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Best Famous Clash Poems

Here is a collection of the all-time best famous Clash poems. This is a select list of the best famous Clash poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Clash poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of clash poems.

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Written by Edgar Allan Poe | Create an image from this poem

The Bells

 I

Hear the sledges with the bells-
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells-
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.
II Hear the mellow wedding bells, Golden bells! What a world of happiness their harmony foretells! Through the balmy air of night How they ring out their delight! From the molten-golden notes, And an in tune, What a liquid ditty floats To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats On the moon! Oh, from out the sounding cells, What a gush of euphony voluminously wells! How it swells! How it dwells On the Future! how it tells Of the rapture that impels To the swinging and the ringing Of the bells, bells, bells, Of the bells, bells, bells,bells, Bells, bells, bells- To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells! III Hear the loud alarum bells- Brazen bells! What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells! In the startled ear of night How they scream out their affright! Too much horrified to speak, They can only shriek, shriek, Out of tune, In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire, In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire, Leaping higher, higher, higher, With a desperate desire, And a resolute endeavor, Now- now to sit or never, By the side of the pale-faced moon.
Oh, the bells, bells, bells! What a tale their terror tells Of Despair! How they clang, and clash, and roar! What a horror they outpour On the bosom of the palpitating air! Yet the ear it fully knows, By the twanging, And the clanging, How the danger ebbs and flows: Yet the ear distinctly tells, In the jangling, And the wrangling, How the danger sinks and swells, By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells- Of the bells- Of the bells, bells, bells,bells, Bells, bells, bells- In the clamor and the clangor of the bells! IV Hear the tolling of the bells- Iron Bells! What a world of solemn thought their monody compels! In the silence of the night, How we shiver with affright At the melancholy menace of their tone! For every sound that floats From the rust within their throats Is a groan.
And the people- ah, the people- They that dwell up in the steeple, All Alone And who, tolling, tolling, tolling, In that muffled monotone, Feel a glory in so rolling On the human heart a stone- They are neither man nor woman- They are neither brute nor human- They are Ghouls: And their king it is who tolls; And he rolls, rolls, rolls, Rolls A paean from the bells! And his merry bosom swells With the paean of the bells! And he dances, and he yells; Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the paean of the bells- Of the bells: Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the throbbing of the bells- Of the bells, bells, bells- To the sobbing of the bells; Keeping time, time, time, As he knells, knells, knells, In a happy Runic rhyme, To the rolling of the bells- Of the bells, bells, bells: To the tolling of the bells, Of the bells, bells, bells, bells- Bells, bells, bells- To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.


Written by Rabindranath Tagore | Create an image from this poem

The Hero

 Mother, let us imagine we are travelling, and passing through a
strange and dangerous country.
You are riding in a palanquin and I am trotting by you on a red horse.
It is evening and the sun goes down.
The waste of Joradighi lies wan and grey before us.
The land is desolate and barren.
You are frightened and thinking-"I know not where we have come to.
" I say to you, "Mother, do not be afraid.
" The meadow is prickly with spiky grass, and through it runs a narrow broken path.
There are no cattle to be seen in the wide field; they have gone to their village stalls.
It grows dark and dim on the land and sky, and we cannot tell where we are going.
Suddenly you call me and ask me in a whisper, "What light is that near the bank?" Just then there bursts out a fearful yell, and figures come running towards us.
You sit crouched in your palanquin and repeat the names of the gods in prayer.
The bearers, shaking in terror, hide themselves in the thorny bush.
I shout to you, "Don't be afraid, mother.
I am here.
" With long sticks in their hands and hair all wild about their heads, they come nearer and nearer.
I shout, "Have a care, you villains! One step more and you are dead men.
" They give another terrible yell and rush forward.
You clutch my hand and say, "Dear boy, for heaven's sake, keep away from them.
" I say, "Mother, just you watch me.
" Then I spur my horse for a wild gallop, and my sword and buckler clash against each other.
The fight becomes so fearful, mother, that it would give you a cold shudder could you see it from your palanquin.
Many of them fly, and a great number are cut to pieces.
I know you are thinking, sitting all by yourself, that your boy must be dead by this time.
But I come to you all stained with blood, and say,"Mother, the fight is over now.
" You come out and kiss me, pressing me to your heart, and you say to yourself, "I don't know what I should do if I hadn't my boy to escort me.
" A thousand useless things happen day after day, and why couldn't such a thing come true by chance? It would be like a story in a book.
My brother would say, "Is it possible? I always thought he was so delicate!" Our village people would all say in amazement, "Was it not lucky that the boy was with his mother?"
Written by Matthew Arnold | Create an image from this poem

Dover Beach

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits; on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air! Only, from the long line of spray Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd land, Listen! you hear the grating roar Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, At their return, up the high strand, Begin, and cease, and then again begin, With tremulous cadence slow, and bring The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago Heard it on the {AE}gean, and it brought Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow Of human misery; we Find also in the sound a thought, Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.
But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.
Written by Countee Cullen | Create an image from this poem

The Shroud of Color

 "Lord, being dark," I said, "I cannot bear
The further touch of earth, the scented air;
Lord, being dark, forewilled to that despair
My color shrouds me in, I am as dirt
Beneath my brother's heel; there is a hurt
In all the simple joys which to a child
Are sweet; they are contaminate, defiled
By truths of wrongs the childish vision fails
To see; too great a cost this birth entails.
I strangle in this yoke drawn tighter than The worth of bearing it, just to be man.
I am not brave enough to pay the price In full; I lack the strength to sacrifice I who have burned my hands upon a star, And climbed high hills at dawn to view the far Illimitable wonderments of earth, For whom all cups have dripped the wine of mirth, For whom the sea has strained her honeyed throat Till all the world was sea, and I a boat Unmoored, on what strange quest I willed to float; Who wore a many-colored coat of dreams, Thy gift, O Lord--I whom sun-dabbled streams Have washed, whose bare brown thighs have held the sun Incarcerate until his course was run, I who considered man a high-perfected Glass where loveliness could lie reflected, Now that I sway athwart Truth's deep abyss, Denuding man for what he was and is, Shall breath and being so inveigle me That I can damn my dreams to hell, and be Content, each new-born day, anew to see The steaming crimson vintage of my youth Incarnadine the altar-slab of Truth? Or hast Thou, Lord, somewhere I cannot see, A lamb imprisoned in a bush for me? Not so?Then let me render one by one Thy gifts, while still they shine; some little sun Yet gilds these thighs; my coat, albeit worn, Still hold its colors fast; albeit torn.
My heart will laugh a little yet, if I May win of Thee this grace, Lord:on this high And sacrificial hill 'twixt earth and sky, To dream still pure all that I loved, and die.
There is no other way to keep secure My wild chimeras, grave-locked against the lure Of Truth, the small hard teeth of worms, yet less Envenomed than the mouth of Truth, will bless Them into dust and happy nothingness.
Lord, Thou art God; and I, Lord, what am I But dust?With dust my place.
Lord, let me die.
" Across earth's warm, palpitating crust I flung my body in embrace; I thrust My mouth into the grass and sucked the dew, Then gave it back in tears my anguish drew; So hard I pressed against the ground, I felt The smallest sandgrain like a knife, and smelt The next year's flowering; all this to speed My body's dissolution, fain to feed The worms.
And so I groaned, and spent my strength Until, all passion spent, I lay full length And quivered like a flayed and bleeding thing.
So lay till lifted on a great black wing That had no mate nor flesh-apparent trunk To hamper it; with me all time had sunk Into oblivion; when I awoke The wing hung poised above two cliffs that broke The bowels of the earth in twain, and cleft The seas apart.
Below, above, to left, To right, I saw what no man saw before: Earth, hell, and heaven; sinew, vein, and core.
All things that swim or walk or creep or fly, All things that live and hunger, faint and die, Were made majestic then and magnified By sight so clearly purged and deified.
The smallest bug that crawls was taller than A tree, the mustard seed loomed like a man.
The earth that writhes eternally with pain Of birth, and woe of taking back her slain, Laid bare her teeming bosom to my sight, And all was struggle, gasping breath, and fight.
A blind worm here dug tunnels to the light, And there a seed, racked with heroic pain, Thrust eager tentacles to sun and rain: It climbed; it died; the old love conquered me To weep the blossom it would never be.
But here a bud won light; it burst and flowered Into a rose whose beauty challenged, "Coward!" There was no thing alive save only I That held life in contempt and longed to die.
And still I writhed and moaned, "The curse, the curse, Than animated death, can death be worse?" "Dark child of sorrow, mine no less, what art Of mine can make thee see and play thy part? The key to all strange things is in thy heart.
" What voice was this that coursed like liquid fire Along my flesh, and turned my hair to wire? I raised my burning eyes, beheld a field All multitudinous with carnal yield, A grim ensanguined mead whereon I saw Evolve the ancient fundamental law Of tooth and talon, fist and nail and claw.
There with the force of living, hostile hills Whose clash the hemmed-in vale with clamor fills, With greater din contended fierce majestic wills Of beast with beast, of man with man, in strife For love of what my heart despised, for life That unto me at dawn was now a prayer For night, at night a bloody heart-wrung tear For day again; for this, these groans From tangled flesh and interlocked bones.
And no thing died that did not give A testimony that it longed to live.
Man, strange composite blend of brute and god, Pushed on, nor backward glanced where last he trod: He seemed to mount a misty ladder flung Pendant from a cloud, yet never gained a rung But at his feet another tugged and clung.
My heart was still a pool of bitterness, Would yield nought else, nought else confess.
I spoke (although no form was there To see, I knew an ear was there to hear), "Well, let them fight; they can whose flesh is fair.
" Crisp lightning flashed; a wave of thunder shook My wing; a pause, and then a speaking, "Look.
" I scarce dared trust my ears or eyes for awe Of what they heard, and dread of what they saw; For, privileged beyond degree, this flesh Beheld God and His heaven in the mesh Of Lucifer's revolt, saw Lucifer Glow like the sun, and like a dulcimer I heard his sin-sweet voice break on the yell Of God's great warriors:Gabriel, Saint Clair and Michael, Israfel and Raphael.
And strange it was to see God with His back Against a wall, to see Christ hew and hack Till Lucifer, pressed by the mighty pair, And losing inch by inch, clawed at the air With fevered wings; then, lost beyond repair, He tricked a mass of stars into his hair; He filled his hands with stars, crying as he fell, "A star's a star although it burns in hell.
" So God was left to His divinity, Omnipotent at that most costly fee.
There was a lesson here, but still the clod In me was sycophant unto the rod, And cried, "Why mock me thus?Am I a god?" "One trial more:this failing, then I give You leave to die; no further need to live.
" Now suddenly a strange wild music smote A chord long impotent in me; a note Of jungles, primitive and subtle, throbbed Against my echoing breast, and tom-toms sobbed In every pulse-beat of my frame.
The din A hollow log bound with a python's skin Can make wrought every nerve to ecstasy, And I was wind and sky again, and sea, And all sweet things that flourish, being free.
Till all at once the music changed its key.
And now it was of bitterness and death, The cry the lash extorts, the broken breath Of liberty enchained; and yet there ran Through all a harmony of faith in man, A knowledge all would end as it began.
All sights and sounds and aspects of my race Accompanied this melody, kept pace With it; with music all their hopes and hates Were charged, not to be downed by all the fates.
And somehow it was borne upon my brain How being dark, and living through the pain Of it, is courage more than angels have.
I knew What storms and tumults lashed the tree that grew This body that I was, this cringing I That feared to contemplate a changing sky, This that I grovelled, whining, "Let me die," While others struggled in Life's abattoir.
The cries of all dark people near or far Were billowed over me, a mighty surge Of suffering in which my puny grief must merge And lose itself; I had no further claim to urge For death; in shame I raised my dust-grimed head, And though my lips moved not, God knew I said, "Lord, not for what I saw in flesh or bone Of fairer men; not raised on faith alone; Lord, I will live persuaded by mine own.
I cannot play the recreant to these; My spirit has come home, that sailed the doubtful seas.
" With the whiz of a sword that severs space, The wing dropped down at a dizzy pace, And flung me on my hill flat on my face; Flat on my face I lay defying pain, Glad of the blood in my smallest vein, And in my hands I clutched a loyal dream, Still spitting fire, bright twist and coil and gleam, And chiseled like a hound's white tooth.
"Oh, I will match you yet," I cried, "to truth.
" Right glad I was to stoop to what I once had spurned.
Glad even unto tears; I laughed aloud; I turned Upon my back, and though the tears for joy would run, My sight was clear; I looked and saw the rising sun.
Written by Francis Thompson | Create an image from this poem

The Hound of Heaven

 I fled Him down the nights and down the days
I fled Him down the arches of the years
I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind, and in the midst of tears
I hid from him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped and shot precipitated Adown titanic glooms of chasme d hears From those strong feet that followed, followed after But with unhurrying chase and unperturbe d pace, Deliberate speed, majestic instancy, They beat, and a Voice beat, More instant than the feet: All things betray thee who betrayest me.
I pleaded, outlaw--wise by many a hearted casement, curtained red, trellised with inter-twining charities, For though I knew His love who followe d, Yet was I sore adread, lest having Him, I should have nought beside.
But if one little casement parted wide, The gust of his approach would clash it to.
Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue.
Across the margent of the world I fled, And troubled the gold gateways of the stars, Smiting for shelter on their clange d bars, Fretted to dulcet jars and silvern chatter The pale ports of the moon.
I said to Dawn --- be sudden, to Eve --- be soon, With thy young skiey blossoms heap me over From this tremendous Lover.
Float thy vague veil about me lest He see.
I tempted all His servitors but to find My own betrayal in their constancy, In faith to Him, their fickleness to me, Their traitorous trueness and their loyal deceit.
To all swift things for swiftness did I sue, Clung to the whistling mane of every wind, But whether they swept, smoothly fleet, The long savannahs of the blue, Or whether, thunder-driven, They clanged His chariot thwart a heaven, Plashy with flying lightnings round the spurn of their feet, Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue.
Still with unhurrying chase and unperturbed pace Deliberate speed, majestic instancy, Came on the following feet, and a Voice above their beat: Nought shelters thee who wilt not shelter Me.
I sought no more that after which I strayed In face of Man or Maid.
But still within the little childrens' eyes Seems something, something that replies, They at least are for me, surely for me.
But just as their young eyes grew sudden fair, With dawning answers there, Their angel plucked them from me by the hair.
Come then, ye other children, Nature's Share with me, said I, your delicate fellowship.
Let me greet you lip to lip, Let me twine with you caresses, Wantoning with our Lady Mother's vagrant tresses, Banqueting with her in her wind walled palace, Underneath her azured dai:s, Quaffing, as your taintless way is, From a chalice, lucent weeping out of the dayspring.
So it was done.
I in their delicate fellowship was one.
Drew the bolt of Nature's secrecies, I knew all the swift importings on the wilful face of skies, I knew how the clouds arise, Spume d of the wild sea-snortings.
All that's born or dies, Rose and drooped with, Made them shapers of mine own moods, or wailful, or Divine.
With them joyed and was bereaven.
I was heavy with the Even, when she lit her glimmering tapers round the day's dead sanctities.
I laughed in the morning's eyes.
I triumphed and I saddened with all weather, Heaven and I wept together, and its sweet tears were salt with mortal mine.
Against the red throb of its sunset heart, I laid my own to beat And share commingling heat.
But not by that, by that was eased my human smart.
In vain my tears were wet on Heaven's grey cheek.
For ah! we know what each other says, these things and I; In sound I speak, Their sound is but their stir, they speak by silences.
Nature, poor step-dame, cannot slake my drouth.
Let her, if she would owe me Drop yon blue-bosomed veil of sky And show me the breasts o' her tenderness.
Never did any milk of hers once bless my thirsting mouth.
Nigh and nigh draws the chase, with unperturbe d pace Deliberate speed, majestic instancy, And past those noise d feet, a Voice comes yet more fleet: Lo, nought contentst thee who content'st nought Me.
Naked, I wait thy Love's uplifted stroke.
My harness, piece by piece, thou'st hewn from me And smitten me to my knee, I am defenceless, utterly.
I slept methinks, and awoke.
And slowly gazing, find me stripped in sleep.
In the rash lustihead of my young powers, I shook the pillaring hours, and pulled my life upon me.
Grimed with smears, I stand amidst the dust o' the mounded years-- My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap.
My days have crackled and gone up in smoke, Have puffed and burst like sunstarts on a stream.
Yeah, faileth now even dream the dreamer and the lute, the lutanist.
Even the linked fantasies in whose blossomy twist, I swung the Earth, a trinket at my wrist, Have yielded, cords of all too weak account, For Earth, with heavy grief so overplussed.
Ah! is thy Love indeed a weed, albeit an Amaranthine weed, Suffering no flowers except its own to mount? Ah! must, Designer Infinite, Ah! must thou char the wood 'ere thou canst limn with it ? My freshness spent its wavering shower i' the dust.
And now my heart is as a broken fount, Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever From the dank thoughts that shiver upon the sighful branches of my mind.
Such is.
What is to be ? The pulp so bitter, how shall taste the rind ? I dimly guess what Time in mists confounds, Yet ever and anon, a trumpet sounds From the hid battlements of Eternity.
Those shaken mists a space unsettle, Then round the half-glimpse d turrets, slowly wash again.
But not 'ere Him who summoneth I first have seen, enwound With glooming robes purpureal; Cypress crowned.
His name I know, and what his trumpet saith.
Whether Man's Heart or Life it be that yield thee harvest, Must thy harvest fields be dunged with rotten death ? Now of that long pursuit, Comes at hand the bruit.
That Voice is round me like a bursting Sea: And is thy Earth so marred, Shattered in shard on shard? Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest me.
Strange, piteous, futile thing; Wherefore should any set thee love apart? Seeing none but I makes much of Naught (He said).
And human love needs human meriting --- How hast thou merited, Of all Man's clotted clay, the dingiest clot.
Alack! Thou knowest not How little worthy of any love thou art.
Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee, Save me, save only me? All which I took from thee, I did'st but take, Not for thy harms, But just that thou might'st seek it in my arms.
All which thy childs mistake fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at Home.
Rise, clasp my hand, and come.
Halts by me that Footfall.
Is my gloom, after all, Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly? Ah, Fondest, Blindest, Weakest, I am He whom thou seekest.
Thou dravest Love from thee who dravest Me.


Written by Andrew Barton Paterson | Create an image from this poem

Song of the Future

 'Tis strange that in a land so strong 
So strong and bold in mighty youth, 
We have no poet's voice of truth 
To sing for us a wondrous song.
Our chiefest singer yet has sung In wild, sweet notes a passing strain, All carelessly and sadly flung To that dull world he thought so vain.
"I care for nothing, good nor bad, My hopes are gone, my pleasures fled, I am but sifting sand," he said: What wonder Gordon's songs were sad! And yet, not always sad and hard; In cheerful mood and light of heart He told the tale of Britomarte, And wrote the Rhyme of Joyous Garde.
And some have said that Nature's face To us is always sad; but these Have never felt the smiling grace Of waving grass and forest trees On sunlit plains as wide as seas.
"A land where dull Despair is king O'er scentless flowers and songless bird!" But we have heard the bell-birds ring Their silver bells at eventide, Like fairies on the mountain side, The sweetest note man ever heard.
The wild thrush lifts a note of mirth; The bronzewing pigeons call and coo Beside their nests the long day through; The magpie warbles clear and strong A joyous, glad, thanksgiving song, For all God's mercies upon earth.
And many voices such as these Are joyful sounds for those to tell, Who know the Bush and love it well, With all its hidden mysteries.
We cannot love the restless sea, That rolls and tosses to and fro Like some fierce creature in its glee; For human weal or human woe It has no touch of sympathy.
For us the bush is never sad: Its myriad voices whisper low, In tones the bushmen only know, Its sympathy and welcome glad.
For us the roving breezes bring From many a blossum-tufted tree -- Where wild bees murmur dreamily -- The honey-laden breath of Spring.
* * * * We have our tales of other days, Good tales the northern wanderers tell When bushmen meet and camp-fires blaze, And round the ring of dancing light The great, dark bush with arms of night Folds every hearer in its spell.
We have our songs -- not songs of strife And hot blood spilt on sea and land; But lilts that link achievement grand To honest toil and valiant life.
Lift ye your faces to the sky Ye barrier mountains in the west Who lie so peacefully at rest Enshrouded in a haze of blue; 'Tis hard to feel that years went by Before the pioneers broke through Your rocky heights and walls of stone, And made your secrets all their own.
For years the fertile Western plains Were hid behind your sullen walls, Your cliffs and crags and waterfalls All weatherworn with tropic rains.
Between the mountains and the sea Like Israelites with staff in hand, The people waited restlessly: They looked towards the mountains old And saw the sunsets come and go With gorgeous golden afterglow, That made the West a fairyland, And marvelled what that West might be Of which such wondrous tales were told.
For tales were told of inland seas Like sullen oceans, salt and dead, And sandy deserts, white and wan, Where never trod the foot of man, Nor bird went winging overhead, Nor ever stirred a gracious breeze To wake the silence with its breath -- A land of loneliness and death.
At length the hardy pioneers By rock and crag found out the way, And woke with voices of today A silence kept for years and tears.
Upon the Western slope they stood And saw -- a wide expanse of plain As far as eye could stretch or see Go rolling westward endlessly.
The native grasses, tall as grain, Bowed, waved and rippled in the breeze; From boughs of blossom-laden trees The parrots answered back again.
They saw the land that it was good, A land of fatness all untrod, And gave their silent thanks to God.
The way is won! The way is won! And straightway from the barren coast There came a westward-marching host, That aye and ever onward prest With eager faces to the West, Along the pathway of the sun.
The mountains saw them marching by: They faced the all-consuming drought, They would not rest in settled land: But, taking each his life in hand, Their faces ever westward bent Beyond the farthest settlement, Responding to the challenge cry of "better country farther out".
And lo, a miracle! the land But yesterday was all unknown, The wild man's boomerang was thrown Where now great busy cities stand.
It was not much, you say, that these Should win their way where none withstood; In sooth there was not much of blood -- No war was fought between the seas.
It was not much! but we who know The strange capricious land they trod -- At times a stricken, parching sod, At times with raging floods beset -- Through which they found their lonely way Are quite content that you should say It was not much, while we can feel That nothing in the ages old, In song or story written yet On Grecian urn or Roman arch, Though it should ring with clash of steel, Could braver histories unfold Than this bush story, yet untold -- The story of their westward march.
* * * * But times are changed, and changes rung From old to new -- the olden days, The old bush life and all its ways, Are passing from us all unsung.
The freedom, and the hopeful sense Of toil that brought due recompense, Of room for all, has passed away, And lies forgotten with the dead.
Within our streets men cry for bread In cities built but yesterday.
About us stretches wealth of land, A boundless wealth of virgin soil As yet unfruitful and untilled! Our willing workmen, strong and skilled, Within our cities idle stand, And cry aloud for leave to toil.
The stunted children come and go In squalid lanes and alleys black: We follow but the beaten track Of other nations, and we grow In wealth for some -- for many, woe.
And it may be that we who live In this new land apart, beyond The hard old world grown fierce and fond And bound by precedent and bond, May read the riddle right, and give New hope to those who dimly see That all things yet shall be for good, And teach the world at length to be One vast united brotherhood.
* * * * So may it be! and he who sings In accents hopeful, clear, and strong, The glories which that future brings Shall sing, indeed, a wondrous song.
Written by Dylan Thomas | Create an image from this poem

Ballad Of The Long-Legged Bait

 The bows glided down, and the coast
Blackened with birds took a last look
At his thrashing hair and whale-blue eye;
The trodden town rang its cobbles for luck.
Then good-bye to the fishermanned Boat with its anchor free and fast As a bird hooking over the sea, High and dry by the top of the mast, Whispered the affectionate sand And the bulwarks of the dazzled quay.
For my sake sail, and never look back, Said the looking land.
Sails drank the wind, and white as milk He sped into the drinking dark; The sun shipwrecked west on a pearl And the moon swam out of its hulk.
Funnels and masts went by in a whirl.
Good-bye to the man on the sea-legged deck To the gold gut that sings on his reel To the bait that stalked out of the sack, For we saw him throw to the swift flood A girl alive with his hooks through her lips; All the fishes were rayed in blood, Said the dwindling ships.
Good-bye to chimneys and funnels, Old wives that spin in the smoke, He was blind to the eyes of candles In the praying windows of waves But heard his bait buck in the wake And tussle in a shoal of loves.
Now cast down your rod, for the whole Of the sea is hilly with whales, She longs among horses and angels, The rainbow-fish bend in her joys, Floated the lost cathedral Chimes of the rocked buoys.
Where the anchor rode like a gull Miles over the moonstruck boat A squall of birds bellowed and fell, A cloud blew the rain from its throat; He saw the storm smoke out to kill With fuming bows and ram of ice, Fire on starlight, rake Jesu's stream; And nothing shone on the water's face But the oil and bubble of the moon, Plunging and piercing in his course The lured fish under the foam Witnessed with a kiss.
Whales in the wake like capes and Alps Quaked the sick sea and snouted deep, Deep the great bushed bait with raining lips Slipped the fins of those humpbacked tons And fled their love in a weaving dip.
Oh, Jericho was falling in their lungs! She nipped and dived in the nick of love, Spun on a spout like a long-legged ball Till every beast blared down in a swerve Till every turtle crushed from his shell Till every bone in the rushing grave Rose and crowed and fell! Good luck to the hand on the rod, There is thunder under its thumbs; Gold gut is a lightning thread, His fiery reel sings off its flames, The whirled boat in the burn of his blood Is crying from nets to knives, Oh the shearwater birds and their boatsized brood Oh the bulls of Biscay and their calves Are making under the green, laid veil The long-legged beautiful bait their wives.
Break the black news and paint on a sail Huge weddings in the waves, Over the wakeward-flashing spray Over the gardens of the floor Clash out the mounting dolphin's day, My mast is a bell-spire, Strike and smoothe, for my decks are drums, Sing through the water-spoken prow The octopus walking into her limbs The polar eagle with his tread of snow.
From salt-lipped beak to the kick of the stern Sing how the seal has kissed her dead! The long, laid minute's bride drifts on Old in her cruel bed.
Over the graveyard in the water Mountains and galleries beneath Nightingale and hyena Rejoicing for that drifting death Sing and howl through sand and anemone Valley and sahara in a shell, Oh all the wanting flesh his enemy Thrown to the sea in the shell of a girl Is old as water and plain as an eel; Always good-bye to the long-legged bread Scattered in the paths of his heels For the salty birds fluttered and fed And the tall grains foamed in their bills; Always good-bye to the fires of the face, For the crab-backed dead on the sea-bed rose And scuttled over her eyes, The blind, clawed stare is cold as sleet.
The tempter under the eyelid Who shows to the selves asleep Mast-high moon-white women naked Walking in wishes and lovely for shame Is dumb and gone with his flame of brides.
Susannah's drowned in the bearded stream And no-one stirs at Sheba's side But the hungry kings of the tides; Sin who had a woman's shape Sleeps till Silence blows on a cloud And all the lifted waters walk and leap.
Lucifer that bird's dropping Out of the sides of the north Has melted away and is lost Is always lost in her vaulted breath, Venus lies star-struck in her wound And the sensual ruins make Seasons over the liquid world, White springs in the dark.
Always good-bye, cried the voices through the shell, Good-bye always, for the flesh is cast And the fisherman winds his reel With no more desire than a ghost.
Always good luck, praised the finned in the feather Bird after dark and the laughing fish As the sails drank up the hail of thunder And the long-tailed lightning lit his catch.
The boat swims into the six-year weather, A wind throws a shadow and it freezes fast.
See what the gold gut drags from under Mountains and galleries to the crest! See what clings to hair and skull As the boat skims on with drinking wings! The statues of great rain stand still, And the flakes fall like hills.
Sing and strike his heavy haul Toppling up the boatside in a snow of light! His decks are drenched with miracles.
Oh miracle of fishes! The long dead bite! Out of the urn a size of a man Out of the room the weight of his trouble Out of the house that holds a town In the continent of a fossil One by one in dust and shawl, Dry as echoes and insect-faced, His fathers cling to the hand of the girl And the dead hand leads the past, Leads them as children and as air On to the blindly tossing tops; The centuries throw back their hair And the old men sing from newborn lips: Time is bearing another son.
Kill Time! She turns in her pain! The oak is felled in the acorn And the hawk in the egg kills the wren.
He who blew the great fire in And died on a hiss of flames Or walked the earth in the evening Counting the denials of the grains Clings to her drifting hair, and climbs; And he who taught their lips to sing Weeps like the risen sun among The liquid choirs of his tribes.
The rod bends low, divining land, And through the sundered water crawls A garden holding to her hand With birds and animals With men and women and waterfalls Trees cool and dry in the whirlpool of ships And stunned and still on the green, laid veil Sand with legends in its virgin laps And prophets loud on the burned dunes; Insects and valleys hold her thighs hard, Times and places grip her breast bone, She is breaking with seasons and clouds; Round her trailed wrist fresh water weaves, with moving fish and rounded stones Up and down the greater waves A separate river breathes and runs; Strike and sing his catch of fields For the surge is sown with barley, The cattle graze on the covered foam, The hills have footed the waves away, With wild sea fillies and soaking bridles With salty colts and gales in their limbs All the horses of his haul of miracles Gallop through the arched, green farms, Trot and gallop with gulls upon them And thunderbolts in their manes.
O Rome and Sodom To-morrow and London The country tide is cobbled with towns And steeples pierce the cloud on her shoulder And the streets that the fisherman combed When his long-legged flesh was a wind on fire And his loin was a hunting flame Coil from the thoroughfares of her hair And terribly lead him home alive Lead her prodigal home to his terror, The furious ox-killing house of love.
Down, down, down, under the ground, Under the floating villages, Turns the moon-chained and water-wound Metropolis of fishes, There is nothing left of the sea but its sound, Under the earth the loud sea walks, In deathbeds of orchards the boat dies down And the bait is drowned among hayricks, Land, land, land, nothing remains Of the pacing, famous sea but its speech, And into its talkative seven tombs The anchor dives through the floors of a church.
Good-bye, good luck, struck the sun and the moon, To the fisherman lost on the land.
He stands alone in the door of his home, With his long-legged heart in his hand.
Written by Stephen Crane | Create an image from this poem

There was crimson clash of war

 There was crimson clash of war.
Lands turned black and bare; Women wept; Babes ran, wondering.
There came one who understood not these things.
He said, "Why is this?" Whereupon a million strove to answer him.
There was such intricate clamour of tongues, That still the reason was not.
Written by Thomas Hardy | Create an image from this poem

De Profundis

 I 

"Percussus sum sicut foenum, et aruit cor meum.
" - Ps.
ci Wintertime nighs; But my bereavement-pain It cannot bring again: Twice no one dies.
Flower-petals flee; But, since it once hath been, No more that severing scene Can harrow me.
Birds faint in dread: I shall not lose old strength In the lone frost's black length: Strength long since fled! Leaves freeze to dun; But friends can not turn cold This season as of old For him with none.
Tempests may scath; But love can not make smart Again this year his heart Who no heart hath.
Black is night's cope; But death will not appal One who, past doubtings all, Waits in unhope.
De Profundis II "Considerabam ad dexteram, et videbam; et non erat qui cognosceret me When the clouds' swoln bosoms echo back the shouts of the many and strong That things are all as they best may be, save a few to be right ere long, And my eyes have not the vision in them to discern what to these is so clear, The blot seems straightway in me alone; one better he were not here.
The stout upstanders say, All's well with us: ruers have nought to rue! And what the potent say so oft, can it fail to be somewhat true? Breezily go they, breezily come; their dust smokes around their career, Till I think I am one horn out of due time, who has no calling here.
Their dawns bring lusty joys, it seems; their eves exultance sweet; Our times are blessed times, they cry: Life shapes it as is most meet, And nothing is much the matter; there are many smiles to a tear; Then what is the matter is I, I say.
Why should such an one be here? Let him to whose ears the low-voiced Best seems stilled by the clash of the First, Who holds that if way to the Better there be, it exacts a full look at the Worst, Who feels that delight is a delicate growth cramped by crookedness, custom, and fear, Get him up and be gone as one shaped awry; he disturbs the order here.
De Profundis III "Heu mihi, quia incolatus meus prolongatus est! Habitavi cum habitantibus Cedar; multum incola fuit aninia mea.
"--Ps.
cxix.
There have been times when I well might have passed and the ending have come - Points in my path when the dark might have stolen on me, artless, unrueing - Ere I had learnt that the world was a welter of futile doing: Such had been times when I well might have passed, and the ending have come! Say, on the noon when the half-sunny hours told that April was nigh, And I upgathered and cast forth the snow from the crocus-border, Fashioned and furbished the soil into a summer-seeming order, Glowing in gladsome faith that I quickened the year thereby.
Or on that loneliest of eves when afar and benighted we stood, She who upheld me and I, in the midmost of Egdon together, Confident I in her watching and ward through the blackening heather, Deeming her matchless in might and with measureless scope endued.
Or on that winter-wild night when, reclined by the chimney-nook quoin, Slowly a drowse overgat me, the smallest and feeblest of folk there, Weak from my baptism of pain; when at times and anon I awoke there - Heard of a world wheeling on, with no listing or longing to join.
Even then! while unweeting that vision could vex or that knowledge could numb, That sweets to the mouth in the belly are bitter, and tart, and untoward, Then, on some dim-coloured scene should my briefly raised curtain have lowered, Then might the Voice that is law have said "Cease!" and the ending have come.
Written by Alfred Lord Tennyson | Create an image from this poem

The Progress of Spring

 THE groundflame of the crocus breaks the mould, 
Fair Spring slides hither o'er the Southern sea, 
Wavers on her thin stem the snowdrop cold 
That trembles not to kisses of the bee: 
Come Spring, for now from all the dripping eaves 
The spear of ice has wept itself away, 
And hour by hour unfolding woodbine leaves 
O'er his uncertain shadow droops the day.
She comes! The loosen'd rivulets run; The frost-bead melts upon her golden hair; Her mantle, slowly greening in the Sun, Now wraps her close, now arching leaves her bar To breaths of balmier air; Up leaps the lark, gone wild to welcome her, About her glance the ****, and shriek the jays, Before her skims the jubilant woodpecker, The linnet's bosom blushes at her gaze, While round her brows a woodland culver flits, Watching her large light eyes and gracious looks, And in her open palm a halcyon sits Patient--the secret splendour of the brooks.
Come Spring! She comes on waste and wood, On farm and field: but enter also here, Diffuse thyself at will thro' all my blood, And, tho' thy violet sicken into sere, Lodge with me all the year! Once more a downy drift against the brakes, Self-darken'd in the sky, descending slow! But gladly see I thro' the wavering flakes Yon blanching apricot like snow in snow.
These will thine eyes not brook in forest-paths, On their perpetual pine, nor round the beech; They fuse themselves to little spicy baths, Solved in the tender blushes of the peach; They lose themselves and die On that new life that gems the hawthorn line; Thy gay lent-lilies wave and put them by, And out once more in varnish'd glory shine Thy stars of celandine.
She floats across the hamlet.
Heaven lours, But in the tearful splendour of her smiles I see the slowl-thickening chestnut towers Fill out the spaces by the barren tiles.
Now past her feet the swallow circling flies, A clamorous cuckoo stoops to meet her hand; Her light makes rainbows in my closing eyes, I hear a charm of song thro' all the land.
Come, Spring! She comes, and Earth is glad To roll her North below thy deepening dome, But ere thy maiden birk be wholly clad, And these low bushes dip their twigs in foam, Make all true hearths thy home.
Across my garden! and the thicket stirs, The fountain pulses high in sunnier jets, The blackcap warbles, and the turtle purrs, The starling claps his tiny castanets.
Still round her forehead wheels the woodland dove, And scatters on her throat the sparks of dew, The kingcup fills her footprint, and above Broaden the glowing isles of vernal blue.
Hail ample presence of a Queen, Bountiful, beautiful, apparell'd gay, Whose mantle, every shade of glancing green, Flies back in fragrant breezes to display A tunic white as May! She whispers, 'From the South I bring you balm, For on a tropic mountain was I born, While some dark dweller by the coco-palm Watch'd my far meadow zoned with airy morn; From under rose a muffled moan of floods; I sat beneath a solitude of snow; There no one came, the turf was fresh, the woods Plunged gulf on gulf thro' all their vales below I saw beyond their silent tops The steaming marshes of the scarlet cranes, The slant seas leaning oll the mangrove copse, And summer basking in the sultry plains About a land of canes; 'Then from my vapour-girdle soaring forth I scaled the buoyant highway of the birds, And drank the dews and drizzle of the North, That I might mix with men, and hear their words On pathway'd plains; for--while my hand exults Within the bloodless heart of lowly flowers To work old laws of Love to fresh results, Thro' manifold effect of simple powers-- I too would teach the man Beyond the darker hour to see the bright, That his fresh life may close as it began, The still-fulfilling promise of a light Narrowing the bounds of night.
' So wed thee with my soul, that I may mark The coming year's great good and varied ills, And new developments, whatever spark Be struck from out the clash of warring wills; Or whether, since our nature cannot rest, The smoke of war's volcano burst again From hoary deeps that belt the changeful West, Old Empires, dwellings of the kings of men; Or should those fail, that hold the helm, While the long day of knowledge grows and warms, And in the heart of this most ancient realm A hateful voice be utter'd, and alarms Sounding 'To arms! to arms!' A simpler, saner lesson might he learn Who reads thy gradual process, Holy Spring.
Thy leaves possess the season in their turn, And in their time thy warblers rise on wing.
How surely glidest thou from March to May, And changest, breathing it, the sullen wind, Thy scope of operation, day by day, Larger and fuller, like the human mind ' Thy warmths from bud to bud Accomplish that blind model in the seed, And men have hopes, which race the restless blood That after many changes may succeed Life, which is Life indeed.

Book: Shattered Sighs