Robert Bridges (1844 – 1930)
English poet.
Why hast thou nothing in thy face?
Thou idol of the human race,
Thou tyrant of the human heart,
The flower of lovely youth that art.
Nature hav no music; nor would ther be for thee
any better melody in the April woods at dawn
than what an old stone-deaf labourer, lying awake
o'night in his comfortless attic, might perchance
be aware of, when the rats run amok in his thatch?
On such a night, when Air has loosed
Its guardian grasp on blood and brain,
Old terrors then of god or ghost
Creep from their caves to life again.
Beneath the crisp and wintry carpet hid
A million buds but stay their blossoming
And trustful birds have built their nests amid
The shuddering boughs, and only wait to sing
Till one soft shower from the south shall bid
And hither tempt the pilgrim steps of Spring.
I love all beauteous things,
I seek and adore them.
But I can tell — let truth be told —
That love will change in growing old;
Though day by day is nought to see,
So delicate his motions be.
As night is withdrawn
From these sweet-springing meads and bursting boughs of May,
Dream, while the innumerable choir of day
Welcome the dawn.
So sweet love seemed that April morn,
When first we kissed beside the thorn,
So strangely sweet, it was not strange
We thought that love could never change.
Simple and brave, his faith awoke
Ploughmen to struggle with their fate;
Armies won battles when he spoke,
And out of Chaos sprang the state.
Poetry's magic lies in the imagery which satifies even without interpretation..it is accepted as easily as it was created.
Beauty, the eternal Spouse of the Wisdom of God
and Angel of his Presence thru' all creation.
Angels’ song, comforting
as the comfort of Christ
When he spake tenderly
to his sorrowful flock.
And Reason kens he herits in
A haunted house. Tenants unknown
Assert their squalid lease of sin
With earlier title than his own.
They gathered up the crystal manna to freeze
Their tongues with tasting, their hands with snowballing;
Or rioted in a drift, plunging up to the knees.
Awake! the land is scattered with light, and see,
Uncanopied sleep is flying from field and tree.
I live on hope and that I think do all
Who come into this world.
Scatter the clouds that hide
The face of heaven, and show
Where sweet peace doth abide,
Where Truth and Beauty grow.
Awake, my heart, to be loved, awake, awake!
The darkness silvers away, the morn doth break,
It leaps in the sky.