The Island

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1. The Island of Skyros Here, where we stood together, we three men, Before the war had swept us to the East Three thousand miles away, I stand again And hear the bells, and breathe, and go to feast. We trod the same path, to the selfsame place, Yet here I stand, having beheld their graves, Skyros whose shadows the […]...
2. THE WHITE ISLAND:OR PLACE OF THE BLEST In this world, the Isle of Dreams, While we sit by sorrow’s streams, Tears and terrors are our themes, Reciting: But when once from hence we fly, More and more approaching nigh Unto young eternity, Uniting In that whiter Island, where Things are evermore sincere: Candour here, and lustre there, Delighting: There no monstrous fancies […]...
3. An Island Take it away, and swallow it yourself. Ha! Look you, there’s a rat. Last night there were a dozen on that shelf, And two of them were living in my hat. Look! Now he goes, but he’ll come back- Ha? But he will, I say… Il reviendra-z-à Pâques, Ou à la Trinité… Be very sure […]...
4. A Song of Pitcairn's Island Come, take our boy, and we will go Before our cabin door; The winds shall bring us, as they blow, The murmurs of the shore; And we will kiss his young blue eyes, And I will sing him, as he lies, Songs that were made of yore: I’ll sing, in his delighted ear, The island […]...
5. On Fields O'er Which the Reaper's Hand has Passed On fields o’er which the reaper’s hand has pass’d Lit by the harvest moon and autumn sun, My thoughts like stubble floating in the wind And of such fineness as October airs, There after harvest could I glean my life A richer harvest reaping without toil, And weaving gorgeous fancies at my will In subtler […]...
6. A Three-Part Song I’m just in love with all these three, The Weald and the Marsh and the Down country. Nor I don’t know which I love the most, The Weald or the Marsh or the white Chalk coast! I’ve buried my heart in a ferny hill, Twix’ a liddle low shaw an’ a great high gill. Oh […]...
7. Ears In The Turrets Hear Ears in the turrets hear Hands grumble on the door, Eyes in the gables see The fingers at the locks. Shall I unbolt or stay Alone till the day I die Unseen by stranger-eyes In this white house? Hands, hold you poison or grapes? Beyond this island bound By a thin sea of flesh And […]...
8. Recompense I saw two sowers in Life’s field at morn, To whom came one in angel guise and said, “Is it for labour that a man is born? Lo: I am Ease. Come ye and eat my bread!” Then gladly one forsook his task undone And with the Tempter went his slothful way, The other toiled […]...
9. A Calendar of Sonnets: September O golden month! How high thy gold is heaped! The yellow birch-leaves shine like bright coins strung On wands; the chestnut’s yellow pennons tongue To every wind its harvest challenge. Steeped In yellow, still lie fields where wheat was reaped; And yellow still the corn sheaves, stacked among The yellow gourds, which from the earth […]...
10. On The Victory Obtained By Blake Over the Spaniards, In The Bay Of Scanctacruze, In The Island Of teneriff.1657 Now does Spains Fleet her spatious wings unfold, Leaves the new World and hastens for the old: But though the wind was fair, the slowly swoome Frayted with acted Guilt, and Guilt to come: For this rich load, of which so proud they are, Was rais’d by Tyranny, and rais’d for war; Every capatious Gallions […]...
11. Fiddler Jones The earth keeps some vibration going There in your heart, and that is you. And if the people find you can fiddle, Why, fiddle you must and for all your life. What do you see, a harvest ofclover? Or a meadow to awlk through to the river? The wind’s in the corn; you rub your […]...
12. Love ERE I lose myself in the vastness and drowse myself with the peace, While I gaze on the light and the beauty afar from the dim homes of men, May I still feel the heart-pang and pity, love-ties that I would not release; May the voices of sorrow appealing call me back to their succour […]...
13. The night wind Have you ever heard the wind go “Yooooo”? ‘T is a pitiful sound to hear! It seems to chill you through and through With a strange and speechless fear. ‘T is the voice of the night that broods outside When folk should be asleep, And many and many’s the time I’ve cried To the darkness […]...
14. Lying In A Hammock At William Duffy's Farm In Pine Island, Minnesota Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly, Asleep on the black trunk, Blowing like a leaf in green shadow. Down the ravine behind the empty house, The cowbells follow one another Into the distances of the afternoon. To my right, In a field of sunlight between two pines, The droppings of last year’s horses […]...
15. Sonnet CV Let not my love be call’d idolatry, Nor my beloved as an idol show, Since all alike my songs and praises be To one, of one, still such, and ever so. Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind, Still constant in a wondrous excellence; Therefore my verse to constancy confined, One thing expressing, leaves out […]...
16. Caliban upon Setebos or, Natural Theology in the Island “Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such a one as thyself.” (David, Psalms 50.21) [‘Will sprawl, now that the heat of day is best, Flat on his belly in the pit’s much mire, With elbows wide, fists clenched to prop his chin. And, while he kicks both feet in the cool slush, And feels about […]...
17. Sonnet 105: Let not my love be called idolatry Let not my love be called idolatry, Nor my belovèd as an idol show, Since all alike my songs and praises be To one, of one, still such, and ever so. Kind is my love today, tomorrow kind, Still constant in a wondrous excellence; Therefore my verse to constancy confined, One thing expressing, leaves out […]...
18. The Falconer of God I flung my soul to the air like a falcon flying. I said, “Wait on, wait on, while I ride below! I shall start a heron soon In the marsh beneath the moon A strange white heron rising with silver on its wings, Rising and crying Wordless, wondrous things; The secret of the stars, of […]...
19. Security Tomorrow will have an island. Before night I always find it. Then on to the next island. These places hidden in the day separate And come forward if you beckon. But you have to know they are there before they exist. Some time there will be a tomorrow without any island. So far, I haven’t […]...
20. Blue Island Intersection SIX street ends come together here. They feed people and wagons into the center. In and out all day horses with thoughts of nose-bags, Men with shovels, women with baskets and baby buggies. Six ends of streets and no sleep for them all day. The people and wagons come and go, out and in. Triangles […]...
21. Long Island Sound I see it as it looked one afternoon In August,-by a fresh soft breeze o’erblown. The swiftness of the tide, the light thereon, A far-off sail, white as a crescent moon. The shining waters with pale currents strewn, The quiet fishing-smacks, the Eastern cove, The semi-circle of its dark, green grove. The luminous grasses, and […]...
22. A Solemn thing within the Soul A Solemn thing within the Soul To feel itself get ripe And golden hang while farther up The Maker’s Ladders stop And in the Orchard far below You hear a Being drop A Wonderful to feel the Sun Still toiling at the Cheek You thought was finished Cool of eye, and critical of Work He […]...
23. From The Last Island: To Lady Elisabeth Verreet Oval mirror of the sea, Age-warped isle waved and cloudy, Each angle crystalline and salty. My lens into reality. Point of space just visible, Focus of beams ineffable, Swith of signals transmissible, Receiver of voices inaudible At time’s edge. No need have I to shout In fear about this death of mine. And any creature […]...
24. The Old Lowe House, Staten Island Another prospect pleased the builder’s eye, And Fashion tenanted (where Fashion wanes) Here in the sorrowful suburban lanes When first these gables rose against the sky. Relic of a romantic taste gone by, This stately monument alone remains, Vacant, with lichened walls and window-panes Blank as the windows of a skull. But I, On evenings […]...
25. Heart O' The North And when I come to the dim trail-end, I who have been Life’s rover, This is all I would ask, my friend, Over and over and over: A little space on a stony hill With never another near me, Sky o’ the North that’s vast and still, With a single star to cheer me; Star […]...
26. Dream Song 7: 'The Prisoner of Shark Island' with Paul Muni Henry is old, old; for Henry remembers Mr Deeds’ tuba, & the Cameo, & the race in Ben Hur, —The Lost World, with sound, & The Man from Blankey’s, which he did not dig, Nor did he understand one caption of, Bewildered Henry, while the Big Ones laughed. Now Henry is unmistakably a Big One. […]...
27. The Wrong Way Home All night a door floated down the river. It tried to remember little incidents of pleasure From its former life, like the time the lovers Leaned against it kissing for hours And whispering those famous words. Later, there were harsh words and a shoe Was thrown and the door was slammed. Comings and goings by […]...
28. Belle Isle, 1949 We stripped in the first warm spring night And ran down into the Detroit River To baptize ourselves in the brine Of car parts, dead fish, stolen bicycles, Melted snow. I remember going under Hand in hand with a Polish highschool girl I’d never seen before, and the cries Our breath made caught at the […]...
29. The Old Man's Grave Make it where the winds may sweep Through the pine boughs soft and deep, And the murmur of the sea Come across the orient lea, And the falling raindrops sing Gently to his slumbering. Make it where the meadows wide Greenly lie on every side, Harvest fields he reaped and trod, Westering slopes of clover […]...
30. Baby Sitter From torrid heat to frigid cold I’ve rovered land and sea; And now, with halting heart I hold My grandchild on my knee: Yet while I’ve eighty years all told, Of moons she has but three. She sleeps, that fragile miniature Of future maidenhood; She will be wonderful, I’m sure, As over her I brood; […]...
31. In these quiet moments In these quiet moments before the night Softens the mountains of the South And deflates the clouds That float beneath their peaks, The dying sun’s rich, peach glow Deepens in the gathering gloom. There, where the mists stretch A false horizon between the sea And the land’s end Aratika glides across the trackless strait And […]...
32. Now Returned Home Beyond the narrows of the Inner Hebrides We sailed the cold angry sea toward Barra, where Heaval mountain Lifts like a mast. There were few people on the steamer, it was late in the year; I noticed most an old shepherd, Two wise-eyed dogs wove anxious circles around his feet, and a thin-armed girl Who […]...
33. Some Things The World Gave 1 Times in the morning early When it rained and the long gray Buildings came forward from darkness Offering their windows for light. 2 Evenings out there on the plains When sunset donated farms That yearned so far to the west that the world Centered there and bowed down. 3 A teacher at a country […]...
34. With a Copy of Shakespeare's Sonnets on Leaving College As one of some fat tillage dispossessed, Weighing the yield of these four faded years, If any ask what fruit seems loveliest, What lasting gold among the garnered ears, Ah, then I’ll say what hours I had of thine, Therein I reaped Time’s richest revenue, Read in thy text the sense of David’s line, Through […]...
35. My playmates The wind comes whispering to me of the country green and cool Of redwing blackbirds chattering beside a reedy pool; It brings me soothing fancies of the homestead on the hill, And I hear the thrush’s evening song and the robin’s morning trill; So I fall to thinking tenderly of those I used to know […]...
36. The Way Of The Wind The wind’s way in the deep sky’s hollow None may measure, as none can say How the heart in her shows the swallow The wind’s way. Hope nor fear can avail to stay Waves that whiten on wrecks that wallow, Times and seasons that wane and slay. Life and love, till the strong night swallow […]...
37. Round-Pond Water ruffled and speckled by galloping wind Which puffs and spurts it into tiny pashing breaks Dashed with lemon-yellow afternoon sunlight. The shining of the sun upon the water Is like a scattering of gold crocus-petals In a long wavering irregular flight. The water is cold to the eye As the wind to the cheek. […]...
38. Two valentines I. TO MISTRESS BARBARA There were three cavaliers, all handsome and true, On Valentine’s day came a maiden to woo, And quoth to your mother: “Good-morrow, my dear, We came with some songs for your daughter to hear!” Your mother replied: “I’ll be pleased to convey To my daughter what things you may sing or […]...
39. Who Learns My Lesson Complete? WHO learns my lesson complete? Boss, journeyman, apprentice-churchman and atheist, The stupid and the wise thinker-parents and offspring-merchant, clerk, porter and customer, Editor, author, artist, and schoolboy-Draw nigh and commence; It is no lesson-it lets down the bars to a good lesson, And that to another, and every one to another still. The great laws […]...
40. Transfiguration Mysterious death! who in a single hour Life’s gold can so refine And by thy art divine Change mortal weakness to immortal power! Bending beneath the weight of eighty years Spent with the noble strife Of a victorious life We watched her fading heavenward, through our tears. But ere the sense of loss our hearts […]...