the wind blows east, the wind blows west;
the blue eggs in the robin’s nest
will soon have wings and beak and breast,
and flutter and fly away.
Turn, turn, my wheel! This earthen jar
a touch can make, a touch can mar;
and shall it to the Potter say,
what makest thou? Thou hast no hand?
As men who think to understand
a world by their Creator planned,
who wiser is than they.
Turn, turn, my wheel! ’T is nature’s plan
the child should grow into the man,
the man grow wrinkled, old, and gray;
in youth the heart exults and sings,
the pulses leap, the feet have wings;
in age the cricket chirps, and brings
the harvest home of day.
Turn, turn, my wheel! The human race,
of every tongue, of every place,
caucasian, Coptic, or Malay,
all that inhabit this great earth,
whatever be their rank or worth,
are kindred and allied by birth,
and made of the same clay.
Turn, turn, my wheel! What is begun
at daybreak must at dark be done,
tomorrow will be another day;
tomorrow the hot furnace flame
will search the heart and try the frame,
and stamp with honor or with shame
these vessels made of clay.
Stop, stop, my wheel! Too soon, too soon
the noon will be the afternoon,
too soon today be yesterday;
behind us in our path we cast
the broken potsherds of the past,
and all are ground to dust at last,
and trodden into clay!
The Rainy Day1
The day is cold, and dark, and dreary;
it rains, and the wind is never weary;
the vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
but at every gust the dead leaves fall,
and the day is dark and dreary.
My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
it rains, and the wind is never weary;
my thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past,
but the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
and the days are dark and dreary.
Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
thy fate is the common fate of all,
into each life some rain must fall,
some days must be dark and dreary.
The Three Silences of Molinos2
To John Greenleaf Whittier
Three Silences there are: the first of speech,
the second of desire, the third of thought;
this is the lore a Spanish monk, distraught
with dreams and visions, was the first to teach.
These Silences, commingling each with each,
made up the perfect Silence, that he sought
and prayed for, and wherein at times he caught
mysterious sounds from realms beyond our reach.
O thou, whose daily life anticipates
the life to come, and in whose thought and word
the spiritual world preponderates.
Hermit of Amesbury! thou too hast heard
voices and melodies from beyond the gates,
and speakest only when thy soul is stirred!
Travels by the Fireside1
The ceaseless rain is falling fast,
and yonder gilded vane,
immovable for three days past,
points to the misty main,
it drives me in upon myself
and to the fireside gleams,
to pleasant books that crowd my shelf,
and still more pleasant dreams,
I read whatever bards have sung
of lands beyond the sea,
and the bright days when I was young
come thronging back to me.
In fancy I can hear again
the Alpine torrent’s roar,
the mule-bells on the hills of Spain,
the sea at Elsinore.
I see the convent’s gleaming wall
rise from its groves of pine,
and towers of old cathedrals tall,
and castles by the Rhine.
I journey on by park and spire,
beneath centennial trees,
through fields with poppies all on fire,
and gleams of distant seas.
I fear no more the dust and heat,
no more I feel fatigue,
while journeying with another’s feet
o’er many a lengthening league.
Let others traverse sea and land,
and toil through various climes,
I turn the world round with my hand
reading these poets’ rhymes.
From them I learn whatever lies
beneath each changing zone,
and see, when looking with their eyes,
better than with mine own.
Twilight1
The twilight is sad and cloudy,
the wind blows wild and free,
and like the wings of sea-birds
flash the white caps of the sea.
But in the fisherman’s cottage
there shines a ruddier light,
and a little face at the window
peers out into the night.
Close, close it is pressed to the window,
as if those childish eyes
were looking into the darkness,
to see some form arise.
And a woman’s waving shadow
is passing to and fro,
now rising to the ceiling,
now bowing and bending low.
What tale do the roaring ocean,
and the night-wind, bleak and wild,
as they beat at the crazy casement,
tell to that little child?
And why do the roaring ocean,
and the night-wind, wild and bleak,
as they beat at the heart of the mother,
drive the color from her cheek?
John Greenleaf Whittier (1807 – 1892)
Autumn Thoughts1
Gone hath the Spring, with all its flowers,
and gone the Summer’s pomp and show,
and Autumn, in his leafless bowers,
is waiting for the Winter’s snow.
I said to Earth, so cold and gray,
“An emblem of myself thou art.”
“Not so,” the Earth did seem to say,
“For Spring shall warm my frozen heart.
I soothe my wintry sleep with dreams
of warmer sun and softer rain,
and wait to hear the sound of streams
and songs of merry birds again.”
“But thou, from whom the Spring hath gone,
for whom the flowers no longer blow,
who standest blighted and forlorn,
like Autumn waiting for the snow;”
“no hope is thine of sunnier hours,
thy Winter shall no more depart;
no Spring revive thy wasted flowers,
nor Summer warm thy frozen heart.”
By their Works1
Call him not heretic whose works attest
his faith in goodness by no creed confessed.
Whatever in love’s name is truly done
to free the bound and lift the fallen one
is done to Christ. Whoso in deed and word
is not against Him labors for our Lord.
When He, who, sad and weary, longing sore
for love’s sweet service, sought the sisters’ door,
one saw the heavenly, one the human guest,
but who shall say which loved the Master best?
Forgiveness2
My heart was heavy,
for its trust had been
abused, its kindness answered with foul wrong;
so, turning gloomily from my fellow-men,
one summer Sabbath day I strolled among
the green mounds of the village burial-place;
where, pondering how all human love and hate
find one sad level; and how, soon or late,
wronged and wrongdoer, each with meekened face,
and cold hands folded over a still heart,
pass the green threshold of our common grave,
whither all footsteps tend, whence none depart,
awed for myself, and pitying my race,
our common sorrow, like a mighty wave,
swept all my pride away, and trembling I forgave!
Trust1
The same old baffling questions! O my friend,
I cannot answer them. In vain I send
my soul into the dark, where never burn
the lamps of science, nor the natural light
of Reason’s sun and stars! I cannot learn
their great and solemn meanings, nor discern
the awful secrets of the eyes which turn
evermore on us through the day and night
with silent challenge and a dumb demand,
proffering the riddles of the dread unknown,
like the calm Sphinxes, with their eyes of stone,
questioning the centuries from their veils of sand!
I have no answer for myself or thee,
save that I learned beside my mother’s knee;
“All is of God that is, and is to be;
and God is good.” Let this suffice us still,
resting in childlike trust upon His will
who moves to His great ends unthwarted by the ill.
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809 – 1894)
Sun and Shadow2
As I look from the isle, o’er its billows of green,
to the billows of foam-crested blue,
yon bark, that afar in the distance is seen,
half dreaming, my eyes will pursue:
now dark in the shadow, she scatters the spray
as the chaff in the stroke of the flail;
now white as the sea-gull, she flies on her way,
the sun gleaming bright on her sail.
Yet her pilot is thinking of dangers to shun,—
of breakers that whiten and roar;
how little he cares, if in shadow or sun
they see him who gaze from the shore!
He looks to the beacon that looms from the reef,
to the rock that is under his lee,
as he drifts on the blast, like a wind-wafted leaf,
o’er the gulfs of the desolate sea.
Thus drifting afar to the dim-vaulted caves
where life and its ventures are laid,
the dreamers who gaze while we battle the waves
may see us in sunshine or shade;
yet true to our course, though the shadows grow dark,
we’ll trim our broad sail as before,
and stand by the rudder that governs the bark,
nor ask how we look from the shore!
Edgar Allan Poe (1809 – 1849)
Annabel Lee1
It was many and many a year ago,
in a kingdom by the sea,
that a maiden there lived whom you may know
by the name of Annabel Lee;
and this maiden she lived with no other thought
than to love and be loved by me.
I was a child and she was a child,
in this kingdom by the sea:
but we loved with a love that was more than love—
I and my Annabel Lee;
with a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
coveted her and me.
And this was the reason that, long ago,
in this kingdom by the sea,
a wind blew out of a cloud by night
chilling my Annabel Lee;
so that her highborn kinsman came
and bore her away from me,
to shut her up in a sepulcher
in this kingdom by the sea.
The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
went envying her and me—
yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,
in this kingdom by the sea)
that the wind came out of the cloud chilling,
and killing my Annabel Lee.
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
of those who were older than we—
of many far wiser than we—
and neither the angels in heaven above,
nor the demons down under the sea,
can ever dissever my soul from the soul
of the beautiful Annabel Lee:
for the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
and the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
and so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,
in her sepulcher there by the sea,
in her tomb by the side of the sea.
For Annie1
Thank Heaven! the crisis—
the danger is past,
and the lingering illness
is over at last—
and the fever called “Living”
is conquered at last.
Sadly, I know
I am shorn of my strength,
and no muscle I move
as I lie at full length—
but no matter!—I feel
I am better at length.
And I rest so composedly,
now, in my bed,
that any beholder
might fancy me dead—
might start at beholding me,
thinking me dead.
The moaning and groaning,
the sighing and sobbing,
are quieted now,
with that horrible throbbing
at heart:—ah, that horrible,
horrible throbbing!
The sickness—the nausea—
the pitiless pain—
have ceased, with the fever
that maddened my brain—
with the fever called “Living”
that burned in my brain.
And oh! of all tortures
that torture the worst
has abated—the terrible
torture of thirst
for the naphthalene river
of Passion accurst:—
I have drank of a water
that quenches all thirst:—
of a water that flows,
with a lullaby sound,
from a spring but a very few
feet under ground—
from a cavern not very far
down under ground.
And ah! let it never
be foolishly said
that my room it is gloomy
and narrow my bed;
for man never slept
in a different bed—
and, to sleep, you must slumber
in just such a bed.
My tantalized spirit
here blandly reposes,
forgetting, or never
regretting its roses—
its old agitations
of myrtles and roses:
for now, while so quietly
lying, it fancies
a holier odor
about it, of pansies—
a rosemary odor,
commingled with pansies—
with rue and the beautiful
puritan pansies.
And so it lies happily,
bathing in many
a dream of the truth
and the beauty of Annie—
drowned in a bath
of the tresses of Annie.
She ten
derly kissed me,
she fondly caressed,
and then I fell gently
to sleep on her breast—
deeply to sleep
from the heaven of her breast.
When the light was extinguished,
she covered me warm,
and she prayed to the angels
to keep me from harm—
to the queen of the angels
to shield me from harm.
And I lie so composedly,
now in my bed,
(knowing her love)
that you fancy me dead—
and I rest so contentedly,
now in my bed,
(with her love at my breast)
that you fancy me dead—
that you shudder to look at me,
thinking me dead:—
but my heart it is brighter
than all of the many
stars in the sky,
for it sparkles with Annie—
it glows with the light
of the love of my Annie—
with the thought of the light
of the eyes of my Annie.
The Raven1
Once upon a midnight dreary,
while I pondered, weak and weary,
over many a quaint and curious
volume of forgotten lore—
while I nodded, nearly napping,
suddenly there came a tapping,
as of some one gently rapping,
rapping at my chamber door.
“‘Tis some visitor,” I muttered,
“tapping at my chamber door—
only this and nothing more.”
Ah, distinctly I remember
it was in the bleak December,
and each separate dying ember
wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow;
—vainly I had sought to borrow
from my books surcease of sorrow
—sorrow for the lost Lenore—
for the rare and radiant maiden
whom the angels name Lenore—
nameless here for evermore.
And the silken sad uncertain
rustling of each purple curtain
thrilled me—filled me with fantastic
terrors never felt before;
so that now, to still the beating
of my heart, I stood repeating
“Tis some visitor entreating
entrance at my chamber door—
some late visitor entreating
The Giant Book of Poetry Page 13