Classic and Contemporary Poetry
GRIEVE NOT, LADIES, by ANNA HEMPSTEAD BRANCH Poet's Biography First Line: Oh, grieve not, ladies, if at night Last Line: And in your loved one's arms, remember. Subject(s): Transience; Impermanence | ||||||||
OH, grieve not, ladies, if at night Ye wake to feel your beauty going. It was a web Of frail delight Inconstant as an April snowing. In other eyes, in other lands, In deep fair pools, new beauty lingers, But like spent water in your hands It runs from your reluctant fingers, Ye shall not keep the singing lark That owes to earlier skies its duty. Weep not to hear along the dark The sound of your departing beauty. The fine and anguished car of night is tuned to bear the smallest sorrow. Oh, wait until the morning light! It may not seem so gone to-morrow! But honey-pale and rosy-red! Brief lights that made a little shining! Beautiful looks about us shed They leave us to the old repining. Think not the watchful dim despair Has come to you the first, sweet-hearted! For oh, the gold in Helen's hair! And how she cried when that departed! Perhaps that one that took the most, The swiftest borrower, wildest spender, May count, as we would not, the cost -- And grow more true to us and tender. Happy are we if in his eyes We see no shadow of forgetting. Nay -- if our star sinks in those skies We shall not wholly see its setting. Then let us laugh as do the brooks That such immortal youth is ours, If memory keeps for them our looks As fresh as are the spring-time flowers. Oh, grieve not, Ladies, if at night Ye wake, to feel the cold December! Rather recall the early light And in your loved one's arms, remember. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...FROM THE SPANISH by JAMES WELDON JOHNSON CHAMBER MUSIC: 17 by JAMES JOYCE SOUTHERN GOTHIC by DONALD JUSTICE THE BEACH IN AUGUST by WELDON KEES THE MAN SPLITTING WOOD IN THE DAYBREAK by GALWAY KINNELL THE SEEKONK WOODS by GALWAY KINNELL SONGS FOR MY MOTHER: 2. HER HANDS by ANNA HEMPSTEAD BRANCH |
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