VESTURE POEMS

Assumpta Maria

Mortals, that behold a Woman,
Rising 'twixt the Moon and Sun;
Who am I the heavens assume? an
All am I, and I am one.
.....

Francis Thompson

Epidermal Macabre

Indelicate is he who loathes
The aspect of his fleshy clothes, --
The flying fabric stitched on bone,
The vesture of the skeleton,
.....

Theodore Roethke

The Pied Piper Of Hamelin

A Child's Story

Hamelin Town's in Brunswick,
By famous Hanover city;
.....

Robert Browning

Omega

WRAPT in fancy by a river,
That flows onward ever, ever,
Down I sat me while the moon
In her fairest vesture shoneâ??
.....

Joseph Skipsey

Christmas Eve

I

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

Robert Browning

Incarnation

OUR little queen of dreams,
Our image of delight,
Which whitens east and gleams
And beckons from the height,
.....

John Le Gay Brereton

Solomon

As thro' the Psalms from theme to theme I chang'd,
Methinks like Eve in Paradice I rang'd;
And ev'ry grace of song I seem'd to see,
As the gay pride of ev'ry season, she.
.....

Thomas Parnell

On Receipt Of My Mother's Picture

Oh that those lips had language! Life has pass'd
With me but roughly since I heard thee last.
Those lips are thine-thy own sweet smiles I see,
The same that oft in childhood solaced me;
.....

William Cowper

The Wanderings Of Oisin: Book I

S. Patrick. You who are bent, and bald, and blind,
With a heavy heart and a wandering mind,
Have known three centuries, poets sing,
Of dalliance with a demon thing.
.....

William Butler Yeats

The Iliad: Book 08

Now when Morning, clad in her robe of saffron, had begun to suffuse
light over the earth, Jove called the gods in council on the topmost
crest of serrated Olympus. Then he spoke and all the other gods gave
ear. “Hear me,” said he, “gods and goddesses, that I may speak even as
.....

Homer

Wordsworth's Grave

I

The old rude church, with bare, bald tower, is here;
Beneath its shadow high-born Rotha flows;
.....

William Watson

The Trial Of The Gods

NEVER nobler was the Senate,
Never grander the debate:
Rome's old gods are on their trial
By the judges of the state!
.....

John Boyle O'reilly

A Lament

Flowers in their freshness are flushing the earth,
And the voice-peopled forest is loud in its mirth,
And streams in their fulness are laughing at dearthâ??
Yet my bosom is aching.
.....

Charles Harpur

The Triad

Show me the noblest Youth of present time,
Whose trembling fancy would to love give birth;
Some God or Hero, from the Olympian clime
Returned, to seek a Consort upon earth;
.....

William Wordsworth

A Pastoral Song

Come, Anna! come, the morning dawns,
Faint streaks of radiance tinge the skies;
Come, let us seek the dewy lawns,
And watch the early lark arise;
.....

Henry Kirk White

Overlooked

Sleep, with her tender balm, her touch so kind,
Has passed me by;
Afar I see her vesture, velvet-lined,
Float silently;
.....

Emily Pauline Johnson

The Breezelet

CRIED Ciss to the breeze, as under the trees,
She lay at her ease, one day,
'From thy rovings cease, and a maiden to please,
Of thy doings breeze now say!
.....

Joseph Skipsey

A London Fête

All night fell hammers, shock on shock;
With echoes Newgate's granite clang'd:
The scaffold built, at eight o'clock
They brought the man out to be hang'd.
.....

Coventry Patmore

Proem.

I only knew one poet in my life.
â?? BROWNING.
I have not known a poet but myself,
If I'm indeed one, as I ought to be,
.....

Robert Crawford

Hymn 28

The triumph of Christ over the enemies of his church.

Isa. 63:1-3, etc.

.....

Isaac Watts

Heroic Poem In Praise Of Wine

To exalt, enthrone, establish and defend,
To welcome home mankind's mysterious friend
Wine, true begetter of all arts that be;
Wine, privilege of the completely free;
.....

Hilaire Belloc

Some Songs After Master Singers

I

SONG

.....

James Whitcomb Riley

The Litany Of Nations

CHORUS

If with voice of words or prayers thy sons may reach thee,
We thy latter sons, the men thine after-birth,
.....

Algernon Charles Swinburne

Isaiah Lxiii

Say, heav'nly muse, what king or mighty God,
That moves sublime from Idumea's road?
In Bosrah's dies, with martial glories join'd,
His purple vesture waves upon the wind.
.....

Phillis Wheatley

The Common Grave

Last night beneath the foreign stars I stood
And saw the thoughts of those at home go by
To the great grave upon the hill of blood.
Upon the darkness they went visibly,
.....

Sydney Thompson Dobell

Before Her Portrait In Youth

As lovers, banished from their lady's face
And hopeless of her grace,
Fashion a ghostly sweetness in its place,
Fondly adore
.....

Francis Thompson

The Bridal

Last night a pale young Moon was wed
Unto the amorous, eager Sea;
Her maiden veil of mist she wore
His kingly purple vesture, he.
.....

Lucy Maud Montgomery

The Faun. A Fragment.

I will go out to grass with that old King,
For I am weary of clothes and cooks.
I long to lie along the banks of brooks,
And watch the boughs above me sway and swing.
.....

Bliss Carman (william)

Translation

CHASTE are their instincts, faithful is their fire,
No foreign beauty tempts to false desire;
The snow-white vesture, and the glittering crown,
The simple plumage, or the glossy down
.....

Oliver Goldsmith

The Impecunious Cricket And The Frugal Ant

There was an ant, a spinster ant,
Whose virtues were so many
That she became intolerant
Of those who hadn't any:
.....

Guy Wetmore Carryl

The Torch-bearer

GREAT cities rise and have their fall; the brass
That held their glories moulders in its turn.
Hard granite rots like an uprooted weed,
And ever on the palimpsest of earth
.....

Edith Wharton

The City Of Dreadful Night

Per me si va nella citta dolente.

--Dante

.....

James Thomson

The Golden Legend: Iii. A Street In Strasburg

Night.
PRINCE HENRY _wandering alone, wrapped in a cloak._

_Prince Henry._ Still is the night. The sound of feet
.....

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

In A Letter To C. P. Esq. In Imitation Of Shakspeare

Trust me the meed of praise, dealt thriftily
From the nice scale of judgement, honours more
Than does the lavish and o'erbearing tide
Of profuse courtesy. Not all the gems
.....

William Cowper

A Shadow Of The Night

Close on the edge of a midsummer dawn
In troubled dreams I went from land to land,
Each seven-colored like the rainbow's arc,
Regions where never fancy's foot had trod
.....

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

The Falcon

Who would not be Sir Hubert, for his birth and bearing fine,
His rich sky-skirted woodlands, valleys flowing oil and wine;
Sir Hubert, to whose sunning all the rays of fortune shine?
So most men praised Sir Hubert, and some others warm'd with praise
.....

Coventry Patmore

Preparatory Meditations - Second Series: 146

(Canticles 6:13. Return, oh Shulamite, Return, Return)

My dear, dear Lord, I know not what to say:
Speech is too coarse a web for me to clothe
.....

Edward Taylor

Jerusalem Delivered - Book 06 - Part 07

LXXXV

'Or else my tender bosom opened wide,
And heart though pierced with his cruel blade,
.....

Torquato Tasso

Our Dead Singer

H. W. L.

PRIDE of the sister realm so long our own,
We claim with her that spotless fame of thine,
.....

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Elegy Iii. Anno Aetates 17.[1] On The Death Of The Bishop Of Winchester.[2]

Silent I sat, dejected, and alone,
Making in thought the public woes my own,
When, first, arose the image in my breast
Of England's sufferings by that scourge, the pest.[3]
.....

William Cowper

The Divine Comedy By Dante: The Vision Of Hell, Or The Inferno: Canto Vi

My sense reviving, that erewhile had droop'd
With pity for the kindred shades, whence grief
O'ercame me wholly, straight around I see
New torments, new tormented souls, which way
.....

Dante Alighieri

The Lord Of The Isles: Canto V

I.
On fair Loch-Ranza stream'd the early day,
Thin wreaths of cottage-smoke are upward curl'd
From the lone hamlet, which her inland bay
.....

Walter Scott (sir)

Two Sonnets: To Haydon, With A Sonnet Written On Seeing The Elgin Marbles

I.

Haydon! forgive me that I cannot speak
Definitively of these mighty things;
.....

John Keats

In A Balcony

First part

Constance and Norbert

.....

Robert Browning

The Bean-feast

He was the man, Pope Sixtus, that Fifth, that swineherd's son:
He knew the right thing, did it, and thanked God when 't was done:
But of all he had to thank for, my fancy somehow leans
To thinking, what most moved him was a certain meal on beans.
.....

Robert Browning

Paracelsus: Part I: Paracelsus Aspires

Scene. Würzburg; a garden in the environs. 1512.
Festus, Paracelsus, Michal.


.....

Robert Browning

Paracelsus: Part Ii: Paracelsus Attains

Scene. Constantinople; the house of a Greek Conjurer. 1521.
Paracelsus.


.....

Robert Browning

Paracelsus: Part V: Paracelsus Attains

Scene. Salzburg; a cell in the Hospital of St. Sebastian. 1541.
Festus, Paracelsus.


.....

Robert Browning

The Station-master Of Lone Prairie

An empty bench, a sky of grayest etching,
A bare, bleak shed in blackest silhouette,
Twelve years of platform, and before them stretching
Twelve miles of prairie glimmering through the wet.
.....

Bret Harte (francis)

The Statue Of Victor Hugo

I.

Since in Athens God stood plain for adoration,
Since the sun beheld his likeness reared in stone,
.....

Algernon Charles Swinburne