Let me not thirst with this Hock at my Lip

My own heart let me more have pity on; let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet.
I cast for comfort I can no more get
By groping round my comfortless, than blind
Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find
Thirst's all-in-all in all a world of wet.

My God, most glad to look, most prone to hear,
An open ear, oh, let my prayer find,
And from my plaint turn not thy face away.
Behold my gestures, hearken what I say,
While uttering moans with most tormented mind,
My body I no less torment and tear.
For, lo, their fearful threat’nings would mine ear,
Who griefs on griefs on me still heaping lay,
A mark to wrath and hate and wrong assigned;
Therefore, my heart hath all his force resigned
To trembling pants; death terrors on me pray;
I fear, nay, shake, nay, quiv’ring quake with fear.

Then say I, oh, might I but cut the wind,
Borne on the wing the fearful dove doth bear:

Deflores. What makes your lip so strange? This must not be betwixt us.
Beatrice. The man talks wildly.
Deflores. Come kisse me with a zeal now.
Beatrice. Heaven I doubt him.
Deflores. I will not stand so long to beg 'em shortly.
Beatrice. Take heed Deflores of forgetfulness, 'twill soon betray us.
Deflores. Take you heed first;
Faith y'are grown much forgetfull, y'are to blame in't.
Beatrice. He's bold, and I am blam'd for't.
Deflores. I have eas'd you of your trouble, think on't, I'me in pain,
And must be as'd of ou; 'tis a charity,
Justice invites your blood to understand me.
Beatrice. I dare not.
Deflores. Quickly.
Beatrice. Oh I never shall, speak if yet further of that I may lose

[Supposed to be written by one at the point of death] Give me my scallop shell of quiet,
My staff of faith to walk upon,
My scrip of joy, immortal diet,
My bottle of salvation,

I show her how to put her arms around me,
but she’s much too small.
What’s worse, she doesn’t understand.
And
although she lies beside me, sticking
out her tongue, it’s herself she licks.

She likes my stroking hand.
And

there was a frozen tree that I wanted to paint
but the shells came down
and in Vegas looking across at a green sunshade
at 3:30 in the morning,
I died without nails, without a copy of the Atlantic Monthly,
the windows screamed like doves moaning the bombing of Milan
and I went out to live with the rats
but the lights were too bright

Our storm is past, and that storm's tyrannous rage,
A stupid calm, but nothing it, doth 'suage.
The fable is inverted, and far more
A block afflicts, now, than a stork before.
Storms chafe, and soon wear out themselves, or us;
In calms, Heaven laughs to see us languish thus.
As steady'as I can wish that my thoughts were,
Smooth as thy mistress' glass, or what shines there,
The sea is now; and, as the isles which we
Seek, when we can move, our ships rooted be.
As water did in storms, now pitch runs out;
As lead, when a fir'd church becomes one spout.
And all our beauty, and our trim, decays,
Like courts removing, or like ended plays.
The fighting-place now seamen's rags supply;

Since she whom I lov'd hath paid her last debt
To nature, and to hers, and my good is dead,
And her soul early into heaven ravished,
Wholly in heavenly things my mind is set.
Here the admiring her my mind did whet
To seek thee, God; so streams do show the head;
But though I have found thee, and thou my thirst hast fed,
A holy thirsty dropsy melts me yet.
But why should I beg more love, whenas thou
Dost woo my soul, for hers off'ring all thine,
And dost not only fear lest I allow
My love to saints and angels, things divine,
But in thy tender jealousy dost doubt
Lest the world, flesh, yea devil put thee out.

In Ocean's wide domains,
Half buried in the sands,
Lie skeletons in chains,
With shackled feet and hands.

Beyond the fall of dews,
Deeper than plummet lies,
Float ships, with all their crews,
No more to sink nor rise.

There the black Slave-ship swims,
Freighted with human forms,
Whose fettered, fleshless limbs
Are not the sport of storms.