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Frank Oliver Call, beauty, in English Clear filters

ContemplativeFrank Oliver Call

Wisteria

Why do you peer at me, old man, With eyes half shut, From underneath the purple lanterns of your wisteria vine? Your face is but a mask, Showing neither joy nor sorrow; But I know you bend your head to listen When the wild geese go honking towards the south, And your eyes grow wide with sadness, When the last petal falls from the wisteria flower. You, too, love beauty, Or else why twine the purple wisteria about your door-posts, Or pin a yellow gem upon your lilac gown?
InspiredFrank Oliver Call

Visions 4

I saw a vision of death. Silence held my feet with clinging hands, And Darkness put heavy fingers across my eyes. Then Darkness raised her hands, and I saw in the gray shadows A great night-moth with sable folded wings; It seemed asleep upon a purple flower, But as I watched, Slowly it spread its wings, And from them shone a gleam of crimson dawn, And all the world was drenched in showers of light. Then with his flaming wings outspread The great moth sailed away, Like a scarlet boat upon a dawn-swept sea, Leaving behind a wake of golden light. And I know that my vision of death Was only a vision of beauty.
InspiredFrank Oliver Call

Visions 1

I saw a vision of beauty. My eyes looked through the mists of ages, Back to the glorious years when Beauty itself was God. And I saw the waves of the blue Ægean, Turquoise, sapphire, jacinth and amethyst mingled, And I heard the singing of the water, As of playing of distant pipes By slender shepherd lads among the hills. Then I turned away from the shore And I saw the pediment of a great temple Standing white against the sky, And beneath the pediment rows of marble columns Like giant trees in a forest of frozen beauty. Statues gleamed amid the dark foliage of cypress and olive trees, Statues of gods and goddesses, youths and maidens, Horses of ruddy bronze and chariots of beaten brass.
SadFrank Oliver Call

Wild Grape

Beneath the crawling shadow Of a crumbling temple to gods long-forgotten, The wild grape twines amid the fragments Of shattered pillars prone upon the ground, And its dark leaves hide from sight the broken sculptures Of faun and youth and maiden, That once stood in the temple pediment, Young, naked, beautiful. In wild freedom it climbs over the carved acanthus leaves of the crumbling columns, And weaves a funeral wreath over their dead beauty. The wild bees hum and buzz Among the grape-flowers, heavy with honeyed perfume, Under the drowsy noonday sun, That spills its amber wine from a full goblet over the thirsting hillside.
ContemplativeFrank Oliver Call

To a Modern Poet

Why must you sing of sorrow When the world is so full of woe? Why must you sing of the ugly? For the ugly and sad I know. Why will you sing of railways, Of Iron and Steel and Coal, And the din of the smoky cities? For these will not feed my soul. But sing to me songs of beauty To gladden my tired eyes,-- The beauty of waving forest, Of meadows and sunlit skies; Sing me of childish laughter, Of cradles and painted toys, Of the sea and the brooks and the rivers, And the shouting of bathing boys.

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