Poetry Books

Darkly you sweep on, Eternal Fugitive, round whose bodiless rush stagnant space frets into eddying bubbles of light. Is your heart lost to the Lover calling you across his immeasurable loneliness? Is the aching urgency of your haste the sole reason why your tangled tresses break into stormy riot and pearls of fire roll along your path as from a broken necklace? Your fleeting steps kiss the dust of this... more...

I. SUCCESS. [Published in "A Masque of Poets"at the request of "H.H.," the author'sfellow-townswoman and friend.] Success is counted sweetestBy those who ne'er succeed.To comprehend a nectarRequires sorest need. Not one of all the purple hostWho took the flag to-dayCan tell the definition,So clear, of victory, As he, defeated, dying,On whose forbidden earThe distant strains of... more...

ARGUMENT After much struggling and loss in love and in the world of man, the protagonist throws in his lot with a woman who is already married. Together they go into another country, she perforce leaving her children behind. The conflict of love and hate goes on between the man and the woman, and between these two and the world around them, till it reaches some sort of conclusion, they transcend into... more...

INTRODUCTION A few days ago I said to a distinguished Bengali doctor of medicine, 'I know no German, yet if a translation of a German poet had moved me, I would go to the British Museum and find books in English that would tell me something of his life, and of the history of his thought. But though these prose translations from Rabindranath Tagore have stirred my blood as nothing has for years, I... more...

THE KING’S WAKE To-night is the night that the wake they hold,To the wake repair both young and old. Proud Signelil she her mother address’d:“May I go watch along with the rest?” “O what at the wake wouldst do my dear?Thou’st neither sister nor brother there. “Nor brother-in-law to protect thy youth,To the wake thou must not go forsooth. “There be the King and his warriors gay,If me... more...

CANTO V Now had I left those spirits, and pursuedThe steps of my Conductor, when beheldPointing the finger at me one exclaim'd:"See how it seems as if the light not shoneFrom the left hand of him beneath, and he,As living, seems to be led on."  Mine eyesI at that sound reverting, saw them gazeThrough wonder first at me, and then at meAnd the light broken underneath, by turns."Why are... more...

BILLY KHAKI MARCHING somewhat out of order   when the band is cock-a-hoop,There's a lilting kind of magic in the swagger   of the troop,Swinging all aboard the steamer with her   nose toward the sea.What is calling, Billy Khaki, that you're foot-   ing it so free? Though his lines are none too level,   And he lacks a bit of style.And he's swanking like the devil   Where... more...

Contents with First Lines: PreludeI have gathered these stories afar, The Man from Snowy RiverThere was movement at the station, for the word had passed around Old Pardon, the Son of ReprieveYou never heard tell of the story? Clancy of the OverflowI had written him a letter which I had, for want of better Conroy's GapThis was the way of it, don't you know — Our New HorseThe boys had come... more...

THE OLD ARM-CHAIR. I love it, I love it; and who shall dare To chide me for loving that old arm-chair? I've cherished it long as a sainted prize; I've bedewed it with tears and embalmed it with sighs 'Tis bound by a thousand bands to my heart; Not a tie will break, not a link will start. Would ye learn the spell?—a mother sat there: And a sacred thing is that old arm-chair. In... more...

embellished with designs.Young Master Pig you here may seeUpon his tender Mother’s kneeNo longer he with patience sucksFor See, he’s cutting both his tusks.Behold him now in Go Cart safely tiedHis pretty feet go trotting side by sideOld Granny smiles and grunting seems to say“Ce petit prodige c’est moi qui l’ai fait.”To Master Goat next Pig is sentWhose learning is most excellentBut all his... more...