Anzac Cove
There’s a lonely stretch of hillocks:
There’s a beach asleep and drear:
There’s a battered broken fort beside the sea.
There are sunken trampled graves:
And a little rotting pier:
And winding paths that wind unceasingly.
There’s a torn and silent valley:
There’s a tiny rivulet
With some blood upon the stones beside its mouth.
There are lines of buried bones:
There’s an unpaid waiting debt :
There’s a sound of gentle sobbing in the South.
poem by Leon Gellert
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
The Dreamer
He lay within a neat white-sheeted bed,
And stared at distance with his wide young eyes:-
Eyes that held space, had dreams, and saw the spread
Of the huge seas, and saw the stretch of skies;
Watched streets and roofs,, and clouds, and quiet rains:-
Eyes that knew the way each slow wind flies
Through long green lengths of winding country lanes:-
Eyes that held time, and saw all unafraid
Each passing hour
Fall like a sleeping flowers
Against a narrow blade.
poem by Leon Gellert
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
To a Man who Wished to Die
And now that you are dead, - If I should die
Upon this ground,
And open my new eye,
I’d leave my body dead,
Just like a garment shed
Without a sound;
And go to you within that dingy room
Above the stair,
To find you in the gloom,
As though you sadly dozed,
With dead eyes partly closed,
Within your chair.
Then would I find you sad, who used to weep
At death’s delay;
And I would notice creep
Upon your cheek a tear
At finding Heaven so near,
And Earth so far away.
poem by Leon Gellert
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
The Christmas Beetle
When Christmas comes the Christmas heat'll
bring once more the Christmas Beetle
The first inflammatory breeze'll
set him buzzing like a diesel.
Hear him open up his throttle
as he hums above the wattle!
Hear him zoom, and snarl and rattle
Like a fighter plane in battle!
Watch him dive to sink and settle-
Folding up his wings of metal -
Cutting off the engines sound
as quietly as he comes to ground.
Then watch some sparrows, frail and lowly,
Strike him swiftly, rend him wholly.
poem by Leon Gellert
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
The Christmas Beetle
When Christmas comes the Christmas heat'll
bring once more the Christmas Beetle
The first inflammatory breeze'll
set him buzzing like a diesel.
Hear him open up his throttle
as he hums above the wattle!
Hear him zoom, and snarl and rattle
Like a fighter plane in battle!
Watch him dive to sink and settle-
Folding up his wings of metal -
Cutting off the engines sound
as quietly as he comes to ground.
Then watch some sparrows, frail and lowly,
Strike him swiftly, rend him wholly.
poem by Leon Gellert
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
These Men
Men moving in a trench, in the clear noon,
Whetting their steel within the crumbling earth;
Men, moving in a trench ‘neath a new moon
That smiles with a slit mouth and has no mirth;
Men moving in a trench in the grey morn,
Lifting bodies on their clotted frames:
Men with narrow mouths thin-carved in scorn
That twist and fumble strangely at dead names.
These men know life – know death a little more.
These men see paths and ends, and see
Beyond some swinging open door
Into eternity.
poem by Leon Gellert
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Poppies
Some scarlet poppies lay upon our right.
He watched them through his periscope all day.
He watched then all the day; but in the night
They seemed to pass away.
They came again much redder with the morn’
And still he gazed, and strangely longed to roam
Among their savage splendour in the corn,
And ponder on his home.
But when the charge was done, they found him
there
Deep in the redness, where he’d made his stand,
With withered poppies in his twisted hair,
And poppies in his hand.
poem by Leon Gellert
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Memories
I see wild waves that break, and breaking-run;
And the wild sea-birds wheeling round the ships;
But at the dawn, the coming of the sun,
I see your red, red lips.
I see the cold moon now with fresh delight;
And the stars arise anew, and yet arise;
But in the night, the blackness of the night
I see your sad, sad eyes.
I hear the engines throbbing as we ride;
And the men’s songs. I hear great throats
Rejoice.
But in the silence, when all the songs have died,
I hear your soft, soft voice.
poem by Leon Gellert
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Blind!
A red-roofed house is shining to the skies;
A house red-roofed and brilliant in the wind:
A house of colour filled with wandering eyes;
And all the eyes are blind.
A gentle sound of moving fills each room:
A sound of hands, - dumb hands that touch and pry:
A sound of fingers feeling in a tomb
Before they close and die.
A hundred windows face long rows of flowers-
Long rows of flowers, and flowers that sway and dance
Where lidded eyes can gaze for hours and hours;
Blue eyes that shut in France.
poem by Leon Gellert
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
The Song’s End
Where will the song end? Here?
Here by the stretching arc
Red-rimmed and clear>
Or there in the dark?
Where will the song end?
Here, where the lizard sticks its tongue
Into the wide air?
Or there with a friend?
Where will the last note be sung?
Here, or there?
How will the song end? High?
Hight with a fighting ring
Through the wild sky
Re-echoing?
How will the tune cease?
Slow-droned beneath a quiet heaven?
With a dead foe?
Or ‘mid bells of peace?
How will the last note be given?
[...] Read more
poem by Leon Gellert
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!