Guglielmo Marconi

I like Marconi best to see
Beneath a Macaroni tree
Playing that Nocturne in F Sharp
By Chopin, on a Wireless Harp.

Oliver Herford

Oliver Herford was born in England on December 2, 1860. He was a British-born American writer, artist, and illustrator, often referred to as 'The American Oscar Wilde' for his sharp wit and humorous works. Herford authored and illustrated many books for children and adults, contributing to magazines such as "The Criterion", "Life", and "Punch". He died on July 5, 1935, in France.

Oliver Herford

The Chimera

Oliver Herford, Simple Poetry

The Outing

Oliver Herford, Simple Poetry

The Rubáiyát of a Persian Kitten

Oliver Herford, Simple Poetry

To Music

Oliver Herford, 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.

A Duettist To Her Pianoforte Song Of Silence

(E. L. H. H. C. H.)


Since every sound moves memories,
How can I play you
Just as I might if you raised no scene,
By your ivory rows, of a form between
My vision and your time-worn sheen,
As when each day you
Answered our fingers with ecstasy?
So it's hushed, hushed, hushed, you are for me!

And as I am doomed to counterchord
Her notes no more
In those old things I used to know,
In a fashion, when we practised so,
"Good-night! Good-bye!" to your pleated show
Of silk, now hoar,
Each nodding hammer, and pedal and key,
For dead, dead, dead, you are to me!

I fain would second her, strike to her stroke,
As when she was by,
Aye, even from the ancient clamorous "Fall
Of Paris," or "Battle of Prague" withal,
To the "Rovin...

Thomas Hardy

The Serenade.

I.

The winds were hushed, and thin and high
    The fleecy clouds were drifting,
And through them as she sailed the sky
    The moon's soft light was sifting.


II.

Beneath her pale and tender ray,
    Its silvery kiss imprinting,
All dew-bedecked each flower and spray
    Like myriad jewels glinting.


III.

Across the lawn there floats the sound
    Of music sweet--entrancing--
'Neath a latticed casement, ivy-bound,
    Where love-lit eyes were glancing.


IV.

The flute and harp and mandolin
    There dulcet notes were blending,
And strains divine from a violin
    In harmony ascending.


V.

Enraptured by the magic spell,
    I lingering stood, and listening,

George W. Doneghy

The Opening Of The Piano

In the little southern parlor of the house you may have seen
With the gambrel-roof, and the gable looking westward to the green,
At the side toward the sunset, with the window on its right,
Stood the London-made piano I am dreaming of to-night!

Ah me I how I remember the evening when it came!
What a cry of eager voices, what a group of cheeks in flame,
When the wondrous box was opened that had come from over seas,
With its smell of mastic-varnish and its flash of ivory keys!

Then the children all grew fretful in the restlessness of joy,
For the boy would push his sister, and the sister crowd the boy,
Till the father asked for quiet in his grave paternal way,
But the mother hushed the tumult with the words, "Now, Mary, play."

For the dear soul knew that music was...

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Robert Browning

Master of human harmonies, where gong
And harp and violin and flute accord;
Each instrument confessing you its lord,
Within the deathless orchestra of Song.
Albeit at times your music may sound wrong
To our dulled senses, and its meaning barred
To Earth's slow understanding, never marred
Your message brave: clear, and of trumpet tongue.
Poet-revealer, who, both soon and late,
Within an age of doubt kept clean your faith,
Crying your cry of"With the world all's well!"
How shall we greet you from our low estate,
Keys in the keyboard that is life and death,
The organ whence we hear your music swell?

Madison Julius Cawein

To Music

Here's to Music,
Joy of joys!
One man's music's
Another man's noise.

Oliver Herford

An Italian Song.

Dear is my little native vale,
The ring-dove builds and murmurs there;
Close by my cot she tells her tale
To every passing villager.
The squirrel leaps from tree to tree,
And shells his nuts at liberty.

In orange-groves and myrtle-bowers,
That breathe a gale of fragrance round,
I charm the fairy-footed hours
With my lov'd lute's romantic sound;
Or crowns of living laurel weave,
For those that win the race at eve.

The shepherd's horn at break of day,
The ballet danc'd in twilight glade,
The canzonet and roundelay
Sung in the silent green-wood shade;
These simple joys, that never fail,
Shall bind me to my native vale.

Samuel Rogers