At Juliet's Tomb.
This fair woman who is dead
(Sung so sweet of long ago)
Lies not in a mortal bed —
Song has made her couch to grow
With all sweet things, as they stir
Like unfading growths that cling
In an everlasting spring
Round her Poet's dream of her.
Time is dead — she has not died!
All the light of beauty stays,
As if the sweet lips replied
To whate'er her lover says
O'er the tomb to her, as he
Fingers her undying hair:
Such is death when Love is there,
Love that lives in poesy.
poem by Robert Crawford
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Fate.
O Thou, who knowest whence we came, and can
Endow a moment with the mood of Man,
When my wan moment like a dream is gone,
Destroy or take me then where I began.
If it be in that moment I have err'd
A thousand times, remember I'm a word
Which Thou hast spoken, and its echoes have
All from Thine own intensity occurr'd.
I am no other than what Thou hast made,
Apprenticed to Thy purpose, like a trade,
I know not why; and if I care or no,
'Tis to Thy purpose, too, how I am paid.
poem by Robert Crawford
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
In Egypt.
Speak softly, wake her not! We all must die.
This is a sleep that wraps her in secure
From Caesar's luck. Yet is that veiny bosom
Warm where now love's despair wrought life's undoing,
Or it may be life's parting, love's renewing,
So all's not over yet. See you, and how
She sleeps in his esteem, and he in hers,
Conjoined in Song's immortal monument;
While Caesar triumphs on through Syria,
And these two lie in Egypt — so together,
And, through the working of a worm, for ever.
poem by Robert Crawford
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Autumn.
I in the autumn of my days
Stand by a place of tears,
And hear the unborn children weep
Within the unborn years;
And feel how all God's sorrow must
Go wailing on until
Man's autumn, too, is past, and he
May winter from all ill.
* * * * *
A pale light in the fading wood,
The sob of dying leaves —
A lorn bird lying in the dusk
Of life that wakes and grieves!
O mournful heart whose love is dust,
In the decaying wood
Death's deepening mystery will cling
Round thee like solitude.
poem by Robert Crawford
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Queen And Clown.
Cleopatra: Hast thou the pretty worm of Nilus there, that kills and
pains not?
Clown: Truly I have him; but I would not be the party that should
desire you to touch him, for his biting is immortal: those that do die of it
do seldom or never recover.
* * * * *
Asps in a basket for the Queen!
The pretty worm of Nile
Will charm her from what might have been,
And make Death smile.
So soft an end for one so fair,
Her Roman lying low —
The other Roman finds her there,
Beyond him so!
poem by Robert Crawford
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
A Bridal Song.
Love that art enlargéd
As the sun!
Shine upon the bride-life
Here begun,
And upon his, too, that stirs
Now within the breath of hers —
No more two, but one.
Touch her beauty, quickening
With the spell
Of her girlhood passing:
Favor well
All his ways with her, that she
May deem this day's mystery
Was thy miracle.
Pass now, Love! upon them
In this light,
Till the magic of them,
Touch and sight,
Fades as either's lone life-story
Into all the grace and glory
[...] Read more
poem by Robert Crawford
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Song #3.
Love's but to be had this way:
Reverent you must be with her,
Letting your heart night and day
Dreamy in her beauty stir.
God has set her to a tune
You may never match until,
Like the moonlight in the moon,
You with her own passion fill.
Is she worth this to you, worth
All that you can think or say —
The one flower of life on earth?
If not, put your dream away!
Close the portals of your speech,
Let not e'en a fancy stir,
If your rapture can but reach
To her beauty — not to her.
poem by Robert Crawford
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Song #7.
You, too, shall know that I have prayed
Beneath the mystic tree
Whose branches at the first were made
Out of God's memory.
Beneath those boughs my soul has knelt,
And each leaf bending down
Stirred with my heart, as it had felt
A rapture like its own.
I dared not touch the holy thing,
But made my prayer a breath
Intense as is the passioning
Of lover gone to death —
Who sees the dark flood he must cross
Without his love afar,
And bears with him that bitter loss
'Where the Eternal are.'
poem by Robert Crawford
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Marriage Morn.
Fades the moonlight on the sea,
And the dawn is coming in —
What will this day bring for me,
This of all days, Evelyn?
Ah! to-day our hands we plight;
Life or death is in the vow;
All that earth knows of delight
Or of grief is round me now —
While the dawn-light limns the shore,
And thou in thy lonely sleep
Dream'st thy maiden dreams before
Hymen's mystery shall steep
Thy heart's fancies in mine own,
And the pulse of passion stir
With the esctasy that's known
Only to Love's worshipper.
poem by Robert Crawford
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Song #4.
They have been here and had this light
Who in their graves are lying,
And e'en the youngest life to-night
Is gradually dying.
Our birth's a kind of death we have
When we upon time waken,
A step still nearer to the grave
With every breath is taken.
We are doomed being born, as 'twere
Decay within us breeding,
Or e'en as time did groan and bear
But death's immortal seeding;
For we are made of stuff that goes
So easy to decaying,
'Tis at the best the spirit's clothes
In which it goes a-Maying.
poem by Robert Crawford
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!