An Exile’s Farewell
by Adam Lindsay Gordon
The ocean heaves around us still
With long and measured swell,
The autumn gales our canvas fill,
Our ship rides smooth and well.
The broad Atlantic’s bed of foam
Still breaks against our prow;
I shed no tears at quitting home,
Nor will I shed them now!
Against the bulwarks on the poop
I lean, and watch the sun
Behind the red horizon stoop —
His race is nearly run.
Those waves will never quench his light,
O’er which they seem to close,
To-morrow he will rise as bright
As he this morning rose.
How brightly gleams the orb of day
Across the trackless sea!
How lightly dance the waves that play
Like dolphins in our lee!
The restless waters seem to say,
In smothered tones to me,
How many thousand miles away
My native land must be!
Speak, Ocean! is my Home the same
Now all is new to me? —
The tropic sky’s resplendent flame,
The vast expanse of sea?
Does all around her, yet unchanged,
The well-known aspect wear?
Oh! can the leagues that I have ranged
Have made no difference there?
How vivid Recollection’s hand
Recalls the scene once more!
I see the same tall poplars stand
Beside the garden door;
I see the bird-cage hanging still;
And where my sister set
The flowers in the window-sill —
Can they be living yet?
Let woman’s nature cherish grief,
I rarely heave a sigh
Before emotion takes relief
In listless apathy;
While from my pipe the vapours curl
Towards the evening sky,
And ‘neath my feet the billows whirl
In dull monotony!
The sky still wears the crimson streak
Of Sol’s departing ray,
Some briny drops are on my cheek,
‘Tis but the salt sea spray!
Then let our barque the ocean roam,
Our keel the billows plough;
I shed no tears at quitting home,
Nor will I shed them now!
A few random poems:
- Where’s the Poet? poem – John Keats poems
- Николай Карамзин – Филлиде
- A Meeting poem – Alfred Austin
- Robert Burns: Halloween: The following poem will, by many readers, be well enough understood; but for the sake of those who are unacquainted with the manners and traditions of the country where the scene is cast, notes are added to give some account of the principal charms and spells of that night, so big with prophecy to the peasantry in the west of Scotland. The passion of prying into futurity makes a striking part of the history of human nature in its rude state, in all ages and nations; and it may be some entertainment to a philosophic mind, if any such honour the author with a perusal, to see the remains of it among the more unenlightened in our own.-R.B.
- The Old Lowe House Staten Island
- THE WAX PALACE by Satish Verma
- In Memoriam A. H. H.: 39. Old warder of these buried bones poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Love Sonnet XVII poem – Zora Bernice May Cross poems
- Николай Карамзин – Истина
- Tinker Jack And The Tidy Wives by Sylvia Plath
- Each small gleam was a voice, by Stephen Crane
- Wednesday by Marvin Bell
- Before you knew you owned it poem – Alice Walker
- Sleep Spaces by Robert Desnos
- A March in the Ranks, Hard-prest. by Walt Whitman
External links
Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus
Talking Writing Monster’s Page –
Batty Writing – the bat’s idle chatter, thoughts, ideas and observations, all original, all fresh
Poems in English
- For What As Easy by W H Auden
- Five Songs – II by W H Auden
- Fish in the Unruffled Lakes by W H Auden
- Eyes Look Into The Well by W H Auden
- Eyes Look Into The Well by W H Auden
- Edward Lear by W H Auden
- Doggerel by a Senior Citizen by W H Auden
- Deftly, Admiral, Cast Your Fly by W H Auden
- Two Songs for Hedli Anderson by W. H. Auden
- The Shield of Achilles by W. H. Auden
- The More Loving One by W. H. Auden
- The Fall of Rome by W. H. Auden
- September 1, 1939 by W. H. Auden
- On the Circuit by W. H. Auden
- In Memory of W. B. Yeats by W. H. Auden
- In Memory of Sigmund Freud by W. H. Auden
- If I could tell you by W. H. Auden
- For Friends Only by W. H. Auden
- Epitaph on a Tyrant by W. H. Auden
- Death’s Echo by W H Auden
More external links (open in a new tab):
Doska or the Board – write anything
Search engines:
Yandex – the best search engine for searches in Russian (and the best overall image search engine, in any language, anywhere)
Qwant – the best search engine for searches in French, German as well as Romance and Germanic languages.
Ecosia – a search engine that supposedly… plants trees
Duckduckgo – the real alternative and a search engine that actually works. Without much censorship or partisan politics.
Yahoo– yes, it’s still around, amazingly, miraculously, incredibly, but now it seems to be powered by Bing.
Parallel Translations of Poetry
The Poetry Repository – an online library of poems, poetry, verse and poetic works
Adam Lindsay Gordon (1833 – 1870) was an Australian or British-Australian poet, horseman, police officer and politician. He is considered to be one of the first national Australian poets.