Came the Great Popinjay
CAME the great Popinjay
Smelling his nosegay:
In cages like grots
The birds sang gavottes.
'Herodiade's flea
Was named sweet Amanda,
She danced like a lady
From here to Uganda.
Oh, what a dance was there!
Long-haired, the candle
Salome-like tossed her hair
To a dance tune by Handel.' . . .
Dance they still? Then came
Courtier Death,
Blew out the candle flame
With civet breath.
poem by Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Related quotes
Salome
Baby please
Baby please dont go
I got lies to feed
They want skin and seed
And dont make me crawl
Please
Baby dont bite your lip
Give you half what I got
If you untie the knot
Its a promise
Salome...salome
Shake it shake it shake it salome
Shake it shake it shake it salome
Salome...shake it shake it shake it salome
Baby please
Baby whats that tune
Well I heard it before
When I crawled from your door
And my blood turned blue
Please
Baby please slow down
Baby I feel sick
Dont make me stick to my promise
Salome...salome
Shake it shake it shake it salome
Shake it shake it shake it salome
Salome...shake it shake it shake it salome
Salome...shake it shake it shake it salome
Baby please
Baby dont say no
Wont you dance for me
Under the cherry tree
Wont you swing down low
Please
Baby please say yes
Baby dont go away
Youre spilling me
And your precious love
Salome...salome
Shake it shake it shake it salome
Shake it shake it shake it salome
Salome...shake it shake it shake it salome
Salome...shake it shake it shake it salome
Salome...shake it shake it shake it salome
song performed by U2
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Christabel
PART I
'Tis the middle of night by the castle clock
And the owls have awakened the crowing cock;
Tu-whit!- Tu-whoo!
And hark, again! the crowing cock,
How drowsily it crew.
Sir Leoline, the Baron rich,
Hath a toothless mastiff, which
From her kennel beneath the rock
Maketh answer to the clock,
Four for the quarters, and twelve for the hour;
Ever and aye, by shine and shower,
Sixteen short howls, not over loud;
Some say, she sees my lady's shroud.
Is the night chilly and dark?
The night is chilly, but not dark.
The thin gray cloud is spread on high,
It covers but not hides the sky.
The moon is behind, and at the full;
And yet she looks both small and dull.
The night is chill, the cloud is gray:
'T is a month before the month of May,
And the Spring comes slowly up this way.
The lovely lady, Christabel,
Whom her father loves so well,
What makes her in the wood so late,
A furlong from the castle gate?
She had dreams all yesternight
Of her own betrothed knight;
And she in the midnight wood will pray
For the weal of her lover that's far away.
She stole along, she nothing spoke,
The sighs she heaved were soft and low,
And naught was green upon the oak,
But moss and rarest mistletoe:
She kneels beneath the huge oak tree,
And in silence prayeth she.
The lady sprang up suddenly,
The lovely lady, Christabel!
It moaned as near, as near can be,
But what it is she cannot tell.-
On the other side it seems to be,
Of the huge, broad-breasted, old oak tree.
The night is chill; the forest bare;
Is it the wind that moaneth bleak?
There is not wind enough in the air
[...] Read more
poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Narrative And Dramatic The Wanderings Of Oisin
BOOK I
S. Patrick. You who are bent, and bald, and blind,
With a heavy heart and a wandering mind,
Have known three centuries, poets sing,
Of dalliance with a demon thing.
Oisin. Sad to remember, sick with years,
The swift innumerable spears,
The horsemen with their floating hair,
And bowls of barley, honey, and wine,
Those merry couples dancing in tune,
And the white body that lay by mine;
But the tale, though words be lighter than air.
Must live to be old like the wandering moon.
Caoilte, and Conan, and Finn were there,
When we followed a deer with our baying hounds.
With Bran, Sceolan, and Lomair,
And passing the Firbolgs' burial-motmds,
Came to the cairn-heaped grassy hill
Where passionate Maeve is stony-still;
And found On the dove-grey edge of the sea
A pearl-pale, high-born lady, who rode
On a horse with bridle of findrinny;
And like a sunset were her lips,
A stormy sunset on doomed ships;
A citron colour gloomed in her hair,
But down to her feet white vesture flowed,
And with the glimmering crimson glowed
Of many a figured embroidery;
And it was bound with a pearl-pale shell
That wavered like the summer streams,
As her soft bosom rose and fell.
S. Patrick. You are still wrecked among heathen dreams.
Oisin. 'Why do you wind no horn?' she said
'And every hero droop his head?
The hornless deer is not more sad
That many a peaceful moment had,
More sleek than any granary mouse,
In his own leafy forest house
Among the waving fields of fern:
The hunting of heroes should be glad.'
'O pleasant woman,' answered Finn,
'We think on Oscar's pencilled urn,
And on the heroes lying slain
[...] Read more
poem by William Butler Yeats
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Gettin In Tune
Im singing this note cause it fits in well
Im singing this note cause it fits in well
With the chords Im playing
With the chords Im playing
I cant pretend theres any meaning here
I cant pretend theres any meaning here
Or in the things Im saying
Or in the things Im saying
But Im in tune
But Im in tune
Right in tune
Right in tune
Im in tune
Im in tune
And Im gonna tune
And Im gonna tune
Right in on you
Right in on you
Right in on you
Right in on you
Right in on you
Right in on you
I get a little tired of having to say
I get a little tired of having to say
do you come here often?
Do you come here often?
But when I look in your eyes and see the harmonies
But when I look in your eyes and see the harmonies
And the heartaches soften
And the heartaches soften
Im getting in tune
Im getting in tune
Right in tune
Right in tune
Im in tune
Im in tune
And Im gonna tune
And Im gonna tune
Right in on you (right in on you)
Right in on you (right in on you)
Right in on you (right in on you)
Right in on you (right in on you)
Right in on you
Right in on you
Ive got it all here in my head
Ive got it all here in my head
Theres nothing more needs to be said
Theres nothing more needs to be said
Im just bangin on my old piano
Im just bangin on my old piano
[...] Read more
song performed by Who
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
The Ballad of the White Horse
DEDICATION
Of great limbs gone to chaos,
A great face turned to night--
Why bend above a shapeless shroud
Seeking in such archaic cloud
Sight of strong lords and light?
Where seven sunken Englands
Lie buried one by one,
Why should one idle spade, I wonder,
Shake up the dust of thanes like thunder
To smoke and choke the sun?
In cloud of clay so cast to heaven
What shape shall man discern?
These lords may light the mystery
Of mastery or victory,
And these ride high in history,
But these shall not return.
Gored on the Norman gonfalon
The Golden Dragon died:
We shall not wake with ballad strings
The good time of the smaller things,
We shall not see the holy kings
Ride down by Severn side.
Stiff, strange, and quaintly coloured
As the broidery of Bayeux
The England of that dawn remains,
And this of Alfred and the Danes
Seems like the tales a whole tribe feigns
Too English to be true.
Of a good king on an island
That ruled once on a time;
And as he walked by an apple tree
There came green devils out of the sea
With sea-plants trailing heavily
And tracks of opal slime.
Yet Alfred is no fairy tale;
His days as our days ran,
He also looked forth for an hour
On peopled plains and skies that lower,
From those few windows in the tower
That is the head of a man.
But who shall look from Alfred's hood
[...] Read more
poem by Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
The Court Of Love
With timerous hert and trembling hand of drede,
Of cunning naked, bare of eloquence,
Unto the flour of port in womanhede
I write, as he that non intelligence
Of metres hath, ne floures of sentence;
Sauf that me list my writing to convey,
In that I can to please her hygh nobley.
The blosmes fresshe of Tullius garden soote
Present thaim not, my mater for to borne:
Poemes of Virgil taken here no rote,
Ne crafte of Galfrid may not here sojorne:
Why nam I cunning? O well may I morne,
For lak of science that I can-not write
Unto the princes of my life a-right
No termes digne unto her excellence,
So is she sprong of noble stirpe and high:
A world of honour and of reverence
There is in her, this wil I testifie.
Calliope, thou sister wise and sly,
And thou, Minerva, guyde me with thy grace,
That langage rude my mater not deface.
Thy suger-dropes swete of Elicon
Distill in me, thou gentle Muse, I pray;
And thee, Melpomene, I calle anon,
Of ignoraunce the mist to chace away;
And give me grace so for to write and sey,
That she, my lady, of her worthinesse,
Accepte in gree this litel short tretesse,
That is entitled thus, 'The Court of Love.'
And ye that ben metriciens me excuse,
I you besech, for Venus sake above;
For what I mene in this ye need not muse:
And if so be my lady it refuse
For lak of ornat speche, I wold be wo,
That I presume to her to writen so.
But myn entent and all my besy cure
Is for to write this tretesse, as I can,
Unto my lady, stable, true, and sure,
Feithfull and kind, sith first that she began
Me to accept in service as her man:
[...] Read more
poem by Anonymous Olde English
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
The House Of Dust: Complete
I.
The sun goes down in a cold pale flare of light.
The trees grow dark: the shadows lean to the east:
And lights wink out through the windows, one by one.
A clamor of frosty sirens mourns at the night.
Pale slate-grey clouds whirl up from the sunken sun.
And the wandering one, the inquisitive dreamer of dreams,
The eternal asker of answers, stands in the street,
And lifts his palms for the first cold ghost of rain.
The purple lights leap down the hill before him.
The gorgeous night has begun again.
'I will ask them all, I will ask them all their dreams,
I will hold my light above them and seek their faces.
I will hear them whisper, invisible in their veins . . .'
The eternal asker of answers becomes as the darkness,
Or as a wind blown over a myriad forest,
Or as the numberless voices of long-drawn rains.
We hear him and take him among us, like a wind of music,
Like the ghost of a music we have somewhere heard;
We crowd through the streets in a dazzle of pallid lamplight,
We pour in a sinister wave, ascend a stair,
With laughter and cry, and word upon murmured word;
We flow, we descend, we turn . . . and the eternal dreamer
Moves among us like light, like evening air . . .
Good-night! Good-night! Good-night! We go our ways,
The rain runs over the pavement before our feet,
The cold rain falls, the rain sings.
We walk, we run, we ride. We turn our faces
To what the eternal evening brings.
Our hands are hot and raw with the stones we have laid,
We have built a tower of stone high into the sky,
We have built a city of towers.
Our hands are light, they are singing with emptiness.
Our souls are light; they have shaken a burden of hours . . .
What did we build it for? Was it all a dream? . . .
Ghostly above us in lamplight the towers gleam . . .
And after a while they will fall to dust and rain;
Or else we will tear them down with impatient hands;
And hew rock out of the earth, and build them again.
II.
[...] Read more
poem by Conrad Potter Aiken
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
The Soul Cages
The boy child is locked in the fishermans yard
Theres a bloodless moon where the ocean died
A shoal of nightstars hang fire in the nets
And the chaos of cages where the crayfish lie
Where is the fisherman, where is the goat?
Where is the keeper in his carrion coat?
Eclipse on the moon when the dark bird flies
Where is the child with his fathers eyes?
There are the soul cages these are the soul cages
Hes the king of the ninth world
The twisted son of the fog bells toll
In each and every lobster cage
A tortured human soul
These are the souls of broken factories
The subject slaves of the broken crown
The dead accounting of old guilty promises
These are the souls of the broken town
These are the soul cages these are the soul cages
These are the soul cages these are the soul cages
i have a wager the brave child spoke
The fisherman laughed, though disturbed at the joke
you will drink what I drink but you must equal me
And if the drink leaves me standing,
A soul shall go free
i have here a cask of most magical wine
A vintage that blessed every ship in the line
Its wrung from the blood of the sailors who died
Young white bodies adrift in the tide
and whats in it for me my pretty young thing?
Why should I whistle, when the caged bird sings?
If you lose a wager with the king of the sea
Youll spend the rest of forever in the cage with me
These are the soul cages these are the soul cages
These are the soul cages these are the soul cages
A body lies open in the fishermans yard
Like the side of a ship where the iceberg rips
One less soul in the soul cages
One last curse on the fishermans lips
These are the soul cages these are the soul cages
These are the soul cages these are the soul cages
Swim to the light swim to the light
He dreamed of the ship on the sea
It would carry his father and he
To a place they could never be found
To a place far away from this town
A newcastle ship without coals
They would sail to the island of souls
song performed by Sting
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
The Moat House
PART I
I
UNDER the shade of convent towers,
Where fast and vigil mark the hours,
From childhood into youth there grew
A maid as fresh as April dew,
And sweet as May's ideal flowers,
Brighter than dawn in wind-swept skies,
Like children's dreams most pure, unwise,
Yet with a slumbering soul-fire too,
That sometimes shone a moment through
Her wondrous unawakened eyes.
The nuns, who loved her coldly, meant
The twig should grow as it was bent;
That she, like them, should watch youth's bier,
Should watch her day-dreams disappear,
And go the loveless way they went.
The convent walls were high and grey;
How could Love hope to find a way
Into that citadel forlorn,
Where his dear name was put to scorn,
Or called a sinful thing to say?
Yet Love did come; what need to tell
Of flowers downcast, that sometimes fell
Across her feet when dreamily
She paced, with unused breviary,
Down paths made still with August's spell--
Of looks cast through the chapel grate,
Of letters helped by Love and Fate,
That to cold fingers did not come
But lay within a warmer home,
Upon her heart inviolate?
Somehow he loved her--she loved him:
Then filled her soul's cup to the brim,
And all her daily life grew bright
With such a flood of rosy light
As turned the altar candles dim.
[...] Read more
poem by Edith Nesbit
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Tamar
I
A night the half-moon was like a dancing-girl,
No, like a drunkard's last half-dollar
Shoved on the polished bar of the eastern hill-range,
Young Cauldwell rode his pony along the sea-cliff;
When she stopped, spurred; when she trembled, drove
The teeth of the little jagged wheels so deep
They tasted blood; the mare with four slim hooves
On a foot of ground pivoted like a top,
Jumped from the crumble of sod, went down, caught, slipped;
Then, the quick frenzy finished, stiffening herself
Slid with her drunken rider down the ledges,
Shot from sheer rock and broke
Her life out on the rounded tidal boulders.
The night you know accepted with no show of emotion the little
accident; grave Orion
Moved northwest from the naked shore, the moon moved to
meridian, the slow pulse of the ocean
Beat, the slow tide came in across the slippery stones; it drowned
the dead mare's muzzle and sluggishly
Felt for the rider; Cauldwell’s sleepy soul came back from the
blind course curious to know
What sea-cold fingers tapped the walls of its deserted ruin.
Pain, pain and faintness, crushing
Weights, and a vain desire to vomit, and soon again
die icy fingers, they had crept over the loose hand and lay in the
hair now. He rolled sidewise
Against mountains of weight and for another half-hour lay still.
With a gush of liquid noises
The wave covered him head and all, his body
Crawled without consciousness and like a creature with no bones,
a seaworm, lifted its face
Above the sea-wrack of a stone; then a white twilight grew about
the moon, and above
The ancient water, the everlasting repetition of the dawn. You
shipwrecked horseman
So many and still so many and now for you the last. But when it
grew daylight
He grew quite conscious; broken ends of bone ground on each
other among the working fibers
While by half-inches he was drawing himself out of the seawrack
up to sandy granite,
Out of the tide's path. Where the thin ledge tailed into flat cliff
he fell asleep. . . .
Far seaward
The daylight moon hung like a slip of cloud against the horizon.
The tide was ebbing
From the dead horse and the black belt of sea-growth. Cauldwell
seemed to have felt her crying beside him,
[...] Read more
poem by Robinson Jeffers
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Canto the First
I
I want a hero: an uncommon want,
When every year and month sends forth a new one,
Till, after cloying the gazettes with cant,
The age discovers he is not the true one;
Of such as these I should not care to vaunt,
I'll therefore take our ancient friend Don Juan—
We all have seen him, in the pantomime,
Sent to the devil somewhat ere his time.
II
Vernon, the butcher Cumberland, Wolfe, Hawke,
Prince Ferdinand, Granby, Burgoyne, Keppel, Howe,
Evil and good, have had their tithe of talk,
And fill'd their sign posts then, like Wellesley now;
Each in their turn like Banquo's monarchs stalk,
Followers of fame, "nine farrow" of that sow:
France, too, had Buonaparté and Dumourier
Recorded in the Moniteur and Courier.
III
Barnave, Brissot, Condorcet, Mirabeau,
Petion, Clootz, Danton, Marat, La Fayette,
Were French, and famous people, as we know:
And there were others, scarce forgotten yet,
Joubert, Hoche, Marceau, Lannes, Desaix, Moreau,
With many of the military set,
Exceedingly remarkable at times,
But not at all adapted to my rhymes.
IV
Nelson was once Britannia's god of war,
And still should be so, but the tide is turn'd;
There's no more to be said of Trafalgar,
'T is with our hero quietly inurn'd;
Because the army's grown more popular,
At which the naval people are concern'd;
Besides, the prince is all for the land-service,
Forgetting Duncan, Nelson, Howe, and Jervis.
V
Brave men were living before Agamemnon
And since, exceeding valorous and sage,
A good deal like him too, though quite the same none;
But then they shone not on the poet's page,
And so have been forgotten:—I condemn none,
But can't find any in the present age
Fit for my poem (that is, for my new one);
So, as I said, I'll take my friend Don Juan.
[...] Read more
poem by Byron from Don Juan (1824)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
The Cōforte of Louers
The prohemye.
The gentyll poetes/vnder cloudy fygures
Do touche a trouth/and clokeit subtylly
Harde is to cōstrue poetycall scryptures
They are so fayned/& made sētēcyously
For som do wryte of loue by fables pryuely
Some do endyte/vpon good moralyte
Of chyualrous actes/done in antyquyte
Whose fables and storyes ben pastymes pleasaunt
To lordes and ladyes/as is theyr lykynge
Dyuers to moralyte/ben oft attendaunt
And many delyte to rede of louynge
Youth loueth aduenture/pleasure and lykynge
Aege foloweth polycy/sadnesse and prudence
Thus they do dyffre/eche in experyence
I lytell or nought/experte in this scyence
Compyle suche bokes/to deuoyde ydlenes
Besechynge the reders/with all my delygence
Where as I offende/for to correct doubtles
Submyttynge me to theyr grete gentylnes
As none hystoryagraffe/nor poete laureate
But gladly wolde folowe/the makynge of Lydgate
Fyrst noble Gower/moralytees dyde endyte
And after hym Cauncers/grete bokes delectable
Lyke a good phylozophre/meruaylously dyde wryte
After them Lydgate/the monke commendable
Made many wonderfull bokes moche profytable
But syth the are deed/& theyr bodyes layde in chest
I pray to god to gyue theyr soules good rest
Finis prohemii.
Whan fayre was phebus/w&supere; his bemes bryght
Amyddes of gemyny/aloft the fyrmament
Without blacke cloudes/castynge his pured lyght
With sorowe opprest/and grete incombrement
Remembrynge well/my lady excellent
Saynge o fortune helpe me to preuayle
For thou knowest all my paynfull trauayle
I went than musynge/in a medowe grene
Myselfe alone/amonge the floures in dede
With god aboue/the futertens is sene
To god I sayd/thou mayst my mater spede
And me rewarde/accordynge to my mede
Thou knowest the trouthe/I am to the true
Whan that thou lyst/thou mayst them all subdue
Who dyde preserue the yonge edyppus
Whiche sholde haue be slayne by calculacyon
To deuoyde grete thynges/the story sheweth vs
[...] Read more
poem by Stephen Hawes
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
The Lang Coortin'
THE ladye she stood at her lattice high,
Wi' her doggie at her feet;
Thorough the lattice she can spy
The passers in the street,
"There's one that standeth at the door,
And tirleth at the pin:
Now speak and say, my popinjay,
If I sall let him in."
Then up and spake the popinjay
That flew abune her head:
"Gae let him in that tirls the pin:
He cometh thee to wed."
O when he cam' the parlour in,
A woeful man was he!
"And dinna ye ken your lover agen,
Sae well that loveth thee?"
"And how wad I ken ye loved me, Sir,
That have been sae lang away?
And how wad I ken ye loved me, Sir?
Ye never telled me sae."
Said - "Ladye dear," and the salt, salt tear
Cam' rinnin' doon his cheek,
"I have sent the tokens of my love
This many and many a week.
"O didna ye get the rings, Ladye,
The rings o' the gowd sae fine?
I wot that I have sent to thee
Four score, four score and nine."
"They cam' to me," said that fair ladye.
"Wow, they were flimsie things!"
Said - "that chain o' gowd, my doggie to howd,
It is made o' thae self-same rings."
"And didna ye get the locks, the locks,
The locks o' my ain black hair,
Whilk I sent by post, whilk I sent by box,
Whilk I sent by the carrier?"
"They cam' to me," said that fair ladye;
"And I prithee send nae mair!"
Said - "that cushion sae red, for my doggie's head,
It is stuffed wi' thae locks o' hair."
[...] Read more
poem by Lewis Carroll from Phantasmagoria and Other Poems
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
The Lang Coortin
The ladye she stood at her lattice high,
Wi' her doggie at her feet;
Thorough the lattice she can spy
The passers in the street,
'There's one that standeth at the door,
And tirleth at the pin:
Now speak and say, my popinjay,
If I sall let him in.'
Then up and spake the popinjay
That flew abune her head:
'Gae let him in that tirls the pin:
He cometh thee to wed.'
O when he cam' the parlour in,
A woeful man was he!
'And dinna ye ken your lover agen,
Sae well that loveth thee?'
'And how wad I ken ye loved me, Sir,
That have been sae lang away?
And how wad I ken ye loved me, Sir?
Ye never telled me sae.'
Said - 'Ladye dear,' and the salt, salt tear
Cam' rinnin' doon his cheek,
'I have sent the tokens of my love
This many and many a week.
'O didna ye get the rings, Ladye,
The rings o' the gowd sae fine?
I wot that I have sent to thee
Four score, four score and nine.'
'They cam' to me,' said that fair ladye.
'Wow, they were flimsie things!'
Said - 'that chain o' gowd, my doggie to howd,
It is made o' thae self-same rings.'
'And didna ye get the locks, the locks,
The locks o' my ain black hair,
Whilk I sent by post, whilk I sent by box,
Whilk I sent by the carrier?'
'They cam' to me,' said that fair ladye;
'And I prithee send nae mair!'
Said - 'that cushion sae red, for my doggie's head,
It is stuffed wi' thae locks o' hair.'
[...] Read more
poem by Lewis Carroll
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Release From Locked Up Cages Aged
Release from locked up cages,
Aged.
Release from locked up cages,
Aged.
Release from locked up cages...
Aged.
Release from locked up cages.
Come everyone...
Release from locked up cages.
Come under the Sun...
Release from locked up cages.
Come feel the breezes.
With fresh air to keep!
And make it yours,
In your mind.
Get more than you need.
And...
Release from locked up cages.
Shake off the rust.
Release from locked up cages.
What's there to lust?
Or trust.
Worthy of your cussing.
Come everyone...
Release from locked up cages.
Come under the Sun...
Release from locked up cages.
Come feel the breezes.
With fresh air to keep!
And make it yours,
In your mind.
Get more than you need.
And...
Release from locked up cages,
Aged.
Release from locked up cages,
Aged.
Release from locked up cages...
Aged.
Release!
Be freed,
From locked up cages aged.
poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Give Your Heart To The Hawks
1 he apples hung until a wind at the equinox,
That heaped the beach with black weed, filled the dry grass
Under the old trees with rosy fruit.
In the morning Fayne Fraser gathered the sound ones into a
basket,
The bruised ones into a pan. One place they lay so thickly
She knelt to reach them.
Her husband's brother passing
Along the broken fence of the stubble-field,
His quick brown eyes took in one moving glance
A little gopher-snake at his feet flowing through the stubble
To gain the fence, and Fayne crouched after apples
With her mop of red hair like a glowing coal
Against the shadow in the garden. The small shapely reptile
Flowed into a thicket of dead thistle-stalks
Around a fence-post, but its tail was not hidden.
The young man drew it all out, and as the coil
Whipped over his wrist, smiled at it; he stepped carefully
Across the sag of the wire. When Fayne looked up
His hand was hidden; she looked over her shoulder
And twitched her sunburnt lips from small white teeth
To answer the spark of malice in his eyes, but turned
To the apples, intent again. Michael looked down
At her white neck, rarely touched by the sun,
But now the cinnabar-colored hair fell off from it;
And her shoulders in the light-blue shirt, and long legs like a boy's
Bare-ankled in blue-jean trousers, the country wear;
He stooped quietly and slipped the small cool snake
Up the blue-denim leg. Fayne screamed and writhed,
Clutching her thigh. 'Michael, you beast.' She stood up
And stroked her leg, with little sharp cries, the slender invader
Fell down her ankle.
Fayne snatched for it and missed;
Michael stood by rejoicing, his rather small
Finely cut features in a dance of delight;
Fayne with one sweep flung at his face
All the bruised and half-spoiled apples in the pan,
[...] Read more
poem by Robinson Jeffers
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Fourth Book
THEY met still sooner. 'Twas a year from thence
When Lucy Gresham, the sick semptress girl,
Who sewed by Marian's chair so still and quick,
And leant her head upon the back to cough
More freely when, the mistress turning round,
The others took occasion to laugh out,–
Gave up a last. Among the workers, spoke
A bold girl with black eyebrows and red lips,–
'You know the news? Who's dying, do you think?
Our Lucy Gresham. I expected it
As little as Nell Hart's wedding. Blush not, Nell,
Thy curls be red enough without thy cheeks;
And, some day, there'll be found a man to dote
On red curls.–Lucy Gresham swooned last night,
Dropped sudden in the street while going home;
And now the baker says, who took her up
And laid her by her grandmother in bed,
He'll give her a week to die in. Pass the silk.
Let's hope he gave her a loaf too, within reach,
For otherwise they'll starve before they die,
That funny pair of bedfellows! Miss Bell,
I'll thank you for the scissors. The old crone
Is paralytic–that's the reason why
Our Lucy's thread went faster than her breath,
Which went too quick, we all know. Marian Erle!
Why, Marian Erle, you're not the fool to cry?
Your tears spoil Lady Waldemar's new dress,
You piece of pity!'
Marian rose up straight,
And, breaking through the talk and through the work,
Went outward, in the face of their surprise,
To Lucy's home, to nurse her back to life
Or down to death. She knew by such an act,
All place and grace were forfeit in the house,
Whose mistress would supply the missing hand
With necessary, not inhuman haste,
And take no blame. But pity, too, had dues:
She could not leave a solitary soul
To founder in the dark, while she sate still
And lavished stitches on a lady's hem
As if no other work were paramount.
'Why, God,' thought Marian, 'has a missing hand
This moment; Lucy wants a drink, perhaps.
Let others miss me! never miss me, God!'
So Marian sat by Lucy's bed, content
With duty, and was strong, for recompense,
To hold the lamp of human love arm-high
To catch the death-strained eyes and comfort them,
Until the angels, on the luminous side
[...] Read more
poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning from Aurora Leigh (1856)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Fifth Book
AURORA LEIGH, be humble. Shall I hope
To speak my poems in mysterious tune
With man and nature,–with the lava-lymph
That trickles from successive galaxies
Still drop by drop adown the finger of God,
In still new worlds?–with summer-days in this,
That scarce dare breathe, they are so beautiful?–
With spring's delicious trouble in the ground
Tormented by the quickened blood of roots.
And softly pricked by golden crocus-sheaves
In token of the harvest-time of flowers?–
With winters and with autumns,–and beyond,
With the human heart's large seasons,–when it hopes
And fears, joys, grieves, and loves?–with all that strain
Of sexual passion, which devours the flesh
In a sacrament of souls? with mother's breasts,
Which, round the new made creatures hanging there,
Throb luminous and harmonious like pure spheres?–
With multitudinous life, and finally
With the great out-goings of ecstatic souls,
Who, in a rush of too long prisoned flame,
Their radiant faces upward, burn away
This dark of the body, issuing on a world
Beyond our mortal?–can I speak my verse
So plainly in tune to these things and the rest,
That men shall feel it catch them on the quick,
As having the same warrant over them
To hold and move them, if they will or no,
Alike imperious as the primal rhythm
Of that theurgic nature? I must fail,
Who fail at the beginning to hold and move
One man,–and he my cousin, and he my friend,
And he born tender, made intelligent,
Inclined to ponder the precipitous sides
Of difficult questions; yet, obtuse to me,–
Of me, incurious! likes me very well,
And wishes me a paradise of good,
Good looks, good means, and good digestion!–ay,
But otherwise evades me, puts me off
With kindness, with a tolerant gentleness,–
Too light a book for a grave man's reading! Go,
Aurora Leigh: be humble.
There it is;
We women are too apt to look to one,
Which proves a certain impotence in art.
We strain our natures at doing something great,
Far less because it's something great to do,
Than, haply, that we, so, commend ourselves
As being not small, and more appreciable
To some one friend. We must have mediators
[...] Read more
poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning from Aurora Leigh (1856)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Salome
Salome, the unique daughter of Philip of Rome and Herodias,
Was the stepdaughter of the ruler of Galilee, Herod Antipas,
She wanted to find for her mother's problems a real solution
Therefore, she caused to St. John the Baptist a painful execution.
This saint had condemned the marriage of Herod Antipas
With the divorced wife of his half brother Philip, Herodias.
Herod imprisoned John, but feared this great prophet to kill,
Because to become King Herod the Great he had a goodwill.
Herodias was not mollified by great John's incarceration
And wanted to induce Antipas a great mental state of elation.
She pressed beautiful Salome to seduce him with her dance,
Thinking that her smart daughter his emotions could enhance.
Salome made him to promise to give her everything she wanted.
Dancing the 'Dance of the Seven Veils', her beautiful figure she flaunted.
Salome, thus, asked for the head of John the Baptist on a platter,
At her mother's behest, for whom nothing else could ever matter.
Herod did her bidding and that platter, to her mother, Salome brought.
Her mother won, this way, the John's head for saving her free thought.
Salome became a seductress of a stepfather and a murderer of a saint,
Herodias became a symbol of women, who can live without any constraint.
The Dance of the Seven Veils expresses the myth of the goddess Ishtar,
Also, the myth of the god Tammuz of Assyrian and Babylonian lore.
In this myth, Ishtar went in the underworld to visit Ereshkigal, her sister.
Ishtar passed through the seven gates and her power could glister.
At each gate, Ishtar had to shed an article of clothing, finally being nude.
Unleashing sixty diseases against her, Ereshkigal proved to be so rude.
Ishtar was imprisoned and all the sexual activity on earth ceased.
Papsukkal reported the situation to Ea, the king of the gods, at least.
Ea created the eunuch called Asu-shu-namir and sent him to Ereshkigal
To ask for the bag containing the waters of life, after Ishtar's last squeal.
She gave him this water and Asu-shu-namir sprinkled Ishtar, reviving her.
She came back and sent Tammuz to Ereshkigal, avoiding this story to recur.
Ishtar was associated with sexuality, her cult involved sacred prostitution,
Her city Uruk was the 'town of the sacred courtesans', place of persecution.
Although for the god Ishtar, love was fatal, she treated her passing lovers cruelly,
And the unhappy wretches, for the favors heaped on them, paid dearly.
Philip the Tetrarch was the son of Cleopatra of Jerusalem and Herod the Great.
He was the brother of Herod Antipas and Herod Archelaus, he had a good fate.
He inherited north father's kingdom and by Luke (3: 1) in the Bible he’s mentioned.
[...] Read more
poem by Marieta Maglas
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
A Girl Named Paige
A girl named Paige
With eyes and a face so bright
A girl named Paige
Came into my dreary life
My life, so dark
So full of strife
A girl named Paige
About her I was told
To keep me away until I was old
A girl named Paige
A lesson she did teach
For me to keep sight of my reach
A girl named Paige
Broke my heart
As my world fell apart
A girl named Paige
Perfectly took the part
While adding another fool to her cart
A girl named Paige
Shook my whole world
My eyes were on no other girl
A girl named Paige
Fooled me into loving her
While she secretly lusted another, and another
A girl named Paige
Caused me endless pain
Of this, I'm not ashamed
A girl named Paige
Made me go insane
This girl is love's bane
A girl named Paige
Caused me to do so much
To love her such
A girl named Paige
Made my heart bleed
The woe of pain it did heed
A girl named Paige
I'll never be the same
In that group, she came
A girl named Paige
I loved a whole whole lot
A feeling she returned, did not
A girl named Paige
[...] Read more
poem by Joseph Shofner
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!