For The Birthday of Edgar Allan Poe
(January 19, 1909)
Poet of doom, dementia, and death,
Of beauty singing in a charnel house,
Like the lost soul of a poor moon-mad maid,
With too much loving of some lord of hell;
Doomed and disastrous spirit, to what shore
Of what dark gulf infernal art thou strayed,
Or to what spectral star of topless heaven
Art lifted and enthroned?
The winter dark,
And the drear winter cold that welcomed thee
To a world all winter, gird with ice and storm
Thy January day-yea! the same world
Of winter and the wintry hearts of men;
And still, for all thy shining, the same swarm
That mocked thy song gather about thy fame,
With the small murmur of the undying worm,
And whisper, blind and foul, amid thy dust.
poem by Richard Le Gallienne
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A Child's Even-Song
The sun is weary, for he ran
So far and fast to-day;
The birds are weary, for who sang
So many songs as they?
The bees and butterflies at last
Are tired out, for just think too
How many gardens through the day
Their little wings have fluttered through.
And so, as all tired people do,
They've gone to lay their sleepy heads
Deep deep in warm and happy beds.
The sun has shut his golden eye
And gone to sleep beneath the sky,
The birds and butterflies and bees
Have all crept into flowers and trees,
And all lie quiet, still as mice,
Till morning comes-like father's voice.
So Geoffrey, Owen, Phyllis, you
Must sleep away till morning too.
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poem by Richard Le Gallienne
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Spring's Promises
When the spring comes again, will you be there?
Three springs I watched and waited for your face,
And listened for your voice upon the air;
I sought for you in many a hidden place,
Saying, 'She must be there.'
'Surely some magic slumber holds her fast,
She whose blue eyes were morning's earliest flowers,'
I sighed: and, one by one, before me passed
The rainbowed daughters of the vernal showers,
Saying, 'She comes at last.'
Ah! broken promise of the world! how fair
You speak young hearts! In many a wanton word
Of lyric April, each succeeding year,
By risen flower, and the returning bird,
You vowed to bring back her.
And now the flutes are in the trees once more,
The violets breathe up through the melting snow,
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poem by Richard Le Gallienne
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Ballade Of The Paid Puritan
In vain with whip and knotted cord
The hirelings of hypocrisy
Would make us comely for the Lord:
Think ye God works through such as ye--
Paid Puritan, plump Pharisee,
And lobbyist fingering his fat bill,
Reeking of rum and bribery:
God needs not you to work His will.
We know you whom you serve, abhorred
Traducers of true piety,
What tarnished gold is your reward
In Washington and Albany;
'Tis not from God you take your fee,
Another's purpose to fulfil,
You that are God's worst enemy:
God needs not you to work His will.
Not by the money-changing horde,
Base traders in the sanctuary,
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poem by Richard Le Gallienne
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Ballade Of The Unchanged Beloved
(TO I----a)
When rumour fain would fright my ear
With the destruction and decay
Of things familiar and dear,
And vaunt of a swift-running day
That sweeps the fair old Past away;
Whatever else be strange and new,
All other things may go or stay,
So that there be no change in you.
These loud mutations others fear
Find me high-fortressed 'gainst dismay,
They trouble not the tranquil sphere
That hallows with immortal ray
The world where love and lovers stray
In glittering gardens soft with dew--
O let them break and burn and slay,
So that there be no change in you.
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poem by Richard Le Gallienne
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To A Mountain Spring
Strange little spring, by channels past our telling,
Gentle, resistless, welling, welling, welling;
Through what blind ways, we know not whence
You darkling come to dance and dimple--
Strange little spring!
Nature hath no such innocence,
And no more secret thing--
So mysterious and so simple;
Earth hath no such fairy daughter
Of all her witchcraft shapes of water.
When all the land with summer burns,
And brazen noon rides hot and high,
And tongues are parched and grasses dry,
Still are you green and hushed with ferns,
And cool as some old sanctuary;
Still are you brimming o'er with dew
And stars that dipped their feet in you.
And I believe when none is by,
Only the young moon in the sky--
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poem by Richard Le Gallienne
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A Ballad of London
AH, London! London! our delight,
Great flower that opens but at night,
Great City of the midnight sun,
Whose day begins when day is done.
Lamp after lamp against the sky
Opens a sudden beaming eye,
Leaping alight on either hand,
The iron lilies of the Strand.
Like dragonflies, the hansoms hover,
With jeweled eyes, to catch the lover;
The streets are full of lights and loves,
Soft gowns, and flutter of soiled doves.
The human moths about the light
Dash and cling close in dazed delight,
And burn and laugh, the world and wife,
For this is London, this is life!
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poem by Richard Le Gallienne
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At The Sign Of The Lyre
(To the Memory of Austin Dobson)
Master of the lyric inn
Where the rarer sort so long
Drew the rein, to 'scape the din
Of the cymbal and the gong,
Topers of the classic bin,--
Oporto, sherris and tokay,
Muscatel, and beaujolais--
Conning some old Book of Airs,
Lolling in their Queen Anne chairs--
Catch or glee or madrigal,
Writ for viol or virginal;
Or from France some courtly tune,
Gavotte, ridotto, rigadoon;
(Watteau and the rising moon);
Ballade, rondeau, triolet,
Villanelle or virelay,
Wistful of a statelier day,
Gallant, delicate, desire:
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poem by Richard Le Gallienne
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Paris Day By Day: A Family Epistle
(TO MRS. HENRY HARLAND)
Paris, half Angel, half Grisette,
I would that I were with thee yet,
Where the long boulevard at even
Stretches its starry lamps to heaven,
And whispers from a thousand trees
Vague hints of the Hesperides.
Once more, once more, my heart, to sit
With Aline's smile and Harry's wit,
To sit and sip the cloudy green,
With dreamy hints of speech between;
Or, may be, flashing all intent
At call of some stern argument,
When the New Woman fain would be,
Like the Old Male, her husband, free.
The prose-man takes his mighty lyre
And talks like music set on fire!
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poem by Richard Le Gallienne
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The World's Musqueteer: To Marshal Foch
(_Ballade a double refrain_)
Marshal of France, yet still the Musqueteer,
Comrade at arms, on your bronzed cheek we press
The soldier's kiss, and drop the soldier's tear;
Brother by brother fought we in the stress
Of the locked steel, all the wild work that fell
For our reluctant doing; we that stormed hell
And smote it down together, in the sun
Stand here once more, with all our fighting done,
Garlands upon our helmets, sword and lance
Quiet with laurel, sharing the peace they won:
Soldier that saved the world in saving France.
Soldier that saved the world in saving France,
France that was Europe's dawn when light was none,
Clear eyes that with eternal vigilance
Pierce through the webs in nether darkness spun,
Soul of man's soul, his sentinel upon
The ramparts of the world: Ah! France, 'twas well
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poem by Richard Le Gallienne
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