In the Great Metropolis
Each for himself is still the rule
We learn it when we go to school
The devil take the hindmost, O!
And when the schoolboys grow to men,
In life they learn it o’er again
The devil take the hindmost, O!
For in the church, and at the bar,
On ’Change, at court, where’er they are,
The devil takes the hindmost, O!
Husband for husband, wife for wife,
Are careful that in married life
The devil takes the hindmost, O!
From youth to age, whate’er the game,
The unvarying practice is the same
The devil take the hindmost, O!
[...] Read more
poem by Arthur Hugh Clough
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Elegiac I.
From thy far sources, 'mid mountains airily climbing,
Pass to the rich lowland, thou busy sunny river;
Murmuring once, dimpling, pellucid, limpid, abundant,
Deepening now, widening, swelling, a lordly river.
Through woodlands steering, with branches waving above thee,
Through the meadows sinuous, wandering irriguous;
Towns, hamlets leaving, towns by thee, bridges across thee,
Pass to palace garden, pass to cities populous.
Murmuring once, dimpling, ’mid woodlands wandering idly,
Now with mighty vessels loaded, a mighty river.
Pass to the great waters, though tides may seem to resist thee,
Tides to resist seeming, quickly will lend thee passage,
Pass to the dark waters that roaring wait to receive thee;
Pass them thou wilt not, thou busy sunny river.
poem by Arthur Hugh Clough
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Solvitur acris Hiems
Youth, that went, is come again,
Youth, for which we all were fain;
With soft pleasure and sweet pain
In each nerve and every vein,
Circling through the heart and brain,
Whence and wherefore come again?
Eva, tell me!
Dead and buried when we thought him,
Who the magic spell hath taught him?
Who the strong elixir brought him?
Dead and buried as we thought,
Lo! unasked for and unsought
Comes he, shall it be for nought?
Eva, tell me!
Youth that lifeless long had lain,
Youth that long we longed in vain for,
Used to grumble and complain for,
Thought at last to entertain
[...] Read more
poem by Arthur Hugh Clough
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Sic Itur
As, at a railway junction, men
Who came together, taking then
One the train up, one down, again
Meet never! Ah, much more as they
Who take one street’s two sides, and say
Hard parting words, but walk one way:
Though moving other mates between,
While carts and coaches intervene,
Each to the other goes unseen;
Yet seldom, surely, shall there lack
Knowledge they walk not back to back,
But with an unity of track,
Where common dangers each attend,
And common hopes their guidance lend
To light them to the self-same end.
[...] Read more
poem by Arthur Hugh Clough
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
The Stream of Life
O STREAM descending to the sea,
Thy mossy banks between,
The flowerets blow, the grasses grow,
The leafy trees are green.
In garden plots the children play,
The fields the labourers till,
And houses stand on either hand,
And thou descendest still.
O life descending into death,
Our walking eyes behold,
Parent and friend thy lapse attend,
Companions young and old.
Strong purposes our minds possess,
Our hearts affections fill,
We toil and earn, we seek and learn,
And thou descendest still.
[...] Read more
poem by Arthur Hugh Clough
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Alteram Partem
Or shall I say, Vain word, false thought,
Since prudence hath her martyrs too,
And Wisdom dictates not to do,
Till doing shall be not for nought.
Not ours to give or lose is life;
Will Nature, when her brave ones fall,
Remake her work? or songs recall
Death’s victim slain in useless strife?
That rivers flow into the sea
Is loss and waste, the foolish say,
Nor know that back they find their way,
Unseen, to where they wont to be.
Showers fall upon the hills, springs flow,
The river runneth still at hand,
Brave men are born into the land,
And whence the foolish do not know.
[...] Read more
poem by Arthur Hugh Clough
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Elegiac II.
Trunks the forest yielded with gums ambrosial oozing,
Boughs with apples laden beautiful, Hesperian,
Golden, odoriferous, perfume exhaling about them,
Orbs in a dark umbrage luminous and radiant;
To the palate grateful, more luscious were not in Eden,
Or in that fabled garden of Alcinoüs;
Out of a dark umbrage sounds also musical issued,
Birds their sweet transports uttering in melody
Thrushes clear piping, wood-pigeons cooing, arousing
Loudly the nightingale, loudly the sylvan echoes;
Waters transpicuous flowed under, flowed to the list’ning
Ear with a soft murmur, softly soporiferous;
Nor, with ebon locks too, there wanted, circling, attentive
Unto the sweet fluting, girls, of a swarthy shepherd;
Over a sunny level their flocks are lazily feeding,
They of Amor musing rest in a leafy cavern.
poem by Arthur Hugh Clough
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Revival
SO I went wrong,
Grievously wrong, but folly crushed itself,
And vanity o’ertoppling fell, and time
And healthy discipline and some neglect,
Labour and solitary hours revived
Somewhat, at least, of that original frame.
Oh, well do I remember then the days
When on some grassy slope (what time the sun
Was sinking, and the solemn eve came down
With its blue vapour upon field and wood
And elm-embosomed spire) once more again
I fed on sweet emotion, and my heart
With love o’erflowed, or hushed itself in fear
Unearthly, yea celestial. Once again
My heart was hot within me, and, me seemed,
I too had in my body breath to wind
The magic horn of song; I too possessed
Up-welling in my being’s depths a fount
Of the true poet-nectar whence to fill
The golden urns of verse.
poem by Arthur Hugh Clough (1839)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Life is Struggle
TO WEAR out heart, and nerves, and brain,
And give oneself a world of pain;
Be eager, angry, fierce, and hot,
Imperious, supple—God knows what,
For what’s all one to have or not;
O false, unwise, absurd, and vain!
For ’tis not joy, it is not gain,
It is not in itself a bliss,
Only it is precisely this
That keeps us all alive.
To say we truly feel the pain,
And quite are sinking with the strain;—
Entirely, simply, undeceived,
Believe, and say we ne’er believed
The object, e’en were it achieved,
A thing we e’er had cared to keep;
With heart and soul to hold it cheap,
And then to go and try it again;
O false, unwise, absurd, and vain!
[...] Read more
poem by Arthur Hugh Clough
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Ανεμωλια
Go, foolish thoughts, and join the throng
Of myriads gone before;
To flutter and flap and flit along
The airy limbo shore.
Go, words of sport and words of wit,
Sarcastic point and fine,
And words of wisdom, wholly fit
With folly’s to combine.
Go, words of wisdom, words of sense,
Which, while the heart belied,
The tongue still uttered for pretence,
The inner blank to hide.
Go, words of wit, so gay, so light,
That still were meant express
To soothe the smart of fancied slight
By fancies of success.
[...] Read more
poem by Arthur Hugh Clough (1850)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!