Citatepedia^®.com

The Forest Sanctuary - Part I.

I.
The voices of my home!-I hear them still!
They have been with me through the dreamy night-
The blessed household voices, wont to fill
My heart's clear depths with unalloy'd delight!
I hear them still, unchang'd:-though some from earth
Are music parted, and the tones of mirth-
Wild, silvery tones, that rang through days more bright!
Have died in others,-yet to me they come,
Singing of boyhood back-the voices of my home!

II.
They call me through this hush of woods, reposing
In the grey stillness of the summer morn,
They wander by when heavy flowers are closing,
And thoughts grow deep, and winds and stars are born;
Ev'n as a fount's remember'd gushings burst
On the parch'd traveller in his hour of thirst,
E'en thus they haunt me with sweet sounds, till worn
By quenchless longings, to my soul I say-

[...] Read more

poem by Felicia Dorothea Hemans
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

The Barefoot Boy

Blessings on thee, little man,
Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan!
With thy turned-up pantaloons,
And thy merry whistled tunes;
With thy red lip, redder still
Kissed by strawberries on the hill;
With the sunshine on thy face,
Through thy torn brim's jaunty grace;
From my heart I give thee joy, -
I was once a barefoot boy!
Prince thou art, - the grown-up man
Only is republican.
Let the million-dollared ride!
Barefoot, trudging at his side,
Thou hast more than he can buy
In the reach of ear and eye, -
Outward sunshine, inward joy:
Blessings on thee, barefoot boy!

Oh for boyhood's painless play,

[...] Read more

poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

The Tent On The Beach

I would not sin, in this half-playful strain,--
Too light perhaps for serious years, though born
Of the enforced leisure of slow pain,--
Against the pure ideal which has drawn
My feet to follow its far-shining gleam.
A simple plot is mine: legends and runes
Of credulous days, old fancies that have lain
Silent, from boyhood taking voice again,
Warmed into life once more, even as the tunes
That, frozen in the fabled hunting-horn,
Thawed into sound:--a winter fireside dream
Of dawns and-sunsets by the summer sea,
Whose sands are traversed by a silent throng
Of voyagers from that vaster mystery
Of which it is an emblem;--and the dear
Memory of one who might have tuned my song
To sweeter music by her delicate ear.

When heats as of a tropic clime

[...] Read more

poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

The Pennsylvania Pilgrim

Prelude

I sing the Pilgrim of a softer clime
And milder speech than those brave men's who brought
To the ice and iron of our winter time
A will as firm, a creed as stern, and wrought
With one mailed hand, and with the other fought.
Simply, as fits my theme, in homely rhyme
I sing the blue-eyed German Spener taught,
Through whose veiled, mystic faith the Inward Light,
Steady and still, an easy brightness, shone,
Transfiguring all things in its radiance white.
The garland which his meekness never sought
I bring him; over fields of harvest sown
With seeds of blessing, now to ripeness grown,
I bid the sower pass before the reapers' sight.

The Pennsylvania Pilgrim

[...] Read more

poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Quatrains Of Life

What has my youth been that I love it thus,
Sad youth, to all but one grown tedious,
Stale as the news which last week wearied us,
Or a tired actor's tale told to an empty house?

What did it bring me that I loved it, even
With joy before it and that dream of Heaven,
Boyhood's first rapture of requited bliss,
What did it give? What ever has it given?

'Let me recount the value of my days,
Call up each witness, mete out blame and praise,
Set life itself before me as it was,
And--for I love it--list to what it says.

Oh, I will judge it fairly. Each old pleasure
Shared with dead lips shall stand a separate treasure.
Each untold grief, which now seems lesser pain,
Shall here be weighed and argued of at leisure.

[...] Read more

poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

The First Time II

'Well, well', he smiled, 'is that so'.
inviting me to look into his glittering, prescient, black eyes-
so much like mine, that said, like mine
'I am not what I seem'.
'I've written poems, too. We shall see'.
The shrubs half-exhaled in relief but remained vigilant.
He bellowed not, see.
No, he saw me in return
doubtless as a creature stuck in eternal, inarguable boyhood
like a fly fixed forever in amber;
boyhood like meanings, pictures that resonate and magnify-
amber like fun,
the boy who'd be the man who'd be Peter Pan
flight being one thing you can't argue with.

But he despared, I knew,
because I saw a cloud ascend his brow-
this was the suburbs after all.
'Whose fault...

poem by Morgan Michaels
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Like A Butterfly

In my boyhood,
So sweet so lovely;
Like an eagle with its meteor eyes.
This pilot is guiding me,
This love is my hope;
Like a swarm of golden bees.
Of my unseen feet,
Of your unseen feet,
Of his unseen feet,
Of her unseen feet,
From Cape to Cape;
I am lured by the love of my growth.
Of a world so fair,
Eyes have not seen it;
It is like life beyond the tomb of love.
Ears have not heard its deep songs of joy,
This land is full of harvest;
But another race has filled it.
In silence and in fear like,
The banners up high in the sky;

[...] Read more

poem by Edward Kofi Louis
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

My Dad, Your Matchless Legacy !

my dad!
it was you who took me by my hand
daily during my boyhood age
amidst star-folks of the night space
and lighted introductory lamps
to spread the rays of friendship amongst us!

the 'dawns'
in which ' Ushaa ', the angel strolls with hues in hand-

the' evenings '
in which the hues meditate in golden sunset moments-

the ' rivers '
in which the sweet babble over pebbly bed is ever heard-

the ' water falls '
in which the far off ' om ' chants are ever raised-

the ' flower gardens '

[...] Read more

poem by Sundaram Chandrakalaadhar
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

39

I only woke this morning
To find the world is fair—
I’m going on for forty,
With scarcely one grey hair;
I’m going on for forty,
Where man’s strong life begins,
With scarce a sign of crows’ feet,
In spite of all my sins.

Then here’s the living Forties!
The Forties! The Forties!
Then here’s the living Forties!
We’re good for ten years more.

The teens were black and bitter,
A smothered boyhood’s grave—
A farm-drudge in the drought-time,
A weary workshop slave.
But twenty years have laid them,
And all the world is fair—

[...] Read more

poem by Henry Lawson
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Moving Through The Dew

I
Moving through the dew, moving through the dew,
Ere I waken in the city—Life, thy dawn makes all things new!
And up a fir-clad glen, far from all the haunts of men,
Up a glen among the mountains, oh my feet are wings again!

Moving through the dew, moving through the dew,
O mountains of my boyhood, I come again to you,
By the little path I know, with the sea far below,
And above, the great cloud-galleons with their sails of rose and snow

As of old, when all was young, and the earth a song unsung
And the heather through the crimson dawn its Eden incense flung
From the mountain-heights of joy, for a careless-hearted boy,
And the lavrocks rose like fountain sprays of bliss that ne’er could cloy,

From their little beds of bloom, from the golden gorse and broom,

[...] Read more

poem by Alfred Noyes
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!