The Dream of His Soul
The Dream of his Soul, in flesh and blood--
Not to possess, but only to see--
Was given him, for an hour:
Ah, fool, he lingered longer,--
The Dream died like the shadow of a Star!
Sad poems
Sad poems — a collection of the best works on PoemShip.
The Night Builds Her Temple of Rain
The night builds her temple of rain :
In the forest a sobbing music
Played by the hands of darkness
On the scale of dark leaves.
No bird-song stirs the soul;
Nor the golden dawn-harmonies;
A cry, a shedding of tears,
A music of sable tonalities.
Truly, a temple of silence and sound,
A vibrant, and dim solitude,
A gray telling of black beads;
A prayer, a moan, a dim worship.
On That Day
On that day
I shall put roses on roses, and cover your grave
With multitude of white roses: and since you were
brave
One bright red ray.
So people, passing under
The ash-trees of the valley-road, will raise
Their eyes and look at the grave on the hill, in
wonder,
Wondering mount, and put the flowers asunder
To see whose praise
Is blazoned here so white and so bloodily red.
Then they will say: "'Tis long since she is dead,
Who has remembered her after many days?"
And standing there
They will consider how you went your ways
Reading a Letter
She sits on the recreation ground
Under an oak whose yellow buds dot the pale
blue sky.
The young grass twinkles in the wind, and the sound
Of the wind in the knotted buds in a canopy.
So sitting under the knotted canopy
Of the wind, she is lifted and carried away as in
a balloon
Across the insensible void, till she stoops to see
The sandy desert beneath her, the dreary platoon.
She knows the waste all dry beneath her, in one
place
Stirring with earth-coloured life, ever turning and
stirring.
But never the motion has a human face
Nor sound, save intermittent machinery whirring.
Piano
Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the
tingling strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who
smiles as she sings.
In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song
Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong
To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter
outside
And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano
our guide.
So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour
With the great black piano appassionato. The
glamour
Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast
Parliament Hill in the Evening
The houses fade in a melt of mist
Blotching the thick, soiled air
With reddish places that still resist
The Night's slow care.
The hopeless, wintry twilight fades,
The city corrodes out of sight
As the body corrodes when death invades
That citadel of delight.
Now verdigris smoulderings softly spread
Through the shroud of the town, as slow
Night-lights hither and thither shed
Their ghastly glow.
"And Oh--That the Man I Am Might Cease to Be--"
No, now I wish the sunshine would stop,
and the white shining houses, and the gay red flowers on the balconies
and the bluish mountains beyond, would be crushed out
between two valves of darkness;
the darkness falling, the darkness rising, with muffled sound
obliterating everything.
I wish that whatever props up the walls of light
would fall, and darkness would come hurling heavily down,
and it would be thick black dark for ever.
Not sleep, which is grey with dreams,
nor death, which quivers with birth,
but heavy, sealing darkness, silence, all immovable.
What is sleep?
It goes over me, like a shadow over a hill,
but it does not alter me, nor help me.
And death would ache still, I am sure;
Autumn Rain
The plane leaves
fall black and wet
on the lawn;
The cloud sheaves
in heaven's fields set
droop and are drawn
in falling seeds of rain;
the seed of heaven
on my face
falling--I hear again
like echoes even
that softly pace
Heaven's muffled floor,
the winds that tread
out all the grain
of tears, the store
All Souls
They are chanting now the service of All the Dead
And the village folk outside in the burying ground
Listen--except those who strive with their dead,
Reaching out in anguish, yet unable quite to touch them:
Those villagers isolated at the grave
Where the candles burn in the daylight, and the painted wreaths
Are propped on end, there, where the mystery starts.
The naked candles burn on every grave.
On your grave, in England, the weeds grow.
But I am your naked candle burning,
And that is not your grave, in England,
The world is your grave.
And my naked body standing on your grave
Upright towards heaven is burning off to you
Its flame of life, now and always, till the end.
Giorno dei Morti
Along the avenue of cypresses
All in their scarlet cloaks, and surplices
Of linen go the chanting choristers,
The priests in gold and black, the villagers. . . .
And all along the path to the cemetery
The round dark heads of men crowd silently,
And black-scarved faces of women-folk, wistfully
Watch at the banner of death, and the mystery.
And at the foot of a grave a father stands
With sunken head, and forgotten, folded hands;
And at the foot of a grave a mother kneels
With pale shut face, nor either hears nor feels
The coming of the chanting choristers
Between the avenue of cypresses,
The silence of the many villagers,
The candle-flames beside the surplices.
Winter Dawn
Green star Sirius
Dribbling over the lake;
The stars have gone so far on their road,
Yet we're awake!
Without a sound
The new young year comes in
And is half-way over the lake.
We must begin
Again. This love so full
Of hate has hurt us so,
We lie side by side
Moored--but no,
Let me get up
And wash quite clean
Of this hate.--
So green
Misery
Out of this oubliette between the mountains
five valleys go, five passes like gates;
three of them black in shadow, two of them bright
with distant sunshine;
and sunshine fills one high valley bed,
green grass shining, and little white houses
like quartz crystals,
little, but distinct a way off.
Why don't I go?
Why do I crawl about this pot, this oubliette,
stupidly?
Why don't I go?
But where?
If I come to a pine-wood, I can't say
Now I am arrived!
What are so many straight trees to me!
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