The Tidings (Easter 1916)

Censored lies that mimic truth...
        Censored truth as pale as fear...
My heart is like a rousing bell -
        And but the dead to hear...

My heart is like a mother bird,
        Circling ever higher,
And the nest-tree rimmed about
        By a forest fire...

My heart is like a lover foiled
        By a broken stair -
They are fighting to-night in Sackville Street,
        And I am not there!

Lola Ridge

Lola Ridge, born Rose Emily Ridge, was an Irish-American anarchist poet and influential editor of avant-garde, feminist, and Marxist publications. Best known for her long poems and involvement in various social movements, Ridge's work addressed issues such as oppression and social justice. She published her first book of poems, "The Ghetto and Other Poems," in 1918, which gained her considerable acclaim. Ridge's poetry often focused on the lives of immigrants and the working class.

Lola Ridge

The Woman With Jewels

Lola Ridge, Simple Poetry

Potpourri

Lola Ridge, Simple Poetry

The Edge

Lola Ridge, Simple Poetry

To The Others

Lola Ridge, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

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An Easter Rhyme

Easter Monday in the city,
Rattle, rattle, rumble, rush;
Tom and Jerry, Nell and Kitty,
All the down-the-harbour push,
Little thought have they, or pity,
For a wanderer from the bush.

Shuffle, feet, a merry measure,
Hurry, Jack and find your Jill,
Let her,if it give her pleasure,
Flaunt her furbelow and frill,
Kiss her while you have the leisure,
For tomorrow brings the mill.

Go ye down the harbour, winding
Mid the eucalypts and fern,
Respite from your troubles finding,
Kiss her, till her pale cheeks burn,
For to-morrow will the grinding
Mill-stones of the city turn.

Stunted figures, sallow faces,
Sad girls striving to be gay
In their cheap sateens and laces.
Ah! how different tis to-day
Where theyre going t...

Barcroft Boake

Frank Little At Calvary

I

He walked under the shadow of the Hill
Where men are fed into the fires
And walled apart...
Unarmed and alone,
He summoned his mates from the pit's mouth
Where tools rested on the floors
And great cranes swung
Unemptied, on the iron girders.
And they, who were the Lords of the Hill,
Were seized with a great fear,
When they heard out of the silence of wheels
The answer ringing
In endless reverberations
Under the mountain...

So they covered up their faces
And crept upon him as he slept...
Out of eye-holes in black cloth
They looked upon him who had flung
Between them and their ancient prey
The frail barricade of his life...
And when night - that has connived at so much -
Was heavy with the unborn day,
They haled h...

Lola Ridge

Easter Bells

Oh bells of Easter morn, oh solemn sounding bells,
    Which fill the hollow cells
Of the blue April air with a most sweet refrain,
    Ye fill my heart with pain.

For when, as from a thousand holy altar-fires,
    A thousand resonant spires
Sent up the offering--the glad thanksgiving strain--
    "The Lord is risen again!"

He went from us who shall return no more, no more!
    I say the sad words o'er,
And they are mixed and blent with your triumphant psalm,
    Like bitterness and balm,

We stood with him beside the black and silent river,
    Cold, cold and soundless ever;
But there our feet were stayed--unloosed our clasping fond,
    And he has passed beyond.

And still that solemn hymn, like smoke of sacrifice,
    Clomb the bl...

Kate Seymour Maclean

To Mary Boyle

I.

Spring-flowers! While you still delay to take
Your leave of town,
Our elm-trees ruddy-hearted blossom-flake
Is fluttering down.



II.

Be truer to your promise. There! I heard
Our cuckoo call.
Be needle to the magnet of your word,
Nor wait, till all



III.

Our vernal bloom from every vale and plain
And garden pass,
And all the gold from each laburnum chain
Drop to the grass.



IV.

Is memory with your Marian gone to rest,
Dead with the dead?
For ere she left us, when we met, you prest
My hand, and said



V.

I come with your spring-flowers. You came not, my friend;
My birds would sing,
You heard not. Take then this spring-flower...

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Easter Morn

A truth that has long lain buried
    At Superstition's door,
I see, in the dawn uprising
    In all its strength once more.

Hidden away in the darkness,
    By Ignorance crucified,
Crushed under stones of dogmas -
    Yet lo! it has not died.

It stands in the light transfigured,
    It speaks from the heights above,
"EACH SOUL IS ITS OWN REDEEMER;
    THERE IS NO LAW BUT LOVE."

And the spirits of men are gladdened
    As they welcome this Truth re-born
With its feet on the grave of Error
    And its eyes to the Easter Morn.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Spring

A spring wind on the Bowery,
Blowing the fluff of night shelters
Off bedraggled garments,
And agitating the gutters, that eject little spirals of vapor
Like lewd growths.

Bare-legged children stamp in the puddles, splashing each other,
One - with a choir-boy's face
Twits me as I pass...
The word, like a muddied drop,
Seems to roll over and not out of
The bowed lips,
Yet dewy red
And sweetly immature.

People sniff the air with an upward look -
Even the mite of a girl
Who never plays...
Her mother smiles at her
With eyes like vacant lots
Rimming vistas of mean streets
And endless washing days...
Yet with sun on the lines
And a drying breeze.

The old candy woman
Shivers in the young wind.
Her eyes - litter...

Lola Ridge