Delphi Poetry Anthology: The World's Greatest Poems (Delphi Poets Series Book 50) (281 page)
Read Delphi Poetry Anthology: The World's Greatest Poems (Delphi Poets Series Book 50) Online
Authors: Homer,William Shakespeare
William Morris (1834–1896)
WHILES in the early winter eve
We pass amid the gathering night
Some homestead that we had to leave
Years past; and see its candles bright
Shine in the room beside the door
5
Where we were merry years agone,
But now must never enter more,
As still the dark road drives us on.
E’en so the world of men may turn
At even of some hurried day
10
And see the ancient glimmer burn
Across the waste that hath no way;
Then, with that faint light in its eyes,
Awhile I bid it linger near
And nurse in waving memories
15
The bitter sweet of days that were.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
John Boyle O’Reilly (1844–1890)
THE RED rose whispers of passion,
And the white rose breathes of love;
O, the red rose is a falcon,
And the white rose is a dove.
But I send you a cream-white rosebud
5
With a flush on its petal tips;
For the love that is purest and sweetest
Has a kiss of desire on the lips.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Arthur William Edgar O’Shaughnessy
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Arthur William Edgar O’Shaughnessy (1844–1881)
WE are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
5
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.
With wonderful deathless ditties
And out of a fabulous story
10
We build up the world’s great cities,
We fashion an empire’s glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song’s measure
15
Can trample an empire down.
We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth;
20
And o’erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world’s worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Robert Williams Buchanan (1841–1901)
THE CRIMSON light of sunset falls
Through the grey glamour of the murmuring rain,
And creeping o’er the housetops crawls
Through the black smoke upon the broken pane,
Steals to the straw on which she lies,
5
And tints her thin black hair and hollow cheeks,
Her sun-tanned neck, her glistening eyes, —
While faintly, sadly, fitfully she speaks.
But when it is no longer light,
The pale girl smiles, with only One to mark,
10
And dies upon the breast of Night,
Like trodden snowdrift melting in the dark.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909)
WHEN the hounds of spring are on winter’s traces,
The mother of months in meadow or plain
Fills the shadows and windy places
With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain;
And the brown bright nightingale amorous
5
Is half assuaged for Itylus,
For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces,
The tongueless vigil, and all the pain.
Come with bows bent and with emptying of quivers,
Maiden most perfect, lady of light,
10
With a noise of winds and many rivers,
With a clamour of waters, and with might;
Bind on thy sandals, O thou most fleet,
Over the splendour and speed of thy feet;
For the faint east quickens, the wan west shivers,
15
Round the feet of the day and the feet of the night.
Where shall we find her, how shall we sing to her,
Fold our hands round her knees, and cling?
O that man’s heart were as fire and could spring to her,
Fire, or the strength of the streams that spring!
20
For the stars and the winds are unto her
As raiment, as songs of the harp-player;
For the risen stars and the fallen cling to her,
And the southwest-wind and the west-wind sing.
For winter’s rains and ruins are over,
25
And all the season of snows and sins;
The days dividing lover and lover,
The light that loses, the night that wins;
And time remember’d is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
30
And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the spring begins.
The full streams feed on flower of rushes,
Ripe grasses trammel a travelling foot,
The faint fresh flame of the young year flushes
35
From leaf to flower and flower to fruit;
And fruit and leaf are as gold and fire,
And the oat is heard above the lyre,
And the hoofèd heel of a satyr crushes
The chestnut-husk at the chestnut-root.
40
And Pan by noon and Bacchus by night,
Fleeter of foot than the fleet-foot kid,
Follows with dancing and fills with delight
The Mænad and the Bassarid;
And soft as lips that laugh and hide
45
The laughing leaves of the trees divide,
And screen from seeing and leave in sight
The god pursuing, the maiden hid.
The ivy falls with the Bacchanal’s hair
Over her eyebrows hiding her eyes;
50
The wild vine slipping down leaves bare
Her bright breast shortening into sighs;
The wild vine slips with the weight of its leaves,
But the berried ivy catches and cleaves
To the limbs that glitter, the feet that scare
55
The wolf that follows, the fawn that flies.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909)
SWALLOW, my sister, O sister swallow,
How can thine heart be full of the spring?
A thousand summers are over and dead.
What hast thou found in the spring to follow?
What hast thou found in thine heart to sing?
5
What wilt thou do when the summer is shed?
O swallow, sister, O fair swift swallow,
Why wilt thou fly after spring to the south,
The soft south whither thine heart is set?
Shall not the grief of the old time follow?
10
Shall not the song thereof cleave to they mouth?
Hast thou forgotten ere I forget?
Sister, my sister, O fleet sweet swallow,
Thy way is long to the sun and the south;
But I, fulfill’d of my heart’s desire,
15
Shedding my song upon height, upon hollow,
From tawny body and sweet small mouth
Feed the heart of the night with fire.
I the nightingale all spring through,
O swallow, sister, O changing swallow,
20
All spring through till the spring be done,
Clothed with the light of the night on the dew,
Sing, while the hours and the wild birds follow,
Take flight and follow and find the sun.
Sister, my sister, O soft light swallow,
25
Though all things feast in the spring’s guest-chamber,
How hast thou heart to be glad thereof yet?
For where thou fliest I shall not follow,
Till life forget and death remember,
Till thou remember and I forget.
30
Swallow, my sister, O singing swallow,
I know not how thou hast heart to sing.
Hast thou the heart? is it all past over?
Thy lord the summer is good to follow,
And fair the feet of thy lover the spring:
35
But what wilt thou say to the spring thy lover?
O swallow, sister, O fleeting swallow,
My heart in me is a molten ember
And over my head the waves have met.
But thou wouldst tarry or I would follow
40
Could I forget or thou remember,
Couldst thou remember and I forget.
O sweet stray sister, O shifting swallow,
The heart’s division divideth us.
Thy heart is light as a leaf of a tree;
45
But mine goes forth among sea-gulfs hollow
To the place of the slaying of Itylus,
The feast of Daulis, the Thracian sea.
O swallow, sister, O rapid swallow,
I pray thee sing not a little space.
50
Are not the roofs and the lintels wet?
The woven web that was plain to follow,
The small slain body, the flower-like face,
Can I remember if thou forget?
O sister, sister, thy first-begotten!
55
The hands that cling and the feet that follow,
The voice of the child’s blood crying yet,
Who hath remember’d me? who hath forgotten?
Thou hast forgotten, O summer swallow,
But the world shall end when I forget.
60
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
