On Going Unnoticed

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1. Leaves Compared With Flowers A tree’s leaves may be ever so good, So may its bar, so may its wood; But unless you put the right thing to its root It never will show much flower or fruit. But I may be one who does not care Ever to have tree bloom or bear. Leaves for smooth and bark […]...
2. Sea Poppies Amber husk Fluted with gold, Fruit on the sand Marked with a rich grain, Treasure Spilled near the shrub-pines To bleach on the boulders: Your stalk has caught root Among wet pebbles And drift flung by the sea And grated shells And split conch-shells. Beautiful, wide-spread, Fire upon leaf, What meadow yields So fragrant a […]...
3. Trickle, Drops TRICKLE, drops! my blue veins leaving! O drops of me! trickle, slow drops, Candid, from me falling-drip, bleeding drops, From wounds made to free you whence you were prison’d, From my face-from my forehead and lips, From my breast-from within where I was conceal’d-press forth, red drops-confession drops; Stain every page-stain every song I sing, […]...
4. The Leaf And The Tree When will you learn, myself, to be A dying leaf on a living tree? Budding, swelling, growing strong, Wearing green, but not for long, Drawing sustenance from air, That other leaves, and you not there, May bud, and at the autumn’s call Wearing russet, ready to fall? Has not this trunk a deed to do […]...
5. On Retirement A HERMIT’S house beside a stream With forests planted round, Whatever it to you may seem More real happiness I deem Than if I were a monarch crowned. A cottage I could call my own Remote from domes of care; A little garden, walled with stone, The wall with ivy overgrown, A limpid fountain near, […]...
6. The Mountains grow unnoticed The Mountains grow unnoticed Their Purple figures rise Without attempt Exhaustion Assistance or Applause In Their Eternal Faces The Sun with just delight Looks long and last and golden For fellowship at night...
7. Nothing Gold Can Stay Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf’s a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay....
8. Nevertheless you’ve seen a strawberry That’s had a struggle; yet Was, where the fragments met, A hedgehog or a star- Fish for the multitude Of seeds. What better food Than apple seeds – the fruit Within the fruit – locked in Like counter-curved twin Hazelnuts? Frost that kills The little rubber-plant – Leaves of kok-sagyyz-stalks, can’t […]...
9. Aunt Leaf Needing one, I invented her – The great-great-aunt dark as hickory Called Shining-Leaf, or Drifting-Cloud Or The-Beauty-of-the-Night. Dear aunt, I’d call into the leaves, And she’d rise up, like an old log in a pool, And whisper in a language only the two of us knew The word that meant follow, And we’d travel Cheerful […]...
10. Good Friday O my chief good, How shall I measure out thy blood? How shall I count what thee befell, And each grief tell? Shall I thy woes Number according to thy foes? Or, since one star show’d thy first breath, Shall all thy death? Or shall each leaf, Which falls in Autumn, score a grief? Or […]...
11. A Seed See how a Seed, which Autumn flung down, And through the Winter neglected lay, Uncoils two little green leaves and two brown, With tiny root taking hold on the clay As, lifting and strengthening day by day, It pushes red branchless, sprouts new leaves, And cell after cell the Power in it weaves Out of […]...
12. Love's Gleaning Tide Draw not away thy hands, my love, With wind alone the branches move, And though the leaves be scant above The Autumn shall not shame us. Say; Let the world wax cold and drear, What is the worst of all the year But life, and what can hurt us, dear, Or death, and who shall […]...
13. The Room Through that window-all else being extinct Except itself and me-I saw the struggle Of darkness against darkness. Within the room It turned and turned, dived downward. Then I saw How order might-if chaos wished-become: And saw the darkness crush upon itself, Contracting powerfully; it was as if It killed itself, slowly: and with much pain. […]...
14. Beloved, Let Us Once More Praise The Rain Beloved, let us once more praise the rain. Let us discover some new alphabet, For this, the often praised; and be ourselves, The rain, the chickweed, and the burdock leaf, The green-white privet flower, the spotted stone, And all that welcomes the rain; the sparrow too,- Who watches with a hard eye from seclusion, Beneath […]...
15. In spring and summer winds may blow In spring and summer winds may blow, And rains fall after, hard and fast; The tender leaves, if beaten low, Shine but the more for shower and blast But when their fated hour arrives, When reapers long have left the field, When maidens rifle turn’d-up hives, And their last juice fresh apples yield, A leaf […]...
16. The Tyger Tyger Tyger. burning bright, In the forests of the night; What immortal hand or eye. Could frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies. Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand, dare seize the fire? And what shoulder, & what art, Could twist the sinews […]...
17. Learning the Trees Before you can learn the trees, you have to learn The language of the trees. That’s done indoors, Out of a book, which now you think of it Is one of the transformations of a tree. The words themselves are a delight to learn, You might be in a foreign land of terms Like samara, […]...
18. Cacoethes Scribendi If all the trees in all the woods were men; And each and every blade of grass a pen; If every leaf on every shrub and tree Turned to a sheet of foolscap; every sea Were changed to ink, and all earth’s living tribes Had nothing else to do but act as scribes, And for […]...
19. Misgiving All crying, ‘We will go with you, O Wind!’ The foliage follow him, leaf and stem; But a sleep oppresses them as they go, And they end by bidding them as they go, And they end by bidding him stay with them. Since ever they flung abroad in spring The leaves had promised themselves this […]...
20. Twinkletoes When the sun Shines through the leaves of the apple-tree, When the sun Makes shadows of the leaves of the apple-tree, Then I pass On the grass From one leaf to another, From one leaf to its brother, Tip-toe, tip-toe! Here I go!...
21. The Donkey When forests walked and fishes flew And figs grew upon thorn, Some moment when the moon was blood, Then, surely, I was born. With monstrous head and sickening bray And ears like errant wings – The devil’s walking parody Of all four-footed things: The battered outlaw of the earth Of ancient crooked will; Scourge, beat, […]...
22. Send Me A Leaf Send me a leaf, but from a bush That grows at least one half hour Away from your house, then You must go and will be strong, and I Thank you for the pretty leaf....
23. Canis Major The great Overdog That heavenly beast With a star in one eye Gives a leap in the east. He dances upright All the way to the west And never once drops On his forefeet to rest. I’m a poor underdog, But to-night I will bark With the great Overdog That romps through the dark....
24. 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 […]...
25. The Coming Of Wisdom With Time Though leaves are many, the root is one; Through all the lying days of my youth I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun; Now I may wither into the truth....
26. Encounter Those who have touched it or been touched by it Or brushed by something that the vine has brushed, Or burning it, have stood where the sly smoke Has touched them-Know the meaning of its name. The leaf is smooth. Its green is innocence. A clean, unblemished leaf, glossy when young. A leaf the unobserving […]...
27. Midnight Mass for the Dying Year Yes, the Year is growing old, And his eye is pale and bleared! Death, with frosty hand and cold, Plucks the old man by the beard, Sorely, sorely! The leaves are falling, falling, Solemnly and slow; Caw! caw! the rooks are calling, It is a sound of woe, A sound of woe! Through woods and […]...
28. The Weakest Thing Which is the weakest thing of all Mine heart can ponder? The sun, a little cloud can pall With darkness yonder? The cloud, a little wind can move Where’er it listeth? The wind, a little leaf above, Though sere, resisteth? What time that yellow leaf was green, My days were gladder; But now, whatever Spring […]...
29. St. Senanus and the Lady St. Senanus “On! haste, and leave this sacred isle, Unholy bark, ere morning smile; For on thy deck, though dark it be, A female form I see; And I have sworn this sainted sod Shall ne’er by woman’s feet by trod!” The Lady “Oh! Father, send not hence my bark Through wintry winds and billows […]...
30. Written near a Port on a Dark Evening Huge vapours brood above the clifted shore, Night on the ocean settles dark and mute, Save where is heard the repercussive roar Of drowsy billows on the rugged foot Of rocks remote; or still more distant tone Of seamen in the anchored bark that tell The watch relieved; or one deep voice alone Singing the […]...
31. Huge Vapours Brood Above the Clifted Shore Huge vapours brood above the clifted shore, Night o’er the ocean settles, dark and mute, Save where is heard the repercussive roar Of drowsy billows, on the rugged foot Of rocks remote; or still more distant tone Of seamen, in the anchored bark, that tell The watch relieved; or one deep voice alone, Singing the […]...
32. Sandpipers Sandland where the salt water kills the sweet potatoes. Homes for sandpipers-the script of their feet is on the sea shingles-they write in the morning, it is gone at noon-they write at noon, it is gone at night. Pity the land, the sea, the ten mile flats, pity anything but the sandpiper’s wire legs and […]...
33. 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, […]...
34. Oh, the Shamrock Through Erin’s Isle To sport awhile As Love and Valour wander’d, With Wit, the sprite, Whose quiver bright A thousand arrows squander’d; Where’er they pass, A triple grass Shoots up, with dew-drops streaming, As softly green As emeralds seen Through purest crystal gleaming. Oh the Shamrock, the green, immortal Shamrock! Chosen leaf Of Bard and […]...
35. Sonnet LXXX O, how I faint when I of you do write, Knowing a better spirit doth use your name, And in the praise thereof spends all his might, To make me tongue-tied, speaking of your fame! But since your worth, wide as the ocean is, The humble as the proudest sail doth bear, My saucy bark […]...
36. These Green-Going-to-Yellow This year, I’m raising the emotional ante, Putting my face In the leaves to be stepped on, Seeing myself among them, that is; That is, likening Leaf-vein to artery, leaf to flesh, The passage of a leaf in autumn To the passage of autumn, Branch-tip and winter spaces To possibilities, and possibility To God. Even […]...
37. Sonnet 80: O, how I faint when I of you do write O, how I faint when I of you do write, Knowing a better spirit doth use your name, And in the praise thereof spends all his might To make me tongue-tied speaking of your fame. But since your worth, wide as the ocean is, The humble as the proudest sail doth bear, My saucy bark, […]...
38. Chorus from Atalanta in Calydon When the hounds of spring are on winter’s traces, The mother of months in meadow or plain Fills the shadows and windy places With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain; And the brown bright nigthingale amorous Is half assuaged for Itylus, For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces, The […]...
39. Hymn To Life The hair falling on your forehead suddenly lifted. Suddenly something stirred on the ground. The trees are whispering in the dark. Your bare arms will be cold. Far off where we can’t see, the moon must be rising. It hasn’t reached us yet, slipping through the leaves to light up your shoulder. But I know […]...
40. A Winter Eden A winter garden in an alder swamp, Where conies now come out to sun and romp, As near a paradise as it can be And not melt snow or start a dormant tree. It lifts existence on a plane of snow One level higher than the earth below, One level nearer heaven overhead, And last […]...