The Rattlesnake (John Charles McNeill Poems)
Coiled like a clod, his eyes the home of hate,Where rich the harvest bows, he lies in wait,Linking earth's death ...
Coiled like a clod, his eyes the home of hate,Where rich the harvest bows, he lies in wait,Linking earth's death ...
THERE'S a mansion old 'mid the hills of the west,So old, that men know not by whom it was built;But ...
ORIGIN OF THE SERPENT.Ahti, living on the island,Near the Kauko-point and harbor,Plowed his fields for rye and barley,Furrowed his extensive ...
A Historical Tragedy in Five Acts.This play is dedicated, in profound veneration and respect, to thememory of George Eliot, the ...
Alpha and Omega, sadness and mirth, The springing music, and its wasting breath--The fairest things in life are Death and ...
I.Master and Sage, greetings and health to thee,From thy most meek disciple! Deign once moreEndure me at thy feet, enlighten ...
Beside the pounding cataracts Of midnight streams unknown to us 'Tis builded in the leafless tracts And valleys huge of Tartarus. Lurid and lofty and vast it seems; It hath no rounded name that rings, But I have heard it called in dreams The City of the End of Things. Its roofs and iron towers have grown None knoweth how high within the night, But in its murky streets far down A flaming terrible and bright Shakes all the stalking shadows there, Across the walls, across the floors, And shifts upon the upper air From out a thousand furnace doors; And all the while an awful sound Keeps roaring on continually, And crashes in the ceaseless round Of a gigantic harmony. Through its grim depths re-echoing And all its weary height of walls, With measured roar and iron ring, The inhuman music lifts and falls. Where no thing rests and no man is, And only fire and night hold sway; The beat, the thunder and the hiss Cease not, and change not, night nor day. And moving at unheard commands, The abysses and vast fires between, Flit figures that with clanking hands Obey a hideous routine; They are not flesh, they are not bone, They see not with the human eye, And from their iron lips is blown A dreadful and monotonous cry; And whoso of our mortal race Should find that city unaware, Lean Death would smite him face to face, And blanch him with its venomed air: Or caught by the terrific spell, Each thread of memory snapt and cut, His soul would shrivel and its shell Go rattling like an empty nut. It was not always so, but once, In days that no man thinks upon, Fair voices echoed from its stones, The light above it leaped and shone: Once there were multitudes of men, That built that city in their pride, Until its might was made, and then They withered age by age and died. But now of that prodigious race, Three only in an iron tower, Set like carved idols face to face, Remain the masters of its power; And at the city gate a fourth, Gigantic and with dreadful eyes, Sits looking toward the lightless north, Beyond the reach of memories; Fast rooted to the lurid floor, A bulk that never moves a jot, In his pale body dwells no more, Or mind or soul,-an idiot! But sometime in the end those three Shall perish and their hands be still, And with the master's touch shall flee Their incommunicable skill. A stillness absolute as death Along the slacking wheels shall lie, And, flagging at a single breath, The fires shall moulder out and die. The roar shall vanish at its height, And over that tremendous town The silence of eternal night Shall gather close and settle down. All its grim grandeur, tower and hall, Shall be abandoned utterly, And into rust and dust shall fall From century to century; Nor ever living thing shall grow, Nor trunk of tree, nor blade of grass; No drop shall fall, no wind shall blow, Nor sound of any foot shall pass: Alone of its accursèd state, One thing the hand of Time shall spare, For the grim Idiot at the gate Is deathless and eternal there.(Archibald Lampman)
HOW lightly men can love, how soon forget! I said--yet some there be not false or fickle: For one, the ...
THERE was a land, where all men lived in dreams, Where heaven was hid by vapours, grey or gold; Yet ...
It floats about, that boat of cypress wood, Now here, now there, as by the current borne. Nor rest ...
Cry on! full well I know the voice,For often it hath called on me, Stirring my passions with the noise,As ...
Who are the men that clamor mostAgainst the war, its cause and cost,And who Jeff Davis sometimes toast? The Copperheads.Who, ...
Come to me in any shape! As a victor crown'd with vine, In thy curls the clustering grape, - Or ...
We shall see the daylight breaking,Watch the rosy dawn awaking;We shall see the twilight fading—Adown the path the elms are ...
'Twas but a breath--And yet the fair, good name was wilted;And friends once fond grew cold and stilted,And life was ...
IF these gay tales give pleasure to the FAIR, The honour's great conferred, I'm well aware; Yet, why suppose the ...
Were I not a patriot, which of course I am, I would explain just how the term remains a sticking ...
AN we suppress the old Remorse Who bends our heart beneath his stroke, Who feeds, as worms feed on the ...
(Newdigate prize poem recited in the Sheldonian Theatre Oxford June 26th, 1878. To my friend George Fleming author of 'The ...
After two sittings, now our Lady State To end her picture does the third time wait. But ere thou fall'st ...
A Masque Presented At Ludlow Castle, 1634, Before The Earl Of Bridgewater, Then President Of Wales. The Persons The ATTENDANT ...
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