Dragongrrl's Poems
Ode
We are the music makers,
With wonderful deathless ditties,
We, in the ages lying
A breath of our inspiration,
They had no vision amazing
And therefore today is thrilling,
But we, with our dreaming and singing,
For we are afar with the dawning
Great hail! we cry to the corners
Mock on Mock on Voltaire Rousseau
And every sand becomes a Gem
The Atoms of Democritus
Souls of poets dead and gone,
I have heard that on a day
I've known rivers:
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I've known rivers:
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I wandered lonely as a cloud
Continuous as the stars that shine
The waves beside them danced, but they
For oft, when on my couch I lie
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And both that morning equally lay
I shall be telling this with a sigh
You may write me down in history
Does my sassiness upset you?
Just like moons and like suns,
Did you want to see me broken?
Does my haughtiness offend you?
You may shoot me with your words,
Does my sexiness upset you?
Out of the huts of history's shame
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy
And we are the dreamer of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.
We build up the world's great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire's glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure
Can trample an empire down.
In the buried past of earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth;
And o'erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world's worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.
Is the life of each generation.
A wondrous thing of our dreaming,
Unearthly, impossible seeming-
The soldier, the king, and the peasant
Are working together in one,
Till our dream shall become their present,
And their work in the world be done.
Of the goodly house they are raising.
They had no divine foreshowing
Of the land to which they are going:
But on one man's soul it hath broke,
A light that doth not depart
And his look, or a word he hath spoken,
Wrought flame in another man's heart.
With a past day's late fulfilling.
And the multitudes are enlisted
In the faith that their fathers resisted,
And, scorning the dream of tomorrow,
Are bringing to pass, as they may,
In the world, for it's joy or it's sorrow,
The dream that was scorned yesterday.
Ceaseless and sorrowless we!
The glory about us clinging
Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing;
O men! It must ever be
A little apart from ye.
And the suns that are not yet high,
And out of the infinite morning
Intrepid you hear us cry-
How, spite of your human scorning,
Once more God's future draws nigh,
And already goes forth the warning
That ye of the past must die.
From the dazzling unknown shore;
Bring us hither your sun and your summers,
And renew our world as of yore;
You shall teach us your song's new numbers,
And things that we dreamt not before;
Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers,
And a singer who sings no more.
William Blake
Mock on Mock on! tis all in vain!
You throw the sand against the wind
And the wind blows it back again
Reflected in the beams divine
Blown back they blind the mocking Eye
But still in Israels paths they shine
And Newtons Particles of ligh
Are sands upon the Red sea shore
Where Isreals tents do shine so bright
John Keats
What Elysium have ye known,
Happy field or mossy cavern,
Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern
Have ye tippled drink more fine
Than mine host's Canary wine?
Or are fruits of Paradise
Sweeter than those dainty pies
Of venison? O generous food!
Drest as though bold Robin Hood
Would, with his maid Marian,
Sup and bowse from horn and can.
Mind host's sign-board flew away,
Nobody knew whither, till
An astrologer's old quill
To a sheepskin gave the story
Said he saw you in your glory,
Underneath a new old sign
Sipping beverage divine,
And pledging with contented smack
The Mermaid in the Zodiac.
Souls of poets dead and gone,
What Elysium have ye known,
Happy field or mossy cavern,
Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?
Langston Hughes
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
Ancient, dusky rivers.
William Wordsworth
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils,
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretch'd in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:--
A Poet could not but be gay
In such a jocund company!
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought;
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills
And dances with the daffodils.
Robert Frost
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Maya Angelou
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own backyard.
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.