Delphi Poetry Anthology: The World's Greatest Poems (Delphi Poets Series Book 50) (185 page)
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Authors: Homer,William Shakespeare
Charles Lamb (1775–1834)
I HAVE had playmates, I have had companions
In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days;
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
I have been laughing, I have been carousing,
Drinking late, sitting late, with my bosom cronies;
5
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
I loved a Love once, fairest among women:
Closed are her doors on me, I must not see her —
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
I have a friend, a kinder friend has no man:
10
Like an ingrate, I left my friend abruptly;
Left him, to muse on the old familiar faces.
Ghost-like I paced round the haunts of my childhood,
Earth seem’d a desert I was bound to traverse,
Seeking to find the old familiar faces.
15
Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother,
Why wert not thou born in my father’s dwelling?
So might we talk of the old familiar faces,
How some they have died, and some they have left me,
And some are taken from me; all are departed;
20
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Charles Lamb (1775–1834)
WHEN maidens such as Hester die
Their place ye may not well supply,
Though ye among a thousand try
With vain endeavour.
A month or more hath she been dead,
5
Yet cannot I by force be led
To think upon the wormy bed
And her together.
A springy motion in her gait,
A rising step, did indicate
10
Of pride and joy no common rate
That flush’d her spirit:
I know not by what name beside
I shall it call: if ’twas not pride,
It was a joy to that allied
15
She did inherit.
Her parents held the Quaker rule,
Which doth the human feeling cool;
But she was train’d in Nature’s school,
Nature had blest her.
20
A waking eye, a prying mind,
A heart that stirs, is hard to bind;
A hawk’s keen sight ye cannot blind,
Ye could not Hester.
My sprightly neighbour! gone before
25
To that unknown and silent shore,
Shall we not meet, as heretofore
Some summer morning —
When from thy cheerful eyes a ray
Hath struck a bliss upon the day,
30
A bliss that would not go away,
A sweet fore-warning?
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
On an Infant Dying as Soon as Born
Charles Lamb (1775–1834)
I SAW where in the shroud did lurk
A curious frame of Nature’s work;
A flow’ret crushéd in the bud,
A nameless piece of Babyhood,
Was in her cradle-coffin lying;
5
Extinct, with scarce the sense of dying:
So soon to exchange the imprisoning womb
For darker closets of the tomb!
She did but ope an eye, and put
A clear beam forth, then straight up shut
10
For the long dark: ne’er more to see
Through glasses of mortality,
Riddle of destiny, who can show
What thy short visit meant, or know
What thy errand here below?
15
Shall we say, that Nature blind
Check’d her hand, and changed her mind
Just when she had exactly wrought
A finish’d pattern without fault?
Could she flag, or could she tire,
20
Or lack’d she the Promethean fire
(With her nine moons’ long workings sicken’d)
That should thy little limbs have quicken’d?
Limbs so firm, they seem’d to assure
Life of health, and days mature:
25
Woman’s self in miniature!
Limbs so fair, they might supply
(Themselves now but cold imagery)
The sculptor to make Beauty by.
Or did the stern-eyed Fate descry
30
That babe or mother, one must die;
So in mercy left the stock
And cut the branch; to save the shock
Of young years widow’d, and the pain
When Single State comes back again
35
To the lone man who, reft of wife,
Thenceforward drags a maiméd life?
The economy of Heaven is dark,
And wisest clerks have miss’d the mark
Why human buds, like this, should fall,
40
More brief than fly ephemeral
That has his day; while shrivell’d crones
Stiffen with age to stocks and stones;
And crabbed use the conscience sears
In sinners of an hundred years.
45
— Mother’s prattle, mother’s kiss,
Baby fond, thou ne’er wilt miss:
Rites, which custom does impose,
Silver bells, and baby clothes;
Coral redder than those lips
50
Which pale death did late eclipse;
Music framed for infants’ glee,
Whistle never tuned for thee;
Though thou want’st not, thou shalt have them,
Loving hearts were they which gave them.
55
Let not one be missing; nurse,
See them laid upon the hearse
Of infant slain by doom perverse.
Why should kings and nobles have
Pictured trophies to their grave,
60
And we, churls, to thee deny
Thy pretty toys with thee to lie —
A more harmless vanity?
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
The Lay of the Last Minstrel: Canto First
Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832)
I
The feast was over in Branksome tower,
And the Ladye had gone to her secret bower;
Her bower that was guarded by word and by spell,
Deadly to hear, and deadly to tell —
Jesu Maria, shield us well!
No living wight, save the Ladye alone,
Had dared to cross the threshold stone.
II
The tables were drawn, it was idlesse all;
Knight and page, and household squire,
Loiter’d through the lofty hall,
Or crowded round the ample fire:
The staghours, weary with the chase,
Lay stretch’d upon the rusy foloor
And urged, in dreams, the forest race,
From Teviot-stone to Eskdale-moor.
III
Nine-and-twenty knights of fame
Hung their shields in Branksome-Hall,
Nine-and-twenty squires of name
Brought them their steeds to bower from stall;
Nine-and-twenty yeomen tall
Waited, duteous, on them all;
They were all knights of mettle true,
Kinsmen to the bold Buccleuch.
IV
Ten of them were sheathed in steel,
With belted sword, and spur on heel:
They quitted not their harness bright,
Neither by day, nor yet by night:
They lay down to rest,
With corslet laced,
Pillow’d on buckler cold and hard;
They carved at the meal
With gloves of steel,
And they drank the red wine through the helmet barr’d.
V
Ten squires, ten yeomen, mail-clad men,
Waited the beck of the warders ten;
Thirty steeds, both fleet and wight,
Stood saddled in stable day and night,
Barbed with frontlet of steel, I trow,
And with Jedwood-axe at saddlebow;
A hundred more fed free in stall: —
Such was the custom of Branksome-Hall.
VI
Why do these steeds stand ready dight?
Why watch these warriors, arm’d, by night? —
They watch, to hear the blood-hound baying?
They watch to hear the war-horn braying;
To see St. George’s red cross streaming,
To see the midnight beacon gleaming:
They watch, against Southern force and guile,
Lest Scroop, or Howard, or Percy’s powers,
Threaten Branksome’s lordly towers,
From Warkwork, or Naworth, or merry Carlisle.
VII
Such is the custom of Branksome-Hall —
Many a valiant knight is here;
But he, the chieftain of them all,
His sword hangs rusting on the wall,
Beside his broken spear.
Bards long shall tell
How Lord Walter fell.
When startled burghers fled afar,
The furies of the Border war;
When the streets of high
Saw lances gleam and falchion redden,
And heard the ‘s deadly yell —
Then the Chef of Branksome fell.
VIII
Can piety the discord heal,
Or stanch the death-feud’s enmity?
Can Christian lore, can patriot zeal,
Can love of blessed charity?
No! vainly to each holy shrine,
In mutual pilgrimage they drew;
Implored, in vain, the grace divine
For chiefs, their own red falchions slew;
While Cessford owns the rule of Carr,
While Ettrick boasts the line of Scott,
The slaughter’d chiefs, the mortal jar,
The havoc of the feudal war,
Shall never, never be forgot!
IX
In sorrow o’er Lord Walter’s bier
The warlike foresters had bent;
And many a flower,and many a tear,
Old Teviot’s maids and matrons lent:
But o’er her warrior’s bloody bier
The Ladye dropp’d nor flowers nor tear!
Vengeance, deep-brooding o’er the slain
Had lock’d the source of softer woe;
And burning pride, and high disdain,
Forbade the rising tear to flow;
Until, amid his sorrowing clan,
Her son lisp’d from the nurse’s knee —
“And if I live to be a man,
My father’s death revenged shall be!”
Then fast the mother’s tears did seek
To dew the infant’s kindling cheek.
X
All loose her negligent attire,
All loose her golden hair,
Hung Margaret o’er her slaughter’d sire,
And wept in wild despair,
But not alone the bitter tear
Had filial grief supplied;
For hopeless love, and anxious fear,
Had lent their mingled tide:
Nor in her mother’s alter’d eye
Dared she to look for sympathy.
Her lover, ‘gainst her father’s clan,
With Carr in arms had stood,
When Mathouse-burn to Melrose ran,
All purple with their blood;
And well she knew, her mother dread,
Before Lord Cranstoun she should wed,
Would see her on her dying bed.
XI
Of noble race the Ladye came
Her father was a clerk of fame,
Of Bethune’s line of Picardie;
He learn’d the art that none may name,
In Padua, far beyond the sea.
Men said, he changed his mortal frame
By feat of magic mystery;
For when, in studious mode, he paced
St. Andrew’s cloister’d hall,
His form no darkening shadow traced
Upon the sunny wall!
XII
And of his skill, as bards avow,
He taught that Ladye fair,
Till to her bidding she could bow
The viewless forms of air.
And now she sits in secret bower,
In old Lord David’s western tower,
And listens to a heavy sound,
That moans the mossy turrets round.
Is it the roar of Teviot’s tide,
That chafes against the ‘s red side?
Is it the wind that swings the oaks?
Is it the echo from the rocks?
What may it be, the heavy sound,
That moans old Branksome’s turrets round?
XIII
At the sullen, moaning sound,
The ban-dogs bay and howl;
And, from the turrets round,
Loud whoops the startled owl.
In the hall, both squire and knight
Swore that a storm was near,
And looked forth to view the night,
But the night was still and clear!
XIV
From the sound of Teviot’s tide,
Chafing with the mountain’s side,
From the groan of the wind-swung oak,
From the sullen echo of the rock,
From the voice of the coming storm,
The Ladye knew it well!
It was the Spirit of the Flood that spoke
And he called on the Spirit of the Fell.
XV
River Spirit
“Sleep’st thou, brother?” —
Mountain Spirit
— “Brother, nay —
On my hills the moon-beams play.
From Craik-cross to Skelfhill-pen,
By every rill, in every glen,
Merry elves their morris pacing,
To aërial minstrelry
Emerald rings on brown heath tracing,
Trip it deft and merrily.
Up, and mark their nimble feet!
Up, and list their music sweet!”
XVI
River Spirit
“Tears of an imprisoned maiden
Mix with my polluted stream;
Margaret of Branksome, sorrow-laden,
Mourns beneath the moon’s pale beam.
Tell me, thou, who view’st the stars,
When shall cease these feudal jars?
What shall be the maiden’s fate?
Who shall be the maiden’s mate?”
XVII
Mountain Spirit
“Arthur’s slow wain his course doth roll
In utter darkness round the pole;
The Northern Bear lowers black and grim;
Orion’s studded belt is dim;
Twinkling faint, and distant far,
Shimmers through mist each planet star;
Ill may I read their high decree!
But no kind influence deign they shower
On Teviot’s tide, and Branksome’s tower,
Till pride be quell’d, and love be free.”
XVIII
The unearthly voices ceast,
And the heavy sound was still;
It died on the river’s breast,
It died on the side of the hill.
But round Lord David’s tower
The sound still floated near;
For it rung in the Ladye’s bower,
And it rung in the Ladye’s ear.
She raised her stately head,
And her heart throbb’d high with pride: —
“Your mountains shall bend,
And your streams ascend,
Ere Margaret be our foeman’s bride!”
XIX
The Lady sought the lofty hall,
Where many a bold retainer lay,
And, with jocund din, among them all,
Her son pursued his infant play.
A fancied , the boy
The truncheon of a spear bestrode,
And round the hall, right merrily,
In mimic foray rode.
Even bearded knights, in arms grown old,
Share in his frolic gambols bore,
Albeit their hearts of rugged mould,
Were stubborn as the steel they wore.
For the grey warriors prophesied,
How the brave boy, in future war,
Should tame the ,
Exalt the .
XX
The Ladye forgot her purpose high,
One moment, and no more;
One moment gazed with a mother’s eye,
As she paused at the arched door:
Then from amid the armed train,
She call’d to her William of Deloraine.
XXI
A stark moss-trooping Scott was he,
As e’er couch’d Border lance by knee;
Through Solway sands, through Tarras moss,
Blindfold, he knew the paths to cross;
By wily turns, by desperate bounds,
Had baffled Percy’s best blood-hounds;
In Eske or Liddell, fords were none,
But he would ride them, one by one;
Alike to him was time or tide,
December’s snow, or July’s pride;
Alike to him was tide or time,
Moonless midnight, or matin prime;
Steady of heart, and stout of hand,
As ever drove prey from Cumberland;
Five times outlawed had be been,
By England’s King, and Scotland’s Queen.
XXII
“Sir William of Deloraine, good at need,
Mount thee on the wightest steed;
Spare not to spur, nor stint to ride,
Until thou come to fair Tweedside;
And in Melrose’s holy pile
Seek thou the Monk of St. Mary’s aisle.
Greet the Father well from me;
Say that the fated hour is come,
And to-night he shall watch with thee,
To win the treasure of the tomb.
For this will be St. Michael’s night,
And, though stars be dim, the moon is bright;
And the Cross, of bloody red,
Will point to the grave of the mighty dead.
XXIII
“What he gives thee, see thou keep;
Stay not thou for food or sleep:
Be it scroll, or be it book,
Into it, Knight, thou must not look;
If thou readest, thou art lorn!
Better hadst thou ne’er been born.” —
XXIV
“O swiftly can speed my dapple-grey steed,
Which drinks of the Teviot clear;
Ere break of day,” the Warrior ‘gan say,
“Again will I be here:
And safer by none may thy errand be done,
Than, noble dame, by me;
Letter nor line know I never a one,
Wer’t my neck-verse at .”
