The Human World.

Here is one picture of the human world:
An unreaped field and Death, the harvester,
Taking his rest beside a gathered sheaf
Of poppy and white lilies. At his side
Passion, with pilfered hour-glass in her hand
Jarring the sluggish sands to haste their flow.

Charles Hamilton Musgrove

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Charles Hamilton Musgrove

Romany.

Charles Hamilton Musgrove, Simple Poetry

Confession.

Charles Hamilton Musgrove, Simple Poetry

The North Wind.

Charles Hamilton Musgrove, Simple Poetry

Idols.

Charles Hamilton Musgrove, 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.

The Newly Dead.

I.

With the light just quenched in their eyes
They lie in their graves 'neath the skies,
And the fresh clod rests
Heavy upon their breasts.
The white rose dies
Upon the new-made mound, and underneath
The lily shrivels in the shriveling hand.
Pale guests of sovereign Death,
They sought their silent beds at his command,
And it seems
Strange that their life-long dreams
Shall find them no more,--never bid them arise
And go forth with a glory in their eyes.


II.

Still, voiceless, cold,
They lie in their shrouds and hold
The crumbling links that make
A chain for Memory's sake,
Broken, alas! too soon.
Blithe morn and brazen noon
And eve with garb of gray and gold,
Know them no more in the dark ways they take.
...

Charles Hamilton Musgrove

The Riddle Of The Sphinx.

From age to age the haggard human train
    Creeps wearily across Time's burning sands
    To look into her face, and lift weak hands
In supplication to the calm disdain
That crowns her stony brow.... But all in vain
    The riddle of mortality they try:
    Doom speaks still from her unrelenting eye--
Doom deep as passion, infinite as pain.
From age to age the voice of Love is heard
    Pleading above the tumult of the throng,
But evermore the inexorable word
    Comes like the tragic burden of a song.
"The answer is the same," the stern voice saith:
"Death yesterday, today and still tomorrow--Death!"

Charles Hamilton Musgrove

Heaven And Earth.

Turn from the grave, turn from the grave,
There's fearful mystery there;
Descend not to the shadowy tomb,
If thou wouldst shun despair.
It tells a tale of severed ties
To break the bleeding heart,
And from the "canopy of dust"
Would make it death to part.
Oh! lift the eye of faith to worlds
Where death shall never come,
And there behold "the pure in heart"
Whom God has gathered home,
Beyond the changing things of time,
Beyond the reach of care.
How sweet to view the ransomed ones
In dazzling glory there!
They seem to whisper to the loved
Who smoothed their path below,
"Weep not for us, our tears have all
Forever ceased to flow."
Take from the grave, take from the grave,
Those bright, but withering; flowers,
The spiri...

Eliza Paul Kirkbride Gurney

Our Field Is The World.

Our field is the world! - let us forth to the sowing,
    O'er valley and mountain, o'er desert and plain,
Beside the still waters through cool meadows flowing,
    O'er regions unblest by the dew and the rain; -
Let us scatter the seed, though in sorrow and weeping,
    Though fields should be verdureless, wintry, and bare,
The Lord of the harvest hath still in His keeping
    Each seed as it falls, and will guard it with care.

Our field is the world! - let us forth to the reaping;
    The long day is waning, the eve draweth nigh;
Faint omens of storm up the heavens are creeping,
    And the sigh of the tempest is heard in the sky; -
The work-hour is brief, but the rest is forever,
    Then stay not for weariness, languor, or pain,
But forth to the harvest with e...

Pamela S. Vining (J. C. Yule)

Vain Transient World.

    Vain transient World, what charms are thine?
        And what do mortals in thee see,
    That they should worship at thy shrine,
        And sacrifice their all to thee?

    Thy brightest gifts, thy happiest hours
        Fly past on pinions of the wind;
    They fade like blooms upon the flowers,
        And leave a painful want behind.

    Thou art a road, though not of space,
        Which rich and poor alike must tread;
    Thy starting point we cannot trace,
        Thine end - the country of the dead.

    A pathway paved with want and woe,
        With pleasures painful, incomplete;
    Like stones upon the way below,
        Which wound the weary pilgrim's feet.

    Thou'rt hedged with visions of despair,
        With w...

W. M. MacKeracher

The Voice Of Toil

I heard men saying, Leave hope and praying,
    All days shall be as all have been;
To-day and to-morrow bring fear and sorrow,
    The never-ending toil between.

When Earth was younger mid toil and hunger,
    In hope we strove, and our hands were strong;
Then great men led us, with words they fed us,
    And bade us right the earthly wrong.

Go read in story their deeds and glory,
    Their names amidst the nameless dead;
Turn then from lying to us slow-dying
    In that good world to which they led;

Where fast and faster our iron master,
    The thing we made, for ever drives,
Bids us grind treasure and fashion pleasure
    For other hopes and other lives.

Where home is a hovel and dull we grovel,
    Forgetting that the world is...

William Morris