In Bondage

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1. THE WITNESSES In Ocean’s wide domains, Half buried in the sands, Lie skeletons in chains, With shackled feet and hands. Beyond the fall of dews, Deeper than plummet lies, Float ships, with all their crews, No more to sink nor rise. There the black Slave-ship swims, Freighted with human forms, Whose fettered, fleshless limbs Are not the […]...
2. The Wage-Slaves Oh, glorious are the guarded heights Where guardian souls abide Self-exiled from our gross delights Above, beyond, outside: An ampler arc their spirit swings Commands a juster view We have their word for all these things, No doubt their words are true. Yet we, the bond slaves of our day, Whom dirt and danger press […]...
3. LES BALLONS Against these turbid turquoise skies The light and luminous balloons Dip and drift like satin moons Drift like silken butterflies; Reel with every windy gust, Rise and reel like dancing girls, Float like strange transparent pearls, Fall and float like silver dust. Now to the low leaves they cling, Each with coy fantastic pose, Each […]...
4. A Word for the Hour The firmament breaks up. In black eclipse Light after light goes out. One evil star, Luridly glaring through the smoke of war, As in the dream of the Apocalypse, Drags others down. Let us not weakly weep Nor rashly threaten. Give us grace to keep Our faith and patience; wherefore should we leap On one […]...
5. Songs of Battle Old as the world no other things so old; Nay, older than the world, else, how had sprung Such lusty strength in them when earth was young? Stand valor and its passion hot and bold, Insatiate of battle. How, else, told Blind men, born blind, that red was fitting tongue Mute, eloquent, to show how […]...
6. The Stars Go Over The Lonely Ocean Unhappy about some far off things That are not my affair, wandering Along the coast and up the lean ridges, I saw in the evening The stars go over the lonely ocean, And a black-maned wild boar Plowing with his snout on Mal Paso Mountain. The old monster snuffled, “Here are sweet roots, Fat grubs, […]...
7. Longing I am not sorry for my soul That it must go unsatisfied, For it can live a thousand times, Eternity is deep and wide. I am not sorry for my soul, But oh, my body that must go Back to a little drift of dust Without the joy it longed to know....
8. Graves I dreamed one man stood against a thousand, One man damned as a wrongheaded fool. One year and another he walked the streets, And a thousand shrugs and hoots Met him in the shoulders and mouths he passed. He died alone. And only the undertaker came to his funeral. Flowers grow over his grave anod […]...
9. The Unequal Fetters Cou’d we stop the time that’s flying Or recall itt when ’tis past Put far off the day of Dying Or make Youth for ever last To Love wou’d then be worth our cost. But since we must loose those Graces Which at first your hearts have wonne And you seek for in new Faces […]...
10. North Atlantic WHEN the sea is everywhere From horizon to horizon.. when the salt and blue fill a circle of horizons.. I swear again how I know The sea is older than anything else And the sea younger than anything else. My first father was a landsman. My tenth father was a sea-lover, a gipsy sea-boy, a […]...
11. For the Fallen With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children, England mourns for her dead across the sea. Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit, Fallen in the cause of the free. Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres, There is music in the midst of desolation […]...
12. The Parallel Yes, sad one of Sion, if closely resembling, In shame and in sorrow, thy wither’d-up heart If drinking deep, deep, of the same “cup of trembling” Could make us thy children, our parent thou art. Like thee doth our nation lie conquer’d and broken, And fall’n from her head is the once royal crown; In […]...
13. The Maid Of Orleans Humanity’s bright image to impair. Scorn laid thee prostrate in the deepest dust; Wit wages ceaseless war on all that’s fair, In angel and in God it puts no trust; The bosom’s treasures it would make its prey, Besieges fancy, dims e’en faith’s pure ray. Yet issuing like thyself from humble line, Like thee a […]...
14. The Immortal Part When I meet the morning beam, Or lay me down at night to dream, I hear my bones within me say, “Another night, another day. “When shall this slough of sense be cast, This dust of thoughts be laid at last, The man of flesh and soul be slain And the man of bone remain? […]...
15. My Vineyard To me at night the stars are vocal. They say: ‘Your planet’s oh so local! A speck of dust in heaven’s ceiling; Your faith divine a foolish feeling. What odds if you are chaos hurled, Yours is a silly little world.’ For their derision, haply true, I hate the stars, as wouldn’t you? But whether […]...
16. A Song Of Life In the rapture of life and of living, I lift up my head and rejoice, And I thank the great Giver for giving The soul of my gladness a voice. In the glow of the glorious weather, In the sweet-scented, sensuous air, My burdens seem light as a feather – They are nothing to bear. […]...
17. Christ Crucified THY restless feet now cannot go For us and our eternal good, As they were ever wont. What though They swim, alas! in their own flood? Thy hands to give Thou canst not lift, Yet will Thy hand still giving be; It gives, but O, itself’s the gift! It gives tho’ bound, tho’ bound ’tis […]...
18. A Pict Song Rome never looks where she treads. Always her heavy hooves fall On our stomachs, our hearts or our heads; And Rome never heeds when we bawl. Her sentries pass on that is all, And we gather behind them in hordes, And plot to reconquer the Wall, With only our tongues for our swords. We are […]...
19. A Letter from Home She sends me news of blue jays, frost, Of stars and now the harvest moon That rides above the stricken hills. Lightly, she speaks of cold, of pain, And lists what is already lost. Here where my life seems hard and slow, I read of glowing melons piled Beside the door, and baskets filled With […]...
20. No conscience in escape Should you be allowed sole privilege Of unconscionable martyrdom? This affliction is self-pity brought by suffering As penitent to unrequited lust. Private sexuality has you bound In bonds no-one devised, In silent bondage languishing, Abject, victimised and anguishing, Yet victor in the sum. None but the coarsest heart could feign To feel in simple kind […]...
21. Jehovah Jesus My song shall bless the Lord of all, My praise shall climb to His abode; Thee, Saviour, by that name I call, The great Supreme, the mighty God. Without beginning or decline, Object of faith and not of sense; Eternal ages saw Him shine, He shines eternal ages hence. As much when in the manger […]...
22. Long Odds How many million galaxies there are Who knows? and each has countless stars in it, And each rolls through eternities afar Beneath the threshold of the Infinite. How is it that will all that space to roam I should have found this mote that spins and leaps In what unutterable sunlight, foam Of what unfathomable […]...
23. Full Moon Above the tower a lone, twice-sized moon. On the cold river passing night-filled homes, It scatters restless gold across the waves. On mats, it shines richer than silken gauze. Empty peaks, silence: among sparse stars, Not yet flawed, it drifts. Pine and cinnamon Spreading in my old garden. . . All light, All ten thousand […]...
24. What think You I take my Pen in Hand? WHAT think you I take my pen in hand to record? The battle-ship, perfect-model’d, majestic, that I saw pass the offing to-day under full sail? The splendors of the past day? Or the splendor of the night that envelopes me? Or the vaunted glory and growth of the great city spread around me?-No; But I […]...
25. Remain! REMAIN, ah not in youth alone! Tho’ youth, where you are, long will stay But when my summer days are gone, And my autumnal haste away. ‘Can I be always by your side?’ No; but the hours you can, you must, Nor rise at Death’s approaching stride, Nor go when dust is gone to dust....
26. The Captive Not with an outcry to Allah nor any complaining He answered his name at the muster and stood to the chaining. When the twin anklets were nipped on the leg-bars that held them, He brotherly greeted the armourers stooping to weld them. Ere the sad dust of the marshalled feet of the chain-gang swallowed him, […]...
27. There is a finished feeling There is a finished feeling Experienced at Graves A leisure of the Future A Wilderness of Size. By Death’s bold Exhibition Preciser what we are And the Eternal function Enabled to infer....
28. Mirabeau Bridge Under Mirabeau Bridge runs the Seine And our loves Must I remember them Joy came always after pain Let arriving night explain Days fade I remain Arm in arm let us stay face to face While below The bridge at our hands passes With eternal regards the wave so slow Let arriving night explain Days […]...
29. Athor and Asar [Dedicated to Frank Harris, editor of Vanity Fair] On the black night, beneath the winter moon, I clothed me in the limbs of Codia, Swooning my soul out into her red throat, So that the glimmer of our skins, the tune Og our ripe rythm, seemed the hideous play Of death-worms crawling on a corpse, […]...
30. To a Gentleman and Lady on the Death of the Lady's Brother and Sister On Death’s domain intent I fix my eyes, Where human nature in vast ruin lies, With pensive mind I search the drear abode, Where the great conqu’ror has his spoils bestow’d; There there the offspring of six thousand years In endless numbers to my view appears: Whole kingdoms in his gloomy den are thrust, And […]...
31. Psalm 90 Man mortal, and God eternal A mournful song at a funeral. Through every age, eternal God, Thou art our rest, our safe abode; High was thy throne ere heav’n was made, Or earth thy humble footstool laid. Long hadst thou reigned ere time began, Or dust was fashioned to a man; And long thy kingdom […]...
32. In Memoriam 82: I Wage Not Any Feud With Death I wage not any feud with Death For changes wrought on form and face; No lower life that earth’s embrace May breed with him, can fright my faith. Eternal process moving on, From state to state the spirit walks; And these are but the shatter’d stalks, Or ruin’d chrysalis of one. Nor blame I Death, […]...
33. Sonnet XVIII: Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer’s lease hath all too short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimm’d; And every fair from fair sometime declines, […]...
34. Sonnets i SHALL I compare thee to a Summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And Summer’s lease hath all too short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimm’d; And every fair from fair sometime declines, […]...
35. Sonnets XVIII: Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer’s lease hath all too short a date. Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimm’d; And every fair from fair sometime declines, […]...
36. Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? (Sonnet 18) Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer’s lease hath all too short a date. Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimmed; And every fair from fair sometime declines, […]...
37. The Prisoner Still let my tyrants know, I am not doomed to wear Year after year in gloom and desolate despair; A messenger of Hope comes every night to me, And offers for short life, eternal liberty. He comes with western winds, with evening’s wandering airs, With that clear dusk of heaven that brings the thickest stars: […]...
38. I Shall Not Burn I have done with love and lust, I reck not for gold or fame; I await familiar dust These frail fingers to reclaim: Not for me the tiger flame. Not for me the furnace glow, Rage of fire and ashen doom; To sweet earth my bones bestow Where above a lowly tomb January roses bloom. […]...
39. Hymn 141 The Humiliation and exaltation of Christ. Isa. 53:1-5,10-12. Who has believed thy word, Or thy salvation known? Reveal thine arm, Almighty Lord, And glorify thy Son. The Jews esteemed him here Too mean for their belief; Sorrows his chief acquaintance were, And his companion, grief. They turned their eyes away, And treated him with scorn; […]...
40. Reuben Pantier Well, Emily Sparks, your prayers were not wasted, Your love was not all in vain. I owe whatever I was in life To your hope that would not give me up, To your love that saw me still as good. Dear Emily Sparks, let me tell you the story. I pass the effect of my […]...