As It Was Written

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1. The Negro Speaks Of Rivers I’ve known rivers: I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers. I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. I looked upon the […]...
2. Love Letter Written In A Burning Building I am in a crate, the crate that was ours, Full of white shirts and salad greens, The icebox knocking at our delectable knocks, And I wore movies in my eyes, And you wore eggs in your tunnel, And we played sheets, sheets, sheets All day, even in the bathtub like lunatics. But today I […]...
3. Testament I GIVE the undertakers permission to haul my body To the graveyard and to lay away all, the head, the Feet, the hands, all: I know there is something left Over they can not put away. Let the nanny goats and the billy goats of the shanty People eat the clover over my grave and […]...
4. Lines Written In The Belief That The Ancient Roman Festival Of The Dead Was Called Ambarvalia Swings the way still by hollow and hill, And all the world’s a song; “She’s far,” it sings me, “but fair,” it rings me, “Quiet,” it laughs, “and strong!” Oh! spite of the miles and years between us, Spite of your chosen part, I do remember; and I go With laughter in my heart. So […]...
5. A Garden, Written after the Civil Wars SEE how the flowers, as at parade, Under their colours stand display’d: Each regiment in order grows, That of the tulip, pink, and rose. But when the vigilant patrol Of stars walks round about the pole, Their leaves, that to the stalks are curl’d, Seem to their staves the ensigns furl’d. Then in some flower’s […]...
6. From The Short Story What The Swallows Did Swallow, swallow, neighbor swallow, Starting on your autumn flight, Pause a moment at my window, Twitter softly your good-night; For the summer days are over, All your duties are well done, And the happy homes you builded Have grown empty, one by one. Swallow, swallow, neighbor swallow, Are you ready for your flight? Are all […]...
7. Written in a Volume of the Comtesse de Noailles Be my companion under cool arcades That frame some drowsy street and dazzling square Beyond whose flowers and palm-tree promenades White belfries burn in the blue tropic air. Lie near me in dim forests where the croon Of wood-doves sounds and moss-banked water flows, Or musing late till the midsummer moon Breaks through some ruined […]...
8. After the Earthquake After the first astounding rush, After the weeks at the lake, The crystal, the clouds, the water lapping the rocks, The snow breaking under our boots like skin, & the long mornings in bed. . . After the tangos in the kitchen, & our eyes fixed on each other at dinner, As if we would […]...
9. The Wildy Ones The sheep are in the silver wood, The cows are in the broom; The goats are in the wild mountain And won’t be home by noon. My mother sang that olden tune Most every night, And to her newest she would croon By candle light; While cuddling in the velvet gloom I’d dream of cows […]...
10. To Be Written On The Mirror In Whitewash I live only here, between your eyes and you, But I live in your world. What do I do? Collect no interest otherwise what I can; Above all I am not that staring man....
11. My Bed is Covered Yellow My bed is covered yellow – Oh Sun, I sit on you Oh golden field I lay on you Oh money I dream of you More, More, cried the bed – talk to me more – Oh bed that taked the weight of the world – all the lost dreams laid on you Oh bed […]...
12. For Anne Gregory ‘Never shall a young man, Thrown into despair By those great honey-coloured Ramparts at your ear, Love you for yourself alone And not your yellow hair.’ ‘But I can get a hair-dye And set such colour there, Brown, or black, or carrot, That young men in despair May love me for myself alone And not […]...
13. Elegy It’s not that the Muse feels like clamming up, It’s more like high time for the lad’s last nap. And the scarf-waving lass who wished him the best Drives a steamroller across his chest. And the words won’t rise either like that rod Or like logs to rejoin their old grove’s sweet rot, And, like […]...
14. Lines Written in the Bay of Lerici She left me at the silent time When the moon had ceas’d to climb The azure path of Heaven’s steep, And like an albatross asleep, Balanc’d on her wings of light, Hover’d in the purple night, Ere she sought her ocean nest In the chambers of the West. She left me, and I stay’d alone […]...
15. Lines Written Among The Euganean Hills Many a green isle needs must be In the deep wide sea of Misery, Or the mariner, worn and wan, Never thus could voyage on – Day and night, and night and day, Drifting on his dreary way, With the solid darkness black Closing round his vessel’s track: Whilst above the sunless sky, Big with […]...
16. Song of the Fifth River “The Treasure and the Low” Puck of Pook’s Hills. Where first by Eden Tree The Four Great Rivers ran, To each was appointed a Man Her Prince and Ruler to be. But after this was ordained (The ancient legends’ tell), There came dark Israel, For whom no River remained. Then He Whom the Rivers obey […]...
17. Answers Why did you travel? Because the house was cold. Why did you travel? Because it is what I have always done between sunset and sunrise. What did you wear? I wore a blue suit, a white shirt, yellow tie, and yellow socks. What did you wear? I wore nothing. A scarf of pain kept me […]...
18. The Whale The Whale is found in seas and oceans, Indulging there in fishlike motions, But Science shows that Whales are mammals, Like Jersey cows, and goats, and camels. When undisturbed, the Whale will browse Like camels, goats, and Jersey cows, On food that satisfies its tongue, Thus making milk to feed its young. Asking no costly […]...
19. Cahoots PLAY it across the table. What if we steal this city blind? If they want any thing let ’em nail it down. Harness bulls, dicks, front office men, And the high goats up on the bench, Ain’t they all in cahoots? Ain’t it fifty-fifty all down the line, Petemen, dips, boosters, stick-ups and guns-what’s to […]...
20. Lines Written Beneath An Elm In The Churchyard Of Harrow Spot of my youth! whose hoary branches sigh, Swept by the breeze that fans thy cloudless sky; Where now alone I muse, who oft have trod, With those I loved, thy soft and verdant sod; With those who, scattered far, perchance deplore, Like me, the happy scenes they knew before: Oh! as I trace again […]...
21. Written On Sunday Morning Go thou and seek the House of Prayer! I to the Woodlands wend, and there In lovely Nature see the GOD OF LOVE. The swelling organ’s peal Wakes not my soul to zeal, Like the wild music of the wind-swept grove. The gorgeous altar and the mystic vest Rouse not such ardor in my breast, […]...
22. 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 […]...
23. Heaven Fish (fly-replete, in depth of June, Dawdling away their wat’ry noon) Ponder deep wisdom, dark or clear, Each secret fishy hope or fear. Fish say, they have their Stream and Pond; But is there anything Beyond? This life cannot be All, they swear, For how unpleasant, if it were! One may not doubt that, somehow, […]...
24. Lines Written in Kensington Gardens In this lone, open glade I lie, Screen’d by deep boughs on either hand; And at its end, to stay the eye, Those black-crown’d, red-boled pine-trees stand! Birds here make song, each bird has his, Across the girdling city’s hum. How green under the boughs it is! How thick the tremulous sheep-cries come! Sometimes a […]...
25. Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea, The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me. Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, And all the air a solemn stillness holds, Save where the beetle wheels his droning […]...
26. We Wear the Mask We wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes, This debt we pay to human guile; With torn and bleeding hearts we smile, And mouth with myriad subtleties. Why should the world be overwise, In counting all our tears and sighs? Nay, let them only see us, while […]...
27. Stanzas Written In Dejection Near Naples The sun is warm, the sky is clear, The waves are dancing fast and bright, Blue isles and snowy mountains wear The purple noon’s transparent might, The breath of the moist air is light, Around its unexpanded buds; Like many a voice of one delight, The winds’, the birds’, the ocean floods’, The City’s voice […]...
28. 180. Written by Somebody on the Window of an Inn at Stirling HERE Stuarts once in glory reigned, And laws for Scotland’s weal ordained; But now unroof’d their palace stands, Their sceptre’s sway’d by other hands; Fallen indeed, and to the earth Whence groveling reptiles take their birth. The injured Stuart line is gone, A race outlandish fills their throne; An idiot race, to honour lost; Who […]...
29. Ode Written On The First Of January Come melancholy Moralizer come! Gather with me the dark and wintry wreath; With me engarland now The SEPULCHRE OF TIME! Come Moralizer to the funeral song! I pour the dirge of the Departed Days, For well the funeral song Befits this solemn hour. But hark! even now the merry bells ring round With clamorous joy […]...
30. From "Vashti&quot WHAT thing shall be held up to woman’s beauty? Where are the bounds of it? Yea, what is all The world, but an awning scaffolded amid The waste perilous Eternity, to lodge This Heaven-wander’d princess, woman’s beauty? The East and West kneel down to thee, the North And South; and all for thee their shoulders […]...
31. At the Aquarium of the Pacific I saw a brilliant angelfish whose tail And fins shimmered yellow until it turned And silver spread like an undercoat of fur When stroked against the nap, across its scales. Black as caviar and rimmed with gold, Its eyes, though flat as dimes, looked deep as wells. The clownfish cruising by above the shells, Its […]...
32. The Poet Words flow onto paper like rain, forming giant rivers Of unseen lands. The very force guides us along a journey That holds of great adventure. We are the explorers of the literary world. We must find the courage to write what Others are unable to, with the greatest Of passion. A poet dreams. and then […]...
33. The Puritan's Ballad My love came up from Barnegat, The sea was in his eyes; He trod as softly as a cat And told me terrible lies. His hair was yellow as new-cut pine In shavings curled and feathered; I thought how silver it would shine By cruel winters weathered. But he was in his twentieth year, Ths […]...
34. Strayed Crab This is not my home. How did I get so far from water? It must Be over that way somewhere. I am the color of wine, of tinta. The inside of my powerful Right claw is saffron-yellow. See, I see it now; I wave it like a Flag. I am dapper and elegant; I move […]...
35. Itylus Swallow, my sister, O sister swallow, How can thine heart be full of the spring? A thousand summers are over and dead. What hast thou found in the spring to follow? What hast thou found in thine heart to sing? What wilt thou do when the summer is shed? O swallow, sister, O fair swift […]...
36. The Princess: A Medley: O Swallow O Swallow, Swallow, flying, flying South, Fly to her, and fall upon her gilded eaves, And tell her, tell her, what I tell to thee. O tell her, Swallow, thou that knowest each, That bright and fierce and fickle is the South, And dark and true and tender is the North. O Swallow, Swallow, if […]...
37. IN THE SMALL HOURS Blue diaphane, tobacco smoke Serpentine on wet film and wood glaze, Mutes chrome, wreathes velvet drapes, Dims the cave of mirrors. Ghost fingers Comb seaweed hair, stroke acquamarine veins Of marooned mariners, captives Of Circe’s sultry notes. The barman Dispenses igneous potions? Somnabulist, the band plays on. Cocktail mixer, silvery fish Dances for limpet clients. […]...
38. Patience Be patient with you? When the stooping sky Leans down upon the hills And tenderly, as one who soothing stills An anguish, gathers earth to lie Embraced and girdled. Do the sun-filled men Feel patience then? Be patient with you? When the snow-girt earth Cracks to let through a spurt Of sudden green, and from […]...
39. New age (i) How new the world is Trying to find Nerve in an old rind (ii) The bread is crumbled For birds to swallow Rolled into droppings Flowers from the hair Of noseless statues Tyrants of parks Where men have cowered Too long and mistaken Unmanned by he dark (iii) When we awaken (how have we […]...
40. Thomas Ross, Jr This I saw with my own eyes: A cliff-swallow Made her nest in a hole of the high clay-bank There near Miller’s Ford. But no sooner were the young hatched Than a snake crawled up to the nest To devour the brood. Then the mother swallow with swift flutterings And shrill cries Fought at the […]...