Long Odds

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1. Hymn 100 Believe and be saved. John 3:16-18. Not to condemn the sons of men, Did Christ, the Son of God, appear; No weapons in his hands are seen, No flaming sword nor thunder there. Such was the pity of our God, He loved the race of man so well, He sent his Son to bear our […]...
2. A Grain Of Sand If starry space no limit knows And sun succeeds to sun, There is no reason to suppose Our earth the only one. ‘Mid countless constellations cast A million worlds may be, With each a God to bless or blast And steer to destiny. Just think! A million gods or so To guide each vital stream, […]...
3. And love has changed to kindliness When love has changed to kindliness Oh, love, our hungry lips, that press So tight that Time’s an old god’s dream Nodding in heaven, and whisper stuff Seven million years were not enough To think on after, make it seem Less than the breath of children playing, A blasphemy scarce worth the saying, A sorry […]...
4. To John Hamilton Reynolds O that a week could be an age, and we Felt parting and warm meeting every week, Then one poor year a thousand years would be, The flush of welcome ever on the cheek: So could we live long life in little space, So time itself would be annihilate, So a day’s journey in oblivious […]...
5. To Fanny I cry your mercy-pity-love!-aye, love! Merciful love that tantalizes not, One-thoughted, never-wandering, guileless love, Unmasked, and being seen-without a blot! O! let me have thee whole,-all-all-be mine! That shape, that fairness, that sweet minor zest Of love, your kiss,-those hands, those eyes divine, That warm, white, lucent, million-pleasured breast,- Yourself-your soul-in pity give me all, […]...
6. Immortality WE must pass like smoke or live within the spirit’s fire; For we can no more than smoke unto the flame return If our thought has changed to dream, our will unto desire, As smoke we vanish though the fire may burn. Lights of infinite pity star the grey dusk of our days: Surely here […]...
7. The Book of Urizen: Chapter V 1. In terrors Los shrunk from his task: His great hammer fell from his hand: His fires beheld, and sickening, Hid their strong limbs in smoke. For with noises ruinous loud; With hurtlings & clashings & groans The Immortal endur’d his chains, Tho’ bound in a deadly sleep. 2. All the myriads of Eternity: All […]...
8. Description My salt marsh -mine, I call it, because These day-hammered fields Of dazzled horizontals Undulate, summers, Inside me and out- How can I say what it is? Sea lavender shivers Over the tidewater steel. A million minnows ally With their million shadows (lucky we’ll never need To know whose is whose). The bud of storm […]...
9. Mary McNeely Passer-by, To love is to find your own soul Through the soul of the beloved one. When the beloved one withdraws itself from your soul Then you have lost your soul. It is written: “I have a friend, But my sorrow has no friend.” Hence my long years of solitude at the home of my […]...
10. Roulette I’ll wait until my money’s gone Before I take the sleeping pills; Then when they find me in the dawn, Remote from earthly ails and ills They’ll say: “She’s broke, the foreign bitch!” And dump me in the common ditch. So thought I, of all hope bereft, And by my evil fate obsessed; A thousand […]...
11. Humdrum IF I had a million lives to live and a million deaths to die in a million humdrum worlds, I’d like to change my name and have a new house number to go by each and every time I died and started life all over again. I wouldn’t want the same name every time and […]...
12. Babylon THE BLUE dusk ran between the streets: my love was winged within my mind, It left to-day and yesterday and thrice a thousand years behind. To-day was past and dead for me, for from to-day my feet had run Through thrice a thousand years to walk the ways of ancient Babylon. On temple top and […]...
13. Jacob Goodpasture When Fort Sumter fell and the war came I cried out in bitterness of soul: “O glorious republic now no more!” When they buried my soldier son To the call of trumpets and the sound of drums My heart broke beneath the weight Of eighty years, and I cried: “Oh, son who died in a […]...
14. Ah! Yet Consider it Again! “Old things need not be therefore true,” O brother men, nor yet the new; Ah! still awhile the old thought retain, And yet consider it again! The souls of now two thousand years Have laid up here their toils and tears, And all the earnings of their pain, Ah, yet consider it again! We! what […]...
15. Psalm XXXIII: Rejoice, Ye Righteous Rejoice, ye righteous, in the Lord, This work belongs to you; Sing of his name, his ways, his word, How holy, just, and true. His mercy and his righteousness Let heav’n and earth proclaim; His works of nature and of grace Reveal his wondrous name. His wisdom and almighty word The heav’nly arches spread, And […]...
16. Historion No man hath dared to write this thing as yet, And yet I know, how that the souls of all men great At times pass athrough us, And we are melted into them, and are not Save reflexions of their souls. Thus am I Dante for a space and am One Francois Villon, ballad-lord and […]...
17. I Keep Six Honest I keep six honest serving-men (They taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who. I send them over land and sea, I send them east and west; But after they have worked for me, I give them all a rest. I let them rest […]...
18. A Rusty Nail I ran a nail into my hand, The wound was hard to heal; So bitter was the pain to stand I thought how it would feel, To have spikes thrust through hands and feet, Impaled by hammer beat. Then hoisted on a cross of oak Against the sullen sky, With all about the jeering follk […]...
19. Psalm 103 part 2 v.8-18 L. M. God’s gentle chastisement; or, His tender mercy to his people. The Lord, how wondrous are his ways! How firm his truth! how large his grace! He takes his mercy for his throne, And thence he makes his glories known. Not half so high his power hath spread The starry heav’ns above our […]...
20. Ordeal LOVE and pity are pleading with me this hour. What is this voice that stays me forbidding to yield, Offering beauty, love, and immortal power, Æons away in some far-off heavenly field? Though I obey thee, Immortal, my heart is sore. Though love be withdrawn for love it bitterly grieves: Pity withheld in the breast […]...
21. Psalm 90 part 1 v.1-5 C. M. Man frail, and God eternal. Our God, our help in ages past, Our hope for years to come, Our shelter from the stormy blast, And our eternal home. Under the shadow of thy throne Thy saints have dwelt secure; Sufficient is thine arm alone, And our defence is sure. Before the hills […]...
22. Merops What care I, so they stand the same,- Things of the heavenly mind,- How long the power to give them fame Tarries yet behind? Thus far to-day your favors reach, O fair, appeasing Presences! Ye taught my lips a single speech, And a thousand silences. Space grants beyond his fated road No inch to the […]...
23. New Year's Chimes What is the song the stars sing? (And a million songs are as song of one) This is the song the stars sing: (Sweeter song’s none) One to set, and many to sing, (And a million songs are as song of one) One to stand, and many to cling, The many things, and the one […]...
24. The Boss of the Admiral Lynch Did you ever hear tell of Chili? I was readin’ the other day Of President Balmaceda and of how he was sent away. It seems that he didn’t suit ’em they thought that they’d like a change, So they started an insurrection and chased him across the range. They seem to be restless people and, […]...
25. Bankers Are Just Like Anybody Else, Except Richer This is a song to celebrate banks, Because they are full of money and you go into them and all You hear is clinks and clanks, Or maybe a sound like the wind in the trees on the hills, Which is the rustling of the thousand dollar bills. Most bankers dwell in marble halls, Which […]...
26. Scholfield Huxley God! ask me not to record your wonders, I admit the stars and the suns And the countless worlds. But I have measured their distances And weighed them and discovered their substances. I have devised wings for the air, And keels for water, And horses of iron for the earth. I have lengthened the vision […]...
27. They leave us with the Infinite They leave us with the Infinite. But He is not a man His fingers are the size of fists His fists, the size of men And whom he foundeth, with his Arm As Himmaleh, shall stand Gibraltar’s Everlasting Shoe Poised lightly on his Hand, So trust him, Comrade You for you, and I, for you […]...
28. Confessions Wanting to know all I overlooked each particle Containing the whole Unknowable. Intent on one great love, perfect, Requited and for ever, I missed love’s everywhere Small presence, thousand-guised. And lifelong have been reading Book after book, searching For wisdom, but bringing Only my own understanding. Forgive me, forgiver, Whether you be infinite omniscient Or […]...
29. The Divine Image To Mercy Pity Peace and Love. All pray in their distress: And to these virtues of delight Return their thankfulness. For Mercy Pity Peace and Love, Is God our Father dear: And Mercy Pity Peace and Love, Is Man his child and care. For Mercy has a human heart Pity, a human face: And Love, […]...
30. The Book of Urizen: Chapter II 1. Earth was not: nor globes of attraction The will of the Immortal expanded Or contracted his all flexible senses. Death was not, but eternal life sprung 2. The sound of a trumpet the heavens Awoke & vast clouds of blood roll’d Round the dim rocks of Urizen, so nam’d That solitary one in Immensity […]...
31. Darest Thou Now, O Soul 1 DAREST thou now, O Soul, Walk out with me toward the Unknown Region, Where neither ground is for the feet, nor any path to follow? 2 No map, there, nor guide, Nor voice sounding, nor touch of human hand, Nor face with blooming flesh, nor lips, nor eyes, are in that land. 3 I […]...
32. Holy Sonnet VII: At The Round Earth's Imagined Corners Blow At the round earth’s imagined corners blow Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise From death, you numberless infinities Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go, All whom the flood did, and fire shall, overthrow, All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies, Despair, law, chance, hath slain, and you whose eyes Shall behold God, and […]...
33. Bards of Passion and of Mirth, written on the Blank Page before Beaumont and Fletcher's Tragi-Comedy 'The Fair Maid of the Inn&#039 BARDS of Passion and of Mirth, Ye have left your souls on earth! Have ye souls in heaven too, Doubled-lived in regions new? Yes, and those of heaven commune With the spheres of sun and moon; With the noise of fountains wondrous, And the parle of voices thund’rous; With the whisper of heaven’s trees And […]...
34. Vegetation O never harm the dreaming world, The world of green, the world of leaves, But let its million palms unfold The adoration of the trees. It is a love in darkness wrought Obedient to the unseen sun, Longer than memory, a thought Deeper than the graves of time. The turning spindles of the cells Weave […]...
35. The Mourners I look into the aching womb of night; I look across the mist that masks the dead; The moon is tired and gives but little light, The stars have gone to bed. The earth is sick and seems to breathe with pain; A lost wind whimpers in a mangled tree; I do not see the […]...
36. Immortality So I have sunk my roots in earth Since that my pretty boys had birth; And fear no more the grave and gloom, I, with the centuries to come. As the tree blossoms so bloom I, Flinging wild branches to the sky; Renew each year my leafy suit, Strike with the years a deeper root. […]...
37. Golden Silence I told her I loved her and begged but a word, One dear little word, that would be For me by all odds the most sweet ever heard, But never a word said she! I raged at her then, and I said she was cold; I swore she was nothing to me; I prayed her […]...
38. In Bondage I would be wandering in distant fields Where man, and bird, and beast, lives leisurely, And the old earth is kind, and ever yields Her goodly gifts to all her children free; Where life is fairer, lighter, less demanding, And boys and girls have time and space for play Before they come to years of […]...
39. Gods 1 THOUGHT of the Infinite-the All! Be thou my God. 2 Lover Divine, and Perfect Comrade! Waiting, content, invisible yet, but certain, Be thou my God. 3 Thou-thou, the Ideal Man! Fair, able, beautiful, content, and loving, Complete in Body, and dilate in Spirit, Be thou my God. 4 O Death-(for Life has served its […]...
40. The Telephone To-night in million-voiced London I Was lonely as the million-pointed sky Until your single voice. Ah! So the sun Peoples all heaven, although he be but one....