Seagulls Screamed in the Sky Above (Do Not Stand Under This Poem)
The seagulls screamed in the sky above
seagulls screamed in the sky above The
screamed in the sky above The seagulls
in the sky above The seagulls screamed
the sky above The seagulls screamed in
sky above The seagulls screamed in the
above The seagulls screamed in the sky
Thanks, I wondered what that racket was.
The seagulls screamed in the sky above
The seagulls screamed in the sky
The seagulls screamed in the
The seagulls screamed in
The seagulls screamed
The seagulls
The
Thanks, I wondered what that racket was.
above
sky above
the sky above
in the sky above
screamed in the sky above
seagulls screamed in the sky above
The seagulls screamed in the sky above
Thanks, I wondered what that racket was.
I wondered what that racket was. Thanks,
wondered what that racket was. Thanks, I
what that racket was. Thanks, I wondered
that racket was. Thanks, I wondered what
racket was. Thanks, I wondered what that
was. Thanks, I wondered what that racket
Thanks, I wondered what that racket was.
The seagulls screamed in the sky above
poem by Sean Joyce
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Related quotes
The seagulls screamed in the sky above (Do not stand under this poem)
The seagulls screamed in the sky above
seagulls screamed in the sky above The
screamed in the sky above The seagulls
in the sky above The seagulls screamed
the sky above The seagulls screamed in
sky above The seagulls screamed in the
above The seagulls screamed in the sky
Thanks, I wondered what that racket was.
The seagulls screamed in the sky above
The seagulls screamed in the sky
The seagulls screamed in the
The seagulls screamed in
The seagulls screamed
The seagulls
The
Thanks, I wondered what that racket was.
above
sky above
the sky above
in the sky above
screamed in the sky above
seagulls screamed in the sky above
The seagulls screamed in the sky above
Thanks, I wondered what that racket was.
I wondered what that racket was. Thanks,
wondered what that racket was. Thanks, I
what that racket was. Thanks, I wondered
that racket was. Thanks, I wondered what
racket was. Thanks, I wondered what that
was. Thanks, I wondered what that racket
Thanks, I wondered what that racket was.
The seagulls screamed in the sky above
poem by Sean Joyce
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Ho For California!
Rouse ye, Yankees, from your dreaming!
See that vessel, strong and bold,
On her banner proudly streaming,
California for gold!
See a crowd around her gather,
Eager all to push from land!
They will have all sorts o' weather
Ere they reach the golden strand.
Rouse to action,
Fag and faction;
Ho, for mines of wealth untold!
Rally! Rally!
All for Cali-
Fornia in search of gold!
Away, amid the rush and racket,
Ho for the California packet!
Wake ye! O'er the surging ocean,
Loud above each coral cave,
Comes a sound of wild commotion
From the lands beyond the wave.
Riches, riches, greater--rarer,
Than Golconda's far-famed mines;
Ho for California's shores!
Where the gold so brightly shines.
O'er the ocean
All's commotion;
Ho for mines of wealth untold!
Countless treasure
Waits on pleasure;
Ho for California's gold!
Let us go the rush and racket,
On the Californian packet.
Hear the echo wildly ringing
Through our country far and wide!
Thousands leaving home and springing
Into the resistless tide.
Now our nation's roused from sleeping,
All alert and wide awake.
O, there's no such thing as keeping
Folks asleep when gold's the stake!
Old Oregon
We'll look not on;
Ho, for mines of wealth untold!
We'll take our way,
Without delay,
In search of gold--of glittering gold!
Here we go, amid the racket,
On the Californian packet!
[...] Read more
poem by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
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Lines on Mr. Hodgson Written on Board the Lisbon Packet
Huzza! Hodgson, we are going,
Our embargo's off at last;
Favourable breezes blowing
Bend the canvass o'er the mast.
From aloft the signal's streaming,
Hark! the farewell gun is fir'd;
Women screeching, tars blaspheming,
Tell us that our time's expir'd.
Here's a rascal
Come to task all,
Prying from the custom-house;
Trunks unpacking
Cases cracking,
Not a corner for a mouse
'Scapes unsearch'd amid the racket,
Ere we sail on board the Packet.
Now our boatmen quit their mooring,
And all hands must ply the oar;
Baggage from the quay is lowering,
We're impatient--push from shore.
"Have a care! that case holds liquor--
Stop the boat--I'm sick--oh Lord!"
"Sick, ma'am, damme, you'll be sicker,
Ere you've been an hour on board."
Thus are screaming
Men and women,
Gemmen, ladies, servants, Jacks;
Here entangling,
All are wrangling,
Stuck together close as wax.--
Such the genial noise and racket,
Ere we reach the Lisbon Packet.
Now we've reach'd her, lo! the captain,
Gallant Kidd, commands the crew;
Passengers their berths are clapt in,
Some to grumble, some to spew.
"Hey day! call you that a cabin?
Why 't is hardly three feet square;
Not enough to stow Queen Mab in--
Who the deuce can harbour there?"
"Who, sir? plenty--
Nobles twenty
Did at once my vessel fill."
"Did they? Jesus,
How you squeeze us!
Would to God they did so still:
Then I'd 'scape the heat and racket
Of the good ship, Lisbon Packet."
[...] Read more
Before Action
We always had to do our work at night.
I wondered why we had to be so sly.
I wondered why we couldn't have our fight
Under the open sky.
I wondered why I always felt so cold.
I wondered why the orders seemed so slow,
So slow to come, so whisperingly told,
So whisperingly low.
I wondered if my packing-straps were tight,
And wondered why I wondered……Sound
went wild………
and order came…… I ran into the night,
wondering why I smiled.
poem by Leon Gellert
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Finding Oneself......... [EXTREMELY LONG; Growing Up; Relationships; Humor
Part One
When Bri was 13 and in grade 8,
he noticed classmates beginning to date.
At school (other) boys got their way with the girls with a kiss.
But Bri didn't have the urge; he thought 'what's this? '
He decided he should give it a try,
but each time he tried, the girl would cry.
Not only would she cry; she would run away and hide.
Bri felt between himself and the other boys a great divide.
Back home after school he'd seclude himself in his room and cry.
Through his mind was repeated the question 'why? ' 'Why DO they cry? Why? '
Bri was a straight A+ student with no flubs.
He played football but (except for 'Cooking') he joined not clubs.
After a few months Bri gave up (on girls) . He had NO close friends to set him right;
his parents should have known the problem, but they weren't bright.
In high school he took AP courses, and took 3 courses at a nearby college.
He ignored girls and sports and concentrated on gaining knowledge.
He got a full scholarship to Harvard, but his advisor looked at him funny.
By age 26 he had his PhD in psychology and started making money.
But he still asked 'why? '
It still bothered him and at times he'd cry.
Then waking up one day from a dream, Bri suddenly asked himself 'were they shy?
And if so, why with ME and not the other boys? Why DID they cry? '
The answer could be that his brain and looks were superior.
Were those girls only uncomfortable with boys that were inferior (to him) ?
If that really was the answer, he could now save face,
and could pursue women with HIS high level of brains, looks, and grace.
(But WAS it the answer? He was still not SURE why they did cry.)
For now he would work hard, avoid girls, and try to keep his eyes dry.
In two more years would be a second high school reunion. Thoughts of attending gave Bri a fright. (He'd skipped the first,5 year, reunion.)
But by going this time he might find out if his answer to his 'why? ' was right.
PART TWO
For two more years he waited anxiously for invitation he was dreading.
At times he'd awaken at night from a 'reunion dream', profusely sweating.
Finally it arrived in mail; it would be in June, before it got TOO warm.
He kept his calendar free for the whole month, doubting, at work, he could perform.
He got out the yearbooks his Mom had bought, and he studied each girl's name.
Would he have the nerve to ask them 'why? ' ….OR would he be too scared and lame?
He lived on sedatives for a week. He picked his favorite tie, and a light grey business suit.
Would he find out if the girls had just been shy, or would they give him 'the boot'?
[...] Read more
poem by Bri Edwards
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The Congo: A Study of the Negro Race
I. THEIR BASIC SAVAGERY
Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room,
Barrel-house kings, with feet unstable,
Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table,
A deep rolling bass.
Pounded on the table,
Beat an empty barrel with the handle of a broom,
Hard as they were able,
Boom, boom, BOOM,
With a silk umbrella and the handle of a broom,
Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM.
THEN I had religion, THEN I had a vision.
I could not turn from their revel in derision.
THEN I SAW THE CONGO, CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK,
More deliberate. Solemnly chanted.
CUTTING THROUGH THE FOREST WITH A GOLDEN TRACK.
Then along that riverbank
A thousand miles
Tattooed cannibals danced in files;
Then I heard the boom of the blood-lust song
And a thigh-bone beating on a tin-pan gong.
A rapidly piling climax of speed & racket.
And "BLOOD" screamed the whistles and the fifes of the warriors,
"BLOOD" screamed the skull-faced, lean witch-doctors,
"Whirl ye the deadly voo-doo rattle,
Harry the uplands,
Steal all the cattle,
Rattle-rattle, rattle-rattle,
Bing.
Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM,"
A roaring, epic, rag-time tune
With a philosophic pause.
From the mouth of the Congo
To the Mountains of the Moon.
Death is an Elephant,
Torch-eyed and horrible,
Shrilly and with a heavily accented metre.
Foam-flanked and terrible.
BOOM, steal the pygmies,
BOOM, kill the Arabs,
BOOM, kill the white men,
HOO, HOO, HOO.
Listen to the yell of Leopold's ghost
Like the wind in the chimney.
Burning in Hell for his hand-maimed host.
Hear how the demons chuckle and yell
Cutting his hands off, down in Hell.
Listen to the creepy proclamation,
Blown through the lairs of the forest-nation,
[...] Read more
poem by Vachel Lindsay
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A Last Confession
Our Lombard country-girls along the coast
Wear daggers in their garters: for they know
That they might hate another girl to death
Or meet a German lover. Such a knife
I bought her, with a hilt of horn and pearl.
Father, you cannot know of all my thoughts
That day in going to meet her,—that last day
For the last time, she said;—of all the love
And all the hopeless hope that she might change
And go back with me. Ah! and everywhere,
At places we both knew along the road,
Some fresh shape of herself as once she was
Grew present at my side; until it seemed—
So close they gathered round me—they would all
Be with me when I reached the spot at last,
To plead my cause with her against herself
So changed. O Father, if you knew all this
You cannot know, then you would know too, Father,
And only then, if God can pardon me.
What can be told I'll tell, if you will hear.
I passed a village-fair upon my road,
And thought, being empty-handed, I would take
Some little present: such might prove, I said,
Either a pledge between us, or (God help me!)
A parting gift. And there it was I bought
The knife I spoke of, such as women wear.
That day, some three hours afterwards, I found
For certain, it must be a parting gift.
And, standing silent now at last, I looked
Into her scornful face; and heard the sea
Still trying hard to din into my ears
Some speech it knew which still might change her heart,
If only it could make me understand.
One moment thus. Another, and her face
Seemed further off than the last line of sea,
So that I thought, if now she were to speak
I could not hear her. Then again I knew
All, as we stood together on the sand
At Iglio, in the first thin shade o' the hills.
“Take it,” I said, and held it out to her,
While the hilt glanced within my trembling hold;
“Take it and keep it for my sake,” I said.
Her neck unbent not, neither did her eyes
Move, nor her foot left beating of the sand;
Only she put it by from her and laughed.
Father, you hear my speech and not her laugh;
But God heard that. Will God remember all?
It was another laugh than the sweet sound
Which rose from her sweet childish heart, that day
Eleven years before, when first I found her
[...] Read more
poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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Bird Flew By
Bird flew by
And wondered, wondered why
She was white
And ought to stay up in the sky
From the air she could wonder
For the reason
Whats the point of a year
Or a season
Your life flies away
As the night turns to day
If you start once to think
Your hair will soon turn grey
But one would like to wonder
For the reason
Whats the point of a year
Or a season
The list of fallen stars
And crumbled, broken hearts
Comes from a need
To play so many parts
But one would like to wonder
For the reason
Whats the point of a year
Or a season
The wind and the rain
Shook hands again
Untouched by the world
They managed to keep sane
They were able to wonder
For the reason
Whats the point of a year
Or a season
Bird flew by
And wondered, wondered why
She was white
And ought to stay up in the sky
From the air she could wonder
For the reason
Whats the point of a year
Or a season
song performed by Nick Drake
Added by Lucian Velea
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Quiet Kind
I've never really written a poem
no reason to
But today feels like a day for words
the quiet kind
I wondered if i should tell
you know, about me
what i think
i thought about the
snow, and the night when
we were forever
i wondered if you knew
if you saw right through me
if i was a mystery
or if you never even looked
i thought about what comes next
i wondered if you wondered
if there was something
more
or if we just turned to
dust
and nothing is left
but you
but me
i thought about you today.
poem by Lady Hope
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I Didnt Ask & She Didnt Say
Fogged in in dallas on my way to l.a.
Staring up at the screen , all flights were delayed
When a voice behinde me asked
Stranger how have you been?
I was caught off guard when I saw her face
Stumbled my way through an awkward embrace
Yet somehow I managed to say good to see you again
We caught up on old friends
Caught up on old times
But all through the small talk, it kept burning through my mind
Does she think about the nights we spent on crystal lake
Wrapped up in a blaket til the break of day
So many times I wondered does she think of me that way
I didnt ask and she didnt say
Trading stories and pictures of kids
Things were gonna do and things never did
til we were stranded in that moment not sure what to say
Then she broke the silence with her little shy smile
And she brought up the weather but all the while
I wondered if she thinks about jackson hole
Nights beside the fire and angels in the snow
So many times Ive wondered does she think of me that way
I didnt ask and she didnt say
We said our goodbyes, swore wed stay in touch
Then we went our separate ways knowing, knowing no one ever does
But I couldnt help but wonder as I walked
If thinks had turned out different where would we be today
So many times ive wondered does she think of me that way
I didnt ask and she didnt say
No, I didnt ask and she didnt say
song performed by Tim McGraw
Added by Lucian Velea
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I Am Visited By An Editor And A Poet
I had just won $115 from the headshakers and
was naked upon my bed
listening to an opera by one of the Italians
and had just gotten rid of a very loose lady
when there was a knock upon the wood,
and since the cops had just raided a month or so ago,
I screamed out rather on edge—
who the hell is it? what you want, man?
I’m your publisher! somebody screamed back,
and I hollered, I don’t have a publisher,
try the place next door, and he screamed back,
you’re Charles Bukowski, aren’t you? and I got up and
peeked through the iron grill to make sure it wasn’t a cop,
and I placed a robe upon my nakedness,
kicked a beercan out of the way and bade them enter,
an editor and a poet.
only one would drink a beer (the editor)
so I drank two for the poet and one for myself
and they sat there sweating and watching me
and I sat there trying to explain
that I wasn’t really a poet in the ordinary sense,
I told them about the stockyards and the slaughterhouse
and the racetracks and the conditions of some of our jails,
and the editor suddenly pulled five magazines out of a portfolio
and tossed them in between the beercans
and we talked about Flowers of Evil, Rimbaud, Villon,
and what some of the modern poets looked like:
J.B. May and Wolf the Hedley are very immaculate, clean fingernails, etc.;
I apologized for the beercans, my beard, and everything on the floor
and pretty soon everybody was yawning
and the editor suddenly stood up and I said,
are you leaving?
and then the editor and the poet were walking out the door,
and then I thought well hell they might not have liked
what they saw
but I’m not selling beercans and Italian opera and
torn stockings under the bed and dirty fingernails,
I’m selling rhyme and life and line,
and I walked over and cracked a new can of beer
and I looked at the five magazines with my name on the cover
and wondered what it meant,
wondered if we are writing poetry or all huddling in
one big tent
clasping assholes.
poem by Charles Bukowski
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Everybodys Selling Something
More 4/4s in the neighborhood
Banging on the same guitar
Dreaming of living in hollywood
Puffing on a big cigar
Prima ballerina in a magazine
Call her on the telephone
Tell her that youre sending up a limousine
She say: I dont know...
I know where to go!
Now 4/4s in a different mood
Thinks hes gonna change the world
Making all the money that some others should
Guess its cause we dont deserve
Meet a lot of people in a magazine
Tell you where not to go
Tell you that Im living out a fantasy
You say: you dont know
They play me on the radio
You gotta walk before you crawl
Remember everybodys selling something
You gotta talk before you know
Remember everybodys selling something
Theres like a racket on the ball
Remember everybody wants attention
You gotta rock before you roll
Remember everybodys selling something
Sell me something
Sell me something
Sell me something
Now!
Now 4/4s into mother earth
Hurry up and wait t.v.
Funny how your lifell take a different turn
And how you get to dance for free
See a lot of freedom in your magazine?
Does it tell you what you want to know?
Tell you once and maybe twice and maybe three times
Thats all right!
Were coming out in stereo!!!
You gotta walk before you crawl
Remember everybodys selling something
You gotta talk before you know
Remember everybodys selling something
Theres like a racket on the ball
Remember everybody wants attention
You gotta rock before you roll
Remember everybodys selling something
Sell me something
Sell me something
Sell me something
[...] Read more
song performed by Men Without Hats
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When I was a freelancer, I thought this journalism thing was a racket, and now that I'm where I am now, I know it's a racket.
quote by Tabitha Soren
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no more, no less...by Talile Ali
I have been a failure all of my life.
I can't get a job.
My wife despises and fears me.
My children barely speak to me.
My mom hates me.
My brothers tolerate me.
My sisters talk about me.
My friends..........do I rally have any? .
Failure? Yes, failure!
It seems that way to me
No one to confide in or talk to me
Is this to be my end in this tragedy?
I've lied to get jobs,
Stretched out my med,
Medication racket.
Stopped my education,
Education racket.
Where do i go from here?
I do not know.
But, i do go on.
Until i am in my grave
I guess.
No more
No less
poem by Talile Ali
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At half-mast
You didn't know Billy, did you? Well, Bill was one of the boys,
The greatest fellow you ever seen to racket an' raise a noise,--
An' sing! say, you never heard singing 'nless you heard Billy sing.
I used to say to him, "Billy, that voice that you've got there'd bring
A mighty sight more bank-notes to tuck away in your vest,
If only you'd go on the concert stage instead of a-ranchin' West."
An' Billy he'd jist go laughin', and say as I didn't know
A robin's whistle in springtime from a barnyard rooster's crow.
But Billy could sing, an' I sometimes think that voice lives anyhow,--
That perhaps Bill helps with the music in the place he's gone to now.
The last time that I seen him was the day he rode away;
He was goin' acrost the plain to catch the train for the East next day.
'Twas the only time I ever seen poor Bill that he didn't laugh
Or sing, an' kick up a rumpus an' racket around, and chaff,
For he'd got a letter from his folks that said for to hurry home,
For his mother was dyin' away down East an' she wanted Bill to come.
Say, but the feller took it hard, but he saddled up right away,
An' started across the plains to take the train for the East, next day.
Sometimes I lie awake a-nights jist a-thinkin' of the rest,
For that was the great big blizzard day, when the wind come down from west,
An' the snow piled up like mountains an' we couldn't put foot outside,
But jist set into the shack an' talked of Bill on his lonely ride.
We talked of the laugh he threw us as he went at the break o' day,
An' we talked of the poor old woman dyin' a thousand mile away.
Well, Dan O'Connell an' I went out to search at the end of the week,
Fer all of us fellers thought a lot,--a lot that we darsn't speak.
We'd been up the trail about forty mile, an' was talkin' of turnin' back,
But Dan, well, he wouldn't give in, so we kep' right on to the railroad track.
As soon as we sighted them telegraph wires says Dan, "Say, bless my soul!
Ain't that there Bill's red handkerchief tied half way up that pole?"
Yes, sir, there she was, with her ends a-flippin' an' flyin' in the wind,
An' underneath was the envelope of Bill's letter tightly pinned.
"Why, he must a-boarded the train right here," says Dan, but I kinder knew
That underneath them snowdrifts we would find a thing or two;
Fer he'd writ on that there paper, "Been lost fer hours,--all hope is past.
You'll find me, boys, where my handkerchief is flyin' at half-mast."
poem by Emily Pauline Johnson
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The Death Penalty
Bring back the death penalty screamed a lady as the blood ran, dripping from the cold concrete as her sons blood fled from its body. Bring back, bring back the death penalty screamed a mother as her child dies slowly watching the pools of life fade away from his eyes.
Bring back, bring back the death penalty screamed a mother while she watched her child being killed by the hands of another man, bring back the death penalty.
Bring back the death penalty as she screamed holding her dying child while he laid his last words and breath upon her chest. Bring back the death penalty she screamed in mercy so that she will so that she will no longer have to hold any more of her dying sons and lay them in graves before she lays in her own.
Bring back the death penalty she screamed as her sons soul left his body and he became another victim to a violent society. Bring back the death penalty, bring back our sons.
poem by Melvyn Mohan
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Nestling
When to summon the sky
Little nestling?
When to summon the sky?
And suffer the risk - abscond in dread -
The knowledge of sort that you'll be dead
Upon a calamitous fall;
Or taken in flight - a hawkish pounce -
Demolished as prey; your fate pronounce
You gone, and to never recall.
O when to summon the sky
Little nestling?
When to summon the sky?
Aborting a den with
Feathered bed,
Unwavering mother who
Saw you fed -
Surrendering all so
You may spread
Your reach of tentative wings!
‘Tis only instinct -
E'er the reason -
Forging life:
The Nesting Season
And the trials it brings.
So up and summon the sky
Little nestling,
Up! and summon the sky!
Copyright © Mark R Slaughter 2011
[...] Read more
poem by Mark R Slaughter
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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
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The Truce And The Peace
(NOVEMBER, 1918)
Peace now for every fury has had her day,
Their natural make is moribund, they cease,
They carry the inward seeds of quick decay,
Build breakwaters for storm but build on peace.
The mountains' peace answers the peace of the stars,
Our petulances are cracked against their term.
God built our peace and plastered it with wars,
Those frescoes fade, flake off, peace remains firm.
In the beginning before light began
We lay or fluttered blind in burdened wombs,
And like that first so is the last of man,
When under death for husband the amorous tombs
Are covered and conceived; nine months go by
No midwife called, nine years no baby's cry.
II
Peace now, though purgatory fires were hot
They always had a heart something like ice
That coldly peered and wondered, suffering not
Nor pleased in any park, nor paradise
Of slightly swelling breasts and beautiful arms
And throat engorged with very carnal blood.
It coldly peered and wondered, 'Strong God your charms
Are glorious, I remember solitude.
Before youth towered we knew a time of truth
To have eyes was nearly rapture.' Peace now, for war
Will find the cave that childhood found and youth.
Ten million lives are stolen and not one star
Dulled; wars die out, life will die out, death cease,
Beauty lives always and the beauty of peace.
III
Peace to the world in time or in a year,
In the inner world I have touched the instant peace.
Man's soul's a flawless crystal coldly clear,
A cold white mansion that he yields in lease
To tenant dreams and tyrants from the brain
And riotous burnings of the lovelier flesh.
We pour strange wines and purples all in vain.
The crystal remains pure, the mansion fresh.
All the Asian bacchanals and those from Thrace
Lived there and left no wine-mark on the walls.
What were they doing in that more sacred place
All the Asian and the Thracian bacchanals?
Peace to the world to-morrow or in a year,
Peace in that mansion white, that crystal clear.
IV
Peace now poor earth. They fought for freedom's sake,
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poem by Robinson Jeffers
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The Bride's Prelude
“Sister,” said busy Amelotte
To listless Aloÿse;
“Along your wedding-road the wheat
Bends as to hear your horse's feet,
And the noonday stands still for heat.”
Amelotte laughed into the air
With eyes that sought the sun:
But where the walls in long brocade
Were screened, as one who is afraid
Sat Aloÿse within the shade.
And even in shade was gleam enough
To shut out full repose
From the bride's 'tiring-chamber, which
Was like the inner altar-niche
Whose dimness worship has made rich.
Within the window's heaped recess
The light was counterchanged
In blent reflexes manifold
From perfume-caskets of wrought gold
And gems the bride's hair could not hold,
All thrust together: and with these
A slim-curved lute, which now,
At Amelotte's sudden passing there,
Was swept in somewise unaware,
And shook to music the close air.
Against the haloed lattice-panes
The bridesmaid sunned her breast;
Then to the glass turned tall and free,
And braced and shifted daintily
Her loin-belt through her côte-hardie.
The belt was silver, and the clasp
Of lozenged arm-bearings;
A world of mirrored tints minute
The rippling sunshine wrought into 't,
That flushed her hand and warmed her foot.
At least an hour had Aloÿse—
Her jewels in her hair—
Her white gown, as became a bride,
Quartered in silver at each side—
Sat thus aloof, as if to hide.
Over her bosom, that lay still,
The vest was rich in grain,
With close pearls wholly overset:
Around her throat the fastenings met
Of chevesayle and mantelet.
Her arms were laid along her lap
With the hands open: life
Itself did seem at fault in her:
Beneath the drooping brows, the stir
Of thought made noonday heavier.
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poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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