To His Mistresse

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1. The Only Son She dropped the bar, she shot the bolt, she fed the fire anew For she heard a whimper under the sill and a great grey paw came through. The fresh flame comforted the hut and shone on the roof-beam, And the Only Son lay down again and dreamed that he dreamed a dream. The last […]...
2. A Paralell Between Bowling And Preferment Preferment, like a Game at bowles, To feede our hope with diverse play Heer quick it runnes, there soft it rowles: The Betters make and shew the way. As upper ground, so great Allies Doe many cast on theyr desire: Some uppe are thrust, and forc’t to rise, When those are stopt that would aspire. […]...
3. Having Lost My Sons, I Confront The Wreckage Of The Moon: Christmas, 1960 After dark Near the South Dakota border, The moon is out hunting, everywhere, Delivering fire, And walking down hallways Of a diamond. Behind a tree, It ights on the ruins Of a white city Frost, frost. Where are they gone Who lived there? Bundled away under wings And dark faces. I am sick Of it, […]...
4. On Gray Eyes Looke how the russet morne exceeds the night, How sleekest Jett yields to the di’monds light, So farr the glory of the gray-bright eye Out-vyes the black in lovely majesty. A morning mantl’d with a fleece of gray Laughs from her brow and shewes a spotlesse day: This di’mond-like doth not his lustre owe To […]...
5. An Embroidery Rose Red’s hair is brown as fur And shines in firelight as she prepares Supper of honey and apples, curds and whey, For the bear, and leaves it ready On the hearth-stone. Rose White’s grey eyes Look into the dark forest. Rose Red’s cheeks are burning, Sign of her ardent, joyful Compassionate heart. Rose White […]...
6. Suum Cuique The rain has spoiled the farmer’s day; Shall sorrow put my books away? Thereby are two days lost: Nature shall mind her own affairs, I will attend my proper cares, In rain, or sun, or frost....
7. Sonnet XXX: Those Priests To the Vestals Those priests which first the Vestal fire begun, Which might be borrow’d from no earthly flame, Devis’d a vessel to receive the Sun, Being steadfastly opposed to the same; Where, with sweet wood, laid curiously by art, On which the Sun might by reflection beat, Receiving strength from every secret part, The […]...
8. On Jealousy There is a thing that nothing is, A foolish wanton, sober wise; It hath noe wings, noe eyes, noe eares, And yet it flies, it sees, it heares; It lives by losse, it feeds on smart, It joyes in woe, it liveth not; Yet evermore this hungry elfe Doth feed on nothing but itselfe....
9. To A Gentlewoman For A Friend No marvell if the Sunne’s bright eye Shower downe hott flames; that qualitie Still waytes on light; but when wee see Those sparkling balles of ebony Distil such heat, the gazer straight Stands so amazed at the sight As when the lightning makes a breach Through pitchie clouds: can lightning reach The marrowe hurting not […]...
10. LOVE'S DISTRESSES WHO will hear me? Whom shall I lament to? Who would pity me that heard my sorrows? Ah, the lip that erst so many raptures Used to taste, and used to give responsive, Now is cloven, and it pains me sorely; And it is not thus severely wounded By my mistress having caught me fiercely, […]...
11. Sonnet 04: Not In This Chamber Only At My Birth Not in this chamber only at my birth- When the long hours of that mysterious night Were over, and the morning was in sight- I cried, but in strange places, steppe and firth I have not seen, through alien grief and mirth; And never shall one room contain me quite Who in so many rooms […]...
12. In Tempore Senectutis When I am old I will not have you look apart From me, into the cold, Friend of my heart, Nor be sad in your remembrance Of the careless, mad-heart semblance That the wind hath blown away When I am old. When I am old And the white hot wonder-fire Unto the world seem cold, […]...
13. Sonnet XL: My Heart the Anvil My heart the anvil where my thoughts do beat; My words the hammers fashioning my desire; My breast the forge including all the heat; Love is the fuel which maintains the fire; My sighs the bellows which the flame increaseth, Filling mine ears with noise and nightly groaning; Toiling with pain, my labor never ceaseth, […]...
14. Daughter leaves and leaving call october home Her daughter releases wood Smoke from her skin Rich in scorpio Blood survived the first Flood each new year marks A circle around her Thick bark middle This the month summer and Winter fall into each Other and leave orange Yellow ashes The vibrancy of death Carry it all […]...
15. An Eare-Stringe ‘Tis vayne to add a ring or gemme, Your eare itselfe outpasseth them. When idle words are passing here, I warne and pull you by the eare. This silken chayne stands wayting here For golden tongues to tye on there. Here silken twynes, there locks you see Now tell me which the softer bee?...
16. The Frost Spirit He comes, – he comes, – the Frost Spirit comes! You may trace his footsteps now On the naked woods and the blasted fields And the brown hill’s withered brow. He has smitten the leaves of the gray old trees Where their pleasant green came forth, And the winds, which follow wherever he goes, Have […]...
17. The Fires Men make them fires on the hearth Each under his roof-tree, And the Four Winds that rule the earth They blow the smoke to me. Across the high hills and the sea And all the changeful skies, The Four Winds blow the smoke to me Till the tears are in my eyes. Until the tears […]...
18. Communism When my blood flows calm as a purling river, When my heart is asleep and my brain has sway, It is then that I vow we must part for ever, That I will forget you, and put you away Out of my life, as a dream is banished Out of the mind when the dreamer […]...
19. Song: Eternity of Love Protested How ill doth he deserve a lover’s name, Whose pale weak flame Cannot retain His heat, in spite of absence or disdain; But doth at once, like paper set on fire, Burn and expire; True love can never change his seat, Nor did her ever love, that could retreat. That noble flame which my breast […]...
20. The Fairy Bridal-Hymn [This is the hymn to Eleanor, daughter of Mab and a golden drone, sung by the Locust choir when the fairy child marries her God, the yellow rose] This is a song to the white-armed one Cold in the breast as the frost-wrapped Spring, Whose feet are slow on the hills of life, Whose round […]...
21. Like Trains of Cars on Tracks of Plush Like Trains of Cars on Tracks of Plush I hear the level Bee A Jar across the Flowers goes Their Velvet Masonry Withstands until the sweet Assault Their Chivalry consumes While He, victorious tilts away To vanquish other Blooms....
22. Winter Clouded with snow The cold winds blow, And shrill on leafless bough The robin with its burning breast Alone sings now. The rayless sun, Day’s journey done, Sheds its last ebbing light On fields in leagues of beauty spread Unearthly white. Thick draws the dark, And spark by spark, The frost-fires kindle, and soon Over […]...
23. The Portrait The portrait there above my bed They tell me is a work of art; My Wife, since twenty years she’s dead: Her going nearly broke my heart. Alas! No little ones we had To light our hearth with joy and glee; Yet as I linger lone and sad I know she’s waiting me. The picture? […]...
24. Ice and Fire My love is like to ice, and I to fire: How comes it then that this her cold so great Is not dissolved through my so hot desire, But harder grows the more I her entreat? Or how comes it that my exceeding heat Is not allayed by her heart-frozen cold, But that I burn […]...
25. Self-Acquaintance Dear Lord! accept a sinful heart, Which of itself complains, And mourns, with much and frequent smart, The evil it contains. There fiery seeds of anger lurk, Which often hurt my frame; And wait but for the tempter’s work, To fan them to a flame. Legality holds out a bribe To purchase life from Thee; […]...
26. 'Twas warm at first like Us ‘Twas warm at first like Us Until there crept upon A Chill like frost upon a Glass Till all the scene be gone. The Forehead copied Stone The Fingers grew too cold To ache and like a Skater’s Brook The busy eyes congealed It straightened that was all It crowded Cold to Cold It multiplied […]...
27. Sonnet 30 (Fire And Ice) My love is like to ice, and I to fire: How comes it then that this her cold so great Is not dissolv’d through my so hot desire, But harder grows, the more I her entreat? Or how comes it that my exceeding heat Is not delayed by her heart frozen cold, But that I […]...
28. Dickens Chief in thy generation born of men, Whom English praise acclaimed as English-born, With eyes that matched the worldwide eyes of morn For gleam of tears or laughter, tenderest then When thoughts of children warmed their light, or when Reverence of age with love and labor worn, Or godlike pity fired with godlike scorn, Shot […]...
29. First Death In Nova Scotia In the cold, cold parlor My mother laid out Arthur Beneath the chromographs: Edward, Prince of Wales, With Princess Alexandra, And King George with Queen Mary. Below them on the table Stood a stuffed loon Shot and stuffed by Uncle Arthur, Arthur’s father. Since Uncle Arthur fired A bullet into him, He hadn’t said a […]...
30. WHEN THE FOX DIES, HIS SKIN COUNTS.* (* The name of a game, known in English as “Jack’s Alight.”) WE young people in the shade Sat one sultry day; Cupid came, and “Dies the Fox” With us sought to play. Each one of my friends then sat By his mistress dear; Cupid, blowing out the torch, Said: “The taper’s here!” Then we […]...
31. A Child of the Snows There is heard a hymn when the panes are dim, And never before or again, When the nights are strong with a darkness long, And the dark is alive with rain. Never we know but in sleet and in snow, The place where the great fires are, That the midst of the earth is a […]...
32. The Punisher I have fetched the tears up out of the little wells, Scooped them up with small, iron words, Dripping over the runnels. The harsh, cold wind of my words drove on, and still I watched the tears on the guilty cheek of the boys Glitter and spill. Cringing Pity, and Love, white-handed, came Hovering about […]...
33. Modern Love XXII: What May the Woman What may the woman labour to confess? There is about her mouth a nervous twitch. ‘Tis something to be told, or hidden: which? I get a glimpse of hell in this mild guess. She has desires of touch, as if to feel That all the household things are things she knew. She stops before the […]...
34. Dead Men's Love There was a damned successful Poet; There was a Woman like the Sun. And they were dead. They did not know it. They did not know their time was done. They did not know his hymns Were silence; and her limbs, That had served Love so well, Dust, and a filthy smell. And so one […]...
35. The Witch I HAVE walked a great while over the snow, And I am not tall nor strong. My clothes are wet, and my teeth are set, And the way was hard and long. I have wandered over the fruitful earth, But I never came here before. Oh, lift me over the threshold, and let me in […]...
36. Leaving and Leaving You When I leave you postcode and your commuting station, When I left undone all the things we planned to do You may feel you have been left by association But there is leaving and leaving you. When I leave your town and the club that you belong to, When I leave without much warning or […]...
37. A Translation Horace, BK. V., Ode 3 “Regulus” A Diversity of Creatures There are whose study is of smells, And to attentive schools rehearse How something mixed with something else Makes something worse. Some cultivate in broths impure The clients of our body these, Increasing without Venus, cure, Or cause, disease. Others the heated wheel extol, And […]...
38. A Song On A Sigh O tell mee, tell, thou god of wynde, In all thy cavernes canst thou finde A vapor, fume, a gale or blast Like to a sigh which love doth cast? Can any whirlwynde in thy vault Plough upp earth’s breast with like assault? Goe wynde and blowe thou where thou please, Yea breathles leave mee […]...
39. Opposite To Meloncholly Returne my joyes, and hither bring A tongue not made to speake but sing, A jolly spleene, an inward feast, A causelesse laugh without a jest, A face which gladnesse doth anoynt, An arm that springs out of his joynt, A sprightfull gate that leaves no print, And makes a feather of a flint, A […]...
40. Angel Or Demon You call me an angel of love and of light, A being of goodness and heavenly fire, Sent out from God’s kingdom to guide you aright, In paths where your spirits may mount and aspire. You say that I glow like a star on its course, Like a ray from the alter, a spark from […]...