Down To The Mothers

Linger no more, my beloved, by abbey and cell and cathedral;
Mourn not for holy ones mourning of old them who knew not the Father,
Weeping with fast and scourge, when the bridegroom was taken from them.
Drop back awhile through the years, to the warm rich youth of the nations,
Childlike in virtue and faith, though childlike in passion and pleasure,
Childlike still, and still near to their God, while the day-spring of Eden
Lingered in rose-red rays on the peaks of Ionian mountains.
Down to the mothers, as Faust went, I go, to the roots of our manhood,
Mothers of us in our cradles; of us once more in our glory.
New-born, body and soul, in the great pure world which shall be
In the renewing of all things, when man shall return to his Eden
Conquering evil, and death, and shame, and the slander of conscience-
Free in the sunshine of Godhead-and fearlessly smile on his Father.
Down to the mothers I go-yet with thee still!-be with me, thou purest!
Lead me, thy hand in my hand; and the dayspring of God go before us.

Eversley, 1852.

poem by Charles Kingsley
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Screaming Through December

What a crew we made up there was faustus
Burnt out from playing too many bars, on a jersey shore
And sammy, almost bald from ironing her hair too much
Back in 64
And me and phazon out of phase, of least my temporary
Name for the day
Oh, blown away and screaming
All blown away and screaming
All blown away and screaming thru december
We crossed state lines we were burning
Although the cold could freeze your hand, to the steel
Of the wheel
Miami, just a cold hearted word
From a warm smiling man on a sign in a field
We laughed just o take up some time my (hmmm) job
Was staring to dry, and we went screaming thru december
Quasar, quasar, where the first words I heard from faustas
All day
And giggling he apologized and then returned to flicking
His blade

[...] Read more

song performed by Hall & Oates
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Fingers resting on the moon

Hidden beneath soft wooden floor boards
of men and women in relationships spoken for tell they're tales of romance and physical attraction
With they're playing hands, intertwined with fate
reaching far, imaginations run wild
you're secret is my best friend

Enter through a door
past a candle in a
well-lit room
I see into the past,
neglected by my future
by my sad eyes
obscurity comes to life

I lay ye down
my fingers resting upon solid ground
a dimming in a royal Faust of harvests;
Sycamores frantically sway back and fourth in a windless funnel
standing tall, shedding bark
stretched wide

[...] Read more

poem by Dante Pellegrino
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Kometenmelodie

[Lyrics are an excerpt of "The Heaven Prolog" from Faust - Wolfgang von Goethe. In this masterpiece, these lines are said by Raphael archangel]
Die sonne toent nach alter weise
In brudersphaeren wettgesang
Und ihre vorgeschriebene reise
vollendet sie mit donnergang
[Translation 1:]
The sun sounds out in an old manner
In a fraternal vocal competition
And its prescribed course
Reaches a conclusion with a thunder
[Translation 2:]
The sun intones its ancient song
Mid rival chant of brother spheres
Its predestined course it speeds along
In thund?rous march throughout the years
[Translation 3:]
The sun intones, in ancient tourney
With brother-spheres, a rival song
Fulfilling its predestined journey
With march of thunder moves along

[...] Read more

song performed by Kraftwerk
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

To E.

The mountains in fantastic lines
Sweep, blue-white, to the sky, which shines
Blue as blue gems; athwart the pines
The lake gleams blue.

We three were here, three years gone by;
Our Poet, with fine-frenzied eye,
You, stepped in learned lore, and I,
A poet too.

Our Poet brought us books and flowers,
He read us Faust; he talked for hours
Philosophy (sad Schopenhauer's),
Beneath the trees:

And do you mind that sunny day,
When he, as on the sward he lay,
Told of Lassalle who bore away
The false Louise?

[...] Read more

poem by Amy Levy
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

~ Past ~

~ PAST ~
Ms. Nivedita.
10.11.09.
UK

Past
Beginingless
Secondless
Mat chless
Ageless
Timeless
Fathomless
Speechless
Immortal
Eternal why
O’ You?

Civilization
History
Religion

[...] Read more

poem by Ms. Nivedita Bagchi Spc. Uk.
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Soul Cleansing

Rescued in chains of solemn ice
Balance pivots on the fence
Walk where things do not exist
Universal mind coherent in blue
Solomon’s Porch resides in gold leaf
Peace and dharma exalts the weary
Everything is separate and out of tune
Caldrons of Asian finance
Platforms of forums, Philo writes
Placid monasteries with Gregorian eyes
Jackson Pollack is inebriated
Back to the broken base
Slaves build the union
He writes an ode to his pride
She garbles words of veneer
Walls higher than the tower of Babel
Everything bathed in pretense
Sophistry shines like a Greek oracle
Alliances between the mundane
Mars gleams with angry throats

[...] Read more

poem by Joseph Narusiewicz
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

I Could Bring You A Shattered Windowpane

I could bring you a shattered windowpane,
I could bring you a musical whip that's been trained
to read the stops of your flute
and how your fingers move like windproof spiders.
I could bring you the red brick of dried blood
that was left of my heart when I threw it through the window,
and it broke into a thousand chips of rose petals
that shed like flakes of dried paint off the eyelids
of a revolution that hasn't woken up yet
to finish what it started in a recurring dream
of mystic junkies flagging their fits
until Faustus sees Christ's blood
streaming across the firmament like mother's milk.

Should I ever come to know you well enough
to let you drink from my hidden starwell in my field of view,
I could raise your spirits up like a candelabra
to be whatever constellation you wanted
among all these myriad stars dying to be given a focus.
And if at first you didn't know where you were, I'd be your locus

[...] Read more

poem by Patrick White
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

The Nabob

(To the memory of William Hickey, Esq.)
COMING out of India with ten thousand a year
Exchanged for flesh and temper, a dry Faust
Whose devil barters with digestion, has he paid dear
For dipping his fingers in the Roc's valley?
Who knows? It's certain that he owns a rage,
A face like shark-skin, full of Yellow Jack,
And that unreckoning tyranny of age
That calls for turtles' eggs in Twickenham.
Sometimes, by moonlight, in a barge he'll float
Whilst hirelings blow their skulking flageolets,
Served by a Rajah in a golden coat
With pigeon-pie . . . Madeira . . . and Madeira . . .
Or in his Bon de Paris with silver frogs
He rolls puff-bellied in an equipage,
Elegant chariot, through a gulf of fogs
To dine on dolphin-steak with Post-Captains.
Who knows? There are worse things than steak, perhaps,
Worse things than oyster-sauces and tureens
And worlds of provender like painted maps

[...] Read more

poem by Kenneth Slessor
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Song: The House of Cards

Come look at the house,
the wonderful house,
and admire it's lavish facades.
The hearth's as transparent,
as the heart of young Faust,
in the beautiful house of cards.

And on the balcony suite, where all powers meet;
as made men they're known as goodfellas.
See the play of elites, who admit no defeats,
but display their true corporate colours.

Come look at the house,
the wonderful house,
lest like glass it shatters to shards.
When you hold up a mirror,
they scatter like grouse,
in the beautiful house of cards.

Like fat cats in heat, or on hunting retreat,

[...] Read more

poem by David SmithWhite
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Drury-lane Prologue Spoken by Mr. Garrick

1 When Learning's triumph o'er her barb'rous foes
2 First rear'd the stage, immortal Shakespear rose;
3 Each change of many-colour'd life he drew,
4 Exhausted worlds, and then imagin'd new:
5 Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign,
6 And panting Time toil'd after him in vain:
7 His pow'rful strokes presiding Truth impress'd,
8 And unresisted Passion storm'd the breast.

9 Then Jonson came, instructed from the school,
10 To please in method, and invent by rule;
11 His studious patience, and laborious art,
12 By regular approach essay'd the heart;
13 Cold Approbation gave the ling'ring bays,
14 For those who durst not censure, scarce could praise.
15 A mortal born he met the general doom,
16 But left, like Egypt's kings, a lasting tomb.

17 The Wits of Charles found easier ways to fame,
18 Nor wish'd for Jonson's art, or Shakespear's flame,

[...] Read more

poem by Samuel Johnson
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Vocation, Evocation, Revocation... Correlations

To be or not to be? the question's put
in hamlet and in town, by gown or jeans,
by promise which seemed once so full of beans -
'til walking shadow gutters lamp turned soot.
Life's slings and arrows slay both those on foot
and those whose mounted pride soon falls, what paens
outlast fate's payday voiding ways and means,
both rich and poor soon trampled underfoot.
Set to heart's tune Time rhymes with infinite,
and yet what bud, once blown, may Lethe's night
turn into cheerful dawn? In pawn our souls
grasp straws too soon foreclosed as pauper, knight
descend from scope to end, ambition's blight.
no traveller returns to stoke life's coals...

Can purblind moth reeled onwards to bright wick,
in fretful riot weave round warning flame,
of its will still frenetic dance to pick
hair point dividing failure from fame.
Where 'heart to heart though far apart' would lick

[...] Read more

poem by Jonathan Robin
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Nux Postcoenatica

I was sitting with my microscope, upon my parlor rug,
With a very heavy quarto and a very lively bug;
The true bug had been organized with only two antennae,
But the humbug in the copperplate would have them twice as many.

And I thought, like Dr. Faustus, of the emptiness of art,
How we take a fragment for the whole, and call the whole a part,
When I heard a heavy footstep that was loud enough for two,
And a man of forty entered, exclaiming, “How d’ ye do?”

He was not a ghost, my visitor, but solid flesh and bone;
He wore a Palo Alto hat, his weight was twenty stone;
(It’s odd how hats expand their brims as riper years invade,
As if when life had reached its noon it wanted them for shade!)

I lost my focus,—­dropped my book,—­the bug, who was a flea,
At once exploded, and commenced experiments on me.
They have a certain heartiness that frequently appalls,—­
Those mediaeval gentlemen in semilunar smalls!

[...] Read more

poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

The Demon Of The Study

The Brownie sits in the Scotchman's room,
And eats his meat and drinks his ale,
And beats the maid with her unused broom,
And the lazy lout with his idle flail;
But he sweeps the floor and threshes the corn,
And hies him away ere the break of dawn.

The shade of Denmark fled from the sun,
And the Cocklane ghost from the barn-loft cheer,
The fiend of Faust was a faithful one,
Agrippa's demon wrought in fear,
And the devil of Martin Luther sat
By the stout monk's side in social chat.

The Old Man of the Sea, on the neck of him
Who seven times crossed the deep,
Twined closely each lean and withered limb,
Like the nightmare in one's sleep.
But he drank of the wine, and Sindbad cast
The evil weight from his back at last.

[...] Read more

poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Now Halcyon Seas

Now halcyon seas, the Kingfisher Star, Alcyone.
No sign of ever having drowned here. Most
are as unaware of the sentient space they're immersed in
as a fish is of the water it wears like skin
or a bird of the air it plunges through. I was
given a brain. The universe was rolled up
into a ball of starmud, a planetesimal of my own,
that was meant to receive a lot more than it
could ever transmit. The way this bursting bubble
of a multiverse gets you to listen to it
once you get sick of listening to your own voice
trying to lift words and feelings like an ant
with a butterfly wing in its mandibles like a sail
that knows more about which way the wind is blowing
than it does. I may be only a whisper
of the shriek I used to be in a much denser medium
than this when I felt my lungs being crushed like bag-pipes
by the implosions of a black dwarf. Thirteen tons
per cubic centimetre of mass. Things weighed
heavily on me back then like basso-profundo bells

[...] Read more

poem by Patrick White
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

The Celebrated Woman - An Epistle By A Married Man

Can I, my friend, with thee condole?--
Can I conceive the woes that try men,
When late repentance racks the soul
Ensnared into the toils of hymen?
Can I take part in such distress?--
Poor martyr,--most devoutly, "Yes!"
Thou weep'st because thy spouse has flown
To arms preferred before thine own;--
A faithless wife,--I grant the curse,--
And yet, my friend, it might be worse!
Just hear another's tale of sorrow,
And, in comparing, comfort borrow!

What! dost thou think thyself undone,
Because thy rights are shared with one!
O, happy man--be more resigned,
My wife belongs to all mankind!
My wife--she's found abroad--at home;
But cross the Alps and she's at Rome;
Sail to the Baltic--there you'll find her;

[...] Read more

poem by Friedrich Schiller
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Proud Music Of The Storm

PROUD music of the storm!
Blast that careers so free, whistling across the prairies!
Strong hum of forest tree-tops! Wind of the mountains!
Personified dim shapes! you hidden orchestras!
You serenades of phantoms, with instruments alert,
Blending, with Nature's rhythmus, all the tongues of nations;
You chords left us by vast composers! you choruses!
You formless, free, religious dances! you from the Orient!
You undertone of rivers, roar of pouring cataracts;
You sounds from distant guns, with galloping cavalry! 10
Echoes of camps, with all the different bugle-calls!
Trooping tumultuous, filling the midnight late, bending me powerless,
Entering my lonesome slumber-chamber--Why have you seiz'd me?

Come forward, O my Soul, and let the rest retire;
Listen--lose not--it is toward thee they tend;
Parting the midnight, entering my slumber-chamber,
For thee they sing and dance, O Soul.

[...] Read more

poem by Walt Whitman
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Morituri Salutamus: Poem for the Fiftieth Anniversary of th

Tempora labuntur, tacitisque senescimus annis,
Et fugiunt freno non remorante dies.
Ovid, Fastorum, Lib. vi.
"O Cæsar, we who are about to die
Salute you!" was the gladiators' cry
In the arena, standing face to face
With death and with the Roman populace.
O ye familiar scenes,--ye groves of pine,
That once were mine and are no longer mine,--
Thou river, widening through the meadows green
To the vast sea, so near and yet unseen,--
Ye halls, in whose seclusion and repose

Phantoms of fame, like exhalations, rose
And vanished,--we who are about to die,
Salute you; earth and air and sea and sky,
And the Imperial Sun that scatters down
His sovereign splendors upon grove and town.

Ye do not answer us! ye do not hear!

[...] Read more

poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Sword Blades And Poppy Seed

A drifting, April, twilight sky,
A wind which blew the puddles dry,
And slapped the river into waves
That ran and hid among the staves
Of an old wharf. A watery light
Touched bleak the granite bridge, and white
Without the slightest tinge of gold,
The city shivered in the cold.
All day my thoughts had lain as dead,
Unborn and bursting in my head.
From time to time I wrote a word
Which lines and circles overscored.
My table seemed a graveyard, full
Of coffins waiting burial.
I seized these vile abortions, tore
Them into jagged bits, and swore
To be the dupe of hope no more.
Into the evening straight I went,
Starved of a day's accomplishment.
Unnoticing, I wandered where

[...] Read more

poem by Amy Lowell
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

The Battle Of The Lake Regillus

A Lay Sung at the Feast of Castor and Pollux on the Ides of Quintilis in the year of the City CCCCLI.

I.
Ho, trumpets, sound a war-note!
Ho, lictors, clear the way!
The Knights will ride, in all their pride,
Along the streets to-day.
To-day the doors and windows
Are hung with garlands all,
From Castor in the Forum,
To Mars without the wall.
Each Knight is robed in purple,
With olive each is crowned;
A gallant war-horse under each
Paws haughtily the ground.
While flows the Yellow River,
While stands the Sacred Hill,
The proud Ides of Quintilis
Shall have such honor still.

[...] Read more

poem by Thomas Babbington Macaulay
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!