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

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Charles Hamilton Musgrove

The Derelict.

Charles Hamilton Musgrove, Simple Poetry

Immutability.

Charles Hamilton Musgrove, Simple Poetry

The Gold Fields.

Charles Hamilton Musgrove, Simple Poetry

The Monastery.

Charles Hamilton Musgrove, Simple Poetry

English

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The Unknowable.

O! Sun, resplendent in the smiling morn,
    As thou dost view the wastes of earth and sky,
Canst thou behold the realms of the Unborn,
    Canst thou behold the realms of those who die?
Where dwells the spirit e'er its mortal birth,
        E'er yet it suffereth
The pain and sorrow incident to earth?
        Where after death?
The Sun gave answer, with refulgent glow:
Child of a fleeting hour, thou too must die to know.

Canst tell, thou jeweled canopy of space,
    Bewildering, and boundless to the eyes,
Knowest thou the unborn spirits' dwelling place?
    Knowest thou the distant regions of the skies
Where rest the spirits freed from mundane strife,
        From mortal grief and care?
Knowest thou the secret of the future life?
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On Death.

THERE IS NO WORK, NOR DEVICE, NOR KNOWLEDGE, NOR WISDOM, IN THE GRAVE, WHITHER THOU GOEST. - Ecclesiastes.

The pale, the cold, and the moony smile
Which the meteor beam of a starless night
Sheds on a lonely and sea-girt isle,
Ere the dawning of morn's undoubted light,
Is the flame of life so fickle and wan
That flits round our steps till their strength is gone.

O man! hold thee on in courage of soul
Through the stormy shades of thy worldly way,
And the billows of cloud that around thee roll
Shall sleep in the light of a wondrous day,
Where Hell and Heaven shall leave thee free
To the universe of destiny.

This world is the nurse of all we know,
This world is the mother of all we feel,
And the coming of death is a fearful blow
To a brain unenco...

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Quatrains.

The Sky Line.

Like black fangs in a cruel ogre's jaw
    The grim piles lift against the sunset sky;
Down drops the night, and shuts the horrid maw--
    I listen, breathless, but there comes no cry.


Defeat.

He sits and looks into the west
    Where twilight gathers, wan and gray,
A knight who quit the Golden Quest,
    And flung Excalibur away.


To an Amazon.

O! twain in spirit, we shall know
    Thy like no more, so fierce, so mild,
One breast shorn clean to rest the bow,
    One milk-full for thy warrior child.


The Old Mother.

Life is like an old mother whom trouble and toil
Have sufficed the best part of her nature to spoil,
Whom her children, the Passions, so ...

Charles Hamilton Musgrove

The Vision Of Life.

    Death and I,
    On a hill so high,
Stood side by side:
    And we saw below,
    Running to and fro,
All things that be in the world so wide.

    Ten thousand cries
    From the gulf did rise,
With a wild discordant sound;
    Laughter and wailing,
    Prayer and railing,
As the ball spun round and round.

    And over all
    Hung a floating pall
Of dark and gory veils:
    'Tis the blood of years,
    And the sighs and tears,
Which this noisome marsh exhales.

    All this did seem
    Like a fearful dream,
Till Death cried with a joyful cry:
    "Look down! look down!
    It is all mine own,
Here comes life's pageant by!"

Like to a masque in ancient revelries,
With mingling sound of tho...

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Ode To The New Century.

The dial has pointed the hour and the hour has rounded the day,
    The day has finished the year that dies with a century's birth;
Eastward the morning stars sing as they go their way:
    "Lo! the Great Mother travaileth, a king is born to the earth!
King of a hundred years, and king of a million tombs,
    Sovereign of infinite joys, keeper of countless tears;
Peace to the throneless dead, hail to the ruler who comes,
    King of a million tombs, and king of a hundred years!"

Time and his tenant Death, for the space of a moment's flight
    Stand on the bare, black ridge dividing eternities twain;
One looks back to his realm all waste in the hopeless night,
    One with the eyes of hope sees it rebuilded again.
Behind are the gray, gleaned fields with their worthless stu...

Charles Hamilton Musgrove

The Old Man And The Boy.

"Glenara, Glenara, now read me my dream."
Campbell.

Father, I have dreamed a dream,
    When the rosy morning hour
Poured its light on field and stream,
    Kindling nature with its pow'r; -

O'er the meadow's dewy breast,
    I had chased a butterfly,
Tempted by its gaudy vest,
    Still my vain pursuit to ply, -

Till my limbs were weary grown,
    With the distance I had strayed,
Then to rest I laid me down,
    Where a beech tree cast its shade,

Soon a heaviness came o'er me,
    And a deep sleep sealed my eyes;
And a vision past before me,
    Full of changing phantasies.

First I stood beside a bower,
    Green as summer bow'r could be;
Vine and fruit, and leaf and flower,
    Mixed to weave its canopy....

George W. Sands