Here, in her elbow chair, she sits
A soul alert, alive,
A poor old body shrunk and bent-
The queen-bee of the hive.
But hives of bees and hives of men
Obey their several laws;
No fiercely-loving filial throng
This mother-head adores.
This bringer of world-wealth, whereof
None may compute the worth,
Is possibly of no account
To anyone on earth.
Her cap and spectacles, that mean
Dim eyes and scanty hairs,
The humble symbols of her state-
The only crown she wears.
Lacking a kingdom and a court,
A relic of the past,
Almost a cumberer of the ground-
That is our queen at last.
But still not wholly without place,
Nor quite bereft of power;
A useful stopgap-a resource
In many a troubled hour.
She darns the stockings, keeps the house,
The nurseless infant tends,
While the young matrons and the men
Pursue their various ends-
Too keen-set on their great affairs,
Or little plays and pranks,
The things and people of their world,
To give her thought or thanks-
The children on whom all her thought
And time and love were spent
Through half a century of years!
Yet is she well content.
The schooling of those fiery years,
It has not been for nought;
A large philosophy of life
Has self-less service taught.
The outlook from the heights attained
By climbings sore and slow
Discovers worlds of wisdom, hid
From clearest eyes below.
So calmly, in her elbow chair,
Forgotten and alone,
She knits and dreams, and sometimes sighs
But never makes a moan.
Still dwelling with her brood unseen-
Ghosts of a bygone day-
The precious daughter in her grave,
The dear son gone astray-
And others, to whom once she stood
As only light and law,
The near and living, and yet lost,
That need her love no more.
Watching their joyous setting forth
To mingle with their kind,
With scarce a pang, with ne’er a grudge,
At being left behind.
“Let them be young, as I was young,
And happy while they may” . . . .
A dog that waits the night in peace
Since it has had its day.
A few random poems:
- Patience, Hard Thing! The Hard Thing But To Pray poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- In the Nower poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- Umbrella by Mike Yuan
- The Street Sounds to the Soldiers’ Tread poem – A. E. Housman
- Николай Языков – Девятое мая
- Composed After A Journey Across The Hambleton Hills, Yorkshire by William Wordsworth
- The Flower-Fed Buffaloes by Vachel Lindsay
- Wild Soul by Michael Yuan
- The Gardener XIV: I Was Walking by the Road by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Net by Sara Teasdale
- Lover’s Gifts XLIII: Dying, You Have Left Behind by Rabindranath Tagore
- Sidelined by Satish Verma
- Epitaph On Mr. Chester Of Chicheley by William Cowper
- Robert Burns: There’ll Never Be Peace Till Jamie Comes Hame:
- Effrontery by Satish Verma
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
- Here’s to the Mice! by Vachel Lindsay
- On the Road to Nowhere by Vachel Lindsay
- Heart of God by Vachel Lindsay
- On the Garden Wall by Vachel Lindsay
- On the Building of Springfield by Vachel Lindsay
- On Reading Omar Khayyam by Vachel Lindsay
- Niagara by Vachel Lindsay
- My Lady in Her White Silk Shawl by Vachel Lindsay
- Michaelangelo by Vachel Lindsay
- Mark Twain and Joan of Arc by Vachel Lindsay
- Love and Law by Vachel Lindsay
- Look You, I’ll Go Pray by Vachel Lindsay
- Lincoln by Vachel Lindsay
- King Arthur’s Men Have Come Again by Vachel Lindsay
- Incense by Vachel Lindsay
- In Praise of Songs that Die by Vachel Lindsay
- In Memory of a Child by Vachel Lindsay
- I Went Down into the Desert by Vachel Lindsay
- I Heard Immanuel Singing by Vachel Lindsay
- How Samson Bore Away the Gates of Gaza by Vachel Lindsay
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
Ada Cambridge (1844 – 1926), also known as Ada Cross, was an English-born Australian author and poetess. She wrote more than 25 works of fiction, three volumes of poetry and two autobiographical works.