The Womb

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1. Divine Device Would it be loss or gain To hapless human-kind If we could feel no pain Of body or of mind? Would it be for our good If we were calloused so, And God in mercy should End all our woe? I wonder and I doubt: It is my bright belief We should be poor without […]...
2. In the Womb STILL rests the heavy share on the dark soil: Upon the black mould thick the dew-damp lies: The horse waits patient: from his lowly toil The ploughboy to the morning lifts his eyes. The unbudding hedgerows dark against day’s fires Glitter with gold-lit crystals: on the rim Over the unregarding city’s spires The lonely beauty […]...
3. Warsaw I was in Warsaw when the first bomb fell; I was in Warsaw when the Terror came – Havoc and horror, famine, fear and flame, Blasting from loveliness a living hell. Barring the station towered a sentinel; Trainward I battled, blind escape my aim. ENGLAND! I cried. He kindled at the name: With lion-leap he […]...
4. Farewell, Ungrateful Traitor! Farewell, ungrateful traitor! Farewell, my perjur’d swain! Let never injur’d woman Believe a man again. The pleasure of possessing Surpasses all expressing, But ’tis too short a blessing, And love too long a pain. ‘Tis easy to deceive us In pity of your pain, But when we love, you leave us To rail at you […]...
5. REVERSIBILITY ANGEL of gaiety, have you tasted grief? Shame and remorse and sobs and weary spite, And the vague terrors of the fearful night That crush the heart up like a crumpled leaf? Angel of gaiety, have you tasted grief? Angel of kindness, have you tasted hate? With hands clenched in the shade and tears of […]...
6. To Clementina Black More blest than was of old Diogenes, I have not held my lantern up in vain. Not mine, at least, this evil to complain: “There is none honest among all of these.” Our hopes go down that sailed before the breeze; Our creeds upon the rock are rent in twain; Something it is, if at […]...
7. Hymn 113 Abraham’s blessing on the Gentiles. Gen. 17:7; Rom. 15:8; Mk 10:14. How large the promise, how divine, To Abram and his seed! “I’ll be a God to thee and thine, Supplying all their need.” The words of his extensive love From age to age endure; The Angel of the cov’nant proves, And seals the blessing […]...
8. Song From An Evening's Love After the pangs of a desperate lover, When day and night I have sighed all in vain, Ah, what a pleasure it is to discover In her eyes pity, who causes my pain! When with unkindness our love at a stand is, And both have punished ourselves with the pain, Ah, what a pleasure the […]...
9. Resolutions Each New Year’s Eve I used to brood On my misdoings of the past, And vowed: “This year I’ll be so good – Well, haply better than the last.” My record of reforms I read To Mum who listened sweetly to it: “Why plan all this, my son?” she said; “Just do it.” Of her […]...
10. Examination at the Womb-Door Who owns those scrawny little feet? Death. Who owns this bristly scorched-looking face? Death. Who owns these still-working lungs? Death. Who owns this utility coat of muscles? Death. Who owns these unspeakable guts? Death. Who owns these questionable brains? Death. All this messy blood? Death. These minimum-efficiency eyes? Death. This wicked little tongue? Death. This […]...
11. Vain Venture To have a business of my own With toil and tears, I wore my fingers to the bone For weary years. With stoic heart, for sordid gold In patient pain My life and liberty I sold For others gain. I scrimped and scraped, as cent by cent My savings grew; I found a faded shop […]...
12. Sonnet CXLIV Two loves I have of comfort and despair, Which like two spirits do suggest me still: The better angel is a man right fair, The worser spirit a woman colour’d ill. To win me soon to hell, my female evil Tempteth my better angel from my side, And would corrupt my saint to be a […]...
13. Sonnet 144: Two loves I have, of comfort and despair Two loves I have, of comfort and despair, Which like two spirits do suggest me still: The better angel is a man right fair, The worser spirit a woman coloured ill. To win me soon to hell, my female evil Tempteth my better angel from my side, And would corrupt my saint to be a […]...
14. Prometheus Titan! to whose immortal eyes The sufferings of mortality, Seen in their sad reality, Were not as things that gods despise; What was thy pity’s recompense? A silent suffering, and intense; The rock, the vulture, and the chain, All that the proud can feel of pain, The agony they do not show, The suffocating sense […]...
15. In Age And art thou he, now “fallen on evil days,” And changed indeed! Yet what do this sunk cheek, These thinner locks, and that calm forehead speak! A spirit reckless of man’s blame or praise, A spirit, when thine eyes to the noon’s blaze Their dark orbs roll in vain, in suffering meek, As in the […]...
16. Birth-Dues Joy is a trick in the air; pleasure is merely contemptible, the dangled Carrot the ass follows to market or precipice; But limitary pain the rock under the tower and the hewn coping That takes thunder at the head of the turret- Terrible and real. Therefore a mindless dervish carving himself With knives will seem […]...
17. To know just how He suffered would be dear To know just how He suffered would be dear To know if any Human eyes were near To whom He could entrust His wavering gaze Until it settle broad on Paradise To know if He was patient part content Was Dying as He thought or different Was it a pleasant Day to die And did […]...
18. The Ever-Patient Woman In the flowing sap In her growing fever Parting her veils Cracking out of her shells Sliding out of her skins The ever-patient woman Slowly Gives herself Life In her volcanoes In her orchards Seeking solidity and measure Clasping her most tender flesh Straining every fine-honed fiber The ever-patient woman Slowly Gives herself Light....
19. My Guardian Angel When looking back I dimly see The trails my feet have trod, Some hand divine, it seems to me, Has pulled the strings with God; Some angel form has lifeward leaned When hope for me was past; Some love sublime has intervened To save me at the last. For look you! I was born a […]...
20. I measure every Grief I meet I measure every Grief I meet With narrow, probing, Eyes I wonder if It weighs like Mine Or has an Easier size. I wonder if They bore it long Or did it just begin I could not tell the Date of Mine It feels so old a pain I wonder if it hurts to live […]...
21. Ignorance Oh happy he who cannot see With scientific eyes; Who does not know how flowers grow, And is not planet wise; Content to find with simple mind Joys as they are: To whom a rose is just a rose, A star a star. It is not good, I deem, to brood On things beyond our […]...
22. Nocturne Night comes, an angel stands Measuring out the time of stars, Still are the winds, and still the hours. It would be peace to lie Still in the still hours at the angel’s feet, Upon a star hung in a starry sky, But hearts another measure beat. Each body, wingless as it lies, Sends out […]...
23. Limitless There is nothing, I hold, in the way of work That a human being may not achieve If he does not falter, or shrink, or shirk, And more than all, if he will believe. Believe in himself and the power behind That stands like an aid on a dual ground, With hope for the spirit […]...
24. Dark Trinity Said I to Pain: “You would not dare Do ill to me.” Said Pain: “Poor fool! Why should I care Whom you may be? To clown and king alike I bring My meed of bane; Why should you shirk my chastening?” Said Pain. Said I to Grief: “No tears have I, Go on your way.” […]...
25. Immortality Full well I trow that when I die Down drops the curtain; Another show is all my eye And Betty Martin. I know the score, and with a smile Of rueful rating, I reckon I am not worth while Perpetuating. I hope that God, if God there be Of love and glory, Will let me […]...
26. Patience Be patient with you? When the stooping sky Leans down upon the hills And tenderly, as one who soothing stills An anguish, gathers earth to lie Embraced and girdled. Do the sun-filled men Feel patience then? Be patient with you? When the snow-girt earth Cracks to let through a spurt Of sudden green, and from […]...
27. The Damned My days are haunted by the thought Of men in coils of Justice caught With stone and steel, in chain and cell, Of men condemned to living hell, Yet blame them not. In my sun-joy their dark I see: For what they are and had to be Blame Nature, red in tooth and claw, Blame […]...
28. Intolerance I have no brief for gambling, nay The notion I express That money earned ‘s the only way To pay for happiness. With cards and dice I do not hold; By betting I’ve been bit: Conclusion: to get honest gold You’ve got to sweat for it. Though there be evil in strong drink It’s brought […]...
29. My Dearest Frank, I Wish You Joy My dearest Frank, I wish you joy Of Mary’s safety with a Boy, Whose birth has given little pain Compared with that of Mary Jane. May he a growing Blessing prove, And well deserve his Parents’ Love! Endow’d with Art’s and Nature’s Good, Thy Name possessing with thy Blood, In him, in all his ways, […]...
30. ANSWERS IN A GAME OF QUESTIONS THE LADY. IN the small and great world too, What most charms a woman’s heart? It is doubtless what is new, For its blossoms joy impart; Nobler far is what is true, For fresh blossoms it can shoot Even in the time of fruit. THE YOUNG GENTLEMAN. With the Nymphs in wood and cave Paris […]...
31. Power of Love Love, indeed thy strength is mighty Thus, alone, such strife to bear Three ‘gainst one, and never ceasing Death, and Madness, and Despair! ‘Tis not my own strength has saved me; Health, and hope, and fortitude, But for love, had long since failed me; Heart and soul had sunk subdued. Often, in my wild impatience, […]...
32. Troilus And Cressida Can life be a blessing, Or worth the possessing, Can life be a blessing if love were away? Ah no! though our love all night keep us waking, And though he torment us with cares all the day, Yet he sweetens, he sweetens our pains in the taking, There’s an hour at the last, there’s […]...
33. To the Memory of Mrs. Lefroy who died Dec:r 16 my Birthday The day returns again, my natal day; What mix’d emotions with the Thought arise! Beloved friend, four years have pass’d away Since thou wert snatch’d forever from our eyes. The day, commemorative of my birth Bestowing Life and Light and Hope on me, Brings back the hour which was thy last on Earth. Oh! bitter […]...
34. Detachment As I go forth from fair to mart With racket ringing, Who would divine that in my heart Mad larks are singing. As I sweet sympathy express, Lest I should pain them, The money-mongers cannot guess How I disdain them. As I sit at some silly tea And flirt and flatter How I abhor society […]...
35. End Of The World When I was young in school in Switzerland, about the time of the Boer War, We used to take it for known that the human race Would last the earth out, not dying till the planet died. I wrote a schoolboy poem About the last man walking in stoic dignity along the dead shore Of […]...
36. Christ of Everywhere “Christ of the Andes,” Christ of Everywhere, Great lover of the hills, the open air, And patient lover of impatient men Who blindly strive and sin and strive again, Thou Living Word, larger than any creed, Thou Love Divine, uttered in human deed, Oh, teach the world, warring and wandering still, Thy way of Peace, […]...
37. The Divine Image To Mercy Pity Peace and Love. All pray in their distress: And to these virtues of delight Return their thankfulness. For Mercy Pity Peace and Love, Is God our Father dear: And Mercy Pity Peace and Love, Is Man his child and care. For Mercy has a human heart Pity, a human face: And Love, […]...
38. St. Peter and the Angel Delivered out of raw continual pain, Smell of darkness, groans of those others To whom he was chained Unchained, and led Past the sleepers, Door after door silently opening Out! And along a long street’s Majestic emptiness under the moon: One hand on the angel’s shoulder, one Feeling the air before him, Eyes open but […]...
39. Dream Song 37: Three around the Old Gentleman His malice was a pimple down his good Big face, with its sly eyes. I must be sorry Mr Frost has left: I like it so less I don’t understood— He couldn’t hear or see well—all we sift— But this is a bad story. He had fine stories and was another man In private; difficult, […]...
40. On Being Human Angelic minds, they say, by simple intelligence Behold the Forms of nature. They discern Unerringly the Archtypes, all the verities Which mortals lack or indirectly learn. Transparent in primordial truth, unvarying, Pure Earthness and right Stonehood from their clear, High eminence are seen; unveiled, the seminal Huge Principles appear. The Tree-ness of the tree they […]...