Short Poetry Collection 143 by Various — Free Audiobook

1 01 - Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven 0:52

2 02 - Sonnet VIII - And you as well must die, beloved dust 1:38

3 03 - April 1:21

4 04 - A Ballade of an Anti-Puritan 1:34

5 05 - Because I could not stop for Death 1:13

6 06 - Dirge 1:21

7 07 - An Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog 1:35

8 08 - Fidessa, Sonnet 37 1:03

9 09 - Fitchburgh 2:06

10 10 - Green Grow the Rashes 2:22

11 11 - High-tide 1:02

12 12 - Houses of Dreams 1:04

13 13 - I'm Nobody! Who are you? 0:37

14 14 - The Last Charge 2:11

15 15 - Less than the Dust 0:47

16 16 - The Library 3:06

The Library by Carolyn A. Mason. From the Ode read at the dedication of the Wallace Library and Art Building, Fitchburg.

Ah, what a treasury of wisdom lies in a good book! And who would not be wise? What founts of sweetness and strength well up from its deep heart! Who would not quaff the cup? The bees must know where honey-dews abound. Oh, for a human instinct as profound. The birds must fathom where the southland lies. Oh, for an intuition half as wise. For what are intuitions but the soul's blind reachings after its supremest goals? Divining helps whereby it may essay a stronger sweep along its upward way. Seeking in glad yet reverential mood all gentle friendships and the wise and the good of every nation's age. And look around. Shall not such helps such friendships here be found? O sages, poets, who shall fill this place with lavish store of wisdom, sweetness, grace?

Here we may pay our homage and grow wise and glad beneath your helpful ministries. Here we may offer the allegiance meet to blind old Homer, sit at Milton's feet, and learn of both as fails the outward sight, to trim anew the spirit's inner light. May sing with Chaucer, walk in fairyland with sweet-lipped Spenser, taking Dante's hand, explore the dark abyss where, denied all hope of exit, hapless souls abide. May summon Shakespeare, in himself a host, King Lear and sweet Ophelia, Hamlet's ghost. Sad Desdemona, Egypt's peerless queen, coming and going on the shifting scene. Continue with Cowper, walk a-field with Burns, and listen to him as he sings by turns of luckless Tam O'Shanter and his mare.

Sweet Highland Mary and the Briggs a'air. Or, coming down to later times, rehearse with Tennyson his grand immortal verse, talk with dogmatic scholarly Carlyle, uncouth but grimly honest all the while, abide with our own Emerson, or go a-wooing after nature with Thoreau. Though for that matter all the poets woo the gentle nymph, and our immortal few are Whittier and Longfellow and Holmes, Bryant and Lowell. Whosoever roams with either sees fair nature with new eyes, and life with larger possibilities.

17 17 - To A Little Invisible Being Who Is Expected Soon to Become Visible 2:48

18 18 - The Lovers 1:39

19 19 - An Old Master 4:34

An Old Master by C. J. Dennis. Read for Libbybox.org by Algy Pug. We were cartin' lathes and palins from the slopes of Mount St. Leonard, with our axles near the road-bed and the mud as stiff as glue. And our bullocks weren't precisely what you'd call conditioned nicely, and meself and messmate Mitchell had our doubts of gettin' through. It had rained a tidy skyfall in the week before we started, but our tucker bag depended on the ceiling of our load, so we punched em on by inches, lifting em across the pinches till we struck the final section of the worst part of the road. We were just congratulating one another on the going when we blundered in a pothole right within the sight of goal, where the bush track joins the metal.

Mitchell, as he saw her settle, justified his reputation at the peril of his soul. We were in a glue-pot certain, red and stiff, and most tenacious, over knaves and over axles, wagons sitting on the road. Struth, says I, they'll never lift her, take a shot from hell to shift her. Nothing left us but unyoke em, and sling off the blessed load. Now, beside our scene of trouble, stood a little one-roomed humpy, home of an enfeebled party by the name of Dad Magee. Daddy was, I pause to mention, livin' on an old-age pension, since he gave up bullock punchin' at the age of eighty-three. Startled by our exclamations, Daddy hobbled from the shanty. Gazing where the stranded wagon looked like some half-founded ship.

When the state of things he spotted, "'Look,' he says, "'Like you was potted,' and he toddles up to Mitchell. "'Here,' says he. "'Gimme that whip.' Well, I've heard of transformations. Heard of fellas sort of changin' in the face of sudden danger or some great emergency. Heard the like in song and story, and in bush traditions hoary, but I nearly dropped me bundle as I looked at Dad McGee. While we gazed, he seemed to toughen. As his fingers gripped the handle, his old form grew straight and supple, and a light leapt in his eye, and he stepped around the wagon, not with footsteps weak and lagging, but with firm, determined bearing, as he flung the whip on high. Now he swung the leaders over while the whiplash snarled and volleyed, and they answered like one bullock, straining to each crack and clout.

But he kept his cursing under till old Brindle made a blunder. Then I thought all hell had hit me, and the master opened out. And the language! Oh, the language! Seemed to me I must be dreaming. While the wondrous words and phrases only genius could produce, roared and rumbled, fast and faster, in the throat of that old master, oaths and curses tipped with lightning, crackling flames of fierce abuse. Then we knew the man before us was a master of our calling, one of those great lords of language, gone forever from out back. Heroes of an ancient order, Men who punched across the border, vanished giants of the sixties, puncher princes of the track. Now we heard the timbers straining, heard the wagons loud complaining, and the master cried triumphant as he swung em into line, as they put their shoulders to it, lifted her, and pulled her through it.

That's the way we used to do it in the days of sixty-nine. Near the foot of Mount St. Leonard lives an old enfeebled party who retired from Bullock Punchion at the age of eighty-three. If you seek him, folk will mention, merely that he draws the pension, but to us he looms a master prince of punches, Dad Magee.

20 20 - Our Limitations 1:31

21 21 - The Pantheist's Song of Immortality 2:31

22 22 - Questions and Answers 1:53

23 23 - The Sadness of the Moon 1:05

24 24 - The Sledge at The Gate 1:58

25 25 - Song Of A Second April 1:36

26 26 - Sonnet 97 1:13

27 27 - To the Unattainable 1:04

28 28 - When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d 16:35

When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd by Walt Whitman. Read for LibriVox.org by Winston Tharp.

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed, and the great star early drooped in the western sky in the night, I mourned, and yet shall mourn with ever returning spring. O ever-returning spring, Trinity sure to me you bring, Lilac blooming perennial, and drooping star in the west, And thought of him I love. O powerful western fallen star! O shades of night! O moody, tearful night! O great star disappeared! O the black murk that hides the star! O cruel hands that hold me powerless, O helpless soul of me, O harsh surrounding cloud that will not free my soul. In the dooryard, fronting an old farmhouse, Near the whitewashed palings stands the lilac bush, Tall growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich green.

With many a pointed blossom, rising, delicate, with a perfume strong, I love, with every leaf a miracle. And from this bush in the dooryard, with delicate-colored blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green, a sprig with its flower I break. In the swamp, in secluded recesses, a shy and hidden bird is warbling a song. Solitary, the thrush, the hermit, withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements, sings by himself a song. Song of the bleeding throat. Death's outlet song of life. For well, dear brother, I know, if thou wast not gifted to sing, thou wouldst surely die. Over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities, amid lanes and through old woods, where lately the violets peeped from the ground, spotting the gray debris, amid the grass and the fields each side of the lanes, passing the endless grass, passing the yellow-speared wheat, every grain from its shroud in the dark brown fields uprising, passing the apple-tury blows of white and pink in the orchards, carrying a corpse.

To where it shall rest in the grave, night and day journeys a coffin. Coffin that passes through lanes and streets, through day and night, with a great Cloud darkening the land, with the pomp of the inlooped flags, with the cities draped in black, with the show of the states themselves as of crepe-veiled women standing, with processions long and winding, and the flambeaus of the night, with the countless torches lit, with the silent sea of faces and the unbeared heads, with the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, and the somber faces. With dirges through the night, with a thousand voices rising strong and solemn, with all the mournful voices of the dirges poured around the coffin, the dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs, where amid these you journey, with the tolling, tolling, bells perpetual clang, here, coffin that slowly passes, I give you my sprig of lilac.

Nor for you, for one alone, Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring. For fresh is the morning, thus would I carol a song for you, O sane and sacred death. All over bouquets of roses, O death, I cover you over with roses and early lilies. But mostly, and now, the lilac that blooms the first, copious, I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes. With loaded arms I come, pouring for you, for you, and the coffins all of you, O Death! O western orb sailing the heaven, now I know what you must have meant as a month since we walked, as we walked up and down in the dark blue so mystic, as we walked in silence the transparent shadowy night, as I saw you had something to tell, as you bent to me night after night, as you drooped from the sky low down as if to my side, while the other stars all looked on.

As we wandered together the solemn night, for something I know not what kept me from sleep. As the night advanced, and I saw on the rim of the west ere you went, how full you were of woe. As I stood on the rising ground in the breeze in the cold, transparent night. As I watched where you passed, and was lost in the netherward black of the night. As my soul, in its trouble, dissatisfied, sank. As where you, sad orb, concluded, dropped in the night, and was gone. Sing on there in the swamp. O singer bashful and tender, I hear your notes, I hear your call. I hear, I come presently, I understand you. But a moment I linger, for the lustrous star has detained me. The star, my departing comrade, holds and detains me.

O, how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I loved? And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that has gone? And what shall my perfume be for the grave of him I love? Sea winds blown from east and west, blown from the eastern sea and blown from the western sea, until there on the prairies, meeting these and with these in the breath of my chant, I perfume the grave of him I love. Oh, what shall I hang on the chamber walls, and what shall the pictures be that I hang on the walls to adorn the burial house of him I love? Pictures of growing spring, and farms, and homes, with the fourth month eve at sundown, and the gray smoke lucid and bright, with floods of the yellow gold of the gorgeous, indolent, sinking sun burning, expanding the air, with the fresh, sweet herbage underfoot, and the pale green leaves of the trees prolific.

In the distance, the flowing glaze, the breast of the river, with a wind dapple here and there, with ranging hills on the banks, with many a line against the sky and shadows, and the city at hand, with dwellings so dense and stacks of chimneys, and all the scenes of life and the workshops and the workmen homeward returning. Lo, body and soul, this land! Mighty Manhattan with spires and the sparkling and hurrying tides, and the ships, the varied and ample land, the south and the north and the light, Ohio's shores and flashing Missouri, and ever the far-spreading prairies covered with grass and corn. Lo, the most excellent sun, so calm and haughty! The violet and purple morn with just felt breezes, the gentle soft-born measureless light, the miracle spreading, bathing all, the fulfilled noon, the coming eve delicious, the welcome night and the stars over my city's shining all, enveloping man and land.

Sing on. Sing on, you gray-brown bird. Sing from the swamps, the recesses. Pour your chant from the bushes, limitless out of the dust, out of the cedars and pines. Sing on, dearest brother. Warble your reedy song, loud human song, with voice of uttermost woe. O liquid and free and tender, O wild and loose to my soul, O wondrous singer, you only I hear. Yet the star holds me, but will soon depart. Yet the lilac with mastering odor holds me. Now while I sit in the day and look forth, in the close of the day with its light and the fields of spring, and the farmer preparing his crops, in the large unconscious scenery of my land with its lakes and forests, In the heavenly aerial beauty, after the perturbed winds and the storms, under the arching heavens of the afternoon, swift passing, and the voices of children and women, the many moving sea-tides, and I saw the ships, how they sailed, and the summer approaching with richness, and the fields all busy with labor, and the infinite separate houses, how they all went on, each with its meals and minutiae of daily usages.

And the streets, how their throbbings throbbed, and the cities pent, lo, then and there, falling upon them all, and among them all, enveloping me with the rest, appeared the cloud, appeared the long black trail, and I knew death, its thought, and the sacred knowledge of death. Then, with the knowledge of death as walking one side of me, and the thought of death close walking the other side of me, and I in the middle, as with companions, and as holding the hands of companions, I fled forth to the hiding, receiving night that talks not, down to the shores of the water, the path by the swamp in the dimness, to the solemn, shadowy cedars and ghostly pines, so still And the singer, so shy to the rest, received me.

The gray-brown bird, I know, received us comrades three, and he sang what seemed the carol of death, and a verse for him I love. From deep secluded recesses, from the fragrant cedars and the ghostly pine, so still came the carol of the bird. And the charm of the carol rapped me, as I held, as if by their hands, my comrades in the night, and the voice of my spirit tallied the song of the bird. Death Carol. Come, lovely and soothing Death, undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving in the day, in the night, to all, to each. Sooner or later, delicate death. Praised be the fathomless universe for life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious, and for love, sweet love. But praise, praise, praise for the sure and winding arms of cool and folding death.

Dark mother, always gliding near with soft feet, Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome? Then I chant it for thee. I glorify thee above all. I bring thee a song, that when thou must indeed come, come unfalteringly. Approach! Strong! Deliver us! When it is so, when thou hast taken them, I joyously sing the dead, Lost in the loving floating ocean of thee, Laved in the flood of thy bliss, O death. From me to thee, glad serenades. Dances for thee I propose, saluting thee, adornments and feastings for thee, and in the sights of the open landscape and the high-spread sky are fitting, and life and the fields and the huge and thoughtful night. The night in silence under many a star, the ocean shore, and the husky whispering wave whose voice I know, and the soul turning to thee, O vast and well-veiled death, and the body gratefully nestling close to thee.

Over the treetops I float thee a song. Over the rising and sinking waves, over the myriad fields and the prairies wide, over the dense-packed cities all, and the teeming wharfs and ways, I float this carol with joy, with joy to thee, O Death. To the tally of my soul, loud and strong kept up the gray-brown bird, with pure, deliberate notes spreading, filling the night. Loud in the pines and cedars dim, clear in the freshness moist and the swamp perfume, and I with my comrades there in the night. Why, my sight that was bound in my eyes unclosed as to long panoramas of visions. I saw ascant the armies, and I saw as in noiseless dreams hundreds of battle-flags, borne through the smoke of the battles and pierced with missiles I saw them.

And carried hither and yon through the smoke, and torn and bloody, and at last but a few shreds left on the staffs, and all in silence, and the staffs all splintered and broken. I saw battle corpses, myriads of them, and the white skeletons of young men, I saw them. I saw the debris and debris of all the dead soldiers of the war, but I saw they were not as was thought. They themselves were fully at rest. They suffered not. The living remained and suffered. The mother suffered, and the wife and the child, and the musing comrade suffered, and the armies that remained suffered. Passing the visions, passing the night, passing unloosing the hold of my comrade's hands, passing the song of the hermit bird and the tallying song of my soul, victorious song.

Death's outlet song, yet varying, ever-altering song, as low and wailing, yet clear the notes rising and falling, flooding the night, sadly sinking and fainting, as warning and warning, and yet again bursting with joy, covering the earth and filling the spread of the heaven, as that powerful psalm in the night I heard from recesses. Passing, I leave thee. Lilac with heart-shaped leaves, I leave thee there in the dooryard, Blooming, returning with spring. I cease from my song for thee, From my gaze on thee in the west, Fronting the west, communing with thee, O comrade lustrous, With silver face in the night. Yet each I keep, And all retrievments out of the night. The song, The wondrous chant of the gray-brown bird, and the tallying chant, the echo aroused in my soul.

With the lustrous and drooping star, with the countenance full of woe, with the lilac tall and its blossoms of mastering odor, with the holders holding my hand, nearing the call of the bird, comrades mine, and I in the midst, and their memory ever I keep. For the dead I loved so well, for the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands, and this for his dear sake. Lilac and star and bird, twined with the chant of my soul there in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim.

29 29 - Written in Early Spring 1:32

queue_music Chapters 29