Search

Search results

Sad, Arthur Stringer, in English Clear filters

SadArthur Stringer

The Drums

A village wrapped in slumber, Silent between the hills, Empty of moon-lit marketplace, Empty of moving life-- Such is my quiet heart. Shadowy-walled it rests, Sleeping its heavy sleep; But sudden across the dark Tingles a sound of drums! The drums, the drums, the distant drums, The throb of the drums strikes up, The beat of the drums awakes! Then loud through the little streets, And strange to the startled roofs, The drums, the drums approach and pound, And throb and clamour and thrill and pass,
SadArthur Stringer

Letters from Home

Letters from Home, you said. Unopened they lay on the shack-sill As you stared with me at the prairie And the foothills bathed with light. Letters from Home, you whispered, And the homeland casements shone Through the homeland dusk again, And the sound of the birds came back, And the soft green sorrowing hills, And the sigh of remembered names, The wine of remembered youth,-- Oh, these came back, Back with those idle words Of "Letters from Home"! Over such desolate leagues, Over such sundering seas,
SadArthur Stringer

The Dream

I lay by your side last night. By you, in my dreams, I felt the damp of the grave. I was dead with you-- And my bones still ache with Death. For my hand went out and I touched your lips, And I found them fallen away, Wasted and lost! Those lips once warm with life Were eaten and gone! And my soul screamed out in the dark At the intimate blackness of Death. And then I arose from the dead And returned to the day; And my bones and my heart still ache with it all, And I hunger to hear the relieving babble of life,
SadArthur Stringer

My Heart Stood Empty

My heart stood empty and bare, So I hung it with thoughts of a woman. The remembered ways of this woman Hung sweet in my heart. So I followed where thought should lead, And it led to her feet. But the mouth of this woman was pain, And the love of this woman, regret; And now only the thought Of all those remembered thoughts Of remembered ways, Is shut in my heart!
SadArthur Stringer

Autumn

The thin gold of the sun lies slanting on the hill; In the sorrowful greys and muffled violets of the old orchard A group of girls are quietly gathering apples. Through the mingled gloom and green they scarcely speak at all, And their broken voices rise and fall unutterably sad. There are no birds, And the goldenrod is gone. And a child calls out, far away, across the autumn twilight; And the sad grey of the dusk grows slowly deeper, And all the world seems old!
SadArthur Stringer

The Day

Dewy, dewy lawn-slopes, Is this the day she comes? O wild-flower face of Morning, Must you never wake? Silvery, silvery sea-line, Does she come to-day? O murmurous, murmurous birch-leaves, Beneath your whispering shadow She will surely pass; And thrush beneath the black-thorn And white-throat in the pine-top, Sing as you have never sung, For she will surely come! The lone green of the lawn-slope, The grey light on the sky-line, The mournful stir of birch-leaves,
SadArthur Stringer

Prescience

"The sting of it all," you said, as you stooped low over your roses, "The worst of it is, when I think of Death, That Spring by Spring the Earth shall still be beautiful, And Summer by Summer be lovely again, --And I shall be gone!" "I would not care, perhaps," you said, watching your roses, "If only 'twere dust and ruin and emptiness left behind! But the thought that Earth and April Year by casual year Shall waken around the old ways, soft and beautiful, Year by year when I am away, --This, this breaks my heart!"
SadArthur Stringer

You Bid Me to Sleep

You bid me to sleep,-- But why, O Daughter of Beauty, Was beauty thus born in the world? Since out of these shadowy eyes The wonder shall pass! And out of this surging and passionate breast The dream shall depart! And out of these delicate rivers of warmth The fire shall wither and fail! And youth like a bird from your body shall fly! And Time like a fang on your flesh shall feed! And this perilous bosom that pulses with love Shall go down to the dust from which it arose,-- Yet Daughter of Beauty, close, Close to its sumptuous warmth You hold my sorrowing head,
SadArthur Stringer

Life

A rind of light hangs low On the rim of the world; A sound of feet disturbs The quiet of the cell Where a rope and a beam looms high At the end of the yard. But in the dusk Of that walled yard waits a woman; And as the thing from its cell, Still guarded and chained and bound, Crosses that little space, Silent, for ten brief steps, A woman hangs on his neck. And that walk from a cell to a sleep Is known as Life, And those ten dark steps
SadArthur Stringer

Doors

Listen! Footsteps Are they, That falter through the gloom, That echo through the lonely chambers Of our house of life? Listen! Did a door close? Did a whisper waken? Did a ghostly something Sigh across the dusk? From the mournful silence Something, something went! Far down some shadowy passage Faintly closed a door-- And O how empty lies

Describe a feeling — we’ll find a poem

Or try: