St. Agnes' Eve—Ah, bitter chill it was! The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold; The hare limp'd trembling through the frozen grass, And silent was the flock in woolly fold: Numb were the Beadsman's fingers, while he told His rosary, and while his frosted breath, Like pious incense from a censer old, Seem'd taking flight for heaven, without a death, Past the sweet Virgin's picture, while his prayer he saith.
His prayer he saith, this patient, holy man; Then takes his lamp, and riseth from his knees, And back returneth, meagre, barefoot, wan, Along the chapel aisle by slow degrees: The sculptur'd dead, on each side, seem to freeze,
THE Angel ended, and in Adams Eare So Charming left his voice, that he a while Thought him still speaking, still stood fixt to hear; Then as new wak't thus gratefully repli'd. What thanks sufficient, or what recompence Equal have I to render thee, Divine Hystorian, who thus largely hast allayd The thirst I had of knowledge, and voutsaf't This friendly condescention to relate Things else by me unsearchable, now heard With wonder, but delight, and, as is due, With glorie attributed to the high Creator; something yet of doubt remaines, Which onely thy solution can resolve. When I behold this goodly Frame, this World
Hell, my ardent sisters, be assured, Is where we’re bound; we’ll drink the pitch of hell— We, who have sung the praises of the lord With every fiber in us, every cell.
We, who did not manage to devote Our nights to spinning, did not bend and sway Above a cradle—in a flimsy boat, Wrapped in a mantle, we’re now borne away.
If Heaven has into being deigned to call Thy light, O Liberty! to shine on all; Bright intellectual Sun! why does thy ray To earth distribute only partial day? Since no resisting cause from spirit flows Thy universal presence to oppose; No obstacles by Nature’s hand impressed, Thy subtle and ethereal beams arrest;
And when my Joy was born, I held it in my arms and stood on the house-top shouting, “Come ye, my neighbours, come and see, for Joy this day is born unto me. Come and behold this gladsome thing that laugheth in the sun.”
But none of my neighbours came to look upon my Joy, and great was my astonishment.
And every day for seven moons I proclaimed my Joy from the house-top—and yet no one heeded me. And my Joy and I were alone, unsought and unvisited.
Then my Joy grew pale and weary because no other heart but mine held its loveliness and no other lips kissed its lips.
Then my Joy died of isolation.
And now I only remember my dead Joy in remembering my dead Sorrow. But memory is an autumn leaf that murmurs a while in the wind and then is heard no more.
When you get in on a try you never learn it back umpteen times the tenth part of a featured world in black and in back it’s roses and fostered nail bite rhyme sling slang, a song that teaches without travail of the tale, the one you longing live and singing burn
It’s insane to remain a trope, of a rinsing out or a ringing whatever, it’s those bells that . . .
Alas, my Purse! how lean and low! My silken Purse! what art thou now! One I beheld—but stocks will fall— When both thy ends had wherewithal. When I within thy slender fence My fortune placed, and confidence; A poet’s fortune!—not immense: Yet, mixed with keys, and coins among,
Wheel of sorrow, centerless. Voices, sad without cause, slope upward, expiring on grave summits. Mournfulness of muddy playgrounds, raw smell of rubbers and wrapped lunches when little girls stand in a circle singing of windows and of lovers.
While one sere leaf, that parting Autumn yields, Trembles upon the thin, and naked spray, November, dragging on this sunless day, Lours, cold and sullen, on the watery fields; And Nature to the waste dominion yields, Stripped her last robes, with gold and purple gay — So droops my life, of your soft beams despoiled, Youth, Health, and Hope, that long exulting smiled; And the wild carols, and the bloomy hues Of merry Spring-time, spruce on every plain Her half-blown bushes, moist with sunny rain, More pensive thoughts in my sunk heart infuse Than Winter’s grey, and desolate domain Faded like my lost Youth, that no bright Spring renews.
1 The white butterfly in the park is being read by many. I love that cabbage-moth as if it were a fluttering corner of truth itself!
At dawn the running crowds set our quiet planet in motion. Then the park fills with people. To each one, eight faces polished like jade, for all situations, to avoid making mistakes. To each one, there's also the invisible face reflecting "something you don't talk about." Something that appears in tired moments and is as rank as a gulp of viper schnapps with its long scaly aftertaste.
Openly, yes, With the naturalness Of the hippopotamus or the alligator When it climbs out on the bank to experience the
Sun, I do these Things which I do, which please No one but myself. Now I breathe and now I am sub- Merged; the blemishes stand up and shout when the object
In view was a Renaissance; shall I say The contrary? The sediment of the river which Encrusts my joints, makes me very gray but I am used
Where, like a pillow on a bed A pregnant bank swell'd up to rest The violet's reclining head, Sat we two, one another's best. Our hands were firmly cemented With a fast balm, which thence did spring; Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread Our eyes upon one double string; So to'intergraft our hands, as yet Was all the means to make us one, And pictures in our eyes to get Was all our propagation. As 'twixt two equal armies fate Suspends uncertain victory, Our souls (which to advance their state
I don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz, or arrow of carnations that propagate fire: I love you as one loves certain obscure things, secretly, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself, and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose from the earth lives dimly in my body.
41 His classic studies made a little puzzle, Because of filthy loves of gods and goddesses, Who in the earlier ages raised a bustle, But never put on pantaloons or bodices; His reverend tutors had at times a tussle, And for their Aeneids, Iliads, and Odysseys, Were forced to make an odd sort of apology, For Donna Inez dreaded the mythology.
42 Ovid's a rake, as half his verses show him, Anacreon's morals are a still worse sample,
The last time I saw Donald Armstrong He was staggering oddly off into the sun, Going down, off the Philippine Islands. I let my shovel fall, and put that hand Above my eyes, and moved some way to one side That his body might pass through the sun,
And I saw how well he was not Standing there on his hands,
60 Her eye (I'm very fond of handsome eyes) Was large and dark, suppressing half its fire Until she spoke, then through its soft disguise Flash'd an expression more of pride than ire, And love than either; and there would arise A something in them which was not desire, But would have been, perhaps, but for the soul Which struggled through and chasten'd down the whole.
61 Her glossy hair was cluster'd o'er a brow Bright with intelligence, and fair, and smooth; Her eyebrow's shape was like the aerial bow, Her cheek all purple with the beam of youth,
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