The Inconsistent

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1. The Mole Said he: “I’ll dive deep in the Past, And write a book of direful days When summer skies were overcast With smoke of humble hearths ablaze; When War was rampant in the land, And poor folk cowered in the night, While ruin gaped on every hand – Of ravishing and wrath I’ll write.” Ten years […]...
2. My Book Before I drink myself to death, God, let me finish up my Book! At night, I fear, I fight for breath, And wake up whiter than a spook; And crawl off to a bistro near, And drink until my brain is clear. Rare Absinthe! Oh, it gives me strength To write and write; and so […]...
3. Dedication To the City of Bombay The Cities are full of pride, Challenging each to each This from her mountain-side, That from her burthened beach. They count their ships full tale Their corn and oil and wine, Derrick and loom and bale, And rampart’s gun-flecked line; City by City they hail: “Hast aught to match with […]...
4. A Nativity 1914-18 The Babe was laid in the Manger Between the gentle kine All safe from cold and danger “But it was not so with mine, (With mine! With mine!) “Is it well with the child, is it well?” The waiting mother prayed. “For I know not how he fell, And I know not where he […]...
5. To a Western Boy O BOY of the West! To you many things to absorb, I teach, to help you become eleve of mine: Yet if blood like mine circle not in your veins; If you be not silently selected by lovers, and do not silently select lovers, Of what use is it that you seek to become eleve […]...
6. 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 […]...
7. Partners Love took chambers on our street Opposite to mine; On his door he tacked a neat, Clearly lettered sign. Straightway grew his custom great, For his sign read so: “Hearts united while you wait. Step in. Love and Co.” Much I wondered who was “Co.” In Love’s partnership; Thought across the street I’d go- Learn […]...
8. Mine by the Right of the White Election! Mine by the Right of the White Election! Mine by the Royal Seal! Mine by the Sign in the Scarlet prison Bars cannot conceal! Mine here in Vision and in Veto! Mine by the Grave’s Repeal Tilted Confirmed Delirious Charter! Mine long as Ages steal!...
9. No Labor-Saving Machine NO labor-saving machine, Nor discovery have I made; Nor will I be able to leave behind me any wealthy bequest to found a hospital or library, Nor reminiscence of any deed of courage, for America, Nor literary success, nor intellect-nor book for the book-shelf; Only a few carols, vibrating through the air, I leave, For […]...
10. The Thieves Lovers in the act despense With such meum-tuum sense As might warningly reveal What they must not pick or steal, And their nostrum is to say: ‘I and you are both away.’ After, when they disentwine You from me and yours from mine, Neither can be certain who Was that I whose mine was you. […]...
11. With a Copy of Shakespeare's Sonnets on Leaving College As one of some fat tillage dispossessed, Weighing the yield of these four faded years, If any ask what fruit seems loveliest, What lasting gold among the garnered ears, Ah, then I’ll say what hours I had of thine, Therein I reaped Time’s richest revenue, Read in thy text the sense of David’s line, Through […]...
12. Dumb Gabriel whispered in mine ear His archangelic poesie. How can I write? I only hear The sobbing murmur of the sea. Raphael breathed and bade me pass His rapt evangel to mankind; I cannot even match, alas! The ululation of the wind. The gross grey gods like gargoyles spit On every poet’s holy head; No […]...
13. In A Year Never any more, While I live, Need I hope to see his face As before. Once his love grown chill, Mine may strive: Bitterly we re-embrace, Single still. II. Was it something said, Something done, Vexed him? was it touch of hand, Turn of head? Strange! that very way Love begun: I as little understand […]...
14. The Day Is Gone, And All Its Sweets Are Gone The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone! Sweet voice, sweet lips, soft hand, and softer breast, Warm breath, light whisper, tender semitone, Bright eyes, accomplished shape, and lang’rous waist! Faded the flower and all its budded charms, Faded the sight of beauty from my eyes, Faded the shape of beauty from my […]...
15. Modern Love XXI: We Three Are We three are on the cedar-shadowed lawn; My friend being third. He who at love once laughed, Is in the weak rib by a fatal shaft Struck through, and tells his passion’s bashful dawn And radiant culmination, glorious crown, When ‘this’ she said: went ‘thus’: most wondrous she. Our eyes grow white, encountering that we […]...
16. Wisdom This I say, and this I know: Love has seen the last of me. Love’s a trodden lane to woe, Love’s a path to misery. This I know, and knew before, This I tell you, of my years: Hide your heart, and lock your door. Hell’s afloat in lovers’ tears. Give your heart, and toss […]...
17. The Missal Makers To visit the Escurial We took a motor bus, And there a guide mercurial Took charge of us. He showed us through room after room, And talked hour after hour, Of place, crypt and royal tomb, Of pomp and power. But in bewilderment of grace What pleased me most of all Were ancient missals proud […]...
18. 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 […]...
19. What Fields Are As Fragrant As Your Hands? What fields are as fragrant as your hands? You feel how external fragrance stands Upon your stronger resistance. Stars stand in images above. Give me your mouth to soften, love; Ah, your hair is all in idleness. See, I want to surround you with yourself And the faded expectation lift From the edges of your […]...
20. Corn and Catholics “What! still those two infernal questions, That with our meals our slumbers mix That spoil our tempers and digestions Eternal Corn and Catholics! Gods! were there ever two such bores? Nothing else talk’d of night or morn Nothing in doors, or out of doors, But endless Catholics and Corn! Never was such a brace of […]...
21. My Masterpiece It’s slim and trim and bound in blue; Its leaves are crisp and edged with gold; Its words are simple, stalwart too; Its thoughts are tender, wise and bold. Its pages scintillate with wit; Its pathos clutches at my throat: Oh, how I love each line of it! That Little Book I Never Wrote. In […]...
22. An Almost Made Up Poem I see you drinking at a fountain with tiny Blue hands, no, your hands are not tiny They are small, and the fountain is in France Where you wrote me that last letter and I answered and never heard from you again. You used to write insane poems about ANGELS AND GOD, all in upper […]...
23. Did Not ‘Twas a new feeling – something more Than we had dared to own before, Which then we hid not; We saw it in each other’s eye, And wished, in every half-breathed sigh, To speak, but did not. She felt my lips’ impassioned touch – ‘Twas the first time I dared so much, And yet she […]...
24. In My Craft Or Sullen Art In my craft or sullen art Exercised in the still night When only the moon rages And the lovers lie abed With all their griefs in their arms I labour by singing light Not for ambition or bread Or the strut and trade of charms On the ivory stages But for the common wages Of […]...
25. The Genesis of the Butterfly The dawn is smiling on the dew that covers The tearful roses; lo, the little lovers That kiss the buds, and all the flutterings In jasmine bloom, and privet, of white wings, That go and come, and fly, and peep and hide, With muffled music, murmured far and wide. Ah, the Spring time, when we […]...
26. I Will Not Fight I will not fight: though proud of pith I hold no one worth striving with; And should resentment burn my breast I deem that silence serves me best: So having not a word to say, Contemptuous I turn away. I will not fret: my rest of life Free I will keep from hate and strife; […]...
27. Authorship You say that father write a lot of books, but what he write I don’t Understand. He was reading to you all the evening, but could you really Make out what he meant? What nice stores, mother, you can tell us! Why can’t father Write like that, I wonder? Did he never hear from his […]...
28. Circumstantial Evidence She does not mind a good cigar (The kind, that is, I smoke); She thinks all men quite stupid are, (But laughs whene’er I joke). She says she does not care for verse (But praises all I write); She says that punning is a curse, (But then mine are so bright!) She does not like […]...
29. TO WILLIAM E. CHANNING The pages of thy book I read, And as I closed each one, My heart, responding, ever said, “Servant of God! well done!” Well done! Thy words are great and bold; At times they seem to me, Like Luther’s, in the days of old, Half-battles for the free. Go on, until this land revokes The […]...
30. Upon Julia's Unlacing Herself Tell, if thou canst, and truly, whence doth come This camphire, storax, spikenard, galbanum, These musks, these ambers, and those other smells Sweet as the Vestry of the Oracles. I’ll tell thee:-while my Julia did unlace Her silken bodice but a breathing space, The passive air such odour then assumed As when to Jove great […]...
31. MY PERFECT ROSE At ten she came to me, three years ago, There was ‘something between us’ even then; Watching her write like Eliot every day, Turn prose into haiku in ten minutes flat, Write a poem in Greek three weeks from learning the alphabet; Then translate it as ‘Sun on a tomb, gold place, small sacred horse’. […]...
32. Love in a Look Let me but feel thy look’s embrace, Transparent, pure, and warm, And I’ll not ask to touch thy face, Or fold thee with mine arm. For in thine eyes a girl doth rise, Arrayed in candid bliss, And draws me to her with a charm More close than any kiss. A loving-cup of golden wine, […]...
33. 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 […]...
34. Echo How sweet the answer Echo makes To music at night, When, roused by lute or horn, she wakes, And far away, o’er lawns and lakes, Goes answering light. Yet Love hath echoes truer far, And far more sweet, Than e’er beneath the moonlight’s star, Of horn or lute, or soft guitar, The songs repeat. ‘Tis […]...
35. Golden Days Another day of toil and strife, Another page so white, Within that fateful Log of Life That I and all must write; Another page without a stain To make of as I may, That done, I shall not see again Until the Judgment Day. Ah, could I, could I backward turn The pages of that […]...
36. The Oldest Song “These were never your true love’s eyes. Why do you feign that you love them? You that broke from their constancies, And the wide calm brows above them! This was never your true love’s speech. Why do you thrill when you hear it? You that have ridden out of its reach The width of the […]...
37. 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 […]...
38. In falling Timbers buried In falling Timbers buried There breathed a Man Outside the spades were plying The Lungs within Could He know they sought Him Could They know He breathed Horrid Sand Partition Neither could be heard Never slacked the Diggers But when Spades had done Oh, Reward of Anguish, It was dying Then Many Things are fruitless […]...
39. He touched me, so I live to know He touched me, so I live to know That such a day, permitted so, I groped upon his breast It was a boundless place to me And silenced, as the awful sea Puts minor streams to rest. And now, I’m different from before, As if I breathed superior air Or brushed a Royal Gown My […]...
40. You love the Lord you cannot see You love the Lord you cannot see You write Him every day A little note when you awake And further in the Day. An Ample Letter How you miss And would delight to see But then His House is but a Step And Mine’s in Heaven You see....