Quotes about relics, page 21
Wait. Wait. Wait For It To Come
Wait. Wait. Wait for it to come,
the mad folly of my creative destruction.
Bleak the flowers in this ruinous garden
and my psyche speaking in tongues
like gates someone left open banging in the wind.
Bring on the storm. Uproot the lightning.
I will not run. I'll stand here steadfast
as an amputated stump in this open field
with a ghostly feeling I can grow my arms back
like a faith healer sitting like Stonehenge
in solstitial silence at the last broken window
snarling at the fixed stars that keep drifting
in and out of the asylum like a seance of fireflies
that's turned into an angry mob
looking for stars to martyr for not taking
their fanatical starmaps as literally as they do.
I'm an heretical astrologer tied to the axis mundi
of my own imagination. I read my doom,
cowled in candlelight like the skull of the full moon
scrying the entrails of a wounded bull
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poem by Patrick White
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Marmion: Introduction to Canto V.
When dark December glooms the day,
And takes our autumn joys away;
When short and scant the sunbeam throws,
Upon the weary waste of snows,
A cold and profitless regard,
Like patron on a needy bard,
When silvan occupation's done,
And o'er the chimney rests the gun,
And hang, in idle trophy, near,
The game-pouch, fishing-rod, and spear;
When wiry terrier, rough and grim,
And greyhound, with his length of limb,
And pointer, now employed no more,
Cumber our parlour's narrow floor;
When in his stall the impatient steed
Is long condemned to rest and feed;
When from our snow-encircled home,
Scarce cares the hardiest step to roam,
Since path is none, save that to bring
The needful water from the spring;
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poem by Sir Walter Scott
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To Ladies Of A Certain Age
Ye ancient Maids, who ne'er must prove
The early joys of youth and love,
Whose names grim Fate (to whom 'twas given,
When marriages were made in heaven)
Survey'd with unrelenting scowl,
And struck them from the muster-roll;
Or set you by, in dismal sort,
For wintry bachelors to court;
Or doom'd to lead your faded lives,
Heirs to the joys of former wives;
Attend! nor fear in state forlorn,
To shun the pointing hand of scorn,
Attend, if lonely age you dread,
And wish to please, or wish to wed.
When beauties lose their gay appearance,
And lovers fall from perseverance,
When eyes grow dim and charms decay,
And all your roses fade away,
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poem by John Trumbull
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Yardley Oak
Survivor sole, and hardly such, of all
That once lived here, thy brethren, at my birth,
(Since which I number threescore winters past,)
A shattered veteran, hollow-trunked perhaps,
As now, and with excoriate forks deform,
Relics of ages! Could a mind, imbued
With truth from heaven, created thing adore,
I might with reverence kneel, and worship thee.
It seems idolatry, with some excuse,
When our forefather Druids in their oaks
Imagined sanctity. The conscience, yet
Unpurified by an authentic act
Of amnesty, the meed of blood divine,
Loved not the light, but, gloomy, into gloom
Of thickest shades, like Adam after taste
Of fruit proscribed, as to a refuge, fled.
Thou wast a bauble once; a cup and ball,
Which babes might play with; and the thievish jay
Seeking her food, with ease might have purloined
The auburn nut that held thee, swallowing down
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poem by William Cowper
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The Burden of Nineveh
In our Museum galleries
To-day I lingered o'er the prize
Dead Greece vouchsafes to living eyes,—
Her Art for ever in fresh wise
From hour to hour rejoicing me.
Sighing I turned at last to win
Once more the London dirt and din;
And as I made the swing-door spin
And issued, they were hoisting in
A wingèd beast from Nineveh.
A human face the creature wore,
And hoofs behind and hoofs before,
And flanks with dark runes fretted o'er.
'Twas bull, 'twas mitred Minotaur,
A dead disbowelled mystery:
The mummy of a buried faith
Stark from the charnel without scathe,
Its wings stood for the light to bathe,—
Such fossil cerements as might swathe
The very corpse of Nineveh.
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poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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A Hero's Grave
O'er our evening fire the smoke is like a pall,
And funeral banners hang about the arches of the hall,
In the gable end I see a catafalque aloof,
And night is drawn up like a curtain to the girders of the roof.
Thou knowest why we silent sit, and why our eyes are dim,
Sing us such proud sorrow as we may hear for him.
Reach me the old harp that hangs between the flags he won,
I will sing what once I heard beside the grave of such a son.
My son, my son,
A father's eyes are looking on thy grave,
Dry eyes that look on this green mound and see
The low weed blossom and the long grass wave,
Without a single tear to them or thee,
My son, my son.
Why should I weep? The grass is grass, the weeds
Are weeds. The emmet hath done thus ere now.
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poem by Sydney Thompson Dobell
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Marenghi
I.
Let those who pine in pride or in revenge,
Or think that ill for ill should be repaid,
Who barter wrong for wrong, until the exchange
Ruins the merchants of such thriftless trade,
Visit the tower of Vado, and unlearn
Such bitter faith beside Marenghi’s urn.
II.
A massy tower yet overhangs the town,
A scattered group of ruined dwellings now...
...
III.
Another scene are wise Etruria knew
Its second ruin through internal strife
And tyrants through the breach of discord threw
The chain which binds and kills. As death to life,
As winter to fair flowers (though some be poison)
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poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley
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Palmyra (2nd Edition)
---anankta ton pantôn huperbal-
lonta chronon makarôn.
Pindar. Hymn. frag. 33
Spirit of the days of yore!
Thou! who, in thy haunted cave,
By the torrent's sounding shore,
Mark'st the autumnal tempest rave:
Or, where on some ivied wall
Twilight-mingled moonbeams fall,
Deep in aisles and cloisters dim,
Hear'st the grey monks' verpser hymn:
Or, beneath the cypress shade,
Where forgotten chiefs are laid,
Pacing slow with solemn tread,
Breathest the verse that wakes the dead---
By the ivied convent lone,
By the Runic warrior's stone,
By the mountain-cataract's roar,
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poem by Thomas Love Peacock
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An Epistle Addressed To Sir Thomas Hanmer, On His Edition Of Shakspeare's Works
WHILE, born to bring the Muse's happier days,
A patriot's hand protects a poet's lays,
While nurs'd by you she sees her myrtles bloom,
Green and unwither'd o'er his honour'd tomb;
Excuse her doubts, if yet she fears to tell
What secret transports in her bosom swell.
With conscious awe she hears the critic's fame,
And blushing hides her wreath at Shakespeare's name.
Hard was the lot those injur'd strains endur'd,
Unown'd by Science, and by years obscur'd;
Fair Fancy wept; and echoing sighs confess'd
A fixt despair in every tuneful breast.
Not with more grief the afflicted swains appear,
When wintry winds deform the plenteous year;
When ling'ring frosts the ruin'd seats invade
Where Peace resorted, and the Graces play'd.
Each rising art by just gradation moves,
Toil builds on toil and age on age improves:
The Muse alone unequal dealt her rage,
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poem by William Taylor Collins
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The Heart Of The Bruce
It was upon an April morn,
While yet the frost lay hoar,
We heard Lord James's bugle-horn
Sound by the rocky shore.
Then down we went, a hundred knights,
All in our dark array,
And flung our armour in the ships
That rode within the bay.
We spoke not as the shore grew less,
But gazed in silence back,
Where the long billows swept away
The foam behind our track.
And aye the purple hues decay'd
Upon the fading hill,
And but one heart in all that ship
Was tranquil, cold, and still.
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poem by William Edmondstoune Aytoun
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