The Columbine

Gray lonely rocks about thee stand,
Ignored of sun and dew,
Yet is thy breath upon the land,
To thy vocation true.

So come they character to me
That works in sunless ways,
And I shall learn to give with thee
Dark hills a constant praise.

Michael Earls

Michael Earls, born on November 2, 1875, and died on November 7, 1937, was an American poet, playwright, and Jesuit priest. He was a prolific writer, contributing to numerous American periodicals and magazines. His works often explored themes of faith, nature, and human experience. He was known for his engaging style and profound insights into spirituality and everyday life. Earls had a significant influence on Catholic literature in America during the early 20th century.

Michael Earls

The Storyteller

Michael Earls, Simple Poetry

The Happy Time

Michael Earls, Simple Poetry

On a Train

Michael Earls, Simple Poetry

The Towers Of Holy Cross

Michael Earls, 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.

Alleluia Height

Yea, constant through the changeful year,
This queenly Height commands our praise.
To stand in meek unflinching hardihood
When fortune blows its storm of fright,
And work to full effect that good
Resolved in open days of clearer sight-
O, this is worth!
That daily sees the soul
To braver liberties give birth,
That heeds not time's annoy,
And hears surrounding voices roll
Perennial circumstance of joy.
Then come not only when the springtime blows
The old familiar strangeness of its breath
Across the long-lain snows,
And chants her resurrected songs
About the tombs of death;
Nor yet when summer glows
In roseate throngs
And works her plenitude of deeds
By tangled dells and waving meads,
Come here in beauty's pilgrimage:
Nor when the ...

Michael Earls

Monochromes

I.

The last rose falls, wrecked of the wind and rain;
Where once it bloomed the thorns alone remain:
Dead in the wet the slow rain strews the rose.
The day was dim; now eve comes on again,
Grave as a life weighed down by many woes, -
So is the joy dead, and alive the pain.

The brown leaf flutters where the green leaf died;
Bare are the boughs, and bleak the forest side:
The wind is whirling with the last wild leaf.
The eve was strange; now dusk comes weird and wide,
Gaunt as a life that lives alone with grief, -
So doth the hope go and despair abide.

An empty nest hangs where the wood-bird pled;
Along the west the dusk dies, stormy red:
The frost is subtle as a serpent's breath.
The dusk was sad; now night is overhead,
Grim as a soul bro...

Madison Julius Cawein

The Hills

There is no joy of earth that thrills
My bosom like the far-off hills!
Th' unchanging hills, that, shadowy,
Beckon our mutability
To follow and to gaze upon
Foundations of the dusk and dawn.
Meseems the very heavens are massed
Upon their shoulders, vague and vast
With all the skyey burden of
The winds and clouds and stars above.
Lo, how they sit before us, seeing
The laws that give all Beauty being!
Behold! to them, when dawn is near,
The nomads of the air appear,
Unfolding crimson camps of day
In brilliant bands; then march away;
And under burning battlements
Of twilight plant their tinted tents.
The truth of olden myths, that brood
By haunted stream and haunted wood,
They see; and feel the happiness
Of old at which we only guess:

Madison Julius Cawein

Under Arcturus

I.

"I belt the morn with ribboned mist;
With baldricked blue I gird the noon,
And dusk with purple, crimson-kissed,
White-buckled with the hunter's moon.

"These follow me," the season says:
"Mine is the frost-pale hand that packs
Their scrips, and speeds them on their ways,
With gipsy gold that weighs their backs."


II.

A daybreak horn the Autumn blows,
As with a sun-tanned band he parts
Wet boughs whereon the berry glows;
And at his feet the red-fox starts.

The leafy leash that holds his hounds
Is loosed; and all the noonday hush
Is startled; and the hillside sounds
Behind the fox's bounding brush.

When red dusk makes the western sky
A fire-lit window through the firs,
He stoops to see the red-fox d...

Madison Julius Cawein

Alleluia Height

Obedience to the seasons' marshall-rod,
That is a law of God,
Here beauty passes with her gorgeous train,
On paths that range from bud to grain.
O, here the searching eyes
In traffic for the soul's good gain
Earn wealth of rare delight.
Far pathways of surprise,
In color's frumenty bedight,
Lead off from avenues of day
Through miles of pageantries:
And from the starry chancels of the night
And the inscrutable farther skies,
Beyond where trackless comets stray,
Outspreads a world in thought's array.
And lo! the heart's true voices sing
From the exulting reverent breast,
And lips proclaim, with adoration blessed,
Glad Alleluias to the King.

Prompt is our praise unto a jewelled queen
In all her courtly splendor set,
(Fair as those f...

Michael Earls

To A Gipsy Child By The Sea-Shore

Douglas, Isle of Man


Who taught this pleading to unpractisd eyes?
Who hid such import in an infants gloom?
Who lent thee, child, this meditative guise?
What clouds thy forehead, and fore-dates thy doom?

Lo! sails that gleam a moment and are gone;
The swinging waters, and the clusterd pier.
Not idly Earth and Ocean labour on,
Nor idly do these sea-birds hover near.

But thou, whom superfluity of joy
Wafts not from thine own thoughts, nor longings vain,
Nor weariness, the full-fed souls annoy;
Remaining in thy hunger and thy pain:

Thou, drugging pain by patience; half averse
From thine own mothers breast, that knows not thee;
With eyes that sought thine eyes thou didst converse,
And that soul-searching vision fell on me.<...

Matthew Arnold