A Thought of the Rose by Felicia Hemans

How much of memory dwells amidst thy bloom,
    Rose! ever wearing beauty for thy dower?
The Bridal day—the Festival—the Tomb—
    Thou hast thy part in each—thou stateliest flower!

Therefore with thy soft breath come floating by
    A thousand images of Love and Grief,
Dreams, fill'd with tokens of mortality,
    Deep thoughts of all things beautiful and brief.

Not such thy spells o'er those that hail'd thee first
    In the clear light of Eden's golden day;
There thy rich leaves to crimson glory burst,
    Link'd with no dim remembrance of decay.

Rose! for the banquet gathered, and the bier;
    Rose! coloured now by human hope or pain;
Surely where death is not—nor change, nor fear,
    Yet may we meet thee, Joy's own Flower, again!

Adam's Curse

We sat together at one summer’s end,
That beautiful mild woman, your close friend, 
And you and I, and talked of poetry.
I said, ‘A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought, 
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught. 
Better go down upon your marrow-bones 
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones 
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather; 
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet 
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen 
The martyrs call the world.’
And thereupon
That beautiful mild woman for whose sake 
There’s many a one shall find out all heartache 
On finding that her voice is sweet and low 
Replied, ‘To be born woman is to know—
Although they do not talk of it at school—
That we must labour to be beautiful.’
I said, ‘It’s certain there is no fine thing 
Since Adam’s fall but needs much labouring.
There have been lovers who thought love should be 
So much compounded of high courtesy 
That they would sigh and quote with learned looks 
Precedents out of beautiful old books; 
Yet now it seems an idle trade enough.’

We sat grown quiet at the name of love; 
We saw the last embers of daylight die, 
And in the trembling blue-green of the sky 
A moon, worn as if it had been a shell 
Washed by time’s waters as they rose and fell 
About the stars and broke in days and years.

I had a thought for no one’s but your ears: 
That you were beautiful, and that I strove 
To love you in the old high way of love;
That it had all seemed happy, and yet we’d grown 
As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.

The House Was Quiet and The World Was Calm

The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The reader became the book; and summer night

Was like the conscious being of the book.

The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The words were spoken as if there was no book,

Except that the reader leaned above the page,

Wanted to lean, wanted much most to be

The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom

The summer night is like a perfection of thought.

The house was quiet because it had to be.

The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:

The access of perfection to the page.

And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,

In which there is no other meaning, itself

Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself

Is the reader leaning late and reading there.

Claude McKay - Baptism

Into the furnace let me go alone;
Stay you without in terror of the heat.
I will go naked in--for thus ''tis sweet--
Into the weird depths of the hottest zone.
I will not quiver in the frailest bone,
You will not note a flicker of defeat;
My heart shall tremble not its fate to meet,
My mouth give utterance to any moan.
The yawning oven spits forth fiery spears;
Red aspish tongues shout wordlessly my name.
Desire destroys, consumes my mortal fears,
Transforming me into a shape of flame.
I will come out, back to your world of tears,
A stronger soul within a finer frame.

Louise Glück - Omens

I rode to meet you: dreams
like living beings swarmed around me
and the moon on my right side
followed me, burning.

I rode back: everything changed.
My soul in love was sad
and the moon on my left side
trailed me without hope.

To such endless impressions
we poets give ourselves absolutely,
making, in silence, omen of mere event,
until the world reflects the deepest needs of the soul.