A March

    Dreary East winds howling o'er us;
    Clay-lands knee-deep spread before us;
    Mire and ice and snow and sleet;
    Aching backs and frozen feet;
    Knees which reel as marches quicken,
    Ranks which thin as corpses thicken;
    While with carrion birds we eat,
    Calling puddle-water sweet,
As we pledge the health of our general, who fares as rough as we:
What can daunt us, what can turn us, led to death by such as he?

Eversley, 1848.

Charles Kingsley

Charles Kingsley was an English writer, historian, and clergyman born on June 12, 1819, in Holne, Devon. He was associated with the Christian Socialist movement and was a friend of prominent figures such as Charles Darwin. Kingsley is best known for his historical novels, including 'Westward Ho!' and 'Hypatia,' as well as his children's book 'The Water-Babies.' His works often explore social issues and aim to contribute to societal reform. Kingsley died on January 23, 1875, in Eversley, Hampshire.

Charles Kingsley

Young And Old

Charles Kingsley, Simple Poetry

Ode To The North-East Wind

Charles Kingsley, Simple Poetry

Elegiacs

Charles Kingsley, Simple Poetry

The Red King

Charles Kingsley, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

On The Death Of A Certain Journal[1]

So die, thou child of stormy dawn,
Thou winter flower, forlorn of nurse;
Chilled early by the bigot's curse,
The pedant's frown, the worldling's yawn.

Fair death, to fall in teeming June,
When every seed which drops to earth
Takes root, and wins a second birth
From steaming shower and gleaming moon.

Fall warm, fall fast, thou mellow rain;
Thou rain of God, make fat the land;
That roots which parch in burning sand
May bud to flower and fruit again.

To grace, perchance, a fairer morn
In mightier lands beyond the sea,
While honour falls to such as we
From hearts of heroes yet unborn,

Who in the light of fuller day,
Of purer science, holier laws,
Bless us, faint heralds of their cause,
Dim beacons of their glorious way.
...

Charles Kingsley

Ode To The North-East Wind

Welcome, wild North-easter.
    Shame it is to see
Odes to every zephyr;
    Ne'er a verse to thee.
Welcome, black North-easter!
    O'er the German foam;
O'er the Danish moorlands,
    From thy frozen home.
Tired we are of summer,
    Tired of gaudy glare,
Showers soft and steaming,
    Hot and breathless air.
Tired of listless dreaming,
    Through the lazy day:
Jovial wind of winter
    Turns us out to play!
Sweep the golden reed-beds;
    Crisp the lazy dyke;
Hunger into madness
    Every plunging pike.
Fill the lake with wild-fowl;
    Fill the marsh with snipe;
While on dreary moorlands
    Lonely curlew pipe.
Through the black fir-forest
    Thunder harsh and dry,
Shattering down the snow-flakes
   ...

Charles Kingsley

Elegiacs

Wearily stretches the sand to the surge, and the surge to the cloudland;
Wearily onward I ride, watching the water alone.
Not as of old, like Homeric Achilles, ??de? ya???,
Joyous knight-errant of God, thirsting for labour and strife;
No more on magical steed borne free through the regions of ether,
But, like the hack which I ride, selling my sinew for gold.
Fruit-bearing autumn is gone; let the sad quiet winter hang o'er me -
What were the spring to a soul laden with sorrow and shame?
Blossoms would fret me with beauty; my heart has no time to bepraise them;
Gray rock, bough, surge, cloud, waken no yearning within.
Sing not, thou sky-lark above! even angels pass hushed by the weeper.
Scream on, ye sea-fowl! my heart echoes your desolate cry.
Sweep the dry sand on, thou wild wind...

Charles Kingsley

The March

    I heard a voice that cried, "Make way for those who died!"
    And all the coloured crowd like ghosts at morning fled;
    And down the waiting road, rank after rank there strode,
    In mute and measured march a hundred thousand dead.

    A hundred thousand dead, with firm and noiseless tread,
    All shadowy-grey yet solid, with faces grey and ghast,
    And by the house they went, and all their brows were bent
    Straight forward; and they passed, and passed, and passed, and passed.

    But O there came a place, and O there came a face,
    That clenched my heart to see it, and sudden turned my way;
    And in the Face that turned I saw two eyes that burned,
    Never-forgotten eyes, and they had things to say.

    Like desolate stars they shone one mome...

John Collings Squire, Sir

The Starlings

Early in spring time, on raw and windy mornings,
Beneath the freezing house-eaves I heard the starlings sing -
'Ah dreary March month, is this then a time for building wearily?
    Sad, sad, to think that the year is but begun.'

Late in the autumn, on still and cloudless evenings,
Among the golden reed-beds I heard the starlings sing -
'Ah that sweet March month, when we and our mates were courting merrily;
    Sad, sad, to think that the year is all but done.'

Eversley, 1848.

Charles Kingsley

The Last Of March. Written At Lolham Brigs.

Though o'er the darksome northern hill
Old ambush'd winter frowning flies,
And faintly drifts his threatenings still
In snowy sweet and blackening skies;
Yet here the willow leaning lies
And shields beneath the budding flower,
Where banks to break the wind arise,
'Tis sweet to sit and spend an hour.

Though floods of winter bustling fall
Adown the arches bleak and blea,
Though snow-storms clothe the mossy wall,
And hourly whiten o'er the lea;
Yet when from clouds the sun is free
And warms the learning bird to sing,
'Neath sloping bank and sheltering tree
'Tis sweet to watch the creeping spring.

Though still so early, one may spy
And track her footsteps every hour;
The daisy with its golden eye,
And primrose bursting into flower;
...

John Clare