Poem Hunter: Poems - Poets - Poetry

Ye flowery banks o' bonnie Doon,
How can ye blume sae fair?
How can ye chant, ye little birds,
And I sae fu' o' care?

Thou'll break my heart, thou bonie bird,
That sings upon the bough;
Thou minds me o' the happy days,
When my false love was true.

Thou'll break my heart, thou bonnie bird,
That sings beside thy mate;
For sae I sat, and sae I sang,
And wist na o' my fate.

Aft hae I roved by bonnie Doon
To see the wood-bine twine,
And ilka bird sang o' its luve,
And sae did I o' mine.

Wi' lightsome heart I pulled a rose
Frae aff its thorny tree;
And my false luver stole my rose
But left the thorn wi' me.
...

Wild eyes—and faces ashen grey
That strain through lofty prison bars
To see the everlasting stars,
Then turn—to slumber as we may:

Even as we are, so are they,
And here is peace for all who know
The stars still follow where we go,
When heaven and earth have passed away.


...

A world overheated,
brightly burning and boiling in its bone marrow.
Take the taiga and the tundra,
take what is left untreated.

Still, at least, people talk
musing on the way of talking.

Metallic brass or a nod in agreement?
Trying to carry meaning honestly,

...

STAY, O sweet and do not rise!
The light that shines comes from thine eyes;
The day breaks not: it is my heart,
   Because that you and I must part.
   Stay! or else my joys will die
   And perish in their infancy.
...

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

...

I felt the roughness of the grope,
But the revulsive cringe that should follow deserted me.
Rather, it held me in awe
that protection so much felt like hatred.

When my eyes drifted to the other end,
His eyes told not of a different story
and his abductor held him by his head.
Perhaps, to stop his daring love ideas from flowing
For he once muttered to me in secret

...

I hid my heart in a nest of roses,
Out of the sun's way, hidden apart;
In a softer bed than the soft white snow's is,
Under the roses I hid my heart.
Why would it sleep not? why should it start,
When never a leaf of the rose-tree stirred?
What made sleep flutter his wings and part?
Only the song of a secret bird.

Lie still, I said, for the wind's wing closes,
And mild leaves muffle the keen sun's dart;
Lie still, for the wind on the warm seas dozes,
And the wind is unquieter yet than thou art.
Does a thought in thee still as a thorn's wound smart?
Does the fang still fret thee of hope deferred?
What bids the lips of thy sleep dispart?
Only the song of a secret bird.

The green land's name that a charm encloses,
It never was writ in the traveller's chart,
And sweet on its trees as the fruit that grows is,
It never was sold in the merchant's mart.
The swallows of dreams through its dim fields dart,
And sleep's are the tunes in its tree-tops heard;
No hound's note wakens the wildwood hart,
Only the song of a secret bird.


<i>ENVOI</i>


...

In the pond in the park
all things are doubled:
Long buildings hang and
wriggle gently. Chimneys
are bent legs bouncing
on clouds below. A flag
wags like a fishhook
down there in the sky.

The arched stone bridge

...

Cry my beloved Zimbawe,
Cry my beloved Jewel of Africa!
They have slaughtered the rights of
Your children, cry my beloved!

Women are now seen as baby Making machines with no hope
To be in power.
Cry my beloved!

Young girls have been denied the Chance to be in school as they have

...