Once We Played

ONCE we played at love together--
Played it smartly, if you please;
Lightly, as a windblown feather,
Did we stake a heart apiece.

Oh, it was delicious fooling!
In the hottest of the game,
Without thought of future cooling,
All too quickly burned Life's flame.

In this give-and-take of glances,
Kisses sweet as honey dews,
When we played with equal chances,
Did you win, or did I lose?

Was your heart then hurt to bleeding,
In the ardour of the throw?
Was it then I lost, unheeding,
Lost my heart so long ago?

[...] Read more

poem by Mathilde Blind
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Untimely Love

Peace, throbbing heart, nor let us shed one tear
O'er this late love's unseasonable glow;
Sweet as a violet blooming in the snow,
The posthumous offspring of the widowed year
That smells of March when all the world is sere,
And, while around the hurtling sea-winds blow--
Which twist the oak and lay the pine tree low--
Stands childlike in the storm and has no fear.

Poor helpless blossom orphaned of the sun,
How could it thus brave winter's rude estate?
Oh love, more helpless, why bloom so late,
Now that the flower-time of the year is done?
Since thy dear course must end when scarce begun,
Nipped by the cold touch of relentless fate.

poem by Mathilde Blind
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

The Sleeping Beauty

There was intoxication in the air;
The wind, keen blowing from across the seas,
O'er leagues of new-ploughed land and heathery leas,
Smelt of wild gorse whose gold flamed everywhere.
And undertone of song pulsed far and near,
The soaring larks filled heaven with ecstasies,
And, like a living clock among the trees,
The shouting cuckoo struck the time of year.

For now the Sun had found the earth once more,
And woke the Sleeping Beauty with a kiss;
Who thrilled with light of love in every pore,
Opened her flower-blue eyes, and looked in his.
Then all things felt life fluttering at their core--
The world shook mystical in lambent bliss.

poem by Mathilde Blind
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

The Sâkiyeh

"How long shall Man be Nature's fool?" Man cries;
"Be like those great, gaunt oxen, drilled and bound,
Inexorably driven round and round
To turn the water-wheel with bandaged eyes?
And as they trudge beneath Egyptian skies,
Watering the wrinkled desert's beggared ground,
The hoarse Sâkiyeh's lamentable sound
Fills all the land as with a people's sighs?"

Poor Brutes! Who in unconsciousness sublime,
Replenishing the ever-empty jars,
Endow the waste with palms and harvest gold:
And men, who move in rhythm with moving stars,
Should shrink to give the borrowed lives they hold:
Bound blindfold to the groaning wheel of Time.

poem by Mathilde Blind
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Anne Hathaway's Cottage

IS this the Cottage, ivy-girt and crowned,
And this the path down which our Shakespeare ran,
When, in the April of his love, sweet Anne
Made all his mighty pulses throb and bound;
Where, mid coy buds and winking flowers around,
She blushed a rarer rose than roses can,
To greet her Will--even Him, fair Avon's Swan--
Whose name has turned this plot to holy ground!

To these dear walls, once dear to Shakespeare's eyes,
Time's Vandal hand itself has done no wrong;
This nestling lattice opened to his song,
When, with the lark, he bade his love arise
In words whose strong enchantment never dies--
Old as these flowers, and, like them, ever young.

poem by Mathilde Blind
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

The Music-Lesson

A thrush alit on a young-leaved spray,
And, lightly clinging,
It rocked in its singing
As the rapturous notes rose loud and gay;
And with liquid shakes,
And trills and breaks,
Rippled though blossoming bough of May.

Like a ball of fluff, with a warm brown throat
And throbbing bosom,
'Mid the apple-blossom,
The new-fledged nestling sat learning by rote
To echo the song
So tender and strong,
As it feebly put in its frail little note.

O blissfullest lesson amid the green grove!
The low wind crispeth
The leaves, where lispeth
The shy little bird with its parent above;

[...] Read more

poem by Mathilde Blind
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Pastiche

I.

LOVE, oh, Love's a dainty sweeting,
Wooing now, and now retreating;
Brightest joy and blackest care,
Swift as light, and light as air.

II.

Would you seize and fix and capture
All his evanescent rapture?
Bind him fast with golden curls,
Fetter with a chain of pearls?

III.

Would you catch him in a net,
Like a white moth prankt with jet?

[...] Read more

poem by Mathilde Blind
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

In Spring

THE young birds shy twitter
In hedges and bowers,
Fields brighten and glitter
With dewdrops and flowers.
Over flood, over fallow,
Impelled by old yearning,
The nest-building swallow
Exults at returning;
For dark days and hoary
Are routed and over,
Dark Winter is gone;
Resplendent in glory,
The earth meets her lover,
Her bridegroom the Sun.

Must I alone sorrow,
Despairingly languish,
Breaks never a morrow
On the night of my anguish?
The jubilant gladness

[...] Read more

poem by Mathilde Blind
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

To the Obelisk

DURING THE GREAT FROST, 1881.

Thou sign-post of the Desert! Obelisk,
Once fronting in thy monumental pride
Egypt's fierce sun, that blazing far and wide,
Sheared her of tree and herb, till like a disk
Her waste stretched shadowless, and fraught with risk
To those who with their beasts of burden hied
Across the seas of sand until they spied
Thy pillar, and their flagging hearts grew brisk:

Now reared beside out Thames so wintry grey,
Where blocks of ice drift with the drifting stream,
Thou risest o'er the alien prospect! Say,
Yon dull, blear, rayless orb whose lurid gleam
Tinges the snow-draped ships and writhing steam,
Is this the sun which fired thine orient day?

poem by Mathilde Blind
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

My Lady

Like putting forth upon a sea
On which the moonbeams shimmer,
Where reefs and unknown perils be
To wreck, yea, wreck one utterly,
It were to love you, lady fair,
In whose black braids of billowy hair
The misty moonstones glimmer.

Oh, misty moonstone-coloured eye,
Latticed behind long lashes,
Within whose clouded orbs there lies,
Like lightning in the sleeping skies,
A spark to kindle and ignite,
And set a fire of love alight
To burn one's heart to ashes.

I will not put forth on this deep
Of perilous emotion;
No, though your hands be soft as sleep,
They shall not have my heart to keep,

[...] Read more

poem by Mathilde Blind
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!