Love Litanies.
I.
I, too, have come to feel and see
How little in the world can be
Ours, as we pine and pass —
How all we long for, know of, love,
As in a dream from us remove,
Till each becomes the shadow of
A light that was.
II.
We must all somehow be made
One with time, that fleeting shade;
Until we within the dust
Wither as sweet violets must
In their own scent, as they lie
Like a virgin memory
Trembling with its sweetest breath
In the mystery of death.
poem by Robert Crawford
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The Orator.
He has a charm that sets each thought to music,
So rare an utterance, whoso hears him feels
Even a prosy theme has poesy
When a magician takes its study on.
So setting every subject to the tune
Of a due and endowed delivery,
The matter and the manner seem to steal
Like meeting music on the listening ear,
And crowded benches lurk to linger on
His latest note, as if a siren sung;
So sweet a fascination has the power
Of language when used by an orator.
poem by Robert Crawford
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Antony's Friend.
Bring me my robes and crown!
I must make a brave end,
Charmian, fitting the renown
Of Antony's friend.
Caesar shall find me so,
'Tired like a royal bride,
When he comes in, and the lights are low,
And I'm by Antony's side —
Wedded in Death's bright hall
Beyond the Egyptian air,
My crown and robes on me, and all
The love that made me fair.
My women! sooth to tell
Soft is the aspic's bite:
It would have pleased my Roman well
So to have said good-night.
poem by Robert Crawford
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The Old Unrest.
That which made us seems to fret
Like a pang within us yet,
As if we unfinished were,
Such blind gropings in us stir,
As light in an eye grown dim
That can no more finely limn
All the senses would impart
To the sad, mysterious heart,
Or an ear grown taut that can
No more tune the tones of man.
We are still such troubled elves,
As we were beside ourselves —
One with Him, it may be, who
Is as vexed as we are too
With a mystic malady
Running through Eternity!
poem by Robert Crawford
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A Memory.
She had an other-worldly air,
So like a flower she grew,
As if her thoughts and feelings were
The only life she knew.
She moved in other ways apart,
As in a secret place,
And the emotion of her heart
Seemed breathing in her face.
It was as if a faery power
Had charmed her with its mood,
And graced her with the dreamy dower
Of earthly angelhood.
And when Death touched her starry brow,
It seemed as if it were
The dream she was became somehow
Another dream of her.
poem by Robert Crawford
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Mutation.
The peaceful years, and then the stormy time
When the perturbed Earth moans, and Death himself
Seems ready to seize all his prey, 'to smite
Once and to smite no more.' Not yet the end,
And still the labour of the God goes on:
Time sows and reaps, and men are born and die;
Moons wax and wane, and all is changing still
As in the dream of some mysterious Power,
A dream of joy and woe, obscure as life —
That vagrant melody still lapsing down
The aeons to our doom!
poem by Robert Crawford
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Thought's Assiduity.
Be not afraid of facts; they must be faced,
And thought must in the affairs of circumstance
Untangle many a knotty point, decide
Grave issues, and so tend life's business that
She runs not into debt with hope and fear,
Doubt's brokers or emotion's merchants, and
So bankrupt's her estate that, inly poor,
Not all conceit or custom's bravery
Can long ward off the wretched hour that gives
Her beggary, like an evil odour, to
The casual air, and taints the time with her.
poem by Robert Crawford
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Lethe.
The waves of Lethe wash till we forget
Our earthy life and love; and 'twould appear
Before Time's tune possessed us, before we
Let fall the shadow of our meaning here —
Oh, it would seem that in another Lethe
We had been dipped as Death will dip us, to
Wash out the memory of ourselves, as though
Each stage had its own livery, and we threw
Off the old meaning, like the garments that,
Worn and occasion-soiled, men doff when they
Have to look natural in another sphere.
poem by Robert Crawford
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The Joy Of Life.
I have the man's-heart in me, and 'tis noble
To be alive, to think, to feel, to have
My part in all the precious come-and-go
Of all things here. My very blood's a-tune
With the sweet air; my brain is musical;
And every appetite, a healthy maw,
Is satisfied, not cloyed. It is so fair
A world, so good to be alive. O Time!
To dance unto the piping of desire,
To feast each fancy with material fare,
And then to heaven as in a wink, and be
Immortal in the paradise of power!
poem by Robert Crawford
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Three In A Shade.
Here we sit, and blind Desire
Plays his spinet in the shade.
How is it our fancies tire?
Why is it our hearts afraid,
Cower, as with trembling wing
'Neath the grey hawk Time that flies
Where the phantom colours cling
To the ever-fading skies?
Is it with all things but thus?
In our hearts when we were born
Young Desire laughed with us,
So, so old now and forlorn
As he sits, an eerie elf
In the wizard airs that stir,
With a man so like himself
And the ghost of what you were.
poem by Robert Crawford
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