Heloise

I saw a light on yester-night
A low light on the misty lea;
The stars were dim and silence grim
Sat brooding on the sullen sea.

From out the silence came a voice
A voice that thrilled me through and through,
And said, "Alas, is this your choice?
For he is false and I was true."

And in my ears the passing years
Will sadly whisper words of rue:
Forget and yet can I forget
That one was false and one was true?

Hanford Lennox Gordon

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Hanford Lennox Gordon

The Legend

Hanford Lennox Gordon, Simple Poetry

Grierson's Raid

Hanford Lennox Gordon, Simple Poetry

O Let Me Dream The Dreams Of Long Ago

Hanford Lennox Gordon, Simple Poetry

Charge Of "The Black-Horse"

Hanford Lennox Gordon, Simple Poetry

English

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Hawthorne

MAY 23, 1864

How beautiful it was, that one bright day
    In the long week of rain!
Though all its splendor could not chase away
    The omnipresent pain.

The lovely town was white with apple-blooms,
    And the great elms o'erhead
Dark shadows wove on their aerial looms
    Shot through with golden thread.

Across the meadows, by the gray old manse,
    The historic river flowed:
I was as one who wanders in a trance,
    Unconscious of his road.

The faces of familiar friends seemed strange;
    Their voices I could hear,
And yet the words they uttered seemed to change
    Their meaning to my ear.

For the one face I looked for was not there,
    The one low voice was mute;
Only an unseen presence filled the air,

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

O Let Me Dream The Dreams Of Long Ago

Call me not back, O cold and crafty world:
I scorn your thankless thanks and hollow praise.
Wiser than seer or scientist content
To tread no paths beyond these bleating hills,
Here let me lie beneath this dear old elm,
Among the blossoms of the clover-fields,
And listen to the humming of the bees.
Here in those far-off, happy, boyhood years,
When all my world was bounded by these hills,
I dreamed my first dreams underneath this elm.
Dreamed? Aye, and builded castles in the clouds;
Dreamed, and made glad a fond, proud mother's heart,
Now moldering into clay on yonder hill;
Dreamed till my day-dreams paved the world with gold;
Dreamed till my mad dreams made one desolate;
Dreamed O my soul, and was it all a dream?

As I lay dreaming under this old elm,

Hanford Lennox Gordon

A Gleam Of Sunshine

This is the place.    Stand still, my steed,
    Let me review the scene,
And summon from the shadowy Past
    The forms that once have been.

The Past and Present here unite
    Beneath Time's flowing tide,
Like footprints hidden by a brook,
    But seen on either side.

Here runs the highway to the town;
    There the green lane descends,
Through which I walked to church with thee,
    O gentlest of my friends!

The shadow of the linden-trees
    Lay moving on the grass;
Between them and the moving boughs,
    A shadow, thou didst pass.

Thy dress was like the lilies,
    And thy heart as pure as they:
One of God's holy messengers
    Did walk with me that day.

I saw the branches of the trees
    Bend down t...

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Twenty Years Ago

I am growing old and weary
Ere yet my locks are gray;
Before me lies eternity,
Behind me but a day.
How fast the years are vanishing!
They melt like April snow:
It seems to me but yesterday
Twenty years ago.

There's the school-house on the hill-side,
And the romping scholars all;
Where we used to con our daily tasks,
And play our games of ball.
They rise to me in visions
In sunny dreams and ho'
I sport among the boys and girls
Twenty years ago.

We played at ball in summer time
We boys with hearty will;
With merry shouts in winter time
We coasted on the hill.
We would choose our chiefs, divide in bands,
And build our forts of snow,
And storm those forts right gallantly
Twenty years ago.

Last year in June...

Hanford Lennox Gordon

The Harp Of Hoel. Part II.

    High on the hill, with moss o'ergrown,
    A hermit chapel stood;
    It spoke the tale of seasons gone,
    And half-revealed its ivied stone.
    Amid the beechen wood.

    Here often, when the mountain trees
    A leafy murmur made,
    Now still, now swaying to the breeze,
    (Sounds that the musing fancy please),
    The widowed mourner strayed.

    And many a morn she climbed the steep,
    From whence she might behold,
    Where, 'neath the clouds, in shining sweep,
    And mingling with the mighty deep,
    The sea-broad Severn rolled.

    Her little boy beside her played,
    With sea-shells in his hand;
    And sometimes, 'mid the bents delayed,
    And sometimes running onward, said,
    Oh, where is Holy Land!<...

William Lisle Bowles

Wormwood And Nightshade

The troubles of life are many,
The pleasures of life are few;
When we sat in the sunlight, Annie,
I dreamt that the skies were blue,
When we sat in the sunlight, Annie,
I dreamt that the earth was green;
There is little colour, if any,
Neath the sunlight now to be seen.

Then the rays of the sunset glinted
Through the blackwoods emerald bough
On an emerald sward, rose-tinted,
And spangled, and gemmd; and now
The rays of the sunset redden
With a sullen and lurid frown,
From the skies that are dark and leaden,
To earth that is dusk and brown.

To right and to left extended
The uplands are blank and drear,
And their neutral tints are blended
With the dead leaves sombre and sere;
The cold grey mist from the still side
Of the l...

Adam Lindsay Gordon