Frederic Lawrence Knowles

Frederic Lawrence Knowles Poems

Frederic Lawrence Knowles Biography

Born at Lawrence, Massachusetts, September 8, 1869, and graduated at Wesleyan University in 1894 and Harvard University in 1896. He was connected for a short time with the editorial department of Houghton Mifflin Company and with the staff of L. C. Page and Company as literary adviser. In 1900 he accepted a similar position with Dana Estes and Company where he remained until his death in September, 1905. Mr. Knowles was the author of two volumes of verse: "On Life's Stairway", 1900, and "Love Triumphant", 1904. In addition to his own work in poetry he was the editor of several excellent anthologies, such as "The Golden Treasury of American Lyrics", 1897; "A Treasury of Humorous Poetry", 1902; and "A Year-Book of Famous Lyrics". Mr. Knowles was a poet of fine gifts and his early death was a loss to American poetry.)

The Best Poem Of Frederic Lawrence Knowles

Love Triumphant

Helen's lips are drifting dust;
Ilion is consumed with rust;
All the galleons of Greece
Drink the ocean's dreamless peace;
Lost was Solomon's purple show
Restless centuries ago;
Stately empires wax and wane --
Babylon, Barbary, and Spain; --
Only one thing, undefaced,
Lasts, though all the worlds lie waste
And the heavens are overturned.
Dear, how long ago we learned!

There's a sight that blinds the sun,
Sound that lives when sounds are done,
Music that rebukes the birds,
Language lovelier than words,
Hue and scent that shame the rose,
Wine no earthly vineyard knows,
Silence stiller than the shore
Swept by Charon's stealthy oar,
Ocean more divinely free
Than Pacific's boundless sea, --
Ye who love have learned it true.
Dear, how long ago we knew!

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