by Homer
That caught up Gauwaine, all, all, verily,
But just that which would save me; these things flit.
“Nevertheless you, O Sir Gauwaine, lie,
Whatever may have happen’d these long years, 275
God knows I speak truth, saying that you lie!
“All I have said is truth, by Christ’s dear tears.”
She would not speak another word, but stood
Turn’d sideways; listening, like a man who hears
His brother’s trumpet sounding through the wood 280
Of his foes’ lances. She leaned eagerly,
And gave a slight spring sometimes, as she could
At last hear something really; joyfully
Her cheek grew crimson, as the headlong speed
Of the roan charger drew all men to see, 285
The knight who came was Launcelot at good need.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Prologue of the Earthly Paradise
William Morris (1834–1896)
OF Heaven or Hell I have no power to sing,
I cannot ease the burden of your fears,
Or make quick-coming death a little thing,
Or bring again the pleasure of past years,
Nor for my words shall ye forget your tears, 5
Or hope again for aught that I can say,
The idle singer of an empty day.
But rather, when aweary of your mirth,
From full hearts still unsatisfied ye sigh,
And, feeling kindly unto all the earth, 10
Grudge every minute as it passes by,
Made the more mindful that the sweet days die —
— Remember me a little then I pray,
The idle singer of an empty day.
The heavy trouble, the bewildering care 15
That weighs us down who live and earn our bread,
These idle verses have no power to bear;
So let me sing of names remembered,
Because they, living not, can ne’er be dead,
Or long time take their memory quite away 20
From us poor singers of an empty day.
Dreamer of dreams, born out of my due time,
Why should I strive to set the crooked straight?
Let it suffice me that my murmuring rhyme
Beats with light wing against the ivory gate, 25
Telling a tale not too importunate
To those who in the sleepy region stay,
Lulled by the singer of an empty day.
Folk say, a wizard to a northern king
At Christmas-tide such wondrous things did show, 30
That through one window men beheld the spring,
And through another saw the summer glow,
And through a third the fruited vines a-row,
While still, unheard, but in its wonted way,
Piped the drear wind of that December day. 35
So with this Earthly Paradise it is,
If ye will read aright, and pardon me,
Who strive to build a shadowy isle of bliss
Midmost the beating of the steely sea,
Where tossed about all hearts of men must be; 40
Whose ravening monsters mighty men shall slay,
Not the poor singer of an empty day.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
The Nymph’s Song to Hylas
William Morris (1834–1896)
I KNOW a little garden-close
Set thick with lily and red rose,
Where I would wander if I might
From dewy dawn to dewy night,
And have one with me wandering. 5
And though within it no birds sing,
And though no pillar’d house is there,
And though the apple boughs are bare
Of fruit and blossom, would to God,
Her feet upon the green grass trod, 10
And I beheld them as before!
There comes a murmur from the shore,
And in the place two fair streams are,
Drawn from the purple hills afar,
Drawn down unto the restless sea; 15
The hills whose flowers ne’er fed the bee,
The shore no ship has ever seen,
Still beaten by the billows green,
Whose murmur comes unceasingly
Unto the place for which I cry. 20
For which I cry both day and night,
For which I let slip all delight,
That maketh me both deaf and blind,
Careless to win, unskill’d to find,
And quick to lose what all men seek. 25
Yet tottering as I am, and weak,
Still have I left a little breath
To seek within the jaws of death
An entrance to that happy place;
To seek the unforgotten face 30
Once seen, once kiss’d, once reft from me
Anigh the murmuring of the sea.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
The Day is Coming
William Morris (1834–1896)
COME hither, lads, and harken, for a tale there is to tell,
Of the wonderful days a-coming, when all shall be better than well.
And the tale shall be told of a country, a land in the midst of the sea,
And folk shall call it England in the days that are going to be.
There more than one in a thousand in the days that are yet to come, 5
Shall have some hope of the morrow, some joy of the ancient home.
For then, laugh not, but listen to this strange tale of mine,
All folk that are in England shall be better lodged than swine.
Then a man shall work and bethink him, and rejoice in the deed of his hand,
Nor yet come home in the even too faint and weary to stand. 10
Men in that time a-coming shall work and have no fear
For to-morrow’s lack of earning and the hunger-wolf anear.
I tell you this for a wonder, that no man then shall be glad
Of his fellow’s fall and mishap to snatch at the work he had.
For that which the worker winneth shall then be his indeed, 15
Nor shall half be reaped for nothing by him that sowed no seed.
O strange new wonderful justice! But for whom shall we gather the gain?
For ourselves and for each of our fellows, and no hand shall labor in vain.
Then all Mine and all Thine shall be Ours, and no more shall any man crave
For riches that serve for nothing but to fetter a friend for a slave. 20
And what wealth then shall be left us when none shall gather gold
To buy his friend in the market, and pinch and pine the sold?
Nay, what save the lovely city, and the little house on the hill,
And the wastes and the woodland beauty, and the happy fields we till;
And the homes of ancient stories, the tombs of the mighty dead; 25
And the wise men seeking out marvels, and the poet’s teeming head;
And the painter’s hand of wonder; and the marvelous fiddle-bow,
And the banded choirs of music: all those that do and know.
For all these shall be ours and all men’s; nor shall any lack a share
Of the toil and the gain of living in the days when the world grows fair. 30
Ah! such are the days that shall be! But what are the deeds of to-day,
In the days of the years we dwell in, that wear our lives away?
Why, then, and for what are we waiting? There are three words to speak;
WE WILL IT, and what is the foeman but the dream-strong wakened and weak?
O why and for what are we waiting? while our brothers droop and die, 35
And on every wind of the heavens a wast
ed life goes by.
How long shall they reproach us where crowd on crowd they dwell,
Poor ghosts of the wicked city, the gold-crushed, hungry hell?
Through squalid life they labored, in sordid grief they died,
Those sons of a mighty mother, those props of England’s pride. 40
They are gone; there is none can undo it, nor save our souls from the curse;
But many a million cometh, and shall they be better or worse?
It is we must answer and hasten, and open wide the door
For the rich man’s hurrying terror, and the slow-foot hope of the poor.
Yea, the voiceless wrath of the wretched, and their unlearned discontent, 45
We must give it voice and wisdom till the waiting-tide be spent.
Come, then, since all things call us, the living and the dead,
And o’er the weltering tangle a glimmering light is shed.
Come, then, let us cast off fooling, and put by ease and rest,
For the Cause alone is worthy till the good days bring the best. 50
Come, join in the only battle wherein no man can fail,
Where whoso fadeth and dieth, yet his deed shall still prevail.
Ah! come, cast off all fooling, for this, at least, we know:
That the Dawn the Day is coming, and forth the Banners go.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
The Days That Were
William Morris (1834–1896)
WHILES in the early winter eve
We pass amid the gathering night
Some homestead that we had to leave
Years past; and see its candles bright
Shine in the room beside the door 5
Where we were merry years agone,
But now must never enter more,
As still the dark road drives us on.
E’en so the world of men may turn
At even of some hurried day 10
And see the ancient glimmer burn
Across the waste that hath no way;
Then, with that faint light in its eyes,
Awhile I bid it linger near
And nurse in waving memories 15
The bitter sweet of days that were.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
John Boyle O’Reilly
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
A White Rose
John Boyle O’Reilly (1844–1890)
THE RED rose whispers of passion,
And the white rose breathes of love;
O, the red rose is a falcon,
And the white rose is a dove.
But I send you a cream-white rosebud 5
With a flush on its petal tips;
For the love that is purest and sweetest
Has a kiss of desire on the lips.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Arthur William Edgar O’Shaughnessy
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Ode
Arthur William Edgar O’Shaughnessy (1844–1881)
WE are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers, 5
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.
With wonderful deathless ditties
And out of a fabulous story 10
We build up the world’s great cities,
We fashion an empire’s glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song’s measure 15
Can trample an empire down.
We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth; 20
And o’erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world’s worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Robert Williams Buchanan
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Liz
Robert Williams Buchanan (1841–1901)
THE CRIMSON light of sunset falls
Through the grey glamour of the murmuring rain,
And creeping o’er the housetops crawls
Through the black smoke upon the broken pane,
Steals to the straw on which she lies, 5
And tints her thin black hair and hollow cheeks,
Her sun-tanned neck, her glistening eyes, —
While faintly, sadly, fitfully she speaks.
But when it is no longer light,
The pale girl smiles, with only One to mark, 10
And dies upon the breast of Night,
Like trodden snowdrift melting in the dark.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Algernon Charles Swinburne
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Chorus from ‘Atalanta’
Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909)
WHEN the hounds of spring are on winter’s traces,
The mother of months in meadow or plain
Fills the shadows and windy places
With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain;
And the brown bright nightingale amorous 5
Is half assuaged for Itylus,
For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces,
The tongueless vigil, and all the pain.
Come with bows bent and with emptying of quivers,
Maiden most perfect, lady of light, 10
With a noise of winds and many rivers,
With a clamour of waters, and with might;
Bind on thy sandals, O thou most fleet,
Over the splendour and speed of thy feet;
For the faint east quickens, the wan west shivers, 15
Round the feet of the day and the feet of the night.
Where shall we find her, how shall we sing to her,
Fold our hands round her knees, and cling?
O that man’s heart were as fire and could spring to her,
Fire, or the strength of the streams that spring! 20
For the stars and the winds are unto her
As raiment, as songs of the harp-player;
For the risen stars and the fallen cling to her,
And the southwest-wind and the west-wind sing.
For winter’s rains and ruins are over, 25
And all the season of snows and sins;
The days dividing lover and lover,
The light that loses, the night that wins;
And time remember’d is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten, 30
And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the spring begins.
The full streams feed on flower of rushes,
Ripe grasses trammel a travelling foot,
The faint fresh flame of the young year flushes 35
From leaf to flower and flower to fruit;
And fruit and leaf are as gold and fire,
And the oat is heard above the lyre,
And the hoofèd heel of a satyr crushes
The chestnut-husk at the chestnut-root. 40
And Pan by noon and Bacchus by night,
Fleeter of foo
t than the fleet-foot kid,
Follows with dancing and fills with delight
The Mænad and the Bassarid;
And soft as lips that laugh and hide 45
The laughing leaves of the trees divide,
And screen from seeing and leave in sight
The god pursuing, the maiden hid.
The ivy falls with the Bacchanal’s hair
Over her eyebrows hiding her eyes; 50
The wild vine slipping down leaves bare
Her bright breast shortening into sighs;
The wild vine slips with the weight of its leaves,
But the berried ivy catches and cleaves
To the limbs that glitter, the feet that scare 55
The wolf that follows, the fawn that flies.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Itylus
Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909)
SWALLOW, my sister, O sister swallow,
How can thine heart be full of the spring?
A thousand summers are over and dead.
What hast thou found in the spring to follow?
What hast thou found in thine heart to sing? 5