Citatepedia^®.com

The Hand In The Dark

How calm the spangled city spread below!
How cool the night! How fair the starry skies!
How sweet the dewy breezes! But I know
What, under all their seeming beauty, lies.

That million-fibred heart, alive, is wrung
With every grief that human creatures fear.
Could its dumb anguish find a fitting tongue
The very dead within their graves would hear.

It calls me from my rest, that voiceless wail
Of Lazarus at the gate — my kith and kin
Whose cruise and cake, and staff and beacon, fail —
The famished crowd, that cannot enter in.

How can I take my ease amid this pain,
These pangs, these tears, these crimes, that never cease?
While homeless children cry for bread in vain
How can I eat? How can I sleep in peace?

[...] Read more

poem by Ada Cambridge
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Hero And Leander: The Second Sestiad

By this, sad Hero, with love unacquainted,
Viewing Leander's face, fell down and fainted.
He kissed her and breathed life into her lips,
Wherewith as one displeased away she trips.
Yet, as she went, full often looked behind,
And many poor excuses did she find
To linger by the way, and once she stayed,
And would have turned again, but was afraid,
In offering parley, to be counted light.
So on she goes and in her idle flight
Her painted fan of curled plumes let fall,
Thinking to train Leander therewithal.
He, being a novice, knew not what she meant
But stayed, and after her a letter sent,
Which joyful Hero answered in such sort,
As he had hope to scale the beauteous fort
Wherein the liberal Graces locked their wealth,
And therefore to her tower he got by stealth.
Wide open stood the door, he need not climb,
And she herself before the pointed time

[...] Read more

poem by Christopher Marlowe
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Lamia. Part II

Love in a hut, with water and a crust,
Is—Love, forgive us!—cinders, ashes, dust;
Love in a palace is perhaps at last
More grievous torment than a hermit’s fast:—
That is a doubtful tale from faery land,
Hard for the non-elect to understand.
Had Lycius liv’d to hand his story down,
He might have given the moral a fresh frown,
Or clench’d it quite: but too short was their bliss
To breed distrust and hate, that make the soft voice hiss.
Besides, there, nightly, with terrific glare,
Love, jealous grown of so complete a pair,
Hover’d and buzz’d his wings, with fearful roar,
Above the lintel of their chamber door,
And down the passage cast a glow upon the floor.

For all this came a ruin: side by side
They were enthroned, in the even tide,
Upon a couch, near to a curtaining
Whose airy texture, from a golden string,

[...] Read more

poem by John Keats
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Arabian Night's Entertainments

Once on a time
There was a little boy: a master-mage
By virtue of a Book
Of magic--O, so magical it filled
His life with visionary pomps
Processional! And Powers
Passed with him where he passed. And Thrones
And Dominations, glaived and plumed and mailed,
Thronged in the criss-cross streets,
The palaces pell-mell with playing-fields,
Domes, cloisters, dungeons, caverns, tents, arcades,
Of the unseen, silent City, in his soul
Pavilioned jealously, and hid
As in the dusk, profound,
Green stillnesses of some enchanted mere. -

I shut mine eyes . . . And lo!
A flickering snatch of memory that floats
Upon the face of a pool of darkness five
And thirty dead years deep,

[...] Read more

poem by William Ernest Henley
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

The Masque of Queen Bersabe: A Miracle-Play

KING DAVID.
Knights mine, all that be in hall,
I have a counsel to you all,
Because of this thing God lets fall
Among us for a sign.
For some days hence as I did eat
From kingly dishes my good meat,
There flew a bird between my feet
As red as any wine.
This bird had a long bill of red
And a gold ring above his head;
Long time he sat and nothing said,
Put softly down his neck and fed
From the gilt patens fine:
And as I marvelled, at the last
He shut his two keen eyën fast
And suddenly woxe big and brast
Ere one should tell to nine.

PRIMUS MILES.

[...] Read more

poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Deborah

Time Sire of years unwind thy leaf anew,
& still the past recall to present view,
Spread forth its circles, swiftly gaze ym ore,
But where an action's nobly sung before
There stop & stay for me whose thoughts design
To make anothers song resound in mine.
Pass where ye priests procession bore the law,
When Jourdans parted waters fixd with awe,
While Israel marchd upon ye naked Sand,
Admird ye wonder, & obtaind the land.
Slide through the num'rous fates of Canaans kings,
While conquest rode on Expeditions wings.
Glance over Israel at a single view
In bondage oft, & oft unbound anew,
Till Jabin rise, & Deborah stand enrolld
On the broad guilded leafs revolving fold.

O King subdu'd! O Woman born to fame!
O Wake my fancy for the glorious theme,
O wake my fancy with the sense of praise,

[...] Read more

poem by Thomas Parnell
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

The Athenaid: Volume II: Book the Twelfth

Now in the zodiac had the sun o'erpass'd
The tenth fair sign. The new succeeding month,
Though not by Flora, nor Vertumnus deck'd,
Nor green in hue, though first of winter's train,
Oft with unsully'd skies irradiate cheers
The prone creation, and delights mankind.
The birds yet warble on the leafless sprays,
The placid surface, glaz'd by clearest light,
In crystal rivers, and transparent lakes,
Or ocean's smooth cerulean bosom, shews
The finny tribes in play. The active son
Of Neocles uprises, and descries
A dawn which promis'd purity of air,
Of light and calmness, tempting sloth herself
To action. Thus he rous'd his native fire:

Of this kind season not a moment lose,
Themistocles. Sicinus ever nigh
He call'd: Provide two receptacles sure,

[...] Read more

poem by Richard Glover
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Otho The Great - Act III

SCENE I.
The Country.
Enter ALBERT.
Albert. O that the earth were empty, as when Cain
Had no perplexity to hide his head!
Or that the sword of some brave enemy
Had put a sudden stop to my hot breath,
And hurl'd me down the illimitable gulph
Of times past, unremember'd! Better so
Than thus fast-limed in a cursed snare,
The white limbs of a wanton. This the end
Of an aspiring life! My boyhood past
In feud with wolves and bears, when no eye saw
The solitary warfare, fought for love
Of honour 'mid the growling wilderness.
My sturdier youth, maturing to the sword,
Won by the syren-trumpets, and the ring
Of shields upon the pavement, when bright-mail'd
Henry the Fowler pass'd the streets of Prague,
Was't to this end I louted and became

[...] Read more

poem by John Keats
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

The Emigrants: Book I

Scene, on the Cliffs to the Eastward of the Town of
Brighthelmstone in Sussex. Time, a Morning in November, 1792.

Slow in the Wintry Morn, the struggling light
Throws a faint gleam upon the troubled waves;
Their foaming tops, as they approach the shore
And the broad surf that never ceasing breaks
On the innumerous pebbles, catch the beams
Of the pale Sun, that with reluctance gives
To this cold northern Isle, its shorten'd day.
Alas! how few the morning wakes to joy!
How many murmur at oblivious night
For leaving them so soon; for bearing thus
Their fancied bliss (the only bliss they taste!),
On her black wings away!--Changing the dreams
That sooth'd their sorrows, for calamities
(And every day brings its own sad proportion)
For doubts, diseases, abject dread of Death,
And faithless friends, and fame and fortune lost;

[...] Read more

poem by Charlotte Smith
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Miriam

One Sabbath day my friend and I
After the meeting, quietly
Passed from the crowded village lanes,
White with dry dust for lack of rains,
And climbed the neighboring slope, with feet
Slackened and heavy from the heat,
Although the day was wellnigh done,
And the low angle of the sun
Along the naked hillside cast
Our shadows as of giants vast.
We reached, at length, the topmost swell,
Whence, either way, the green turf fell
In terraces of nature down
To fruit-hung orchards, and the town
With white, pretenceless houses, tall
Church-steeples, and, o'ershadowing all,
Huge mills whose windows had the look
Of eager eyes that ill could brook
The Sabbath rest. We traced the track
Of the sea-seeking river back,

[...] Read more

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