Poem Hunter: Poems - Poets - Poetry

Lo! Death has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the dim West,
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest.
There shrines and palaces and towers
(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)
Resemble nothing that is ours.
Around, by lifting winds forgot,
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters he.

No rays from the holy heaven come down
On the long night-time of that town;
But light from out the lurid sea
Streams up the turrets silently-
Gleams up the pinnacles far and free-
Up domes- up spires- up kingly halls-
Up fanes- up Babylon-like walls-
Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers
Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers-
Up many and many a marvellous shrine
Whose wreathed friezes intertwine
The viol, the violet, and the vine.
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.
So blend the turrets and shadows there
That all seem pendulous in air,
While from a proud tower in the town
Death looks gigantically down.

...

I too was a poet once O life of my words, but I cannot remember
Since I have forgotten you the love of my art too, I cannot remember

Yesterday during a coversation with my heart I learnt
that any forelock, lips, any mouth, I cannot rememeber

In the city of intellect insanity is quiet as if
the very spontainety the rabid fluidity of his speech, he cannot rememebr

Firstly I was not familiar with the mannerisms required for ruins

...

A steadfast smile courts incoming waves,
raucously lapping in song.
Undulant dominion yields prayers,
of sailors yearning to come home.

Her lips acclaim dulcet words,
torn from heaven's horizon.
Empathy echoes throughout,
Above frigid lurch clouds.


...

From a rude isle, his ruder lineage came.
The spark, that, from a suburb hovel's hearth
Ascending, wraps some capital in flame,
Hath not a meaner or more sordid birth.
And for the soul that bade him waste the earth—
The sable land-flood from some swamp obscure,
That poisons the glad husband-field with dearth,
And by destruction bids its fame endure,
Hath not a source more sullen, stagnant, and impure.

Before that Leader strode a shadowy form,
Her limbs like mist, her torch like meteor shew'd;
With which she beckon'd him through fight and storm,
And all he crush'd that cross'd his desp'rate road,
Nor thought, nor fear'd, nor look'd on what he trode;
Realms could not glut his pride, blood not slake,
So oft as e'er she shook her torch abroad—
It was Ambition bade his terrors wake;
Nor deign'd she, as of yore, a milder form to take.

No longer now she spurn'd at mean revenge,
Or stay'd her hand for conquer'd freeman's moan,
As when, the fates of aged Rome to change,
By Caesar's side she cross'd the Rubicon;
Nor joy'd she to bestow the spoils she won,
As when the banded Powers of Greece were task'd
To war beneath the Youth of Macedon:
No seemly veil her modern minion ask'd,
He saw her hideous face, and lov'd the fiend unmask'd.


...

Anyone here had a go at themselves
for a laugh? Anyone opened their wrists
with a blade in the bath? Those in the dark
at the back, listen hard. Those at the front
in the know, those of us who have, hands up,
let's show that inch of lacerated skin
between the forearm and the fist. Let's tell it
like it is: strong drink, a crimson tidemark
round the tub, a yard of lint, white towels
washed a dozen times, still pink. Tough luck.

...

When said I unmindfully,
The word coming out of mouth,
The woman sitting next to me
On the platform
Under the cool shade of the tree
Complaining of heat and humidity
Said she,
If the summer is not hot,
How will it be?


...

YES, I know that you once were my lover,
But that sort of thing has an end,
And though love and its transports are over,
You know you can still be--my friend:
I was young, too, and foolish, remember;
(Did you ever hear John Hardy sing?)
It was then, the fifteenth of November,
And this is the end of the spring!

You complain that you are not well-treated
By my suddenly altering so;
Can I help it?--you're very conceited,
If you think yourself equal to Joe.
Don't kneel at my feet, I implore you;
Don't write on the drawings you bring;
Don't ask me to say, 'I adore you,'
For, indeed, it is now no such thing.

I confess, when at Bognor we parted,
I swore that I worshipped you then--
That I was a maid broken-hearted,
And you the most charming of men.
I confess, when I read your first letter,
I blotted your name with a tear--
But, oh! I was young--knew no better,
Could I tell that I'd meet Hardy here?

How dull you are grown! how you worry,
Repeating my vows to be true--
If I said so, I told you a story,

...

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come our real work,

and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings.
...

My love,

I feel our love story to become
As ancient mythology
It will live on and on
And linger in memories

And yet, it's not an ordinary
Love story, it's epic, unique
It faced the odds of the odds

...