Away, Melancholy

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1. Melancholy HENCE, all you vain delights, As short as are the nights Wherein you spend your folly! There ‘s naught in this life sweet, If men were wise to see’t, But only melancholy O sweetest melancholy! Welcome, folded arms and fixed eyes, A sight that piercing mortifies, A look that ‘s fasten’d to the ground, A […]...
2. Ode On Melancholy No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist Wolf’s-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine; Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss’d By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine; Make not your rosary of yew-berries, Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl A partner in your sorrow’s mysteries; […]...
3. Soldier, Soldier “Soldier, soldier come from the wars, Why don’t you march with my true love?” “We’re fresh from off the ship an’ ‘e’s maybe give the slip, An’ you’d best go look for a new love.” New love! True love! Best go look for a new love, The dead they cannot rise, an’ you’d better dry […]...
4. The Pleasures of Melancholy Mother of musings, Contemplation sage, Whose grotto stands upon the topmost rock Of Teneriffe; ‘mid the tempestuous night, On which, in calmest meditation held, Thou hear’st with howling winds the beating rain And drifting hail descend; or if the skies Unclouded shine, and through the blue serene Pale Cynthia rolls her silver-axled car, Whence gazing […]...
5. Ode to Melancholy SORC’RESS of the Cave profound! Hence, with thy pale, and meagre train, Nor dare my roseate bow’r profane, Where light-heel’d mirth despotic reigns, Slightly bound in feath’ry chains, And scatt’ring blisses round. Hence, to thy native Chaos­where Nurs’d by thy haggard Dam, DESPAIR, Shackled by thy numbing spell, Mis’ry’s pallid children dwell; Where, brooding o’er […]...
6. Melancholy To Laura Laura! a sunrise seems to break Where’er thy happy looks may glow. Joy sheds its roses o’er thy cheek, Thy tears themselves do but bespeak The rapture whence they flow; Blest youth to whom those tears are given The tears that change his earth to heaven; His best reward those melting eyes For him new […]...
7. 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 […]...
8. Having it Out with Melancholy 1FROM THE NURSERY When I was born, you waited Behind a pile of linen in the nursery, And when we were alone, you lay down On top of me, pressing The bile of desolation into every pore. And from that day on Everything under the sun and moon Made me sad even the yellow Wooden […]...
9. 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, […]...
10. Wars IN the old wars drum of hoofs and the beat of shod feet. In the new wars hum of motors and the tread of rubber tires. In the wars to come silent wheels and whirr of rods not Yet dreamed out in the heads of men. In the old wars clutches of short swords and […]...
11. Alone In The Woods Alone in the woods I felt The bitter hostility of the sky and the trees Nature has taught her creatures to hate Man that fusses and fumes Unquiet man As the sap rises in the trees As the sap paints the trees a violent green So rises the wrath of Nature’s creatures At man So […]...
12. Sestina I have come, alas, to the great circle of shadow, To the short day and to the whitening hills, When the colour is all lost from the grass, Though my desire will not lose its green, So rooted is it in this hardest stone, That speaks and feels as though it were a woman. And […]...
13. THE LAST DAY OF ANOTHER HOME HOLIDAY I sat on a low stone wall Watching the blue blood of the azaleas Spatter on Haworth’s cobbles. A seamless transparency of rain Lowering over the turning trees My thoughts drifting to Claudel’s ‘Five Great Odes’, to the stone marker To the swathes of heather. I stood on the moor top Where the tracks cross […]...
14. PUBLISHERS And then they pretend like owls With marble eyes and wizened stupidity I do not know why they cannot perceive True art But I will write Until sand evaporates And the moon consumes the sun I will write Even for the sake of art For myself and for those who feel Reading could lift them […]...
15. The Human Tree Many have Earth’s lovers been, Tried in seas and wars, I ween; Yet the mightiest have I seen: Yea, the best saw I. One that in a field alone Stood up stiller than a stone Lest a moth should fly. Birds had nested in his hair, On his shoon were mosses rare, Insect empires flourished […]...
16. What Is Love? What is Love? Is it a folly, Is it mirth, or melancholy? Joys above, Are there many, or not any? What is Love? If you please, A most sweet folly! Full of mirth and melancholy: Both of these! In its sadness worth all gladness, If you please! Prithee where, Goes Love a-hiding? Is he long […]...
17. January 3 The shrink says, “Everything depends On how many stuffed animals you had As a boy,” and my mother tells me my Father was left-handed and so is my son And they’re both named Joe whose favorite Stuffed animal was a bear called Sweetheart While I, the sole constant in this dream, Am carrying a little […]...
18. 233. Song-O were I on Parnassus Hill O, WERE I on Parnassus hill, Or had o’ Helicon my fill, That I might catch poetic skill, To sing how dear I love thee! But Nith maun be my Muse’s well, My Muse maun be thy bonie sel’, On Corsincon I’ll glowr and spell, And write how dear I love thee. Then come, sweet […]...
19. The Mower's Song My Mind was once the true survey Of all these Medows fresh and gay; And in the greenness of the Grass Did see its Hopes as in a Glass; When Juliana came, and she What I do to the Grass, does to my Thoughts and Me. But these, while I with Sorrow pine, Grew more […]...
20. The Beer Was Cold Enough It is amazing, while I lay in bed, I had the lines Roaring through my head like locusts on the wing, The unabashed extravagance of such a flock Of stunning words shocked me out of brittle sleep; And sleep avoids me now like something way too out of vogue, So I rise and try to […]...
21. PEACEFUL GROUND Cool Morning spit on bladed grass. A Thousand silky fingers tickling toes. The strong scent of natures freshly cut hair. Mans spiritual stamping groung toward inner Peace....
22. PEACE OF MIND Carry me out the ocean, where My drifting thoughts flow free. Guide them to a far distant land, That only the mind can see. There I shall paint a great portrait, Of what this world should be. A place without seneless wars, And human poverty....
23. 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 […]...
24. Sonnet XXXV: Some, Misbelieving To Miracle Some, misbelieving and profane in love, When I do speak of miracles by thee, May say, that thou art flattered by me, Who only write my skill in verse to prove. See miracles, ye unbelieving, see A dumb-born Muse made t’express the mind, A cripple hand to write, yet lame by kind, One […]...
25. Sonnet LXXXV My tongue-tied Muse in manners holds her still, While comments of your praise, richly compiled, Reserve their character with golden quill And precious phrase by all the Muses filed. I think good thoughts whilst other write good words, And like unletter’d clerk still cry ‘Amen’ To every hymn that able spirit affords In polish’d form […]...
26. Sonnet 85: My tongue-tied Muse in manners holds her still My tongue-tied Muse in manners holds her still, While comments of your praise, richly compiled, Reserve their character with golden quill, And precious phrase by all the Muses filed. I think good thoughts, whilst other write good words, And like unlettered clerk still cry “Amen” To every hymn that able spirit affords In polished form […]...
27. Sonnet III THe souerayne beauty which I doo admyre, Witnesse the world how worthy to be prayzed: The light wherof hath kindled heauenly iyre, In my fraile spirit by her from basenesse raysed. That being now with her huge brightnesse dazed, Base thing I can no more endure to view: But looking still on her I stand […]...
28. Riddle Where far in forest I am laid, In a place ringed around by stones, Look for no melancholy shade, And have no thoughts of buried bones; For I am bodiless and bright, And fill this glade with sudden glow; The leaves are washed in under-light; Shade lies upon the boughs like snow....
29. Hence, All You Vain Delights from the Nice Valour Hence, all you vain delights, As short as are the nights Wherein you spend your folly: There’s nought in this life sweet, If man were wise to see’t, But only melancholy, O sweetest melancholy! Welcome, folded arms, and fixed eyes, A sigh that piercing mortifies, A look that’s fastened to the ground, A tongue chained […]...
30. 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 […]...
31. At The Other End Of The Telescope the people are very small and shrink, Dwarves on the way to netsuke hell Bound for a flea circus in full Retreat toward sub-atomic particles difficult to keep in focus, the figures At that end are nearly indistinguishable, Generals at the heads of minute armies Differing little from fishwives, Emperors the same as eskimos Huddled […]...
32. Sonnet 76: Why is my verse so barren of new pride? Why is my verse so barren of new pride? So far from variation or quick change? Why with the time do I not glance aside To new-found methods, and to compounds strange? Why write I still all one, ever the same, And keep invention in a noted weed, That every word doth almost tell my […]...
33. To One In Bedlam With delicate, mad hands, behind his sordid bars, Surely he hath his posies, which they tear and twine; Those scentless wisps of straw, that miserably line His strait, caged universe, whereat the dull world stares, Pedant and pitiful. O, how his rapt gaze wars With their stupidity! Know they what dreams divine Lift his long, […]...
34. Vehicles This is a place on the way after the distances can no longer be kept straight here in this dark corner Of the barn a mound of wheels has convened along raveling courses to stop in a single moment And lie down as still as the chariots of the Pharaohs some in pairs that rolled […]...
35. "I Love You Sweatheart&quot A man risked his life to write the words. A man hung upside down (an idiot friend Holding his legs?) with spray paint To write the words on a girder fifty feet above A highway. And his beloved, The next morning driving to work…? His words are not (meant to be) so unique. Does she […]...
36. To Ireland In The Coming Times Know, that I would accounted be True brother of a company That sang, to sweeten Ireland’s wrong, Ballad and story, rann and song; Nor be I any less of them, Because the red-rose-bordered hem Of her, whose history began Before God made the angelic clan, Trails all about the written page. When Time began to […]...
37. Loitering with a Vacant Eye Loitering with a vacant eye Along the Grecian gallery, And brooding on my heavy ill, I met a statue standing still. Still in marble stone stood he, And stedfastly he looked at me. “Well met,” I thought the look would say, “We both were fashioned far away; We neither knew, when we were young, These […]...
38. Well I Remember How You Smiled Well I remember how you smiled To see me write your name upon The soft sea-sand. . . “O! what a child! You think you’re writing upon stone!” I have since written what no tide Shall ever wash away, what men Unborn shall read o’er ocean wide And find Ianthe’s name again....
39. Subject to Change A reflection on my students They are so beautiful, and so very young They seem almost to glitter with perfection, These creatures that I briefly move among. I never get to stay with them for long, But even so, I view them with affection: They are so beautiful, and so very young. Poised or clumsy, […]...
40. Ape You haven’t finished your ape, said mother to father, Who had monkey hair and blood on his whiskers. I’ve had enough monkey, cried father. You didn’t eat the hands, and I went to all the Trouble to make onion rings for its fingers, said mother. I’ll just nibble on its forehead, and then I’ve had […]...