Vrais Amants

(FOURTEENTH CENTURY)

    "Time mocks thy opening music with a close;
    What now he gives long since he gave away.
    Thou deemst thy sun hath risen, but ere it rose
    It was eclipsed, and dusk shall be thy day."

    Yet has the Dawn gone up: in loveliest light
    She walks high heaven beyond the shadow there:
    Whom I too veiled from all men's envious sight
    With inward eyes adore and silent prayer.

Henry John Newbolt

Sir Henry John Newbolt was an English poet and author, famous for his ballads such as 'Vitaï Lampada'. He graduated from Oxford and was called to the bar, but he is better remembered for his literary contributions than his legal career. Newbolt served as a government advisor on military and naval literature during World War I. He was knighted in 1915 for his services to literature. Newbolt's work often reflected themes of patriotism and duty.

Henry John Newbolt

Midway

Henry John Newbolt, Simple Poetry

The Final Mystery

Henry John Newbolt, Simple Poetry

Balade*

Henry John Newbolt, Simple Poetry

Waggon Hill

Henry John Newbolt, 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.

Amore Altiero

    Since thou and I have wandered from the highway
        And found with hearts reborn
    This swift and unimaginable byway
        Unto the hills of morn,
    Shall not our love disdain the unworthy uses
        Of the old time outworn?

    I'll not entreat thy half unwilling graces
        With humbly folded palms,
    Nor seek to shake thy proud defended places
        With noise of vague alarms,
    Nor ask against my fortune's grim pursuing
        The refuge of thy arms.

    Thou'lt not withhold for pleasure vain and cruel
        That which has long been mine,
    Nor overheap with briefly burning fuel
        A fire of flame divine,
    Nor yield the key for life's profaner voices
        To brawl within the shrine.

Henry John Newbolt

Balade*

I cannot tell, of twain beneath this bond,
Which one in grief the other goes beyond,---
Narcissus, who to end the pain he bore
Died of the love that could not help him more;
Or I, that pine because I cannot see
The lady who is queen and love to me.

Nay--for Narcissus, in the forest pond
Seeing his image, made entreaty fond,
"Beloved, comfort on my longing pour":
So for a while he soothed his passion sore;
So cannot I, for all too far is she---
The lady who is queen and love to me.

But since that I have Love's true colours donned,
I in his service will not now despond,
For in extremes Love yet can all restore:
So till her beauty walks the world no more
All day remembered in my hope shall be
The lady who is queen and love to me.

Henry John Newbolt

Sir Hugh the Palmer

    I

    He kneeled among a waste of sands
        Before the Mother-Maid,
    But on the far green forest-lands
        His steadfast eyes were stayed,
    And like a knight of stone his hands
        He straightened while he prayed.

    "Lady, beyond all women fair,
        Beyond all saints benign,
    Whose living heart through life I bear
        In mystery divine,
    Hear thou and grant me this my prayer,
        Or grant no prayer of mine.

    "The fever of my spirit's pain
        Heal thou with heavenly scorn;
    The dust that but of dust is fain
        Leave thou in dust forlorn;
    Yea! bury love to rise again
        Meet for eternal morn.

    "So by thy grace my inward eyes
        Thy beauty still ...

Henry John Newbolt

Premiers Amours.

Old Loves and old dreams,--
"Requiescant in pace."
How strange now it seems,--
"Old" Loves and "old" dreams!
Yet we once wrote you reams
Maude, Alice, and Gracie!
Old Loves and old dreams,--
"Requiescant in pace."


When I called at the "Hollies" to-day,
In the room with the cedar-wood presses,
Aunt Deb. was just folding away
What she calls her "memorial dresses."

She'd the frock that she wore at fifteen,--
Short-waisted, of course--my abhorrence;
She'd "the loveliest"--something in "een"
That she wears in her portrait by Lawrence;

She'd the "jelick" she used--"as a Greek," (!)
She'd the habit she got her bad fall in;
She had e'en the blue moiré antique
That she opened Squire Grasshopper's ball in:--

New and old ...

Henry Austin Dobson

André Le Chapelain.

(Clerk of Love, 1170.)

His Plaint To Venus Of The Coming Years.

"Plus ne suis ce que j'ay esté
Et ne le sçaurois jamais estre;
Mon beau printemps et mon esté
Ont fait le saut par la fenestre."


Queen Venus, round whose feet,
To tend thy sacred fire,
With service bitter-sweet
Nor youths nor maidens tire;--
Goddess, whose bounties be
Large as the un-oared sea;--

Mother, whose eldest born
First stirred his stammering tongue,
In the world's youngest morn,
When the first daisies sprung:--
Whose last, when Time shall die,
In the same grave shall lie:--

Hear thou one suppliant more!
Must I, thy Bard, grow old,
Bent, with the temples frore,
Not jocund be nor bold,
To tune for folk in May
Ballad and ...

Henry Austin Dobson

At the Opera

The curtain rose, the play began,
The limelight on the gay garbs shone;
Yet carelessly I gazed upon
The painted players, maid and man,
As one with idle eyes who sees
The marble figures on a frieze.

Long lark-notes clear the first act close,
So the soprano: then a hush,
The tenor, tender as a thrush;
Then loud and high the chorus rose,
Till, with a sudden rush and strong,
It ended in a storm of song.

The curtain fell, the music died,
The lights grew bright, revealing there
The flash of jewelled fingers fair,
And wreaths of pearls on brows of pride;
Then, with a quick-flushed cheek, I turned,
And into mine her dark eyes burned.

Such eyes but once a man may see,
And, seeing once, his fancy dies
To thought of any other eyes:

Victor James Daley