Vestigia Nulla Retrorsum
O steep and rugged Life, whose harsh ascent
Slopes blindly upward through the bitter night!
They say that on thy summit, high in light,
Sweet rest awaits the climber, travel-spent;
But I, alas, with dusty garments rent,
With fainting heart and failing limbs and sight,
Can see no glimmer of the shining height,
And vainly list, with body forward bent,
To catch athwart the gloom one wandering note
Of those glad anthems which (they say) are sung
When one emerges from the mists below:
But though, O Life, thy summit be remote
And all thy stony path with darkness hung,
Yet ever upward through the night I go.
poem by William Gay
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Primroses
They shine upon my table there,
A constellation mimic sweet,
No stars in Heaven could shine more fair,
Nor Earth has beauty more complete;
And on my table there they shine,
And speak to me of things Divine.
In Heaven at first they grew, and when
God could no fairer make them, He
Did plant them by the ways of men
For all the pure in heart to see,
That each might shine upon its stem
And be a light from Him to them.
They speak of things above my verse,
Of thoughts no earthly language knows,
That loftiest Bard could ne'er rehearse,
Nor holiest prophet e'er disclose,
Which God Himself no other way
Than by a Primrose could convey.
poem by William Gay
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
To M.
IF in the summer of thy bright regard
For one brief season these poor Rhymes shall live
I ask no more, nor think my fate too hard
If other eyes but wintry looks should give;
Nor will I grieve though what I here have writ
O’er burdened Time should drop among the ways,
And to the unremembering dust commit
Beyond the praise and blame of other days:
The song doth pass, but I who sing, remain,
I pluck from Death’s own heart a life more deep,
And as the Spring, that dies not, in her train
Doth scatter blossoms for the Winds to reap,
So I, immortal, as I fare along,
Will strew my path with mortal flowers of song.
poem by William Gay
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
A Sonnet of Battle
RELUCTANT Morn, whose meagre radiance lies
With doubtful glimmer on the farthest hills,
How long shall men, reiterant of their ills,
With peevish invocation bid thee rise
To burn to noontide glory in the skies
That now a gloom perplexed and starless fills,
And seek from thee and not their own strong wills
That perfect good which is not bought with sighs?
Why weep and wait for thee, though laggard, Morn,
With all thy joys of love and peace and light?
For us the mightier joy that rives the soul,
When, slaves no longer to a day unborn,
Our flag of war along the dark we unroll
For fell encounter with the hosts of Night.
poem by William Gay
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Australia 1894
SHE sits a queen whom none shall dare despoil,
Her crown the sun, her guard the vigilant sea,
And round her throne are gathered, stalwart, free,
A people proud, yet stooping to the soil,
Patient to swell her greatness with their toil,
And swift to leave, should dire occasion be,
The mine, the flock, the desk, the furrowed lea,
And force the invader to a dark recoil.—
Yet as she gazes o’er the plains that lie
Fruitful about her throne, she sighs full sore
To see the barriers Greed has builded high,
Dividing them who brothers were before,
When still they dwelt beneath a sterner sky
And heard the thunders of a wilder shore.
poem by William Gay
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
The Crazy World
THE WORLD did say to me,
‘My bread thou shalt not eat,
I have no place for thee
In house nor field nor street.
‘I have on land nor sea
For thee nor home nor bread,
I scarce can give to thee
A grave when thou art dead.’
‘O crazy World,’ said I,
‘What is it thou canst give,
Which wanting, I must die,
Or having, I shall live?
‘When thou thy all hast spent,
And all thy harvests cease,
I still have nutriment
That groweth by decrease.
[...] Read more
poem by William Gay
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Storm
I love not when the oily seas
Heave huge and slow beneath the sun,
When decks are hot, and dead the breeze,
And wits are dropping one by one.
But when the South wind fiercely breaks
His frozen bonds and rushes forth
Across the roaring sea and shakes
His icy spear against the North;
When breakers thunder on the lee,
When timbers crash and sails are rent,
When wild and louder grows the sea,
And black the reeling firmament;
O then at last my soul awakes,
A thousand joys within her rise,
And all the bounds of sense she breaks
To soar exulting through the skies.
I love not when my ship of Fate
Glides on before some fragrant breeze,
And slowly tracks with costly freight
The sapphire deeps of prosperous seas.
[...] Read more
poem by William Gay
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
The Sorrowful Fate of Bartholomew Jones
Bartholemew Jones made his money in mines,
And although he has left us his fame still shines
As a man who was knowing in various lines.
It wasn't his line to write or to spell,
To teach or to preach, to dig or to fell,
But to handle his shares, and to keep out of hell.
He knelt every day at the foot of the Throne
(To use his own words), yet he wore (it was known)
His garments of grace o'er a heart made of stone.
And when Death would no longer concede a respite,
He hied straight away to the regions of light,
As a man of whom no one could question the right.
He wandered for long o'er the pavements of gold,
Saw wonders and glories around him unfold,
But somehow all seemed to him dismal and cold.
He tired of the sun's everlasting rays,
Grew sick of the harps and the hymns and the praise,
And drooped in the glare of the glittering ways.
'If this be the heaven I laboured to win,
I'd better have taken full measure of sin,'
[...] Read more
poem by William Gay
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
The Ex Official's Lament
Alas alas! my power is gone;
I thought 'twould last for ever;
But now 'tis over, I must own,
They've done it very clever.
I could have feather'd well my nest,
If I had been permitted;
To that intent I did my best,
To have my friend acquitted.
'Congratulatory address'
I also did procure him.
Among my influential class
And thought this must secure him.
In fact, I left no means untried,
To smother up the matter,
And on my influence relied,
To stop the diggers' chatter.
But rumours soon got spread about,
Of this our camp proceeding;
And very soon we all found out,
That discontent was breeding.
[...] Read more
poem by William Gay
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
The War of the Ghosts
Three Ghosts that haunt me have I,
Three Ghosts in my soul that fight,
Three grandsire Ghosts in my soul,
That haunt me by day and by night.
The first was a dark mountaineer,
Who hunted with arrow and knife,
To whom the turf was a bed,
And the wind of the moorland was life.
And the next was a mariner rude,
Whose home and whose grave was the sea,
For whom the land was a prison
And only the ocean was free.
And the last was a shrunken recluse,
Who lived with the dust and the gloom
And wrote of the Saints and of Him
Who went for us to His doom.
And all through the days and years
These ancient Ghosts contend,
[...] Read more
poem by William Gay
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!