Cinquain Poems
November Night
by Adelaide Crapsey
Listen . . .
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp’d, break from the trees
And fall.
To Helen
by Edgar Allan Poe
Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore,
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
The weary, wayworn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.
On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece
......
The Guarded Wound
by Adelaide Crapsey
If it
Were lighter touch
Than petal of flower resting
On grass, oh still too heavy it were,
Too heavy!
The World
by George Herbert
Love built a stately house, where Fortune came,
And spinning fancies, she was heard to say
That her fine cobwebs did support the frame,
Whereas they were supported by the same;
But Wisdom quickly swept them all away.
The Pleasure came, who, liking not the fashion,
Began to make balconies, terraces,
Till she had weakened all by alteration;
But reverend laws, and many a proclomation
......
Amaze
by Adelaide Crapsey
I know
Not these my hands
And yet I think there was
A woman like me once had hands
Like these.
To Helen
by Edgar Allan Poe
Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore,
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
The weary, wayworn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.
On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece
......
The World
by George Herbert
Love built a stately house, where Fortune came,
And spinning fancies, she was heard to say
That her fine cobwebs did support the frame,
Whereas they were supported by the same;
But Wisdom quickly swept them all away.
The Pleasure came, who, liking not the fashion,
Began to make balconies, terraces,
Till she had weakened all by alteration;
But reverend laws, and many a proclomation
......
November Night
by Adelaide Crapsey
Listen . . .
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp’d, break from the trees
And fall.
Amaze
by Adelaide Crapsey
I know
Not these my hands
And yet I think there was
A woman like me once had hands
Like these.
Triad
by Adelaide Crapsey
These be
three silent things:
The falling snow . . . the hour
Before the dawn . . . the mouth of one
Just dead.
