Music poems
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The Sphynx
© Ralph Waldo Emerson
Thorough a thousand voices
Spoke the universal dame,
"Who telleth one of my meanings,
Is master of all I am."
The Sphinx
© Ralph Waldo Emerson
Through a thousand voices
Spoke the universal dame
"Who telleth one of my meanings
Is master of all I am."
Bacchus
© Ralph Waldo Emerson
Bring me wine, but wine which never grew
In the belly of the grape,
Or grew on vine whose tap-roots, reaching through
Under the Andes to the Cape,
Suffer no savor of the earth to scape.
Merlin
© Ralph Waldo Emerson
I
Thy trivial harp will never please
Or fill my craving ear;
Its chords should ring as blows the breeze,
The Problem
© Ralph Waldo Emerson
And on my heart monastic aisles
Fall like sweet strains or pensive smiles;
Yet not for all his faith can see,
Would I that cowled churchman be.
Why should the vest on him allure,
Which I could not on me endure?
The Bell
© Ralph Waldo Emerson
I love thy music, mellow bell,
I love thine iron chime,
To life or death, to heaven or hell,
Which calls the sons of Time.
Ode To Beauty
© Ralph Waldo Emerson
Who gave thee, O Beauty!
The keys of this breast,
Too credulous lover
Of blest and unblest?
Two Rivers
© Ralph Waldo Emerson
I see the inundation sweet,
I hear the spending of the steam
Through years, through men, through Nature fleet,
Through love and thought, through power and dream.
Fate
© Ralph Waldo Emerson
That you are fair or wise is vain,
Or strong, or rich, or generous;
You must have also the untaught strain
That sheds beauty on the rose.
Eternity
© James Lee Jobe
for C. G. Macdonald, 1956-2006
Charlie, sunrise is a three-legged mongrel dog,going deaf, already blind in one eye,answering to the unlikely name, 'Lucky.'
The sky, at gray-blue dawn, is a football field painted by smiling artists. Each artist has 3 arms, 3 hands, 3 legs.One leg drags behind, leaving a trail, leaving a mark.
The future resembles a cloudy dream where the ghosts of all your lifetry to tell you something, but what?
Moon In Virgo
© James Lee Jobe
You are not beaten. The simple music rises up,
children's voices in the air, sound floating out
From The Long Sad Party
© Mark Strand
Someone was saying
something about shadows covering the field, about
how things pass, how one sleeps towards morning
and the morning goes.
In Defence of the Bush
© Andrew Barton Paterson
So you're back from up the country, Mister Lawson, where you went,
And you're cursing all the business in a bitter discontent;
Well, we grieve to disappoint you, and it makes us sad to hear
That it wasn't cool and shady -- and there wasn't whips of beer,
Mulligan's Mare
© Andrew Barton Paterson
Oh, Mulligan's bar was the deuce of a place
To drink, and to fight, and to gamble and race;
The height of choice spirits from near and from far
Were all concentrated on Mulligan's bar.
The Old Australian Ways
© Andrew Barton Paterson
The London lights are far abeam
Behind a bank of cloud,
Along the shore the gaslights gleam,
The gale is piping loud;
Driver Smith
© Andrew Barton Paterson
"Wherever the rifle bullets flash and the Maxims raise a din,
It's here you'll find the Medical men a-raking the wounded in --
A-raking 'em in like human flies -- and a driver smart like me
Will find some scope for his extra skill in the ranks of the A.M.C."
Jock
© Andrew Barton Paterson
There's a soldier that's been doing of his share
In the fighting up and down and round about.
He's continually marching here and there,
And he's fighting, morning in and morning out.
Black Swans
© Andrew Barton Paterson
As I lie at rest on a patch of clover
In the Western Park when the day is done.
I watch as the wild black swans fly over
With their phalanx turned to the sinking sun;
Uncle Bill
© Andrew Barton Paterson
Enough! I now must end my song,
My needless anguish, why prolong?
From what I've said, you'll own, I'm sure,
That Uncle Bill was pretty "pure",
So, rowdies all, your glasses fill,
And -- drink it standing -- "Uncle Bill"."
Old Pardon, the Son of Reprieve
© Andrew Barton Paterson
You never heard tell of the story?
Well, now, I can hardly believe!
Never heard of the honour and glory
Of Pardon, the son of Reprieve?
