Ianthe! You are Call’d to Cross the Sea

I
Ianthe! you are call’d to cross the sea!
A path forbidden me!
Remember, while the sun his blessing sheds
Upon the mountain-heads,
How often we have watcht him laying down
His brow, and dropt our own
Against each other’s, and how faint and short
And sliding the support!
What will succeed it now? Mine is unblest,
Ianthe! nor will rest
But on the very thought that swells with pain.
O bid me hope again!
O give me back what Earth, what (without you)
Not heaven itself can do—
One of the golden days that we have past,
And let it be my last!
Or else the gift would be, however sweet,
Fragile and incomplete.
187
Rating:

Comment form:

*Max text - 1500. Manual moderation.

Similar Poems:

Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse by Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnold
Through Alpine meadows soft-suffused
With rain, where thick the crocus blows,
Past the dark forges long disused,
The mule-track from Saint Laurent goes.
The bridge is cross'd, and slow we ride,
Through forest, up the mountain-side.

The autumnal evening darkens round,
The wind is up, and drives the rain;
While, hark! far down, with strangled sound
Doth the Dead Guier's stream complain,
Where that wet smoke, among the woods,
Over his boiling cauldron broods.

Swift rush the spectral vapours white
Read Poem
0
249
Rating:

“No, I wasn’t meant to love and be loved” by Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib
Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib
No, I wasn’t meant to love and be loved.
If I’d lived longer, I would have waited longer.

Knowing you are faithless keeps me alive and hungry.
Knowing you faithful would kill me with joy.

Delicate are you, and your vows are delicate, too,
so easily do they break.

You are a laconic marksman. You leave me
not dead but perpetually dying.
Read Poem
0
230
Rating:

Voyages by Hart Crane
Hart Crane
I

Above the fresh ruffles of the surf
Bright striped urchins flay each other with sand.
They have contrived a conquest for shell shucks,
And their fingers crumble fragments of baked weed
Gaily digging and scattering.

And in answer to their treble interjections
The sun beats lightning on the waves,
Read Poem
0
250
Rating:

Elevation by Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire
Over gutters and over parking lots,
over rooftops, fountains, cloudbanks and the bay,
beyond the sun, beyond the medium that fills
unoccupied space, beyond the confines of the known

universe, ghost, you slip out of me
with the ease of a swimmer
at one with the waves, furrowing the deep
with a pleasure we can’t articulate
Read Poem
0
287
Rating:

from The Prelude: Book 1: Childhood and School-time by William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth
—Was it for this
That one, the fairest of all Rivers, lov'd
To blend his murmurs with my Nurse's song,
And from his alder shades and rocky falls,
And from his fords and shallows, sent a voice
That flow'd along my dreams? For this, didst Thou,
O Derwent! travelling over the green Plains
Near my 'sweet Birthplace', didst thou, beauteous Stream
Read Poem
0
267
Rating:

On Freedom by Kahlil Gibran
Kahlil Gibran
And an orator said, Speak to us of Free-
dom.
And he answered:
At the city gate and by your fireside I
have seen you prostrate yourself and worship
your own freedom,
Even as slaves humble themselves before
a tyrant and praise him though he slays
Read Poem
0
270
Rating:

The Laboratory by Robert Browning
Robert Browning
Now that I, tying thy glass mask tightly,
May gaze thro’ these faint smokes curling whitely,
As thou pliest thy trade in this devil’s-smithy—
Which is the poison to poison her, prithee?

He is with her, and they know that I know
Where they are, what they do: they believe my tears flow
While they laugh, laugh at me, at me fled to the drear
Empty church, to pray God in, for them!—I am here.

Grind away, moisten and mash up thy paste,
Pound at thy powder,—I am not in haste!
Better sit thus and observe thy strange things,
Than go where men wait me and dance at the King’s.

Read Poem
0
260
Rating:

How God Answers the Soul by Mechthild of Magdeburg
Mechthild of Magdeburg
It is my nature that makes me love you often,
For I am love itself.

It is my longing that makes my love you intensely,
For I yearn to be loved from the heart.

It is my eternity that makes me love you long,
For I have no end.
Read Poem
0
285
Rating:

God Speaks to the Soul by Mechthild of Magdeburg
Mechthild of Magdeburg
God speaks to the soul
And God said to the soul:
I desired you before the world began.
I desire you now
As you desire me.
And where the desires of two come together
There love is perfected.


Read Poem
0
210
Rating:

from d e l e t e, Part 12 by Richard O. Moore
Richard O. Moore
Welcome to your day of sanity! Come in and close the door it will likely lock behind you and you will be home alone waste disposal will take care of your needs : at long last undisturbed phenomena without the heavy metal background of the street will be yours for observation and response : do you have visions? do you think? Your mouth do you open it for more than medication? I should know I know that I should know : we’ve watched centuries erode the fortress drain the moat the poet’s clumsy beast has reached its home and prey we wither 
in the gridlock of our power only the guns remain and are in use pure accident is beauty to be glimpsed your trembling only further clouds your sight I in my home you in your other place harmonize 
the fading anthem of an age the cracked bell of our liberty keeps time a penny for the corpse you left behind keep on recycling all that you have heard before call it a double bind much like the dead bolt that locked the door that keeps you safe and sane : ho — hum — harry who? oh that’s just a phrase found in a time capsule capped and sealed and shot up in the air : no I cannot tell you where it fell to earth that page was torn out years ago it’s chance that we have a fragment of that language left : do your archaeology before a mirror the canyons and the barren plains are clear but where to dig for a ruined golden age a fiction we were served with breakfast flakes say have you forgot this day of sanity? No problem the heavy key was thrown away as soon as the door was closed and locked you’re safe : some day the asylum may be torn down to make way for a palace of the mad it does not follow that anything will change : choose your executioner by lot almost 
everyone is trained and competent there are different schools of course check out degrees fees can become an issue of your choice and some may be in service or abroad as usual nothing’s simple it’s all a part of the grand unraveling that must take place before the new line can be introduced : prepare now don’t be shocked when the music starts the year’s fashions may feature pins and nails.
Read Poem
0
290
Rating:

Anecdote of the Prince of Peacocks by Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens
In the moonlight
I met Berserk,
In the moonlight
On the bushy plain.

Oh, sharp he was
As the sleepless!

And, “Why are you red
In this milky blue?”
Read Poem
0
292
Rating:

Finale by Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda
Matilde, years or days
sleeping, feverish,
here or there,
gazing off,
twisting my spine,
bleeding true blood,
perhaps I awaken
or am lost, sleeping:
Read Poem
0
189
Rating:

Sicilian Cyclamens by D. H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence
When he pushed his bush of black hair off his brow:
When she lifted her mop from her eyes, and screwed it
in a knob behind
—O act of fearful temerity!
When they felt their foreheads bare, naked to heaven,
their eyes revealed:
When they left the light of heaven brandished like a knife at
their defenceless eyes
Read Poem
0
200
Rating:

The Garden of Proserpine by Algernon Charles Swinburne
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Here, where the world is quiet;
Here, where all trouble seems
Dead winds' and spent waves' riot
In doubtful dreams of dreams;
I watch the green field growing
For reaping folk and sowing,
For harvest-time and mowing,
A sleepy world of streams.

I am tired of tears and laughter,
And men that laugh and weep;
Of what may come hereafter
For men that sow to reap:
I am weary of days and hours,
Blown buds of barren flowers,
Read Poem
0
264
Rating:

Speech: “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more” by William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
(from Henry V, spoken by King Henry) Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
Read Poem
0
236
Rating:

One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII by Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda
I don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz,
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as one loves certain obscure things,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries
the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself,
and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose
from the earth lives dimly in my body.
Read Poem
0
222
Rating:

from Don Juan: Canto 1, Stanzas 217-221 by Lord Byron (George Gordon)
Lord Byron (George Gordon)
217
Ambition was my idol, which was broken
Before the shrines of Sorrow and of Pleasure;
And the two last have left me many a token
O'er which reflection may be made at leisure:
Now, like Friar Bacon's brazen head, I've spoken,
'Time is, Time was, Time's past', a chymic treasure
Is glittering youth, which I have spent betimes—
My heart in passion, and my head on rhymes.
Read Poem
0
215
Rating:

To Rosa by Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
You are young, and I am older;
You are hopeful, I am not—
Enjoy life, ere it grow colder—
Pluck the roses ere they rot.

Teach your beau to heed the lay—
That sunshine soon is lost in shade—
That now’s as good as any day—
Read Poem
1
291
Rating:

Streets in Shanghai by Tomas Tranströmer
Tomas Tranströmer
1
The white butterfly in the park is being read by many.
I love that cabbage-moth as if it were a fluttering corner of truth itself!

At dawn the running crowds set our quiet planet in motion.
Then the park fills with people. To each one, eight faces polished like jade, for all
situations, to avoid making mistakes.
To each one, there's also the invisible face reflecting "something you don't talk about."
Something that appears in tired moments and is as rank as a gulp of viper schnapps with its long scaly aftertaste.
Read Poem
0
438
Rating:

Song by Stephen Spender
Stephen Spender
Stranger, you who hide my love
In the curved cheek of a smile
And sleep with her upon a tongue
Of soft lies that beguile,
Your paradisal ecstasy
Is justified is justified
By hunger of the beasts beneath
The overhanging cloud
Read Poem
0
238
Rating: