Poem Hunter: Poems - Poets - Poetry

It may be misery not to sing at all,
And to go silent through the brimming day;
It may be misery never to be loved,
But deeper griefs than these beset the way.

To sing the perfect song,
And by a half-tone lost the key,
There the potent sorrow, there the grief,
The pale, sad staring of Life's Tragedy.

To have come near to the perfect love,
Not the hot passion of untempered youth,
But that which lies aside its vanity,
And gives, for thy trusting worship, truth.

This, this indeed is to be accursed,
For if we mortals love, or if we sing,
We count our joys not by what we have,
But by what kept us from that perfect thing.
...

Everything’s looted, betrayed and traded,
black death’s wing’s overhead.
Everything’s eaten by hunger, unsated,
so why does a light shine ahead?

By day, a mysterious wood, near the town,
breathes out cherry, a cherry perfume.
By night, on July’s sky, deep, and transparent,
new constellations are thrown.


...

Alone in the wild, forty days long,
No friendly face, no comforting song.
Just sand and sky, and whispers within,
A battle fought, where shadows begin.

Gethsemane's garden, dark and deep,
His friends were near, but they fell asleep.
He prayed in anguish, tears on the ground,
A heavy burden, nowhere around,
To share the weight, the coming pain,

...

The stream with languid murmur creeps,
In Lumin's flowery vale:
Beneath the dew the Lily weeps
Slow-waving to the gale.

'Cease, restless gale! 'it seems to say,
'Nor wake me with thy sighing!
The honours of my vernal day
On rapid wing are flying.

Tomorrow shall the Traveller come
Who late beheld me blooming:
His searching eye shall vainly roam
The dreary vale of Lumin.'

With eager gaze and wetted cheek
My wonted haunts along,
Thus, faithful Maiden! thou shalt seek
The Youth of simplest song.

But I along the breeze shall roll
The voice of feeble power;
And dwell, the Moon-beam of thy soul,
In Slumber's nightly hour.
...

The plunging limbers over the shattered track
Racketed with their rusty freight,
Stuck out like many crowns of thorns,
And the rusty stakes like sceptres old
To stay the flood of brutish men
Upon our brothers dear.

The wheels lurched over sprawled dead
But pained them not, though their bones crunched,
Their shut mouths made no moan.

...

Life, a winding, wondrous road,
Where sunshine dances, shadows load.
A mystery woven, thread by thread,
With joy and sorrow gently bled.

Our bodies, like a humming thing,
Need fuel to soar, to laugh, to sing.
Good food and water, air so clear,
Keep us upright, banish fear.


...

Unfathomable Night! how dost thou sweep
Over the flooded earth, and darkly hide
The mighty city under thy full tide;
Making a silent palace for old Sleep,
Like his own temple under the hush'd deep,
Where all the busy day he doth abide,
And forth at the late dark, outspreadeth wide
His dusky wings, whence the cold waters sweep!
How peacefully the living millions lie!
Lull'd unto death beneath his poppy spells;
There is no breath—no living stir—no cry
No tread of foot—no song—no music-call—
Only the sound of melancholy bells—
The voice of Time—survivor of them all!
...

To grow old is to lose everything.
Aging, everybody knows it.
Even when we are young,
we glimpse it sometimes, and nod our heads
when a grandfather dies.
Then we row for years on the midsummer
pond, ignorant and content. But a marriage,
that began without harm, scatters
into debris on the shore,
and a friend from school drops

...

I feel light, empty in my soul
No reason to reason a full thought
Life treats like a blazing coal
Making the void even more.
...