Poems by Arthur Henry Adams

All Poems Original Poems Translations

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BayswaterW

About me leagues of houses lie,

Above me, grim and straight and high,

They climb; the terraces lean up

Like long grey reefs against the sky.

Packed tier on tier the people dwell;

Each narrow, hollow wall is full;

And in that hive of honeycomb,

Remote and high, I have one cell.

by Arthur Henry Adams

King Street

A morn, a sallow lamp-lit morn,

A dawn that never breaks to day!

Old, old the faces, and forlorn;

The hearts look out, so seared, so grey!

It is as if some upturned stone

Had flung to light a vermin rout —

For things misfeatured, souls unknown,

Stagger in blind amaze about.

by Arthur Henry Adams

Love And Life

AS some faint wisp of fragrance, floating wide —

A pennant-perfume on the evening air —

From a walled garden, flower-filled and fair,

To drape a sudden beauty long denied

Upon life's highway desolate and dried —

So come you to me, as I, unaware,

Bend my strict eyes upon my pathway bare;

by Arthur Henry Adams

A Song Of Failure

HERE is my hand to you, brother,

You of the ruck who have failed

I, too, am only another

Fighter who faltered and quailed.

Now with my courage for token

Here to grim Fate I give tithe;

I, too, am beaten and broken,

Lying, the swath of the scythe!

by Arthur Henry Adams

Antagonists

WHAT though the neutral sea sever us twain?

In the still night your soul in mine I take;

Your eyes, hilarious with passion, wake,

And love's delirium is mine again,

When all your body's warmth swirled in my brain —

Your face uplifted like a pallid lake

Where in my eager lips their thirst could slake,

With deep-sighed, langourous kisses, keener than pain.

by Arthur Henry Adams

Afterwards

NOW that our pathways sever here,

And mine slopes down across the night,

Whence I shall see you burning clear

A beacon on the mountain-height —

Now that our pathways sever here,

I have no kiss, I have no tear.

Your eyes my lonely world have lit

With sunset peace that lingers yet,

by Arthur Henry Adams

Blossom

A LONE rose in a garden burned — a quivering flame,

But yesterday blindly from out the bud it came;

And now an envious wind with itching fingers leant

And touched its lingering beauty, and the petals went

Upon the twilight tossing swift,

Like little dusky boats adrift.

Then in the birth and doom of that brief rose I saw

The long unrolling of creation's one vast law.

by Arthur Henry Adams

And Yet — :

THEY drew him from the darkened room,

Where, swooning in a peace profound,

Beneath a heavy fragrance drowned

Her grey form glimmered in the gloom.

Death smoothed from her each sordid trace

Of Life; at last he read the scroll;

For all the meaning of her soul

Flowered upon her perfect face.

by Arthur Henry Adams

A Question

AND so in the death-darkened chamber they met,

The woman that once he had loved and the one he loved yet —

The wife who had warped his desire and the woman he could not forget.

They stood by the bier where between them he slept,

And the love he had lost in his wife to her swimming eyes leapt;

But the woman his life had belonged to — his paramour — spoke not

nor wept.

It was only a story of sated desire —

by Arthur Henry Adams

Bereft

FOR nine drear nights my darling has been dead;

And ah, dear God! I cannot dream of her!

Now I shall see her always lying white —

A frozen flower beneath a snow of flowers,

Drowned in a sea of fragrance. I shall hear

In every silence of the coming years

Only the muffled horror from the room

Where I had left my little child asleep —

by Arthur Henry Adams

A Portrait

HER glance is equable, serene;

She looks at life with level brow;

She strides through circumstance — a queen!

To compromise she cannot bow —

Even to love she will not lean!

Not hers the head that, like a flower,

Trembles upon a swaying stem;

Her neck is firm-curved as a tower,

by Arthur Henry Adams

Grey Eyes

SHE glanced across the path to me,

Grey eyes!

Her looks were kisses plain to see.

I gave her glances back to her —

Glad eyes!

She saw the lifting of despair.

From memory a face looked out,

Dim eyes!

by Arthur Henry Adams