One fine morning, in the country of a very gentle people, a magnificent man and woman were shouting in the public square. “My friends, I want her to be queen!” “I want to be queen!” She was laughing and trembling. He spoke to their friends of revelation, of trials completed. They swooned against each other.
In fact they were regents for a whole morning as crimson hangings were raised against the houses, and for the whole afternoon, as they moved toward groves of palm trees.
[Introduction] Lo now! four other acts upon the stage, Childhood, and Youth, the Manly, and Old-age. The first: son unto Phlegm, grand-child to water, Unstable, supple, moist, and cold’s his Nature. The second: frolic claims his pedigree; From blood and air, for hot and moist is he. The third of fire and choler is compos’d, Vindicative, and quarrelsome dispos’d. The last, of earth and heavy melancholy, Solid, hating all lightness, and all folly. Childhood was cloth’d in white, and given to show, His spring was intermixed with some snow. Upon his head a Garland Nature set: Of Daisy, Primrose, and the Violet.
In pious times, ere priest-craft did begin, Before polygamy was made a sin; When man, on many, multipli'd his kind, Ere one to one was cursedly confin'd: When Nature prompted, and no Law deni'd Promiscuous use of concubine and bride; Then, Israel's monarch, after Heaven's own heart, His vigorous warmth did variously impart
It was your idea to park and watch the elephants swaying among the trees like royalty at that make-believe safari near Laguna. I didn’t know anything that big could be so quiet.
And once, you stopped on a dark desert road to show me the stars climbing over each other riotously like insects
It is too early for white boughs, too late For snows. From out the hedge the wind lets fall A few last flakes, ragged and delicate. Down the stripped roads the maples start their small, Soft, ’wildering fires. Stained are the meadow stalks A rich and deepening red. The willow tree Is woolly. In deserted garden-walks The lean bush crouching hints old royalty, Feels some June stir in the sharp air and knows Soon ’twill leap up and show the world a rose.
The days go out with shouting; nights are loud; Wild, warring shapes the wood lifts in the cold; The moon’s a sword of keen, barbaric gold, Plunged to the hilt into a pitch black cloud.
I We thrill too strangely at the master's touch; We shrink too sadly from the larger self Which for its own completeness agitates And undetermines us; we do not feel— We dare not feel it yet—the splendid shame Of uncreated failure; we forget, The while we groan, that God's accomplishment
Take a statement, the same as yesterday’s dictation: Lately pain has been there waiting when I awake. Creative despair and failure have made their patient. Anyway, I’m afraid I have nothing to say. Those crazy phrases I desecrated the paper With against the grain ... Taste has turned away her face Temporarily, like a hasty, ill-paid waitress At table, barely capable but very vague.
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