Broken Music
I know not in what fashion she was made,
Nor what her voice was, when she used to speak,
Nor if the silken lashes threw a shade
On wan or rosy cheek.
I picture her with sorrowful vague eyes,
Illumed with such strange gleams of inner light
As linger in the drift of London skies
Ere twilight turns to night.
I know not; I conjecture. 'Twas a girl
That with her own most gentle desperate hand
From out God's mystic setting plucked life's pearl--
'Tis hard to understand.
So precious life is! Even to the old
The hours are as a miser's coins, and she--
Within her hands lay youth's unminted gold
And all felicity.
[...] Read more
poem by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
In Westminster Abbey
"The Southern Transept, hardly known by any other name but Poets' Corner"
DEAN STANLEY
Tread softly here; the sacredest of tombs
Are those that hold your poets. Kings and queens
Are facile accidents of Time and Chance.
Chance sets them on the heights, they climb not there!
But he who from the darkling mass of men
Is on the wing of heavenly thought upborne
To finer ether, and becomes a voice
For all the voiceless, God annointed him:
His name shall be a star, his grave a shrine.
Tread softly here, in silent reverence tread.
Beneath those marble cenotaphs and urns
Lies richer dust than ever nature hid
Packed in the mountain's adamantine heart,
Or slyly wrapt in unsuspected sand--
The dross men toil for, and oft stain the soul.
How vain and all ignoble seems that greed
[...] Read more
poem by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
The Shipman's Tale
Listen my masters! I speak naught but truth.
From dawn to dawn they drifted on and on,
Not knowing wither nor to what dark end.
Now the North froze them, now the hot South scorched.
Some called to God, and found great comfort so;
Some gnashed their teeth with curses, some laughed
An empty laughter, seeing they yet lived,
So sweet was breath between their foolish lips.
Day after day the same relentless sun,
Night after night the same unpitying stars.
At intervals fierce lightning tore the clouds,
Showing vast hollow spaces, and the sleet
Hissed, and the torrents of the sky were loosed.
From time to time a hand relaxed its grip,
And some pale wretch slid down into the dark
With stifled moan, and transient horror seized
The rest who waited, knowing what must be.
At every turn strange shapes reached up and clutched
The whirling wreck, held on awhile, and then
Slipt back into that blackness whence they came.
[...] Read more
poem by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
A Shadow of the Night
Close on the edge of a midsummer dawn
In troubled dreams I went from land to land,
Each seven-colored like the rainbow's arc,
Regions where never fancy's foot had trod
Till then; yet all the strangeness seemed not strange,
At which I wondered, reasoning in my dream
With twofold sense, well knowing that I slept.
At last I came to this our cloud-hung earth,
And somewhere by the seashore was a grave,
A woman's grave, new-made, and heaped with flowers;
And near it stood an ancient holy man
That fain would comfort me, who sorrowed not
For this unknown dead woman at my feet.
But I, because his sacred office held
My reverence, listened; and 'twas thus he spake:--
'When next thou comest thou shalt find her still
In all the rare perfection that she was.
Thou shalt have gentle greeting of thy love!
Her eyelids will have turned to violets,
Her bosom to white lilies, and her breath
[...] Read more
poem by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
At a Reading
The spare professor, grave and bald,
Began his paper. It was called,
I think, "A Brief Historic Glance
At Russia, Germany, and France."
A glance, but to my best belief
'T was almost anything but brief--
A wide survey, in which the earth
Was seen before mankind had birth;
Strange monsters basked them in the sun,
Behemoth, armored glyptodon,
And in the dawn's unpractised ray
The transient dodo winged its way;
Then, by degrees, through slit and slough,
We reached Berlin--I don't know how.
The good Professor's monotone
Had turned me into senseless stone
Instanter, but that near me sat
Hypatia in her new spring hat,
Blue-eyed, intent, with lips whose bloom
Lighted the heavy-curtained room.
[...] Read more
poem by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Fannie
Fannie has the sweetest foot
Ever in a gaiter boot!
And the hoyden knows it,
And, of course, she shows it-
Not the knowledge, but the foot-
Yet with such a modest grace,
Never seems it out of place,
Ah, there are not many
Half so sly, or sad, or mad,
Or wickeder than Fannie.
Fannie has the blackest hair
Of any of the village girls;
It does not shower on her neck
In silken or coquettish curls.
It droops in folds around her brow,
As clouds, at night, around the moon,
Looped with lilies here and there,
In many a dangerous festoon.
And Fannie wears a gipsy hat,
[...] Read more
poem by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Thalia
"A MIDDLE-AGED LYRICAL POET IS SUPPOSED TO BE TAKING FINAL LEAVE OF THE MUSE OF COMEDY. SHE HAS BROUGHT HIM HIS HAT AND GLOVES, AND IS ABSTRACTEDLY PICKING A THREAD OF GOLD HAIR FROM HIS COAT SLEEVE AS HE BEGINS TO SPEAK:
I say it under the rose--
oh, thanks! --yes, under the laurel,
We part lovers, not foes;
we are not going to quarrel.
We have too long been friends
on foot and in guilded coaches,
Now that the whole thing ends,
to spoil our kiss with reproaches.
I leave you; my soul is wrung;
I pause, look back from the portal--
Ah, I no more am young,
and you, child, are immortal!
Mine is the glacier's way,
yours is the blossom's weather--
When were December and May
[...] Read more
poem by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Alec Yeaton's Son
GLOUCESTER, AUGUST, 1720
The wind it wailed, the wind it moaned,
And the white caps flecked the sea;
"An' I would to God," the skipper groaned,
"I had not my boy with me!
Snug in the stern-sheets, little John
Laughed as the scud swept by;
But the skipper's sunburnt cheeks grew wan
As he watched the wicked sky.
"Would he were at his mother's side!"
And the skipper's eyes were dim.
"Good Lord in heaven, if ill betide,
What would become of him!
"For me--my muscles are as steel,
For me let hap what may;
I might make shift upon the keel
[...] Read more
poem by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Sea Longings
The first world-sound that fell upon my ear
Was that of the great winds along the coast
Crushing the deep-sea beryl on the rocks--
The distant breakers' sullen cannonade.
Against the spires and gables of the town
The white fog drifted, catching here and there
At overleaning cornice or peaked roof,
And hung--weird gonfalons. The garden walks
Were choked with leaves, and on their ragged biers
Lay dead the sweets of summer--damask rose,
Clove-pink, old-fashioned, loved New England flowers
Only keen salt-sea odors filled the air.
Sea-sounds, sea-odors--these were all my world.
Hence is it that life languishes with me
Inland; the valleys stifle me with gloom
And pent-up prospect; in their narrow bound
Imagination flutters futile wings.
Vainly I seek the sloping pearl-white sand
And the mirage's phantom citadels
Miraculous, a moment seen, then gone.
[...] Read more
poem by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Monody on the Death of Wendell Phillips
I
One by one they go
Into the unknown dark--
Star-lit brows of the brave,
Voices that drew men's souls.
Rich is the land, O Death!
Can give you dead like our dead!--
Such as he from whose hand
The magic web of romance
Slipt, and the art was lost!
Such as he who erewhile--
The last of the Titan brood--
With his thunder the Senate shook;
Or he who, beside the Charles,
Untoucht of envy or hate,
Tranced the world with his song;
Or that other, that grey-eyed seer
Who in pastoral Concord ways
With Plato and Hâfiz walked.
[...] Read more
poem by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!