James Benjamin Kenyon

  • O dawn upon me slowly, Paradise!
      Come not too suddenly,
    Lest my just-opened, unaccustomed eyes
      Smitten with blindness be.

    To those who from Time’s penury and woe
      Rise to thy heights afar,
    Down which the floods of glory fall and flow,...

  • Yet, o my friend—pale conjurer, I call
    Thee friend—bring, bring the dead not back again,
    Since for the tears, the darkness and the pain
    Of unrequited friendship—for the gall
    That hatred mingles with fond love—for all
    Life’s endless turmoil, bitterness and...

  • The bearded grass waves in the summer breeze;
    The sunlight sleeps along the distant hills;
    Faint is the music of the murmuring rills,
    And faint the drowsy piping of the bees.
    The languid leaves scarce stir upon the trees,
    And scarce is heard the clangor of...

  • The bedouins OF THE SKIES
    YON clouds that roam the deserts of the air,
      On wind-swift barbs, o’er many an azure plain,
    Scarce pause to lift to Allah one small prayer,
      Ere Ishmael’s spirit drives them forth again.

    THE TWO SPIRITS
    I DREAMED two...

  • She roves through shadowy solitudes,
      Where scentless herbs and fragile flowers
    Pine in the gloom that ever broods
      Around her sylvan bowers.

    No winds amid the branches sigh,
      No football wakes the sodden ground;
    And the cold streams that...