Poem of the day-121: Time and Love by Shakespeare

   When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced

     The rich proud cost of out-worn buried age;

     When sometime lofty towers I see down-razed,

     And brass eternal slave to mortal rage.

     When I have seen the hungry ocean gain

     Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,

     And the firm soil win of the watery main,

     Increasing store with loss, and loss with store.

     When I have seen such interchange of state,

     Or state itself confounded to decay,

     Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate—

     That Time will come and take my Love away.

     —This thought is as a death, which cannot choose

     But weep to have that which it fears to lose.

Poem of the day-120: SUMMONS TO LOVE by William Drummond of Hawthornden

Phoebus, arise!

     And paint the sable skies

     With azure, white, and red:

     Rouse Memnon's mother from her Tithon's bed

     That she may thy career with roses spread:

     The nightingales thy coming eachwhere sing:

     Make an eternal spring!

     Give life to this dark world which lieth dead;

     Spread forth thy golden hair

     In larger locks than thou wast wont before,

     And emperor-like decore

     With diadem of pearl thy temples fair:

     Chase hence the ugly night

     Which serves but to make dear thy glorious light.

     —This is that happy morn,

     That day, long wishéd day

     Of all my life so dark,

     (If cruel stars have not my ruin sworn

     And fates not hope betray),

     Which, purely white, deserves

     An everlasting diamond should it mark.

     This is the morn should bring unto this grove

     My Love, to hear and recompense my love.

     Fair King, who all preserves,

     But show thy blushing beams,

     And thou two sweeter eyes

     Shalt see than those which by Penéus' streams

     Did once thy heart surprize.

     Now, Flora, deck thyself in fairest guise:

     If that ye winds would hear

     A voice surpassing far Amphion's lyre,

     Your furious chiding stay;

     Let Zephyr only breathe

     And with her tresses play.

     —The winds all silent are,

     And Phoebus in his chair

     Ensaffroning sea and air

     Makes vanish every star:

     Night like a drunkard reels

     Beyond the hills, to shun his flaming wheels:

     The fields with flowers are deck'd in every hue,

     The clouds with orient gold spangle their blue;

     Here is the pleasant place—

     And nothing wanting is, save She, alas.

Poem of the day-119: The Life without Passion by Shakespeare

They that have power to hurt, and will do none,      

That do not do the thing they most do show,

Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,       

Unmovèd, cold, and to temptation slow,—   

 

They rightly do inherit heaven's graces,      
And husband nature's riches from expense;

They are the lords and owners of their faces,           

Others, but stewards of their excellence.     

 

The summer's flower is to the summer sweet,        

Though to itself it only live and die;      

But if that flower with base infection meet,    

The basest weed outbraves his dignity:        

 

For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;

Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

Poem of the day-118: How Sleep The Brave by William Collins

How sleep the brave, who sink to rest
By all their Country's wishes blessed!
When spring, with dewy fingers cold,
Returns to deck their hallowed mould,
She there shall dress a sweeter sod
Than fancy's feet have ever trod.

By fairy hands their knell is rung;
By forms unseen their dirge is sung;
There honor comes, a pilgrim gray,
To bless the turf that wraps their clay;
And freedom shall awhile repair,
To dwell a weeping hermit there!

Write-up on William Collins from Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Collins_(poet)

Grateful thanks to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Poem of the day-117: Song - A Spirit Haunts The Year's Last Hours... by Alfred Lord Tennyson

Song - A Spirit Haunts The Year's Last Hours...

by Alfred Lord Tennyson

I

A spirit haunts the year's last hours
Dwelling amid these yellowing bowers:
To himself he talks;
For at eventide, listening earnestly,
At his work you may hear him sob and sigh
In the walks;
Earthward he boweth the heavy stalks
Of the mouldering flowers:
Heavily hangs the broad sunflower
Over its grave i' the earth so chilly;
Heavily hangs the hollyhock,
Heavily hangs the tiger-lily.

II

The air is damp, and hush'd, and close,
As a sick man's room when he taketh repose
An hour before death;
My very heart faints and my whole soul grieves
At the moist rich smell of the rotting leaves,
And the breath
Of the fading edges of box beneath,
And the year's last rose.
Heavily hangs the broad sunflower
Over its grave i' the earth so chilly;
Heavily hangs the hollyhock,
Heavily hangs the tiger-lily.

Poem of the day-116: Song on May Morning by John Milton

NOW the bright morning-star, Day’s harbinger,
Comes dancing from the East, and leads with her
The flowery May, who from her green lap throws
The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose.
       Hail, bounteous May, that dost inspire 5
       Mirth, and youth, and warm desire!
       Woods and groves are of thy dressing;
       Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing.
Thus we salute thee with our early song,
And welcome thee, and wish thee long.

Poem of the day-115: A Happy Life by Sir Henry Wotton

How happy is he born and taught
That serveth not another's will;
Whose armour is his honest thought,
And simple truth his utmost skill!

Whose passions not his masters are;
Whose soul is still prepared for death,
Untied unto the world by care
Of public fame or private breath;

Who envies none that chance doth raise,
Nor vice; who never understood
How deepest wounds are given by praise;
Nor rules of state, but rules of good;

Who hath his life from rumours freed;
Whose conscience is his strong retreat;
Whose state can neither flatterers feed,
Nor ruin make oppressors great;

Who God doth late and early pray
More of His grace than gifts to lend;
And entertains the harmless day
With a religious book or friend;

—This man is freed from servile bands
Of hope to rise or fear to fall:
Lord of himself, though not of lands,
And having nothing, yet hath all.

Write-up on Sir Henry Wottom from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Wotton

Grateful thanks to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Poem of the day-114: Hunting Song by Sir Walter Scott

Waken, lords and ladies gay;
On the mountain dawns the day;
All the jolly chase is here
With hawk and horse and hunting-spear!
Hounds are in their couples yelling;
Hawks are whistling; horns are knelling;
Merrily, merrily, mingle they;
"Waken, lords and ladies gay";

Waken, lords and ladies gay;
The mist has left the mountain grey;
Springlets in the dawn are streaming;
Diamonds on the brake are gleaming;
And foresters have busy been
To track the buck in thicket green;
Now we come to chant our lay;
"Waken, lords and ladies gay"

Waken, lords and ladies gay;
To the green wood haste away;
We can show you where he lies
Fleet of foot and tall of size;
We can show the marks he made,
When  'gainst the oak his antlers fray'd;
You shall see him brought to bay;
"Waken, lords and ladies gay"

Louder, louder chant the lay,
Waken, lords and ladies gay!
Tell them youth, and mirth, and glee
Run a course as well as we;
Time, stern huntsman!  who can baulk?
Stanch as hound, and fleet as hawk;
Think of this, and rise with day,
Gentle lords and ladies gay.

Write-up on Sir Walter Scott from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Scott

Full Text of Some Poems of Sir Walter Scott from Project Gutenberg:
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/wspm10h.htm

Grateful thanks to Project Gutenberg and Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Poem of the day-113: Phedre by Oscar Wilde

Phedre by Oscar Wilde
(To Sarah Bernhardt)


How vain and dull this common world must seem
To such a One as thou, who should'st have talked
At Florence with Mirandola, or walked
Through the cool olives of the Academe:
Thou should'st have gathered reeds from a green stream
For Goat-foot Pan's shrill piping, and have played
With the white girls in that Phaeacian glade
Where grave Odysseus wakened from his dream.

Ah! surely once some urn of Attic clay
Held thy wan dust, and thou hast come again
Back to this common world so dull and vain,
For thou wert weary of the sunless day,
The heavy fields of scentless asphodel,
The loveless lips with which men kiss in Hell.

Poem of the day-112: Spring by Charles D’Orleans

The year has changed his mantle cold
Of wind, of rain, of bitter air;
And he goes clad in cloth of gold,
Of laughing suns and season fair;
No bird or beast of wood or wold
But doth with cry or song declare
The year lays down his mantle cold.
All founts, all rivers, seaward rolled,
The pleasant summer livery wear,
With silver studs on broidered vair;
The world puts off its raiment old,
The year lays down his mantle cold.

Poem of the day-111: The Deluge by David Richards

Whether to the east or west
You go, wondrous through all
Are the myriad clouds;
Dense and grim they appear—
Black and fierce the firmament,
Dark and horrid is all.
A ray of light’s not seen,
But light’ning white and flashy,
Thunder throughout the heavens,
A torrent from on high.
A thousand cascades roar
Boiling with floods of hate,
Rivers all powerful
With great commotion rush.
The air disturb’d is seen,
While the distant sea’s in uproar:
The heaving ocean bounds,
Within its prison wild;
Great thundering throughout
The bottomless abyss.
Some folk, simple and bewilder’d,
For shelter seek the mountains;
Shortly the raging waters
Drown their loftiest summits.
Where shall they go, where flee
From the eternal torrent?
Conscience, a ready witness,
Having been long asleep,
Mute among mortals,
Now awakens with stinging pangs.

Poem of the day-110: Rob Roy, a ballad by Sir Walter Scott

Rob Roy from the Highlands cam,
Unto the Lawlan’ border,
To steal awa a gay ladie
To haud his house in order.
He cam oure the lock o’ Lynn,
Twenty men his arms did carry;
Himsel gaed in, an’ fand her out,
Protesting he would many.
“O will ye gae wi’ me,” he says,
“Or will ye be my honey?
Or will ye be my wedded wife?

For I love you best of any.”
“I winna gae wi’ you,” she says,
“Nor will I be your honey,
Nor will I be your wedded wife;
You love me for my money.”
* * * * *
But he set her on a coal-black steed,
Himsel lap on behind her,
An’ he’s awa to the Highland hills,
Whare her frien’s they canna find her.
* * * * *
“Rob Roy was my father ca’d,
Macgregor was his name, ladie;
He led a band o’ heroes bauld,
An’ I am here the same, ladie.
Be content, be content,
Be content to stay, ladie,
For thou art my wedded wife
Until thy dying day, ladie.
“He was a hedge unto his frien’s,
A heckle to his foes, ladie,
Every one that durst him wrang,
He took him by the nose, ladie.
I’m as bold, I’m as bold,
I’m as bold, an more, ladie;
He that daurs dispute my word,
Shall feel my guid claymore, ladie.”

Write-up on Sir Walter Scott from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Scott

Project Gutenberg's Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated, by Sir Walter Scott:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/7025/7025-h/7025-h.htm

Grateful thanks to Project Gutenberg and Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Poem of the day-109: Travel by R L Stevenson

I should like to rise and go
Where the golden apples grow;--
Where below another sky
Parrot islands anchored lie,
And, watched by cockatoos and goats,
Lonely Crusoes building boats;--
Where in sunshine reaching out
Eastern cities, miles about,
Are with mosque and minaret
Among sandy gardens set,
And the rich goods from near and far
Hang for sale in the bazaar;--
Where the Great Wall round China goes,
And on one side the desert blows,
And with the voice and bell and drum,
Cities on the other hum;--
Where are forests hot as fire,
Wide as England, tall as a spire,
Full of apes and cocoa-nuts
And the negro hunters' huts;--
Where the knotty crocodile
Lies and blinks in the Nile,
And the red flamingo flies
Hunting fish before his eyes;--
Where in jungles near and far,
Man-devouring tigers are,
Lying close and giving ear
Lest the hunt be drawing near,
Or a comer-by be seen
Swinging in the palanquin;--
Where among the desert sands
Some deserted city stands,
All its children, sweep and prince,
Grown to manhood ages since,
Not a foot in street or house,
Not a stir of child or mouse,
And when kindly falls the night,
In all the town no spark of light.
There I'll come when I'm a man
With a camel caravan;
Light a fire in the gloom
Of some dusty dining room;
See the pictures on the walls,
Heroes, fights and festivals;
And in a corner find the toys
Of the old Egyptian boys.

Poem of the day-108: Music, an Ode by A C Swinburne

I
Was it light that spake from the darkness, or music that shone from the word,
When the night was enkindled with sound of the sun or the first-born bird?
Souls enthralled and entrammelled in bondage of seasons that fall and rise,
Bound fast round with the fetters of flesh, and blinded with light that dies,
Lived not surely till music spake, and the spirit of life was heard.

II
Music, sister of sunrise, and herald of life to be,
Smiled as dawn on the spirit of man, and the thrall was free.
Slave of nature and serf of time, the bondman of life and death,
Dumb with passionless patience that breathed but forlorn and reluctant breath,
Heard, beheld, and his soul made answer, and communed aloud with the sea.

III
Morning spake, and he heard: and the passionate silent noon
Kept for him not silence: and soft from the mounting moon
Fell the sound of her splendour, heard as dawn's in the breathless night,
Not of men but of birds whose note bade man's soul quicken and leap to light:
And the song of it spake, and the light and the darkness of earth were as chords in tune.

Write-up on A C Swinburne from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algernon_Charles_Swinburne

Full Text of A MIDSUMMER HOLIDAY AND OTHER POEMS BY SWINBURNE from Project Gutenberg:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18424/18424-h/18424-h.htm

Grateful thanks to Project Gutenberg and Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Poem of the day-107: I Dream'd I Lay by Robert Burns

I dream'd I lay where flowers were springing
Gaily in the sunny beam;
List'ning to the wild birds singing,
By a falling crystal stream:
Straight the sky grew black and daring;
Thro' the woods the whirlwinds rave;
Tress with aged arms were warring,
O'er the swelling drumlie wave.

Such was my life's deceitful morning,
Such the pleasures I enjoyed:
But lang or noon, loud tempests storming
A' my flowery bliss destroy'd.
Tho' fickle fortune has deceiv'd me—
She promis'd fair, and perform'd but ill,
Of mony a joy and hope bereav'd me—
I bear a heart shall support me still.

Poem of the day-106: The Daffodils by William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

Poem of the day-105: In the woods by Emerson

Oh, when I am safe in my sylvan home
I tread on the pride of Greece and Rome*
But when I am stretched beneath the pines,
When the evening star so lonely shines,
I laugh at the love and the pride of man,
At the sophist's schools and the learned clan;
For what are they all in their high conceit
When man in the bush with God can meet?

Ralph Waldo Emerson
From " Good-bye, Proud World "

Poem of the day-104: The Ladder of St Augustin by Longfellow

We have not wings, we cannot soar;
But we have feet to scale and climb
By slow degrees, by more and more,
The cloudy summits of our time.

The heights by great men reached and kept 
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night.

Poem of the day-103: Heaven from all creatures hides the book of Fate by Alexander Pope

’T is true,’t is certain; man though dead retains, Part of himself: the immortal mind remains.

Reason’s whole pleasure, all the joys of sense, Lie in three words health, peace, and competence.

Words are like leaves; and where they most abound, much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found.

Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly! O grave! Where is thy victory? O death! Where is thy sting?

Manners with fortunes, humors turn with climes, Tenets with books, and principles with times.

Heaven from all creatures hides the book of Fate, All but the page prescribed, their present state.

I never knew any man in my life that could not bear another’s misfortunes perfectly like a Christian.

Means not, but blunders round about a meaning; And he whose fustian’s so sublimely bad, It is not poetry, but prose run mad.

Curse on all laws but those which love has made! Love, free as air at sight of human ties, Spreads his light wings, and in a moment flies.

It is not strength, but art, obtains the prize, And to be swift is less than to be wise.’T is more by art than force of num’rous strokes.

A brave man struggling in the storms of fate, and greatly falling with a falling state. While Cato gives his little senate laws, what bosom beats not in his country’s cause?

Stuff the head, With all such reading as was never read: For thee explain a thing till all men doubt it, And write about it, goddess, and about it.

Hope springs eternal in the human breast: Man never is, but always to be blest. The soul, uneasy and confined from home, Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, And drinking largely sobers us again.

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, As those move easiest who have learn’d to dance.’T is not enough no harshness gives offence — The sound must seem an echo to the sense.

Chiefs who no more in bloody fights engage, But wise through time, and narrative with age, In summer-days like grasshoppers rejoice — A bloodless race, that send a feeble voice.

Of all the causes which conspire to blind, Man’s erring judgment, and misguide the mind; What the weak head with strongest bias rules — Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools.

Like leaves on trees the race of man is found — Now green in youth, now withering on the ground; Another race the following spring supplies: They fall successive, and successive rise.

All nature is but art, unknown to thee; All chance, direction, which thou canst not see; All discord, harmony not understood; All partialevil, universal good; And spite of pride, in erring reason’s spite, One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right.

Write-up on Alexander Pope from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Pope

Full Text of Works of Alexander Pope from Project Gutenberg:

• An Essay on Criticism (English) (as Author)
• An Essay on Man (English) (as Author)
• The Iliad (English) (as Translator)
• The Odyssey (English) (as Translator)
• The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope, Volume 1 (English) (as Author)
• The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope, Volume 2 (English) (as Author)
• The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems (English) (as Author)
• Three Hours after Marriage (English) (as Author)
• The Works of Alexander Pope, Volume 1
  New Edition (English) (as Author)

Grateful thanks to Project Gutenberg and Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Poem of the day-102: The Winter Evening by William Cowper

....
In such a world, so thorny, and where none
Finds happiness unblighted, or if found,
Without some thistly sorrow at its side,
It seems the part of wisdom, and no sin
Against the law of love, to measure lots
With less distinguished than ourselves, that thus
We may with patience bear our moderate ills,
And sympathise with others, suffering more.
....

From The Winter Evening by William Cowper