Morning Phoenix

In my body lives a flame,
    Flame that burns me all the day;
When a fierce sun does the same,
    I am charred away.

Who could keep a smiling wit,
    Roasted so in heart and hide,
Turning on the sun's red spit,
    Scorched by love inside?

Caves I long for and cold rocks,
    Minnow-peopled country brooks,
Blundering gales of Equinox,
    Sunless valley-nooks,

Daily so I might restore
    Calcined heart and shrivelled skin,
A morning phoenix with proud roar
    Kindled new within.

Robert von Ranke Graves

Robert von Ranke Graves was a British poet, historical novelist, critic, and classicist. His father was Alfred Perceval Graves, a distinguished Irish poet and figure in the Gaelic revival. Known for his war poetry, love poems, and scholarly works, he created a lasting literary legacy, including his interpretations of the Greek myths. Graves was also a soldier in World War I, an experience that profoundly influenced his writing.

Robert von Ranke Graves

The Pier-Glass

Robert von Ranke Graves, Simple Poetry

Brittle Bones.

Robert von Ranke Graves, Simple Poetry

To Robert Nichols

Robert von Ranke Graves, Simple Poetry

Jane.

Robert von Ranke Graves, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

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Sonnets: Idea XVI An Allusion To The Phoenix

'Mongst all the creatures in this spacious round
    Of the birds' kind, the phoenix is alone,
    Which best by you of living things is known;
None like to that, none like to you is found!
Your beauty is the hot and splend'rous sun;
    The precious spices be your chaste desire,
    Which being kindled by that heavenly fire,
Your life, so like the phoenix's begun.
Yourself thus burnèd in that sacred flame,
    With so rare sweetness all the heavens perfuming;
    Again increasing as you are consuming,
Only by dying born the very same.
    And winged by fame you to the stars ascend;
    So you of time shall live beyond the end.

Michael Drayton

The Cloud.

I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,
When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,
As she dances about the sun.
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains under,
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.

I sift the snow on the mountains below,
And their great pines groan aghast;
And all the night 'tis my pillow white,
While I sleep in the arms of the blast.
Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers,
Lightning my pilot sits;
In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,
It struggles and howls at fits;
Over ea...

Percy Bysshe Shelley

The Fugitive.

The air is perfumed with the morning's fresh breeze,
From the bush peer the sunbeams all purple and bright,
While they gleam through the clefts of the dark-waving trees,
And the cloud-crested mountains are golden with light.

With joyful, melodious, ravishing, strain,
The lark, as he wakens, salutes the glad sun,
Who glows in the arms of Aurora again,
And blissfully smiling, his race 'gins to run.

    All hail, light of day!
    Thy sweet gushing ray
Pours down its soft warmth over pasture and field;
    With hues silver-tinged
    The meadows are fringed,
And numberless suns in the dewdrop revealed.

    Young Nature invades
    The whispering shades,
    Displaying each ravishing charm;
    The soft zephyr blows,
    And kisses the ...

Friedrich Schiller

Matins.

Gray earth, gray mist, gray sky:
Through vapors hurrying by,
Larger than wont, on high
    Floats the horned, yellow moon.
Chill airs are faintly stirred,
And far away is heard,
Of some fresh-awakened bird,
    The querulous, shrill tune.


The dark mist hides the face
Of the dim land: no trace
Of rock or river's place
    In the thick air is drawn;
But dripping grass smells sweet,
And rustling branches meet,
And sounding water greet
    The slow, sure, sacred dawn.


Past is the long black night,
With its keen lightnings white,
Thunder and floods: new light
    The glimmering low east streaks.
The dense clouds part: between
Their jagged rents are seen
Pale reaches blue and green,
    As the mirk curtain b...

Emma Lazarus

The Master Singer

A laughter in the diamond air, a music in the trembling grass;
And one by one the words of light as joydrops through my being pass.
I am the sunlight in the heart, the silver moonglow in the mind;
My laughter runs and ripples through the wavy tresses of the wind.
I am the fire upon the hills, the dancing flame that leads afar
Each burning-hearted wanderer, and I the dear and homeward star.
A myriad lovers died for me, and in their latest yielded breath
I woke in glory giving them immortal life though touched by death.
They knew me from the dawn of time: if Hermes beats his rainbow wings,
If Angus shakes his locks of light, or golden-haired Apollo sings,
It matters not the name, the land; my joy in all the gods abides:
Even in the cricket in the grass some dimness of me smiles and hide...

George William Russell

Pisgah-Sights

I
Over the ball of it,
Peering and prying,
How I see all of it,
Life there, outlying!
Roughness and smoothness,
Shine and defilement,
Grace and uncouthness:
One reconcilement.

Orbed as appointed,
Sister with brother
Joins, neer disjointed
One from the other.
Alls lend-and-borrow;
Good, see, wants evil,
Joy demands sorrow,
Angel weds devil!

Which things must, why be?
Vain our endeavor!
So shall things aye be
As they were ever.
Such things should so be!
Sage our desistence!
Rough-smooth let globe be,
Mixed, mans existence!

Man, wise and foolish,
Lover and scorner,
Docile and mulish,
Keep each his corner!
Honey yet gall of it!
Theres the life lying,
And I see all ...

Robert Browning