The Monk (Archibald Lampman Poems)
IIn Nino's chamber not a sound intrudesUpon the midnight's tingling silentness,Where Nino sits before his book and broods,Thin and brow-burdened ...
IIn Nino's chamber not a sound intrudesUpon the midnight's tingling silentness,Where Nino sits before his book and broods,Thin and brow-burdened ...
Out of the gray northwest, where many a day gone by Ye tugged and howled in your tempestuous grot, And evermore the huge frost giants lie, Your wizard guards in vigilance unforgot, Out of the gray northwest, for now the bonds are riven, On wide white wings your thongless flight is driven, That lulls but resteth not. And all the gray day long, and all the dense wild night, Ye wheel and hurry with the sheeted snow, By cedared waste and many a pine-dark height, Across white rivers frozen fast below; Over the lonely forests, where the flowers yet sleeping Turn in their narrow beds with dreams of weeping In some remembered woe; Across the unfenced wide marsh levels, where the dry Brown ferns sigh out, and last year's sedges scold In some drear language, rustling haggardly Their thin dead leaves and dusky hoods of gold; Across gray beechwoods where the pallid leaves unfalling In the blind gusts like homeless ghosts are calling With voices cracked and old; Across the solitary clearings, where the low Fierce gusts howl through the blinded woods, and round The buried shanties all day long the snow Sifts and piles up in many a spectral mound; Across lone villages in eerie wildernesses Whose hidden life no living shape confesses Nor any human sound; Across the serried masses of dim cities, blown Full of the snow that ever shifts and swells, While far above them all their towers of stone Stand and beat back your fierce and tyrannous spells, And hour by hour send out, like voices torn and broken Of battling giants that have grandly spoken, The veering sound of bells; So day and night, O Wind, with hiss and moan you fleet, Where once long gone on many a green-leafed day Your gentler brethren wandered with light feet And sang, with voices soft and sweet as they, The same blind thought that you with wilder might are speaking, Seeking the same strange thing that you are seeking In this your stormier way. O Wind, wild-voicèd brother, in your northern cave, My spirit also being so beset With pride and pain, I heard you beat and rave, Grinding your chains with furious howl and fret, Knowing full well that all earth's moving things inherit The same chained might and madness of the spirit, That none may quite forget. You in your cave of snows, we in our narrow girth Of need and sense, for ever chafe and pine; Only in moods of some demonic birth Our souls take fire, our flashing wings untwine; Even like you, mad Wind, above our broken prison, With streaming hair and maddened eyes uprisen, We dream ourselves divine; Mad moods that come and go in some mysterious way, That flash and fall, none knoweth how or why, O Wind, our brother, they are yours today, The stormy joy, the sweeping mastery; Deep in our narrow cells, we hear you, we awaken, With hands afret and bosoms strangely shaken, We answer to your cry. I most that love you, Wind, when you are fierce and free, In these dull fetters cannot long remain; Lo, I will rise and break my thongs and flee Forth to your drift and beating, till my brain Even for an hour grow wild in your divine embraces, And then creep back into mine earthly traces, And bind me with my chain. Nay, Wind, I hear you, desperate brother, in your might Whistle and howl; I shall not tarry long, And though the day be blind and fierce, the night Be dense and wild, I still am glad and strong To meet you face to face; through all your gust and drifting With brow held high, my joyous hands uplifting, I cry you song for song.(Archibald Lampman)
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)
Hear me, Brother, gently met;Just a little, turn, not yet,Thou shalt laugh, and soon forget:Now the midnight draweth near.I have ...
Now hath the summer reached her golden close,And, lost amid her corn-fields, bright of soul,Scarcely perceives from her divine reposeHow ...
IBreathers of wisdom won without a quest,Quaint uncouth dreamers, voices high and strange,Flutists of land where beauty hath no change,And ...
Out of the heart of the city begottenOf the labour of men and their manifold hands,Whose souls, that were sprung ...
II lie upon my bed and hear and see.The moon is rising through the glistening trees;And momently a great and ...
Not, not for thee, Belovèd child, the burning grasp of life Shall bruise the tender soul. The noise, and strife, And clamor of midday thou shalt not see; But wrapped for ever in thy quiet grave, Too little to have known the earthly lot, Time's clashing hosts above thine innocent head, Wave upon wave, Shall break, or pass as with an army's tread, And harm thee not. A few short years We of the living flesh and restless brain Shall plumb the deeps of life and know the strain, The fleeting gleams of joy, the fruitless tears; And then at last when all is touched and tried, Our own immutable night shall fall, and deep In the same silent plot, O little friend, Side by thy side, In peace that changeth not, nor knoweth end, We too shall sleep.(Archibald Lampman)
What do poets want with gold,Cringing slaves and cushioned ease;Are not crusts and garments oldBetter for their souls than these?Gold ...
All day, all day, round the clacking netThe weaver's fingers fly:Gray dreams like frozen mists are setIn the hush of ...
I saw the city's towers on a luminous pale-gray sky; Beyond them a hill of the softest mistiest green, With naught but frost and the coming of night between, And a long thin cloud above the colour of August rye. I sat in the midst of a plain on my snowshoes with bended knee Where the thin wind stung my cheeks, And the hard snow ran in little ripples and peaks, Like the fretted floor of a white and petrified sea. And a strange peace gathered about my soul and shone, As I sat reflecting there, In a world so mystically fair, So deathly silent—I so utterly alone.(Archibald Lampman)
Not to be conquered by these headlong days, But to stand free: to keep the mind at ...
Friend, though thy soul should burn thee, yet be stillThoughts were not meant for strife, nor tongues for swords,He that ...
Even as I watched the daylight how it spedFrom noon till eve, and saw the light wind passIn long pale ...
What is more large than knowledge and more sweet;Knowledge of thoughts and deeds, of rights and wrongs,Of passions and of ...
'Tis well with words, oh masters, ye have sought,To turn men's eyes yearning to the great and true,Yet first take ...
Comfort the sorrowful with watchful eyesIn silence, for the tongue cannot avail.Vex not his wounds with rhetoric, nor the staleWorn ...
All day upon the garden brightThe suns shines strong,But in my heart there is no light,Or any song.Voices of merry ...
To the distance! Ah, the distance!Blue and broad and dim!Peace is not in burgh or meadow,But beyond the rim.Aye, beyond ...
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