Death

To the garden, the world, anew ascending,
Potent mates, daughters, sons, preluding,
The love, the life of their bodies, meaning and being,
Curious, here behold my resurrection, after slumber;
The revolving cycles, in their wide sweep, have brought me again,
Amorous, mature all beautiful to me all wondrous;
My limbs, and the quivering fire that ever plays through them, for reasons, most wondrous;
Existing, I peer and penetrate still,
Content with the present content with the past,
By my side, or back of me, Eve following,
Or in front, and I following her just the same.

Is this a life, to break thy sleep,
To rise as soon as day doth peep?
To tire thy patient ox or ass
By noon, and let thy good days pass,
Not knowing this, that Jove decrees
Some mirth, t' adulce man's miseries?
No; 'tis a life to have thine oil
Without extortion from thy soil;
Thy faithful fields to yield thee grain,
Although with some, yet little pain;
To have thy mind, and nuptial bed,
With fears and cares uncumbered
A pleasing wife, that by thy side
Lies softly panting like a bride;
This is to live, and to endear
Those minutes Time has lent us here.
Then, while fates suffer, live thou free,
As is that air that circles thee;
And crown thy temples too; and let
Thy servant, not thy own self, sweat,
To strut thy barns with sheaves of wheat.<...

Air - "Nancy's to the greenwood gane."


I.

    Farewell, thou stream that winding flows
        Around Eliza's dwelling!
    O mem'ry! spare the cruel throes
        Within my bosom swelling:
    Condemn'd to drag a hopeless chain,
        And yet in secret languish,
    To feel a fire in ev'ry vein,
        Nor dare disclose my anguish.

II.

    Love's veriest wretch, unseen, unknown,
        I fain my griefs would cover;
    The bursting sigh, th' unweeting groan,
        Betray the hapless lover.
    I know thou doom'st me to despair,
        Nor wilt, nor canst relieve me;
    But oh, Eliza, hear one prayer -
        For pity's sake forgive me!

III.

    The music of thy voice I heard,
...

Well! I'm determin'd; that's enough: -
Gee, Bayard! move your poor old bones,
I'll take to-morrow, smooth or rough,
To go and court the Widow Jones.

Our master talks of stable-room,
And younger horses on his grounds;
'Tis easy to foresee thy doom,
Bayard, thou'lt go to feed the hounds.

The first Determination.

But could I win the widow's hand,
I'd make a truce 'twixt death and thee;
For thou upon the best of land
Should'st feed, and live, and die with me.

And must the pole-axe lay thee low?
And will they pick thy poor old bones?
No - hang me if it shall be so, -
If I can win the Widow Jones.

Twirl went his stick; his curly pate
A bran-new hat uplifted bore;
And Abner, as he leapt the gate,
Had never look'd so g...

I know not why I yearn for thee again,
To sail once more upon thy fickle flood;
I'll hear thy waves wash under my death-bed,
Thy salt is lodged forever in my blood.

Yet I have seen thee lash the vessel's sides
In fury, with thy many tailed whip;
And I have seen thee, too, like Galilee,
When Jesus walked in peace to Simon's ship

And I have seen thy gentle breeze as soft
As summer's, when it makes the cornfields run;
And I have seen thy rude and lusty gale
Make ships show half their bellies to the sun.

Thou knowest the way to tame the wildest life,
Thou knowest the way to bend the great and proud:
I think of that Armada whose puffed sails,
Greedy and large, came swallowing every cloud.

But I have seen the sea-boy, young and drowned,
...

To mute and to material things
New life revolving summer brings;
The genial call dead Nature hears,
And in her glory reappears.
But oh, my Country’s wintry state
What second spring shall renovate?
What powerful call shall bid arise
    The buried warlike and the wise;

The mind that thought for Britain’s weal,
The hand that grasp’d the victor steel?
The vernal sun new life bestows
Even on the meanest flower that blows;
But vainly, vainly may he shine
Where glory weeps o’er Nelson’s shrine;
And vainly pierce the solemn gloom
That shrouds, O Pitt, thy hallow’d tomb!

Deep graved in every British heart,
O never let those names depart!
Say to your sons, Lo, here his grave,
Who victor died on Gadite wave!
To him, as to the burning levi...

Good morning sweetheart.
Good morning my Saint of a sweetheart.
It has been two year mother
since the boy has sailed
on his mythical journey.
Since he hid within his luggage
the green morning of his homeland
and her stars, and her streams,
and all of her red poppy.
Since he hid in his cloths
bunches of mint and thyme,
and a Damascene Lilac.



I am alone.
The smoke of my cigarette is bored,
and even my seat of me is bored
My sorrows are like flocking birds looking for a grain field in season.
I became acquainted with the women of Europe,
I became acquainted with their tired civilization.
I toured India, and I toured China,
I toured the entire oriental world,
and nowhere I found,
a Lady to comb my golden hair.
A Lady...

I.

Annisquam

Old days, old ways, old homes beside the sea;
Old gardens with old-fashioned flowers aflame,
Poppy, petunia, and many a name
Of many a flower of fragrant pedigree.
Old hills that glow with blue- and barberry,
And rocks and pines that stand on guard, the same,
Immutable, as when the Pilgrim came,
And here laid firm foundations of the Free.
The sunlight makes the dim dunes hills of snow,
And every vessel's sail a twinkling wing
Glancing the violet ocean far away:
The world is full of color and of glow;
A mighty canvas whereon God doth fling
The flawless picture of a perfect day.

II.

"The Highlands, " Annisquam

Here, from the heights, among the rocks and pines,
The sea and shore seem some tremendous page

Whoe'er thou art whose path in summer lies
Through yonder village, turn thee where the grove
Of branching oaks a rural palace old
Imbosoms. there dwells Albert, generous lord
Of all the harvest round. and onward thence
A low plain chapel fronts the morning light
Fast by a silent riv'let. Humbly walk,
O stranger, o'er the consecrated ground;
And on that verdant hilloc, which thou see'st
Beset with osiers, let thy pious hand
Sprinkle fresh water from the brook and strew
Sweet-smelling flowers. for there doth Edmund rest,
The learned shepherd; for each rural art
Fam'd, and for songs harmonious, and the woes
Of ill-requited love. The faithless pride
Of fair Matilda sank him to the grave
In manhood's prime. But soon did righteous heaven
With tears, with sharp ...

Long is it since they ceased to look on light,
To thrill with hope in our fond human way.
Why grudge them rest in their sweet ancient night,
            Ungrieved, if never gay,
            Eased from Life's sorry day?

Is it because at times when storms subside
Through which thou oarest Life's ill-fitted bark,
Dreams rise, from sounds of lapping of the tide,
            To veil the daylight stark,
            Its anguish and its cark?

What was their joy here? Absence of great pain?
Some music in lamentings of the wind?
The mystic whispers of the dripping rain?
            Sad yearnings toward their kind?
            Ruth for old loves that pined?

For these would'st thou revoke their flawless rest?
Restore hope unfulfilled which they knew here...

As the bright flowers start from their wintry tomb,
I've sprung from the depths of futurity's gloom;
With the glory of Hope on my unshadowed brow,
But a fear at my heart, earth welcomes me now.
I come and bear with me a measureless flow,
Of infinite joy and of infinite woe:
The banquet's light jest and the penitent prayer,
The sweet laugh of gladness, the wail of despair,
The warm words of welcome, and broken farewell,
The strains of rich music, the funeral knell,
The fair bridal wreath, and the robe for the dead,
O how will they meet in the path I shall tread!
O how will they mingle where'er I pass by,
As sunshine and storm in the rainbow on high!

Yet start not, nor shrink from the race I must run;
I've peace and repose for the heart-stricken one,
And s...

Just lost when I was saved!
Just felt the world go by!
Just girt me for the onset with eternity,
When breath blew back,
And on the other side
I heard recede the disappointed tide!

Therefore, as one returned, I feel,
Odd secrets of the line to tell!
Some sailor, skirting foreign shores,
Some pale reporter from the awful doors
Before the seal!

Next time, to stay!
Next time, the things to see
By ear unheard,
Unscrutinized by eye.

Next time, to tarry,
While the ages steal, --
Slow tramp the centuries,
And the cycles wheel.

There's the dragon banner, says Old King Cole,
And the tiger banner, he cries.
Pantagruel breaks into a laugh
As the monarch dries his eyes. - The Search

"The tiger banyer, that is what you call much
Bad men in China, Amelica. The dragon banyer.
That is storm, leprosy, no rice, what you call
Nature. See! Nature!" - King Joy

        *        *        *        *        *

Said Old King Cole I know the banner
Of dragon and tiger too,
But I would know the vagrant fellows
Who came to my castle with you.

        *        *        *        *        *

And I would know why they rise in the morning
And never take bread or scrip;
And why they hasten over the mountain
In a sorrowed fellowship.

        *        *        *...

I saw when I looked up, on either hand,
A pale high chalk-cliff, reared aloft in white;
A narrowing rent soon closed toward the land, -
Toward the sea, an open yawning bight.

The polished tide, with scarce a hint of blue,
Washed in the bight; above with angry moan
A raven, that was robbed, sat up in view,
Croaking and crying on a ledge alone.

"Stand on thy nest, spread out thy fateful wings,
With sullen hungry love bemoan thy brood,
For boys have wrung their necks, those imp-like things,
Whose beaks dripped crimson daily at their food.

"Cry, thou black prophetess! cry, and despair,
None love thee, none! Their father was thy foe,
Whose father in his youth did know thy lair,
And steal thy little demons long ago.

"Thou madest many childles...

Since man has been articulate,
Mechanical, improvidently wise,
(Servant of Fate),
He has not understood the little cries
And foreign conversations of the small
Delightful creatures that have followed him
Not far behind;
Has failed to hear the sympathetic call
Of Crockery and Cutlery, those kind
Reposeful Teraphim
Of his domestic happiness; the Stool
He sat on, or the Door he entered through:
He has not thanked them, overbearing fool!
What is he coming to?

But you should listen to the talk of these.
Honest they are, and patient they have kept,
Served him without his 'Thank you' or his 'Please'.
I often heard
The gentle Bed, a sigh between each word,
Murmuring, before I slept.
The Candle, as I blew it, cried aloud,
Then bowed,

I had been almost happy for an hour,
Lost to the world that knew me in the park
Among strange faces; while my little girl
Leaped with the squirrels, chirruped with the birds
And with the sunlight glowed.    She was so dear,
So beautiful, so sweet; and for the time
The rose of love, shorn of its thorn of shame,
Bloomed in my heart.    Then suddenly you passed.
I sat alone upon the public bench;
You, with your lawful husband, rode in state;
And when your eyes fell on me and my child,
They were not eyes, but daggers, poison tipped.

God! how good women slaughter with a look!
And, like cold steel, your glance cut through my heart,
Struck every petal from the rose of love
And left the ragged stalk alive with thorns.

My little one came running to my side<...

Or look'd I back unto the times hence flown
To praise those Muses and dislike our own--
Or did I walk those Pæan-gardens through,
To kick the flowers and scorn their odours too--
I might, and justly, be reputed here
One nicely mad or peevishly severe.
But by Apollo! as I worship wit,
Where I have cause to burn perfumes to it;
So, I confess, 'tis somewhat to do well
In our high art, although we can't excel
Like thee, or dare the buskins to unloose
Of thy brave, bold, and sweet Maronian muse.
But since I'm call'd, rare Denham, to be gone,
Take from thy Herrick this conclusion:
'Tis dignity in others, if they be
Crown'd poets, yet live princes under thee;
The while their wreaths and purple robes do shine
Less by their own gems than those beams of thine.

    I.    THE FLUKE

    For two years you went
    Through all the worst of it,
    Men fell around you, but you did not fall.
    On the Somme when the air was a sea
    Of contesting flashes and clouds of smoke,
    Your gunners fell fast but you got never a scratch.
    And once when you watched from a village tower
    (At Longueval, was it?) between our guns and theirs
    As men fought in the houses below,
    A shell from an English battery came
    And tore a hole in the tower below you,
    But you were not hurt and remained observing.

    And now,
    A casual shell has come
    And pierced your head,
    And the men who were with you, uninjured,
    Carried you back,
    And you died on the way.


    II.    THE ...