When I think of her sparkling face
And of her body that rocked this way and that,
When I think of her laughter,
Her jubilance that filled me,
...
1.
Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure. This frail vessel thou emptiest again and again, and fillest it ever with fresh life.
...
O stony grey soil of Monaghan
The laugh from my love you thieved;
You took the gay child of my passion
And gave me your clod-conceived.
...
You speak for the lakes, the trees and the birds
You say what they'd say if they had the words.
Make PEACE and be proud, choose well every choice
Speak HOPE and speak loud, you are Nature's voice.
...
Sad sad sad in blue
For sad sad sad you
The moon is all bluish tonight
The night is all dark out side
...
Budger of history Brake of time You Bomb
Toy of universe Grandest of all snatched sky I cannot hate you
...
Let us begin and carry up this corpse,
Singing together.
Leave we the common crofts, the vulgar thorpes
Each in its tether
...
Angelic minds, they say, by simple intelligence
Behold the Forms of nature. They discern
Unerringly the Archtypes, all the verities
Which mortals lack or indirectly learn.
...
I deem that there are lyric days
So ripe with radiance and cheer,
So rich with gratitude and praise
That they enrapture all the year.
...
Loved to write as far back as memory goes
Without any thought for a verse to compose
Poetic expressions of innate creativity
...
THE LOTUS _ Sermon of Heart
(Love Lyric)
From the bough of immortal tree,
...
Come, my darling, let us dance
To the moon that beckons us
To dissolve our love in trance
Heedless of the hideous
...
So it is eighteen years,
Helena, since we met!
A season so endears,
Nor you nor I forget
...
Ah! what pleasant visions haunt me
As I gaze upon the sea!
All the old romantic legends,
All my dreams, come back to me.
...
My poem may be yours indeed
In melody and tone,
If in its rhythm you can read
A music of your own;
...
What doesn't enter then my slumbering mind?
-Derzhavin
I
October has arrived - the woods have tossed
...
There was an apple tree in the yard --
this would have been
forty years ago -- behind,
only meadows. Drifts
...
Green leaves tap at my window like lost souls.
I trace their signatures upon the glass.
Dawn is only a few quatrains away.
I memorize the fragrance of spring rain.
...
What means my name to you?...T'will die
As does the melancholy murmur
Of distant waves or, of a summer,
The forest's hushed nocturnal sigh.
...
Oh, let it be a night of lyric rain
And singing breezes, when my bell is tolled.
I have so loved the rain that I would hold
Last in my ears its friendly, dim refraln.
...
How grand the human race would be
If every man would wear a kilt,
A flirt of Tartan finery,
Instead of trousers, custom built!
...
DEIGN, Prince, my tribute to receive,
This lyric offering to your name,
Who round your jewelled scepter bind
The lilies of a poet's fame;
...
Hail Bishop Valentine, whose day this is,
All the air is thy Diocese,
And all the chirping choristers
And other birds are thy parishioners,
...
THE FIRST BOOK
I, WHO erewhile the happy Garden sung
By one man's disobedience lost, now sing
...
Here where the wind is always north-north-east
And children learn to walk on frozen toes,
Wonder begets an envy of all those
Who boil elsewhere with such a lyric yeast
...
I.
I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs;
A palace and a prison on each hand:
I saw from out the wave her structures rise
...
Lyric night of the lingering Indian summer,
Shadowy fields that are scentless but full of singing,
Never a bird, but the passionless chant of insects,
Ceaseless, insistent.
...
(For Aline)
From what old ballad, or from what rich frame
Did you descend to glorify the earth?
...
Here let us linger at will and delightsomely hearken
Music aeolian of wind in the boughs of pine,
Timbrel of falling waters, sounds all soft and sonorous,
Worshipful litanies sung at a bannered shrine.
...
On this cold, gray-wintry day,
The sun is nowhere to be found.
Listen! I hear the rain:
...
"As certain also of your own poets have said"--
(Acts 17.28)
Cleon the poet (from the sprinkled isles,
Lily on lily, that o'erlace the sea
...
Life is a well-written lyric with an uncomposed music.
Death is well-composed music for an unwritten lyric,
All drama starts with life and ends with the death
Both have a distinction of innocence with the grandeur of purity.
...
O' Lyric Love, half angel and half bird,
And all a wonder and a wild desire,-
Boldest of hearts that ever braved the sun,
...
Phoebus, sitting one day in a laurel-tree's shade,
Was reminded of Daphne, of whom it was made,
For the god being one day too warm in his wooing,
She took to the tree to escape his pursuing
...
Vegetables on the chopping board
Inaugurate a television recital..
I chop chop
Recital going on
...
While the milder fates consent,
Let's enjoy our merriment :
Drink, and dance, and pipe, and play ;
Kiss our dollies night and day :
...
I cannot hold my peace, John Keats;
There never was a spring like this;
It is an echo, that repeats
...
I
A dream of interlinking hands, of feet
Tireless to spin the unseen, fairy woof
...
The twilight's inner flame grows blue and deep,
And in my Lesbos, over leagues of sea,
The temples glimmer moonwise in the trees.
Twilight has veiled the little flower face
...
Perplexed and troubled at his bad success
The Tempter stood, nor had what to reply,
Discovered in his fraud, thrown from his hope
So oft, and the persuasive rhetoric
...
Echoes from the outside
The shades of evening soul
Step by step dance toward the open windows
Bring out the sounds when the wind blows
...
Ho, a day
Whereon we may up and away,
With a fetterless wind that is out on the downs,
And there piping a call to the fallow and shore,
...
The snow-white Olympic swan,
with beak of rose-red agate,
preens his eucharistic wing,
which he opens to the sun like a fan.
...
Prelude
Blue storm-clouds in hot heavens of mid-July
Hung heavy, brooding over land and sea:
...
I like to think that when I fall,
A rain-drop in Death's shoreless sea,
This shelf of books along the wall,
Beside my bed, will mourn for me.
...
^An Acutely Obtuse Pythagorean Lyric
Isosceles
was watering
...
The sound of wooden rake scratching concrete.
walk nearer - rustle of dry leaves.
This, the beginning of a Japanese haiku
...
Adrift in space where dreamers tread
a Needle's sewing cosmic thread
through cloths of heavens vastly spread
of gold and silver light o'erhead,
...
A little say to you,
my darling-
You don't come and love me
I can't commit you
...
Clothes: to compose
The furtive, lone
Pillar of bone
To some repose.
...
When I a verse shall make,
Know I have pray'd thee,
For old religion's sake,
Saint Ben to aid me.
...
Hail, Muse! et cetera.--We left Juan sleeping,
Pillow'd upon a fair and happy breast,
And watch'd by eyes that never yet knew weeping,
And loved by a young heart, too deeply blest
...
Row after row with strict impunity
The headstones yield their names to the element,
The wind whirrs without recollection;
In the riven troughs the splayed leaves
...
I
Lately, when we wished good-bye
Underneath a gloomy sky,
``Bear,'' you said, ``my love in mind,
...
Singing larks I saw for sale -
(Ah! the pain of it)
Plucked and ready to impale
On a roasting spit;
...
We told her that her far off shore was bleak and dour to view,
And that her sky was dull and mirk while ours was smiling blue.
She only sighed in answer, "It is even as ye say,
But oh, the ragged splendor when the sun bursts through the gray!"
...
Lo, I have loved thee long, long have I yearned and entreated!
Tell me how I may win thee, tell me how I must woo.
Shall I creep to thy white feet, in guise of a humble lover ?
Shall I croon in mild petition, murmuring vows anew ?
...
What is love?
love is a word
It is also devotion
It is pleasure, passion,
...
son of hidden sun
lead them with invocation
isn't with flying lizard
that will make you more sincere
...
A pale enchanted moon is sinking low
Behind the dunes that fringe the shadowy lea,
And there is haunted starlight on the flow
Of immemorial sea.
...
I sought for my happiness over the world,
Oh, eager and far was my quest;
I sought it on mountain and desert and sea,
I asked it of east and of west.
...
Ah Ben!
Say how or when
Shall we, thy guests,
Meet at those lyric feasts,
...
My some prestigious and pestilent features ask, "what is future? "
And persuade me not to bother about future
Saying that it is too far
And suggesting to enjoy present and not to think of future;
...
[As a Tribute of Esteem and Admiration this Poem is inscribed to ROBERT MERRY, Esq. A. M. Member of the Royal Academy at Florence, and Author of the Laurel of Liberty, and the Della Crusca Poems.]
O THOU, to whom superior worth's allied,
...
Anything artificial does not help at all,
Artificial cooling lacks nature's call,
Kissing and embracing the sweating sweetheart,
Keeps me so saline whole day her salt,
...
Lone amid the cafe's cheer,
Sad of heart am I to-night;
Dolefully I drink my beer,
But no single line I write.
...
Honour to you who sit
Near to the well of wit,
And drink your fill of it!
...
For blows on the fort of evil
That never shows a breach,
For terrible life-long races
To a goal no foot can reach,
...
The elusive winter sun finally breaks
Through the misty leaves
Moving steadily and slowly
Finally touching her feet
...
WHEN slow Disease, with all her host of pains,
Chills the warm, tide which flows along the veins
When Health,affrighted, spreads her rosy wing,
And flies with every changing gale of spring;
...
The sun peeks through the horizon
In the wake of another day
As heart drums, breathe waves
Vibrations inside veins
...
I’m the man to be,
cos I’m me, me, me;
but you’re just you
and who cares who
...
Hark, oh hark the elfin laughter
All the little waves along,
As if echoes speeding after
Mocked a merry merman's song!
...
After the movie, when the lights come up,
He takes her powdered hand behind the wings;
She, all in yellow, like a buttercup,
Lifts her white face, yearns up to him, and clings;
...
When the dark comes down, oh, the wind is on the sea
With lisping laugh and whimper to the red reef's threnody,
The boats are sailing homeward now across the harbor bar
With many a jest and many a shout from fishing grounds afar.
...
Let those who will of friendship sing,
And to its guerdon grateful be,
But I a lyric garland bring
To crown thee, O, mine enemy!
...
There fell a star from realms above--
A glittering, glorious star to see!
Methought it was the star of love,
...
_Stanzas from 'Onegin'_
Our Northern Winter's fickle Summer,
Than Southern Winter scarce more bland--
Is undeniably withdrawing
...
Aurora that came with
the dawn,
Strengthened the the ties of life,
With a bouquet of new songs,
...
In memory of Menke Katz
I hold you in the lyric of my thoughts.
No, never mind that mist that hurts the eyes.
Tomorrow in Jerusalem, my friend,
...
Between the wave-ridge and the strand
I let you forth in sight of land,
Songs that with storm-crossed wings and eyes
Strain eastward till the darkness dies;
...
THE dinner-bell, the dinner-bell
Is ringing loud and clear;
Through hill and plain, through street and lane,
...
Lyric night of the lingering Indian Summer,
Shadowy fields that are scentless but full of singing,
...
Say, lovely youth, that dost my heart command,
Can Phaon's eyes forget his Sappho's hand?
Must then her name the wretched writer prove,
...
HE.
Halt here awhile. That mossy-cushioned seat
Is for your queenliness a natural throne;
As I am fitly couched on this low sward,
...
When these dead leaves were green, love,
November's skies were blue,
And summer came with lips aflame,
The gentle spring to woo;
...
Dreams define life
Its chapters read,
Its pages written,
You have been
...
I.
In midmost Ind, beside Hydaspes cool,
There stood, or hover'd, tremulous in the air,
A faery city 'neath the potent rule
...
So easy 'tis to make a rhyme,
That did the world but know it,
Your coachman might Parnassus climb,
Your butler be a poet.
...
Scenes of my youth! awake its slumbering fire!
Ye winds of Memory, sweep the silent lyre!
Ray of the past, if yet thou canst appear,
...
It’s too hot, could you come as a rainy spout!
The heat inside now shrieks for outing,
The music of steps I can feel, I breathe-in you,
And what I inhale is shivering my body,
...
Here is a voice that soundeth low and far
And lyricvoice of wind among the pines,
Where the untroubled, glimmering waters are,
And sunlight seldom shines.
...
You were once the Music of my Life-
Each chord played rapidly one after one-
An arousing Arpeggio of sensual delight-
'Neath a once blossoming Erotic Sun...
...
Pulwama attack
A Convoy of Vehicle,
A Convoy of soldiers,
...
God-like Tsarevna
Of the Kirgiz-Kaisatskii horde!
Whose wisdom matchless
Opened the true path
...
'Twas in the Crescent City not long ago befell
The tear-compelling incident I now propose to tell;
...
I SAID 'The dark deed matters nought,
And this green gown becomes her well;
For phrase and rhyme oft hide the thought,
...
The gentle breeze as messenger
whispered the words on thy beloved's ears
And make that soulful dream, not fancy
Into the heart of reality..............
...