Oh! Mr Best You're Very Bad

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1. The Gardener XLVI: You Left Me You left me and went on your way. I thought I should mourn for you And set your solitary image in my Heart wrought in a golden song. But ah, my evil fortune, time is Short. Youth wanes year after year; the Spring days are fugitive; the frail Flowers die for nothing, and the wise […]...
2. A Calendar of Sonnets: July Some flowers are withered and some joys have died; The garden reeks with an East Indian scent From beds where gillyflowers stand weak and spent; The white heat pales the skies from side to side; But in still lakes and rivers, cool, content, Like starry blooms on a new firmament, White lilies float and regally […]...
3. The Appology ‘Tis true I write and tell me by what Rule I am alone forbid to play the fool To follow through the Groves a wand’ring Muse And fain’d Idea’s for my pleasures chuse Why shou’d it in my Pen be held a fault Whilst Mira paints her face, to paint a thought Whilst Lamia to […]...
4. Delilah cIn the midnight of darkness and terror, When I would grope nearer to God, With my back to a record of error And the highway of sin I have trod, There comes to me shapes I would banish – The shapes of the deeds I have done; And I pray and I plead till they […]...
5. Resignation WHY, why repine, my pensive friend, At pleasures slipp’d away? Some the stern Fates will never lend, And all refuse to stay. I see the rainbow in the sky, The dew upon the grass; I see them, and I ask not why They glimmer or they pass. With folded arms I linger not To call […]...
6. To the President of Magdalen College, Oxford Since now from woodland mist and flooded clay I am fled beside the steep Devonian shore, Nor stand for welcome at your gothic door, ‘Neath the fair tower of Magdalen and May, Such tribute, Warren, as fond poets pay For generous esteem, I write, not more Enhearten’d than my need is, reckoning o’er My life-long […]...
7. Mrs. Purkapile He ran away and was gone for a year. When he came home he told me the silly story Of being kidnapped by pirates on Lake Michigan And kept in chains so he could not write me. I pretended to believe it, though I knew very well What he was doing, and that he met […]...
8. FAREWELL To break one’s word is pleasure-fraught, To do one’s duty gives a smart; While man, alas! will promise nought, That is repugnant to his heart. Using some magic strains of yore, Thou lurest him, when scarcely calm, On to sweet folly’s fragile bark once more, Renewing, doubling chance of harm. Why seek to hide thyself […]...
9. Amoretti LXXV: One Day I Wrote Her Name One day I wrote her name upon the strand, But came the waves and washed it away: Again I wrote it with a second hand, But came the tide, and made my pains his prey. “Vain man,” said she, “that dost in vain assay, A mortal thing so to immortalize; For I myself shall like […]...
10. Impromptu, to Lady Winchelsea In vain you boast Poetic Names of yore, And cite those Sapho’s we admire no more: Fate doom’d the Fall of ev’ry Female Wit, But doom’d it then when first Ardelia writ. Of all Examples by the World confest, I knew Ardelia could not quote the best; Who, like her Mistress on Britannia’s Throne; Fights, […]...
11. Psalm 49 part 1 v.6-14 C. M. Pride and death; or, The vanity of life and riches. Why doth the man of riches grow To insolence and pride, To see his wealth and honors flow With every rising tide? [Why doth he treat the poor with scorn, Made of the self-same clay, And boast as though his flesh was […]...
12. Anna Who Was Mad Anna who was mad, I have a knife in my armpit. When I stand on tiptoe I tap out messages. Am I some sort of infection? Did I make you go insane? Did I make the sounds go sour? Did I tell you to climb out the window? Forgive. Forgive. Say not I did. Say […]...
13. Water I was born in a drouth year. That summer My mother waited in the house, enclosed In the sun and the dry ceaseless wind, For the men to come back in the evenings, Bringing water from a distant spring. Veins of leaves ran dry, roots shrank. And all my life I have dreaded the return […]...
14. An Address to the Rev. George Gilfillan All hail to the Rev. George Gilfillan of Dundee, He is the greatest preacher I did ever hear or see. He is a man of genius bright, And in him his congregation does delight, Because they find him to be honest and plain, Affable in temper, and seldom known to complain. He preaches in a […]...
15. To love thee Year by Year To love thee Year by Year May less appear Than sacrifice, and cease However, dear, Forever might be short, I thought to show And so I pieced it, with a flower, now....
16. Variations on ‘The short night Below are eleven Buson haiku Beginning with the phrase ‘The short night ‘ The short night On the hairy caterpillar Beads of dew. The short night Patrolmen Washing in the river. The short night Bubbles of crab froth Among the river reeds. The short night A broom thrown away On the beach. The short night […]...
17. I Knew A Man By Sight I knew a man by sight, A blameless wight, Who, for a year or more, Had daily passed my door, Yet converse none had had with him. I met him in a lane, Him and his cane, About three miles from home, Where I had chanced to roam, And volumes stared at him, and he […]...
18. Psalm 89 part 6 v.47ff L. M. Mortality and hope. A funeral psalm. Remember, Lord, our mortal state, How frail our life! how short the date! Where is the man that draws his breath Safe from disease, secure from death’? Lord, while we see whole nations die, Our flesh and sense repine and cry, “Must death for ever rage […]...
19. Sanary Her little hot room looked over the bay Through a stiff palisade of glinting palms, And there she would lie in the heat of the day, Her dark head resting upon her arms, So quiet, so still, she did not seem To think, to feel, or even to dream. The shimmering, blinding web of sea […]...
20. Sonnet Not with vain tears, when we’re beyond the sun, We’ll beat on the substantial doors, nor tread Those dusty high-roads of the aimless dead Plaintive for Earth; but rather turn and run Down some close-covered by-way of the air, Some low sweet alley between wind and wind, Stoop under faint gleams, thread the shadows, find […]...
21. Heat O wind, rend open the heat, Cut apart the heat, Rend it to tatters. Fruit cannot drop Through this thick air Fruit cannot fall into heat That presses up and blunts The points of pears And rounds the grapes. Cut the heat Plough through it, Turning it on either side Of your path....
22. Reptiles And Roses So crystal clear it is to me That when I die I cease to be, All else seems sheer stupidity. All promises of Paradise Are wishful thinking, preacher’s lies, Dogmatic dust flung in our eyes. Yea, life’s immortal, swift it flows Alike in reptile and in rose, But as it comes, so too it goes. […]...
23. Sonnet 26: Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit, To thee I send this written embassage To witness duty, not to show my wit- Duty so great, which wit so poor as mine May make seem bare, in wanting words to show it, But that I hope some good […]...
24. Sonnet XXVI Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit, To thee I send this written embassage, To witness duty, not to show my wit: Duty so great, which wit so poor as mine May make seem bare, in wanting words to show it, But that I hope some good […]...
25. Willard Fluke My wife lost her health, And dwindled until she weighed scarce ninety pounds. Then that woman, whom the men Styled Cleopatra, came along. And we we married ones All broke our vows, myself among the rest. Years passed and one by one Death claimed them all in some hideous form, And I was borne along […]...
26. IX. O Poverty! though from thy haggard eye O POVERTY! though from thy haggard eye, Thy cheerless mein, of every charm bereft, Thy brow, that hope’s last traces long have left, Vain Fortune’s feeble sons with terror fly; Thy rugged paths with pleasure I attend; For Fancy, that with fairest dreams can bless; And Patience, in the Pall of Wretchedness, Sad-smiling, as the […]...
27. Fill For Me A Brimming Bowl Fill for me a brimming bowl And in it let me drown my soul: But put therein some drug, designed To Banish Women from my mind: For I want not the stream inspiring That fills the mind with fond desiring, But I want as deep a draught As e’er from Lethe’s wave was quaff’d; From […]...
28. Lines in Praise of Professor Blackie Alas! the people’s hearts are now full of sorrow For the deceased Professor Blackie, of Edinboro’; Because he was a Christian man, affable and kind, And his equal in charitable actions would be hard to find ‘Twas in the year of 1895, March the 2nd, he died at 10 o’clock. Which to his dear wife, […]...
29. Psalm 39 part 2 v.4-7 C. M. The vanity of man as mortal. Teach me the measure of my days, Thou Maker of my frame; I would survey life’s narrow space, And learn how frail I am. A span is all that we can boast, An inch or two of time; Man is but vanity and dust In all […]...
30. To Leonardo “Yes, LAURA, yes, pure as the virgin snow’s “That on the bosom of the whirlwind move,, “For thee my faithful endless passion glows.” – LEONARDO TO LAURA. COLD blows the wind upon the mountain’s brow; In murmuring cadence wave the leafless woods; The feath’ry tribe mope on the frozen bough, And icy fetters hold the […]...
31. Out Back The old year went, and the new returned, in the withering weeks of drought, The cheque was spent that the shearer earned, And the sheds were all cut out; The publican’s words were short and few, And the publican’s looks were black And the time had come, as the shearer knew, to carry his swag […]...
32. To Age Welcome, old friend! These many years Have we lived door by door; The fates have laid aside their shears Perhaps for some few more. I was indocile at an age When better boys were taught, But thou at length hast made me sage, If I am sage in aught. Little I know from other men, […]...
33. Ardelia to Melancholy At last, my old inveterate foe, No opposition shalt thou know. Since I by struggling, can obtain Nothing, but encrease of pain, I will att last, no more do soe, Tho’ I confesse, I have apply’d Sweet mirth, and musick, and have try’d A thousand other arts beside, To drive thee from my darken’d breast, […]...
34. I did not reach Thee I did not reach Thee But my feet slip nearer every day Three Rivers and a Hill to cross One Desert and a Sea I shall not count the journey one When I am telling thee. Two deserts, but the Year is cold So that will help the sand One desert crossed The second one […]...
35. Wishes To His (Supposed) Mistress Whoe’er she be, That not impossible she That shall command my heart and me; Where’er she lie, Locked up from mortal eye In shady leaves of destiny: Till that ripe birth Of studied fate stand forth, And teach her fair steps to our earth; Till that divine Idea take a shrine Of crystal flesh, through […]...
36. Accomplished Facts EVERY year Emily Dickinson sent one friend The first arbutus bud in her garden. In a last will and testament Andrew Jackson Remembered a friend with the gift of George Washington’s pocket spy-glass. Napoleon too, in a last testament, mentioned a silver Watch taken from the bedroom of Frederick the Great, And passed along this […]...
37. The Gardener XX: Day After Day He Comes Day after day he comes and goes Away. Go, and give him a flower from my Hair, my friend. If he asks who was it that sent it, I Entreat you do not tell him my name For he only comes and goes away. He sits on the dust under the tree. Spread there a […]...
38. Admire their style I’m reading fellow poets’ blogs today, A sustaining source of entertainment; I admire their style without exciting comment Or resorting to an unkind eye, simple though It is to sigh about uneasy affirmation. I hope when they read me (if they ever do) They rest as easy on my lack of finished form, The hazy, […]...
39. The Dark House Where a faint light shines alone, Dwells a Demon I have known. Most of you had better say “The Dark House,” and go your way. Do not wonder if I stay. For I know the Demon’s eyes And their lure that never dies. Banish all your fond alarms, For I know the foiling charms Of […]...
40. To An Old Mate Old Mate! In the gusty old weather, When our hopes and our troubles were new, In the years spent in wearing out leather, I found you unselfish and true I have gathered these verses together For the sake of our friendship and you. You may think for awhile, and with reason, Though still with a […]...