John Bannister Tabb Poems

Upon the Isle of Time we trace
The signs of many a vanished race:
But on the sea that laps it round,
No memory of man is found.
...

Behold, throughout the land,
On many a smoking pyre
The maple-martyrs stand
Ablaze in autumn fire.
...

Now from the throne of England one is borne,
Whom all men mourn,
Nor more as queen, than for the life that stood
The type of Motherhood.
...

Oh, wherefore were we torn,
Reluctant, from the bough,
To be a mark of scorn
Upon this bleeding Brow?
...

O thongs, for thirst
Of fiends accurst,
Ye quaffed the crimson flood!
Ah, would that we
...

Aye, have we not felt it and known,
Ere Science proclaimed it her own,
That form is but visible tone?
...

Love thy violin:
Let thy soul therein
Learn the unity
Of the mystic three,
...

As one who on the precincts of a shrine,
Treads softly, lest his footfall, echoing there,
Profane the cloistered solitude of prayer,
...

If I were dead
And yet had read
The praise you have applied,
Methinks I'd be
...

Was it thy lord the sea
That wrought this tragedy,
A spouse to spurn?
...