Prelude To "Preludes"

Though black the night, I know upon the sky,
A little paler now, if clouds were none,
The stars would be. Husht now the thickets lie,
And now the birds are moving one by one,,
A note, and now from bush to bush it goes,
A prelude, now victorious light along
The west will come till every bramble glows
With wash of sunlit dew shaken in song.
Shaken in song;    O heart, be ready now,
Cold in your night, be ready now to sing.
Dawn as it wakes the sleeping bird on bough
Shall summon you to instant reckoning,,
She is your dawn, O heart,, sing, till the night
Of death shall come, the gospel of her light.

John Drinkwater

John Drinkwater was an influential English poet and dramatist who played a significant role in the early 20th-century literary scene. His best-known works include a series of historical plays about Abraham Lincoln, while his poetry often explored themes of nature and human emotion. Drinkwater was also a prominent figure in the Georgian poetry movement, helping to shape modern English poetry. He contributed to various literary journals and was associated with the Dymock poets.

John Drinkwater

May Garden

John Drinkwater, Simple Poetry

Birthright

John Drinkwater, Simple Poetry

Habitation

John Drinkwater, 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.

Prelude: By Still Waters

Oh, be not led away,
    Lured by the colour of the sun-rich day.
The gay romance of song
    Unto the spirit life doth not belong:
Though far-between the hours
    In which the Master of Angelic powers
Lightens the dusk within
    The holy of holies, be it thine to win
Rare vistas of white light,
    Half parted lips through which the Infinite
Murmurs her ancient story,
    Harkening to whom the wandering planets hoary
Waken primeval fires,
    With deeper rapture in celestial choirs
Breathe, and with fleeter motion
    Wheel in their orbits through the surgeless ocean.
So hearken thou like these,
    Intent on her, mounting by slow degrees,
Until thy song's elation
    Echoes her multitudinous meditation.

George William Russell

The Darksome Nightingale

Why dost thou, darksome Nightingale,
Sing so distractingly--and here?
Dawn's preludings prick my ear,
Faint light is creeping up the vale,
While on these dead thy rarer
Song falls, dark night-farer.

Were it not better thou shouldst sing
Where the drenched lilac droops her plume,
Spreading frail banners of perfume?
Or where the easeless pines enring
The river-lullèd village
Whose lads the lilac pillage?

Oh, if aught songful these hid bones
Might reach, like the slow subtle rain,
Surely the dead had risen again
And listened, white by the white stones;
Back to rich life song-charmed,
By ghostly joys alarmed.

This may not be. And yet, oh still
Pour like night dew thy richer speech
Some late-lost youth perchance to reach,
...

John Frederick Freeman

Interlude

What love is; how I love; how builders' clay
By love is lit into a golden spending;
How love calls beautiful ghosts back to the day;
How life because of love shall have no ending,
These with the dawn I have begun to sing,
These with the million-budded noon that's rising
Shall be a theme, with love's consent, to bring
My song to some imperishable devising.
And may the petals of this garland fall
On every quarrel, and in fragrance bless
Old friendship; and a little comfort all
The weary loves that walk the wilderness,
While still my song I consecrate alone
To her who taking it shall take her own.

John Drinkwater

Day-Break.

The red east glows, the dewy cheek of Day
Has not yet met the sun's o'erpowering smile;
The dew-drops in their beauty still are gay,
Save those the shepherd's early steps defile.
Pleas'd will I linger o'er the scene awhile;
The black clouds melt away, the larks awaken--
Sing, rising bird, and I will join with thee:
With day-break's beauties I have much been taken,
As thy first anthem breath'd its melody.
I've stood and paus'd the varied cloud to see,
And warm'd in ecstacy, and look'd and warm'd,
When day's first rays, the far hill top adorning,
Fring'd the blue clouds with gold: O doubly charm'd
I hung in raptures then on early Morning.

John Clare

What Of The Night?

The doom is imminent of unholy hate.
Hail to the light that glimmers where the leaves
Are shaken by winds of dawning, and the sheaves
Of hemlock swirl and scatter in the spate!
Love, that has learned in faith to sorrow and wait,
Sings loud his glorious charm and subtly weaves
The spell subduing madness that receives
The madman at his own mad estimate.

Ah, but the ponderous horror! Nay, not yet
The cloud of sorrow leeward growls and rolls;
The eyes that meet the morn are heavy and wet.
The loss the military mind enscrolls,
Spilt blood and battered bones, we may forget,
But not the wastage of beloved souls

John Le Gay Brereton

A Prelude, And A Bird's Song.

The poet's song, and the bird's,
    And the waters' that chant as they run
And the waves' that kiss the beach,
    And the wind's--they are but one.
He who may read their words,
And the secret hid in each,
May know the solemn monochords
That breathe in vast still places;
And the voices of myriad races,
    Shy, and far-off from man,
That hide in shadow and sun,
    And are seen but of him who can
To him the awful face is shown
Swathed in a cloud wind-blown
Of Him, who from His secret throne,
In some void, shadowy, and unknown land
Comes forth to lay His mighty hand
On the sounding organ keys,
    That play deep thunder-marches,
Like the rush and the roar of seas,
    And fill the cavernous arches
Of antique wildernesses hoary,
  ...

Kate Seymour Maclean