Ah, Koelue

Ah, Koelue!
Had you embalmed your beauty, so
It could not backward go,
Or change in any way,
What were the use, if on my eyes
The embalming spices were not laid
To keep us fixed,
Two amorous sculptures passioned endlessly?
What were the use, if my sight grew,
And its far branches were cloud-hung,
You small at the roots, like grass,
While the new lips my spirit would kiss
Were not red lips of flesh,
But the huge kiss of power?
Where yesterday soft hair through my fingers fell,
A shaggy mane would entwine,
And no slim form work fire to my thighs,
But human Life's inarticulate mass
Throb the pulse of a thing
Whose mountain flanks awry
Beg my mastery - mine!
Ah! I will ride the dizzy beast of the world
My road - my way!

Isaac Rosenberg

Isaac Rosenberg was an English poet and artist. Born on November 25, 1890, in Bristol, he grew up in poverty in London. Despite financial struggles, Rosenberg pursued his passion for art and poetry, attending the Slade School of Fine Art. He served in the British Army during World War I, where he wrote some of his most famous war poetry. Rosenberg was killed in action on April 1, 1918. His works are celebrated for their stark depiction of war and its effects.

Isaac Rosenberg

English

Suggested Poems

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

At the Opera

The curtain rose, the play began,
The limelight on the gay garbs shone;
Yet carelessly I gazed upon
The painted players, maid and man,
As one with idle eyes who sees
The marble figures on a frieze.

Long lark-notes clear the first act close,
So the soprano: then a hush,
The tenor, tender as a thrush;
Then loud and high the chorus rose,
Till, with a sudden rush and strong,
It ended in a storm of song.

The curtain fell, the music died,
The lights grew bright, revealing there
The flash of jewelled fingers fair,
And wreaths of pearls on brows of pride;
Then, with a quick-flushed cheek, I turned,
And into mine her dark eyes burned.

Such eyes but once a man may see,
And, seeing once, his fancy dies
To thought of any other eyes:

Victor James Daley

Women And Roses

I.
I dream of a red-rose tree.
And which of its roses three
Is the dearest rose to me?

II.
Round and round, like a dance of snow
In a dazzling drift, as its guardians, go
Floating the women faded for ages,
Sculptured in stone, on the poets pages.
Then follow women fresh and gay,
Living and loving and loved to-day.
Last, in the rear, flee the multitude of maidens,
Beauties yet unborn. And all, to one cadence,
They circle their rose on my rose tree.

III.
Dear rose, thy term is reached,
Thy leaf hangs loose and bleached:
Bees pass it unimpeached.

IV.
Stay then, stoop, since I cannot climb,
You, great shapes of the antique time!
How shall I fix you, fire you, freeze you,
Break my heart at your feet to please you?

Robert Browning

Don Rafael.

    "I would not have," he said,
"Tears, nor the black pall, nor the wormy grave,
Grief's hideous panoply I would not have
    Round me when I am dead.


    "Music and flowers and light,
And choric dances to guitar and flute,
Be these around me when my lips are mute,
    Mine eyes are sealed from sight.


    "So let me lie one day,
One long, eternal day, in sunshine bathed,
In cerements of silken tissue swathed,
    Smothered 'neath flowers of May.

    "One perfect day of peace,
Or ere clean flame consume my fleshly veil,
My life - a gilded vapor - shall exhale,
    Brief as a sigh - and cease.


    "But ere the torch be laid
To my unshrinking limbs by some true hand,
Athwart the orange-fragrant laughing land,

Emma Lazarus

Chopin.

    I.


A    dream of interlinking hands, of feet
Tireless to spin the unseen, fairy woof,
Of the entangling waltz.    Bright eyebeams meet,
Gay laughter echoes from the vaulted roof.
Warm perfumes rise; the soft unflickering glow
Of branching lights sets off the changeful charms
Of glancing gems, rich stuffs, dazzling snow
Of necks unkerchieft, and bare, clinging arms.
Hark to the music!    How beneath the strain
Of reckless revelry, vibrates and sobs
One fundamental chord of constant pain,
The pulse-beat of the poet's heart that throbs.
So yearns, though all the dancing waves rejoice,
The troubled sea's disconsolate, deep voice.



    II.


Who shall proclaim the golden fable false
Of Orpheus' miracles?    This subtl...

Emma Lazarus

Melancholy To Laura.

Laura! a sunrise seems to break
Where'er thy happy looks may glow.
Joy sheds its roses o'er thy cheek,
Thy tears themselves do but bespeak
The rapture whence they flow;
Blest youth to whom those tears are given
The tears that change his earth to heaven;
His best reward those melting eyes
For him new suns are in the skies!

Thy soul a crystal river passing,
Silver-clear, and sunbeam-glassing,
Mays into bloom sad Autumn by thee;
Night and desert, if they spy thee,
To gardens laugh with daylight shine,
Lit by those happy smiles of thine!
Dark with cloud the future far
Goldens itself beneath thy star.
Smilest thou to see the harmony
Of charm the laws of Nature keep?
Alas! to me the harmony
Brings only cause to weep!

Holds not Ha...

Friedrich Schiller

Years Ago

The old dead flowers of bygone summers,
The old sweet songs that are no more sung,
The rose-red dawns that were welcome comers
When you and I and the world were young,

Are lost, O love, to the light for ever,
And seen no more of the moon or sun,
For seas divide, and the seasons sever,
And twain are we that of old were one.

O fair lost love, when the ship went sailing
Across the seas in the years agone,
And seaward-set were the eyes unquailing,
And landward-looking the faces wan,

My heart went back as a dove goes homeward
With wings aweary to seek its nest,
While fierce sea-eagles are flying foamward
And storm-winds whiten the surges crest;

And far inland for a farewell pardon
Flew on and on, while the ship went South,
The ros...

Victor James Daley