Poems by Arthur Henry Adams

All Poems Original Poems Translations

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Bond Street

Its glittering emptiness it brings —

This little lane of useless things.

Here peering envy arm in arm

With ennui takes her saunterings.

Here fretful boredom, to appease

The nagging of her long disease,

Comes day by day to dabble in

This foamy sea of fripperies.

by Arthur Henry Adams

Civilization

One moment mankind rides the crested wave,

A moment glorious, beyond recall;

And then the wave, with slow and massive fall,

Obliterates the beauty that it gave.

When discrowned king and manumitted slave

Are free and equal to be slaves of all,

Democracies in their wide freedom brawl,

And go down shouting to a common grave.

by Arthur Henry Adams

On The Sands

ALL the air was tranced and the sea was stilled,

And we stood and dreamed of a world to be.

When it seemed to me that our souls were thrilled

With a sudden sympathy.

My life's long riddle at last I read,

And the spirit-face I had sought I knew;

All the Past's far years to this hour had led

On the sands alone with you!

by Arthur Henry Adams

Song

TO a woman's wistful heart

In a startled wave of feeling,

Swift and sudden,

Sweeps love's flood in,

Joy with fear in rapture reeling;

Scathe and sorrow, fret and smart,

In one flush of gladness healing;

Life beclouded,

by Arthur Henry Adams

China 1899

She lies, a grave disdain all her defence,

Too imperturbable for scorn. She hears

Only the murmur of the flowing years

That thunder slowly on her shores immense

And ebb away in moaning impotence.

Giants enduring, she and Time are peers—

Her dream-hazed eyes knowing no hopes, no tears,

Her glance a langour-lidded insolence.

by Arthur Henry Adams

The Weakling

I AM a weakling. God, who made

The still, strong man, made also me.

The God who could the tiger plan,

In his lithe splendour unafraid—

A thing of flame and poetry—

That Puissance made of me—a Man!

The One who reared His vast design—

by Arthur Henry Adams

A Pair Of Lovers In The Street

A PAIR of lovers in the street!

I dare not mock: with reverence meet

My unforgetting heart I cheat.

Ah, God, spare me—so soon again

At the barred door to beat in vain,

And find their dalliance such fierce pain!

by Arthur Henry Adams

Written In Australia

THE WIDE sun stares without a cloud:

Whipped by his glances truculent

The earth lies quivering and cowed.

My heart is hot with discontent:

I hate this haggard continent.

But over the loping leagues of sea

A lone land calls to her children free:

by Arthur Henry Adams

Fleet Street

BENEATH this narrow jostling street,

Unruffled by the noise of feet,

Like a slow organ-note I hear

The pulses of the great world beat.

Unseen beneath the city’s show

Through this aorta ever flow

The currents of the universe—

by Arthur Henry Adams

The Australian

ONCE more this Autumn-earth is ripe,

Parturient of another type.

While with the Past old nations merge

His foot is on the Future’s verge.

They watch him, as they huddle, pent,

Striding a spacious continent,

by Arthur Henry Adams

Lovers

I thought, because we had been friends so long,

That I knew all your dear lips dared intend

Before they dawned to speech. Our thoughts would blend,

I dreamed, like memories that faintly throng.

Your voice dwelt in me like an olden song.

Petal, I thought, from petal I could rend

The blossom of your soul, and at the end

Find still the same sweet fragrance. I was wrong.

by Arthur Henry Adams

The Wonderful Aussie Waler

When Allenby's Army smashed the Turk

Who was the bloke who did all the work

The Aussie knows and he'll tell you straight

That most of the job was done by his mate

The wonderful Aussie Waler

It was umpty-nine in the shade each day

And the wells were spoiled in the Turkish way

But with nothing to eat and plenty to do

by Arthur Henry Adams