Poem Hunter: Poems - Poets - Poetry

Ah, well can I the day recall, when first
The conflict fierce of love I felt, and said:
If _this_ be love, how hard it is to bear!

With eyes still fixed intent upon the ground,
I saw but _her_, whose artless innocence,
Triumphant took possession of this heart.

Ah, Love, how badly hast thou governed me!
Why should affection so sincere and pure,
Bring with it such desire, such suffering?

Why not serene, and full, and free from guile
But sorrow-laden, and lamenting sore,
Should joy so great into my heart descend?

O tell me, tender heart, that sufferest so,
Why with that thought such anguish should be blent,
Compared with which, all other thoughts were naught?

That thought, that ever present in the day,
That in the night more vivid still appeared,
When all things round in sweet sleep seemed to rest:

Thou, restless, both with joy and misery
Didst with thy constant throbbings weary so
My breast, as panting in my bed I lay.

And when worn out with grief and weariness,
In sleep my eyes I closed, ah, no relief

...

I take my wine jug out among the flowers
to drink alone, without friends.

I raise my cup to entice the moon.
That, and my shadow, makes us three.

But the moon doesn't drink,
and my shadow silently follows.

I will travel with moon and shadow,

...

How does Freedom looks like?

Is it a kind of sunlight..

breaking all the fogs of mind

taking out it's immense warmth out of life!

How does Freedom shapes us all?


...

How lovely the elder brother’s
Life all laced in the other’s,
Lóve-laced!—what once I well
Witnessed; so fortune fell.
When Shrovetide, two years gone,
Our boys’ plays brought on
Part was picked for John,
Young Jóhn: then fear, then joy
Ran revel in the elder boy.
Their night was come now; all
Our company thronged the hall;
Henry, by the wall,
Beckoned me beside him:
I came where called, and eyed him
By meanwhiles; making my play
Turn most on tender byplay.
For, wrung all on love’s rack,
My lad, and lost in Jack,
Smiled, blushed, and bit his lip;
Or drove, with a diver’s dip,
Clutched hands down through clasped knees—
Truth’s tokens tricks like these,
Old telltales, with what stress
He hung on the imp’s success.
Now the other was bráss-bóld:
Hé had no work to hold
His heart up at the strain;
Nay, roguish ran the vein.
Two tedious acts were past;
Jack’s call and cue at last;

...

I wish you were here, dear,
I wish you were here.
I wish you sat on the sofa
and I sat near.
The handkerchief could be yours,
the tear could be mine, chin-bound.
Though it could be, of course,
the other way around.

I wish you were here, dear,

...

The mother still waits in the perfect haven
not restless, not grieving,
but attentive, as only mothers ever are.
She watches the world below
the way soil remembers rain.
Her fragments remain scattered,
most resting quietly in her children,
doing what fragments do best—
protecting, warning, enduring.
But one fragment remains restless.

...

We speak with the lip, and we dream in the soul,
Of some better and fairer day;
And our days, the meanwhile, to that golden goal
Are gliding and sliding away.
Now the world becomes old, now again it is young,
But 'The better' 's forever the word on the tongue.

At the threshold of life hope leads us in-
Hope plays round the mirthful boy;
Though the best of its charms may with youth begin,
Yet for age it reserves its toy.
...

Maud went to college.
Sadie stayed home.
Sadie scraped life
With a fine toothed comb.

She didn't leave a tangle in
Her comb found every strand.
Sadie was one of the livingest chicks
In all the land.


...

Why did fate let us meet today,
at a moment bitter, cruel, unkind—
when I could not ask you to stay,
nor step ahead and call you mine?
Where I couldn't reach to hold your hand,
or lose myself within your eyes,
nor whisper low, as lovers can,
you're the place where my heart lies.
If you had come a little sooner,
we might have spoken—soft and slow—

...