The Seamaids’ Music

One moment the boy, as he wander’d by night
Where the far spreading foam in the moonbeam was white,
One moment he caught on the breath of the breeze
The voice of the sisters that sing in the seas.

One moment, no more: though the boy linger’d long,
No more might he hear of the mermaidens’ song,
But the pine-woods behind him moan’d low from the land,
And the ripple gush’d soft at his feet on the sand.

Yet or ever they ceas’d, the strange sound of their joy
Had lighted a light in the breast of the boy:
And the seeds of a wonder, a splendor to be
Had been breath’d through his soul from the songs of the sea.

poem by Ernest Myers
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Infant Eyes

Blood of my blood, bone of my bone,
Heart of my being's heart,
Strange visitant, yet very son;
All this, and more, thou art.

In thy soft lineaments I trace,
More winning daily grown,
The sweetness of thy mother's face
Transfiguring my own.

That grave but all untroubled gaze,
So rapt yet never dim,
Seems following o'er their starry ways
The wings of cherubim.

Two worlds man hardly may descry,
(For manhood clouds them o'er),
Commingled to mine inward eye
Are shadowed forth once more:

[...] Read more

poem by Ernest Myers
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Etsi Omnes, Ego Non

HERE where under earth his head
Finds a last and lonely bed,
Let him speak upon the stone:
Etsi omnes, ego non.

Here he shall not know the eyes
Bent upon their sordid prize
Earthward ever, nor the beat
Of the hurrying faithless feet.

None to make him perfect cheer
Join’d him on his journey drear;
Some too soon, who fell away;
Some too late, who mourn to-day.

Yet while comrades one by one
Made denial and were gone,
Not the less he labor’d on:
Etsi omnes, ego non.

[...] Read more

poem by Ernest Myers
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Gordon

I
ON through the Libyan sand
Rolls ever, mile on mile,
League on long league, cleaving the rainless land,
Fed by no friendly wave, the immemorial Nile.

II
Down through the cloudless air,
Undimm’d, from heaven’s sheer height,
Bend their inscrutable gaze, austere and bare,
In long-proceeding pomp, the stars of Libyan night.

III
Beneath the stars, beside the unpausing flood,
Earth trembles at the wandering lion’s roar;
Trembles again, when in blind thirst of blood
Sweep the wild tribes along the startled shore.

IV
They sweep and surge and struggle, and are gone:

[...] Read more

poem by Ernest Myers
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!