Amy Lowell

Lowell Pages1 2 3 4

Sonnets

Leisure

Leisure, thou goddess of a bygone age,
  When hours were long and days sufficed to hold
  Wide-eyed delights and pleasures uncontrolled
By shortening moments, when no gaunt presage
Of undone duties, modern heritage,
  Haunted our happy minds; must thou withhold
  Thy presence from this over-busy world,
And bearing silence with thee disengage
  Our twined fortunes? Deeps of unhewn woods
  Alone can cherish thee, alone possess
Thy quiet, teeming vigor. This our crime:
  Not to have worshipped, marred by alien moods
  That sole condition of all loveliness,
The dreaming lapse of slow, unmeasured time.

On Carpaccio's Picture: The Dream of St. Ursula

Swept, clean, and still, across the polished floor
  From some unshuttered casement, hid from sight,
  The level sunshine slants, its greater light
Quenching the little lamp which pallid, poor,
Flickering, unreplenished, at the door
  Has striven against darkness the long night.
  Dawn fills the room, and penetrating, bright,
The silent sunbeams through the window pour.
  And she lies sleeping, ignorant of Fate,
  Enmeshed in listless dreams, her soul not yet
Ripened to bear the purport of this day.
  The morning breeze scarce stirs the coverlet,
  A shadow falls across the sunlight; wait!
A lark is singing as he flies away.

The Matrix

Goaded and harassed in the factory
  That tears our life up into bits of days
  Ticked off upon a clock which never stays,
Shredding our portion of Eternity,
We break away at last, and steal the key
  Which hides a world empty of hours; ways
  Of space unroll, and Heaven overlays
The leafy, sun-lit earth of Fantasy.
  Beyond the ilex shadow glares the sun,
  Scorching against the blue flame of the sky.
Brown lily-pads lie heavy and supine
  Within a granite basin, under one
  The bronze-gold glimmer of a carp; and I
Reach out my hand and pluck a nectarine.

Monadnock in Early Spring

Cloud-topped and splendid, dominating all
  The little lesser hills which compass thee,
  Thou standest, bright with April's buoyancy,
Yet holding Winter in some shaded wall
Of stern, steep rock; and startled by the call
  Of Spring, thy trees flush with expectancy
  And cast a cloud of crimson, silently,
Above thy snowy crevices where fall
  Pale shrivelled oak leaves, while the snow beneath
  Melts at their phantom touch. Another year
Is quick with import. Such each year has been.
  Unmoved thou watchest all, and all bequeath
  Some jewel to thy diadem of power,
Thou pledge of greater majesty unseen.

The Little Garden

A little garden on a bleak hillside
  Where deep the heavy, dazzling mountain snow
  Lies far into the spring. The sun's pale glow
Is scarcely able to melt patches wide
About the single rose bush. All denied
  Of nature's tender ministries. But no, --
  For wonder-working faith has made it blow
With flowers many hued and starry-eyed.
  Here sleeps the sun long, idle summer hours;
Here butterflies and bees fare far to rove
  Amid the crumpled leaves of poppy flowers;
Here four o'clocks, to the passionate night above
  Fling whiffs of perfume, like pale incense showers.
A little garden, loved with a great love!

To an Early Daffodil

Thou yellow trumpeter of laggard Spring!
  Thou herald of rich Summer's myriad flowers!
  The climbing sun with new recovered powers
Does warm thee into being, through the ring
Of rich, brown earth he woos thee, makes thee fling
  Thy green shoots up, inheriting the dowers
  Of bending sky and sudden, sweeping showers,
Till ripe and blossoming thou art a thing
  To make all nature glad, thou art so gay;
To fill the lonely with a joy untold;
  Nodding at every gust of wind to-day,
To-morrow jewelled with raindrops. Always bold
  To stand erect, full in the dazzling play
Of April's sun, for thou hast caught his gold.

Listening

'T is you that are the music, not your song.
  The song is but a door which, opening wide,
  Lets forth the pent-up melody inside,
Your spirit's harmony, which clear and strong
Sings but of you. Throughout your whole life long
  Your songs, your thoughts, your doings, each divide
  This perfect beauty; waves within a tide,
Or single notes amid a glorious throng.
  The song of earth has many different chords;
Ocean has many moods and many tones
  Yet always ocean. In the damp Spring woods
The painted trillium smiles, while crisp pine cones
  Autumn alone can ripen. So is this
  One music with a thousand cadences.

The Lamp of Life

Always we are following a light,
  Always the light recedes; with groping hands
  We stretch toward this glory, while the lands
We journey through are hidden from our sight
Dim and mysterious, folded deep in night,
  We care not, all our utmost need demands
  Is but the light, the light! So still it stands
Surely our own if we exert our might.
Fool! Never can'st thou grasp this fleeting gleam,
  Its glowing flame would die if it were caught,
Its value is that it doth always seem
  But just a little farther on. Distraught,
  But lighted ever onward, we are brought
Upon our way unknowing, in a dream.

Hero-Worship

A face seen passing in a crowded street,
  A voice heard singing music, large and free;
  And from that moment life is changed, and we
Become of more heroic temper, meet
To freely ask and give, a man complete
  Radiant because of faith, we dare to be
  What Nature meant us. Brave idolatry
Which can conceive a hero! No deceit,
  No knowledge taught by unrelenting years,
  Can quench this fierce, untamable desire.
We know that what we long for once achieved
  Will cease to satisfy. Be still our fears;
  If what we worship fail us, still the fire
Burns on, and it is much to have believed.

In Darkness

Must all of worth be travailled for, and those
  Life's brightest stars rise from a troubled sea?
  Must years go by in sad uncertainty
Leaving us doubting whose the conquering blows,
Are we or Fate the victors? Time which shows
  All inner meanings will reveal, but we
  Shall never know the upshot. Ours to be
Wasted with longing, shattered in the throes,
  The agonies of splendid dreams, which day
  Dims from our vision, but each night brings back;
We strive to hold their grandeur, and essay
  To be the thing we dream. Sudden we lack
The flash of insight, life grows drear and gray,
  And hour follows hour, nerveless, slack.

Before Dawn

Life! Austere arbiter of each man's fate,
  By whom he learns that Nature's steadfast laws
  Are as decrees immutable; O pause
Your even forward march! Not yet too late
Teach me the needed lesson, when to wait
  Inactive as a ship when no wind draws
  To stretch the loosened cordage. One implores
Thy clemency, whose wilfulness innate
  Has gone uncurbed and roughshod while the years
  Have lengthened into decades; now distressed
He knows no rule by which to move or stay,
  And teased with restlessness and desperate fears
He dares not watch in silence thy wise way
  Bringing about results none could have guessed.

The Poet

What instinct forces man to journey on,
  Urged by a longing blind but dominant!
  Nothing he sees can hold him, nothing daunt
His never failing eagerness. The sun
Setting in splendour every night has won
  His vassalage; those towers flamboyant
  Of airy cloudland palaces now haunt
His daylight wanderings. Forever done
With simple joys and quiet happiness
  He guards the vision of the sunset sky;
Though faint with weariness he must possess
  Some fragment of the sunset's majesty;
He spurns life's human friendships to profess
  Life's loneliness of dreaming ecstasy.

At Night

The wind is singing through the trees to-night,
  A deep-voiced song of rushing cadences
  And crashing intervals. No summer breeze
Is this, though hot July is at its height,
Gone is her gentler music; with delight
  She listens to this booming like the seas,
  These elemental, loud necessities
Which call to her to answer their swift might.
  Above the tossing trees shines down a star,
  Quietly bright; this wild, tumultuous joy
Quickens nor dims its splendour. And my mind,
  O Star! is filled with your white light, from far,
  So suffer me this one night to enjoy
The freedom of the onward sweeping wind.

The Fruit Garden Path

The path runs straight between the flowering rows,
  A moonlit path, hemmed in by beds of bloom,
  Where phlox and marigolds dispute for room
With tall, red dahlias and the briar rose.
'T is reckless prodigality which throws
  Into the night these wafts of rich perfume
  Which sweep across the garden like a plume.
Over the trees a single bright star glows.
  Dear garden of my childhood, here my years
Have run away like little grains of sand;
  The moments of my life, its hopes and fears
Have all found utterance here, where now I stand;
  My eyes ache with the weight of unshed tears,
You are my home, do you not understand?

Mirage

How is it that, being gone, you fill my days,
  And all the long nights are made glad by thee?
  No loneliness is this, nor misery,
But great content that these should be the ways
Whereby the Fancy, dreaming as she strays,
  Makes bright and present what she would would be.
  And who shall say if the reality
Is not with dreams so pregnant. For delays
  And hindrances may bar the wished-for end;
A thousand misconceptions may prevent
  Our souls from coming near enough to blend;
Let me but think we have the same intent,
  That each one needs to call the other, "friend!"
It may be vain illusion. I'm content.

To a Friend

I ask but one thing of you, only one,
  That always you will be my dream of you;
  That never shall I wake to find untrue
All this I have believed and rested on,
Forever vanished, like a vision gone
  Out into the night. Alas, how few
  There are who strike in us a chord we knew
Existed, but so seldom heard its tone
  We tremble at the half-forgotten sound.
The world is full of rude awakenings
  And heaven-born castles shattered to the ground,
Yet still our human longing vainly clings
  To a belief in beauty through all wrongs.
  O stay your hand, and leave my heart its songs!

A Fixed Idea

What torture lurks within a single thought
When grown too constant, and however kind,
However welcome still, the weary mind
Aches with its presence. Dull remembrance taught
Remembers on unceasingly; unsought
The old delight is with us but to find
That all recurring joy is pain refined,
Become a habit, and we struggle, caught.
You lie upon my heart as on a nest,
Folded in peace, for you can never know
How crushed I am with having you at rest
Heavy upon my life. I love you so
You bind my freedom from its rightful quest.
In mercy lift your drooping wings and go.

Dreams

I do not care to talk to you although
  Your speech evokes a thousand sympathies,
  And all my being's silent harmonies
Wake trembling into music. When you go
It is as if some sudden, dreadful blow
  Had severed all the strings with savage ease.
  No, do not talk; but let us rather seize
This intimate gift of silence which we know.
  Others may guess your thoughts from what you say,
As storms are guessed from clouds where darkness broods.
  To me the very essence of the day
Reveals its inner purpose and its moods;
  As poplars feel the rain and then straightway
Reverse their leaves and shimmer through the woods.

Frankincense and Myrrh

My heart is tuned to sorrow, and the strings
  Vibrate most readily to minor chords,
  Searching and sad; my mind is stuffed with words
Which voice the passion and the ache of things:
Illusions beating with their baffled wings
  Against the walls of circumstance, and hoards
  Of torn desires, broken joys; records
Of all a bruised life's maimed imaginings.
  Now you are come! You tremble like a star
Poised where, behind earth's rim, the sun has set.
  Your voice has sung across my heart, but numb
  And mute, I have no tones to answer. Far
Within I kneel before you, speechless yet,
  And life ablaze with beauty, I am dumb.

From One Who Stays

How empty seems the town now you are gone!
  A wilderness of sad streets, where gaunt walls
  Hide nothing to desire; sunshine falls
Eery, distorted, as it long had shone
On white, dead faces tombed in halls of stone.
  The whir of motors, stricken through with calls
  Of playing boys, floats up at intervals;
But all these noises blur to one long moan.
  What quest is worth pursuing? And how strange
That other men still go accustomed ways!
  I hate their interest in the things they do.
  A spectre-horde repeating without change
An old routine. Alone I know the days
  Are still-born, and the world stopped, lacking you.

Crepuscule du Matin

All night I wrestled with a memory
  Which knocked insurgent at the gates of thought.
  The crumbled wreck of years behind has wrought
Its disillusion; now I only cry
For peace, for power to forget the lie
  Which hope too long has whispered. So I sought
  The sleep which would not come, and night was fraught
With old emotions weeping silently.
I heard your voice again, and knew the things
  Which you had promised proved an empty vaunt.
I felt your clinging hands while night's broad wings
Cherished our love in darkness. From the lawn
  A sudden, quivering birdnote, like a taunt.
My arms held nothing but the empty dawn.

Aftermath

I learnt to write to you in happier days,
  And every letter was a piece I chipped
  From off my heart, a fragment newly clipped
From the mosaic of life; its blues and grays,
Its throbbing reds, I gave to earn your praise.
  To make a pavement for your feet I stripped
  My soul for you to walk upon, and slipped
Beneath your steps to soften all your ways.
  But now my letters are like blossoms pale
We strew upon a grave with hopeless tears.
  I ask no recompense, I shall not fail
Although you do not heed; the long, sad years
  Still pass, and still I scatter flowers frail,
And whisper words of love which no one hears.

The End

Throughout the echoing chambers of my brain
  I hear your words in mournful cadence toll
  Like some slow passing-bell which warns the soul
Of sundering darkness. Unrelenting, fain
To batter down resistance, fall again
  Stroke after stroke, insistent diastole,
  The bitter blows of truth, until the whole
Is hammered into fact made strangely plain.
  Where shall I look for comfort? Not to you.
  Our worlds are drawn apart, our spirit's suns
Divided, and the light of mine burnt dim.
  Now in the haunted twilight I must do
  Your will. I grasp the cup which over-runs,
And with my trembling lips I touch the rim.

The Starling

  "`I can't get out', said the starling."
  Sterne's `Sentimental Journey'.

Forever the impenetrable wall
  Of self confines my poor rebellious soul,
  I never see the towering white clouds roll
Before a sturdy wind, save through the small
Barred window of my jail. I live a thrall
  With all my outer life a clipped, square hole,
  Rectangular; a fraction of a scroll
Unwound and winding like a worsted ball.
  My thoughts are grown uneager and depressed
  Through being always mine, my fancy's wings
Are moulted and the feathers blown away.
  I weary for desires never guessed,
  For alien passions, strange imaginings,
To be some other person for a day.

Market Day

White, glittering sunlight fills the market square,
  Spotted and sprigged with shadows. Double rows
  Of bartering booths spread out their tempting shows
Of globed and golden fruit, the morning air
Smells sweet with ripeness, on the pavement there
  A wicker basket gapes and overflows
  Spilling out cool, blue plums. The market glows,
And flaunts, and clatters in its busy care.
  A stately minster at the northern side
Lifts its twin spires to the distant sky,
  Pinnacled, carved and buttressed; through the wide
Arched doorway peals an organ, suddenly --
  Crashing, triumphant in its pregnant tide,
Quenching the square in vibrant harmony.

Epitaph in a Church-Yard in Charleston, South Carolina

  GEORGE AUGUSTUS CLOUGH
  A NATIVE OF LIVERPOOL,
  DIED SUDDENLY OF "STRANGER'S FEVER"
  NOV'R 5th 1843
  AGED 22

He died of "Stranger's Fever" when his youth
  Had scarcely melted into manhood, so
  The chiselled legend runs; a brother's woe
Laid bare for epitaph. The savage ruth
Of a sunny, bright, but alien land, uncouth
  With cruel caressing dealt a mortal blow,
  And by this summer sea where flowers grow
In tropic splendor, witness to the truth
Of ineradicable race he lies.
  The law of duty urged that he should roam,
Should sail from fog and chilly airs to skies
  Clear with deceitful welcome. He had come
With proud resolve, but still his lonely eyes
  Ached with fatigue at never seeing home.

Francis II, King of Naples

Written after reading Trevelyan's "Garibaldi and the making of Italy"

Poor foolish monarch, vacillating, vain,
  Decaying victim of a race of kings,
  Swift Destiny shook out her purple wings
And caught him in their shadow; not again
Could furtive plotting smear another stain
  Across his tarnished honour. Smoulderings
  Of sacrificial fires burst their rings
And blotted out in smoke his lost domain.
Bereft of courtiers, only with his queen,
  From empty palace down to empty quay.
No challenge screamed from hostile carabine.
  A single vessel waited, shadowy;
  All night she ploughed her solitary way
Beneath the stars, and through a tranquil sea.

To John Keats

Great master! Boyish, sympathetic man!
  Whose orbed and ripened genius lightly hung
  From life's slim, twisted tendril and there swung
In crimson-sphered completeness; guardian
Of crystal portals through whose openings fan
  The spiced winds which blew when earth was young,
  Scattering wreaths of stars, as Jove once flung
A golden shower from heights cerulean.
  Crumbled before thy majesty we bow.
  Forget thy empurpled state, thy panoply
Of greatness, and be merciful and near;
  A youth who trudged the highroad we tread now
  Singing the miles behind him; so may we
Faint throbbings of thy music overhear.