Winter-Store (Archibald Lampman Poems)
Subtly conscious, all awake,Let us clear our eyes, and breakThrough the cloudy chrysalis,See the wonder as it is.Down a narrow ...
Subtly conscious, all awake,Let us clear our eyes, and breakThrough the cloudy chrysalis,See the wonder as it is.Down a narrow ...
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)
Long, long ago, it seems, this summer mornThat pale-browed April passed with pensive treadThrough the frore woods, and from its ...
Here when the cloudless April days begin,And the quaint crows flock thicker day by day,Filling the forests with a pleasant ...
Underneath a tree at noontideAbu Midjan sits distressed,Fetters on his wrists and ancles,And his chin upon his breast;For the Emir's ...
II lie upon my bed and hear and see.The moon is rising through the glistening trees;And momently a great and ...
It fell on a day I was happy,And the winds, the concave sky,The flowers and the beasts in the meadowSeemed ...
Far above us where a jayScreams his matins to the day,Capped with gold and amethyst,Like a vapour from the forgeOf ...
White are the far-off plains, and whiteThe fading forests grow;The wind dies out along the height,And denser still the snow,A ...
Not to be conquered by these headlong days, But to stand free: to keep the mind at ...
From where I sit, I see the stars, And down the chilly floor The moon between the ...
We in sorrow coldly witting,In the bleak world sitting, sitting,By the forest, near the mould,Heard the summer calling, calling,Through the ...
How still it is here in the woods. The treesStand motionless, as if they did not dareTo stir, lest it ...
Let us be much with Nature; not as theyThat labour without seeing, that employHer unloved forces, blindly without joy;Nor those ...
As a weed beneath the ocean,As a pool beneath a treeAnswers with each breath or motionAn imperious mastery;So my spirit ...
© 2020 Inspirational Stories