For Fasting Days.

    Are you my songs, importunate of praise?
    Be still, remember for your comforting
    That sweeter birds have had less leave to sing
    Before men piped them from their lonely ways.

    Greener leaves than yours are lost in every spring
    Rubies far redder thrust their eager rays
    Into the blindfold dark for many days
    Before men chose them for a finger-ring.

    Sing as you dare, not as men choose, receive not
    The passing fashion's prize, for dole or due -
    Men's summer-sweet unrecognition - grieve not:
    Oh, stoop not to them!    Better far that you
    Should go unsung than sing as you believe not,
    Should go uncrowned than to yourselves untrue.

Muriel Stuart

Muriel Stuart was a British poet who gained prominence during the early 20th century. She was highly regarded for her contributions to Georgian poetry, a movement characterized by its eclectic and modernist styles. Stuart's work often grappled with themes of nature, love, and the human condition, reflecting the changing societal landscapes of her time. In addition to her poetry, she penned essays and other literary works, cementing her status as an influential literary figure.

Muriel Stuart

Madala Goes By The Orphanage.

Muriel Stuart, Simple Poetry

Lady Hamilton.

Muriel Stuart, Simple Poetry

Annunciation.

Muriel Stuart, Simple Poetry

The Wood And The Shore.

Muriel Stuart, 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.

Forgotten Dead, I Salute You.

    Dawn has flashed up the startled skies,
    Night has gone out beneath the hill
    Many sweet times; before our eyes
    Dawn makes and unmakes about us still
    The magic that we call the rose.
    The gentle history of the rain
    Has been unfolded, traced and lost
    By the sharp finger-tips of frost;
    Birds in the hawthorn build again;
    The hare makes soft her secret house;
    The wind at tourney comes and goes,
    Spurring the green, unharnessed boughs;
    The moon has waxed fierce and waned dim:
    He knew the beauty of all those
    Last year, and who remembers him?

    Love sometimes walks the waters still,
    Laughter throws back her radiant head;
    Utterly beauty is not gone,
    And wonder is not wholly dead.

Muriel Stuart

A Song For Old Love.

    There shall be a song for both of us that day
    Though fools say you have long outlived your songs,
    And when, perhaps, because your hair is grey,
    You go unsung, to whom all praise belongs,
    And no men kiss your hands - your fragile hands
    Folded like empty shells on sea-spurned sands.
    And you that were dawn whereat men shouted once
    Are sunset now, with but one worshipper,
    Then to your twilight heart this song shall be
    Sweeter than those that did your youth announce
    For your brave beautiful spirit is lovelier
    Than once your lovely body was to me.
    Your folded hands and your shut eyelids stir
    A passion that Time has crowned with sanctity.
    Young fools shall wonder why, your youth being over,
    You are so sung st...

Muriel Stuart

The Nightingale Unheard

Yes, Nightingale, through all the summer-time
    We followed on, from moon to golden moon;
    From where Salerno day-dreams in the noon,
And the far rose of Pæstum once did climb.
    All the white way beside the girdling blue,
Through sun-shrill vines and campanile chime,
    We listened;--from the old year to the new.
        Brown bird, and where were you?

You, that Ravello lured not, throned on high
    And filled with singing out of sun-burned throats!
    Nor yet Minore of the flame-sailed boats;
Nor yet--of all bird-song should glorify--
    Assisi, Little Portion of the blest,
Assisi, in the bosom of the sky,
    Where God's own singer thatched his sunward nest;
        That little, heavenliest!

And north and north, to where the hedge-row...

Josephine Preston Peabody

Words.

        Is it not brave to be a king, Techelles! -
        Usumcasane and Theridamas,
        Is it not passing brave to be a king,
        And ride in triumph through Persepolis? - MARLOWE.


    Bring the great words that scourge the thundering line
    With lust and slaughter - words that reek of doom
    And the lost battle and the ruined shrine; -
    Words dire and black as midnight on a tomb;
    Hushed speech of waters on the lip of gloom;
    Huge sounds of death and plunder in the night; -
    Words whose vast plumes above the ages meet,
    Girdling the lost, dark centuries in their flight,
    The slave of their unfetterable feet.

    Bring words as pure as rills of earliest Spring
    In some far cranny of the hillside born
    To stitc...

Muriel Stuart

To Valeria.

Broideries and ancient stuffs that some queen
Wore; nor gems that warriors' hilts encrusted;
Nor fresh from heroes' brows the laurels green;
Nor bright sheaves by bards of eld entrusted
To earth's great granaries--I bring not these.
Only thin, scattered blades from harvests gleaned
Erewhile I plucked, may happen thee to please.
So poor indeed, those others had demeaned
Themselves to cull; or from their strong, firm hands
Down dropped about their feet with careless laugh,
Too broken for home gathering, these strands,
Or else more useless than the idle chaff.
But I have garnered them.    Yet, lest they seem
Unworthy, and so shame Love's offering,
Amid the loose-bound sheaf stray flowers gleam.
And fairer seeming make the gift I bring,
Lilies blood-red, that lit ...

Ada Langworthy Collier

Raptures

Sing for the sun your lyric, lark,
Of twice ten thousand notes;
Sing for the moon, you nightingales,
Whose light shall kiss your throats;
Sing, sparrows, for the soft warm rain,
To wet your feathers through;
And when a rainbow's in the sky,
Sing you, cuckoo - Cuckoo!

Sing for your five blue eggs, fond thrush,
By many a leaf concealed;
You starlings, wrens, and blackbirds, sing
In every wood and field:
While I, who fail to give my love
Long raptures twice as fine,
Will for her beauty breathe this one -
A sigh, that's more divine.

William Henry Davies