Delphi Poetry Anthology: The World's Greatest Poems (Delphi Poets Series Book 50)

by Homer

  AT the last, tenderly,

  From the walls of the powerful fortress’d house,

  From the clasp of the knitted locks, from the keep of the well-closed doors,

  Let me be wafted.

  Let me glide noiselessly forth; 5

  With the key of softness unlock the locks — with a whisper,

  Set ope the doors O soul.

  Tenderly — be not impatient,

  (Strong is your hold O mortal flesh,

  Strong is your hold O love). 10

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  D. H. Lawrence

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  A Winter’s Tale

  Yesterday the fields were only grey with scattered snow,

  And now the longest grass-leaves hardly emerge;

  Yet her deep footsteps mark the snow, and go

  On towards the pines at the hills’ white verge.

  I cannot see her, since the mist’s white scarf

  Obscures the dark wood and the dull orange sky;

  But she’s waiting, I know, impatient and cold, half

  Sobs struggling into her frosty sigh.

  Why does she come so promptly, when she must know

  That she’s only the nearer to the inevitable farewell;

  The hill is steep, on the snow my steps are slow —

  Why does she come, when she knows what I have to tell?

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  Snake

  A snake came to my water-trough

  On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,

  To drink there.

  In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob-tree

  I came down the steps with my pitcher

  And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before

  me.

  He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom

  And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of

  the stone trough

  And rested his throat upon the stone bottom,

  And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,

  He sipped with his straight mouth,

  Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body,

  Silently.

  Someone was before me at my water-trough,

  And I, like a second comer, waiting.

  He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,

  And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,

  And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment,

  And stooped and drank a little more,

  Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth

  On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.

  The voice of my education said to me

  He must be killed,

  For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.

  And voices in me said, If you were a man

  You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.

  But must I confess how I liked him,

  How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough

  And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,

  Into the burning bowels of this earth?

  Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him? Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him? Was it humility, to feel so honoured?

  I felt so honoured.

  And yet those voices:

  If you were not afraid, you would kill him!

  And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid, But even so, honoured still more

  That he should seek my hospitality

  From out the dark door of the secret earth.

  He drank enough

  And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken,

  And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black,

  Seeming to lick his lips,

  And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air,

  And slowly turned his head,

  And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream,

  Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round

  And climb again the broken bank of my wall-face.

  And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,

  And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered farther,

  A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole,

  Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after,

  Overcame me now his back was turned.

  I looked round, I put down my pitcher,

  I picked up a clumsy log

  And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.

  I think it did not hit him,

  But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed in undignified haste.

  Writhed like lightning, and was gone

  Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front,

  At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination.

  And immediately I regretted it.

  I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act!

  I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.

  And I thought of the albatross

  And I wished he would come back, my snake.

  For he seemed to me again like a king,

  Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,

  Now due to be crowned again.

  And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords

  Of life.

  And I have something to expiate:

  A pettiness.

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  Anxiety

  The hoar-frost crumbles in the sun,

  The crisping steam of a train

  Melts in the air, while two black birds

  Sweep past the window again.

  Along the vacant road, a red

  Bicycle approaches; I wait

  In a thaw of anxiety, for the boy

  To leap down at our gate.

  He has passed us by; but is it

  Relief that starts in my breast?

  Or a deeper bruise of knowing that still

  She has no rest.

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  Bavarian Gentians

  Not every man has gentians in his house

  in Soft September, at slow, Sad Michaelmas.

  Bavarian gentians, big and dark, only dark

  darkening the daytime torchlike with the smoking blueness of Pluto’s

  gloom,

  ribbed and torchlike, with their blaze of darkness spread blue

  down flattening into points, flattened under the sweep of white day

  torch-flower of the blue-smoking darkness, Pluto’s dark-blue daze,

  black lamps from the halls of Dis, burning dark blue,

  giving off darkness, blue darkness, as Demeter’s pale lamps give off

  light,

  lead me then, lead me the way.

  Reach me a gentian, give me a torch!

  Let me guide myself with the blue, forked torch of a flower

  down the darker and darker stairs, where blue is darkened on blueness

  down the way Persephone goes, just now, in first-frosted September

  to the sightless realm where darkness is married to dark

  and Persephone herself is but a voice, as a bride

  a gloom invisible enfolded in the deeper dark

  of the arms of Pluto as he ravishes her once again

  and pierces her once more with his passion of the utter dark

/>   among the splendour of black-blue torches, shedding

  fathomless darkness on the nuptials.

  Bavarian gentians, tall and dark, but dark

  darkening the daytime torch-like with the smoking blueness of Pluto’s gloom,

  ribbed hellish flowers erect, with their blaze of darkness spread blue,

  blown flat into points, by the heavy white draught of the day.

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  A Passing Bell

  Mournfully to and fro, to and fro the trees are waving;

  What did you say, my dear?

  The rain-bruised leaves are suddenly shaken, as a child

  Asleep still shakes in the clutch of a sob —

  Yes, my love, I hear.

  One lonely bell, one only, the storm-tossed afternoon is braving,

  Why not let it ring?

  The roses lean down when they hear it, the tender, mild

  Flowers of the bleeding-heart fall to the throb —

  It is such a little thing!

  A wet bird walks on the lawn, call to the boy to come and look,

  Yes, it is over now.

  Call to him out of the silence, call him to see

  The starling shaking its head as it walks in the grass —

  Ah, who knows how?

  He cannot see it, I can never show it him, how it shook —

  Don’t disturb him, darling.

  — Its head as it walked: I can never call him to me,

  Never, he is not, whatever shall come to pass.

  No, look at the wet starling.

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  Belief

  Forever nameless

  Forever unknwon

  Forever unconceived

  Forever unrepresented

  yet forever felt in the soul.

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  Butterfly

  Butterfly, the wind blows sea-ward,

  strong beyond the garden-wall!

  Butterfly, why do you settle on my

  shoe, and sip the dirt on my shoe,

  Lifting your veined wings, lifting them?

  big white butterfly!

  Already it is October, and the wind

  blows strong to the sea

  from the hills where snow must have

  fallen, the wind is polished with

  snow.

  Here in the garden, with red

  geraniums, it is warm, it is warm

  but the wind blows strong to sea-ward,

  white butterfly, content on my shoe!

  Will you go, will you go from my warm

  house?

  Will you climb on your big soft wings,

  black-dotted,

  as up an invisible rainbow, an arch

  till the wind slides you sheer from the

  arch-crest

  and in a strange level fluttering you go

  out to sea-ward, white speck!

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  A Love Song

  Reject me not if I should say to you

  I do forget the sounding of your voice,

  I do forget your eyes that searching through

  The mists perceive our marriage, and rejoice.

  Yet, when the apple-blossom opens wide

  Under the pallid moonlight’s fingering,

  I see your blanched face at my breast, and hide

  My eyes from diligent work, malingering.

  Ah, then, upon my bedroom I do draw

  The blind to hide the garden, where the moon

  Enjoys the open blossoms as they straw

  Their beauty for his taking, boon for boon.

  And I do lift my aching arms to you,

  And I do lift my anguished, avid breast,

  And I do weep for very pain of you,

  And fling myself at the doors of sleep, for rest.

  And I do toss through the troubled night for you,

  Dreaming your yielded mouth is given to mine,

  Feeling your strong breast carry me on into

  The peace where sleep is stronger even than wine.

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  Dreams

  All people dream, but not equally.

  Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their mind,

  Wake in the morning to find that it was vanity.

  But the dreamers of the day are dangerous people,

  For they dream their dreams with open eyes,

  And make them come true.

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  Trust

  Oh we’ve got to trust

  one another again

  in some essentials.

  Not the narrow little

  bargaining trust

  that says: I’m for you

  if you’ll be for me. -

  But a bigger trust,

  a trust of the sun

  that does not bother

  about moth and rust,

  and we see it shining

  in one another.

  Oh don’t you trust me,

  don’t burden me

  with your life and affairs; don’t

  thrust me

  into your cares.

  But I think you may trust

  the sun in me

  that glows with just

  as much glow as you see

  in me, and no more.

  But if it warms

  your heart’s quick core

  why then trust it, it forms

  one faithfulness more.

  And be, oh be

  a sun to me,

  not a weary, insistent

  personality

  but a sun that shines

  and goes dark, but shines

  again and entwines

  with the sunshine in me

  till we both of us

  are more glorious

  and more sunny.

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  W. B. Yeats

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  When You Are Old

  WHEN you are old and grey and full of sleep,

  And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

  And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

  Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

  How many loved your moments of glad grace,

  And loved your beauty with love false or true,

  But one man loved the pilgrim Soul in you,

  And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

  And bending down beside the glowing bars,

  Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

  And paced upon the mountains overhead

  And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  The Stolen Child

  Where dips the rocky highland

  Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,

  There lies a leafy island

  Where flapping herons wake

  The drowsy water rats;

  There we’ve hid our faery vats,

  Full of berrys

  And of reddest stolen cherries.

  Come away, O human child!

  To the waters and the wild

  With a faery, hand in hand,

  For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

  Where the wave of moonlight glosses

  The dim gray sands with light,

  Far off by furthest Rosses

  We foot it all the night,

>   Weaving olden dances

  Mingling hands and mingling glances

  Till the moon has taken flight;

  To and fro we leap

  And chase the frothy bubbles,

  While the world is full of troubles

  And anxious in its sleep.

  Come away, O human child!

  To the waters and the wild

  With a faery, hand in hand,

  For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

  Where the wandering water gushes

  From the hills above Glen-Car,

  In pools among the rushes

  That scarce could bathe a star,

  We seek for slumbering trout

  And whispering in their ears

  Give them unquiet dreams;

  Leaning softly out

  From ferns that dropp their tears

  Over the young streams.

  Come away, O human child!

  To the waters and the wild

  With a faery, hand in hand,

  For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

  Away with us he’s going,

  The solemn-eyed:

  He’ll hear no more the lowing

  Of the calves on the warm hillside

  Or the kettle on the hob

  Sing peace into his breast,