The Innocence

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1. Innocence The height of wisdom seems to me That of a child; So let my ageing vision be Serene and mild. The depth of folly, I aver, Is to fish deep In that dark pool of science where Truth-demons sleep. Let me not be a bearded sage Seeing too clear; In issues of the atom age […]...
2. Reeds of Innocence Piping down the valleys wild, Piping songs of pleasant glee, On a cloud I saw a child, And he laughing said to me: ‘Pipe a song about a Lamb!’ So I piped with merry cheer. ‘Piper, pipe that song again;’ So I piped: he wept to hear. ‘Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe; Sing thy […]...
3. Introduction to the Songs of Innocence Piping down the valleys wild, Piping songs of pleasant glee, On a cloud I saw a child, And he laughing said to me: ‘Pipe a song about a Lamb!’ So I piped with merry cheer. ‘Piper, pipe that song again;’ So I piped: he wept to hear. ‘Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe; Sing thy […]...
4. Songs Of Innocence: Introduction Piping down the valleys wild Piping songs of pleasant glee On a cloud I saw a child. And he laughing said to me. Pipe a song about a Lamb: So I piped with merry chear, Piper, pipe that song again So I piped, he wept to hear. Drop thy pipe thy happy pipe Sing thy […]...
5. The Chimney Sweeper (Innocence) When my mother died I was very young, And my father sold me while yet my tongue, Could scarcely cry weep weep weep weep, So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep. Theres little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head That curled like a lambs back was shav’d, so I said. Hush […]...
6. 16-bit Intel 8088 chip with an Apple Macintosh You can’t run Radio Shack programs In its disc drive. Nor can a Commodore 64 Drive read a file You have created on an IBM Personal Computer. Both Kaypro and Osborne computers use The CP/M operating system But can’t read each other’s Handwriting For they format (write On) discs in different […]...
7. Auguries Of Innocence To see a world in a grain of sand And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand And eternity in an hour. A robin redbreast in a cage Puts all heaven in a rage. A dove-house filled with doves and pigeons Shudders hell through all its regions. A […]...
8. Holy Thursday (Innocence) Twas on a Holy Thursday their innocent faces clean The children walking two & two in red & blue & green Grey headed beadles walked before with wands as white as snow Till into the high dome of Pauls they like Thames waters flow O what a multitude they seemed these flowers of London town […]...
9. Nurse's Song (Innocence) When voices of children are heard on the green And laughing is heard on the hill, My heart is at rest within my breast And everything else is still Then come home my children the sun is gone down And the dews of night arise Come come leave off play, and let us away Till […]...
10. The Man Rock A man is a rock in a garden of chairs and waits For a longtime to be over. It is easier for a rock in a garden than a man Inside his mother. He decided to be a rock when He got outside. A rock asks only what is a rock. A rock waits to […]...
11. Their Height in Heaven comforts not Their Height in Heaven comforts not Their Glory nought to me ‘Twas best imperfect as it was I’m finite I can’t see The House of Supposition The Glimmering Frontier that Skirts the Acres of Perhaps To Me shows insecure The Wealth I had contented me If ’twas a meaner size Then I had counted it […]...
12. Last Answers I wrote a poem on the mist And a woman asked me what I meant by it. I had thought till then only of the beauty of the mist, how pearl and gray of it mix and reel, And change the drab shanties with lighted lamps at evening into points of mystery quivering with color. […]...
13. Runner, The ON a flat road runs the well-train’d runner; He is lean and sinewy, with muscular legs; He is thinly clothed-he leans forward as he runs, With lightly closed fists, and arms partially rais’d....
14. Sonnet LXVI: The Night-Flood Rakes The night-flood rakes upon the stony shore; Along the rugged cliffs and chalky caves Mourns the hoarse Ocean, seeming to deplore All that are buried in his restless waves- Mined by corrosive tides, the hollow rock Falls prone, and rushing from its turfy height, Shakes the broad beach with long-resounding shock, Loud thundering on the […]...
15. The First Dream The Wind is ghosting around the house tonight And as I lean against the door of sleep I begin to think about the first person to dream, How quiet he must have seemed the next morning As the others stood around the fire Draped in the skins of animals Talking to each other only in […]...
16. Mist In The Valley These hills, to hurt me more, That am hurt already enough,- Having left the sea behind, Having turned suddenly and left the shore That I had loved beyond all words, even a song’s words, to Convey, And built me a house on upland acres, Sweet with the pinxter, bright and rough With the rusty blackbird […]...
17. The Wicked Postman Why do you sit there on the floor so quiet and silent, tell me, Mother dear? The rain is coming in through the open window, making you all Wet, and you don’t mind it. Do you hear the gong striking four? It is time for my brother To come home from school. What has happened […]...
18. BOIREANN They are both old Boireann and her She wants to remain in the car Hunched Regarding the other Through the smear of a window The intrusion of a wing mirror mars A romance of meddled limestone A partial view Yet she is content Because she sees Even when these days Rooks overhead look crimson One […]...
19. Unlyric Love Song It is time to give that-of-myself which I could not at first: To offer you now at last my least and my worst: Minor, absurd preserves, The shell’s end-curves, A document kept at the back of a drawer, A tin hidden under the floor, Recalcitrant prides and hesitations: To pile them carefully in a desparate […]...
20. Olmecs rule The news is out, down Veracruz they found the evidence, Olmecs had the written word 400 years before Sumerians. A Chinese claim predates all that, but let it rest. Examine what it means to Mesoamericans! Okay, you Spanish thinking converts to the English tongue, Reflect a while, your reaching back predates the sum Of everything […]...
21. A Song I had wanted a quiet testament And I had wanted, among other things, A song. That was to be Of a like monotony. (A grace Simply. Very very quiet. A murmur of some lost Thrush, though I have never seen one. Which was you then. Sitting And so, at peace, so very much now this […]...
22. Mist Forms THE SHEETS of night mist travel a long valley. I know why you came at sundown in a scarf mist. What was it we touched asking nothing and asking all? How many times can death come and pay back what we saw? In the oath of the sod, the lips that swore, In the oath […]...
23. Elementalist Could Fate ordain a lot for me Beyond all human ills, I think that I would choose to be A shephard of the hills; With shaggy cloak and cape where skies Eternally are blue How I would stare with quiet eyes At passing you! And you would stare at static me, Beside my patient flock; […]...
24. A Week Later A week later, I said to a friend: I don’t Think I could ever write about it. Maybe in a year I could write something. There is something in me maybe someday To be written; now it is folded, and folded, And folded, like a note in school. And in my dream Someone was playing […]...
25. 1914 IV: The Dead These hearts were woven of human joys and cares, Washed marvellously with sorrow, swift to mirth. The years had given them kindness. Dawn was theirs, And sunset, and the colours of the earth. These had seen movement, and heard music; known Slumber and waking; loved; gone proudly friended; Felt the quick stir of wonder; sat […]...
26. The Laughter Of Women The laughter of women sets fire To the Halls of Injustice And the false evidence burns To a beautiful white lightness It rattles the Chambers of Congress And forces the windows wide open So the fatuous speeches can fly out The laughter of women wipes the mist From the spectacles of the old; It infects […]...
27. The Red Blaze is the Morning The Red Blaze is the Morning The Violet is Noon The Yellow Day is falling And after that is none But Miles of Sparks at Evening Reveal the Width that burned The Territory Argent that Never yet consumed...
28. To His Two Children In the land of Wu the mulberry leaves are green, And thrice the silkworms have gone to sleep. In East Luh where my family stay, I wonder who is sowing those fields of ours. I cannot be back in time for the spring doings, Yet I can help nothing, traveling on the river. The south […]...
29. At leisure is the Soul At leisure is the Soul That gets a Staggering Blow The Width of Life before it spreads Without a thing to do It begs you give it Work But just the placing Pins Or humblest Patchwork Children do To Help its Vacant Hands...
30. Nothing To Be Said For nations vague as weed, For nomads among stones, Small-statured cross-faced tribes And cobble-close families In mill-towns on dark mornings Life is slow dying. So are their separate ways Of building, benediction, Measuring love and money Ways of slow dying. The day spent hunting pig Or holding a garden-party, Hours giving evidence Or birth, advance […]...
31. How many schemes may die How many schemes may die In one short Afternoon Entirely unknown To those they most concern The man that was not lost Because by accident He varied by a Ribbon’s width From his accustomed route The Love that would not try Because beside the Door It must be competitions Some unsuspecting Horse was tied Surveying […]...
32. Matins You want to know how I spend my time? I walk the front lawn, pretending To be weeding. You ought to know I’m never weeding, on my knees, pulling Clumps of clover from the flower beds: in fact I’m looking for courage, for some evidence My life will change, though It takes forever, checking Each […]...
33. Somewhere upon the general Earth Somewhere upon the general Earth Itself exist Today The Magic passive but extant That consecrated me Indifferent Seasons doubtless play Where I for right to be Would pay each Atom that I am But Immortality Reserving that but just to prove Another Date of Thee Oh God of Width, do not for us Curtail Eternity!...
34. Take Back the Virgin Page Written on Returning a Blank Book Take back the virgin page, White and unwritten still; Some hand, more calm and sage, The leaf must fill. Thoughts come, as pure as light Pure as even you require; But, oh! each word I write Love turns to fire. Yet let me keep the book: Oft shall my […]...
35. Budapest Museum of Fine Arts a Memo from the Past This is to compliment those Who have made us petrified And conjured up evidence of our sufferings Into what they call a tourist’s attraction...
36. No Man can compass a Despair No Man can compass a Despair As round a Goalless Road No faster than a Mile at once The Traveller proceed Unconscious of the Width Unconscious that the Sun Be setting on His progress So accurate the One At estimating Pain Whose own has just begun His ignorance the Angel That pilot Him along...
37. Daybreak In Alabama When I get to be a composer I’m gonna write me some music about Daybreak in Alabama And I’m gonna put the purtiest songs in it Rising out of the ground like a swamp mist And falling out of heaven like soft dew. I’m gonna put some tall tall trees in it And the scent […]...
38. The Argument Of His Book I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers, Of April, May, of June, and July-flowers. I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes, Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal-cakes. I write of youth, of love, and have access By these to sing of cleanly wantonness. I sing of dews, of rains, and piece by […]...
39. It Is March It is March and black dust falls out of the books Soon I will be gone The tall spirit who lodged here has Left already On the avenues the colorless thread lies under Old prices When you look back there is always the past Even when it has vanished But when you look forward With […]...
40. May 24, 1980 I have braved, for want of wild beasts, steel cages, Carved my term and nickname on bunks and rafters, Lived by the sea, flashed aces in an oasis, Dined with the-devil-knows-whom, in tails, on truffles. From the height of a glacier I beheld half a world, the earthly width. Twice have drowned, thrice let knives […]...