Blue
The earth again like a ship steams out of the dark sea over The edge of the blue, and the sun stands up to see us glide Slowly into another day; slowly the rover
Tortoise Shout
I thought he was dumb, said he was dumb, Yet I’ve heard him cry. First faint scream, Out of life’s unfathomable dawn, Far off, so far, like a madness, under the horizon’s dawning rim,
The Enkindled Spring
This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green, Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes, Thorn-blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between Where the wood fumes up and the watery, flickering
Worm Either Way
If you live along with all the other people And are just like them, and conform, and are nice You’re just a worm And if you live with all the other people And you
Conundrums
Tell me a word That you’ve often heard, Yet it makes you squint When you see it in print! Tell me a thing That you’ve often seen Yet if put in a book It
Bavarian Gentians
Not every man has gentians in his house In Soft September, at slow, Sad Michaelmas. Bavarian gentians, big and dark, only dark Darkening the daytime torchlike with the smoking blueness of Pluto’s gloom, Ribbed
Ballad of Another Ophelia
Oh the green glimmer of apples in the orchard, Lamps in a wash of rain! Oh the wet walk of my brown hen through the stackyard, Oh tears on the window pane! Nothing now
How Beastly The Bourgeois Is
How beastly the bourgeois is Especially the male of the species Presentable, eminently presentable Shall I make you a present of him? Isn’t he handsome? Isn’t he healthy? Isn’t he a fine specimen? Doesn’t
Virgin Youth
Now and again All my body springs alive, And the life that is polarised in my eyes, That quivers between my eyes and mouth, Flies like a wild thing across my body, Leaving my
Cruelty and Love
What large, dark hands are those at the window Lifted, grasping in the yellow light Which makes its way through the curtain web At my heart to-night? Ah, only the leaves! So leave me
The End
If I could have put you in my heart, If but I could have wrapped you in myself, How glad I should have been! And now the chart Of memory unrolls again to me
Grey Evening
When you went, how was it you carried with you My missal book of fine, flamboyant hours? My book of turrets and of red-thorn bowers, And skies of gold, and ladies in bright tissue?
Bat
At evening, sitting on this terrace, When the sun from the west, beyond Pisa, beyond the mountains of Carrara Departs, and the world is taken by surprise… When the tired flower of Florence is
Dreams
All people dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their mind, Wake in the morning to find that it was vanity. But the dreamers of the day
Giorno dei Morti
Along the avenue of cypresses, All in their scarlet cloaks and surplices Of linen, go the chanting choristers, The priests in gold and black, the villagers. . . And all along the path to