Beauty
Say not of beauty she is good, Or aught but beautiful, Or sleek to doves’ wings of the wood Her wild wings of a gull. Call her not wicked; that word’s touch Consumes her
Ophelia
My locks are shorn for sorrow Of love which may not be; Tomorrow and tomorrow Are plotting cruelty. The winter wind tangles These ringlets half-grown, The sun sprays with spangles And rays like his
Incantation
A white well In a black cave; A bright shell In a dark wave. A white rose Black brambles hood; Smooth bright snows In a dark wood. A flung white glove In a dark
August
Why should this Negro insolently stride Down the red noonday on such noiseless feet? Piled in his barrow, tawnier than wheat, Lie heaps of smouldering daisies, sombre-eyed, Their copper petals shriveled up with pride,
Love Song
Lovers eminent in love Ever diversities combine; The vocal chords of the cushat-dove, The snake’s articulated spine. Such elective elements Educate the eye and lip With one’s refreshing innocence, The other’s claim to scholarship.
The Church-Bell
As I was lying in my bed I heard the church-bell ring; Before one solemn word was said A bird began to sing. I heard a dog begin to bark And a bold crowing
Quarrel
Let us quarrel for these reasons: You detest the salt which seasons My speech. . . and all my lights go out In the cold poison of your doubt. I love Shelley. . .
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
Winter Sleep
When against earth a wooden heel Clicks as loud as stone on steel, When stone turns flour instead of flakes, And frost bakes clay as fire bakes, When the hard-bitten fields at last Crack
Nancy
You are a rose, but set with sharpest spine; You are a pretty bird that pecks at me; You are a little squirrel on a tree, Pelting me with the prickly fruit of the
Atavism
I was always afraid of Somes’s Pond: Not the little pond, by which the willow stands, Where laughing boys catch alewives in their hands In brown, bright shallows; but the one beyond. There, where
Primavera in the North
She has danced for leagues and leagues, Over thorns and thistles, Prancing to a tune of Griegg’s Performed on willow whistles. Antelopes behold her, dazed, Velvet-eyed, and furry; Polar flowers, crackle-glazed, Snap beneath her
Bells in the Rain
Sleep falls, with limpid drops of rain, Upon the steep cliffs of the town. Sleep falls; men are at peace again While the small drops fall softly down. The bright drops ring like bells
Curious Circumstance
The sailorman’s child And the girl of the witch They can’t be defiled By touching pitch. The sailorman’s son Had a ship for a nursery; The other one Was baptised by sorcery. Although he’s
The Prinkin' Leddie
The Hielan’ lassies are a’ for spinnin’, The Lowlan’ lassies for prinkin’ and pinnin’; My daddie w’u’d chide me, an’ so w’u’d my minnie If I s’u’d bring hame sic a prinkin’ leddie. Now