Identity

Indigo bulb of darkness
Punctured by needle lights
Through a fissure of brick canyon shutting out stars,
And a sliver of moon
Spigoting two high windows over the West river....

Boy, I met to-night,
Your eyes are two red-glowing arcs shifting with my vision....
They reflect as in a fading proof
The deadened eyes of a woman,
And your shed virginity,
Light as the withered pod of a sweet pea,
Moist and fragrant
Blows against my soul.
What are you to me, boy,
That I, who have passed so many lights,
Should carry your eyes
Like swinging lanterns?

    Memory as embankment,
    a mudslide at High Tide
    with shades up...
    my avocado green brethren
    pleasures the soil.

    Memory as enchantment
    a Belle at a Soiree,
    pureed, Gaston at a Dinner Party.

    Napanee suggests sympathy,
    a serendipity...
    as water winders its way
    to clay in a moonlight
    turn of the bottle,
    I shall find a way.
    that's ironclad.

Laugh, my Friends, and without blame
Lightly quit what lightly came:
Rich to-morrow as to-day
Spend as madly as you may.
I, with little land to stir,
Am the exacter labourer.
Ere the parting hour go by,
Quick, thy tablets, Memory!

But my Youth reminds me ‘Thou
Hast liv’d light as these live now:
As these are, thou too wert such:
Much hast had, hast squander’d much.’
Fortune’s now less frequent heir,
Ah! I husband what’s grown rare.
Ere the parting hour go by,
Quick, thy tablets, Memory!

Young, I said: ‘A face is gone
If too hotly mus’d upon:
And our best impressions are
Those that do themselves repair.’
Many a face I then let by,
Ah! is faded utterly.
Ere the parting hour go by,
Quick, thy tablets, Memory!

    Still must your hands withhold your loveliness?
        Is your soul jealous of your body still?
    The fair white limbs beneath the clouding dress
        Are such hard forms as you alone could fill
    With life and sweetness.    Such a harmony
        Is yours as music and the thought expressed
    By the musician: have no rivalry
        Between your soul and the shape in which it's drest.
    Kisses or words, both sensual, which shall be
        The burning symbol of the love we bear?
    My art is words, yours song, but still must we
        Be mute and songless, seeing how love is fair.
    Both our known arts being useless, we must turn
    To love himself and his old practice learn.

Lance, shield, and sword relinquished, at his side
A bead-roll, in his hand a clasped book,
Or staff more harmless than a shepherd's crook,
The war-worn Chieftain quits the world to hide
His thin autumnal locks where Monks abide
In cloistered privacy. But not to dwell
In soft repose he comes: within his cell,
Round the decaying trunk of human pride,
At morn, and eve, and midnight's silent hour,
Do penitential cogitations cling;
Like ivy, round some ancient elm, they twine
In grisly folds and strictures serpentine;
Yet, while they strangle, a fair growth they bring,
For recompense, their own perennial bower.

        Well, how has it been with you since we met
    That last strange time of a hundred times?
        When we met to swear that we could forget -
    I your caresses, and you my rhymes -
        The rhyme of my lays that rang like a bell,
        And the rhyme of my heart with yours, as well?

        How has it been since we drank that last kiss,
    That was bitter with lees of the wasted wine,
        When the tattered remains of a threadbare bliss,
    And the worn-out shreds of a joy divine,
        With a year's best dreams and hopes, were cast
        Into the rag-bag of the Past?

        Since Time, the rag-buyer, hurried away,
    With a chuckle of glee at a bargain made,
        Did you discover, like me, one day,
    That, hid in the fold...

        I plucked a fair flower that grew
In the shadow of summer's green trees -
                A rose petalled flower,
                Of all in the bower,
        Best beloved of the bee and the breeze
I plucked it, and kissed it, and called it my own -
        This beautiful, beautiful flower
That alone in the cool, tender shadow had grown,
        Fairest and first in the bower

        Then a murmur I heard at my feet -
        A pensive and sorrowful sound,
                And I stooped me to hear,
                While tear after tear
        Rained down from my eyes to the ground,
                As I, listening, heard
                This sorrowful word,
        So breathing of anguish profound: -

        "I have gathered the fairest...

Darkness surrounds us; seeking, we are lost
On Snowdon's wilds, amid Brigantian coves,
Or where the solitary shepherd roves
Along the plain of Sarum, by the ghost
Of Time and shadows of Tradition, crost;
And where the boatman of the Western Isles
Slackens his course, to mark those holy piles
Which yet survive on bleak Iona's coast.
Nor these, nor monuments of eldest name,
Nor Taliesin's unforgotten lays,
Nor characters of Greek or Roman fame,
To an unquestionable Source have led;
Enough, if eyes, that sought the fountainhead
In vain, upon the growing Rill may gaze.

I.

I heard the ancient forest talk,
(Its voice was like a wandering breeze):
It said, "Who is it comes to walk
Along my paths when, white as chalk,
The moon hangs o'er my sleeping trees?
What presence is it no one sees?"

II.

And then I heard a voice reply,
That seemed far off yet very near;
It sounded from the earth and sky,
And said, "A spirit walketh here,
Whom mortals know as Awe and Fear.
Terrible and beautiful am I."

III.

And then I heard the meadows say,
(Their voice was as the sound of streams,
Or rain that comes from far away):
"Who sits amid us here and dreams,
When sunlight on our blossoms gleams,
And keeps us company all day?"

IV.

And then I heard a voice intone,
A voice no...

Too oft we hide our Frailties' Blame
Beneath some simple-sounding Name!
So Folks, who in gilt Coaches ride,
Will call Display but Proper Pride;
So Spendthrifts, who their Acres lose,
Curse not their Folly but the Jews;
So Madam, when her Roses faint,
Resorts to ... anything but Paint.

An honest Uncle, who had plied
His Trade of Mercer in Cheapside,
Until his Name on 'Change was found
Good for some Thirty Thousand Pound,
Was burdened with an Heir inclined
To thoughts of quite a different Kind.
His Nephew dreamed of Naught but Verse
From Morn to Night, and, what was worse,
He quitted all at length to follow
That "sneaking, whey-faced God, APOLLO."
In plainer Words, he ran up Bills
At Child's, at Batson's and at Will's;
Discussed the Cla...

As I walked through the lamplit gardens,
On the thin white crust of snow,
So intensely was I thinking of my misfortune,
So clearly were my eyes fixed
On the face of this grief which has come to me,
That I did not notice the beautiful pale colouring
Of lamplight on the snow;
Nor the interlaced long blue shadows of trees;
And yet these things were there,
And the white lamps, and the orange lamps, and the lamps of lilac were there,
As I have seen them so often before;
As they will be so often again
Long after my grief is forgotten.
And still, though I know this, and say this, it cannot console me.

Thou wast that all to me, love,
For which my soul did pine,
A green isle in the sea, love,
A fountain and a shrine,
All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,
And all the flowers were mine.

Ah, dream too bright to last!
Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise
But to be overcast!
A voice from out the Future cries,
"On! on!", but o'er the Past
(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies
Mute, motionless, aghast!

For, alas! alas! with me
The light of Life is o'er!
"No more, no more, no more",
(Such language holds the solemn sea
To the sands upon the shore)
Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree,
Or the stricken eagle soar!

And all my days are trances,
And all my nightly dreams
Are where thy dark eye glances,
And where thy foo...

It is noontime, Senlin says. The sky is brilliant
Above a green and dreaming hill.
I lay my trowel down. The pool is cloudless,
The grass, the wall, the peach-tree, all are still.
It appears to me that I am one with these:
A hill, upon whose back are a wall and trees.
It is noontime: all seems still
Upon this green and flowering hill.
Yet suddenly out of nowhere in the sky,
A cloud comes whirling, and flings
A lazily coiled vortex of shade on the hill.
It crosses the hill, and a bird in the peach-tree sings.
Amazing! Is there a change?
The hill seems somehow strange.
It is noontime. And in the tree
The leaves are delicately disturbed
Where the bird descends invisibly.
It is noontime. And in the pool
The sky is blue and cool.
Yet suddenly out of ...

It's my opinion - though I own
In thinking so I'm quite alone -
In some respects I'm but a fright.
YOU like my features, I suppose?
I'M disappointed with my nose:
Some rave about it - perhaps they're right.
My figure just sets off a fit;
But when they say it's exquisite
(And they DO say so), that's too strong.
I hope I'm not what people call
Opinionated!    After all,
I'm but a goose, and may be wrong!

When charms enthral
There's some excuse
For measures strong;
And after all
I'm but a goose,
And may be wrong!

My teeth are very neat, no doubt;
But after all they MAY fall out:
I think they will - some think they won't.
My hands are small, as you may see,
But not as small as they might be,
At least, I think so - oth...

1.
A portal as of shadowy adamant
Stands yawning on the highway of the life
Which we all tread, a cavern huge and gaunt;
Around it rages an unceasing strife
Of shadows, like the restless clouds that haunt
The gap of some cleft mountain, lifted high
Into the whirlwinds of the upper sky.

2.
And many pass it by with careless tread,
Not knowing that a shadowy ...
Tracks every traveller even to where the dead
Wait peacefully for their companion new;
But others, by more curious humour led,
Pause to examine; - these are very few,
And they learn little there, except to know
That shadows follow them where'er they go.

    Mellow hazes, lowly trailing
    Over wood and meadow, veiling
    Somber skies, with wildfowl sailing
        Sailor-like to foreign lands;
    And the north-wind overleaping
    Summer's brink, and floodlike sweeping
    Wrecks of roses where the weeping
        Willows wring their helpless hands.

    Flared, like Titan torches flinging
        Flakes of flame and embers, springing
    From the vale the trees stand swinging
        In the moaning atmosphere;
    While in dead'ning-lands the lowing
    Of the cattle, sadder growing,
    Fills the sense to overflowing
        With the sorrow of the year.

    Sorrowfully, yet the sweeter
    Sings the brook in rippled meter
    Under boughs that lithely teeter
        Lorn birds, ...

Gold or silver, every day,
Dies to gray.
There are knots in every skein.
Hours of work and hours of play
Fade away
Into one immense Inane.
Shadow and substance, chaff and grain,
Are as vain
As the foam or as the spray.
Life goes crooning, faint and fain,
One refrain:
'If it could be always May!'

Though the earth be green and gay,
Though, they say,
Man the cup of heaven may drain;
Though, his little world to sway,
He display
Hoard on hoard of pith and brain:
Autumn brings a mist and rain
That constrain

Him and his to know decay,
Where undimmed the lights that wane
Would remain,
If it could be always May.

YEA, alas, must turn to NAY,
Flesh to clay.
Chance and Time are ever twain.
Men may sc...

The faint sun tipt the rising ground,
No blustering wind, the air was still;
The blue mist, thinly scatter'd round,
Verg'd along the distant hill:
Delightful morn! from labour free
I jocund met the south-west gale,
While here and there a busy bee
Humm'd sweetly o'er the flow'ry vale.

O joyful morn! on pleasure bent,
Down the green slopes and fields I flew;
And through the thickest covert went,
Which hid me from the public view:
Nor was it shame, nor was it fear,
No, no, it was my own dear choice;
I love the briary thicket, where
Echo keeps her mocking voice.

The sun's increasing heat was kind,
His warm beams cheer'd the vales around:
I left my own fields far behind,
And, pilgrim-like, trod foreign ground;
The glowing landscape's...