The Machine
The little biplane that has the river-meadow for landing-field And carries passengers brief rides, Buzzed overhead on the tender blue above the orange of sundown. Below it five troubled night-herons Turned short over the
The Eye
The Atlantic is a stormy moat; and the Mediterranean, The blue pool in the old garden, More than five thousand years has drunk sacrifice Of ships and blood, and shines in the sun; but
Let Them Alone
If God has been good enough to give you a poet Then listen to him. But for God’s sake let him alone until he is dead; No prizes, no ceremony, They kill the man.
The Silent Shepherds
What’s the best life for a man? Never to have been born, sings the choros, and the next best Is to die young. I saw the Sybil at Cumae Hung in her cage over
The Bed By The Window
I chose the bed downstairs by the sea-window for a good death-bed When we built the house, it is ready waiting, Unused unless by some guest in a twelvemonth, who hardly suspects Its latter
The Epic Stars
The heroic stars spending themselves, Coining their very flesh into bullets for the lost battle, They must burn out at length like used candles; And Mother Night will weep in her triumph, taking home
Love The Wild Swan
“I hate my verses, every line, every word. Oh pale and brittle pencils ever to try One grass-blade’s curve, or the throat of one bird That clings to twig, ruffled against white sky. Oh
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
The Stars Go Over The Lonely Ocean
Unhappy about some far off things That are not my affair, wandering Along the coast and up the lean ridges, I saw in the evening The stars go over the lonely ocean, And a
Ghost
There is a jaggle of masonry here, on a small hill Above the gray-mouthed Pacific, cottages and a thick-walled tower, all made of rough sea rock And Portland cement. I imagine, fifty years from
Fawn's Foster-Mother
The old woman sits on a bench before the door and quarrels With her meagre pale demoralized daughter. Once when I passed I found her alone, laughing in the sun And saying that when
Bixby's Landing
They burned lime on the hill and dropped it down here in an iron car On a long cable; here the ships warped in And took their loads from the engine, the water is
Sign-Post
Civilized, crying: how to be human again; this will tell you how. Turn outward, love things, not men, turn right away from humanity, Let that doll lie. Consider if you like how the lilies