Flying to the hills on a blue and breezy noon.

  No, she is athirst and drinking up her wonder:

  Earth to her is young as the slip of the new moon.

  Deals she an unkindness, ’tis but her rapid measure,

  Even as in a dance; and her smile can heal no less: 30

  Like the swinging May-cloud that pelts the flowers with hailstones

  Off a sunny border, she was made to bruise and bless.

  Lovely are the curves of the white owl sweeping

  Wavy in the dusk lit by one large star.

  Lone on the fir-branch, his rattle-note unvaried, 35

  Brooding o’er the gloom, spins the brown evejar.

  Darker grows the valley, more and more forgetting:

  So were it with me if forgetting could be will’d.

  Tell the grassy hollow that holds the bubbling well-spring,

  Tell it to forget the source that keeps it fill’d. 40

  Stepping down the hill with her fair companions,

  Arm in arm, all against the raying West,

  Boldly she sings, to the merry tune she marches,

  Brave is her shape, and sweeter unpossess’d.

  Sweeter, for she is what my heart first awaking 45

  Whisper’d the world was; morning light is she.

  Love that so desires would fain keep her changeless;

  Fain would fling the net, and fain have her free.

  Happy happy time, when the white star hovers

  Low over dim fields fresh with bloomy dew, 50

  Near the face of dawn, that draws athwart the darkness

  Threading it with colour, like yewberries the yew.

  Thicker crowd the shades as the grave East deepens

  Glowing, and with crimson a long cloud swells.

  Maiden still the morn is; and strange she is, and secret; 55

  Strange her eyes; her cheeks are cold as cold sea-shells.

  Sunrays, leaning on our southern hills and lighting

  Wild cloud-mountains that drag the hills along,

  Oft ends the day of your shifting brilliant laughter

  Chill as a dull face frowning on a song. 60

  Ay, but shows the South-west a ripple-feather’d bosom

  Blown to silver while the clouds are shaken and ascend

  Scaling the mid-heavens as they stream, there comes a sunset

  Rich, deep like love in beauty without end.

  When at dawn she sighs, and like an infant to the window 65

  Turns grave eyes craving light, released from dreams,

  Beautiful she looks, like a white water-lily

  Bursting out of bud in havens of the streams.

  When from bed she rises clothed from neck to ankle

  In her long nightgown sweet as boughs of May, 70

  Beautiful she looks, like a tall garden-lily

  Pure from the night, and splendid for the day.

  Mother of the dews, dark eye-lash’d twilight,

  Low-lidded twilight, o’er the valley’s brim,

  Rounding on thy breast sings the dew-delighted skylark, 75

  Clear as though the dewdrops had their voice in him.

  Hidden where the rose-flush drinks the rayless planet,

  Fountain-full he pours the spraying fountain-showers.

  Let me hear her laughter, I would have her ever

  Cool as dew in twilight, the lark above the flowers. 80

  All the girls are out with their baskets for the primrose;

  Up lanes, woods through, they troop in joyful bands.

  My sweet leads: she knows not why, but now she loiters,

  Eyes the bent anemones, and hangs her hands.

  Such a look will tell that the violets are peeping, 85

  Coming the rose: and unaware a cry

  Springs in her bosom for odours and for colour,

  Covert and the nightingale; she knows not why.

  Kerchief’d head and chin she darts between her tulips,

  Streaming like a willow gray in arrowy rain: 90

  Some bend beaten cheek to gravel, and their angel

  She will be; she lifts them, and on she speeds again.

  Black the driving raincloud breasts the iron gateway:

  She is forth to cheer a neighbour lacking mirth.

  So when sky and grass met rolling dumb for thunder 95

  Saw I once a white dove, sole light of earth.

  Prim little scholars are the flowers of her garden,

  Train’d to stand in rows, and asking if they please.

  I might love them well but for loving more the wild ones:

  O my wild ones! they tell me more than these. 100

  You, my wild one, you tell of honied field-rose,

  Violet, blushing eglantine in life; and even as they,

  They by the wayside are earnest of your goodness,

  You are of life’s, on the banks that line the way.

  Peering at her chamber the white crowns the red rose, 105

  Jasmine winds the porch with stars two and three.

  Parted is the window; she sleeps; the starry jasmine

  Breathes a falling breath that carries thoughts of me.

  Sweeter unpossess’d, have I said of her my sweetest?

  Not while she sleeps: while she sleeps the jasmine breathes, 110

  Luring her to love; she sleeps; the starry jasmine

  Bears me to her pillow under white rose-wreaths.

  Yellow with birdfoot-trefoil are the grass-glades;

  Yellow with cinquefoil of the dew-gray leaf;

  Yellow with stonecrop; the moss-mounds are yellow; 115

  Blue-neck’d the wheat sways, yellowing to the sheaf.

  Green-yellow, bursts from the copse the laughing yaffle;

  Sharp as a sickle is the edge of shade and shine:

  Earth in her heart laughs looking at the heavens,

  Thinking of the harvest: I look and think of mine. 120

  This I may know: her dressing and undressing

  Such a change of light shows as when the skies in sport

  Shift from cloud to moonlight; or edging over thunder

  Slips a ray of sun; or sweeping into port

  White sails furl; or on the ocean borders 125

  White sails lean along the waves leaping green.

  Visions of her shower before me, but from eyesight

  Guarded she would be like the sun were she seen.

  Front door and back of the moss’d old farmhouse

  Open with the morn, and in a breezy link 130

  Freshly sparkles garden to stripe-shadow’d orchard,

  Green across a rill where on sand the minnows wink.

  Busy in the grass the early sun of summer

  Swarms, and the blackbird’s mellow fluting notes

  Call my darling up with round and roguish challenge: 135

  Quaintest, richest carol of all the singing throats!

  Cool was the woodside; cool as her white dairy

  Keeping sweet the cream-pan; and there the boys from school,

  Cricketing below, rush’d brown and red with sunshine;

  O the dark translucence of the deep-eyed cool! 140

  Spying from the farm, herself she fetch’d a pitcher

  Full of milk, and tilted for each in turn the beak.

  Then a little fellow, mouth up and on tiptoe,

  Said, ‘I will kiss you’: she laugh’d and lean’d her cheek.<
br />
  Doves of the fir-wood walling high our red roof 145

  Through the long noon coo, crooning through the coo.

  Loose droop the leaves, and down the sleepy roadway

  Sometimes pipes a chaffinch; loose droops the blue.

  Cows flap a slow tail knee-deep in the river,

  Breathless, given up to sun and gnat and fly. 150

  Nowhere is she seen; and if I see her nowhere,

  Lightning may come, straight rains and tiger sky.

  O the golden sheaf, the rustling treasure-armful!

  O the nutbrown tresses nodding interlaced!

  O the treasure-tresses one another over 155

  Nodding! O the girdle slack about the waist!

  Slain are the poppies that shot their random scarlet

  Quick amid the wheat-ears: wound about the waist,

  Gather’d, see these brides of Earth one blush of ripeness!

  O the nutbrown tresses nodding interlaced! 160

  Large and smoky red the sun’s cold disk drops,

  Clipp’d by naked hills, on violet shaded snow:

  Eastward large and still lights up a bower of moonrise,

  Whence at her leisure steps the moon aglow.

  Nightlong on black print-branches our beech-tree 165

  Gazes in this whiteness: nightlong could I.

  Here may life on death or death on life be painted.

  Let me clasp her soul to know she cannot die!

  Gossips count her faults; they scour a narrow chamber

  Where there is no window, read not heaven or her. 170

  ‘When she was a tiny,’ one agèd woman quavers,

  Plucks at my heart and leads me by the ear.

  Faults she had once as she learn’d to run and tumbled:

  Faults of feature some see, beauty not complete.

  Yet, good gossips, beauty that makes holy 175

  Earth and air, may have faults from head to feet.

  Hither she comes; she comes to me; she lingers,

  Deepens her brown eyebrows, while in new surprise

  High rise the lashes in wonder of a stranger;

  Yet am I the light and living of her eyes. 180

  Something friends have told her fills her heart to brimming,

  Nets her in her blushes, and wounds her, and tames. —

  Sure of her haven, O like a dove alighting,

  Arms up, she dropp’d: our souls were in our names.

  Soon will she lie like a white frost sunrise. 185

  Yellow oats and brown wheat, barley pale as rye,

  Long since your sheaves have yielded to the thresher,

  Felt the girdle loosen’d, seen the tresses fly.

  Soon will she lie like a blood-red sunset.

  Swift with the to-morrow, green-wing’d Spring! 190

  Sing from the South-west, bring her back the truants,

  Nightingale and swallow, song and dipping wing.

  Soft new beech-leaves, up to beamy April

  Spreading bough on bough a primrose mountain, you

  Lucid in the moon, raise lilies to the skyfields, 195

  Youngest green transfused in silver shining through:

  Fairer than the lily, than the wild white cherry:

  Fair as in image my seraph love appears

  Borne to me by dreams when dawn is at my eyelids:

  Fair as in the flesh she swims to me on tears. 200

  Could I find a place to be alone with heaven,

  I would speak my heart out: heaven is my need.

  Every woodland tree is flushing like the dogwood,

  Flashing like the whitebeam, swaying like the reed.

  Flushing like the dogwood crimson in October; 205

  Streaming like the flag-reed South-west blown;

  Flashing as in gusts the sudden-lighted whitebeam:

  All seem to know what is for heaven alone.

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  Alexander Smith

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  Barbara

  Alexander Smith (1829–1867)

  ON the Sabbath-day,

  Through the churchyard old and grey,

  Over the crisp and yellow leaves, I held my rustling way;

  And amid the words of mercy, falling on my soul like balms;

  ‘Mid the gorgeous storms of music — in the mellow organ-calms, 5

  ‘Mid the upward streaming prayers, and the rich and solemn psalms,

  I stood careless, Barbara.

  My heart was otherwhere

  While the organ shook the air,

  And the priest, with outspread hands, blessed the people with a prayer; 10

  But, when rising to go homeward, with a mild and saint-like shine

  Gleamed a face of airy beauty with its heavenly eyes on mine —

  Gleamed and vanished in a moment — O that face was surely thine

  Out of heaven, Barbara!

  O pallid, pallid face! 15

  O earnest eyes of grace!

  When last I saw thee, dearest, it was in another place.

  You came running forth to meet me with my love-gift on your wrist:

  The flutter of a long white dress, then all was lost in mist —

  A purple stain of agony was on the mouth I kissed, 20

  That wild morning, Barbara!

  I searched in my despair,

  Sunny noon and midnight air;

  I could not drive away the thought that you were lingering there.

  O many and many a winter night I sat when you were gone, 25

  My worn face buried in my hands, beside the fire alone.

  Within the dripping churchyard, the rain plashing on your stone,

  You were sleeping, Barbara.

  ‘Mong angels, do you think

  Of the precious golden link 30

  I clasped around your happy arm while sitting by yon brink?

  Or when that night of gliding dance, of laughter and guitars,

  Was emptied of its music, and we watched, through latticed bars,

  The silent midnight heaven creeping o’er us with its stars,

  Till the day broke, Barbara? 35

  In the years I’ve changed;

  Wild and far my heart hath ranged,

  And many sins and errors now have been on me avenged;

  But to you I have been faithful, whatsoever good I lacked:

  I loved you, and above my life still hangs that love intact — 40

  Your love the trembling rainbow, I the reckless cataract.

  Still I love you, Barbara!

  Yet, love, I am unblest;

  With many doubts oppressed,

  I wander like a desert wind, without a place of rest. 45

  Could I but win you for an hour from off that starry shore,

  The hunger of my soul were stilled, for Death hath told you more

  Than the melancholy world doth know; things deeper than all lore

  Will you teach me, Barbara?

  In vain, in vain, in vain, 50

  You will never come again.

  There droops upon the dreary hills a mournful fringe of rain;

  The gloaming closes slowly round, loud winds are in the tree,

  Round selfish shores for ever moans the hurt and wounded sea,

  There is no rest upon the earth, peace is with Death and thee, 55

  Barbara!

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  Charles Dickens

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  The Ivy Green

  Charles Dickens (1812–1870)

  OH, a dainty plant is the Ivy green,

  That creepeth o’er ruins old!

  Of right choice food are his meals I ween,

  In his cell so lone and cold.r />
  The wall must be crumbled, the stone decayed, 5

  To pleasure his dainty whim:

  And the mouldering dust that years have made

  Is a merry meal for him.

  Creeping where no life is seen,

  A rare old plant is the Ivy green. 10

  Fast he stealeth on, though he wears no wings,

  And a stanch old heart has he.

  How closely he twineth, how tight he clings

  To his friend the huge Oak Tree!

  And slyly he traileth along the ground, 15

  And his leaves he gently waves,

  As he joyously hugs and crawleth round

  The rich mould of dead men’s graves.

  Creeping where grim death has been,

  A rare old plant is the Ivy green. 20

  Whole ages have fled and their works decayed,

  And nations have scattered been;

  But the stout old Ivy shall never fade,

  From its hale and hearty green.

  The brave old plant in its lonely days, 25

  Shall fatten upon the past:

  For the stateliest building man can raise,

  Is the Ivy’s food at last.

  Creeping on, where time has been,

  A rare old plant is the Ivy green. 30

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  A Christmas Carol

  Charles Dickens (1812–1870)

  I care not for Spring; on his fickle wing

  Let the blossoms and buds be borne:

  He woos them amain with his treacherous rain,

  And he scatters them ere the morn.

  An inconstant elf, he knows not himself

  Nor his own changing mind an hour,

  He’ll smile in your face, and, with wry grimace,

  He’ll wither your youngest flower.

  Let the Summer sun to his bright home run,

  He shall never be sought by me;

  When he’s dimmed by a cloud I can laugh aloud,

 

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