Upon Graciosa, Walking And Talking. (From 'Troy Town'.)

When as abroad, to greet the morn,
I mark my Graciosa walk,
In homage bends the whisp'ring corn,
    Yet to confess
    Its awkwardness
Must hang its head upon the stalk.

And when she talks, her lips do heal
The wounds her lightest glances give:--
In pity then be harsh, and deal
    Such wounds that I
    May hourly die,
And, by a word restored, live.

Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch, born on November 21, 1863, and died on May 12, 1944, was a Cornish writer, who published under the pen name Q. His legacy includes a vast body of critical and anthological work, most notably 'The Oxford Book of English Verse 1250–1900'. Quiller-Couch was knighted in 1910 and also served as a professor of English at the University of Cambridge. His works have influenced many, including writers like Virginia Woolf.

Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

The Root

Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch, Simple Poetry

Christmas Eve

Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch, Simple Poetry

The Marine - Folk Song

Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch, Simple Poetry

Tim The Dragoon (From 'Troy Town')

Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch, 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.

To A Friend Who Sent Me A Box Of Violets

Nay, more than violets
These thoughts of thine, friend!
Rather thy reedy brook--
Taw's tributary--
At midnight murmuring,
Descried them, the delicate
Dark-eyed goddesses,
There by his cressy bed
Dissolved and dreaming
Dreams that distilled into dew
All the purple of night,
All the shine of a planet.

Whereat he whispered;
And they arising--

Of day's forget-me-nots
The duskier sisters--
Descended, relinquished
The orchard, the trout-pool,
Torridge and Tamar,
The Druid circles,
Sheepfolds of Dartmoor,
Granite and sandstone;
By Roughtor, Dozmare,
Down the vale of the Fowey
Moving in silence,
Brushing the nightshade
By bridges cyclopean,
By Trevenna, Treverbyn,
Lawharne and Largin,
By Glyn...

Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

To A Friend

Here in the fairway
Fetching--foul of keel,
Long-stray but fortunate--
Out of the fogs, the vast
Atlantic solitudes.
Shall, by the hawser-pin
Waiting the signal
Leave--go--anchor!
Scent the familiar,
The unforgettable
Fragrance of home;
So in a long breath
Bless us unknowing:
Bless them, the violets,
Bless me, the gardener,
Bless thee, the giver.

Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

The Traveller

Excerpt from "Gertrude Of Wyoming"


Apart there was a deep untrodden grot,
Where oft the reading hours sweet Gertrude wore;
Tradition had not named its lonely spot;
But here (methinks) might India's sons explore
Their father's dust, or lift, perchance of yore,
Their voice to the great Spirit: rocks sublime
To human art a sportive semblance bore,
And yellow lichens coloured all the clime,
Like moonlight battlements, and towers decayed by time.

But high in amphitheatre above,
Gay tinted woods their massy foliage threw:
Breathed but an air of heaven, and all the grove
As if instinct with living spirit grew,
Rolling its verdant gulfs of every hue;
And now suspended was the pleasing din,
Now from a murmur faint it swelled anew,
Like the...

Thomas Campbell

The Countess - To E. W.

I know not, Time and Space so intervene,
Whether, still waiting with a trust serene,
Thou bearest up thy fourscore years and ten,
Or, called at last, art now Heavens citizen;
But, here or there, a pleasant thought of thee,
Like an old friend, all day has been with me.
The shy, still boy, for whom thy kindly hand
Smoothed his hard pathway to the wonder-land
Of thought and fancy, in gray manhood yet
Keeps green the memory of his early debt.
To-day, when truth and falsehood speak their words
Through hot-lipped cannon and the teeth of swords,
Listening with quickened heart and ear intent
To each sharp clause of that stern argument,
I still can hear at times a softer note
Of the old pastoral music round me float,
While through the hot gleam of our civil strife

John Greenleaf Whittier

Exmoor Verses I. Vashti's Song

Over the rim of the Moor,
    And under the starry sky,
Two men came to my door
    And rested them thereby.

Beneath the bough and the star,
    In a whispering foreign tongue,
They talked of a land afar
    And the merry days so young!

Beneath the dawn and the bough
    I heard them arise and go:
And my heart it is aching now
    For the more it will never know.

Why did they two depart
    Before I could understand?
Where lies that land, O my heart?
    --O my heart, where lies that land?

Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

Memorials Of A Tour In Scotland, 1803 I. Departure From The Vale Of Grasmere, August 1803

The gentlest Shade that walked Elysian plains
Might sometimes covet dissoluble chains;
Even for the tenants of the zone that lies
Beyond the stars, celestial Paradise,
Methinks 'twould heighten joy, to overleap
At will the crystal battlements, and peep
Into some other region, though less fair,
To see how things are made and managed there.
Change for the worse might please, incursion bold
Into the tracts of darkness and of cold;
O'er Limbo lake with aery flight to steer,
And on the verge of Chaos hang in fear.
Such animation often do I find,
Power in my breast, wings growing in my mind,
Then, when some rock or hill is overpast,
Perhance without one look behind me cast.
Some barrier with which Nature, from the birth
Of things, has fenced this fairest spot o...

William Wordsworth