The Thief Of Beauty.

    The mind is Beauty's thief, the poet takes
    The golden spendthrift's trail among the blooms
    Where she stands tossing silver in the lakes,
    And twisting bright swift threads on airy looms.
    Her ring the poppy snatches, and the rose
    With laughter plunders all her gusty plumes.
    He steals behind her, gathering, as she goes
    Heedless of summer's end certain and soon, -
    Of winter rattling at the door of June.

    When Beauty lies hand-folded, pale and still,
    Forsaken of her lovers and her lords,
    And winter keeps cold watch upon the hill
    Then he lets fall his bale of coloured words.
    At frosty midnight June shall rise in flame,
    Move at his magic with her bells and birds;
    The rose will redden as he speaks her name,
    He shall release earth's frozen bosom there,
    And with great words shall cuff the whining air!

Muriel Stuart

Muriel Stuart was a British poet who gained prominence during the early 20th century. She was highly regarded for her contributions to Georgian poetry, a movement characterized by its eclectic and modernist styles. Stuart's work often grappled with themes of nature, love, and the human condition, reflecting the changing societal landscapes of her time. In addition to her poetry, she penned essays and other literary works, cementing her status as an influential literary figure.

Muriel Stuart

The Harebell.

Muriel Stuart, Simple Poetry

Sic Transit -

Muriel Stuart, Simple Poetry

Enough.

Muriel Stuart, Simple Poetry

English

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Words.

        Is it not brave to be a king, Techelles! -
        Usumcasane and Theridamas,
        Is it not passing brave to be a king,
        And ride in triumph through Persepolis? - MARLOWE.


    Bring the great words that scourge the thundering line
    With lust and slaughter - words that reek of doom
    And the lost battle and the ruined shrine; -
    Words dire and black as midnight on a tomb;
    Hushed speech of waters on the lip of gloom;
    Huge sounds of death and plunder in the night; -
    Words whose vast plumes above the ages meet,
    Girdling the lost, dark centuries in their flight,
    The slave of their unfetterable feet.

    Bring words as pure as rills of earliest Spring
    In some far cranny of the hillside born
    To stitc...

Muriel Stuart

White Magic.

Is it not a wonderful thing to be able to force an astonished plant to bear rare flowers which are foreign to it ... and to obtain a marvellous result from sap which, left to itself, would have produced corollas without beauty? - VIRGIL.


    I stood forlorn and pale,
    Pressed by the cold sand, pinched by the thin grass,
    Last of my race and frail
    Who reigned in beauty once when beauty was,
    Before the rich earth beckoned to the sea,
    Took his salt lips to taste,
    And spread this gradual waste -
    This ruin of flower, this doom of grass and tree.
    Each Spring could scarcely lift
    My brows from the sand drift
    To fill my lips with April as she went,
    Or force my weariness
    To its sad, summer dress:
    On the harsh beach I h...

Muriel Stuart

The Butterfly

    I

    O wonderful and wingèd flow'r,
    That hoverest in the garden-close,
    Finding in mazes of the rose,
    The beauty of a Summer hour!

    O symbol of Impermanence,
    Thou art a word of Beauty's tongue,
    A word that in her song is sung,
    Appealing to the inner sense!

    Of that great mystic harmony,
    All lovely things are notes and words -
    The trees, the flow'rs, the songful birds,
    The flame-white stars, the surging sea,

    The aureate light of sudden dawn,
    The sunset's crimson afterglow,
    The summer clouds, the dazzling snow,
    The brooks, the moonlight chaste and wan.

    Lacking (who knows?) a cloud, a tree,
    A streamlet's purl, the ocean's roar
    From Nature's multi...

Clark Ashton Smith

Evening Beauty: Blackfriars

Nought is but beauty weareth, near and far,
Under the pale, blue sky and lonely star.
This is that quick hour when the city turns
Her troubled harsh distortion and blind care
Into brief loveliness seen everywhere,
While in the fuming west the low sun smouldering burns.

Not brick nor marble the rich beauty owns,
Not this is held in starward-pointing stones.
Sun, wind and smoke the threefold magic stir,
Kissing each favourless poor ruin with kiss
Like that when lovers lovers lure to bliss,
And earth than towered heaven awhile is heavenlier.

Tall shafts that show the sky how far away!
The thousand-window'd house gilded with day
That fades to night; the arches low, the streamer
Everywhere of the ruddy'd smoke.... Is aught
Of loveliness so rich e'er sol...

John Frederick Freeman

In Memory Of Douglas Vernon Cow

    This Poem, Dedicated to His Mother.


    To twilight heads comes Death as comes a friend,
    As with the gentle fading of the year
    Fades rose, folds leaf, falls fruit, and to their end
    Unquestioning draw near,
    Their flowering over, and their fruiting done,
    Fulfilled and finished and going down with the sun.

    But for June's heart there is no comforting
    When her full-throated rose
    Still quick with buds, still thrilling to the air,
    By some stray wind is tossed,
    Her swelling grain that goes
    Heavy to harvesting
    In a black gale is lost,
    And her round grape that purpled to the wine
    Is pinched by some chance frost.
    Ah, then cry out for that lost, lovely rose,
    For the stricken wheat, ...

Muriel Stuart

The Seed Shop.

    Here in a quiet and dusty room they lie,
    Faded as crumbled stone or shifting sand,
    Forlorn as ashes, shrivelled, scentless, dry -
    Meadows and gardens running through my hand.

    Dead that shall quicken at the call of Spring,
    Sleepers to stir beneath June's magic kiss,
    Though birds pass over, unremembering,
    And no bee seek here roses that were his.

    In this brown husk a dale of hawthorn dreams
    A cedar in this narrow cell is thrust
    That will drink deeply of a century's streams,
    These lilies shall make summer on my dust.

    Here in their safe and simple house of death,
    Sealed in their shells a million roses leap;
    Here I can blow a garden with my breath,
    And in my hand a forest lies asleep.

Muriel Stuart