DESERT POEMS

The Old Familiar Faces

I have had playmates, I have had companions,
In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days-
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

.....

Charles Lamb

You Are A Dream

YOU ARE A DREAM

A never ending desert,
I walk into
.....

Meetali Sharma

A Dying Bachelor

His eyes deeming like a rainy cloud,
The chime of his voice joisting in chide,
For on his dying mattress he lay,
Winking and blinking in hayfever like a dying soul in pain,
.....

Iyke Flint

A Song In The Desert

Friend, thou beholdest the lightning? Who has the charge of it,
To decree which rock-ridge shall receive, shall be chosen for targe of it?
Which crown among palms shall go down, by the thunderbolt broken;
While the floods drown the sere wadis where no bud is token?
.....

Rudyard Kipling

Jobson's Amen

"Blessed be the English and all their ways and works.
Cursed be the Infidels, Hereticks, and Turks!"
"Amen," quo' Jobson, "but where I used to lie
Was neither Candle, Bell nor Book to curse my brethren by,
.....

Rudyard Kipling

You Have Crossed The Rubicon

I was a young vine with leaves until you turned me into a pine.
A flowing river, then you seared me into a desert
I was the dazzling sun, a cynosure of many eyes, until you raped me of my iridescence.
The pride of many men, until you smeared me with lust.
.....

Gerald Onyebuchi

Youth

If I had youth I'd bid the world to try me;
I'd answer every challenge to my will.
Though mountains stood in silence to defy me,
I'd try to make them subject to my skill.
.....

Edgar Albert Guest

Wayfarer

A desert life, lonely it may seem
A long journey awaits
But aimless you feel
With no clear path to take
.....

Juana Liwanag

Remembrances

Summer pleasures they are gone like to visions every one
And the cloudy days of autumn and of winter cometh on
I tried to call them back but unbidden they are gone
Far away from heart and eye and for ever far away
.....

John Clare

Sabbath Bells

Oh holy Sabbath bells,
Ye have a pleasant voice!
Through all the land your music swells,
And man with one commandment tells
.....

George Macdonald

The School At War

All night before the brink of death
In fitful sleep the army lay,
For through the dream that stilled their breath
Too gauntly glared the coming day.
.....

Henry Newbolt

Elegy Iv. Ophilia's Urn. To Mr. Graves

Through the dim veil of evening's dusky shade,
Near some lone fane, or yew's funereal green,
What dreary forms has magic Fear survey'd!
What shrouded spectres Superstition seen!
.....

William Shenstone

The English Flag

Above the portico a flag-staff, bearing the Union Jack,
remained fluttering in the flames for some time, but ultimately
when it fell the crowds rent the air with shouts,
and seemed to see significance in the incident. -- DAILY PAPERS.
.....

Rudyard Kipling

Ojira, To Her Lover

I am waiting in the desert, looking out towards the sunset,
And counting every moment till we meet.
I am waiting by the marshes and I tremble and I listen
Till the soft sands thrill beneath your coming feet.
.....

Laurence Hope (adela Florence Cory Nicolson)

Locksley Hall Sixty Years After

Late, my grandson! half the morning have I paced these sandy tracts,
Watch'd again the hollow ridges roaring into cataracts,

Wander'd back to living boyhood while I heard the curlews call,
.....

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Song Of The Wild Bushman

Let the proud White Man boast his flocks,
And fields of foodful grain;
My home is 'mid the mountain rocks,
The Desert my domain.
.....

Thomas Pringle

Four Quartets 4: Little Gidding

I

Midwinter spring is its own season
Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,
.....

T. S. Eliot

Absalom And Achitophel

In pious times, ere priest-craft did begin,
Before polygamy was made a sin;
When man, on many, multipli'd his kind,
Ere one to one was cursedly confin'd:
.....

John Dryden

The Rhodora

On Being Asked, Whence Is The Flower?

In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,
I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,
.....

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Silence

There is a silence where hath been no sound,
There is a silence where no sound may be,
In the cold grave-under the deep, deep sea,
Or in wide desert where no life is found,
.....

Thomas Hood

The Prophet

Longing for spiritual springs,
I dragged myself through desert sands ...
An angel with three pairs of wings
Arrived to me at cross of lands;
.....

Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin

Letter To Maria Gisborne

The spider spreads her webs, whether she be
In poet's tower, cellar, or barn, or tree;
The silk-worm in the dark green mulberry leaves
His winding sheet and cradle ever weaves;
.....

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Saul

I.

Said Abner, ``At last thou art come! Ere I tell, ere thou speak,
``Kiss my cheek, wish me well!'' Then I wished it, and did kiss his cheek.
.....

Robert Browning

Afar In The Desert

Afar in the Desert I love to ride,
With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side:
When the sorrows of life the soul o'ercast,
And, sick of the Present, I cling to the Past;
.....

Thomas Pringle

Saadi

Trees in groves,
Kine in droves,
In ocean sport the scaly herds,
Wedge-like cleave the air the birds,
.....

Ralph Waldo Emerson

To Think Of Time

To think of time, of all that retrospection!
To think of to-day, and the ages continued henceforward!

Have you guess'd you yourself would not continue?
.....

Walt Whitman

The Brewing Of Soma

The fagots blazed, the caldron's smoke
Up through the green wood curled;
'Bring honey from the hollow oak,
Bring milky sap,' the brewers spoke,
.....

John Greenleaf Whittier

The Songs Of Selma

ARGUMENTAddress to the evening star:

An apostrophe to Fingal and his times. Minonasings before the king the song of the unfortunate Colma; and the bards exhibit other specimens of their poetical talents; according to an annual custom established by the monarchs of the ancient Caledonians.

.....

James Macpherson

Walking With God

By faith in Christ I walk with God,
With heav'n, my journeys'-end, in view;
Supported by his staff and rod,
My road is safe and pleasant too,
.....

John Newton

High Waving Heather 'neath Stormy Blasts Bending

High waving heather 'neath stormy blasts bending,
Midnight and moonlight and bright shining stars,
Darkness and glory rejoicingly blending,
Earth rising to heaven and heaven descending,
.....

Emily Jane Brontë

Lamia

Out of her desert lair the lamia came,
A lovely serpent shaped as women are.
Meeting me there, she hailed me by the name

.....

Clark Ashton Smith

Her Last Words, At Parting.

Her last words, at parting, how can I forget?
Deep treasured thro' life, in my heart they shall stay;
Like music, whose charm in the soul lingers yet,
When its sounds from the ear have long melted away.
.....

Thomas Moore

Endymion: Book Iii

There are who lord it o'er their fellow-men
With most prevailing tinsel: who unpen
Their baaing vanities, to browse away
The comfortable green and juicy hay
.....

John Keats

To Venus

Venus, dear Cnidian-Paphian queen!
Desert that Cyprus way off yonder,
And fare you hence, where with incense
My Glycera would have you fonder;
.....

Eugene Field

The Cross

'The cross, if rightly borne, shall be
No burden, but support to thee;'
So, moved of old time for our sake,
The holy monk of Kempen spake.
.....

John Greenleaf Whittier

The Ladder Of St. Augustine

Saint Augustine! well hast thou said,
That of our vices we can frame
A ladder, if we will but tread
Beneath our feet each deed of shame!
.....

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Raven

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore-
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping-rapping at my chamber door.
.....

Edgar Allan Poe

Tamerlane - Early Version

I.

I have sent for thee, holy friar;1
But 'twas not with the drunken hope,
.....

Edgar Allan Poe

How It Happened

I pray you, pardon me, Elsie,
And smile that frown away
That dims the light of your lovely face
As a thunder-cloud the day.
.....

John Hay

Heliograph

(Self-Portrait) Omens and Astrology. A desert flat and undisturbed, stupid and forlorn. Sunless. a caravan of failures. Pons Asinorum and the Feast of the Ass and revolt against standardized American childhood.
War and Violence.
Catapults and Torches and the first stray thrusts of Sun into the Soul. Bombardments and Bordels. Heraldry and High Walls. Too rigid to crumble but not too strong to fracture.

.....

Harry Crosby

Sonnets To The Sundry Notes Of Music

I.
IT was a lording's daughter, the fairest one of three,
That liked of her master as well as well might be,
Till looking on an Englishman, the fair'st that eye could see,
.....

William Shakespeare

Prejudice

IN yonder red-brick mansion, tight and square,
Just at the town's commencement, lives the mayor.
Some yards of shining gravel, fenced with box,
Lead to the painted portal--where one knocks :
.....

Jane Taylor

The Hive At Gettysburg

In the old Hebrew myth the lion's frame,
So terrible alive,
Bleached by the desert's sun and wind, became
The wandering wild bees' hive;
.....

John Greenleaf Whittier

The Cotter's Saturday Night

INSCRIBED TO ROBERT AIKEN, ESQ.

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys and destiny obscure;
.....

Robert Burns

Comus

A Masque Presented At Ludlow Castle, 1634, Before

The Earl Of Bridgewater, Then President Of Wales.

.....

John Milton

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
.....

William Butler Yeats

The Deserted Village

Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain,
Where health and plenty cheered the labouring swain,
Where smiling spring its earliest visits paid,
And parting summer's lingering blooms delayed:
.....

Oliver Goldsmith

Understand

wild animals become divinely rare
their habitats wild homes are soft earth & tree
cannot flee before the bulldozer concrete
flame and smoke desert where only wheat
.....

S. K. Kelen

The Iliad: Book 22

Thus the Trojans in the city, scared like fawns, wiped the sweat
from off them and drank to quench their thirst, leaning against the
goodly battlements, while the Achaeans with their shields laid upon
their shoulders drew close up to the walls. But stern fate bade Hector
.....

Homer

The Odyssey: Book 03

But as the sun was rising from the fair sea into the firmament of
heaven to shed Blight on mortals and immortals, they reached Pylos the
city of Neleus. Now the people of Pylos were gathered on the sea shore
to offer sacrifice of black bulls to Neptune lord of the Earthquake.
.....

Homer