There's a Regret
There’s a regret
So grinding, so immitigably sad,
Remorse thereby feels tolerant, even glad. …
Do you not know it yet?
For deeds undone
Rnakle and snarl and hunger for their due,
Till there seems naught so despicable as you
In all the grin o’ the sun.
Like an old shoe
The sea spurns and the land abhors, you lie
About the beach of Time, till by and by
Death, that derides you too
Death, as he goes
His ragman’s round, espies you, where you stray,
With half-an-eye, and kicks you out of his way
And then and then, who knows
But the kind Grave
Turns on you, and you feel the convict Worm,
In that black bridewell working out his term,
Hanker and grope and crave?
“Poor fool that might
That might, yet would not, dared not, let this be,
Think of it, here and thus made over to me
In the implacable night!”
And writhing, fain
And like a triumphing lover, he shall take,
His fill where no high memory lives to make
His obscene victory vain.
Related poetry:
- Regret It’s not for laws I’ve broken That bitter tears I’ve wept, But solemn vows I’ve spoken And promises unkept; It’s not for sins committed My heart is full of rue, But gentle acts omitted, Kind deeds I did not do. I have outlived the blindness, The selfishness of youth; The canker of unkindness, The cruelty […]...
- PLEA FOR A HISTORY OF WORKING-CLASS LEEDS I want a true history of my city FUCK THE DE LACY FAMILY AND DOUBLE FUCK JOHN OF GAUNT ESPECIALLY And all his descendants With their particular vilenesses – I met one in the sixties Who had all the coldness of Himmler So svelte and adored by the cognoscenti. I want a history responsive To […]...
- Regret Long ago I wished to leave ” The house where I was born; ” Long ago I used to grieve, My home seemed so forlorn. In other years, its silent rooms Were filled with haunting fears; Now, their very memory comes O’ercharged with tender tears. Life and marriage I have known, Things once deemed so […]...
- It was once called it comes like a convict Squeezing through bars And is gone before The promptest siren It suddenly turns In the ear or rides The eye of a thought Before dissolving I have it in a faint Taste or shudder An ache like a spring High in the mountains It was once called love And now […]...
- In Memoriam A. H. H.: Is it, then, regret for buried time Is it, then, regret for buried time That keenlier in sweet April wakes, And meets the year, and gives and takes The colours of the crescent prime? Not all: the songs, the stirring air, The life re-orient out of dust, Cry thro’ the sense to hearten trust In that which made the world so fair. […]...
- The Little Lives Of Earth And Form The little lives of earth and form, Of finding food, and keeping warm, Are not like ours, and yet A kinship lingers nonetheless: We hanker for the homeliness Of den, and hole, and set. And this identity we feel – Perhaps not right, perhaps not real – Will link us constantly; I see the rock, […]...
- 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 […]...
- Daybreak In Alabama When I get to be a composer I’m gonna write me some music about Daybreak in Alabama And I’m gonna put the purtiest songs in it Rising out of the ground like a swamp mist And falling out of heaven like soft dew. I’m gonna put some tall tall trees in it And the scent […]...
- Worm Either Way If you live along with all the other people And are just like them, and conform, and are nice You’re just a worm And if you live with all the other people And you don’t like them and won’t be like them and won’t conform Then you’re just the worm that has turned, In either […]...
- A Process In The Weather Of The Heart A process in the weather of the heart Turns damp to dry; the golden shot Storms in the freezing tomb. A weather in the quarter of the veins Turns night to day; blood in their suns Lights up the living worm. A process in the eye forwarns The bones of blindness; and the womb Drives […]...
- By the Spring, at Sunset Sometimes we remember kisses, Remember the dear heart-leap when they came: Not always, but sometimes we remember The kindness, the dumbness, the good flame Of laughter and farewell. Beside the road Afar from those who said “Good-by” I write, Far from my city task, my lawful load. Sun in my face, wind beside my shoulder, […]...
- Ah, Are You Digging On My Grave? “Ah, are you digging on my grave, My loved one? planting rue?” “No: yesterday he went to wed One of the brightest wealth has bred. ‘It cannot hurt her now,’ he said, ‘That I should not be true.'” “Then who is digging on my grave, My nearest dearest kin?” “Ah, no: they sit and think, […]...
- Letter To My Wife 11-11-1933 Bursa Prison My one and only! Your last letter says: “My head is throbbing, my heart is stunned!” You say: “If they hang you, if I lose you, I’ll die!” You’ll live, my dear My memory will vanish like black smoke in the wind. Of course you’ll live, red-haired lady of my heart: In […]...
- THE REMORSE OF THE DEAD O SHADOWY Beauty mine, when thou shalt sleep In the deep heart of a black marble tomb; When thou for mansion and for bower shalt keep Only one rainy cave of hollow gloom; And when the stone upon thy trembling breast, And on thy straight sweet body’s supple grace, Crushes thy will and keeps thy […]...
- 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 […]...
- In Winter in my Room In Winter in my Room I came upon a Worm Pink, lank and warm But as he was a worm And worms presume Not quite with him at home Secured him by a string To something neighboring And went along. A Trifle afterward A thing occurred I’d not believe it if I heard But state […]...
- 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 […]...
- Song of the Worm THE worm, the rich worm, has a noble domain In the field that is stored with its millions of slain ; The charnel-grounds widen, to me they belong, With the vaults of the sepulchre, sculptured and strong. The tower of ages in fragments is laid, Moss grows on the stones, and I lurk in its […]...
- Autumn: A Dirge The warm sun is falling, the bleak wind is wailing, The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying, And the Year On the earth is her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead, Is lying. Come, Months, come away, From November to May, In your saddest array; Follow the bier Of the dead […]...
- More than the Grave is closed to me More than the Grave is closed to me The Grave and that Eternity To which the Grave adheres I cling to nowhere till I fall The Crash of nothing, yet of all How similar appears...
- 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 […]...
- The Tragedy Oh, I never felt so wretched, and things never looked so blue Since the days I gulped the physic that my Granny used to brew; For a friend in whom I trusted, entering my room last night, Stole a bottleful of Heenzo from the desk whereon I write. I am certain sure he did it […]...
- Caroline Branson With our hearts like drifting suns, had we but walked, As often before, the April fields till star-light Silkened over with viewless gauze the darkness Under the cliff, our trysting place in the wood, Where the brook turns! Had we but passed from wooing Like notes of music that run together, into winning, In the […]...
- Giorno dei Morti Along the avenue of cypresses, All in their scarlet cloaks and surplices Of linen, go the chanting choristers, The priests in gold and black, the villagers. . . And all along the path to the cemetery The round dark heads of men crowd silently, And black-scarved faces of womenfolk, wistfully Watch at the banner of […]...
- Death Fugue Black milk of daybreak we drink it at sundown We drink it at noon in the morning we drink it at night We drink it and drink it We dig a grave in the breezes there one lies unconfined A man lives in the house he plays with the serpents he writes He writes when […]...
- The Bird and the Arras By neer resemblance see that Bird betray’d Who takes the well wrought Arras for a shade There hopes to pearch and with a chearfull Tune O’re-passe the scortchings of the sultry Noon. But soon repuls’d by the obdurate scean How swift she turns but turns alas in vain That piece a Grove, this shews an […]...
- To A Shade If you have revisited the town, thin Shade, Whether to look upon your monument (I wonder if the builder has been paid) Or happier-thoughted when the day is spent To drink of that salt breath out of the sea When grey gulls flit about instead of men, And the gaunt houses put on majesty: Let […]...
- London Voluntaries IV: Out of the Poisonous East Out of the poisonous East, Over a continent of blight, Like a maleficent Influence released From the most squalid cellerage of hell, The Wind-Fiend, the abominable The Hangman Wind that tortures temper and light Comes slouching, sullen and obscene, Hard on the skirts of the embittered night; And in a cloud unclean Of excremental humours, […]...
- The Twilight Turns The twilight turns from amethyst To deep and deeper blue, The lamp fills with a pale green glow The trees of the avenue. The old piano plays an air, Sedate and slow and gay; She bends upon the yellow keys, Her head inclines this way. Shy thought and grave wide eyes and hands That wander […]...
- Service of all the Dead Between the avenues of cypresses, All in their scarlet cloaks, and surplices Of linen, go the chaunting choristers, The priests in gold and black, the villagers. And all along the path to the cemetery The round, dark heads of men crowd silently And black-scarved faces of women-folk, wistfully Watch at the banner of death, and […]...
- Cruisers As our mother the Frigate, bepainted and fine, Made play for her bully the Ship of the Line; So we, her bold daughters by iron and fire, Accost and decoy to our masters’ desire. Now, pray you, consider what toils we endure, Night-walking wet sea-lanes, a guard and a lure; Since half of our trade […]...
- 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 […]...
- September 1913 What need you, being come to sense, But fumble in a greasy till And add the halfpence to the pence And prayer to shivering prayer, until You have dried the marrow from the bone? For men were born to pray and save: Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone, It’s with O’Leary in the grave. Yet they […]...
- All All And All The Dry Worlds Lever I All all and all the dry worlds lever, Stage of the ice, the solid ocean, All from the oil, the pound of lava. City of spring, the governed flower, Turns in the earth that turns the ashen Towns around on a wheel of fire. How now my flesh, my naked fellow, Dug of the […]...
- 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 […]...
- Prospice Fear death?-to feel the fog in my throat, The mist in my face, When the snows begin, and the blasts denote I am nearing the place, The power of the night, the press of the storm, The post of the foe; Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form, Yet the strong man […]...
- Hummingbird Pauses at the Trumpet Vine Who doesn’t love Roses, and who Doesn’t love the lilies Of the black ponds Floating like flocks Of tiny swans, And of course, the flaming Trumpet vine Where the hummingbird comes Like a small green angel, to soak His dark tongue In happiness – And who doesn’t want To live with the brisk Motor of […]...
- At The Railway Station, Upways ‘There is not much that I can do, For I’ve no money that’s quite my own!’ Spoke up the pitying child A little boy with a violin At the station before the train came in, ‘But I can play my fiddle to you, And a nice one ’tis, and good in tone!’ The man in […]...
- Curse of the Cat Woman It sometimes happens That the woman you meet and fall in love with Is of that strange Transylvanian people With an affinity for cats. You take her to a restuarant, say, or a show, On an ordinary date, being attracted By the glitter in her slitty eyes and her catlike walk, And afterwards of course […]...
- Liebestod When I was bold, when I was bold- And that’s a hundred years!- Oh, never I thought my breast could hold The terrible weight of tears. I said: “Now some be dolorous; I hear them wail and sigh, And if it be Love that play them thus, Then never a love will I.” I said: […]...