Prayer

Let me not know how sins and sorrows glide
Along the sombre city of our rage,
Or why the sons of men are heavy-eyed.

Let me not know, except from printed page,
The pain of litter love, of baffled pride,
Or sickness shadowing with a long presage.

Let me not know, since happy some have died
Quickly in youth or quietly in age,
How faint, how loud the bravest hearts have cried.

James Elroy Flecker

James Elroy Flecker was an English poet and playwright born in London. He is best remembered for his poem "The Golden Journey to Samarkand" and his plays. Flecker was associated with the neo-romantic movement, and his works often explored themes of travel and classical antiquity. He died of tuberculosis at a young age, cutting short a promising literary career.

James Elroy Flecker

Prayer

James Elroy Flecker, Simple Poetry

No Coward's Song

James Elroy Flecker, Simple Poetry

A Fragment

James Elroy Flecker, Simple Poetry

Invitation To A Young But Learned Friend To Abandon Archaeology For The Moment, And Play Once More With His Neglected Muse.

James Elroy Flecker, Simple Poetry

English

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My Friend

I had a friend who battled for the truth
With stubborn heart and obstinate despair,
Till all his beauty left him, and his youth,
And there were few to love him anywhere.

Then would he wander out among the graves,
And think of dead men lying in a row;
Or, standing on a cliff observe the waves,
And hear the wistful sound of winds below;

And yet they told him nothing. So he sought
The twittering forest at the break of day,
Or on fantastic mountains shaped a thought
As lofty and impenitent as they.

And next he went in wonder through a town
Slowly by day and hurriedly by night,
And watched men walking up the street and down
With timorous and terrible delight.

Weary, he drew man's wisdom from a book,
And pondered on the high words spoken...

James Elroy Flecker

Prayer.

I stood upon a hill, and watched the death
    Of the day's turmoil. Still the glory spread
    Cloud-top to cloud-top, and each rearing head
Trembled to crimson. So a mighty breath
    From some wild Titan in a rising ire
    Might kindle flame in voicing his desire.

Soft stirred the evening air; the pine-crowned hills
    Glowed in an answering rapture where the flush
    Grew to a blood-drop, and the vesper hush
Moved in my soul, while from my life all ills
    Faded and passed away. God's voice was there
    And in my heart the silence was a prayer.

There was a day when to my fearfulness
    Was born a joy, when doubt was swept afar
    A shadow and a memory, and a star
Gleamed in my sky more bright for the distress.
    The stillness breathed ...

Sophie M. (Almon) Hensley

The Town Without A Market

There lies afar behind a western hill
The Town without a Market, white and still;
For six feet long and not a third as high
Are those small habitations. There stood I,
Waiting to hear the citizens beneath
Murmur and sigh and speak through tongueless teeth.
When all the world lay burning in the sun
I heard their voices speak to me. Said one:
"Bright lights I loved and colours, I who find
That death is darkness, and has struck me blind."
Another cried: "I used to sing and play,
But here the world is silent, day by day."
And one: "On earth I could not see or hear,
But with my fingers touched what I was near,
And knew things round and soft, and brass from gold,
And dipped my hand in water, to feel cold,
And thought the grave would cure me, and was glad
When t...

James Elroy Flecker

Andrew Rykmans Prayer

Andrew Rykmans dead and gone;
You can see his leaning slate
In the graveyard, and thereon
Read his name and date.

Trust is truer than our fears,
Runs the legend through the moss,
Gain is not in added years,
Nor in death is loss.

Still the feet that thither trod,
All the friendly eyes are dim;
Only Nature, now, and God
Have a care for him.

There the dews of quiet fall,
Singing birds and soft winds stray:
Shall the tender Heart of all
Be less kind than they?

What he was and what he is
They who ask may haply find,
If they read this prayer of his
Which he left behind.

.        .        .        .        .

Pardon, Lord, the lips that dare
Shape in words a mortals prayer!
Prayer, that, when...

John Greenleaf Whittier

The Pains of Sleep

Ere on my bed my limbs I lay,
It hath not been my use to pray
With moving lips or bended knees;
But silently, by slow degrees,
My spirit I to Love compose,
In humble trust mine eyelids close,
With reverential resignation,
No wish conceived, no thought expressed,
Only a sense of supplication;
A sense o'er all my soul impressed
That I am weak, yet not unblessed,
Since in me, round me, every where
Eternal strength and wisdom are.

But yester-night I prayed aloud
In anguish and in agony,
Up-starting from the fiendish crowd
Of shapes and thoughts that tortured me:
A lurid light, a trampling throng,
Sense of intolerable wrong,
And whom I scorned, those only strong!
Thirst of revenge, the powerless will
Still baffled, and yet burning sti...

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Lamentation.

I read upon that book,
Which down the golden gulf doth let us look
On the sweet days of pastoral majesty;
    I read upon that book
How, when the Shepherd Prince did flee
(Red Esau's twin), he desolate took
The stone for a pillow: then he fell on sleep.
And lo! there was a ladder. Lo! there hung
A ladder from the star-place, and it clung
To the earth: it tied her so to heaven; and O!
    There fluttered wings;
Then were ascending and descending things
That stepped to him where he lay low;
Then up the ladder would a-drifting go
(This feathered brood of heaven), and show
Small as white flakes in winter that are blown
Together, underneath the great white throne.

    When I had shut the book, I said,
"Now, as for me, my dreams upon my bed
    ...

Jean Ingelow