All Lovely Things

All lovely things will have an ending,
All lovely things will fade and die,
And youth, thats now so bravely spending,
Will beg a penny by and by.
Fine ladies soon are all forgotten,
And goldenrod is dust when dead,
The sweetest flesh and flowers are rotten
And cobwebs tent the brightest head.
Come back, true love! Sweet youth, return!
But time goes on, and will, unheeding,
Though hands will reach, and eyes will yearn,
And the wild days set true hearts bleeding.
Come back, true love! Sweet youth, remain!
But goldenrod and daisies wither,
And over them blows autumn rain,
They pass, they pass, and know not whither.

Conrad Aiken

Conrad Aiken was an American poet, born on August 5, 1889. He was an influential figure in 20th-century American literature, known for his lyrical and psychological depth. Aiken's work often explored themes of identity, time, and the psychoanalytic. He also served as the Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, a position now known as the U.S. Poet Laureate. He passed away on August 17, 1973.

Conrad Aiken

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Conrad Aiken, Simple Poetry

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Conrad Aiken, Simple Poetry

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Conrad Aiken, Simple Poetry

English

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My Youth

Come, beneath yon verdant branches,
Come, my own, with me!
Come, and there my soul will open
Secret doors to thee.
Yonder shalt thou learn the secrets
Deep within my breast,
Where my love upsprings eternal;
Come! with pain opprest,
Yonder all the truth I'll tell thee,
Tell it thee with tears...
(Ah, so long have we been parted,
Years of youth, sweet years!)

See'st thou the dancers floating
On a stream of sound?
There alone, the soul entrancing,
Happiness is found!
Magic music, hark! it calls us,
Ringing wild and sweet!
One, two, three!--beloved, haste thee,
Point thy dainty feet!
Now at last I feel that living
Is no foolish jest...
(O sweet years of youth departed,
Vanished with the rest!)

Fiddler, play a lit...

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The House Of Dust: Part 04: 04: Counterpoint: Two Rooms

He, in the room above, grown old and tired,
She, in the room below, his floor her ceiling,
Pursue their separate dreams. He turns his light,
And throws himself on the bed, face down, in laughter. . . .
She, by the window, smiles at a starlight night,

His watch, the same he has heard these cycles of ages,
Wearily chimes at seconds beneath his pillow.
The clock, upon her mantelpiece, strikes nine.
The night wears on. She hears dull steps above her.
The world whirs on. . . .New stars come up to shine.

His youth, far off, he sees it brightly walking
In a golden cloud. . . .Wings flashing about it. . . . Darkness
Walls it around with dripping enormous walls.
Old age, far off, her death, what do they matter?
Down the smooth purple night a streaked star falls.

Conrad Aiken

Youth and Age

Verse, a breeze 'mid blossoms straying,
Where Hope clung feeding, like a bee -
Both were mine! Life went a-maying
With Nature, Hope, and Poesy,
When I was young!
When I was young? - Ah, woeful When!
Ah! for the change 'twixt Now and Then!
This breathing house not built with hands,
This body that does me grievous wrong,
O'er aery cliffs and glittering sands
How lightly then it flashed along,
Like those trim skiffs, unknown of yore,
On winding lakes and rivers wide,
That ask no aid of sail or oar,
That fear no spite of wind or tide!
Nought cared this body for wind or weather
When Youth and I lived in't together.

Flowers are lovely; Love is flower-like;
Friendship is a sheltering tree;
O the joys! that came down shower-like,
Of Friendshi...

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The House Of Dust: Part 02: 05: Retrospect

Round white clouds roll slowly above the housetops,
Over the clear red roofs they flow and pass.
A flock of pigeons rises with blue wings flashing,
Rises with whistle of wings, hovers an instant,
And settles slowly again on the tarnished grass.

And one old man looks down from a dusty window
And sees the pigeons circling about the fountain
And desires once more to walk among those trees.
Lovers walk in the noontime by that fountain.
Pigeons dip their beaks to drink from the water.
And soon the pond must freeze.

The light wind blows to his ears a sound of laughter,
Young men shuffle their feet, loaf in the sunlight;
A girls laugh rings like a silver bell.
But clearer than all these sounds is a sound he hears
More in his secret heart than in his ears,

Conrad Aiken

Nocturne Of Remembered Spring

I.

Moonlight silvers the tops of trees,
Moonlight whitens the lilac shadowed wall
And through the evening fall,
Clearly, as if through enchanted seas,
Footsteps passing, an infinite distance away,
In another world and another day.
Moonlight turns the purple lilacs blue,
Moonlight leaves the fountain hoar and old,
And the boughs of elms grow green and cold,
Our footsteps echo on gleaming stones,
The leaves are stirred to a jargon of muted tones.
This is the night we have kept, you say:
This is the moonlit night that will never die.
Through the grey streets our memories retain
Let us go back again.

II.

Mist goes up from the river to dim the stars,
The river is black and cold; so let us dance
To flare of horns, and clang of cymbal...

Conrad Aiken

Young Love

Young love, all rainbows in the lane,
    Brushed by the honeysuckle vines,
Scattered the wild rose in a dream:
    A sweeter thing his arm entwines.

Ah, redder lips than any rose!
    Ah, sweeter breath than any bee
Sucks from the heart of any flower;
    Ah, bosom like the Summer sea!

A fairy creature made of dew
    And moonrise and the songs of birds,
And laughter like the running brook,
    And little soft, heart-broken words.

Haunted as marble in the moon,
    Her whiteness lies on young love's breast.
And living frankincense and myrrh
    Her lips that on his lips are pressed.

Her eyes are lost within his eyes,
    His eyes in hers are fathoms deep;
Death is not stiller than these twain
    That smile as in a magic...

Richard Le Gallienne