BEACON POEMS

A Dangling Hope

Seconds after seconds
Minutes turns hours
Hours clock months
Months birth years
.....

Ola Olawale

You Have Crossed The Rubicon

I was a young vine with leaves until you turned me into a pine.
A flowing river, then you seared me into a desert
I was the dazzling sun, a cynosure of many eyes, until you raped me of my iridescence.
The pride of many men, until you smeared me with lust.
.....

Gerald Onyebuchi

Advent Of Spring

The city has fallen: only the hills and rivers remain.
In Spring the streets were green with grass and trees.
Sorrowing over the times, the flowers are weeping.
The birds startled my heart in fear of departing.
.....

Du Fu

Endymion: Book I

ENDYMION.

A Poetic Romance.

.....

John Keats

The Viking's Song

When I thy lover first
Shook out my canvas free
And like a pirate burst
Into that dreaming sea,
.....

Henry Newbolt

Two Backgrounds

I. LA VIERGE AU DONATEUR
HERE by the ample river's argent sweep,
Bosomed in tilth and vintage to her walls,
A tower-crowned Cybele in armoured sleep
.....

Edith Wharton

The Spirit Of The Unborn Babe

The Spirit of the Unborn Babe peered through the window-pane,
Peered through the window-pane that glowed like beacon in the night;
For, oh, the sky was desolate and wild with wind and rain;
And how the little room was crammed with coziness and light!
.....

Robert Service

Four Songs Of Four Seasons

I. WINTER IN NORTHUMBERLAND
OUTSIDE the garden
The wet skies harden;
The gates are barred on
.....

Algernon Charles Swinburne

A Home.

What is a home? A guarded space,
Wherein a few, unfairly blest,
Shall sit together, face to face,
And bask and purr and be at rest?
.....

Susan Coolidge (sarah Chauncey Woolsey)

Nefarious War

Last year we fought by the head-stream of the Sang-kan,
This year we are fighting on the Tsung-ho road.
We have washed our armor in the waves of the Chiao-chi lake,
We have pastured our horses on Tien-shan's snowy slopes.
.....

Li Po

The Night Before

Look you, Dominie; look you, and listen!
Look in my face, first; search every line there;
Mark every feature,-chin, lip, and forehead!
Look in my eyes, and tell me the lesson
.....

Edwin Arlington Robinson

That Nature Is A Heraclitean Fire And Of The Comfort Of The Resurrection

Cloud-puffball, torn tufts, tossed pillows ‘flaunt forth, then chevy on an air-
built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs' they throng; they glitter in marches.
Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, ‘wherever an elm arches,
Shivelights and shadowtackle in long' lashes lace, lance, and pair.
.....

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Blood And The Moon

I

Blessed be this place,
More blessed still this tower;
.....

William Butler Yeats

The Surf Sprite

I.

In the far off sea there is many a sprite,
Who rests by day, but awakes at night.
.....

Sam G. Goodrich

The Human Face

I. Soon

Of all the springtimes of the world
This one is the ugliest
.....

Paul Eluard

Frances

SHE will not sleep, for fear of dreams,
But, rising, quits her restless bed,
And walks where some beclouded beams
Of moonlight through the hall are shed.
.....

Charlotte Brontë

A Study (a Soul)

She stands as pale as Parian statues stand;
Like Cleopatra when she turned at bay,
And felt her strength above the Roman sway,
And felt the aspic writhing in her hand.
.....

Christina Rossetti

Sonnet (oh For A Poet'for A Beacon Bright)

Oh for a poet-for a beacon bright
To rift this changeless glimmer of dead gray;
To spirit back the Muses, long astray,
And flush Parnassus with a newer light;
.....

Edwin Arlington Robinson

Fears In Solitude

Written in April 1798, during the alarm of an invasion

A green and silent spot, amid the hills,
A small and silent dell! O'er stiller place
.....

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Four Quartets 3: The Dry Salvages

(The Dry Salvages-presumably les trois sauvages
- is a small group of rocks, with a beacon, off the N.E.
coast of Cape Ann, Massachusetts. Salvages is pronounced
to rhyme with assuages. Groaner: a whistling buoy.)
.....

T. S. Eliot

The Wreck Of The Deutschland

To the
happy memory of five Franciscan Nuns
exiles by the Falk Laws
drowned between midnight and morning of
.....

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Fission

White glow melts life
freezes shadow, twisted bottle
the birth of the transistor
and then.
.....

S. K. Kelen

The Iliad: Book 13

Now when Jove had thus brought Hector and the Trojans to the
ships, he left them to their never-ending toil, and turned his keen
eyes away, looking elsewhither towards the horse-breeders of Thrace,
the Mysians, fighters at close quarters, the noble Hippemolgi, who
.....

Homer

The Iliad: Book 18

Thus then did they fight as it were a flaming fire. Meanwhile the
fleet runner Antilochus, who had been sent as messenger, reached
Achilles, and found him sitting by his tall ships and boding that
which was indeed too surely true. “Alas,” said he to himself in the
.....

Homer

Goblin Market

Morning and evening
Maids heard the goblins cry:
“Come buy our orchard fruits,
Come buy, come buy:
.....

Christina Rossetti

Strange Voices

Strange voices sing among the planets which
Move on for ever; in the old sea's foam
There is a prophecy; in Heaven's blue dome
Great beacon fires are lighted; black as pitch
.....

Christina Rossetti

The New Hawaiian Girl

EXPLANATORY

Kamehameha First, of the Hawaiian Islands, conquered his
foes in a great battle, driving them over the high mountain
.....

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Guy Of The Temple

Down the dim West slow fails the stricken sun,
And from his hot face fades the crimson flush
Veiled in death's herald-shadows sick and gray.
Silent and dark the sombre valley lies
.....

John Hay

If Homely Virtues Draw From Me A Tune

If homely virtues draw from me a tune
In happy jingle or a half-sad croon;
Or if the smoldering future should inspire
My hand to strike the seer's prophetic lyre;
.....

James Weldon Johnson

Sonnet

Oh for a poetâ??for a beacon bright
To rift this changless glimmer of dead gray;
To spirit back the Muses, long astray,
And flush Parnassus with a newer light;
.....

Edwin Arlington Robinson

Despair

Alone! Alone! No beacon, far or near!
   No chart, no compass, and no anchor stay!
   Like melting fog the mirage melts away
In all-surrounding darkness, void and clear.
.....

Ada Cambridge

The London 'bobby'

A Tribute To The Policemen Of England's Capital


Here in my cosy corner,
.....

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The Trip To Mars

Oh! by and by we shall hear the cry,
‘This is the way to Mars.'
Come take a trip, on the morning Ship;
It sails by the Isle of Stars.
.....

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Vision

I had been sitting alone with books,
Till doubt was a black disease,
When I heard the cheerful shout of rooks
In the bare, prophetic trees.
.....

Aldous Huxley

Friar Pedro's Ride

It was the morning season of the year;
It was the morning era of the land;
The watercourses rang full loud and clear;
Portala's cross stood where Portala's hand
.....

Bret Harte

To Cinna

Cinna, the great Venusian told
In songs that will not die
How in Augustan days of old
Your love did glorify
.....

Eugene Field

An Ode - In Commemoration Of The Founding, Of The Massachusetts Bay Colony In The Year 1623.

I.

They who maintained their rights,
Through storm and stress,
.....

Madison Julius Cawein

Were I A Skilful Painter

Were I a skilful painter,
My pencil, not my pen,
Should try to teach thee hope and fear,
And who would blame me then?-
.....

George Macdonald

Autumn

I dwell alone,-I dwell alone, alone,
Whilst full my river flows down to the sea,
Gilded with flashing boats
That bring no friend to me:
.....

Christina Rossetti

Mrs. Katherine-s Lantern

'Coming from a gloomy court,
Place of Israelite resort,
This old lamp I've brought with me.
Madam, on its panes you'll see
.....

William Makepeace Thackeray

The Princes' Quest - Part The Seventh

But Sleep, who makes a mist about the sense,
Doth ope the eyelids of the soul, and thence
Lifteth a heavier cloud than that whereby
He veils the vision of the fleshly eye.
.....

William Watson

An Interregnum

LOUD trumpets blow among the naked pines,
Fine spun as sere-cloth rent from royal dead.
Seen ghostly thro' high-lifted vagrant drifts,
Shrill blaring, but no longer loud to moons
.....

Isabella Valancy Crawford

The London 'bobby'

A Tribute To The Policemen Of Englands Capital

Here in my cosy corner,
Before a blazing log,
.....

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Reveille

Wake: the silver dusk returning
Up the beach of darkness brims,
And the ship of sunrise burning
Strands upon the eastern rims.
.....

Alfred Edward Housman

The Armada

Attend, all ye who list to hear our noble England's praise;
I tell of the thrice famous deeds she wrought in ancient days,
When that great fleet invincible against her bore in vain
The richest spoils of Mexico, the stoutest hearts of Spain.
.....

Thomas Babbington Macaulay

Prayer For The Home

Peace, unto this house, I pray,
Keep terror and despair away;
Shield it from evil and let sin
Never find lodging room within.
.....

Edgar Albert Guest

For The Commemoration Services

CAMBRIDGE, JULY 21, 1865

FOUR summers coined their golden light in leaves,
Four wasteful autumns flung them to the gale,
.....

Oliver Wendell Holmes

The Christ Upon The Hill

Part I.

A couple old sat o'er the fire,
And they were bent and gray;
.....

William Cosmo Monkhouse

Hymn To The North Star.

The sad and solemn night
Hath yet her multitude of cheerful fires;
The glorious host of light
Walk the dark hemisphere till she retires;
.....

William Cullen Bryant

To Liberty

O spirit of the wind and sky,
Where doth thy harp neglected lie?
Is there no heart thy bard to be,
To wake that soul of melody?
.....

John Clare