Days – Karle Wilson Baker

Some days my thoughts are just cocoons- all cold, and dull and blind,
They hang from dripping branches in the grey woods of my mind;

And other days they drift and shine – such free and flying things!
I find the gold-dust in my hair, left by their brushing wings.

Blue Smoke – Karle Wilson Baker

The flame of my life burns low
Under the cluttered days,
Like a fire of leaves.
But always a little blue, sweet-smelling smoke
Goes up to God.

A Clear Night – Karle Wilson Baker

I have worn this day as a fretting, ill-made garment,
Impatient to be rid of it.
And lo, as I drew it off over my shoulders
This jewel caught in my hair.

Death, Always cruel – Dante Alighieri

Death, always cruel, Pity’s foe in chief,
Mother who brought forth grief,
Merciless judgment and without appeal!
Since thou alone hast made my heart to feel
This sadness and unweal,
My tongue upbraideth thee without relief.

And now (for I must rid thy name of ruth)
Behoves me speak the truth
Touching thy cruelty and wickedness:
Not that they be not known; but ne’ertheless
I would give hate more stress
With them that feed on love in very sooth.

Out of this world thou hast driven courtesy,
And virtue, dearly prized in womanhood;
And out of youth’s gay mood
The lovely lightness is quite gone through thee.

Whom now I mourn, no man shall learn from me
Save by the measure of these praises given.
Whoso deserves not Heaven
May never hope to have her company.

Love And The Gentle Heart – Dante Alighieri

Love and the gentle heart are one thing,
just as the poet says in his verse,
each from the other one as well divorced
as reason from the mind’s reasoning.

Nature craves love, and then creates love king,
and makes the heart a palace where he’ll stay,
perhaps a shorter or a longer day,
breathing quietly, gently slumbering.

Then beauty in a virtuous woman’s face
makes the eyes yearn, and strikes the heart,
so that the eyes’ desire’s reborn again,
and often, rooting there with longing, stays,

Till love, at last, out of its dreaming starts.
Woman’s moved likewise by a virtuous man.

Red, Red Wine – Scarlett Treat

Remembering, I ponder my wine glass,
Envisioning blazing night embers,
Shadows dancing in my dreams,
And I consider……Love.

I am indecisive,
My memories are desolate,
And I question your love
Because you called Collect!

I wonder where your soul is
As these restless night shadows burn,
While memory’s red, red colors bleed
Like a clock’s relentless flight.

Red Dust – Philip Levine

This harpie with dry red curls
talked openly of her husband,
his impotence, his death, the death
of her lover, the birth and death
of her own beauty. She stared
into the mirror next to
our table littered with the wreck
of her appetite and groaned:
Look what you’ve done to me!
as though only that moment
she’d discovered her own face.
Look, and she shoved the burden
of her ruin on the waiter.

I do not believe in sorrow;
it is not American.
At 8,000 feet the towns
of this blond valley smoke
like the thin pipes of the Chinese,
and I go higher where the air
is clean, thin, and the underside
of light is clearer than the light.
Above the tree line the pines
crowd below like moments of the past
and on above the snow line
the cold underside of my arm,
the half in shadow, sweats with fear
as though it lay along the edge
of revelation.

And so my mind closes around
a square oil can crushed on the road
one morning, startled it was not
the usual cat. If a crow
had come out of the air to choose
its entrails could I have laughed?
If eagles formed now in the
shocked vegetation of my sight
would they be friendly? I can hear
their wings lifting them down, the feathers
tipped with red dust, that dust which
even here I taste, having eaten it
all these years.

The Red Rose – Alison Cassidy

You offer me a red rose
The little prince loved her

I hold her carefully
Because of the thorns

I breathe your rose
And am transported

The Rain And The Wind – William Ernest Henley

The rain and the wind, the wind and the rain —
They are with us like a disease:
They worry the heart, they work the brain,
As they shoulder and clutch at the shrieking pane,
And savage the helpless trees.

What does it profit a man to know
These tattered and tumbling skies
A million stately stars will show,
And the ruining grace of the after-glow
And the rush of the wild sunrise?

Ever the rain — the rain and the wind!
Come, hunch with me over the fire,
Dream of the dreams that leered and grinned,
Ere the blood of the Year got chilled and thinned,
And the death came on desire!

April Rain – Mathilde Blind

The April rain, the April rain,
Comes slanting down in fitful showers,
Then from the furrow shoots the grain,
And banks are fledged with nestling flowers;
And in grey shaw and woodland bowers
The cuckoo through the April rain
Calls once again.

The April sun, the April sun,
Glints through the rain in fitful splendour,
And in grey shaw and woodland dun
The little leaves spring forth and tender
Their infant hands, yet weak and slender,
For warmth towards the April sun,
One after one.

And between shower and shine hath birth
The rainbow’s evanescent glory;
Heaven’s light that breaks on mists of earth!
Frail symbol of our human story,
It flowers through showers where, looming hoary,
The rain-clouds flash with April mirth,
Like Life on earth.

Rain – Jack Gilbert

Suddenly this defeat.
This rain.
The blues gone gray
And the browns gone gray
And yellow
A terrible amber.
In the cold streets
Your warm body.
In whatever room
Your warm body.
Among all the people
Your absence
The people who are always
Not you.

I have been easy with trees
Too long.
Too familiar with mountains.
Joy has been a habit.

Now
Suddenly
This rain.

Spring – Ernst Toller

In spring I go to war
To sing or to die.
What do I care for my own troubles?
Today I shatter them, laughing in pieces.

Oh, Brothers, know that young spring came
In a whirlwind.
Quickly throw off tired grief
And follow her in a host.

I have never felt so strongly
How much I love you, Oh, Germany,
As the magic of spring surrounds you
Amidst the bustle of war.

To A Star – Percy Bysshe Shelley

Sweet star, which gleaming o’er the darksome scene
Through fleecy clouds of silvery radiance fliest,
Spanglet of light on evening’s shadowy veil,
Which shrouds the day-beam from the waveless lake,
Lighting the hour of sacred love; more sweet
Than the expiring morn-star’s paly fires:–
Sweet star! When wearied Nature sinks to sleep,
And all is hushed,–all, save the voice of Love,
Whose broken murmurings swell the balmy blast
Of soft Favonius, which at intervals
Sighs in the ear of stillness, art thou aught but
Lulling the slaves of interest to repose
With that mild, pitying gaze? Oh, I would look
In thy dear beam till every bond of sense
Became enamoured–

To The Mind Of Man – Percy Bysshe Shelley

Thou living light that in thy rainbow hues
Clothest this naked world; and over Sea
And Earth and air, and all the shapes that be
In peopled darkness of this wondrous world
The Spirit of thy glory dost diffuse
… truth … thou Vital Flame
Mysterious thought that in this mortal frame
Of things, with unextinguished lustre burnest
Now pale and faint now high to Heaven upcurled
That eer as thou dost languish still returnest
And ever
Before the … before the Pyramids

So soon as from the Earth formless and rude
One living step had chased drear Solitude
Thou wert, Thought; thy brightness charmed the lids
Of the vast snake Eternity, who kept
The tree of good and evil.–

Lines – Percy Bysshe Shelley

WHEN the lamp is shatter’d,
The light in the dust lies dead;
When the cloud is scatter’d,
The rainbow’s glory is shed;
When the lute is broken,
Sweet tones are remember’d not
When the lips have spoken,
Loved accents are soon forgot.

As music and splendour
Survive not the lamp and the lute,
The heart’s echoes render
No song when the spirit is mute–
No song but sad dirges,
Like the wind through a ruin’d cell,
Or the mournful surges
That ring the dead seaman’s knell.

When hearts have once mingled,
Love first leaves the well-built nest;
The weak one is singled
To endure what it once possest.
O Love, who bewailest
The frailty of all things here,
Why choose you the frailest
For your cradle, your home, and your bier?

Its passions will rock thee,
As the storms rock the ravens on high:
Bright reason will mock thee,
Like the sun from a wintry sky.
From thy nest every rafter
Will rot, and thine eagle home
Leave thee naked to laughter,
When leaves fall and cold winds come.

A Bridal Song – Percy Bysshe Shelley

I.
The golden gates of Sleep unbar
Where Strength and Beauty, met together,
Kindle their image like a star
In a sea of glassy weather!
Night, with all thy stars look down,–
Darkness, weep thy holiest dew,–
Never smiled the inconstant moon
On a pair so true.
Let eyes not see their own delight;–
Haste, swift Hour, and thy flight
Oft renew.

II.
Fairies, sprites, and angels, keep her!
Holy stars, permit no wrong!
And return to wake the sleeper,
Dawn,—ere it be long!
O joy! O fear! what will be done
In the absence of the sun!
Come along!

Night – Percy Bysshe Shelley

SWIFTLY walk o’er the western wave,
Spirit of Night!
Out of the misty eastern cave,–
Where, all the long and lone daylight,
Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear
Which make thee terrible and dear,–
Swift be thy flight!

Wrap thy form in a mantle grey,
Star-inwrought!
Blind with thine hair the eyes of Day;
Kiss her until she be wearied out.
Then wander o’er city and sea and land,
Touching all with thine opiate wand–
Come, long-sought!

When I arose and saw the dawn,
I sigh’d for thee;
When light rode high, and the dew was gone,
And noon lay heavy on flower and tree,
And the weary Day turn’d to his rest,
Lingering like an unloved guest,
I sigh’d for thee.

Thy brother Death came, and cried,
‘Wouldst thou me?’
Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed,
Murmur’d like a noontide bee,
‘Shall I nestle near thy side?
Wouldst thou me?’–And I replied,
‘No, not thee!’

Death will come when thou art dead,
Soon, too soon–
Sleep will come when thou art fled.
Of neither would I ask the boon
I ask of thee, beloved Night–
Swift be thine approaching flight,
Come soon, soon!

Mighty Eagle – Percy Bysshe Shelley

Mighty eagle! thou that soarest
O’er the misty mountain forest,
And amid the light of morning
Like a cloud of glory hiest,
And when night descends defiest
The embattled tempests’ warning!

The Drowned Lover – Percy Bysshe Shelley

I.
Ah! faint are her limbs, and her footstep is weary,
Yet far must the desolate wanderer roam;
Though the tempest is stern, and the mountain is dreary,
She must quit at deep midnight her pitiless home.
I see her swift foot dash the dew from the whortle,
As she rapidly hastes to the green grove of myrtle;
And I hear, as she wraps round her figure the kirtle,
‘Stay thy boat on the lake,–dearest Henry, I come.’

II.
High swelled in her bosom the throb of affection,
As lightly her form bounded over the lea,
And arose in her mind every dear recollection;
‘I come, dearest Henry, and wait but for thee.’
How sad, when dear hope every sorrow is soothing,
When sympathy’s swell the soft bosom is moving,
And the mind the mild joys of affection is proving,
Is the stern voice of fate that bids happiness flee!

III.
Oh! dark lowered the clouds on that horrible eve,
And the moon dimly gleamed through the tempested air;
Oh! how could fond visions such softness deceive?
Oh! how could false hope rend, a bosom so fair?
Thy love’s pallid corse the wild surges are laving,
O’er his form the fierce swell of the tempest is raving;
But, fear not, parting spirit; thy goodness is saving,
In eternity’s bowers, a seat for thee there.

Mutability – Percy Bysshe Shelley

We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;
How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver,
Streaking the darkness radiantly!–yet soon
Night closes round, and they are lost forever:

Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings
Give various response to each varying blast,
To whose frail frame no second motion brings
One mood or modulation like the last.

We rest.–A dream has power to poison sleep;
We rise.–One wandering thought pollutes the day;
We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;
Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:

It is the same!–For, be it joy or sorrow,
The path of its departure still is free:
Man’s yesterday may ne’er be like his morrow;
Nought may endure but Mutability.

Love’s Philosophy – Percy Bysshe Shelley

The fountains mingle with the river,
And the rivers with the ocean;
The winds of heaven mix forever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In another’s being mingle-
Why not I with thine?

See, the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister flower could be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea; –
What are all these kissings worth,
If thou kiss not me?

The Sunset – Percy Bysshe Shelley

There late was One within whose subtle being,
As light and wind within some delicate cloud
That fades amid the blue noon’s burning sky,
Genius and death contended. None may know
The sweetness of the joy which made his breath
Fail, like the trances of the summer air,
When, with the Lady of his love, who then
First knew the unreserve of mingled being,
He walked along the pathway of a field
Which to the east a hoar wood shadowed o’er,
But to the west was open to the sky.
There now the sun had sunk, but lines of gold
Hung on the ashen clouds, and on the points
Of the far level grass and nodding flowers
And the old dandelion’s hoary beard,
And, mingled with the shades of twilight, lay
On the brown massy woods — and in the east
The broad and burning moon lingeringly rose
Between the black trunks of the crowded trees,
While the faint stars were gathering overhead–
‘Is it not strange, Isabel,’ said the youth,
‘I never saw the sun? We will walk here
To-morrow; thou shalt look on it with me.’

That night the youth and lady mingled lay
In love and sleep–but when the morning came
The lady found her lover dead and cold.
Let none believe that God in mercy gave
That stroke. The lady died not, nor grew wild,
But year by year lived on–in truth I think
Her gentleness and patience and sad smiles,
And that she did not die, but lived to tend
Her agèd father, were a kind of madness,
If madness ’tis to be unlike the world.
For but to see her were to read the tale
Woven by some subtlest bard, to make hard hearts
Dissolve away in wisdom-working grief;–
Her eyes were black and lustreless and wan:
Her eyelashes were worn away with tears,
Her lips and cheeks were like things dead–so pale;
Her hands were thin, and through their wandering veins
And weak articulations might be seen
Day’s ruddy light. The tomb of thy dead self
Which one vexed ghost inhabits, night and day,
Is all, lost child, that now remains of thee!

‘Inheritor of more than earth can give,
Passionless calm and silence unreproved,
Whether the dead find, oh, not sleep! but rest,
And are the uncomplaining things they seem,
Or live, or drop in the deep sea of Love;
Oh, that like thine, mine epitaph were– Peace!’
This was the only moan she ever made.

The Rose – William Browne

A ROSE, as fair as ever saw the North,
Grew in a little garden all alone;
A sweeter flower did Nature ne’er put forth,
Nor fairer garden yet was never known:
The maidens danced about it morn and noon,
And learned bards of it their ditties made;
The nimble fairies by the pale-faced moon
Water’d the root and kiss’d her pretty shade.
But well-a-day! – the gardener careless grew;
The maids and fairies both were kept away,
And in a drought the caterpillars threw
Themselves upon the bud and every spray.
God shield the stock! If heaven send no supplies,
The fairest blossom of the garden dies.

The Sick Rose – William Blake

O Rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

A Rose In Disguise – Sarah Mellberg

A rose is a rose every day, every night
You too are the same, except different in my sight

You are like a rose, such a beautiful creation
But a rose in disguise, meant to blume for every nation

So show your beauty, for I know what you are
You are a rose in disguise, and very, very wise

A rose is a rose is a rose…..

A Black Rose – The Black Rose

A Black Rose,
Glistening in the rain,
A sign, a symbol,
An insignia of loss,
It’s the Flower of Darkness,
Lying in wait on this cold winter night,

It represents the beauty of despair,
The grace of defeat,
The feelings we all find hard to bear,
The millions of people that have all loved and lost,
All behind this flower that holds us aloft,

Within its petals we drown our grief,
With its stem we clutch to what’s left of life,
Within its thorns we spite those who have set us so
And within this dark flower we find our peace,
The power to let go and leave the loved lie,

So with this flower we sign our hearts,
We accept our everlasting love,
And move on,

A Black Rose,
Glistening in the rain,
Ill forever love you,
Ill never lose hope,
But until you come back,
Here’s a Black Rose,
For my love…

Water – Adelaide Rhead

Water still, water deep, how many secrets do you keep?
We look upon your surface calm, and feel the peace that is a balm.
Now the gentle stream runs faster, racing swiftly swiftly —
Over boundless cataracts. Water — share your energy with me.
As a big wide river flowing slowly to the sea,
It fills me with its strength. Love and peace now cover me.
Sunshine on the water fills everything with gold.
And silver from the moonbeams. Feel the joy you now behold.
Water in its many forms soothes the jangled nerves,
Isn’t this a pleasure that everyone deserves?

Water Picture – May Swenson

In the pond in the park
all things are doubled:
Long buildings hang and
wriggle gently. Chimneys
are bent legs bouncing
on clouds below. A flag
wags like a fishhook
down there in the sky.

The arched stone bridge
is an eye, with underlid
in the water. In its lens
dip crinkled heads with hats
that don’t fall off. Dogs go by,
barking on their backs.
A baby, taken to feed the
ducks, dangles upside-down,
a pink balloon for a buoy.

Treetops deploy a haze of
cherry bloom for roots,
where birds coast belly-up
in the glass bowl of a hill;
from its bottom a bunch
of peanut-munching children
is suspended by their
sneakers, waveringly.

A swan, with twin necks
forming the figure 3,
steers between two dimpled
towers doubled. Fondly
hissing, she kisses herself,
and all the scene is troubled:
water-windows splinter,
tree-limbs tangle, the bridge
folds like a fan.

Going For Water – Robert Frost

The well was dry beside the door,
And so we went with pail and can
Across the fields behind the house
To seek the brook if still it ran;
Not loth to have excuse to go,
Because the autumn eve was fair
(Though chill), because the fields were ours,
And by the brook our woods were there.

We ran as if to meet the moon
That slowly dawned behind the trees,
The barren boughs without the leaves,
Without the birds, without the breeze.

But once within the wood, we paused
Like gnomes that hid us from the moon,
Ready to run to hiding new
With laughter when she found us soon.

Each laid on other a staying hand
To listen ere we dared to look,
And in the hush we joined to make
We heard, we knew we heard the brook.

A note as from a single place,
A slender tinkling fall that made
Now drops that floated on the pool
Like pearls, and now a silver blade.

Fire & Love – Patricia Gale

Golden orangish flames
Hinted with a hue of blue
Circling round hardened wood
Consuming the outer
Streaking through the grain
Down to its very core

Strange.. the comparison to love
How it begins with a spark
Then a glowing consuming feeling
Circling round the outer till it reaches the very core of the soul
As it streaks through the body then reaching the heart

Fire and love different as night is to day
But none the less….
Both consume and may warm a being
Or leave one with nothing but ashes

Fire And Ice – Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Sea Love – Charlotte Mary Mew

Tide be runnin’ the great world over:
‘Twas only last June month I mind that we
Was thinkin’ the toss and the call in the breast of the lover
So everlastin’ as the sea.

Heer’s the same little fishes that sputter an swim,
Wi’ the moon’s old glim on the grey, wet sand;
An’ him no more to me mor me to him
Than the wind goin’ over my hand.

At Sea – Aleister Crowley

As night hath stars, more rare than ships
In ocean, faint from pole to pole,
So all the wonder of her lips
Hints her innavigable soul.

Such lights she gives as guide my barque;
But I am swallowed in the swell
Of her heart’s ocean, sagely dark,
That holds my heaven and holds my hell.

In her I live, a mote minute
Dancing a moment in the sun:
In her I die, a sterile shoot
Of nightshade in oblivion.

In her my elf dissolves, a grain
Of salt cast careless in the sea;
My passion purifies my pain
To peace past personality.

Love of my life, God grant the years
Confirm the chrism – rose to rood!
Anointing loves, asperging tears
In sanctifying solitude!

Man is so infinitely small
In all these stars, determinate.
Maker and moulder of them all,
Man is so infinitely great!

Culture – Oskar Hansen

Education is good, learning is great
One day everyone will have
A University degree but the academia
Will not be so happy
Street cleaners with letters after their name
Cooks with literary degrees,
And the status University gives will mean
Little, everyone is intellectually equal
Something must be done to stop this rot,
Perhaps wood carving will do,
And leave the education to the masses.

Global Culture – Edward Kofi Louis

A global culture is closing up on us,
But with lustful minds to kill mankind;
Yet still, they take up the Bible to calm us down.
When it is not a coup, it is war! !
And like what is now going on in Libya;
But with lustful minds to kill mankind!
Of a global culture,
But little things do mean a lot when you know the value;
And check out the life styles around you today,
For it si a mixture of righteous and evil!
The oil reserves are being bombed today in Libya,
And the dark mushroom clouds bring sadness on our faces;
But how many dead bodies are already recorded?
Of human beings and human identities,
But the global culture is what we know;
With global villages in the state ot our minds,
But quote it from the Torah and compare it with the modernizations around you.
Oh mankind! ! What have we done to ourselves on this earth?
Where is the missing link and, why the hatred? ! !
But the positive ones are never heard in times like this;
With the magnitudes of the negative one crowning the day!
But let us sit down and talk about it.

Indian Culture – Bijay Kant Dubey

Indian thought and culture,
Its ethos and tradition
And ethnicity,
History of thought and philosophy,
History of tradition,
Myth and mysticism
Doing the rounds,
Religion and spirituality,
Theology and metaphysics
And cosmology,
How to analyze it?

But apart from it, there is something
Of course in Western science and learning
Which but we cannot deny,
The modern appliances and tools
Of day-to-day usage.