A Poem by Robert Fuller Murray

When people tell me they have loved
But once in youth,
I wonder, are they always moved
To speak the truth?

Not that they wilfully deceive:
They fondly cherish
A constancy which they would grieve
To think might perish.

They cherish it until they think
‘Twas always theirs.
So, if the truth they sometimes blink,
‘Tis unawares.

Yet unawares, I must profess,
They do deceive
Themselves, and those who questionless
Their tale believe.

For I have loved, I freely own,
A score of times,
And woven, out of love alone,
A hundred rhymes.

Boys will be fickle.    Yet, when all
Is said and done,
I was not one whom you could call
A flirt–not one

Of those who into three or four
Their hearts divide.
My queens came singly to the door,
Not side by side.

Each, while she reigned, possessed alone
My spirit loyal,
Then left an undisputed throne
To one more royal,

To one more fair in form and face
Sweeter and stronger,
Who filled the throne with truer grace,
And filled it longer.

So, love by love, they came and passed,
These loves of mine,
And each one brighter than the last
Their lights did shine.

Until–but am I not too free,
Most courteous stranger,
With secrets which belong to me?
There is a danger.

Until, I say, the perfect love,
The last, the best,
Like flame descending from above,
Kindled my breast,

Kindled my breast like ardent flame,
With quenchless glow.
I knew not love until it came,
But now I know.

You smile.    The twenty loves before
Were each in turn,
You say, the final flame that o’er
My soul should burn.

Smile on, my friend.    I will not say
You have no reason;
But if the love I feel to-day
Depart, ’tis treason!

If this depart, not once again
Will I on paper
Declare the loves that waste and wane,
Like some poor taper.

No, no!    This flame, I cannot doubt,
Despite your laughter,
Will burn till Death shall put it out,
And may be after.

A Poem by William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

“The Second Coming” was first printed in The Dial in November 1920, (see more)

A Poem by Thomas Hardy

“That same first fiddler who leads the orchestra to-night
Here fiddled four decades of years ago;
He bears the same babe-like smile of self-centred delight,
Same trinket on watch-chain, same ring on the hand with the bow.

“But his face, if regarded, is woefully wanner, and drier,
And his once dark beard has grown straggling and gray;
Yet a blissful existence he seems to have led with his lyre,
In a trance of his own, where no wearing or tearing had sway.

“Mid these wax figures, who nothing can do, it may seem
That to do but a little thing counts a great deal;
To be watched by kings, councillors, queens, may be flattering to him
With their glass eyes longing they too could wake notes that appeal.”

    * * *

Ah, but he played staunchly – that fiddler – whoever he was,
With the innocent heart and the soul-touching string:
May he find the Fair Haven! For did he not smile with good cause?
Yes; gamuts that graced forty years’-flight were not a small thing!

A Dialogue Poem by Alexander Pope

POPE.
Since my old friend is grown so great,
As to be Minister of State,
I’m told, but ’tis not true, I hope,
That Craggs will be ashamed of Pope.

CRAGGS.
Alas! if I am such a creature,
To grow the worse for growing greater,
Why, faith, in spite of all my brags,
‘Tis Pope must be ashamed of Craggs.

A Poem by Violet Jacob

Out in the upland places,
I see both dale and down,
And the ploughed earth with open scores
Turning the green to brown.

The bare bones of the country
Lie gaunt in winter days,
Grim fastnesses of rock and scaur,
Sure, while the year decays.

And, as the autumn withers,
And the winds strip the tree,
The companies of buried folk
Rise up and speak with me; –

From homesteads long forgotten,
From graves by church and yew,
They come to walk with noiseless tread
Upon the land they knew; –

Men who have tilled the pasture
The writhen thorn beside,
Women within grey vanished walls
Who bore and loved and died.

And when the great town closes
Upon me like a sea,
Daylong, above its weary din,
I hear them call to me.

Dead folk, the roofs are round me,
To bar out field and hill,
And yet I hear you on the wind
Calling and calling still;

And while, by street and pavement,
The day runs slowly through,
My soul, across these haunted downs,
Goes forth and walks with you.

A Poem by Gwendolyn B. Bennett

I love you for your brownness,
And the rounded darkness of your breast,
I love you for the breaking sadness in your voice
And shadows where your wayward eyelids rest.

Something of old forgotten queens
Lurks in the lithe abandon of your walk
And something of the shackled slave
Sobs in the rhythm of your talk.

Oh, little brown girl, born for sorrow’s mate,
Keep all you have of queenliness,
Forgetting that you once were slave,
And let your full lips laugh at Fate!

A Narrative Poem by Edwin Arlington Robinson

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked,
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
“Good-morning,” and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich–yes, richer than a king–
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.

“Richard Cory” was first published in 1897, (see more)

A Narrative Poem by Edwin Arlington Robinson

Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn,
Grew lean while he assailed the seasons;
He wept that he was ever born,
And he had reasons.

Miniver loved the days of old
When swords were bright and steeds were prancing;
The vision of a warrior bold
Would set him dancing.

Miniver sighed for what was not,
And dreamed and rested from his labors;
He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot
And Priam’s neighbors.

Miniver mourned the ripe renown
That made so many a name so fragrant;
He mourned Romance, now on the town,
And Art, a vagrant.

Miniver loved the Medici,
Albeit he had never seen one;
He would have sinned incessantly
Could he have been one.

Miniver cursed the commonplace,
And eyed a khaki suit with loathing;
He missed the mediaeval grace
Of iron clothing.

Miniver scorned the gold he sought,
But sore annoyed he was without it;
Miniver thought and thought and thought
And thought about it.

Miniver Cheevy, born too late,
Scratched his head and kept on thinking;
Miniver coughed, and called it fate,
And kept on drinking.

“Miniver Cheevy” was first published in The Town down the River in 1910. (see more)

A Poem by Emily Brontë

How beautiful the earth is still,
To thee–how full of happiness?
How little fraught with real ill,
Or unreal phantoms of distress!
How spring can bring thee glory, yet,
And summer win thee to forget
December’s sullen time!
Why dost thou hold the treasure fast,
Of youth’s delight, when youth is past,
And thou art near thy prime?

When those who were thy own compeers,
Equals in fortune and in years,
Have seen their morning melt in tears,
To clouded, smileless day;
Blest, had they died untried and young,
Before their hearts went wandering wrong,–
Poor slaves, subdued by passions strong,
A weak and helpless prey!

‘Because, I hoped while they enjoyed,
And by fulfilment, hope destroyed;
As children hope, with trustful breast,
I waited bliss–and cherished rest.
A thoughtful spirit taught me soon,
That we must long till life be done;
That every phase of earthly joy
Must always fade, and always cloy:

‘This I foresaw–and would not chase
The fleeting treacheries;
But, with firm foot and tranquil face,
Held backward from that tempting race,
Gazed o’er the sands the waves efface,
To the enduring seas–
There cast my anchor of desire
Deep in unknown eternity;
Nor ever let my spirit tire,
With looking for WHAT IS TO BE!

It is hope’s spell that glorifies,
Like youth, to my maturer eyes,
All Nature’s million mysteries,
The fearful and the fair–
Hope soothes me in the griefs I know;
She lulls my pain for others’ woe,
And makes me strong to undergo
What I am born to bear.

Glad comforter! will I not brave,
Unawed, the darkness of the grave?
Nay, smile to hear Death’s billows rave–
Sustained, my guide, by thee?
The more unjust seems present fate,
The more my spirit swells elate,
Strong, in thy strength, to anticipate
Rewarding destiny!

“Anticipation” was published in the 1846 collection Poems By Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell under Emily’s nom de plume ‘Ellis Bell’.

A Poem by Susan Coolidge (Sarah Chauncey Woolsey)

 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?

 Where cushioned walls rise up between
 Its inmates and the common air,
 The common pain, and pad and screen
 From blows of fate or winds of care?

 Where Art may blossom strong and free,
 And Pleasure furl her silken wing,
 And every laden moment be
 A precious and peculiar thing?

 And Past and Future, softly veiled
 In hiding mists, shall float and lie
 Forgotten half, and unassailed
 By either hope or memory,

 While the luxurious Present weaves
 Her perfumed spells untried, untrue,
 Broiders her garments, heaps her sheaves,
 All for the pleasure of a few?

Can it be this, the longed-for thing
Which wanderers on the restless foam,
Unsheltered beggars, birds on wing,
Aspire to, dream of, christen “Home”?

No. Art may bloom, and peace and bliss;
Grief may refrain and Death forget;
But if there be no more than this,
The soul of home is wanting yet.

Dim image from far glory caught,
Fair type of fairer things to be,
The true home rises in our thought,
A beacon set for men to see.

Its lamps burn freely in the night,
Its fire-glows unchidden shed
Their cheering and abounding light
On homeless folk uncomforted.

Each sweet and secret thing within
Gives out a fragrance on the air,–
A thankful breath, sent forth to win
A little smile from others’ care.

The few, they bask in closer heat;
The many catch the farther ray.
Life higher seems, the world more sweet,
And hope and Heaven less far away.

So the old miracle anew
Is wrought on earth and proved good,
And crumbs apportioned for a few,
God-blessed, suffice a multitude.