To the Whippoorwill

 

        Bird of the lone and joyless night,
           Whence is thy sad and solemn lay?
        Attendant on the pale moon's light,
           Why shun the gairish blaze of day?

        When darkness fills the dewy air,
           Nor sounds the song of happier bird,
        Alone, amid the silence there,
           Thy wild and plaintive note is heard.

        Thyself unseen, thy pensive moan
           Pour'd in no living comrade's ear,
        The forest's shaded depths alone
           Thy mournful melody can hear.

        Beside what still and secret spring,
           In what dark wood the livelong day,
        Sett'st thou with dusk and folded wing,
           To while the hours of light away.

        Sad minstrel! thou hast learn'd, like me,
           That life's deceitful gleam is vain;
        And well the lesson profits thee,
           Who will not trust its charm again.

        Thou, unbeguiled, thy plaint dost trill
           To listening night, when mirth is o'er:
        I, heedless of the warning, still
           Believe, to be deceived once more.

 

 

 

"To the Whippoorwill"
Elizabeth F. Ellet

Funeral Blues

 

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

 

 

"Funeral Blues"  
Wystan Hugh Auden

Remember

 

Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day.
You tell me of our future that you plann'd:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.

 

 

"Remember"  
Christina Rossetti

A Valentine

 

For her this rhyme is penned, whose luminous eyes,
  Brightly expressive as the twins of Leda,
Shall find her own sweet name, that nestling lies
  Upon the page, enwrapped from every reader.
Search narrowly the lines! — they hold a treasure
  Divine — a talisman — an amulet
That must be worn at heart. Search well the measure-
  The words — the syllables! Do not forget
The trivialest point, or you may lose your labor
  And yet there is in this no Gordian knot
Which one might not undo without a sabre,
  If one could merely comprehend the plot.
Enwritten upon the leaf where now are peering
  Eyes scintillating soul, there lie perdus
Three eloquent words oft uttered in the hearing
  Of poets, by poets — as the name is a poet's, too,
Its letters, although naturally lying
  Like the knight Pinto-Mendez Ferdinando —
Still form a synonym for Truth — Cease trying!
  You will not read the riddle, though you do the best you can do.

 

"A Valentine"  
Edgar Allan Poe  

 

Sometimes the true mark of a genius pass us by without we even noticing. Edgar Allan Poe addressed this poem for a very special person in his life. To find out who it was, you'll have to take the first letter of the first line and continue to the second letter of the second line and so on. To help us out, there is a highlighted version of this poem.

Autumn

 

I love the fitful gust that shakes
  The casement all the day,
And from the glossy elm tree takes
  The faded leaves away,
Twirling them by the window pane
With thousand others down the lane.

I love to see the shaking twig
  Dance till the shut of eve,
The sparrow on the cottage rig,
  Whose chirp would make believe
That Spring was just now flirting by
In Summer's lap with flowers to lie.

I love to see the cottage smoke
  Curl upwards through the trees,
The pigeons nestled round the cote
  On November days like these;
The cock upon the dunghill crowing,
The mill sails on the heath a-going.

The feather from the raven's breast
  Falls on the stubble lea,
The acorns near the old crow's nest
  Drop pattering down the tree;
The grunting pigs, that wait for all,
Scramble and hurry where they fall.

 

 

"Autumn"  
John Clare

Twilight

 

Dreamily over the roofs
      The cold spring rain is falling,
Out in the lonely tree
      A bird is calling, calling.

Slowly over the earth
      The wings of night are falling;
My heart like the bird in the tree
      Is calling, calling, calling.

 

 

"Twilight"  
Sara Teasdale