FURNACE POEMS

The Lost Gold

I picked a stone so precious-
A gold they said.
But unrefined i thought it was,
I threw it in the furnace;
.....

Brian Bunguswa

Venus And Adonis

Even as the sun with purple-coloured face
Had ta'en his last leave of the weeping morn,
Rose-cheeked Adonis hied him to the chase;
Hunting he loved, but love he laughed to scorn.
.....

William Shakespeare

A Railroad Eclogue

Father: What brought thee back, lad?

Son: Father! the same feet
As took me brought me back, I warrant ye.
.....

Walter Savage Landor

The Tyger

Tyger Tyger. burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye.
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
.....

William Blake

The Man Against The Sky

Between me and the sunset, like a dome
Against the glory of a world on fire,
Now burned a sudden hill,
Bleak, round, and high, by flame-lit height made higher,
.....

Edwin Arlington Robinson

As By Fire

Sometimes I feel so passionate a yearning

For spiritual perfection here below,

.....

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Saadi

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Astræa At The Capitol

WHEN first I saw our banner wave
Above the nation's council-hall,
I heard beneath its marble wall
The clanking fetters of the slave!
.....

John Greenleaf Whittier

Merlin Ii

The rhyme of the poet
Modulates the king's affairs,
Balance-loving nature
Made all things in pairs.
.....

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Abolition Of Slavery In The District Of Columbia, 1862

When first I saw our banner wave
Above the nation's council-hall,
I heard beneath its marble wall
The clanking fetters of the slave!
.....

John Greenleaf Whittier

Brahmā, Vişņu, Śiva

I THE DARK

In a worldless timeless lightless great emptiness
Four-faced Brahma broods.
.....

Rabindranath Tagore

The Song Of The Camp-fire

Heed me, feed me, I am hungry, I am red-tongued with desire;
Boughs of balsam, slabs of cedar, gummy fagots of the pine,
Heap them on me, let me hug them to my eager heart of fire,
Roaring, soaring up to heaven as a symbol and a sign.
.....

Robert Service

The Three Bares

Ma tried to wash her garden slacks but couldn't get 'em clean
And so she thought she'd soak 'em in a bucket o' benzine.
It worked all right. She wrung 'em out then wondered what she'd do
With all that bucket load of high explosive residue.
.....

Robert Service

Harvest-home

Once on a time did Eucritus and I
(With us Amyntas) to the riverside
Steal from the city. For Lycopeus' sons
Were that day busy with the harvest-home,
.....

Jon Corelis Theocritus

Christmas Eve

I

Out of the little chapel I burst
Into the fresh night-air again.
.....

Robert Browning

The Cry Of A Lost Soul

In that black forest, where, when day is done,
With a snake's stillness glides the Amazon
Darkly from sunset to the rising sun,

.....

John Greenleaf Whittier

After The German Subjugation Of France, 1871

LO the twelfth yearâ??the wedding-feast come round
With years for monthsâ??and lo the babe new-born;
Out of the womb's rank furnace cast forlorn,
And with contagious effluence seamed and crown'd.
.....

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Cassandra Southwick

To the God of all sure mercies let my blessing rise today,
From the scoffer and the cruel He hath plucked the spoil away;
Yes, he who cooled the furnace around the faithful three,
And tamed the Chaldean lions, hath set His handmaid free!
.....

John Greenleaf Whittier

Malcolm's Katie: A Love Story: Part I

Max plac'd a ring on little Katie's hand,
A silver ring that he had beaten out
From that same sacred coin-first well-priz'd wage
For boyish labour, kept thro' many years.
.....

Isabella Valancy Crawford

Fingal - Book V

ARGUMENT.

Cuthullin and Connal still remain on the hill. Fingal and Swaran meet: the combat is described. Swaran is overcome, bound, and delivered over as a prisoner to the care of Ossian, and Gaul, the son of Morni; Fingal, his younger sons and Oscar still pursue the enemy. The episode of Orla, a chief of Lochlin, who was mortally wounded in the battle, is introduced. Fingal, touched with the death of Orla, orders the pursuit to be discontinued; and calling his sons together, he is informed that Ryno, the youngest of them, was slain. He laments his death, hears the story of Lamderg and Gelchossa, and returns towards the place where he had left Swaran. Carril, who had been sent by Cuthullin to congratulate Fingal on his victory, comes in the mean time to Ossian. The conversation of the two poets closes the action of the fourth day.

.....

James Macpherson

The Iliad: Book 18

Thus then did they fight as it were a flaming fire. Meanwhile the
fleet runner Antilochus, who had been sent as messenger, reached
Achilles, and found him sitting by his tall ships and boding that
which was indeed too surely true. “Alas,” said he to himself in the
.....

Homer

The Woman

Go sleep, my sweetie-rest-rest!
Oh soft little hand on mother's breast!
Oh soft little lips-the din's mos' gone-
Over and done, my dearie one!
.....

Harriet Monroe

George Mullen's Confession

For the sake of guilty conscience, and the heart that ticks the
time
Of the clockworks of my nature, I desire to say that I'm
A weak and sinful creature, as regards my daily walk
.....

James Whitcomb Riley

The Bridge

I stood on the bridge at midnight,
As the clocks were striking the hour,
And the moon rose o'er the city,
Behind the dark church-tower.
.....

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Out Back

The old year went, and the new returned, in the withering weeks of drought,
The cheque was spent that the shearer earned,
and the sheds were all cut out;
The publican's words were short and few,
.....

Henry Lawson

The Battle Of The Nile

Shout! for the Lord hath triumphed gloriously!
Upon the shores of that renowned land,
Where erst His mighty arm and outstretched hand
He lifted high,
.....

William Lisle Bowles

Heat

From plains that reel to southward, dim,
The road runs by me white and bare;
Up the steep hill it seems to swim
Beyond, and melt into the glare.
.....

Archibald Lampman

Borderland

I am back from up the country -- very sorry that I went --
Seeking for the Southern poets' land whereon to pitch my tent;
I have lost a lot of idols, which were broken on the track --
Burnt a lot of fancy verses, and I'm glad that I am back.
.....

Henry Lawson

Campaspe

Turn from the ways of this Woman! Campaspe we call her by name -
She is fairer than flowers of the fire -
she is brighter than brightness of flame.
As a song that strikes swift to the heart
.....

Henry Kendall

A Drought Idyll

It was the middle of the drought; the ground was hot and bare,
You might search for grass with a microscope, but nary grass was there;
The hay was done, the cornstalks gone, the trees were dying fast,
The sun o'erhead was a curse in read and the wind was a furnace blast;
.....

George Essex Evans

From Venus And Adonis

But, lo! from forth a copse that neighbours by,
A breeding jennet, lusty, young, and proud,
Adonis' trampling courser doth espy,
And forth she rushes, snorts and neighs aloud;
.....

William Shakespeare

The Bull

See an old unhappy bull,
Sick in soul and body both,
Slouching in the undergrowth
Of the forest beautiful,
.....

Ralph Hodgson

Insomnia

Now you hear what the house has to say.
Pipes clanking, water running in the dark,
the mortgaged walls shifting in discomfort,
and voices mounting in an endless drone
.....

Dana Gioia

To Poesy

These vessels of verse, O Great Goddess, are filled with invisible tears,
With the sobs and sweat of my spirit and her desolate brooding for years;
See, I lay them -- not on thine altar, for they are unpolished and plain,
Not rounded enough by the potter, too much burnt in the furnace of pain;
.....

Arthur Bayldon

Enniskillen

Oh my heart beat high with joy elate,
When Danny rode in the Huntersâ?? Plate
On Enniskillen, the raking grey-
A mighty jumper, with power to stay!
.....

Alice Guerin Crist

Outback

The old year went, and the new returned, in the withering weeks of drought,
The cheque was spent that the shearer earned,
and the sheds were all cut out;
The publican's words were short and few,
.....

Henry Lawson

The Alchemist In The City

My window shews the travelling clouds,
Leaves spent, new seasons, alter'd sky,
The making and the melting crowds:
The whole world passes; I stand by.
.....

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Derne

NIGHT on the city of the Moor!
On mosque and tomb, and white-walled shore,
On sea-waves, to whose ceaseless knock
The narrow harbor gates unlock,
.....

John Greenleaf Whittier

Martyrs' Song

We meet in joy, though we part in sorrow;
We part to-night, but we meet to-morrow.
Be it flood or blood the path that's trod,
All the same it leads home to God:
.....

Christina Rossetti

The Doom Of The Esquire Bedell

Adown the torturing mile of street
I mark him come and go,
Thread in and out with tireless feet
The crossings to and fro;
.....

Sir Arthur Quiller-couch

The Artist

One evening there came into his soul the desire to fashion an image of The Pleasure that abideth for a Moment. And he went forth into the world to look for bronze. For he could only think in bronze.

But all the bronze of the whole world had disappeared, nor anywhere in the whole world was there any bronze to be found, save only the bronze of the image of The Sorrow that endureth for Ever.

.....

Oscar Wilde

The Tour

With your bold
Gecko, the little flick!
All cogs, weird sparkle and every cog solid gold.
And I in slippers and housedress with no lipstick!
.....

Sylvia Plath

Notes To A Neophyte

Take the general mumble,
blunt as the faceless gut
of an anonymous clam,
vernacular as the strut
.....

Sylvia Plath

The Widows

Vauvenargues says that in public gardens there are alleys haunted principally by thwarted ambition, by unfortunate inventors, by aborted glories and broken hearts, and by all those tumultuous and contracted souls in whom the last sighs of the storm mutter yet again, and who thus betake themselves far from the insolent and joyous eyes of the well-to-do. These shadowy retreats are the rendezvous of life's cripples. To such places above all others do the poet and philosopher direct their avid conjectures. They find there an unfailing pasturage, for if there is one place they disdain to visit it is, as I have already hinted, the place of the joy of the rich. A turmoil in the void has no attractions for them. On the contrary they feel themselves irresistibly drawn towards all that' is feeble, ruined, sorrowing, and bereft.
An experienced eye is never deceived. In these rigid and dejected lineaments ; in these eyes, wan and hollow, or bright with the last fading gleams of the combat against fate; in these numerous profound wrinkles and in the slow and troubled gait, the eye of experience deciphers unnumbered legends of mistaken devotion, of unrewarded effort, of hunger and cold humbly and silently supported.
Have you not at times seen widows sitting on the deserted benches? Poor widows, I mean. Whether in mourning or not they are easily recognised. Moreover, there is always something wanting in the mourning of the poor; a lack of harmony which but renders it the more heart-breaking. It is forced to be niggardly in its show of grief. They are the rich who exhibit a full complement of sorrow.
Who is the saddest and most saddening of widows: she who leads by the hand a child who cannot share her reveries, or she who is quite alone? I do not know.... It happened that I once followed for several long hours an aged and afflicted woman of this kind : rigid and erect, wrapped in a little worn shawl, she carried in all her being the pride of stoicism.
.....

Charles Baudelaire

Song Of Slaves In The Desert

WHERE are we going? where are we going,
Where are we going, Rubee?
Lord of peoples, lord of lands,
Look across these shining sands,
.....

John Greenleaf Whittier

A Sunset

From Hugo's 'Feuilles d'Automne'.


I love the evenings, passionless and fair, I love the evens,
.....

Francis Thompson

England My Mother

I

England my mother,
Wardress of waters.
.....

William Watson

The Preface

Infinity, when all things it beheld
In Nothing, and of Nothing all did build,
Upon what Base was fixt the Lath wherein
He turn?d this Globe, and riggalld it so trim?
.....

Edward Taylor

Jim Bludso, Of The Prairie Belle

Wall, no! I can't tell whar he lives,
Becase he don't live, you see;
Leastways, he's got out of the habit
Of livin' like you and me.
.....

John Hay

Lines Written Among The Euganean Hills

Many a green isle needs must be
In the deep wide sea of Misery,
Or the mariner, worn and wan,
Never thus could voyage on-
.....

Percy Bysshe Shelley