The First Storm.

The leafless branch and meadow sere,
        The dull and leaden skies,
Join with the mournful wind and drear
In dirges for the passing year,
        Which unreturning flies.

The night in starless gloom descends,
        Nor can the pale moonshine
Break through the clouds whose veil extends
In boundless form, and darkly blends
        With the horizon's line.

Fond nature, in a playful mood,
        In cover of the night,
Arrays the plain and forest rude,
The city and the solitude,
        In robe of spotless white.

Alfred Castner King

Alfred Castner King was an American poet. He is recognized for his significant contributions to American poetry. Despite battling with blindness, his disability did not deter him from crafting poetry that captivated many readers. King often wrote about nature and personal experiences, reflecting a deep appreciation for the world around him and the nuances of human emotion.

Alfred Castner King

Grandeur.

Alfred Castner King, Simple Poetry

They Cannot See the Wreaths We Place.

Alfred Castner King, Simple Poetry

Think Not that the Heart is Devoid of Emotion.

Alfred Castner King, Simple Poetry

In Deo Fides.

Alfred Castner King, 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.

Midnight

Tis midnight oer the dim meres lonely bosom,
Dark, dusky, windy midnight: swift are driven
The swelling vapours onward: every blossom
Bathes its bright petals in the tears of heaven.
Imperfect, half-seen objects meet the sight,
The other half our fancy must pourtray;
A wan, dull, lengthend sheet of swimming light
Lies the broad lake: the moon conceals her ray,
Sketchd faintly by a pale and lurid gleam
Shot thro the glimmering clouds: the lovely planet
Is shrouded in obscurity; the scream
Of owl is silencd; and the rocks of granite
Rise tall and drearily, while damp and dank
Hang the thick willows on the reedy bank.
Beneath, the gurgling eddies slowly creep,
Blackend by foliage; and the glutting wave,
That saps eternally the cold grey steep,
Sounds...

Alfred Lord Tennyson

A Night Of Storm.

Oh city, whom grey stormy hands have sown
With restless drift, scarce broken now of any,
Out of the dark thy windows dim and many
Gleam red across the storm. Sound is there none,
Save evermore the fierce wind's sweep and moan,
From whose grey hands the keen white snow is shaken
In desperate gusts, that fitfully lull and waken,
Dense as night's darkness round thy towers of stone.

Darkling and strange art thou thus vexed and chidden;
More dark and strange thy veilèd agony,
City of storm, in whose grey heart are hidden
What stormier woes, what lives that groan and beat,
Stern and thin-cheeked, against time's heavier sleet,
Rude fates, hard hearts, and prisoning poverty.

Archibald Lampman

Rhymes And Rhythms - XXII

Trees and the menace of night;
Then a long, lonely, leaden mere
Backed by a desolate fell
As by a spectral battlement; and then,
Low-brooding, interpenetrating all,
A vast, grey, listless, inexpressive sky,
So beggared, so incredibly bereft
Of starlight and the song of racing worlds
It might have bellied down upon the Void
Where as in terror Light was beginning to be.

Hist!    In the trees fulfilled of night
(Night and the wretchedness of the sky)
Is it the hurry of the rain?
Or the noise of a drive of the Dead
Streaming before the irresistible Will
Through the strange dusk of this, the Debateable Land
Between their place and ours?

Like the forgetfulness
Of the work-a-day world made visible,
A mist falls from the melancholy sky:

William Ernest Henley

The Fallen Tree.

I passed along a mountain road,
    Which led me through a wooded glen,
Remote from dwelling or abode
    And ordinary haunts of men;
        And wearied from the dust and heat.
        Beneath a tree, I found a seat.

The tree, a tall majestic spruce,
    Which had, perhaps for centuries,
Withstood, without a moment's truce,
    The wing-ed warfare of the breeze;
        A monarch of the solitude,
        Which well might grace the noblest wood.

Beneath its cool and welcome shade,
    Protected from the noontide rays,
The birds amid its branches played
    And caroled forth their twittering praise;
        A squirrel perched upon a limb
        And chattered with loquacious vim.

E'er yet that selfsame week had sped,
    On my r...

Alfred Castner King

Late November

I.

Morning

Deep in her broom-sedge, burs and iron-weeds,
Her frost-slain asters and dead mallow-moons,
Where gray the wilding clematis balloons
The brake with puff-balls: where the slow stream leads
Her sombre steps: decked with the scarlet beads
Of hip and haw: through dolorous maroons
And desolate golds, she goes: the wailing tunes
Of all the winds about her like wild reeds.
The red wrought-iron hues that flush the green
Of blackberry briers, and the bronze that stains
The oak's sere leaves, are in her cheeks: the gray
Of forest pools, clocked thin with ice, is keen
In her cold eyes: and in her hair the rain's
Chill silver glimmers like a winter ray.

II.

Noon

Lost in the sleepy grays and drowsy browns
Of woodlands...

Madison Julius Cawein

Grandeur.

Dedicated to the mountains of the San Juan district, Colorado, as seen from the summit of Mt. Wilson.


I stood at sunrise, on the topmost part
Of lofty mountain, massively sublime;
A pinnacle of trachyte, seamed and scarred
By countless generations' ceaseless war
And struggle with the restless elements;
A rugged point, which shot into the air,
As by ambition or desire impelled
To pierce the eternal precincts of the sky.

        Below, outspread,
A scene of such terrific grandeur lay
That reeled the brain at what the eyes beheld;
The hands would clench involuntarily
And clutch from intuition for support;
The eyes by instinct closed, nor dared to gaze
On such an awful and inspiring sight.

The sun arose with bright transcendent ray,
Up...

Alfred Castner King